Arts

Francine Segan, author of Dolci: Italy's Sweets, discovered the unusual treat while traveling in Tuscany.

Today it's an arts sandwich with two thick slices of visual art and one of the world's most renowned creative pioneers right there in the middle. 

Sawtooth School for Visual Arts - Dane Snodgrass

You've seen it at bookstores and newsstands all over but you probably didn't know that more than 800,000 people in every state in the union and 42 different countries worldwide enjoy an incredible magazine that just happens to be entirely devoted to North Carolina people, places, history and travel.

From an old man feigning dementia to a judge's widow who keeps a scrapbook of murder, the story of Pine Haven's retired residents isn't all seriousness and tragedy. In her new novel, Jill McCorkle draws from the sometimes sad, sometimes comical experience of watching her own parents age.

Smoked salmon pastrami may sound heretical, but owners of a revisionist Jewish deli in Washington, D.C., say it's all part of a revival of traditional Jewish cuisine.

With the Supreme Court hearing arguments this week on same-sex marriage, film critic Bob Mondello observes a parallel evolution in what he calls a Hollywood mini-genre: films in which gay characters are either taken to court or seek redress in court for issues involving their sexuality.

In Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, Douglas Rushkoff cautions against living in the perennial, virtual now. "It's very hard for us to orient ourselves," he says, "to look forward to things, to join movements with goals, to invest in the future."

In 1997, DeGeneres chose a very public forum — her television sitcom — to announce, "I'm gay." The entertainer's career has tracked the seismic shift in public opinion on gays and same-sex marriage.

Move over, tuna fish, shrimp and clam chowder. Alligator is here for your Friday Lenten meals, thanks to confirmation from the archbishop of New Orleans that it is, in fact, a seafood.