CATEGORIES

Southern Living

Forging a Legacy - A Fredericksburg, Texas, couple is creating a new class of heirloom cast-iron cookware

When Jay Mallinckrodt pitched the idea of crafting cast-iron cookware to his wife and business partner, Heather, in 2020, she was hesitant. I immediately said no, she recalls with a laugh. But I finally agreed as long as we made something that we would actually want to use ourselves. Like many others during the initial throes of the pandemic, their multigenerational family operation, Heartland Enterprises (which specializes in machining parts for jet engines and gas and oil equipment), was seeing a lull. “No one was flying; no one was drilling, says Jay. So we had time to try something different.

2 mins |

Southern Living

A Butterfly Haven - In the Texas Hill Country, a conservationist is helping monarchs adjust to the changing world

Twenty-four years ago, Monika Maeckle bought a small property on the Llano River in Central Texas as an escape from fast-paced San Antonio. A journalist and marketing professional by trade, she didn't at first realize the value of the location on which she and her husband would later build their ranch. She also had no idea how this decision would eventually transform her life.One October evening a few years later, a friend invited Maeckle to their nearby house, which sat on a watershed with several large cypresses. All these butterflies dropped from the sky and started to gravitate toward the trees, she recalls. Stronger people who could swing a big 12-foot-long pole began trying to capture them, and we waited. By the end of the evening, we'd tagged a couple hundred butterflies, and I left there enchanted.

3 mins |

Travel+Leisure US

Back to Sri Lanka - The past few years have not been easy on this alluring South Asian island. But on a return visit, Prasad Ramamurthy finds a place-and a people-on the upswing.

I was at the end of a five-day journey that had begun in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Galle Fort, in southwestern Sri Lanka, and taken me across the southern tip of the island to the leopard reserve of Yala National Park. In between I had taken in the dramatic coastline of Weligama and had stopped for some beach time in Hiriketiya. Sri Lanka is a country I'm particularly fond of, so when I was asked to revisit to report this story, I seized the opportunity. Yes, I was dying to go back, but I'd had another motive for coming: I wanted to see if the island nation was ready to welcome international visitors again.

10 mins |

Travel+Leisure US

The Luxury of Silence - Grieving a dissolved marriage, Nora Walsh seeks peace and compassion at a meditation retreat in California.

My decade-long marriage to a man I deeply love had dissolved, and I had come to the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, in the secluded hills of Marin County, north of San Francisco, to steady myself. Led by the author and meditation teacher Oren Jay Sofer, the seven-day silent retreat focused on the four brahmavihāra, or Buddhist virtues: loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.

4 mins |

Travel+Leisure US

Family Values - Gay father and blogger Jonathan Bailey shares his proudest moments of traveling with his partner and daughters.

My partner and I grew up in families that didn't travel a lot, so we've always had a sense of wanderlust. Before we had kids, we traveled together, and it was life-changing-travel opened our minds to different ways of life.In 2000, Triton and I decided to have kids. At the time, my mom had terminal cancer, and we were all about connecting with family. We wanted to adopt, because we felt like there were so many children in the world who needed love and a good home. In 2002, my mom passed away, and Sophia was born two weeks later. We welcomed our second daughter, Ava, in 2004.

3 mins |

They're Not in Kansas City Anymore - Todd and Emily Voth's bold pied-à-terre in Herzog & de Meuron's

When emily and todd voth sold their natural-soap company, Indigo Wild, in 2018, the couple realized they could spend more time away from their century-old home in Kansas City, Missouri. So they decided to get a Manhattan pied-à-terre. Todd became intrigued by “this wonderful Herzog & de Meuron building that towers above everything,” he says, referring to 56 Leonard, a.k.a. “the Jenga Building.” They bought this three-bedroom corner unit on the 29th floor.

2 mins |

The Truths and Distortions of Ruby Franke -The Mormon mother of six built a devoted following by broadcasting her family's wholesome life on YouTube. How did she end up abusing her children?

In 2015, Ruby Franke, a 32-year-old Mormon woman in Utah, became another parent sharing her family’s life on YouTube. The first video on her now-defunct channel, 8 Passengers, begins with old footage of her standing in a modest kitchen, her five children gathered around in anticipation as she cuts into a cake to reveal the gender of her sixth child. The video jumps to a scene at the hospital shortly after her new daughter’s birth. Resting in bed, Ruby cradles the baby and her youngest son, a serious-faced 3-year-old boy in blue overalls. “Can you show me where her nose is?” she asks him as he points. “Where’s her eyes?” When an elder son reports that the camera is almost out of battery, Ruby replies softly, “Go ahead, turn it off. That’s okay.”

Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.

SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”

SENSORY OVERLOAD

A wild Danish restaurant combines avant-garde dining with immersive theatre.

CLOSE QUARTERS

Jen Silverman's \"The Roommate\" and Celine Song's \"Family.\"

5 mins |

UNCOMMITTED

Among the Gaza protest voters in Michigan.

FAMILY STYLE

\"La Maison,\" on Apple TV+.

5 mins |

Ambrose

Lily wants to live in the old days. Her mom, Debra, says, No, you don’t, because in the old days all women did was cook and sew and die in childbirth, but Lily still wishes she could travel back in time.

RHYTHM COLLECTOR

Eblis Álvarez's Meridian Brothers unites the many strands of Latin music.

THE ESCAPE ARTIST

The Italian priest who helps women in the Mafia flee the criminal underworld.

MERELY PLAYERS

Race, politics, and the theatre collide in Alan Hollinghurst's

10 mins |

MOVE TO TRASH

Is it time for a new Constitution?

IMMATERIAL GIRL

Sophie is gone. Her music lives on.

7 mins |

It's Not Complicated - Ta-Nehisi Coates's writing on race fueled a reckoning in America. | Now he wants to change the way we think about Israel and Palestine.

It was mid-august, roughly a month and a half before his new book, The Message, was set to be published, and Ta-Nehisi Coates was in my face, on my level, his eyes wide and aflame and his hands swallowing his scalp as he clutched it in disbelief and wonder and rage. At the Gramercy Park restaurant where we’d met for breakfast, Coates, now 48, looked noticeably older than the fruit-cheeked polemicist whose visage had been everywhere nearly a decade before, when he released Between the World and Me, his era-defining book on race during the Obama presidency, and the stubble of his beard was now frosted with white. But he was possessed still with the conviction and anxiety of a young man: deeply certain that he is right and yet almost desperate to be confirmed. He spoke most of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, a central subject of his book. “I knew it was wrong from day one,” he said. “Day one—you know what I mean?”

Soho Will Get a New Artists' Restaurant

Manuela, from the founders of Hauser & Wirth, is equal parts showroom and dining room.

1 min |

How's the Hyssop?

Cafe Mado is a worthy return to locavore eating.

3 mins |

900 Lives of Tana Mongeau

Is one of the internet's most infamous chaos agents capable of cleaning up her act?

8 mins |

A Shiksa Love Story

Erin Foster has spent the past decade turning her Hollywood life into content, to mixed results. Her new Netflix rom-com series, based on her own conversion to Judaism, might change that.

Hot Commodity

In Sally Rooney's novels, love is always being bought, sold, or reduced to tropes. But this is also what makes it real.

Circuit Cellar

Understanding Mesh Circuits How to Use and Calculate Them

Microcontrollers and other digital systems concern mostly ones and zeros but when connections to the real word are needed it can get messy. Stuart writes about mesh analysis and how mesh circuits can be calculated and applied in practical scenarios.