I first understood the power of words when I was ten years old and found a piece of my writing—a missive calling for gender equality in my family—ripped to shreds and strewn about the landing, my brother clearly angered by it.
In seeing his reaction, I realized that I could unpick the seams of the status quo by putting my voice in writing. I was most expressive in English, the language of Anne Shirley, Jo March, Scout Finch and my other literary heroines, and the fact that my parents could neither read nor write it only fueled its allure as a means of subversion.
On a rainy afternoon in September 2018, the FBI gathered national media in its Minnesota headquarters for an important announcement. Jill Sanborn, special agent in charge of the Minneapolis division, stood in front of a packed room and said, “We’re here today to share with you the recovery of one of the most significant and cherished pieces of movie memorabilia in American history: Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the 1939 movie ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ ”
When the ruby slippers were stolen in August 2005 from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn., it made international news. Someone had broken in, smashed a plexiglass case and escaped with the shoes. David Letterman joked in a monologue that week that “a pair of ruby red slippers worn by Judy Garland in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ have been stolen. The thief is described as being armed and fabulous.” The crime, though, was no joke to this northern timber and mining community of about 10,000 people with a yellow brick sidewalk winding through its historic downtown. Judy Garland was born here in 1922, and “the theft devastated us,” says John Kelsch, senior director of the museum.
Beneath the crystalline waters of the South Pacific, 32 scientists from 12 countries emerged after a nine-week voyage to the depths. They’d been drilling for samples from a long-lost world, on a quest that sounds a whole lot like the premise of a Jules Verne novel: the expedition to Zealandia. Not that far beneath the sea – and sometimes, far above it – the ancient land sleeps. We’re not just talking lost villages, cities, or even a country, but Earth’s newly-baptised eighth continent. How has Zealandia been hiding in plain sight all this time? Is there a way for amateur explorers to find it? Is it possibly Atlantis? We had some burning questions about the discovery of this watery lost world…
If you’re wondering how Zealandia slipped past the radar of your geography class, you’re not alone. The term itself was only coined in 1995, when Bruce P. Luyendyk, a geophysicist and oceanographer at UC Santa Barbara, wanted a name for the collective ‘broken’ land masses in the South Pacific (namely, New Zealand and New Caledonia). Thus, the term Zealandia was born. But Luyendyk also had another motive. Like most scientists at the time, he had a hunch that the islands weren’t just random specks in the sea.
When thinking about Thai food, for many diners, the first dishes that spring to mind will probably be pad Thai, tom yum goong and green curry. They are on the menu of practically every Thai restaurant worldwide.
What they might not be aware of is that the delicious concoction – “Thai stir-fry” in the local vernacular – is not historically a traditional dish in Thailand. Pad Thai’s roots are as political as they are culinary. It was imposed upon the populace almost 80 years ago as a cornerstone ingredient of a nationalistic agenda.
In 2017, when Nora Martins was trying to decide between Japan or South America for a big fall trip, it was neither the staggered steps of Machu Picchu nor the snow-capped peaks of Patagonia that sealed the deal.
“My husband called me and said, ‘I got a reservation at Central, so I think we should go to South America,’” said Ms. Martins, 34, a lawyer who lives in Long Island City.
Central, the chef Virgilio Martínez’s restaurant in Lima, is currently No. 6 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, an annual list that ranks restaurants worldwide.
Robert Macfarlane quotes a long passage from Garner’s novel early on in Underland, his masterly and mesmerising exploration of the world below us. But, instead of perceptual narrowing, what this book is about is the broadening of perspective that comes when we take ourselves out of the familiar world of light and air. It is a book that seeks to re-enchant everyday existence by moving out of it; that asks us to be aware of those things, both actual and fabled, that move beneath our feet; it also seeks, as its subtitle “A Deep Time Journey” suggests, to reconfigure our experience of time, using the vast cycles of geological time and weaving in ancient mythical descents to take the measure of the Anthropocene era.
In 2015, Jenny Odell started an organization she called The Bureau of Suspended Objects. Odell was then an artist-in-residence at a waste operating station in San Francisco. As the sole employee of her bureau, she photographed things that had been thrown out and learned about their histories. (A bird-watcher, Odell is friendly with a pair of crows that sit outside her apartment window; given her talent for scavenging, you wonder whether they’ve shared tips.)
Odell’s first book, “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,” echoes the approach she took with her bureau, creating a collage (or maybe it’s a compost heap) of ideas about detaching from life online, built out of scraps collected from artists, writers, critics and philosophers. In the book’s first chapter, she remarks that she finds things that already exist “infinitely more interesting than anything I could possibly make.” Then, summoning the ideas of others, she goes on to construct a complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto.