Travel in county Carroll

Even celestial events need a backing track—and the April 8 total solar eclipse is no different. Whether you’re road-tripping down to Hot Springs, Arkansas for Atlas Obscura’s Ecliptic Festival or flying over to Cleveland, Ohio, you’ll undoubtedly need some tunes to get you in the mood.

For over 20 years, Melissa Goldstein worked as a magazine photo editor. While researching imagery, she developed a fascination with Scandinavian ceramics, 17th-century botanical illustrations and Japanese woodblock prints dating back to the 1500s. It wasn’t until she moved to Brooklyn and began rehabilitating the overgrown garden behind her brownstone that she began combining her interests: “[My brand MG by Hand] was the merging of my research, the garden and making things for my family,” Goldstein says of the fine English porcelain ceramics she now sells in select shops and online. In 2008, the artist began hand-making everyday dinnerware in her home studio in Carroll Gardens, decorating the pieces with floral motifs in a cobalt stain. Black irises, poppies and flowering quince from her garden adorned vases, shallow banchan dishes and scalloped serving trays. Her new Poppy and Cherry collections, which were fired in a gas kiln for 12 to 15 hours, channel Dutch Delftware while depicting local flora. “I have a wall that separates my garden from my neighbor’s, and I’ve interwoven quince in it,” Goldstein says. “I’m very into blooming trees.”

New York City is practically synonymous with New Year’s Eve. The entire world watches and waits for the ball to drop in Times Square, while revelers at the crossroads of the world and across the boroughs celebrate the upcoming New Year. Plenty of restaurants far away from the chaos are also hosting celebrations for festive meals, toasts and a fun ambiance to ring in the 2024. Here’s where to celebrate:

The adrenaline rush of driving supercars at high speeds on public roads just hits different.

The Brazilian artist Wanda Pimentel’s “Envolvimento” paintings (1968-84) are hard-edged domestic vignettes — kitchens, bathrooms, the insides of cars — rendered in a lean, almost festive palette of mostly reds, greens and yellows. In these claustrophobic spaces, feminine-seeming thighs, ankles, feet and hands make fetishistic cameos, jutting out at awkward angles or lingering near water puddles and toilet-paper rolls. Sometimes, they’re framed by thick, windowpane-like lines that cast the viewer as a peeping Tom. “The house is not only a space of intimacy but also of fear,” says Alexandre Gabriel of São Paulo’s Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel gallery, which will present Pimentel’s work at the Independent 20th Century art fair in New York City next month.