Zoomer Magazine August/September 2023

Zoomer: Is it true that your parents gave you up for adoption? Malka Marom: I was an accident that happened just as my parents were about to realize their dream to leave Poland and move to Israel as pioneers. They gave me to my uncle for fear I wouldn’t survive the hostile conditions in Israel, but just as their train started to pull out of Warsaw’s station, my mother screamed out to her brother to return me through the train window. That’s how I was spared the fate of the million Jewish babies slaughtered in the Holocaust. And maybe because my life started as an accident – serendipity or “it just so happened” informed so many major moments in my life – my grandson nicknamed me Forrest Gump. Z: Which…

MY VERSION OF A PARTY TRICK is throwing around erudite-lite quotes when talking about style. This is not the application 18th-century poet William Blake had in mind when he wrote, “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom; for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough,” but it comes in handy when I need to let others know that I know they think I am overdressed, without actually agreeing that I am. I use “I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity” – courtesy of the ’60s-era Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, who coined the term “youthquake” – as a self-administered hall pass to justify my chronic lateness, due to fashion-related drama. This could be choosing which gold-embossed pair of Gucci…

UP The eco-warrior retires, but refuses to give up the fight David Suzuki, 87, exits The Nature of Things after 44 years, but tells Zoomer he'll continue to fight for the environment while getting “back to what is really my most important job, which is being a full-on grandfather.” A Maine centenarian dubbed the “Lobster Lady” turned 103 and renewed her lobster fishing licence for the 95th straight year Much to the chagrin of the state's lobster population, who’ve dubbed her “that horrible lady with the traps who won’t leave us alone.” They say age is a state of mind, but it turns out that longevity may be more of a gut feeling University of Copenhagen scientists studied Japanese centenarians and concluded that unique gut bacteria, flora and viruses…

For as long as humankind has created art, it's immortalized “the kiss.” Sculptor Auguste Rodin eroticized the moment in marble with two nude lovers on the very edge of falling onto one another, in the late 1890s. In 1907, Gustav Klimt painted his lovers cloaked in gold, with the male taking the female's face in his hands as if to devour it whole. And in 1964, using primary colours and comic book-style graphics in Kiss V, Roy Lichtenstein cemented his version into pop culture history. Now, researchers from the University of Copenhagen and Oxford University say they've discovered humanity's earliest documented romantic kiss. "My upper lip becomes moist, while my lower lip trembles! I shall embrace him, I shall kiss him," is just one of the ditties found in…

While politicians turn to consultants to create “fashionable look,” it’s political style that truly influences voters and wins elections. Consider the 1960 U.S. election, when John F. Kennedy was easily the “chicest” candidate. Yet it was JFK’s calm, cool manner in the televised debate – in stark contrast to Richard Nixon’s perspiring irascibility – that appealed to the public and propelled him to the White House. Political styles, like hemlines, do change with the times. Donald Trump’s chaotic, bullying style was all the rage in 2016, but four years later had become unfashionable up against Joe Biden’s avuncular congeniality. Here in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tried and tested “Sunny Ways” formula, which combines sartorial superiority with an upbeat message, helped deliver his first majority government in 2015 but…

One of the most famous lines in movie history took place between a champagne cork popping and two glasses clinking. As Humphrey Bogart stares into Ingrid Bergman’s eyes in Casablanca, he says the magic words: “Here’s looking at you, kid,” during the pair’s first rendezvous in Paris. If their eyes weren’t trained on each other, they might have noticed the tiny bubbles in their glasses rising in a perfectly straight line to the top and wondered how they did that. At Brown University in Rhode Island, engineering professor Roberto Zenit wondered the same thing. In a series of recent experiments, the self-confessed “nerd who likes bubbles” found the magic element was surfactants. Created during the fermentation process, surfactants change the properties of the bubble's surface, making it less slippery.…