The Trouble With Airports, and How to Fix Them

During this summer of frequent flight delays and cancellations, many travelers spent more time in airports than expected, often subjected to blaring TV news, rock-hard seats and scarce electrical outlets. Add anxiety over Covid-19 and disagreements regarding mandated masking and it’s little wonder incidents of bad behavior have surged in the air. The Federal Aviation…

A Stew for Labor Day

Good morning. Happy Labor Day. Because of the coronavirus there’ll be no West Indian American Day Parade this year along Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, but if you’d like to get into the spirit of past and future holidays, you might try this luscious Jamaican oxtail stew (above) that I learned to make a decade ago…

The Ethereal Taste of Flowers

PART OF THE confusion is a matter of terms. The ancients grappled with how to categorize the sensations that come to us through food. As the classicist John Paulas outlines in his 2017 essay “Tastes of the Extraordinary: Flavor Lists in Imperial Rome,” the Greek philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias, around the turn of the third…

A New Way to Look at Furniture in Milan

It has been 60 years since Salone del Mobile Milano, the premier annual exhibition of furniture, was founded, and two and a half years since crowds last gathered in Milan’s exhibition halls to admire the relentless creativity of international designers and manufacturers. A spirit of innovation continues to drive the fair, not least in the…