Last night, as I ground black pepper and sprinkled some French sea salt into my salad, I stopped to ponder how we take these spices for granted. Back in the Middle Ages, before the Portuguese, Dutch and other voyages of discovery sailed to Indonesia, India, and beyond, spices were worth…
Zhuang Zedong, the Chinese ping pong champion, has just died. He sought out and met his American counterpart, Glenn Cowan during a visit to America in 1971. Zhuang was an important private diplomat for Mao’s China, and after this meeting the U.S. Team, including Cowan, was invited to compete in…
Today is Veteran’s Day, formerly Armistice Day, the 11th day of November, the day the armistice was signed in 1918. Walt Disney was sixteen and officially underage but somehow managed to make his way to France in 1918 as a Red Cross Ambulance Corps driver. Although he didn’t see much…
I love cars. I’ve owned a Jaguar XK 150S, the model predating the E-Type, a Citroën DS 19, an Alfa Romeo 2000 Spider, etc. I especially loved the Citroën. One time David Byrne arrived late at the studio and had to park illegally. I offered to park his car. He told me…
The world has watched the Olympics in London, now continuing. It’s interesting to go back a ways and see an Olympics from an earlier time, Tokyo 1964 in the classic documentary by Kon Ichikawa. It was the first big international event held in Japan since the second world war ended. You…
