Posted on March 15, 2024
| 6 minutes
| 1212 words
| Valentine Belue
Group leader Beatrice Nyariara (in blue dress) demonstrates a punching techniqueKorogocho is one of Nairobi’s most dangerous slums, where rape and robbery are common. Beatrice Nyariara is helping women aged 55 to 90 to fight back Photographs by Brian Otienoby Maurice Oniango in NairobiBeatrice Nyariara, 81, makes her way along the pathways of Korogocho settlement to the Church of the Lord Ministry. It’s a Thursday, and she is not going to a church service or for spiritual nourishment.
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Posted on March 15, 2024
| 5 minutes
| 1043 words
| Aldo Pusey
Book of the dayAutobiography and memoirReviewWhen housing is so expensive that the only thing left is to pack a van, head to Cornwall and set up in a shed
“I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,” wrote Henry David Thoreau of his famous decision to live in a shed, in the woods, a few miles outside the town of Concord, Massachusetts.
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Posted on March 15, 2024
| 2 minutes
| 244 words
| Valentine Belue
The ObserverMoneyKnow your catslideA weekly guide to the language of architectureSome of the words used to describe buildings are so fanciful there must be long-lost stories behind them.
Take the term for a section of a roof that is extended to cover a lean-to or side room, so that it sweeps down from the ridge nearly to the ground. One imagines some medieval builder watching a cat trapped on the roof, missing its step and tumbling down.
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Posted on March 15, 2024
| 3 minutes
| 540 words
| Aldo Pusey
Alys Fowler's gardening columnGardening adviceWith notes of rosemary and sage, the aromatic flowering plant lends its subtle flavours to baking, roasting and even a bit of seasonal winemaking
Mugwort is a wild thing that loves our edges, from paths and urban riverbanks to feral car-park corners and wastelands. Its leaves, with their silvery undersides and feathery plumes of flowers, thrive in these seemingly inhospitable conditions: I’m not sure I’d recommend you plant it in your garden, but if you live near such places, you may find it appears anyway.
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Posted on March 15, 2024
| 5 minutes
| 858 words
| Chauncey Koziol
A man and a performance boiled down to its very essence … Tim Roth, Elliot Tittensor and Anna Maxwell Martin in Reg. Photograph: Tony Blake/BBC/LA ProductionsA man and a performance boiled down to its very essence … Tim Roth, Elliot Tittensor and Anna Maxwell Martin in Reg. Photograph: Tony Blake/BBC/LA ProductionsTV reviewTelevisionReviewJimmy McGovern has made a moving film about Reg Keys, a father on a mission to expose the betrayal that led to his son’s death.
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Posted on March 15, 2024
| 10 minutes
| 2046 words
| Jenniffer Sheldon
Rose Byrne on Gloria Steinem: ‘There’s an incredibly serene quality to her. But it has a real power. She’s actually very tough.’ Photograph: Trunk ArchiveFor the Bridesmaids star, playing Gloria Steinem in her 1970s battle for women’s rights has been a reminder that the same arguments are raging today
by Emma BrockesA few days before New York locked down and Broadway closed indefinitely, Rose Byrne was on stage in Brooklyn, doing Medea.
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Posted on March 15, 2024
| 6 minutes
| 1183 words
| Jenniffer Sheldon
SportSpeed freakIn America they call methamphetamine 'the devil's drug'. It's dangerous, illegal and highly addictive. And now the surprise hero of the Olympics, Alain Baxter, has tested positive for it. Could it all be an innocent mistake?As with so many dangerous illegal drugs, methamphetamine was once a harmless, over-the-counter remedy; a nice little pick-me-up. It was first synthesised in the late 1800s from ephedrine, the active ingredient of a natural remedy that the Chinese had been using for hundreds of years.
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Posted on March 14, 2024
| 3 minutes
| 575 words
| Jenniffer Sheldon
Hillary Clinton'Party Unity, My Ass' - what the Pumas really stand forDiehard Hillary Clinton supporters who still refuse to accept that the nomination race is over have given themselves a name, Pumas, and a logo that the in-house lawyers at the Puma sportswear brand might like to take a look at. In the network of blogs where the name originated, it stood for "Party Unity, My Ass!" - a defiant shout of opposition to the notion that they should fall silent in order to speed the healing of Democratic wounds.
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Posted on March 14, 2024
| 1 minutes
| 100 words
| Kary Bruening
US news 'You don't have to look black to be black': The complex racial identity of a tiny Ohio town - video In the remote Ohio town of East Jackson, which sits in the Appalachian foothills, residents have for decades identified as black – despite the fact they appear white. Tom Silverstone and Francisco Navas visit a place where residents' racial lines have been blurred to invisibility
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