Posts by Sally Speller

Post-WWII London, by the mid-to-late 1960s, was reimagining, rebuilding and rearranging. Its economy was strong, and nearly 30% of its population was aged 15-34. With these factors in play, and with that undefinable "something" that brings creativity and zest to a location for however brief a time, London emerged as the style capital of the world, its youth culture arising from the heady influences of new music and street fashion.

My favorite stories are the ones about the ordinary people who, while going about their daily lives, encounter strange and/or inexplicable events. How they behave in the midst of weirdness is more interesting than the phenomenon itself. I've always been a sucker for a well-told vampire tale. (Sorry!) Or an off-center ghost story or strange-baby story... Here, in no particular order, are a few of my favorite, wonderfully odd movies.

The cuisine of North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia) was influenced by the many peoples who settled there: African, Islamic, Arab, Berber, Ottoman, French, Italian and Spanish. It has its roots in the beginning of civilization itself.

Sometimes naked
Sometimes mad
Now the scholar
Now the fool
Thus they appear on earth:
The free men.
— Hindu verse from Avadhoota Gita

Terence McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000), America's most beloved psychonaut, bard, ethnobotanist, folk hero, and freewheeling philosopher, rose to fame in the early 1990s with the publication of several influential books: The Archaic Revival (1992), Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge — A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (1992), Trialogues at the Edge of the West: Chaos, 

Most people have experienced brushes with the Otherworld, that liminal place where dimensions overlap and reality shimmers, shivers, and breaks apart: seeing ghosts, dreaming "true" dreams, meeting that strange and uncannily helpful "person" at just the right moment... These situations are more common than we collectively admit — but attitudes are shifting. According to the Institute of Noetic Sciences, "The paranormal is no longer a fringe subject. Need proof? Only 32 percent of Americans report no paranormal beliefs, and half of the population reports belief in two or more paranormal phenomena." About.com reports that 71 percent of 

Ancient Egypt has long held a fascination for the West. The idea of Egypt was transmitted to Roman culture through Greek accounts, and after Late Antiquity, existed in the European imagination as an exotic and ancient location in the Bible's Old Testament account of the 6th century BCE Hebrew diaspora.

In the late 1800s Harvey Wilcox and his wife Daeida purchased 160 acres in the rolling California hills for a housing subdivision. They called it Hollywood. In 1911 the first filmmakers arrived from New Jersey; in Hollywood they could shoot outdoors without electrical lighting for over 100 days each year. Others from the east coast soon followed, coming not only for the sunny climate but to escape the clutches of the Motion Pictures Patents Company, or the Edison Trust, which licensed Thomas Edison's patents and often violently enforced their monopoly on cameras, projection equipment, and film distribution. By the time the Trust was successfully prosecuted and dissolved 

When I was a child in the 1960s and 70s, I was convinced that everybody was having a good time but me... As it turns out, I was right!

Until the advent of recorded sound, the indigenous music of England, Scotland, and Wales was passed down through the generations by word of mouth.

"And she proceeded to burn perfume..." [Gulnare of the sea].
Picture Collection, NYPL. Digital ID: 1704102.From ghost-hunting reality-TV shows to feature films like The Hereafter, the paranormal has gone mainstream. Book publishing, too, has jumped on the paranormal bandwagon.

Are you looking for a healthy, flavorful, whole foods approach to cooking? Wherever you are on the vegan to meat-eating spectrum, Indian food offers a wide variety of tastes, colors, and textures guaranteed to appeal to every palate.