Life Style

Healthy In & Out

2008-08-05T19:44:00.000-07:00

A balanced diet not only keeps you healthy on the inside, but makes a big difference on the outside too!

A Person With A Good Diet			A Person With A Bad Diet
clear skin glossy hair sparkling eyes firm muscles straight posture proper weight bright smile alert fun-loving ready to get the most out of life			pale or blotchy skin lifeless hair dark circles under dull eyes flabby muscles droopy posture too thin or fat pale gums, bad teeth tires quickly seems crabby or lazy drags through life

Now that you know what good diet can bring, go ahead and try your skills on the Snack-O-Gram.

Healty Skin

2008-08-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

Drink a lot of water. Your body is composed mainly of water and it is a necessary component of all the natural processes that occur there. When you drink water it not only hydrates your insides but it hydrates your skin as well. Drinking enough water is also one of the best "diets" for weight loss. You should drink at least eight 8 oz. glasses per day.

Stay out of the sun. The ultraviolet rays of the sun are VERY damaging to your skin. Use sunscreen when you are out in it. Be careful of the reflected rays even if you are in the shade. A moisturizer or foundation containing sunscreen is highly recommended for everyday use. I mean EVERY day.

Get plenty of rest. Think that beauty sleep is just a myth? Think again. Proper rest is very important to your overall health and the health of your skin.

Eat Healthy Foods Simple foods are good for you in a lot of ways. They provide essential nutrients; vitamins, minerals and fiber, and are often lower in calories than processed foods. You know the kinds of foods I mean. Beans, rice, vegetables, yogurt, lean meats-there are many more. Cook with olive oil. Use onions, garlic and other high-mineral foods. Many herbs and spices, besides seasoning your supper, also contain beneficial substances. See my Natural Foods page for more information.

Do some type of exercise regularly. Exercise stimulates your entire system to rid itself of built-up toxins. You don't have to buy a treadmill or join a gym (unless you like that kind of thing). Gardening, playing golf, hiking in the woods, whatever you choose to do to get your blood moving is a step in the right direction. Try parking your car a few blocks away from work. There is no doubt that regular activity will begin to make you feel and look better. Once you are accustomed to the walk you may even begin to look forward to it!

You could take up a sport. Even playing frisbee can provide a good cardiovascular workout. It can also improve your strength and hand/eye coordination. Stretching exercises of all kinds are good for working and flexing your joints and muscles. You can do these anywhere; in the middle of your walk, in your living room or kitchen with a chair, even in bed. So get moving! Once you are hooked on activity you may even have to break out that treadmill for rainy days!

Reduce stress. Easier said than done right? Research has shown that stress is a contributing factor in many health problems. If you are not healthy your skin is not going to look healthy. Take some time out just for you. A luxurious bath is a great stress reliever (Perhaps with some nicely scented oil or salt!). So is relaxing with a good book, a cup of hot Earl Grey tea, watching the sun set, taking a walk, or just sitting and watching birds at a feeder outside your window. Most importantly you must be comfortable with yourself. You have to find happiness in what you are doing RIGHT NOW. Not happiness as some sort of goal: ("I will be happy when I have reached this point, have accomplished this much, have finished...") Get the idea? Decide to be happy now.

MOISTURIZE! I mean all the time. Morning and night. This ties in somewhat wi...

FUN FOOD FACTS

2008-08-05T19:31:00.000-07:00

Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries

The onion is named after a Latin word meaning large pearl

Half of the world's population live on a staple diet of rice

"Fast Food" Isn't New!

The remains of fast-food shops have been found in ancient ruins! Even ancient Greeks enjoyed take-out. The only thing that is new is the mass production, standard menus and recipes of fast-food "chains." Wow!

Potato crisps were invented by a North American Indian called George Crum

During a lifetime the average person eats about 35 tonnes of food

Ice Cream Is Chinese Food!

When the famous explorer Marco Polo returned to his homeland of Italy, from China in 1295, he brought back a recipe (among other things). The recipe, was a Chinese recipe for a desert called "Milk Ice." However, Europeans substituted cream for the milk, and voila..."Ice Cream." Ice cream has been a hit ever since!

The founder of McDonald's has a Bachelor degree in Hamburgerology

In France, people eat approximately 500,000,000 snails per year

Carrots Really Can Help You See In The Dark!

Vitamin A is known to prevent "night blindness," and carrots are loaded with Vitamin A. So, why not load-up today!

The first breakfast cereal ever produced was Shredded Wheat

There are about 100,000 bacteria in one litre of drinking water

The Word "Salary" Comes From "Salt!"

Salt, our oldest preservative, was extremely rare in the past. So rare, in fact, that it was often used as pay. Imagine...earning a couple of tablespoons of salt for a hard-days work. Today, salt is so common that restaurants give it away for free, and packaged food contains so much that it's far too easy to eat too much salt (salt is also known as "sodium").

Cream is lighter than milk

Over 1,000 litres of beer are drunk in the House of Commons each week

Sometimes Frozen Fruits And Vegetables

Are More Nutritious Than Fresh!

The longer that fruits or vegetables sit around waiting to be sold or eaten, the more nutrients they lose. But fruits and vegetables grown for freezing are usually frozen right after they're picked. Therefore, they have less time to lose their nutrients.

Instant coffee has been in existence since the middle of the eighteenth century

The dish chop-suey does not come from China. It was created by Chinese immigrants in California

You're More Likely To Be Hungry If You're Cold!

Temperature can affect your appetite.

Frankfurter sausages were first created in China

Within 2 hours of standing in daylight, milk loses between half and two-thirds of its vitamin B content

Have A Tomato With Your Burger!

When a source of Vitamin C (orange, lemon, grapefruit, strawberry, tomato, potato, etc.) is eaten with meat or cooked dry beans, the body makes better use of the iron in the protein food.

A portion of the water you drink has already been drunk by someone else, maybe several times over

Bakers used to be fined if their loaves were under weight, so they used to add an extra loaf to every dozen, just in case -- hence, the expression "baker's dozen"

It Takes 3500 Calories To Make A Pound Of Fat!

So, as long as you're active, and burning of calories, calories shouldn't have too much of a chance to turn into fat.

Peanuts are used in the manufacture of dynamite

It has been traditional to serve fish with a slice of lemon since the Middle Ages, when people believed that the fruit's juice would dissolve any bones accidentally swallowed

The Average Person Eats Almost 1500

Pounds Of Food A Year!

On average, that can be thought of as 150 pounds of meat, 290 pounds of milk and cream, 35 pounds of eggs, 48 pounds of chicken, 68 pounds of bread, 125 pounds of potatoes, and 80 pounds of fruit. That should be enough to fill your stomach.

10 Tips To Healthy Eating And Physical Activity

2008-08-05T19:28:00.000-07:00

1. Start Your Day With Breakfast

Breakfast fills your "empty tank" to get you going after a long night without food. Eating a good breakfast can help you do better in school. Easy to prepare breakfasts include: cold cereal with fruit and low-fat milk, whole-wheat toast with peanut butter, yogurt with fruit, whole-grain waffles or even last night's pizza.

2. Get Moving

It's easy to fit physical activities into your daily routine. Walk, bike or jog to see your friends. Take a 10 minute activity break every hour while you read, do homework or watch TV. Climb stairs instead of taking an escalator or elevator. Try to do these things for a total of 30 minutes every day.

3. Snack Smart

Snacks are a great way to refuel. Choose snacks from different food groups - a glass of low-fat milk and a few graham crackers, an apple or celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins, or some dry cereal. If you eat smart at other meals, cookies, chips, and candy are okay for occasional snacking.

4. Work up a sweat

Vigorous work-outs, when you're breathing hard and sweating, help your heart pump better, give you more energy and help you look and feel your best. Start with a warm-up that stretches your muscles. Include 20 minutes of aerobic activity, such as running, jogging or dancing. Follow-up with activities that help make you stronger such as push-ups or lifting weights. Then cool-down with more stretching and deep breathing.

5. Balance your food choices - don't eat too much of one thing

You don't have to give up foods like hamburgers, french fries, and ice cream to eat healthfully. You just have to be smart about how often and how much of them you eat. Your body needs nutrients like protein, carbohydrates, fat, and many different vitamins and minerals such as vitamins C and A, iron, and calcium from a variety of foods.

6. Get fit with friends or family

Being active is much more fun with friends or family. Encourage others to join you and plan one special physical activity event, like a bike ride or hiking, with a group each week.

7. Eat more grains, fruits, and vegetables

These foods give you carbohydrates for energy, plus vitamins, minerals, and fibre. Besides, they taste good! Try breads such as whole-wheat, bagels, and pita. Spaghetti and oatmeal are also in the grain group.

8. Join in physical activities at school

Whether you take a physical education class or do other physical activities at school, such as intramural sports, structured activities are a sure way to feel good, look good and stay physically fit.

9. Foods aren't good or bad

A healthy eating style is like a puzzle with many parts. Each part, or food, is different. Some foods may have more fat, sugar or salt, while others may have more vitamins or fibre. There is a place for all these foods. What makes a diet good or bad is how foods fit together. Balancing your choices is important. Fit in a higher-fat food, like pepperoni pizza, at dinner by choosing lower-fat foods at other meals. And don't forget about moderation. If two pieces of pizza fill you up, don't eat a third.

10. Make healthy eating and physical activities fun!

Take advantage of physical activities you and your friends enjoy doing together and eat the foods you like. Be adventurous - try new sports, games, and other activities as well as new foods. You'll grow stronger, play longer, and look and feel better! Set realistic goals - don't try changing too much at once.

Grow your own exotic citrus -- pummelos, blood oranges and kaffir limes.

2008-07-02T20:51:00.000-07:00

Southern California's climate is ideal for these fruits that originated in Asia.

By Nan Sterman, Special to The Times
July 3, 2008

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA has the perfect climate for growing unusual citrus. Some of the more interesting include fruited blood oranges, fragrant-leaved kaffir limes and the surprisingly enormous pummelo.

Pummelo (Citrus maxima): It looks like an elephant version of a grapefruit. Those sold at farmers markets can have different shapes -- round, oval, even some with necks -- and come in shades of yellow or green outside, pink or yellow inside. Shop in the nursery, however, and you are most likely to encounter a pummelo called 'Chandler,' which has pink flesh and greenish-yellow or pink-blush-yellow skin.

'Chandler' are vigorous growers, reaching 20 to 22 feet tall and wide on standard rootstock and nearly 15 feet tall and wide on dwarf rootstock. Branches hang down slightly, especially when laden with ripe fruit from April through August.

Tracy Kahn, curator of the Citrus Variety Collection at UC Riverside, says 'Chandler' is a hybrid of two pummelos, one being the very low-acid 'Siamese Sweet,' which is also a parent of 'Oroblanco,' a pummelo-grapefruit cross (most often sold as grapefruit). Pummelos are popular throughout their native Asia. In China, for example, the fruits symbolize fortune and plenty. They are prized as part of the Chinese new year celebration.

'Chandler's' white pith is an inch or so thick, depending on where the fruit is grown. In hotter, drier areas inland, pith tends to be thicker; in cooler and more humid areas along the coast, pith is thinner. To eat, peel and separate the segments. Then slice the membrane open to reveal the pale or deep pink, juice-filled vesicles -- the tasty treasures you're after.

Blood orange (Citrus sinensis): The myth and lore that surround the rosy skin and deep-red flesh of a blood orange include accusations of poisoned trees and blood injected into fruits. One theory proposes that the fruit came from grafting a standard "blonde" orange to the rootstock of a pomegranate. It doesn't seem that far-fetched if you consider the similarity of the two fruits' shapes and colors.

But blood oranges arise neither from contamination nor from grafting. According to fruit specialist David Karp, they are the result of a spontaneous genetic mutation that is thought to have first occurred many centuries ago in blood oranges' native China and repeated, perhaps several times, as oranges spread to Europe, the Mediterranean and eventually to the United States.

If you live where days are warm and dry and nights are cool, you have the perfect climate for the sweetest and deepest red-colored oranges. Along the coast, where the temperature is more moderated, blood oranges are markedly paler.

The three varieties offered by local nurseries all grow to about 15 to 18 feet tall and wide on standard rootstocks, 6 to 8 feet tall and wide on dwarf rootstock. You can keep them smaller with regular pruning or by growing them in containers. Be prepared for fruit color to vary from variety to variety, tree to tree, year to year and fruit to fruit. The size of crops can vary too, heavy one year, light the next.

As with all citrus, tree-ripened fruits taste best, but if left on the tree too long, blood oranges lose their flavor, says Daniel Nelson, director of nursery operations for La Verne Nursery in Piru, one of the area's largest wholesale citrus growers. He says the best time to pick is when the fruit feels heavy and just about falls off into your hand.

'Moro' hails from Sicily and has the deepest-colored rind and flesh. Fruits ripen from January to May. At peak ripeness, the flesh is vermilion and more tart than a navel or ' Valencia.' Left on the tree too long, the color becomes even darker, but as acids break down, the fruit starts to taste flat.

'Tarocco' is the largest variety. The thorny trees of this Sicilian blood orange yield fruits not quite as deep-colored as 'Moro,' but which are often described as the sweetest and best tasting.

'Sanguinelli' (also called 'Spanish Sanguinelli') has smaller fruits that are more oval than round. Rinds are blushed red and the flesh is moderately pigmented, often streaked.

Kaffir lime (Citrus hystrix): While most other citrus are valued for their flesh, kaffir lime is valued for its intensely fragrant leaves and rind. No Thai curry or tom yum goong soup is complete without the tangy aromatics of the leaf.

The leaves of this native of Indonesia and Malaysia are shiny green, each with two lobes. In fact, Spanish-speaking people call kaffir lime hoja de ocho for its figure-eight-shaped leaf.

It can take 10 years or more for a seed-grown kaffir to begin fruiting. Plants sold by nurseries are grafted so they should fruit within a year or two. The fruits are small and round, very warty and very pithy. They stay green for a few months then ripen to yellow. Most, however, are picked and used green.

The leaves can be harvested at any time of the year though most cooks prefer the young, soft leaves from the growth flushes of spring and mid- to late summer.

Dried leaves are available at the market, but fresh ones are that much more potent. Thailand native Cha Cha Wright of Encinitas picks fresh young leaves to freeze and cook with throughout the year.

The ceramics of Otto Heino, and a peek inside his home

2008-07-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

By David A. Keeps, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 26, 2008

The first in a yearlong series profiling California's living legends of midcentury design.

AT 94, Otto Heino has no time for false modesty.

Photos: Otto Heino, a master of...

"I am," he says, "the oldest, richest potter in the world."

With an output of 10,000 pieces a year, Heino might also add "most prolific" to his list of superlatives. For more than six decades, the Ojai artist has been the workhorse of post-World War II ceramics, one of the artisans who transformed California crafts into a national design movement in the 1950s to '70s. Now that home furnishings are falling in step with a burgeoning green movement, Heino's work is resonating with a new generation drawn to his earthy, organic expression of midcentury modernism.

"He has understood and manipulated clay as well as -- or better than -- the handful of ceramists whose work transcends crafts," says Los Angeles Modern Auctions owner Peter Loughrey, who has seen prices for Heino pieces double in the last few years. "And his experiments with glazing and firing techniques -- well, it practically takes a scientist to do what he has done."

Indeed, Heino and his late wife, Vivika, spent about 15 years developing the formula for a once-lost ancient Asian glaze that produces a velvety, low-sheen yellow on high-temperature stoneware and porcelain. Despite million-dollar-plus offers from companies in China, Japan and Korea, the recipe remains his secret. Instead, he sells his own pottery with the signature finish for as much as $25,000 per piece.

Among collectors, Heino also is known for jade-like celadon, rich blues and turquoises, pale purples and blood reds.

"The surface and color and the iron spots on a lot of the pots make them look natural, unmanipulated, like a rock you'd find somewhere," Doug Van Sickle, a Sherman Oaks potter who studied with Heino, says of the finishes -- some glassy, some satiny, others rough and speckled. "To get that look, you have to make your own clay."

Despite his age and slight physique, Heino still fires his own pottery at 2,575 degrees inside the nine kilns of his cinder-block home studio. He packs and ships overseas orders himself and sells $150-and-up pieces to visitors in a showroom that the architect Lloyd Wright designed for the property's original owner, the esteemed potter Beatrice Wood.

And, of course, he still throws at his wheel. During a recent visit to his studio, Heino effortlessly turned 50 pounds of clay into five impressive bowls and vases in well under an hour.

ALONG with Vivika, who taught generations of potters before her passing in 1995, Heino embodied the spirit of the 1950s studio crafts movement. In Southern California, modern ceramists such as the Heinos and Otto and Gertrud Natzler ushered in a new era -- "a merger of designer and craftsman, and a unification of form and function," says Christy Johnson, director of the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona.

In workshops often set up in pastoral communities such as Ojai, these artisans sharpened their skills while earning a living. Demand for their work was driven by the postwar boom for tract-style homes, Johnson says. "The style was modern -- lots of glass, open floor plans -- and that architecture called for a different type of decorative art."

Otto and Vivika produced fittingly modern objects that were appreciated for their natural materials. In the back-to-the-earth counterculture of the 1960s, Johnson notes, such studio pottery fit the social and political priorities of the time.

Among artists, the couple were known for being generous with their expertise.

"They were the teachers who taught the teachers who taught us all," says Van Sickle, 54, who studied with the Heinos in the 1980s. "To this day, I mix my own clay and glazes, just like they did."

This organic style -- something Heino calls "rugged but delicate" -- is informed by centuries of craftsmanship. Bulbous vases with narrow necks and other simple, elegant shapes recall traditional Japanese pottery. His nature-inspired decorations reflect the English Arts and Crafts movement of the early 20th century as well as the indoor-outdoor lifestyle of Southern California.

But most important, Heino's work ethic and aesthetic are in line with the Bauhaus philosophy of functional design.

It is a modernist sensibility that continues to influence contemporary California artists of note, including Van Sickle, Adam Silverman of Atwater Pottery in Los Angeles, Kevin Nguyen of Xiem Clay Center in Pasadena and James Haggerty, a Santa Barbara ceramist who at 13 was Vivika Heino's youngest student.

"For those of us who work in creating vessels, as opposed to sculptural ceramics, Otto's work is a perfect unity of throwing technique and refined forms," Haggerty says, "a great example of what clay and glaze can do together."

OTTO HEINO was born Aho Heino, a second generation Finnish-American in East Hampton, Conn., who with 11 siblings weathered the Great Depression raising dairy cows and delivering milk.

In World War II, while serving as a waist gunner aboard a B-17 bomber, Heino says he was shot down twice over Germany and escaped death because of his blond hair, blue eyes and dog tags with the more Teutonic-sounding "Otto Heino."

During five years of Air Force duty, he briefly worked on engines at a Rolls-Royce factory in England. There he visited the studio of the legendary Bernard Leach, the Hong Kong-born artist who introduced Japanese techniques to British pottery, and the decision was made: "That was what I wanted to do," Heino recalls.

At the end of the war, he attended the League of New Hampshire Arts and Crafts, where he studied painting and ceramics. He married his pottery instructor, Vivika, who in 1952 was recruited to teach at the University of Southern California.

Heino's mechanical abilities and knowledge of ceramics led to a job with NASA here crafting nose cones for rockets. Well compensated but artistically unfulfilled, he gave up the position after 13 years to became a full-time potter.

The couple bought Wood's home in the early 1970s ("paid her $35,000 cash," Heino recalls) and set up shop in Ojai, signing their works "Vivika and Otto."

Ask about his process today, and Heino simply responds, "The clay shows me what to do." He centers the material on his wheel, squeezes it into a cylinder, then presses his thumbs down the center and out to the edges, drawing the clay upward with his fingers to create the walls of a bowl.

After 60 years, it's an entirely intuitive set of movements. Unlike most potters, Heino uses little water to shape his creations. By not thinning out the clay, he can make sturdy vessels that are more than 2 feet tall or wide.

"You tend to see the same shapes again and again in Otto's work," says Gerard O'Brien, owner of Reform, a Los Angeles gallery specializing in California design and decorative arts. "He developed his vocabulary of utilitarian forms early on and added natural elements like leaves and branches impressed into the clay, and colored slip [liquid clay] painted with calligraphy brushes."

The glazes, however, are Heino's greatest legacy.

His famous yellow formula sells for $75,000 per 5-gallon bucket, Van Sickle says, "which I doubt costs more than $5 to make."

When Heino first began selling the yellow pottery overseas, he received six-figure checks and wire transfers that led federal agents to his studio.

"They thought I was selling drugs," Heino says with a laugh, recalling notations on the payments that said, "for pot."

TODAY, where pet peacocks once strolled, the lush grounds of the artist's home are patrolled by the border collie Robbie II.

In the kitchen, a collection of copper pots and pans -- wedding gifts to Otto and Vivika -- still hang from a shelf that he designed, and Heino still eats from stoneware plates made in the studio a quarter-century ago.

They're decorated with his late wife's calligraphic rendering of a blue swallow, a design that also appears on the master bath's tiles -- fitting for the man who won the gold medal at the 1978 Biennale Internationale de Ceramique d'Art in Vallauris, France, for a pot decorated with tiny birds perched on the rim.

A long teak dining table and chairs designed by Danish architect Hans Wegner stretch through the kitchen, leading the eye to an original wrought-iron butterfly chair with leather seat and a gas-powered potbellied stove that sits by a wall covered in handmade Heino tiles.

On the other side of the stove, a Windsor-style chair is testament to Heino's East Coast roots.

"I like American Colonial and the old New England stuff," says Heino, who sleeps in an old four-poster bed and hangs wooden pitchforks and cookie molds as art.

The living room is a midcentury modernist collector's dream: A pair of authentic Papa Bears, Wegner's jet-age version of a wing chair, straddle a flagstone fireplace.

Danish credenzas and tables are covered in '50s and '60s ceramic lamps and bric-a-brac. A long, lean Wegner sofa serves as a backdrop for ethnic and folkloric pillows and textiles. It is in this room that Heino lights a fire in winter or watches the Lakers on TV.

In February, doctors installed a pacemaker that slowed Heino down for a couple of weeks. But he was back to work soon enough.

"Never hurry, never worry," he says, describing his attitude toward art and life.

"If you're negative, you'll never make it."

Hidden Gardens of Paris

2008-06-30T20:03:00.000-07:00

David Brabyn for The New York Times

Parisians can dine at garden cafes like La Muscade at the Palais Royal.

NEXT to the Palais de la Découverte, just off the Champs-Élysées, is a flight-of-fancy sculpture of the 19th-century poet Alfred de Musset daydreaming about his former lovers. As art goes, the expanse of white marble is pretty mediocre, and its sculptor, Alphonse de Moncel, little-remembered. For me, however, it is a crucial marker. To its right is a path with broken stone steps that lead down into one of my favorite places in Paris, a tiny stage-set called Jardin de la Vallée Suisse.

Part of the Champs-Élysées’ gardens, this “Swiss Valley” was built from scratch in the late 19th century by the park designer Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand. It is a lovely illusion, where nothing is quite what it appears at first sight. The rocks that form the pond and waterfall are sculptured from cement; so is the “wooden” footbridge. But the space — 1.7 acres of semitamed wilderness in one of the most urban swaths of Paris — has lured me, over and over again. My only companions are the occasional dog walker and the police woman making her rounds.

On a park bench there, I am enveloped by evergreens, maples, bamboo, lilacs and ivy. There are lemon trees; a Mexican orange; a bush called a wavyleaf silktassel, with drooping flowers, that belongs in an Art Nouveau painting; and another whose leaves smell of caramel in the fall. A 100-year-old weeping beech shades a pond whose waterfall pushes away the noise of the streets above. The pond, fed by the Seine, can turn murky, but the slow-moving carp don’t seem to mind, nor does the otter that surfaces from time to time.

The Swiss Valley is one of the most unusual of Paris’s more than 400 gardens and parks, woods and squares. Much grander showcases include wooded spaces like the Bois de Vincennes on the east of the city and the Bois de Boulogne on the west, and celebrations of symmetry in the heart of Paris like the Tuileries and the Luxembourg.

But I prefer the squares and parks in quiet corners and out-of-the-way neighborhoods. Many are the legacy of former President Jacques Chirac. In the 18 years he served as mayor of Paris, he put his personal stamp on his city by painting its hidden corners green.

“He took some of the pathetic, shabby squares and gardens and transformed and adorned them,” said Claude Bureau, one of the city’s great garden historians who was chief gardener of the Jardin des Plantes for more than two decades. “He appreciated beauty — of women, of nature.”

Paris’s current mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, has taken over the task. In his seven years in the job, he has created 79 acres of what City Hall calls “new green spaces.” Just this month, he transformed the open space in front of City Hall into an “ephemeral garden,” a nearly 31,000-square-foot temporary installation of 6,000 plants and trees, and even a mini-lake.

Intimate, lightly trafficked and often quirky, the small gardens of Paris can be ideal places to rest and to read. The trick is to find them. You can consult “Paris: 100 Jardins Insolites” (“Paris: 100 Unusual Gardens”), a guide by Martine Dumond whose color photos make discovery for the non-French speaker a pleasure, or explore various Web sites like www.paris-walking-tours.com/parisgardens.html. Or you can simply wander on foot, confident that around the next corner there will be something new.

You’ll find spaces for listening to a concert or watching a puppet show (like the Parc de Bagatelle in the 16th Arrondissement); church gardens (like the one enclosing the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Seventh Arrondissement); gardens with vegetable patches (like the Jardin Catherine-Labouré in the Seventh Arrondissement); oriental gardens (like the one at Unesco headquarters in the Seventh Arrondissement that was a gift of the Japanese government). There are gardens with beehives, bird preserves, out-of-fashion roses, chessboards, playgrounds, menageries, panoramic views, even a rain forest and a farm. Green spaces adjoin cemeteries, embassies, movie theaters and hotels.

Even hospitals.

I doubt that most visitors to Notre-Dame Cathedral know that inside the nearby Hôtel-Dieu complex, which is still a working hospital, is a formal garden-courtyard with sculptured 30-year-old boxwoods. The hospital’s gardener replants much of the space every May — with fuchsias, sage, impatiens and Indian roses.

From the top of the flight of steps that cuts across the garden, you can find yourself all alone, looking out through the hospital’s windows to the tourist hordes outside. Every few months, the hospital’s interns choose a different costume for the male statue at the back — at the moment, he is Snow White.

(It was Mr. Bureau who told me that some of the most peaceful gardens belong to hospitals. Gardens help cure patients more quickly, he said).

The Square René Viviani on the Left Bank across from Notre-Dame is another spot that is easy to miss. But this tranquil square features what is said to be the oldest tree in Paris — a false acacia brought to France from Virginia in 1601, and now shored up with concrete posts. Sitting on a park bench in one corner yields one of the best views in Paris — Notre-Dame on the right and St.-Julien-le-Pauvre, a tiny church built in the same era on the left.

And then there are the gardens that are the back or front yards of museums. For instance, at the cafe-garden of the Petit-Palais— with its palm and banana trees and sculptures and mosaic floors lit from below — a half dozen marble tables and metal chairs offer the ideal setting to watch the museum’s stone walls change from buff to tawny yellow as the sun moves.

Inside the museum is a portrait of Alphand (whose park designs include the Bois de Boulogne, the Parc Monceau and the Parc Montsouris, as well as the Vallée Suisse) in a top hat, his pince-nez hanging from his black overcoat.

And then there are country settings like the garden of the Musée de la Vie Romantique, once the home of the 19th-century artist Ary Sheffer, at the end of a narrow path at 16, rue Chaptal in the Ninth Arrondissement. There, you can sit among the poppies, foxglove and roses and sip tea (a cafe opens in the summer) and pretend to be George Sand, who lived nearby, and whose personal effects have been assembled in a reconstructed drawing room inside (even a lock of her hair).

On the other side of town, behind an alley at 100, bis, rue d’Assas in the Sixth Arrondissement, is the garden of the Zadkine Museum, which was once the home and atelier of the 20th-century Russian-born sculptor Ossip Zadkine. The sculpture-filled garden is much the same today as when he worked in wood and granite under its trees. “Come and see my pleasure house, and you’ll understand how much a man’s life can be changed by a pigeon house or by a tree,” he once wrote to a friend.

But gardens are not just museum pieces; they are active, integral parts of neighborhoods. For a bit of entertainment — even drama — on a sleepy weekend afternoon, I sometimes walk over to the Square Blomet in the 15th Arrondissement. It is the headquarters of the Union Bouliste, where games of boules are played with such verve that they continue under spotlights late at night.

The ivy covering the metal walls of the field is so old that the leaves have grown up to six inches wide. At the end of a long park-bench-lined corridor sits a little-known bronze sculpture by Joan Miró, who lived in poverty down the street in the atelier of a fellow Catalan sculptor.

On spring and summer Sundays, there is even more excitement at the Jardin Tino Rossi, a sliver along the Seine that turns into an impromptu dance-a-thon. For more than two decades, the informal group of singers and dancers that has been a fixture at the Rue Mouffetard outdoor Sunday market moves to Tino Rossi, along the Quai St.-Bernard, to party. After a wine-filled picnic, they take over one of the amphitheaters, and to the music of accordion, violin and saxophone, they sing and dance the musette until midnight. The star couple one recent Sunday was an older man, in a white shirt and shoes and Champagne-colored trousers, and his partner, a redhead in white ruffles and red sequined slippers.

For quiet magic, Paris insiders pass the time on the lawn and benches of the Square du Vert-Galant, a pointy-shaped spit of land that reminds me of the deck of a cruise ship. The westernmost tip of the Île de la Cité, it offers the Louvre on the right, the dome of the Institut de France on the left, the river on both sides and straight ahead.

The best way to access it is down two flights of stairs at the equestrian statue of Henri IV on the Pont Neuf. It was there, in the 1991 film “Les Amants du Pont Neuf” (released in the United States as “The Lovers on the Bridge”) that Juliette Binoche, as a homeless artist who is going blind, struggles to paint her companion’s portrait.

Even the city’s large, formal gardens proclaim hidden spaces. The vast Luxembourg Garden can overwhelm with too many joggers, sunbathers, musicians, newspaper readers, pony riders and tulip admirers. But find the 17th-century Fountain of the Medicis, named after Marie de Medicis (Louis XIV’s grandmother), an oasis of calm and shade inspired by the city of Florence and built on her instructions.

I am not much of a gardener, and the Jardin des Plantes in the Fifth Arrondissement, with its greenhouses and odd species and identifying labels, seemed too much like work. Until I met Mr. Bureau. He told me how his mother was a concierge in the neighborhood, and that he took his first baby steps in the vast garden. It was there, in fact, that he met his wife. She was a 17-year-old high school student, he a 21-year-old gardener fresh from military service. It was raining, and he offered her shelter in the gardener’s hut.

“Women always love gardeners,” he said. “We speak of roses and perfume. We can easily get their attention.”

He was readily persuaded to show off its secret corners, the gardens within the garden. After pointing out a Lebanese cedar planted in 1734, he took me up a spiraling stone walkway to a pergola of iron, copper, bronze, lead and even gold that is France’s oldest metal decorative construction.

Then we entered a concrete tunnel beneath the main garden that led to the Jardin Alpin, a craggy, flowering space that houses species from mountainous areas around the world. Deep inside is a valley with a stream and a leafy canopy that only the strongest beams of light can penetrate. "Here,” Mr. Bureau said, “is where lovers come to hide.”

EARLY on a recent morning, I went walking around the 18th Arrondissement with François Jousse, City Hall’s main lighting engineer (and a self-appointed expert on Paris), to explore more of the city’s little-known gardens, ones I had never come across in the six years I have lived in Paris. There, as in other parts of the city, squares and parks were built in a wave of democratization in the 19th century.

Mr. Jousse showed me the Square Carpeaux, where working-class families bring their kids and where table tennis is played on permanent tables. A white statue of a woman whose arm was broken off looks over the space; a pergola sits in the center of the square.

“I love this place for what it represents: an old, authentic Paris neighborhood meeting place,” Mr. Jousse said. “I call it the anti-Luxembourg.”

We stopped by the Parc de la Turlure, a series of discreet spaces that form a sort of garden-apartment — a living room of grass, a corridor with a tilleul (linden) arcade, a “bedroom” that seems to belong to oiled women in bikinis and another for boules-playing. Abutting the Sacré-Coeur Basilica, the park has a small amphitheater that faces a wall of rushing water.

From there, we headed to the wilderness of the Jardin Sauvage St.-Vincent, a 16,000-square-foot space that since 1985 has been designated by the city as a “wild” garden, where insecticides and artificial watering are banned, and some of the most unexpected vegetation in Paris — artemisias, white nettles, wild blackberries — can be found. Unfortunately, it is open only six hours on Saturdays from April through October. Sometimes not even then. It was closed that day.

But that disappointment led to another discovery: a tree- and bird-filled garden at the Musée de Montmartre just around the block at 12, rue Cortot, where Renoir painted “The Garden in the Rue Cortot, Montmartre,” an 1876 work that now hangs in Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art. The Montmartre museum itself is in what was once a 17th-century abbey. Its collection includes photographs, posters, paintings and manuscripts documenting Montmartre’s 2,000-year history.

One room, called “Party Time,” is devoted to the laissez-faire mentality of the neighborhood when it was not part of Paris proper. “Outside the walls of the city, wine is cheaper and women are less shy,” reads an information panel. From a window there, you can look down into a working vineyard no bigger than a basketball court, lovingly adorned with hostas, ferns, pansies and primrose. Purple phlox spill over a wall; wisteria drapes over a fence. (Its grapes, harvested every fall, are said to make the most expensive bad wine in the city.)

Mr. Jousse left his favorite for last: les Jardins du Ruisseau, which are not really gardens at all, at least not in the classic sense. They are a series of narrow spaces along a defunct railway track heading east out of Paris where residents have planted flowers, fruit trees, vegetables and herbs in pots.

You can look down into the space — and at its bold graffiti-painted walls. Except for special events or tours organized by City Hall, the metal door leading to a staircase down into the “gardens” is padlocked. But the 300 members of the garden association have keys.

So Mr. Jousse and I stopped by the Rez-de-Chaussée bistro at 65, rue Letort a few blocks away, and the owner, Thierry Cayla, gave us a key. Over lunch at the bistro, we joked that perhaps Mr. Cayla should turn the gardens into a tourist attraction by preparing picnic baskets for visitors.

But then, at 16.90 euros for a three-course meal, you would miss the chance for one of the best bistro bargains in Paris.

Reference :

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/travel/29gardens.html?pagewanted=3&ref=garden

A Swing Through Myrtle Beach

2008-06-30T19:07:00.000-07:00

Mini-golf's a major deal, rock-and-roll is here to play and life in the fast lane takes on a whole new meaning.

SLIDESHOW

Previous Next

Mayday Golf is one of many elaborate shrines to miniature golf in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (Mayday Golf)

Myrtle Beach's Mayday Golf tells the tale of a doomed yellow Lockheed PV-2 Harpoon. It's one of dozens of miniature golf courses along South Carolina's Grand Strand. (Mayday Golf)

At Hawaiian Rumble mini-golf course in North Myrtle Beach, beware the "Rumble," a.k.a. the volcano that erupts in propane-fueled anger every 20 minutes. (Scott Vogel - The Washington Post)

Buy Photo

By Scott Vogel

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 29, 2008; Page P01

It is a terrain of surpassing beauty: gently rolling, bathed in emerald, covered by an ominous mist. It is morning. A gentle breeze tries, and fails, to cut the humidity. With each step, I inch closer to the rumbling giant, my heart racing as I wind my way through dense underbrush. All at once, there it is: the volcano itself, vast and roiling. It dominates the landscape, cloaking me in shadow. I struggle to get a better look, but I've waited too long. Suddenly the mighty mountain erupts, exploding with a deafening roar. I scramble. All sense of time is lost.

At some point, who knows when, I look down. Remarkably, I am still clutching my putter, having retreated to the relative safety of the 12th hole. You tried to best me, oh Hawaiian Rumble miniature golf course in North Myrtle Beach, S.C. But I have dug deep, and survival is mine.

Until, that is, exactly 20 minutes from now, when the thing will go off again.

Not wanting to tempt fate twice, I bolt to the clubhouse. There, behind a counter covered with golf clubs of every conceivable size and golf balls of every conceivable hue, sits Bo Taylor. He is, I immediately decide, a rare sort of South Carolinian. Rare not because he spends most of his waking hours at Hawaiian Rumble, the most important course in what is indisputably the mini-golf capital of the world. And rare not because he travels from home to work each morning in a burgundy golf cart outfitted with mag wheels. No, Bo Taylor is rare because of his decades-long, unrepentant, curator's love of kitsch. Good kitsch, I mean.

And one thing's certain: He needn't fear for his legacy. Myrtle Beach's ability to attract and breed kitsch -- good kitsch, I mean -- is something even more fearsome than Taylor's volcano. And that's no small part of the area's charm. In fact, you could argue that America needs more of these Black Swan landscapes, where past is no guide to future, where nutty ideas invariably find fertile soil, where improbable notions can become a life's work.

"I joke about it, but it's very serious business," says Taylor, 50. How serious? Olympic Games serious. It turns out that Taylor and a guy by the name of Bob Detwiler are busily readying for the day that the International Olympic Committee decides to include miniature golf in its roster of summer sports. For now, Detwiler, who is president of the U.S. ProMiniGolf Association, is content to run the group's Masters tournament, which is played here each fall on two courses, the Hawaiian Rumble and nearby Hawaiian Village, both of which he owns. In past years, Masters winners have received about $18,000 in prize money, not to mention a green jacket.

"Let me rephrase that. You get a green windbreaker," says Taylor, adding that the 12-round tournament regularly attracts premier competitors from around the world, including Olivia Prokopova, a Czech teen phenom who travels with an entourage, and a Swedish champion named Hans Olofsson. The atmosphere at the Masters of mini-golf is every bit as tense as the one at that other Masters, Taylor says, and many a talented putt-putter has let a nine-stroke lead get away under the glare of the cameras.

"They say to themselves, 'I'm gonna be on ESPN2,' and that plays with their heads," Taylor reports.

* * *

Like many other things in Myrtle Beach, the extraordinary number of miniature golf courses is unexplainable, or rather explainable but not persuasively so. For instance, during a recent three-day stay when the weather was gorgeous and not a single cloud marred the sky, I heard variously that there were 36, 46 or 50 mini-golf courses along the 60-mile strip known as the Grand Strand, which stretches from the town of Little River in the north, through Myrtle Beach, Pawleys Island and Murrells Inlet, and south to Georgetown, S.C. Whatever the actual number of mini-golf opportunities, suffice it to say that you can see more plaster dinosaurs, pirates, airplanes, dragons, tiki torches and safari jeeps, more lost worlds and faux idol worship, more fountains spraying Ty-D-Bol blue water than can possibly be healthy. Whence the profusion?

"It's because it's a family beach, and mini-golf is a wholesome family activity," Detwiler tells me.

Reference :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062701301.html

I got my new shoes at...Geox?

2008-06-30T18:58:00.000-07:00

When you think of Geox shoes, stylish, swanky footwear isn’t what normally comes to mind—try granny-variety loafers and not-so-chic driving shoes as images that pop up instead.

The Italian brand is definitely out to prove me wrong, though. To celebrate its fifth year in business in Canada, Geox recently opened a 900-square-foot concept store—the first of its kind in North America—in the ever-improving Pacific Centre. In fact, the only other place the design concept can be found is on Via Montenapoleone, a street in Milan’s swankiest area. The boutique’s seamless, curved walls creates a “bubble effect” that, according to Mario Moretti Polegato, founder and chairman of the company, is meant to mimic the holes that make up each of Geox’s patented rubber soles.

Speaking of shoes, not only does the store stock rows and rows of colourful thong sandals, Geox has also upped its fashion quotient by releasing everything from stylish ballet flats to work-appropriate pumps and, for fall, mock croc patent leather boots that will keep the rain out and wick away perspiration to keep feet dry. They’re even launching a new line of golf shoes with breathable soles!

So sure, they might not be Loubs, and I won’t go so far as to say I’m ditching those lovely red soles completely, but Geox has certainly, ahem, stepped up for spring.

Reference :

http://www.fashionmagazine.com

Gourmet kitchen, Lean Cuisine cook

2008-06-30T17:46:00.000-07:00

Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times

Not everyone is going gonzo with their kitchen remodeling. Martine Bednarski turned her “dark and ugly” space into a warm, practical room that features a hardwood floor, marble countertop and a free-standing pantry.

Even in this economy, remodeling projects still call for professional-grade appliances and high-end finishes. How did the kitchen become a way to impress rather than a place to cook? And is change on the horizon?

By Sean Mitchell, Special to The Times
June 19, 2008

HIDDEN behind a downturn in the stock market, pain at the gas pump and historic home foreclosures, the high-end designer kitchen gleams on. The remodeling business may be off in parts of Southern California, and some consumers may be rethinking the need for $8,000 professional ranges, granite-topped islands and extra dishwashers, but in the words of Los Angeles interior designer Karen Haas: Clients still want "the best, the brightest, the latest."

"They're wanting these gadgety things," says Cynthia Bennett of Cynthia Bennett & Associates in South Pasadena. "Wine refrigerators have become a staple, plus built-in coffee makers and speed ovens."

Photos: High-end on a budget

Whether people are actually cooking more remains unclear, but the primacy of the kitchen as a public shrine seems, for the moment, secure. "I call them Lean Cuisine kitchens," Haas says, referring to her suspicion that warming a frozen dinner might be the height of culinary expertise expended by some owners of $5,000 ranges -- not counting occasions when the equipment is turned over to caterers.

"No one's going toward Kitchen-Aid and the regular GE," says Susan Serra, a prominent New York designer whose clients spend on average between $150,000 and $200,000 on new kitchens that sport professional-grade equipment by the likes of SubZero and Fisher & Paykel. "I've been against these big appliances from Day One. . . . What people forget is what they really need."

Mid-market manufacturers such as Kenmore and Frigidaire have introduced versions of the high-end ranges for a fraction of the cost. And in the opinion of Los Angeles kitchen remodeling contractor David Ceballos, they're often just as good.

"You're paying for the brand name," he says of the others. But even people on a budget, Ceballos says, "still want that professional look."

Overall appliance sales have flattened, according to the National Kitchen and Bath Assn. But Elaine Chaney, senior vice president for marketing and sales for Dacor, the pricey appliance manufacturer based in Diamond Bar, says its customers still want high style -- as long as it comes with intuitive technology that doesn't require a degree from Caltech to operate.

"Lots of families depend on the high school senior to put a roast chicken in the oven for dinner because both parents are working," Chaney says.

MANY OF the new computerized, dual-fuel, multiple-keypad ovens require much more than turning a knob. These hefty, restaurant-worthy stainless steel icons from Viking, Wolf and others make a statement and deliver charring power, but the question is: To what extent are they necessary for the average family's menu -- even a gourmet menu?

"What's really impressive is being able to sear a steak," says Matthew Lee, a James Beard Award-winning cookbook author, describing what a 15,000-BTU gas burner can accomplish that most home stoves with 1,800 to 3,000 BTUs cannot. Yet Lee and his brother Ted, co-author of "The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook," deliberately make do with "a crappy four-burner Modern Chef" stove in a Manhattan apartment so as to better develop recipes for the average cook.

"If you poke your nose into the world of the been-there-done-that chef like Bobby Flay," Matthew Lee says, "it's not the size of the kitchen you'll notice but its efficiency."

As revealed in the how-to videos on www.danielnyc.com, the home kitchen of Daniel Boulud, the chef-owner of the top-rated restaurant Daniel in New York City, is relatively small, even cramped.

"Space is so dramatically wasted in many of these mansions on steroids," says Katherine Austin, a member of the American Institute of Architects' Housing and Custom Residential advisory group. "You can have high-end appliances in a small space."

The endurance of the showroom-quality kitchen indicates that homeowners still regard this once-utilitarian part of the house to be an emblem of status, as significant to their self-image as the car they drive. Plus, real estate agents and (surprise) kitchen designers will tell you that a camera-ready kitchen is key to a home's resale value.

Research data on consumer preferences released by the American Institute of Architects in February indicated "kitchens continue to be the dominant design area within the home, with dedicated computer work areas and cellphone and personal digital assistant recharging stations becoming an emerging trend."

For those waiting for the kitchen to come back down to Earth, there was a glimmer of hope: The study noted a slight retreat from top-of-the-line appliances.

One factor that may speed the change in mind-set: the growing interest in green building and renovation, with an emphasis on energy efficiency, using renewable resources and generally eschewing the kind of excess that has been a hallmark of many recent remodels.

The AIA survey found that 49% of the respondents wanted renewable countertop materials like ceramic tile and IceStone (made from recycled glass), as opposed to quarried, irreplaceable stone like granite.

EVEN IF environmental concerns don't sway them, some homeowners are dialing back their kitchen plans because of budget.

Bennett says she's been getting more calls for "face-lifts" rather than complete overhauls. Given the uncertain economy, she says, "I think a lot of people are waiting to see what's going to happen."

Denys Barbas, a designer with California Kitchens in Burbank, expects changes to be minor, at least at first. "If anything, they'll pull back on some of the niche items, like the $2,000 built-in coffee maker," she says.

David Glasband, a longtime kitchen contractor based in the San Fernando Valley, is less sanguine, noting that his business is off 70% to 80% over the last six to nine months. "The ultra wealthy people are still buying their Vikings, but aside from them, the Valley has been impacted. Everybody's scared and sitting on their money."

Textile designer Martine Bednarski of Eagle Rock bought her otherwise elegant 1928 Spanish Colonial revival home near Occidental College a few years ago and was faced with "a dark and ugly" kitchen that she knew she had to renovate -- but on a budget. The space was limited and so was her wish list, but she had difficulty finding a contractor willing to entertain any job less than $50,000.

"I finally found someone in San Dimas who would do it," Bednarski says.

Instead of moving the washer and dryer to the basement (which would mean more steps), she decided to mask them with waist-level curtains, and got a hardwood floor that matched the rest of the house, a marble countertop, new light-colored cabinets, a free-standing pantry and open shelving.

She settled for a standard Tappan range and bought one expensive appliance: a compact Miele refrigerator that she wanted to look good because of its stand-alone placement next to an entry.

Her final bill: $40,700.

"I didn't compromise much at all," Bednarski says, giving up only a custom cabinet she originally wanted for the dishwasher.

The result is a handsome and practical kitchen that might not be large enough to make a caterer happy but that suits her needs as a single mom who, in fact, does a lot of cooking. "I don't think I would do it now," she says, "because I probably wouldn't be able to afford it."

Blog: In world mode with BlackBerry

2008-06-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

Page 1 of 2 View as a single page 9:34AM Sunday March 02, 2008
By Peter Griffin

The 'World Edition' BlackBerry 8830 does just about everything a PDA should - except take photos.

It's been an involuntary ritual I've performed countless times in the last couple of weeks - my eye settles on the polished black of Telecom's BlackBerry 8830 World Edition, looking for that red pulsing light that indicates a new email message has arrived.

The BlackBerry is like a bookish travel companion, always ready to divulge some new insight. When using it, the concept of logging-on to check email goes out the window. The device, from Canadian firm Research in Motion, functions primarily as it did back in 2004 when I trialled one of the first BlackBerrys to be offered by Vodafone.

The whole experience centres around push-email technology which uses GPRS mobile data to dribble copies of email from a server to your phone as it arrives at the server.

While a dream at managing email - you are simply given the plain text and the option to open documents, so as to save on data traffic charges, numerous other devices have caught up with the Blackberry when it comes to push email - see Windows Mobile 6 for example.

But the BlackBerry has been evolving too, particularly its user-interface and the breadth of applications available on it has proliferated. It now features a multimedia player, in-built GPS, a microSD card slot, personal information management applications and Bluetooth 2.0.

Before, you may have carried the Blackberry in conjunction with a better-featured mobile or music player. Now the BlackBerry can competently handle most functions you'll need on the road, though there's no digital camera included. I wasn't able to use Google Talk on the 8830 despite there being an icon on the desktop for it, but I'm told it should work with this model. Yahoo Messenger also comes as a default application.

The classic side scroll wheel that's given many an executive the ache of BlackBerry thumb is gone, replaced by an illuminated scroll wheel in the BlackBerry's centre about the full QWERTY keyboard.

The World Edition is thinner but wider than the classic BlackBerry Pearl and has a sleek black face plate with silver trim. My travel companions laughed at how wide it is, but I sure appreciated the full-sized screen which allows for lighting-fast typing once you know the keyboard's layout and gives a nice widescreen feel to the full-colour screen.

Telecom is aiming the BlackBerry squarely at executives who travel regularly and previously would have had to borrow a GSM phone for travel to Europe.

It means that with one device, one phone number and voicemail box you can roam to pretty much anywhere in the world for voice and pick up email in over 60 countries. I used the BlackBerry 8830 in Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam, Barcelona and London.

Life Style

Healthy In & Out

Healty Skin

FUN FOOD FACTS

10 Tips To Healthy Eating And Physical Activity

Grow your own exotic citrus -- pummelos, blood oranges and kaffir limes.

The ceramics of Otto Heino, and a peek inside his home

Photos: Otto Heino, a master of...

Hidden Gardens of Paris

A Swing Through Myrtle Beach

I got my new shoes at...Geox?

Gourmet kitchen, Lean Cuisine cook

Blog: In world mode with BlackBerry

Page 1 of 2 View as a single page 9:34AM Sunday March 02, 2008By Peter Griffin

Page 1 of 2 View as a single page 9:34AM Sunday March 02, 2008
By Peter Griffin