The Art and Ritual of Rangoli

“Four-hundred million Hindu women do some form of this kind of art or ritual sometime during the year,” said Vijaya Nagarajan, the author of a book on the kolam and an associate professor of religious studies at the University of San Francisco. Though I’d always noticed in my own family that the ritual was done…

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How We Hug Now

Welcome. Last weekend I went to a party where I reunited with several friends I hadn’t seen since early 2020 or before. I greeted each with The New Hug. The New Hug is a highly choreographed affair, beginning with an eager approach, the natural inclination to gather someone you’re happy to see in joyful embrace.…

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Toni Tipton-Martin Writes Her Own Legacy

Toni Tipton-Martin, a cookbook writer and the editor in chief of Cook’s Country, is unveiling details for her foundation, which will now be known as the Toni Tipton-Martin Foundation, to support future generations of women in food. Ms. Tipton-Martin, this year’s recipient of the Julia Child Award from the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and…

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Gucci Makes a Hollywood Entrance

LOS ANGELES — On election night in much of America, in the shadow of Grauman’s Chinese Theater and amid the panting anticipation for Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” film, the actual Gucci designer Alessandro Michele brought the “Gucci Love Parade,” his first in-person show since February 2020, to Hollywood Boulevard. Style and stardom collided in…

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Thank You, Claudia Roden!

Thank You, Claudia Roden! Good morning. A real cornucopia of victuals arrived in the blue-bagged newspapers we delivered to Times home-delivery subscribers this morning! Melissa Clark has a lovely profile of the cookbook author Claudia Roden, an Egyptian exile whose 1968 cookbook, “A Book of Middle Eastern Food,” helped introduce the non-Arabic-speaking world to the…

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