August 10, 2022

ADORABLE ANIMALS  Give This Rat a Chance  Wildlife biologist Mike Cove envisioned a romantic career studying big cats in exotic locations. He ended up championing a rat. But not just any rat: Key Largo woodrats, which engineer entire ecosystems and build elaborate, six-foot-tall nests in the thick forests of the Florida Keys. These are one of the rarest and most endangered rodents in the world, thanks to habitat loss, invasive predators, and climate change. They are also, Cove says, tragically misunderstood.  READ MORE → GASTRO OBSCURA Home Through Food, Illustrated Starting in June of 2019, Jenny Lau, a communications consultant by day, interviewed 100 chefs, food writers, food artists, and food entrepreneurs from all over the Chinese diaspora for an Instagram series called #ChineseFoodiesOfIG, asking them questions over email such as “Where are you from? Where are you really from?”, “What’s in your fridge?”, and “What does Chinese food mean to you?” Last October, after her 100th interview, Lau crowned her series with the #ChineseFoodiesOfIG100 exhibition, commissioning 40 artists, mostly of Asian descent, to illustrate interviewees’ answers to the question, “What does home taste like?” READ MORE → PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA The Tombstone House This is a wonderful example of waste not, want not. Or is it waste not, haunt-not? Only the owners would know. The building was constructed in 1934 from the bottom half of government-issued marble tombstones that previously topped the graves of Union soldiers in Poplar Lawn Cemetery. READ MORE → GASTRO OBSCURA COURSES Write a Food Memoir In this generative food memoir-writing workshop, led by award-winning writer Gina Rae La Cerva, will use the subject of food as a starting point to explore our inner worlds. We’ll access deep memories, connect to our childhoods, examine our heritage, and reflect on our personal growth. Through short prompts, longer writing assignments, and readings, we’ll examine the craft of writing about food. ENROLL TODAY → DIVINE DRINKS Resurrecting a Cider Tradition It was the late 1990s, and Father Rui Sousa was the new head of the parish of Prazeres, in the middle west region of Madeira, the famous subtropical Island of Portugal. Father Rui (as locals know him) wanted to foster appreciation of the rural environment and preserve local plants, which led him to investigate the potential of the apples in the area for making cider. He didn’t know it yet, but his experiments would transform a languishing, 600-year-old tradition of making Madeira cider. READ MORE → SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA Balboa Park Botanical Building and Lily Pond A vibrant array of water lilies and lotus bloom along the shallow reflecting pond at Balboa Park, originally constructed for the Panama-California Exposition in 1915. It is the largest body of water in Balboa Park—during World War I, the lily pond was used for Naval training exercises. READ MORE → WHALE, WHALE, WHALE Hunters of the Deep Residents of the West Coast are likely familiar with the iconic and endangered resident killer whales in the Salish Sea, and the more numerous Bigg’s killer whales, or transient orcas, that ply the shallower waters of British Columbia’s coast and inlets. But growing evidence indicates there’s a distinct subgroup of orcas, known as outer coast killer whales, which have a vocal dialect and culture distinct from their transient cousins. They specialize in hunting big game, such as gray whale calves and massive elephant seals or sea lions. READ MORE → MANHATTAN, NEW YORK Grand Central Terminal Whispering Gallery Stand with your ear right up against the tile work in the domed intersection of walkways on the lower floor of Grand Central Terminal and you’ll discover a secret: a corner-to-corner whispering gallery. Even the quietest sweet nothing, soft song, or whispered secret can be heard, even over the din of crowds. READ MORE → SPONSORED BY THE MAINE OFFICE OF TOURISM Maine’s Hidden Magic There’s a lot more to Maine than meets the surface. For example, did you know Maine has its own “Grand Canyon”? From antique railway rides to Stephen King’s mansion to the largest (and perhaps most handsome) Paul Bunyan Statue on earth, there’s a lot you don’t know about Maine—yet. LEARN MORE →