Allen Ginsberg: How to Be

The past few mornings, our reading has been Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews with the poet Allen Ginsberg. Most of the interviews are very long, except one It asked a single question about how to balance working for obvious fortune and the creative life, concerns that resonate with just about everyone we know. Ginsberg’s answer totally blew us away. (We recommend…

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Homemade Curry Powder

Years ago, when Sandy Gluck, a friend and talented cook was assisting me on some recipes, we hadn’t been able to find a great commercial curry powder: one as subtle and complexly flavored as those Indian cooks make themselves. So Sandy divined her way through an array of spices to make this marvelous curry powder,…

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Sir David Attenborough’s Awesome Way

(Video link here.) This wonderful selection of clips from the 2002 BBC documentary Life On Air – David Attenborough’s 50 Years In Television provide a glimpse of beloved BBC nature adventurer Sir David Attenborough‘s unique, always-game approach to the strange and new; it is a fine model for navigating life. Our favorite is right in the first two minutes

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Create A Personal Practice To Prepare for Any Challenge

Australian competitive hurdler Michelle Jenneke dances to get ready to run hurdles, a routine that has worked for her for years: she starts with enthusiasm and momentum to launch into extraordinary movement, using the dance’s performance energy to get ready. It’s a superb example of creating a personal routine that uses excitement and imagination to focus and feed yourself for performance, or just about anything you do in life.

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Butterfly Dreaming

When a friend sent us this image of Greta Oto, a wondrous butterfly with transparent wings, we thought immediately of “The Butterfly Dream” from an ancient Chinese text written by the Daoist sage Chuang-Tzu:

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Crispy Saffron Noodle Cake

Like many cooks, I’d used saffron for years without knowing that it is the dried stigmas from a certain crocus or why it is the most costly spice in the world. After I went to Spain and witnessed the saffron harvest for myself, the backstory made dishes like this Crispy Saffron Noodle Cake all the more wonderful.

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