Archive - July 6, 2019

Egyptian writer Yasmine El Rashidi, who lives in Cairo, and is the author of several books about Egypt, as well as an editor of the Middle East arts and culture quarterly Bidoun, did a full page review of Peter Hessler’s The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review Section. Yesmine goes beyond Hessler’s book to point out elements of archaeological history of The Buried—from the Arabic al-madfuna—an elevated stretch of desert near Abydos. She also shares her own personal writer struggles of trying to write about Egypt, admitting, “The challenge, in my case, was that everything felt too close—too personal or intimate either to me, or to people I knew.” In summing up her careful–but positive–review of Peter’s book, she admits, “In reading The Buried, which I admit is the kind of book I might have criticized in the past, I find . . .

He became famous, in part, by dressing like a PCV, as he was in Panama 1969-70. He created on television “the handy-man-hero aesthetic. The rumpled, but somehow polished workman in a flannel shirt, jeans and work boots.” That uniform has come to be synonymous with home improvement television, with variations worn by current HGTV stars like Jonathan Scott of “Property Brothers” and Chip Gaines of “Fixer Upper.” “He  single-handedly shifted the narrative of an age-old trade,” said Chip Gaines in a long article in The New York Times RealEstate Section of the paper this Sunday, July 7, 2019, entitled This Old House’ Turns 40. Bob Vila was the show’s original host in 1979 and was on the show until 1989. He next had his own show, “At Home with Bob Vila.” Since then he has made periodic cameos on the sitcom “Home Improvement.” The Times article writes that to celebrate . . .