As usual, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden top the country ranking in the annual World Happiness Report . However, seeing Israel at #5 , just above the Netherlands and Norway, is quite a surprise. The map above also does something extra: It shows happiness levels in their regional and global context.
As you can see that happiness levels are relatively high across the Americas, in Europe and Oceania, and generally lowest across Africa and South Asia. In North America, Canada came out on top, happier than the U.S. and Mexico. The least happy country in North America is the Dominican Republic. Uruguay is the happiest country in South America, and Venezuela is the unhappiest.
In Europe, the difference is 2.8 points, between Finland (happiest, 7.7) and, unsurprisingly, Ukraine (unhappiest, 4.9). The Turks (5.0), however, are barely happier than the Ukrainians. The Greeks (5.9) and the Portuguese (6.0) stand out as the most miserable countries in the rest of Europe.
Happiness is very relative in Africa, where civil-war-torn Libya (5.9) tops the continent’s happy list. Still, that’s massively better than its huge neighbor Egypt (4.0), and even they are well ahead of the happiness levels in DR Congo (3.3). Most of Africa’s countries report happiness levels in the fours and threes.
In East Asia, China (6.0) is on par with Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Japan and South Korea (both 6.1) are only marginally happier. India (4.1) is doing a lot worse, and only a bit better than Bangladesh (3.9), which has the region’s lowest happiness score. Singapore tops that list, with 6.5.
I’ve visited hundreds of Roman Catholic cathedrals, basilicas, chapels, and churches in Europe, but Sagrada Familia in Barcelona isn’t just any old church; it’s an extraordinary edifice with a remarkable history. It also has a fantastic design, complete with soaring spires, towers, and an intricately carved facade. Designed by the legendary architect Antoni Gaudí, its construction began on March 19, 1882.
More than 140 years later, the Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família remains the largest unfinished church in the world. However, its completion is within sight. The foundation behind the cathedral recently announced that construction will be finalized early in 2026.
Gaudí’s vision for la Sagrada was so complicated and detailed that it has kept architects and construction workers busy for generations. Amazingly, the enormous project hasn’t used public funding, with the estimated construction cost placed at €25 million a year.
I’ve visited la Sagrada twice, but look forward to returning when it’s finally finished.
The London GreenGround Map: Created Helen Ilus, the London GreenGround Map is a wonderful sort of London transit map analog for the city’s green spaces, mapping connections and routes between public parks and gardens and areas less impacted by urbanization, allowing the user to plan routes that cover parts of the city that are yet to be paved over. “An enthusiastic walker and urban explorer Helen travelled widely, studying and working in UK, before coming up with the idea of connecting parks to tube style network for walkers. Fan of Harry Beck’s London Tube map she wondered what would happen combining the schematic mapping with walking routes. As an intuitive traveler she found the schematic maps more accessible in urban environments, but realized they also trap people in transport networks. This is why her maps give priority to green infrastructure, replacing stations with parks and tube lines with walking routes. She has also experimented with creating a walking map for libraries as well as worked with several commissioned maps.” It’s free to download or use online.
These days I seem to only do long hikes when I’m traveling, but as I’ve aged I have found that every hike results in more aches and pains. So here are Some tips for long walks. “We’re prone to lean forward when we walk. Over long distances, this wreaks havoc on one’s lower back and hips. As such, ‘head over hips’ is something to be conscious of.”
I feel so fortunate to have visited the Louvre more than four decades ago and been able to get up and personal with the art. The last few times that I’ve been to the museum I didn’t even bother to try and see the Mona Lisa. The Louvre wants to put the Mona Lisa in its own room to improve visitor experience. IMHO the museum should ban photography like some other institutions have done.
My ancestors on one branch of the family tree had the good sense to get out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire long before Charles the I succeeded to the throne in 1916, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t care about the old country and its monarchs. Several hundred folks also have a keen interest in the doings of the Habsburg clan. So much so that the went to Plano, Texas and forked over good money to spend a Saturday, listening to three living members of the Habsburg family and a scattering of Carlists talk about what ails the world? It’s clear what the Habsburgs got out of it: the conference, held in Plano and organized by David Ross, a Dallas-area realtor and right-wing Catholic, was in support of the family’s effort to win a sainthood for Emperor Karl I, perhaps the least successful and most tragic Habsburg monarch, who reigned for the last two years of World War I and then died penniless on the Portuguese island of Madeira. The family hoped to keep their memory alive—and maybe sell a few books. What everyone else might get out of it was unclear, at least at first.
I can’t seem to find mine. Do you know where your prayer nuts are at ? gothic boxwood prayer nuts
Prayer nuts or prayer beads are very small, late 15th and early 16th centuryGothic boxwood miniature sculptures, originating in the Low Countries.
Ball-shaped wood carvings that open into halves and hide inside an astonishingly detailed and extremely intricate religious scenes. Handcarvings so miniscule that you can hardly see the smallest detail without magnifying glass. There can be as many as 50 detaily carved figures inside one scene. Probably the smallest and most intricate wood carvings in the world showcase details of clothing, armor, and architecture of their period. You can see the individual folds on their shirts and the feathers lightly decorating their hats. Their scale varies between the size of a walnut and a golf ball. Most are 2–5 cm in diameter and designed so they could be held in the palm of a hand and hung from a belt. The outside shells are decorated with carved openwork, gothic tracery, flower heads, finials, and inscriptions usually related to the narrative waiting for the viewer inside.
I haven’t made it to Patagonia yet, but it’s on my Top 5 to visit list. There are some awesome photos from a gallery of 30 images of this park posted at The Atlantic.
Switzerland Tourism has updated its brand with a new visual identity, unveiling a logo that departs from the Gold Flower used for nearly three decades. The new design, created by Zurich-based branding agency MADE Identity, denotes “a brand universe as multifunctional as a Swiss army knife.”
In a major surprise, the revamp features the word “Switzerland” written large, with a twist. They replaced the letter ‘T’ with an iconic Swiss cross, a powerful symbol instantly recognized across the globe. This design choice aims to strengthen the association between the brand and Switzerland as a tourist destination.
The red utilized in the cross is a gradient of five tones inspired by the “Alpenglow,” the inspiring phenomena where the Alps are bathed in a warm, reddish light at sunrise and sunset. These colors are also meant to represent modernity, diversity, and independence, reflecting the nation’s desire to be seen as more than just a scenic escape.
Switzerland is for the first time adopting a comprehensive tourism brand world with “Switzerland”. The new branding stands for Switzerland’s long-standing tourism promise: nature, hospitality and reliability.
“The Switzerland brand conveys trust, has a modern design and is forward-looking for another generation. The new tourism brand is being closely watched throughout Switzerland and will represent Switzerland far beyond tourism, including internationally”- Martin Nydegger
The always quirky and entertaining director and screenwriter Wes Anderson has brought his trademark stylized aesthetic and offbeat storytelling to the Montblanc’s new ad campaign.
Released to celebrate the centennial of the brand’s Meisterstück pen, the campaign film features Anderson himself in front of the camera joining forces with his frequent creative collaborators including producer Roman Coppola, art director Stephan Gessler, actors Rupert Friend and Jason Schwartzman, and director of photography Linus Sandgren.
Great fun.
Yesterday, The Portal, a public technology sculpture arrived in New York City and Dublin. Serving as a virtual bridge, the installation will transmit a real-time unfiltered live stream of both cities, transcending physical barriers and putting New Yorkers and Dubliners instantly in touch.
Created by Lithuanian artist and entrepreneur Benediktas Gylys, The Portal is a group project bringing together countries, cities, governments, and people to connect cities with these technological art installations. The first iteration was launched in 2021, with portals linking Vilnius–Lublin. As of yesterday morning the New York City and Dublin Portals were live allowing folks 3,000 miles apart to see city life on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
In New York City, The Portal is installed at the landmark Flatiron Building at one of the city’s most dynamic intersections, between Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 23rd street. In Dublin the sculpture will be installed on O’Connell Street, the city’s heart. This location will capture Dublin’s GPO building and the Spire. On view will be identical circular concrete sculptures with a round screen at its center, allowing human connection across borders through a video-call-like projection.
Bringing the vision to life was a coordinated collaboration between the Flatiron NoMad Partnership, the Simons Foundation, the New York City Department of Transportation’s Art Program (NYC DOT Art), and the City of Dublin.
—Southern Pines, NC
Tell me what it’s like to live without
curiosity, without awe. To sail
on clear water, rolling your eyes
at the kelp reefs swaying
beneath you, ignoring the flicker
of mermaid scales in the mist,
looking at the world and feeling
only boredom. To stand
on the precipice of some wild valley,
the eagles circling, a herd of caribou
booming below, and to yawn
with indifference. To discover
something primordial and holy.
To have the smell of the earth
welcome you to everywhere.
To take it all in, and then,
to reach for your knife.
Matthew Olzmann is the author of two collections of poems, Mezzanines, which was selected for the 2011 Kundiman Prize, and Contradictions in the Design, both from Alice James Books. He teaches at Dartmouth College and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Jack Kerouac’s 30-point list, entitled Belief and Technique for Modern Prose offers items like “You’re a genius all the time,” “No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge” and “Accept loss forever,” the list is as much a blueprint for writing as it is a meditation on life. ”
Jack Kerouac
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumb saint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
A Series of Headaches is a marvelous video from the London Review of Books documenting letterpress printer Nick Hand as he prints a page from the magazine using methods as close as he can get to those used to print the First Folio of Shakespeare plays. The page selected is an old LRB article about the First Folio by Michael Dobson. The video is made in conjunction with Folio400, a website with lots of information about the First Folio, as well as a series of articles on it.
Travel Between The Pages 