This is poison hemlock, or Conium maculatum. Its leaves look a lot like flat-leaf parsley, don’t they? That similarity was unfortunate for one man, a Scottish tailor named Duncan Gow. In 1845 his children made him a sandwich for his… Read More
Recently I visited the Poison exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It included a toxicological explication of the witches’ poem in MacBeth, which, by happy coincidence, my son is reading in English class right now… Read More
The models for the painting, "American Gothic" meant to depict a farmer and his spinster daughter, were actually Grant Wood’s sister and their family dentist.