~openculture | Bookmarks (4)

In 1957, Salvador Dalí created a tableware set consisting of 1) a four-tooth fork with a fish handle, 2) an elephant fork with three teeth, 3) a snail knife with tears, 4) a leaf knife, 5) a small artichoke spoon, and 6) an artichoke spoon. When the set went on auction in 2012, it sold […]

Few of us grow up drinking coffee, but once we start drinking it, even fewer of us ever stop. According to legend, the earliest such case was a ninth-century Ethiopian goatherd named Kaldi, who noticed how much energy his ruminant charges seemed to draw from eating particular red berries. After chewing a few of them […]

From the time that a nameless genius in either Ethiopia or Yemen decided to dry, crush and strain water through a berry known for making goats nervous and jumpy, coffee has been loved and worshiped like few other beverages. Early Arab doctors proclaimed the stuff to be a miracle drug. Thoroughly caffeinated thinkers from Voltaire […]

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for […]