Kenyan photographer and art director Barbara Minishi (L) takes pictures of her room mate and fashion stylist Wambui Thimba (R) wearing a creation by a Kenyan fashion designer on the rooftop of their apartment in Nairobi, Kenya, on June 1, 2020. After their scheduled works was cancelled due to the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, Minishi and Thimba have started their own project called “the Kenya Fashion & Style Diary in 21 days” to showcase a Kenyan fashion brand everyday for 3 weeks on social networking services since May 22, 2020 by only shooting at their apartment. (Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP Photo)

Lido cabaret dancers perform during a demonstration outside the cabaret as dancers, other employees and union activists are gathering to try to save their jobs and the history of the cabaret, known for its dinner theater and its “Bluebell Girls” revue, Saturday, May 28, 2022 in Paris. Amid financial troubles and changing times, the venue's new corporate owner is ditching most of the Lido's staff and its high-kicking, high-glamour dance shows – which date back decades and inspired copycats from Las Vegas to Beirut – in favor of more modest musical revues. (Photo by Thomas Padilla/AP Photo)

In this May 21, 2021, file photo, JoJo Hamner, a cast member of the “Sexxy After Dark: Where Dinner Meets Play” show, gets the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine during a pop-up vaccine clinic at Larry Flynt's Hustler Club in Las Vegas. It's one of several methods health officials are employing here and across the country to bring vaccines directly to people to counter waning demand. In tiny towns, ballparks, strip clubs, and marijuana dispensaries, officials are setting up shop and offering incentives to entice people who so far have not gotten shots. (Photo by Ellen Schmidt/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP Photo/File)

A handout picture made available by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shows, NASA teams working around Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft after it landed at White Sands Missile Range’s Space Harbor, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, 25 May 2022. Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) is Starliner’s second uncrewed flight test to the International Space Station as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. OFT-2 serves as an end-to-end test of the system's capabilities. (Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA/EPA/EFE)

A California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer detains a protestor while clearing a pro-Palestinian encampment after dispersal orders were given at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus, on May 2, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. The camp was declared ‘unlawful’ by the university and over 100 protestors who refused to leave were detained during the operation. Pro-Palestinian encampments have sprung up at college campuses around the country with some protestors calling for schools to divest from Israeli interests amid the ongoing war in Gaza. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

“The red panda (Ailurus fulgens, or shining-cat), is a small arboreal mammal native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China. It is the only species of the genus Ailurus. Slightly larger than a domestic cat, it has reddish-brown fur, a long, shaggy tail, and a waddling gait due to its shorter front legs. It feeds mainly on bamboo, but is omnivorous and may also eat eggs, birds, insects, and small mammals. It is a solitary animal, mainly active from dusk to dawn, and is largely sedentary during the day”. – Wikipedia

Photo: In this handout image provided by Taronga Zoo, Seba, a baby Red Panda, explores his new home at Taronga Zoo on April 7, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. The Red Panda cub was born at Christmas and is the 45th to be born at the zoo since 1977. (Photo by Peter Hardin/Taronga Zoo via Getty Images)

Back dropped by planet Earth the International Space Station (ISS) is seen from NASA space shuttle Endeavour after the station and shuttle began their post-undocking relative separation May 29, 2011 in space. After 20 years, 25 missions and more than 115 million miles in space, NASA space shuttle Endeavour is on the last leg of its final flight to the International Space Station before being retired and donated to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Capt. Mark E. Kelly, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' (D-AZ) husband, has lead mission STS-134 as it delivered the Express Logistics Carrier-3 (ELC-3) and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-2) to the International Space Station. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.