Word: dampness
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...into thin sheets and assembled as a jigsaw by gem cutters. Francesco de' Medici in particular, Cosimo's son, took delight in these because of his proto-scientific, alchemical interests; he was fascinated, like someone seeing pictures in the fire or Leonardo free-associating about forms made by accidental damp on walls, by how the grain of the stone suggested further pictures within the larger design...
Paris in autumn can be damp and gray, with plunging temperatures that make sidewalk cafés and long walks along the Seine less than romantic. Luckily, the city has a tradition of outfoxing the fall gloom with the indoor dazzle of its museums, galleries and exhibition halls. This fall's lineup is exceptionally eclectic. In addition to the blockbuster Matisse and Picasso show at the Grand Palais and the big Max Beckmann retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, the season's new shows include Old Masters, guitar gods and great photographers. At the Musée d'Orsay, Manet/Vel...
Indeed, the North Platte River is merely damp sand for long stretches. Local stores carry postcards of a lush, green Scotts Bluff that bears only a passing resemblance to the bare, tan-colored mesa that rises from the Nebraska prairie and once served as a landmark for settlers heading west on the Oregon Trail. Even the weeds have deserted miles of pasture, leaving nothing behind but swirling dust, starving antelope and bawling calves hungry for milk their mothers can't produce...
...Abdel Hadi Palace stinks of urine and damp. A little girl with a dirt-smeared face shuffles barefoot in the muddy courtyard. The women of the Zakari family lean out of their window, an Ottoman arch whose grey stone is pitted by the weather of 250 years. The place was built for one of the richest families in Nablus. Now it serves as rented accommodation for the city's poorest, hidden in the heart of the Casbah. "It's not a palace anymore," says Najah Zakari, the mother of one of six large families that squeeze into quarters once meant...
...surrounding Khmer temples?while the battlefields where 65,000 people have died in two decades in northern Sri Lanka are lush jungles of palms and ponds alive with kingfishers, green parrots and black and yellow longtails. Kashmir in May?as the snow pulls back through the damp pine forests and ponies wander through flower-filled grasslands?is perhaps the most beautiful war zone of all. "Sometimes you wish it was just a little less pretty," sighs Omar Farooq, Kashmir's young spiritual leader and leading moderate separatist. "Maybe then not so many people would want...