My Computer

It is a magical light and sound show. The little blue lamp lights up when you push the button. From inside the grey case comes this low whirring sound, at times steady, as though a collection of ball bearings are rolling around inside, and at other times, intermittent, giving out hesitant clicks and rattles, while another light, this one yellow, flashes on and off.

Then a bright flash comes on the unlit monitor screen. It disappears, to be replaced by a set of numbers and letters, white on black, a list that reflects the arcane activities which are starting up in the guts of the grey case, and this list stays on the screen for a second or two.

Meanwhile, next to the grey case, a separate small flat plastic box about the size of a paperback book with colored lights along its spine, has been flashing. The flashes continue for some seconds and then the lights are steady, to announce with their steadiness that, yes, you are, or will be, connected to that magical world of the Internet.

The screen now displays, briefly, the famous logo of the company founded by the richest man ever to walk on this earth. Below it there is a bar with a series of moving squares intended to show that this machine is working, it's doing its thing, a bit more slowly than you might like, maybe, but it's doing it anyway, so be patient, my friend, and just wait.

The screen now turns blue, and a single word shows up in white. Welcome. You blink another time, and the screen changes once more. Now the screen shows a picture. It is a familiar picture, one that you yourself had made some time before, and through the magic of the stuff they call software, not necessarily made by the company of the richest guy in the world, you somehow managed to get it into the unfathomable innards of the computer, so that now this picture on the screen gives you a comfortable warm feeling of familiarity, of pride of ownership, and forms a pleasant background for the myriad of colorful "icons" situated all around the edges of the screen.

I forgot to mention, vis-à-vis the sound part of this light-and-sound show, that at about the time the "welcome" showed on the screen, a welcoming musical chime also came through the stereo speakers on either side.

So now everything seems to have settled down. The screen is bright and steadily lit. The screen icons and their little brethren in the "task bar" at the foot of the screen are waiting to be touched by the arrow of the "cursor" which moves mysteriously in concert with the "mouse" that your right hand operates, a mouse that also has buttons and wheels and a red light on its underbelly.

You do a couple of clicks with this mouse, and suddenly, there you are. The universe of the World Wide Web is wide open before you.

It's magic.

Vacation Photos Link

Here's a link to some photos taken on our cruise in the Eastern Mediterranean. You can click either on the photo above, or on the line below.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/79222656@N00/

Party Time

Tonight our club's big party will take place. So ...

SOUND, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.

-- Sir Walter Scott -1771–1832

Photographing Time

Excuse me if I might've covered this topic before.

My interest in photography goes back a long, long way. I think, looking back, that what might have prompted that interest was an older cousin of mine, who owned a fancy camera. It was a Zeiss Contax II with a 50mm Sonnar f/2 lens. A fine piece of mechanical and optical engineering that even in the modern world of whizbang electronic digital autofocus auto-exposure ultrazoom gizmos deserves a second look. (My apologies, I often get carried away talking about stuff like that.)

But it's also possible that this interest in photography comes from a subconscious desire on my part to keep time at bay. Maybe I hoped to just capture pieces of it, if that were feasible, since it is unstoppable. By preserving those moments, some to be cherished in later years, others ordinary, trite or easily forgotten, that mark our brief passage through this world.

I love taking pictures of any kind. Stills, movies, anything that you can turn a lens on. There is beauty in our world, even in the smallest things visible to the eye.

Like art, photography provides the means to imprison that beauty for the future.

Rome II

August 10. The hotel breakfast room was on the top floor, reachable by a convoluted combination of elevators and staircases. Bright and cheery, with sheer white drapes over the tall windows, the room looked as if it had once been the hotel roof, and subsequently enclosed when an annex was added to the building. The breakfast offered was continental, but substantial. There was a fine selection of juices, cereals, fruits, eggs, and cold meats, and excellent breads and pastries.

Even at this early hour, in this air-conditioned room, you could sense the heat of the day.

At a tabacchi stand in the Stazione Termini we bought day passes for the Metro. A short subway ride and we were out in the sunshine right across from the Colosseum. Actors dressed as centurions and soldiers of ancient Rome posed for photographs alongside smiling tourists. The line waiting to get into the massive structure (colossal is the right word for it) wound around to the back, a full 90 degrees, which happened also to be about the temperature in Fahrenheit. In the shade.

The ruins are impressive up close. It does not take much of an imagination to visualize the caged wild animals in those underground passages, the gladiators and Christian prisoners, the nets and tridents, short swords and shields, the heavy gates and portcullises, the crowds, the cries, and the blood. Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutamus. Hail, Caesar, we who are about to die salute thee.

The Colosseum, like so many other monuments in today's Rome, including the Vatican itself, has become a tourism moneymaker on a grand scale. Nothing wrong with that, but for those who yearn for a less frenzied appraisal of the glories of a bygone time, this commercialization may strike a sour note. I guess mass tourism can be blamed for that. And for the graffiti. Another word of Italian origin that is now in the English language.

When we had seen what we wanted of the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine, we decided to forego the passage through the Via Sacra and the Forum in the blistering heat, and descended once again into the depths of the Metropolitano. At the Ottaviano-S.Pietro stop we came out into the sunlight, and there in the distance against the blue sky could be seen several of the statues atop the colonnade of St. Peter's Square. We lingered over lunch at a Tuscan restaurant, where we noted that the clientele was made up mainly of local people, a sure sign of good Italian food. I must acknowledge, though, that I've had melanzana alla parmigiana just as good in a Palo Alto ristorante.

A short walk after that hearty meal, and then we were in the Piazza di San Pietro itself, one of the most beautiful public squares in the world, and there it was, the glorious façade of the Basilica with its great dome towering over all.

The younger ones in our group did make it up to the very top of the duomo, but we older folk who had made that very same hike twenty-two years before decided instead to take it easy inside the crowded basilica.
Set apart by a red velvet cordon and monitored by a young Latin American attendant in a dark suit, a chapel on one side of the massive nave now prepared for 5:30PM Mass. The priest officiated in Latin, and the familiar words brought back poignant memories of my time as an altar-boy.

The kids joined us after their descent from the upper reaches of the immense dome, and sat with us through the remainder of the Mass. That they found us in that crowd is something of a major achievement.

Rome I

Rome - Spanish Steps

August 9. We had to get up very early to prepare for disembarkation. As with most cruises, the staterooms must be evacuated by early morning so that the room stewards can get them ready for the subsequent crop of passengers for the sailing later that day.

The van was waiting there at the pier, as promised. The drive from Civitavecchia to Rome took about an hour, as traffic was light going towards the Eternal City. Most of the cars on the autostrada were headed in the opposite direction, towards the beaches. It was August, and almost all of Italy goes on vacation in August. And almost all Italian vacationers head for the beaches. Or sometimes for the lakes up north in Lombardy and Piedmont.

In Rome our driver took us around to all the major sights, the Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, Castel Sant'Angelo, the Borghese Gardens, the Pincio and the Janiculum Hills, the Trevi fountain, the Spanish Steps, The Colosseum and the Forum, passing by the long lines waiting to get into the Vatican museums, before ending up for a leisurely lunch in the Trastevere. Even a passing thundershower did not dampen our high spirits as we dined outdoors under an awning.



In the afternoon, we decided to try for the Vatican once more, and as luck would have it, the lines had thinned out by then, and we were able to enter and spend a couple of crowded hours in the museums and the Sistine Chapel.

It was a highly concentrated expedition on our first day in the city, and by around four o'clock we were, as our driver noted, tutti stanchi, worn out and quite ready to check in at our hotel near the Stazione Termini.

Malta & Messina

It may be a long, long time from May to December, but September is just around the corner, and the days are getting shorter and cooler around here. And just ten days ago we were sweltering in a Roman August.

* * * * *

So let's now get back to my travel diary.

August 7.

Entering Malta's Grand Harbour on a clear bright morning is an experience not to be fogotten. The city looks like it is hewn from solid rock, and much of it is. The walls and battlements are imposingly medieval and robust.

Valletta, Malta is a very small place, and the passengers from one large cruise ship like ours will be quite enough to fill its narrow streets, like a school of fish in a tiny aquarium. The architecture here is Mediterranean. Green-painted bay windows protrude from the houses, much like the ones in southern Spain or Morocco. In the floor of the great Co-Cathedral of Saint John of Malta lie the ornate and colorful sepulchres of the Knights Hospitaller (a.k.a the Knights of Rhodes, Knights of Malta, Cavaliers of Malta, and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem). Inside the Cathedral are two paintings by Caravaggio, which for themselves are worth braving the crowds in order to view. No pictures or videos allowed. Officious guards bark their admonitions at unwary tourists who do not see the posted Verboten sign.

Malta was once a British possession, and signs of the British presence are everywhere. The Maltese language is impenetrable. Some of their words have a lot of x's in them, and sound quite Arabic. Malta has some nice glass products, paperweights and such. Not quite Venetian, but charming nonetheless.

The weather continues to be glorious.

* * * * *

August 8.

Messina, Sicily. Ashore at 9.00AM, and found a telcom provider, where I made a call to Rome to be assured that the car will be there when we arrive tomorrow at Civitavecchia.

The dock is right by the city's municipal government building, and a short walk to the downtown and the Duomo, where at the noon hour crowds assemble in the piazza to watch the show in the belltower. There, on the stroke of twelve, a rampant gilded lion holding a banner begins to roar, several times; then a gilded rooster crows from the ledge one level down; below that a procession of gilded saints move past a seated image of the Almighty, each bowing in turn; while in a window a level below a house rises from the waves. I have no idea what the story is behind the show, and plan to research Wikipedia later to find out.

There are three cruise ships in Messina harbor. American voices are most prominent among the tourists buying shoes.

Sicilians are friendly and helpful. Romans less so.

Kusadasi & Ephesus

What can I tell you about Ephesus. Here are some of the best-preserved ruins of ancient Rome. Great slabs of marble everywhere, including some of the streets. It must, in its time, have been a truly remarkable city. The guide tells our group that it was a seaport back then, but today the sea is a long distance away from Ephesus. We are led through the usual points of interest: the baths, the public toilets, the brothel sign, the magnificent façade of the Library of Celsius, and finally the amphitheater.

By this hour of the morning the sun is beating down mercilessly on the sweating polyglot tourists with their layers of sunscreen and wide-brimmed headcoverings. There is no shade except in the shadows cast by the columns — Ionic, Doric, Corinthian, whatever — or the occasional marble arch or lintel. Tour groups of twenty or thirty people gather around their guides, absorbing historical anecdotes in a half-dozen languages, and drinking bottled water. Each guide waves a plastic sign with a number to lead his or her group onward to the next station. Sometimes two or three groups are within earshot of each other, causing some confusion.

The Turkish tourism authorities have, in this writer's opinion, not yet attained the sophistication of their Greek counterparts in their efforts to promote tourism. There was a long wait to get through the electrically-operated turnstiles at the site, due to a power failure. They had to get an emergency generator started up to allow the throngs into the place. Each tourist was given one ticket, which served for admission but, more important, as the prepaid pass to the restrooms at the conclusion of the tour. Marble-lined W.C.s manned by unshaven old men with a bad attitude.

Kusadasi is a shopper's town. In Turkey they will try to sell you a carpet every chance they get. It seems everybody has a brother or uncle or cousin who owns a carpet factory, who can offer you a handmade carpet of the highest quality at a fraction of what you might have to pay at home. A visit to a carpet showroom is mandatory at the end of a Turkish tour. And if not carpets, then leather goods, or jewelry.

As I said, Kusadasi is a shopper's town.

Valletta, Malta & Messina, Sicily

Messina

Malta - the Grand Harbour

Messina

Malta

Olympia

Santorini

Vacation

I thought I might start this account of our trip from the ending instead of the beginning. Reason is that a large part of the emotional excitement came at the end—if excitement it can truly be called.

I'm referring to the news, on the day prior to our return home from Rome, of the heightened airport security measures resulting from the discovery of a terrorist plot in Britain to blow up planes bound for the U.S.

Throughout the morning, the television in our hotel room kept up an alarming drumbeat of updates about new airport security requirements. No liquids, gels, or pastes of any kind would be allowed on carry-on luggage. Clear plastic bags would be used to carry passports and wallets on board. Anything else had to be placed in checked luggage. And calling the airline to reconfirm our flight or to seek updates required holding times of thirty minutes and more.

But later on, out there at the sweltering Colosseum the long lines of tourists waiting to get inside the famous landmark seemed remarkably nonchalant, as did the throngs sitting on every available Spanish Step in the golden glow of the late afternoon sun. Were any of these people thinking about terrorist plots or airline flight cancellations and delays? Not so far as any casual observer could tell.

Rome in August is typically empty of Romans, and filled instead with sweating sightseers from all corners of the globe. The sign 'chiuso per ferie' (closed for vacation) appears on one out of every two shops and restaurants in the Eternal City. Even His Holiness the Pope has gone off to the coolness of the Castel Gandolfo in the Alban Hills.

Rome was hot, hot, hot. But so were most of the other places we had visited during the previous ten days, starting from Civitavecchia.

Out floating hotel took us past the volcanic island of Stromboli and the Aeolian Isles, and then from the Tyrrhenian to the Ionian Sea through the Strait of Messina, past the Gulf of Taranto, and round the heel of the Italian boot into the Adriatic. By the third morning we were docked outside the ancient city of Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia.

All these seas are of course parts of the Mediterranean as any Italian schoolchild knows, and in color they share the various shades of deep blue for which this part of the world has been known from time immemorial. The "wine-dark sea" of the poets.

The Placa in Dubrovnik is just another shopping street, full of souvenir and t-shirt vendors, only more picturesque than most because of its stone achitecture and flagstone paving. Nowadays to walk along the city walls, you have to pay admission, something we had not done back in 1985 when we last visited, and when the place was still a part of the undisassembled Yugoslavia. Most of the damage from the war has been repaired, but here and there are signs of the recent conflict— a bullet hole in a marble wall, a patch on a tile roof.

In the evening, from the ship's rail, I watched the last busload of tourists return from a day-long side trip into Bosnia. Most of the weary passengers waved cheery goodbyes to the tour guide and her driver and trudged towards the gangway, but one elderly couple remained for several long minutes to have their picture taken beside the bus with the guide and driver. There were hugs and lingering farewells. It must have been, I assumed, a very memorable and edifying day for the visitors, who seemed reluctant to have it end. Then the smiling guide gave a final wave, signalled to the driver, and both boarded the bus. After the elderly couple had come aboard the ship, the gangway was pulled up. The ship then edged slowly away from the pier. And into the sunset.

Next stop on our itinerary was the Greek island of Corfu, or Kerkyra, full of the charm of its checkered past, its Venetian history, its stately mansions, and the open air cafes in the pleasant Spianada park. The sound of the cicadas filled the fragrant air with its steady hum. Tourists from the cruise ship scoured the shops, buying everything from jewelry to olive oil soap to plaster statues of Apollo. Many of our ship's passengers came from Spain, having boarded at Barcelona. Their lisping Castilian could be heard in Corfu's sidewalk cafés and coffee bars. They seemed to be quite at home here.

I had never heard of the Greek port of Katákolon until just before we left home on this trip. Now I know it as a small and pleasant village on the Ionian coast, not all that touristy just yet but slowly getting there, and the starting point for cruise line passengers up to the ancient city of Olympia. Olympia's ruins and the museum we had visited once before on a land tour, but for the kids it was exciting to see where the Olympic Games began.

To arrive in the bay (actually the volcano's caldera) of Santorini in the morning is worth getting up early to witness. The bay is too deep for the ship to drop anchor, so it just sort of casually sits there in the middle, while a fleet of tenders come out from the base of the cliff to ferry passengers ashore. Then there's a funicular ride, or else a donkey ride, up the face of mountain to the volcano's rim and the town of Fira, from where you can take some of those spectacular photos that might end up on travel brochures and calendars — white cubist houses and blue church domes, and a sea of such beauty that one cares not to remember that it was created millenia ago by one of the mightiest cataclysms in that part of the world.

In the town itself we find the mandatory souvenir shops, and some excellent restaurants, along the narrow pedestrian streets. But farther away from the center the buzzing scooters, all-terrain vehicles, and cars, coupled with the traffic cop's shrill brass whistle, all combine with the crowds in the streets to produce noise pollution of Olympian proportions on an otherwise placid Aegean island.

The next morning we arrived in Kusadasi, Turkey, the jumping off point for a visit to the fabulous Roman ruins of Ephesus.

Well, now, let's save the rest of this travel diary for another day.