JWH TRAVEL BITS AND MORE…December 10, 2020

Nov 18, 2020

With the latest COVID-19 restrictions putting the kibosh on live concerts for the immediate future, it’s good to know that local arts companies like Vancouver Opera, Chor Leoni, Music on Main, Vetta Chamber Music, musical intima, and Early Music Vancouver are offering online alternatives.

by Steve Newton on November 27th, 2020 at 8:04 AM

'Tis the season for 'babies napping outside!'

With the long nights of winter approaching, a little inspiration can go a long way toward brightening our days. Thankfully, countries across the globe have come up with plenty of fun, intriguing, and unique ways of celebrating the season’s dog days that are not only inspiring, but also downright delightful. Many of them are centuries-old festivities while others are relatively new, yet all of them provide a bit of possibility and, at times, a touch of laughter in a year where those things are exceedingly hard to come by. From Lithuania to Taiwan, don’t miss these 12 favorite, quirky winter traditions.

Laura Kiniry | November 26, 2020

Hand woven with the finest materials including wool and silk, a single Persian rug can often take years, and sometimes decades to create. A high-quality Iranian carpet can cost tens of thousands of dollars, with antique rugs fetching even higher prices. So how are Persian rugs made, and why are they so expensive? Oct 24, 2020, Business Insider

You love books, right? And travel? Well, you’re in the right place to find thousands of great books set around the world, all with a firm sense of the place the author has set them in.

It might be a novel, a memoir or a travelogue, but each one will transport you to the destination you’re interested in, whether that’s ahead of a trip you’re planning, while you’re already there, or just to pique your literary curiosity, from the comfort of your favourite reading place on a dark winter’s night.TripFiction was created to make it easy to find that perfect combination of book and destination, and from our database you can easily search by location, title, author and genre

In Afghanistan, Kate Humble meets traditional shepherds in the remote Wakhan Corridor. Mar 13, 2020

Ben Heppner, one of the greatest opera stars of all time, is your host for BACKSTAGE. Every week he shares his passion for music - the classical selections that'll make you simply swoon. Great stories. Great music. Backstage

The other day, Ben discovered an old wooden box and inside it were ancient treasures … his ancient treasures. Homemade valentines from Grade 3. His purple Crown Royal bag of marbles. So in this Backstage, he's searching for more buried treasures.

Aired: Nov. 29, 2020

Oct 8, 2020

Ann Morgan considered herself well read -- until she discovered the 'massive blindspot' on her bookshelf. Amid a multitude of English and American authors, there were very few books from beyond the English-speaking world. So she set an ambitious goal: to read one book from every country in the world over the course of a year. Now she's urging other Anglophiles to read translated works so that publishers will work harder to bring foreign literary gems back to their shores. Explore interactive maps of her reading journey here: go.ted.com/readtheworld

This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page. TEDGlobal>London | September 2015

Travel has long been a way for Moscow-born photographer Nancy Lova to feed her craft. Her portfolio is a trip in itself, with distinctive pastel-hued shots that show glimmering pools in Tuscany, ornate façades in Malta, and afternoon shadows on alleyways in Marrakech. “I try to get a mixture of life as it is—people in the markets or stores—and architecture as well. Anything that represents color and the culture of a place.”

But on a trip to western India's Lake Pichola last year, Lova, who is currently based in London, underwent an internal evolution as she crisscrossed the city's waterways and historic royal palaces in search of her shots. “There was a lot going on in my life in my personal life,' she says. 'My relationship was breaking down, which caused my anxiety to just go through the roof, depression, and a sense of losing my identity as well.” The trip, planned with her partner at the time in hopes that it would be the change their relationship needed, wasn't the fix she'd been looking for—instead, it forced Lova to confront the unhappiness it was causing her.

Below, in Lova's words, the places and moments that shepherded her through this reckoning. 

Photographer Nancy Lova shares her images from a transformative visit to Lake Pichola. 

BY MEGAN SPURRELL November 24, 2020

If there’s one food that everybody around the world loves, it’s cheese. Great Big Story’s resident cheese connoisseur and senior producer Beryl Shereshewsky introduces us to seven cheesemakers in seven countries, who show us their take on cheese. We sample all of it, of course—from Serbia’s donkey cheese to Wisconsin’s cheese curds to Sardinia’s casu marzu, full of maggots. Not to be outdone, Shereshewsky invites us into her New York City home where she makes India’s paneer for the first time, using her mother-in-law’s recipe.

Apr 23, 2020

From U.S. presidents to Antarctic penguins, war zones to wonders of the world, Super Bowls to rock ‘n’ roll superstars. The portfolio of National Geographic photographer and Olympus Visionary Jay Dickman is a who’s who and where’s where of the past 50 years.

Sara Drew is a professional art conservator who will be walking us through the restoration of a 125-year-old oil painting and its original frame. The painting is a portrait of Edmund Holland by Willard Leroy Metcalf from 1895. Sara will go through the details of five layers of cleaning that need to happen to restore this painting and the meticulous attention to detail she needs to have to ensure that it's done correctly. She'll also be responsible for patching any tears and rips and retouching any areas where paint has been lost. Oct 18, 2020, Art Insider

'Every village needs a pub,' says Stonesfield resident Steve Callaghan. 'It's the hub of the community'

When Steve Callaghan first moved to Stonesfield, England, he scoped out the village for three essential things: a school, a shop and a pub.

Now, 25 years later, there's only one pub left standing in the British village of 1,500, and it's up for sale. So he and other community members are joining forces in the hopes of buying it and keeping it open. 

'Every village needs a pub. It's the hub of the community,' Callaghan told As It Happens host Carol Off.

'If you run out of milk, you don't want to not have a shop. If you've got kids, you've got send them to the local school. And if you want a good community, you need a pub.'

CBC Radio · Posted: Dec 01, 2020 5:51 PM ET | Last Updated: December 1