Architecture · Art · Museums · Observations · Paris
It has been announced that the artist Christo Javacheff's grandiose project to wrap the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is postponed from this autumn to 2021. The married duo of pioneering artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude (who died in 2009), who won worldwide fame for their art projects
NB! · Archive · Moscow · Observations · People · Humour
Here is my beloved Alla Demidova at twenty. She is not yet a student of the Shchukin Theatre School, but for now an actress of the Moscow State University student theatre under the direction of Igor Lipsky. Do correct me if I am mistaken, but I see a strong portrait
Aristocracy · Archive · Monarchies · Observations
Leafing through old newspapers, I came across a mention of Princess Theodora Romanov, widow of Prince Dmitri Romanovich, head of the House of Romanov and great-great-grandson of Nicholas I. A most attractive woman who looks wonderful for her 78 years, the Princess was born Dorrit Reventlow, of an
Observations · Science
Malaria (mal'aria) is Italian for "bad air", as opposed to buon'aria, good air. The disease was originally thought to arise from foul miasmas in the atmosphere, so the quality of the air was the key to defining it. The malarial plasmodium, which in fact
Art · Observations · Humour
I usually pictured Bacchus as a hideous fatty, more like the Hedonism Bot from Futurama than a youth of idyllic beauty. Tullio Lombardo's Bacchus and Ariadne force one to revise the customary view of the ancient god, who here truly looks divine. In this work by Lombardo one
Books · Observations
He reposes. He has voyaged. And with him? Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Xinbad the Phthailer. When? Going to a dark bed there
NB! · Archive · Observations · Mores · New York · Pop Culture
The NYTimes has recently published a selection of Bill Cunningham's photographs of New York's Easter parades, which ran in Sunday Styles from 1997 to 2007. A time to which one would truly like to return 🌧💖
Art · Observations · Mores · Saint Petersburg
I do not know which came first, the roast chicken or the boiled egg, but pastry in the shape of letters is the very same alphabet biscuit from your childhood breakfasts, only larger and richer. In Germany today such baked goods are sometimes called Russisch Brot, supposedly because the Dresden
Observations · Mores · Humour
I have two questions: when did you last go hunting, and do you know how to make a pigeon pie? It is no simple matter. Ingredients: 12 pigeon breasts, 450 g mushrooms, a few truffles, 12 quail eggs, salt, pepper, cloves and nutmeg, herbs, 1 glass of port, 1 glass
Interviews · Observations · Society · People
But all the same, it is an interesting interview, do read it. Alexievich makes some quite reasonable points: a weak state intends to save only itself, and she draws parallels with the Chernobyl catastrophe. She recalls, for example, how Western aid then settled with the officials and, instead of real
NB! · Books · Observations · Society · Humour
Svetlana Alexievich to the studio. The Nobel laureate doubts the nature of the coronavirus; might the epidemic, after all, have been caused by immunity weakened by 5G?
Books · Monarchies · Observations · Paris · Nature
The British writer Barbara Pym, in her ironic novel Crampton Hodnet, written in the 1930s and 1940s, observes that the fish in the ponds of the Petit Trianon are so old that they must have seen Marie Antoinette. In principle, some freshwater fish really do live for more than a