Quality design for cheap? At Wal-Mart? Surprising revelations from the flatware gospel of Helen Kerr and Gourmet Settings. At the WalMart on Dufferin Street in downtown Toronto, the Gourmet Settings flatware cuts a commanding figure on the shelves. At $30 for twenty pieces, it is among the most expensive cutlery in this discount paradise–and looks […]

E-mail pagers and wireless message services promise community. But can we connect through haiku? Toward the end of his famous 1949 essay “Here Is New York,” E. B. White catalogs some of the changes he’s noticed in the city during the previous 25 years: nearly all the elevated railways have come down, big apartment houses […]