Elgin Park

Designer/photographer Michael Paul Smith believes the secret is in the details.

He gets them right -- and pulls off the “fiction.” Watch it here (2½ min):



See more photos (including a slideshow) here.

Danny Boy

Guitar and vocals* by Gavin Coyle.

Beautiful.

* 7-minute audio clip; music begins 3 minutes in

Animal Vegetable Mineral

I’ve had semesters of botany and pharmacognosy, but today while listening to a podcast about plants on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show, I heard Jamie Boyer (from the New York Botanical Garden) simplify things by defining plants generally as “any organism that can produce its own food.”

Aha! -- they’re food-manufacturing plants.

Second Meaning

I was just ten when my big sister got married in the ‘60s, and was fascinated by her opportunity to play house for real. I listened as she and Mom discussed her household budget, and what I remember to this day is her mentioning some exorbitant amount for staples. True, both she and my new brother-in-law were teachers and would be dealing with lots of papers. But I’d seen the price of staples in the store, and seen the box at home last forever. Wow, I remember thinking, that’s a lotta staples.

So it is when you live with a term for years, then discover a whole other meaning. And so it was yesterday, when I heard about the many magazines carried by the gunman at the Pentagon Metro stop, and my first thought still flashed, Something to read on the train…