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Category Archives: New York Times
Sofia, Bulgaria: An Ancient City That Wears Its History Well
April 30, 2006
THE storm had just broken, taking with it the August mugginess. I looked up from the balcony of my hotel across the dampened city of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Directly in front of me, the golden domes of the huge Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral were set against the dark sky. Twin rainbows arced above them as though the sky itself were part of the building’s design. Sofia is that kind of place.
Posted in New York Times, Newspapers
100 Years Later, Learning From Disaster
April 12, 2006
At 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the San Andreas fault near San Francisco snapped and slipped some 13 feet. The resulting earthquake destroyed hundreds of buildings and initiated a fire that raged for three days, gutting the commercial and cultural capital of the West Coast. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people lay dead in the ruins of almost 30,000 buildings.
This April 18, San Francisco celebrates, warily, the centennial of the Great Earthquake and Fire — the archetypal American natural disaster.
Posted in New York Times, Newspapers
From Sitcoms to Farm Markets, Charms Abound in Los Angeles
April 9, 2006
MY wife doesn’t like Los Angeles. “The cars,” she says, “the smog — it’s a wasteland!” In the decade Nina and I have been married, I have never come close to convincing her that the cradle of global popular culture has any redeeming qualities — but it’s always fun trying.
More than most cities, serious online legwork is a prerequisite to rooting out L.A.’s charms, but they are multifold: even before we arrived I knew our problem would be time, not money.
Posted in New York Times, Newspapers