Lo!  It’s another photo from our 2019 calendar! This is Olavinlinna (“St Olaf’s Castle”), a 15th century fortification on a Finnish island near the Russian border.  The castle was built by the Swedes to keep the Russians out, but in the early 18th Century Sweden ran out of the money necessary to defend themselves and […]

Here’s one of my favorite pictures in the new 2019 calendar.  It’s a small boat tossed on a moody monochrome ocean, with a moody skyscape above.  If it weren’t for the bit of color provided by the setting sun, you’d think I’d printed this out with silver nitrate or something. The only thing that prevents […]

I think it was nine years ago when Jean-Bertrand gave us a memorable dessert, a kind of upside-down apple tart.  I was delighted by two things: first, by the tart itself; and second, by the discovery that actual French people cook from recipes by Julia Child.  (And why not?  They’re thoroughly tested and in their […]

Here’s another photo from our 2019 calendar.  This is an interior view of something called the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood— lighthearted name, that— in St.  Petersburg, Russia.  It is built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was mortally wounded by a nihilist bomb in 1881. Alexander was progressive as autocrats […]