still waiting, after all these years

Thirty two years and counting - that is the length of time since the launch of Vayager II and with it earth's message in a bottle to the extraterrestrial aliens that if you are out there, say something. This was Carl Sagan's idea. he thought that while we are at it, sending space junk out beyond the solar system, we ought to see if someone is out there listening. More on the message.

We are still waiting.

When you think about it, the lack of response from the aliens out there is quite staggering. The earth after all, is over 4 billion years old and the universe itself, is 14 plus billion years old. Enough, already. Forget time travel, parallel universes, and worm holes. If someone, intelligent enough as we are, has been working on this problem of contacting intelligent life out there, and has failed for 10 billion years more or less, then the likelihood of finding intelligent life anywhere is slim.

Still, we keep trying.

I am reminded of Sisyphus, who was doomed to roll a heavy rock up a hill for eternity, only to have it roll back during the night so that he could start all over again. It is an existential nightmare, but it is our nightmare, and so we embrace it.

Julie & Julia

This might keep me going for awhile - this being the Julie & Julia movie about a failed writer who finds her calling and purpose in life by blogging all the recipes of Julia Child's 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Julie is Julie Powell whose blog the Julie/Julia Project, a race to complete 524 recipes in 365 days, becomes a blog sensation, followed by a book and a movie. (Watch the trailer.) Julia of course is Julia Child, cook, author, and TV sensation.

If your looking for the original blog, there is little that is left other than a tribute posted on Julia's death in 2004. And, yes Julie has created a new blog to record her experiences as she deals with fame and fortune, but apparently lighting does not strike twice with Julie; her blog has none of the appeal of the original.

A no-holds-barred movie review.

Having just come back from Paris this summer, I loved the scenes in the movie. Shakespeare and Company, the bookstore, is still there on the Left Bank. Yes, it is the bookstore that Hemingway frequented when he had no cash and was struggling as a writer. The subway scene was also real, the only change was finding a metro train that was vintage. Sadly, the French open-air markets where one went to buy fresh produce are gone. But, one can still find patisseries, boulangeries, and the other small specialty shops where Parisians love to shop.



Read the N.Y. Times story as Julie goes into the homestretch on her blog.

Up the river

Read about the poet Shelley's trip up the river Thames with his wife Mary Shelley.




"The weeds above Lechlade became so thick that ...tugging and pulling [they] could not move the boat an inch..." They returned to Lechlade and stayed at the inn.

In Lechlade Shelley's thoughts turned to writing and the self-reflection that writing creates:

"A mirror would be held up to all men in which they might behold their own recollections, and in dim perspective - their shadowy hopes and fears, all that they dare not, or daring and desiring, they could not expose to the open eyes of day."

The writer's passage from sensation to reflection is sometimes so difficult and dizzying that one "dares not look behind".

feelin' it

Stop right there!

If you are not fifty, or at least forty, go no further.

Now ask yourself if, when you get up in the morning, are you feelin' it?

Or, maybe, after you have been sittin' in a chair for a long time or driving across country and you stop to get out and gas up, are you feelin' it?

For a hoot, listen to Leonard Cohen's Tower of Song on youTube.

Barbara Fritchee

The story goes that at the age of 95, Barbara Fritchee flew the American flag from the attic of her house in Frederick, Maryland.

Alone among all the citizens of Frederick, she was demonstrating her opposition to Confederate General Stonewall Jackson's troops, who were passing through in Lee's Maryland campaign of 1864. The rebel troops shot at the flag and broke the staff....

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.

She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.

'Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag,' she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word;

'Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on! he said...

The poem by John Whitleaf Whittier.

We're going home

...
We're going home

Two of us sending postcards
writing letters on my wall
You and me burning matches
lifting latches on our way back home
We're on our way back home
We're on our way home
We're going home

You and I have memories
longer than the road
that stretches out ahead

Two of us wearing raincoats
standing solo in the sun
You and me chasing paper
getting nowhere on our way back home
We're on our way back home
We're on our way home
We're going home

You and I have memories
longer that that road
that stretches out ahead

Two of us wearing raincoats
standing solo in the sun
You and me chasing paper
getting nowhere on our way back home
We're on our way back home
We're on our way home
We're going home
We're going home

Beatles, Two of us.

self expression

Observed on a tree stump in a park in Wales.

ice bytes

Change comes slowly to small towns. Ludbury for instance, still has its main street with all the small local markets such as the meat shop, the winery, and everything else needed for the town's inhabitants.

Sticking out like a sore thumb is the Ice Bytes wi-fi shop, proving that even the small towns and villages of England want to be a part of the global exchange of information.My advice to the locals is enjoy what you have while it is still here.Gloucester seemed soulless with its large "Superstores," a Walmart knock-off and Sainsbury's everything for sale store.

For a history of the town during the civil wars, click here.

gloucester

It is spelled "GLOUCESTER," but it is pronounced, "GLOSTER."

British spelling is certainly confusing for most Americans, and perhaps it works the other way too. One explanation for the difference in spelling and pronounciation is that England, when it standardized its spelling in the 1800's, opted for the Norman or Anglo-French spellings.

Learn more.

That might explain the differences in spelling, but what about pronounciation? I am not sure, but I have a guess. Walking around listening to English as it is spoken in different parts of the country, I notice a wide variation in pronounciation. (Shades of My Fair Lady and Henry Higgins.) I also notice a tendency to contract words when pronouncing them. Even Shakespeare did this. (Look at the quote of the Earl of Gloucester in a previous blog.)

Here is a concrete example. The word "bedlam" was originally the word "Bethlahem." "Bedlam" is how it was pronounced. "Bethlahem" hospital or "bedlam" (as it was pronounced) was the name of a lunatic asylum where, as you might 'ave guessed, things were a little crazy.

michael jackson

Michael Jackson adulation is a world-wide phenomenon.

Everyday, the newspapers and magazines picture his face and report the latest. The television at the restaurant where we ate last night played the tribute to Michael at the Staples Center. In the tiniest French village of Graffigny, a kindly Dutch couple, who showed me my grandmother's house, had Michael news on the TV while we spoke. And, while two instances of Michael curiosity do not make for a ground swell of European interest in the King of Pop, it does suggest that the world could not get enough of someone who was immensely talented, but flawed.

If loneliness, self-mutilation, and eventually death from an overdose are the price that one pays for celebrity, then for Michael Jackson the price was too high.

bellagio

Everyone I met in Italy said that Bellagio was the prettiest place they had ever been to or the one place they had to get to. But I am here, it is raining and when it is raining, it is not so pretty. It is just wet. I have seen wet a lot of times and a lot of places, and it all looks pretty much the same, wet.



Wet is nice if you are a farmer on the western plains of Kansas. I suppose it is nice if you are a duck, even if I don't understand why people say that, and wet is good if youy simply want to sit in your room and read a good book while listening to the steady patter of the rain drops. But, I am on vacation, and Bellagio doesn't look good in the rain, just another soggy rain soaked Kansas town.

out of order

My posts are now a bit out of order. Three days in Monterossa, the largest and prettiest town in Cinque Terre, left me disconnected and out of touch with the word. The disconnect was refreshing. All there is to do is enjoy the sea, the people and friends, Craig and Dena Robinson were there, and the food.

Being disconnected is not terribly disconcerting. It reminds you that there was a time, not terribly long ago, that we lived in relative isolation. News did not travel at the speed of light. If a celebrity, such as Michael Jackson, died, it was often days, weeks, or months before you learned of it. Distance separated us, it created other worlds where culture and religion, and the old ways were preserved and maintained. Not so any more.

I love gelato, and I feel that the internet is, in a sense, taking all the flavors and stirring them up into one big and bland mixture. Forget sorting it all out. The tourists, the locals, the internet, the television, cell phones and such have brought us all together for good and bad - good because its nice to be connected in a vast global village and bad because I like strawberry gelato.

are you connected?

If the catch phrase of the sixties and seventies was Timothy Leary's, "Are you experienced?" - a multi-dimensional statement suggesting that drugs, sex, and drink are the means to experience - then the catch phrase for the here and now is, "Are you connected?"

"Are you connected?" refers to the simple fact that much of our life depends on our connection to the internet. The internet brings us our mail, our news, it allows us to communicate in ways that we have never before imagined.The internet exponentially increases our connections with the world in which we live and the people who inhabit that world.

My dependence on the internet was brought home to me this morning as I sit here in the drawing room of the Villa Poggiale. The hotel is an eighteenth century villa more designed to keep out the outside world out than to bring it in. Still, to accomodate guests, the villa set up wi-fi, so that businessmen could conduct business; and casual travelers could keep in touch with love ones at home and make the next reservation for the next hotel along their journey. Alas, I am without a connection. I cannot communicate with friends or family outside the sphere of this small villa.

This experience of being unconnected is disconcerting. Like the Robin Williams - Peter Pan character in the movie "Hook;" I on vacation with family, but constantly checking in with the internet to find what is going on back home. In Robin Williams case, it was a cell phone. His wife and children are exasperated, as are mine, with an obsession of staying connected to business clients while ignoring the needs of the family. In the movie, finally the son, I think, chucks the phone out the window and his connection is gone. Robin Williams, the Peter character grown into adulthood must now confront his personal fears.

My family surrounds me while I sit at the computer impatiently waiting for me to drive them to San Gimilgnano. I am unconnected. But, then perhaps the message is that connections can be interpersonal as well as digital. So, for a time, I need to connect to my family and friends in a way that does not involve a computer.

shutterfly

Shutterfly is a free online photo sharing website. Watch for additional photos in the future.

Preparations

Five days to go to our departure date of June the 8th.

Today I am working on the blog. I changed the template style, then added a search and favorite site widget. The layout needs to be customized to move the favorite sites and search to the sidebar. I would also like to have topics appear in the sidebar. I would like to add a logo to the header.

spanish bullfighter, israel lancho, gets the point.

Now on traditionsHome blog, you can twitter. Spanish bullfighter, Israel Lanch, is on the receiving end of the bull's horn. Check it out on the Huffington Post. This is not for the faint of heart.

blogging using twitter

Technology is moving fast, too fast. Blogs, MySpace, Facebook, now, Twitter. There is a dizzying array of social networking sites out there. These sites allow the free expression of ideas and thoughts from anyone to anyone. Gone are the constraints of distance and cost. No wonder that newspapers are feeling the loss of readers and advertising revenue as online news from sources such as the Huffington Post pave the way into a new frontier of cyber-news.

The latest social networking tool is Twitter. Although limited in the amount of content, it nevertheless permits instantaneous responses to ongoing topics. The rave, as they say, is to incorporate twitter into a blog or website to allow reader comment as the story unfolds. Again, the Huffington Post demonstrates this use in action.

Here's how they do it: In the blog underneath the story, insert the twitter logo and then type a link to twitter. http://twitter.com/HuffingtonPost. This link is to a story on bullfighting. The Post changes the link words to Follow HuffPost on Twitter. Now the reader can get other readers' reactions to the story.

If you are not squeemish, watch the video.