A Rare Chance My oldest child and I drove from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to visit my father, who had suffered a stroke. It gave us a rare chance to catch up. After five hours of round trip travel in the car, I reached over to say goodbye. My eldest always saves the biggest news…
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Nine hundred years ago, the Lord Rhys, ruler of the ancient Deheubarth kingdom, established a great seat of religious learning in the heart of mid-Wales. The abbey was called Ystrad Fflur (Strata Florida in the Latin spoken by the Cistercian monks who ran it). It means Vale of the Flowers in English. Today, much of…
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In the 19 years since my book “The Island at the Center of the World,” about the Dutch settlement that preceded New York, came out, I’ve changed the way I think about the history and geography of New Amsterdam, which occupied the southern tip of Manhattan Island in the 1600s. In recent years, as the…
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Geylang Road in central Singapore is synonymous with the night, when a dizzying number of neon street signs power on and large groups crowd tables that spill out onto the sidewalk. It’s a tasty spot for a nocturnal stroll, to discover vespertine feasts of local specialties, like crab doused in a bracing white-pepper sauce or…
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In the spring of 2020, a few months after we became parents, my wife asked what I wanted for Father’s Day. Being a dad still had new-car smell, so I felt a little funny about celebrating what is already a contrived holiday. My instinct was that I wanted a bunch of “Number One Dad” gear:…
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As OPEC does with oil, the Carthusian monastery that has made Chartreuse liqueurs in Eastern France since 1605 is limiting the flow of the spirit and causing shortages at the bar. (The monks do not plan to increase production to meet demand; better to concentrate on solitude and prayer.) Though the venerable liqueur has a…
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This floral-focused stroll in Paris is the favorite of Sandra Sigman, the celebrated florist and author of the book “French Blooms,” about the distinctive French style of flower arrangement. Just short of three miles, it weaves through the gardens, green spaces and flower shops of the 6th and 7th arrondissements. “I love the French approach…
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A 30-year-old Indian woman named Eshita Kabra-Davies is speaking before a rapt audience at the United Nations. She has long amber hair and is wearing an olive green maxi dress, and leans into the microphone with forward-forcing energy, like it’s the top frame of a Peloton. Speaking with steely calm, Kabra-Davies touches on the impact…
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I was having a nightcap at the palmy, Art Deco Phoenicia Hotel in Valletta, Malta, when a former British naval officer struck up a chat, quickly confiding in me that he thought Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, was the handsomest man he’d ever seen. The prince and the future monarch spent the early years…
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