Olympia, Greece was of course the site for the ancient Olympic games. Now, since I'm only about two weeks away from starting to teach Western Civ again, I don't really feel like expounding to the point of writing a history lesson about it just yet... But I will post some of the more interesting photos with some thoughts on them.
So, some highlights... Firstly, we have the only circular temple on the site, started by Philip II of Macedon and completed by his son Alexander the Great, called appropriately the Philippeion. While quite unusual, it nevertheless evinces what I expected to see from the site, I guess... the subtle elegance of the ancients. (Even if it had all been painted up gaudier than Las Vegas at the time!)
And of course we have a distant descendant of the Olympic Games that we celebrate today. When we do, the famous Olympic flame is actually lit here, on the ruins of the former Altar of Hera (pictured at left) using a parabolic mirror. And what visit to Olympia would be complete with a visit to the Stadium (at right)?
Even though I took hundreds of photos in Athens, they were easier to weed through than I thought!
say, you can't dig a hole in downtown Athens without hitting something of historical value. As a result, in an unprecedented move, teams of archeologists worked alongside the metro engineers for a total of six years, uncovering a staggering 32,000 artefacts in the process! The end result is not only a greater knowledge of Athens' buried history, but also metro stations which double as museums! Totally cool.
Dr. V and the Splendour of the Seas in Corfu'
It's always a hoot to look through old issues of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, and with Google Books you can now do just that! But what do you get if you mix an eternally medieval city with eternally hopeful futurists? You get these mags' interesting take on Venice! Through their pages, you see the 20th century slowly but surely arrive to the canal city (or not, as sometimes the case may be...)
I wanted to pose for it from behind the fishtank but they wouldn't let me!
I've been living in Venice each and every summer for the last 16 years, and I've NEVER encountered the (in)famous so-called "stinky" canals of Venice. As far as I'm concerned, Venice smells no better or no worse than any other coastal city during the summer.
Yesterday, I caught the ferry boat that takes cars to Venice's beach island, the Lido. It passes through the wide Giudecca canal that forms the underbelly of the city, where you can get some unparallelled great Venetian views!
Gorgeous collection of photos capturing the Pakistani tradition of elaborately decorating their vehicles. According to Drive Line:The most striking thing in Pakistan is the vision of trucks and buses completely covered in a riot of color and design. They might spew diesel fumes, they may take up all of the winding, narrow, under-maintained road one is trying to negotiate, but they are certainly noticeable, like so many mechanical dinosaurs adorned in full courtship colors.
The decoration of vehicles is a common practice in a number of countries in addition to Pakistan. Similar techniques and materials are employed in truck and (more frequently) bus decoration in the Philippines, Indonesia, and several countries in Central and South America; in South Asia itself, Indian trucks are painted, as are the scooter rickshaws, called "Baby Taxis", of Bangladesh. What makes the case of Pakistan unique, however, is the pervasiveness of vehicle decoration, since decoration is heavily utilized on virtually all privately and fleet-owned commercial vehicles, from the well known trucks and buses, to vans, share taxis, animal carts and even juice vendors' push carts.
The motifs on the trucks can be categorized in five groups:1. Idealized elements of life, such as the romanticized village, landscapes or beautiful women.2. Elements from modern life, such as pictures of political figures or patriotic symbols.3. Talismanic and fetish objects, such as horns, yak tails and items of clothing.4. Talismanically or religiously loaded symbols, such as eyes and fish.5. .Obvious religious symbols and images such as Buraq (a celestial horse that is believed to have carried the Prophet Muhammad on a spiritual journey to heaven).
However, by far the commonest religious symbols appearing on a truck are the Ka'ba and Prophets mosque, appearing on the left and right of the front of the truck somewhere towards the top.
I am now the proud owner of a Vespa scooter! Now, this is the fun life!! (Captured best by this 1999 song by Lunapop, I think!)
to what the party of the Radicali, practically the Italian equivalent of the Libertarians, are doing right now. Their politicians are wearing YELLOW STARS OF DAVID! Initially, I believed that they were doing it as an act of solidarity with the illegal immigrants who are being rounded up and kept in containment camps before being deported... and while I still found it deeply questionable equating this admittedly difficult human rights issue with the genocide of six million people, I thought at least I could understand why they were doing it. Instead, it turns out that they're wearing them just because they feel like their party is under-represented in the media!!! While I used to have respect for their leader, Marco Pannella, despite his sensationalist antics sometimes (he was instrumental for example in the legalization of divorce in Italy in the 1970s), this was the last straw!
Today was the annual celebration of Venice's "Marriage to the Sea," and a wonderful reminder of why I love this city.
sign of our true and perpetual dominion." (What can I say? Venetians were legendary for being more pragmatic than romantic!)
complex that one sees today (at left) is later than the sixteenth century, I have a soft spot in my heart for any and all remnants of the early Middle Ages. Sure enough, there is preserved a section of Romanesque-Byzantine mosaic pavement and some columns from the ruins of the nave of the older church, about a thousand years old! Even better is an easy-to-overlook tiny fragment of relief of an eagle, probably meant to be a symbol of the Saint John who is believed to have written one of the Gospels.
Secondly, the musicians (from the group VeniDilecteMi) were fantastic (6 male & female vocalists, 2 violinists, a viola, 1 lutist, and an organist), and performed music composed more or less at the same time as the present church of San Nicolò was itself was built, that is, during the 1600s.
The best way to experience nature is simple. Go outside. For those who cannot, BlueMarvel presents an alternative. This is nature's events at nature's pace, bears on bear time, and the passage of the sun according to its own rhythm.
BlueMarvel pioneered a format we like to call "Experiential HDTV", whereby the viewer is allowed to slow down and develop a deeper relationship with the content, as if it were an open picture window in their home, hotel room or place of business. Our inventory of experiences include sunrises, sunsets, storms, distinct animal behaviors and migrations from stunning and evocative landscapes of our planet, all with crisply recorded natural sound.
"Maine Maple Sunday" happens every year about this time, when maple syrup producers all over the state open their doors to visitors so they can see (and taste!) the wonderful alchemy which turns 50 gallons of watery sap into just one gallon of gorgeously golden maple syrup!
saphouse and sampling goodies like homemade vanilla ice cream with fresh hot syrup, homemade doughnuts with fresh hot syrup, maple baked beans, maple snow toffee, freshly baked bread with maple butter, maple-glazed roasted nuts, and more! What a great day!!
I used to rely on the blog to share fun links, but now I find it better doing that more on Twitter. When I have time, I use *Michelle's Mental Clutter* for longer essays. In the meantime, I thought I'd begin to catalog some great art pieces that I encounter through Google Reader that are worth far more than just an http address! To start off... (from left to right)
Desiree Palmen (from PicoCool)
I've never, ever heard of anything like this, and I can't wait to learn more!"A SKELETON exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the 'vampires' widely referred to in contemporary documents.
Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of a woman with a small brick in her mouth while excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice."
More here...
(Incidentally, Venice essentially invented quarantine, and the Lazzaretto Nuovo was the quarantine holding island for potentially-exposed people who were not yet symptomatic of plague. More info on the 1575 epidemic previously on MMC.)
I've written, usually not very positively, about the Venetian Carnivale before. Imagine 80,000 tourists crammed into Piazza San Marco for the opening of Carnival, in a city which has a rather elderly population now of about 65,000... and you'll understand why it can all be a bit traumatic for the residents!
coverage from Venice Daily Photo made me want to go back through my old archives and pull out the pictures of the first Venetian Carnival I ever attended, exactly 15 years ago this season.
