Daily dose of gelato in hand, I meander through the back alleys and narrow streets of Florence’s Oltrarno quarter. A few blocks from the Arno River, away from tourists and crowds, lies a quiet neighborhood of Florentine artists. Peering into the artisan workshops and studios, you discover a rich part of Florence’s culture and history. Bookbinders, silversmiths, paper marblers, sculptors, marble craftsmen, perfume makers, potters, shoemakers, metal workers. Some of these craftspersons apprenticed under a master or studied with an instructor. Many are members of artisan families, and the skills and practices were handed down through the generations.
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Adam Schallau greeted me with more cheeriness than I could muster at 4:45 AM. “You get up and moving and a story unfolds,” he smiled. As we headed down dark trails to a ledge a mile above the Colorado River, I realized how much I would learn from one of the Southwest’s premier landscape photographers. I watched Adam track the moon and the clouds, and he saw changes in the
“You have no chance of scoring if you don’t take the shot.” Operating on the premise that you have to start somewhere, Victoria Kopyar almost seems to welcome mistakes and problems. Known as someone who relishes the chance to reimagine or reinvent, Victoria “jumped in with both hands and feet” to improve the look of her golf game. Growing up in Ohio, Victoria loved pretty clothes and couldn’t always afford
Concord grape ice cream, topped with a homemade and torched cinnamon marshmallow sauce, nestled between two homemade, and very special, graham crackers
Sweet corn ice cream, spread with a black currant jam, on savory jalapeño corn meal cookies
Fresh mint ice cream, covered with a velvety mixture of white chocolate and crunchy wasabi peas, sandwiched between two extraordinary sugar cookies
Susan McVicker and Katie Gilliam describe their chance meeting as a God thing. With a mother-daughter age difference, they both marvel at the timing of their worlds coming together and the adventure that unfolded. Susan says she “couldn’t possibly have imagined that her art would someday help women on the other side of the world.” Four years ago Susan came across a dilapidated shoe box filled with her late grandfather’s
Around the world, we discard one million plastic bags every single minute. We use, on the average, a bag for 25 minutes, and it takes 100-500 years for the bag to decompose. Our plastic trash, disposed of on land, flows from streams to rivers to the oceans. An ocean gyre is a system of ocean and wind currents, swirling like a whirlpool. The trash is drawn into the calm center
Give Lynn Lesher a challenge and she’s happy. Problems delight her and routines bore her to tears. She describes herself as “a domestic AND an intellect.” She has figured out a way to employ both tendencies while working alongside some of Nashville’s biggest country music stars. Twenty years ago, Lynn decided she was tired of offices and the corporate world. “I literally just quit one day,” she says, sounding like
I hesitate, wondering if I am headed in the right direction. Following my instructions, I turn down a deserted alley, made more gloomy and lonely by the heavy San Francisco rain and gray January morning. The alley consists of back doors and fire escapes and garbage dumpsters and Chinese signs. I come upon one tiny English sign and smile – I am in the right place. The Golden Gate Fortune
