Michael,
I know you are an insomniac and early-morning riser, so If you have some clear skies in the next few pre-dawn mornings, look up with binocs near the Big Dipper just east of the last star in the handle.
Quoted from APOD:
A newly discovered comet has brightened enough to be visible this week with binoculars. The
ed/rakkity
Hi Mike,
We’ve finally decided how to get our worldly goods west for our big move from Bowie to Boulder. The Mrs looked at the costs of various ways to ship our furniture from MD to CO, and said to me last night,”After looking at the costs of paying movers, I think you’ve got to drive a U-Haul from here to Boulder.” Conveniently, she forgot that I had suggested this mode of transport some months ago (imagining another great road trip), and she had rejected it out of concern for me and my advanced age (late 40s, in case you ask, very late 40s).
But now the load has been put on my shoulders, and I’m looking forward to it. The trip starts on Dec 1 or 2 and ends in Boulder on or before Dec 6. Afterwards, I fly back to MD for 3 or 4 more weeks, before heading west permanantly.
Anyone want to come along? I’m thinking of stopping along the way in Evansville, and looking up my uncle Ed’s homestead, and the Miller homestead. And of course, in Ohio I’ve got to see one of Grohe’s murals with my own eyes.
–rakkity
Michael,
The Rakkity-Katie game came and went without any serious injuries (sorry Michael!), but the games were livened by a few wall and ball collisions and many calls of “Hinder!” Katie is a semi-cautious player, “semi” not meaning that she doesn’t dive for the wall sometimes, but she’s really careful about careening out of control into her opponent (which Patrick, Dom, and Yours Truly are not.)
Our first game started at 5:00 sharp, and began tentatively, both playing right-handed, without any handicap points given. (No left-handed playing yet for Rakkity, thank you.) A number of times when we were on intersecting trajectories, Katie stopped the game with a “Hinder!” call, and we re-started from the serve. One of her shots slapped me on the back of my left shoulder (the bum one), and re-bounded into my jaw. Katie was very apologetic, but needlessly, since ball-hits are a part of the game. Katie put up a good fight in the game, but those good years of trickery and treachery learned in competition against son & Dom were too much for her, and she lost a quick game 15-8.
Being a gentleman of the court, Rakkity offered a handicap–he could only serve to and return to the right half of the front wall. Any serves or returns to the left half would be a losing point or a losing service. Katie gained a lot of points that game when old rickkety rakkity couldn’t quite scoop the ball to the right side. She won 15-13, but not without a trophy red spot on her wrist, where one of my balls clipped her on a return. (Oops! Sorry, Katie!) You could hardly see the red spot there, since her arm was glowing red from exertion, but she had to rub it a lot before going on.
The third game was marked by about a dozen calls of “Hinder!” when Katie couldn’t return the ball without a risk of beaning me, smashing into me, or creaming me with the racquet. She complained that this right-wall handicap I had given her was putting us both on the right side of the court all the time, leading to lots of near collisions. The number of near-collisions didn’t seem so excessive to me, but that’s from a perspective of a more aggressive style. We changed the handicap rule to make me hit to the left half of the front wall. While it might have opened up the game, it didn’t help her, since my serves and returns were to her left hand, which wasn’t as good that day as usual, so Rakkity won that game. Time was up at 6:00 pm Father and daughter retired from the court, steaming with sweat, and grinning together happily.
–rakkity
Michael,
The Rakkity-Katie game came and went without any serious injuries (sorry Michael!), but the games were livened by a few wall and ball collisions and many calls of “Hinder!” Katie is a semi-cautious player, “semi” not meaning that she doesn’t dive for the wall sometimes, but she’s really careful about careening out of control into her opponent (which Patrick, Dom, and Yours Truly are not.)
Our first game started at 5:00 sharp, and began tentatively, both playing right-handed, without any handicap points given. (No left-handed playing yet for Rakkity, thank you.) A number of times when we were on intersecting trajectories, Katie stopped the game with a “Hinder!” call, and we re-started from the serve. One of her shots slapped me on the back of my left shoulder (the bum one), and re-bounded into my jaw. Katie was very apologetic, but needlessly, since ball-hits are a part of the game. Katie put up a good fight in the game, but those good years of trickery and treachery learned in competition against son & Dom were too much for her, and she lost a quick game 15-8.
Being a gentleman of the court, Rakkity offered a handicap–he could only serve to and return to the right half of the front wall. Any serves or returns to the left half would be a losing point or a losing service. Katie gained a lot of points that game when old rickkety rakkity couldn’t quite scoop the ball to the right side. She won 15-13, but not without a trophy red spot on her wrist, where one of my balls clipped her on a return. (Oops! Sorry, Katie!) You could hardly see the red spot there, since her arm was glowing red from exertion, but she had to rub it a lot before going on.
The third game was marked by about a dozen calls of “Hinder!” when Katie couldn’t return the ball without a risk of beaning me, smashing into me, or creaming me with the racquet. She complained that this right-wall handicap I had given her was putting us both on the right side of the court all the time, leading to lots of near collisions. The number of near-collisions didn’t seem so excessive to me, but that’s from a perspective of a more aggressive style. We changed the handicap rule to make me hit to the left half of the front wall. While it might have opened up the game, it didn’t help her, since my serves and returns were to her left hand, which wasn’t as good that day as usual, so Rakkity won that game. Time was up at 6:00 pm Father and daughter retired from the court, steaming with sweat, and grinning together happily.
–rakkity
From Adventures in Spain, Part IV
The Seville Epic
Friday 3/25/05
During her stay in Seville, Niña Katie learned the ins and outs of survival,
particularly during Santa Semana, the Easter holidays when interminable, gaudy processions criss-cross the city, and gawking tourists crowd into the narrow streets to watch. And since Mamacita Beth, Hermana Kathy, and Papacita were coming to visit her there this was of high importance (to us, anyway). Katie’s landlady told her that it would be impossible for us to find a hotel inside Seville during Semana Santa, so, using local buses and taxis, Katie searched for a good place a few miles outside of town. After finding us a place, the Hostal Lepanto, she e-mailed us a picture of it, and we were satisfied that there’d be no problems.
We spent our first day in Seville gawking like tourists, and sampling the
local cuisine. After mucho gawking, it was starting to get dark, and we had to find the hostal where Niña had reserved our rooms. The hostal was located out in the suburbs in the town of Mereina. Since Niña Katie had gone out there by bus and taxi, she only knew the approximate direction. So blindly we drove out that way from Seville Centro, but rapidly found that there were no signs for Mereina, and it wasn’t on our maps. So we drove back to the main bus station in Seville, and Katie asked the agents there how to get to Mereina. The agents were pretty oblivious about the locations of the towns they serviced. We got a slightly better fix on the direction, but nothing specific about road names or landmarks. They gave us a small palm-sized area map showing all of the Seville area. Mareina was on it, but there was no way we could learn how to get there from Seville.
And so adventure #4 began. We called the Hostal Lepanto. The landlady
couldn’t tell Katie how to get there from Seville, but if we could somehow get to the village of San Juan, she could direct us from there. We stopped for directions to San Juan at a gasolino, and “Si”, as Niña questioned him, indeed he knew where San Juan and Mereina were, and he described the route, which was something like:
“Valaproximarondodirechavarondoizquerdorondadirechodirecharondorondokilo
metrosrondodirechoizquerdorondovadirechocruzcampodirechoizquerdadirech
odirecha”
On we went, still blindly, into the suburbs until the directions petered out.
We asked at another gasolino and got another permutation of the directions.
After another few rondos, the territory no longer matched the description so we stopped at a police station, and got some pretty explicit directions, but must have missed something crucial, like the “Cruz Campo” sign they told us to turn at. (Cruz Campo is a popular beer, and its billboards are everywhere.) We asked taxi drivers, more police, got more directions.
“Izquerdorondadirechokilometrosrondodirechoizquerdorondovadirechocruz
campodirechoi zquerdaproximarondodirechavarondo”
The directions seemed to be getting shorter, so maybe we were making progress, maybe not. We considered putting Niña Katie in a taxi and following her to the hostal. But, mirablile dicto, we suddenly found the Hostal Lepanto, only about 3 hours after we had started.
Inside, the Hostal had some nice features, like many blue and white porcelain tiles, but there were a few problems–tricky door latches and weird room geometries, but the plumbing worked, hurray, hurray.
The plan now was to take Niña back to her apartment in Seville, and return to Lepanto. This is where adventure #5 began. We left our bags in the rooms, and headed back towards Seville. This was remarkably easy, since all the signs pointed there. Carefully, we watched all the landmarks and signs so we would be able to re-trace our route back to Lepanto, but that was impossible with all the one-way streets. Amazingly, getting back to Seville, only about 20 minutes away, turned out to be a piece of cake. We wrote notes all the way into town describing the buildings and roads. But we saw not a single landmark that was familiar from the 3-hour trip in the outward direction to Hostal Lepanto. It was as if we were in the Spanish Twilight Zone.
Papacita soon expressed what was going on in Mamacita’s and Hermana’s minds, “Would we be able to get back to the Hostal without Niña and her español?” By the time we reached Seville centro, we were agreed, there was no way we’d be able to find the Hostal again without asking directions and, more important,
understanding the answers.
So we turned around on the fringes of Seville, adopting Plan B, that
Niña would stay with us that night, and we tried to find Mariena
again. We repeated the comedy of asking at gasolinos, taxi stops and
police stations, and getting long-winded answers:
“Direcha va rondo Vala
Proxima rondo izquerdo
Ronda direcho kilometros rondo
Direcho izquerdo direcha
Rondo!
Rondo!
Rondo!
Va direcho cruz campo direcho Izquerda”
Rossini could have scored our roundabout route using his music in The Barber of Seville. One of the policemen kindly gave us a suburban street map, but it was only of his little district, and didn’t extend to San Juan and Mariena. Nevertheless, stalwart Katie was getting better at asking questions, having the answers repeated, and taking notes.
“Direcho izquerdo direcha
Direcha va rondo
Vala proxima rondo izquerdo
Ronda direcho kilometros rondo
Direcho!
Direcho!
Va direcho cruz campo direcho Izquerda”
This time it took only 2 hours. We saw nothing of our earlier route
through the Seville Zona del Twilito until the last few blocks.
Our plan to stay two nights at Lepanto changed then and there.
Tomorrow we would find a place in the well-mapped Seville Centro or
sleep in the car. That resolve stiffened when we found that our
accommodations had no hot water, lights that went out by themselves,
and a doorway that required the skills of a locksmith and the agility
of a circus performer to enter. To open our door, we had to go down
to the lobby and ask for help on the magic twist of the wrist required
to open the lock. Even a maid was helpless at unlocking their door. And
to get into the room with luggage, you had to push the door against
the bed, sit down on it, lift your bag onto the bed, swing your feet
around the door, then push the door shut, so the next person coming in
could repeat the procedure. Going out, one performed the feat in reverse.
3/26/05 Saturday
So much for old Hostal Lepanto. It had beautiful tile hallways, and
it seemed to be very popular–all the rooms were taken–but it wasn’t
one of those multi-star places. Not worth even half a star. Maybe
a negative star. During breakfast the next morning, making calls on
Niña KT’s cell phone, contrary to the expectations of her Senora, we found
a “Hotel Madrid” in Seville Centro. Twenty minutes later, following
all the signs pointing to Seville, we were in the Centro.
Hotel Madrid was clean, quiet and comfortable. The doors unlocked,
the water was hot and the lights went on and off at the switches.
Niña took a taxi back to her apartment, and we had a great sleep.
We highly recommend Hotel Madrid. But if you elect to go to Hostal Lepanto or to any zero-star hotel in a suburb of Seville, bring a GPS!
–rakkity
Michael,
While Matt was moving into Temple, Patrick was getting married to his lovely and effervescent fiancee Georgia Williams. We took lots of pictures of the exciting event, but haven’t gotten our pictures out yet. Fortunately our
friend Lynn Kenny has beat us to the punch and posted a pile of pictures to posted by michael at 6:59 am
Hu Ton, Beijing
I didn’t plan on taking any more tours of Beijing, but this morning my friend Gordon convinced me otherwise. Gordon is at this meeting with his wife Barbara, and they have been doing tours on and off this week between sessions. At 11:30, after the morning flare sessions concluded, he said, “If you go on any more tours, go on the Hu Ton tour.” So I checked the meeting book, and there was a Hu Ton tour starting at 13:20 and ending at 16:30. There weren’t any more flare sessions until 17:00 and my talk was at 18:30, so I could go. “What’s the Hu Ton tour?”, I asked Gordon. “It’s a tour by pedicab of this old district by a lake in Beijing Center, and you get to go into a person’s house and see how regular Beijingers live.”
So at 13:35, the bus to Hu Ton was underway, and I was on it. Following my map of Beijing, I saw that we were on Chegongyuan Dijie, which goes through the exact center of town, between the Forbidden City and Lake Xanhai. We passed by the lake, and I said, “That’s beautiful! But I guess we aren’t going there.” Then we went to the next intersection, made a U turn, and next thing you know, we were parking by Lake Xanhai.
Our guide told us that for a decade or so, the Beijing government had been tearing down the old courtyard apartments in the Hu Ton district around L. Xanhai and building huge apt complexes, (They’re everywhere in town–these great forests of 25-30 story buildings with 20 or more apts on each floor.) But the protests got too great, (and maybe the population pressures reduced or at least stabilized) and/or someone realized the touristic opportunities of showing off these old (100 years or so) garden courtyard complexes. So they stopped ripping them out and left a good sample for us tourists to see.
As we departed from the bus, a flotilla of pedicabs surrounded us. We were supposed to pair up and hop into the pedicabs and they’d take us into the Hu Ton. The driver of our pedicab pushed us off, and soon we were zipping down alleyways only a few inches wider than the pedicabs. We stopped at an old worn out door in an old worn out wall, and our guide knocked. A man came to the door, and invited us in. We walked under a small grape arbor opposite a decrepit shelter full of decrepit, but functional, bikes. The man put out seats and invited the 24 of us to sit down anywhere and everywhere. Our guide translated our questions and his answers. He has his two sons and two daughters-in-law living with him (not there at the time). There are 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, living room, one bathroom, and a small courtyard (with the fore-mentioned grapes and a pomegranate tree). The owner must be upper middle class, because he said that the average income is $500/month, and he pays $400/mo for electricity, gas, and water. At the question of one of our group, he agreed that the apt had tripled in value over the last few years.
As we talked in the living room, I noticed a huge Ming vase next to a very modern refrigerator in the corner. A coffee table by the bed had a built-in picture of St. Louis with the Great Stainless Steel Arch. There was also a nice photo of the owner’s daughter when she was young. An Australian asked the guide how she happened to speak such good English. She said that all students take English from 7 or 8 years on. The guide, who knew this family well, picked up a photo-audio picture from a shelf. It had the owner’s 10-year old niece in the frame. The guide pushed a button, and the niece spoke for a minute in perfect English. Proof enough.
Afterwards, we stood around in the courtyard, and I shot a photo of the front door and a set of blue and white porcelain table and stools. One of the women in the tour group sat on a stool. I gasped to myself, “I’d never do that. If it fell over and broke, was it replaceable?”
The table set seemed out of place with the rattletrap bikes on the other side of the courtyard, and with the 100-year old paint job peeling off the window trim, but not out of place with the grapes and the pomegranates. That’s China for you.
We hiked up to the old Bell Tower nearby and got a terrific view of Beijing. Then we went to a Chinese tea ceremony, and had 3 different teas. (I used their electricity to charge my worn out camera battery and bought some flowery tea to take home.) Our pedicab drivers showed up and we raced back to the bus. I managed by pure luck to catch some fleeting shots of the lake as we sped by.
Very educational tour, which I highly recommend if you happen to come here.
–rakkity
Michael,
On Tuesday I took the Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City tour. It was a surprisingly long ride in the bus to Tiananmen Square, which is in the center of Beijing, and our hotel is also in the “center of Beijing”. But this is a huge city. Along the way I noticed an extensive shanty town that was mostly hidden by billboards. What I saw of it was an expanse of crowded tin-roofed shacks, with the roofs weighted down by rocks so they wouldn’t blow away in the wind. The shacks receded a long way into the distance. I suspect the govenment was trying to shield the eyes of tourists from the bad parts of town–as part of their attempt to spruce things up for the 2008 Olympics. They could put up one more billboard, and no foriegner would ever see that shanty town.
Tiananmen Square is huge, and full of people, both tourists and locals. There were a number of parades, gatherings, and people flying big colorful kites. Hawkers kept coming up to our group trying to sell us their kites. Or maybe they were just renting them to fly them? Hard to tell.
Down at one end of the square is Mao’s Mausoleum, and down at the other end is the Mao Government Center with a big picture of the Chairman facing out onto the square. We walked about a mile down to the Mao picture and past his building into the entry area of the Forbidden City, now known as the Gugong Palace area. We waited in the hot sun while our guide bought tickets for the group. A little lady with red baseball caps came by selling hats for 5 yuan ($1), so I bought one. It says Beijing 2008, and fits fine, keeps my head from getting fried. What a deal. You couldn’t get one that cheap even at Walwart.
Finally we entered the Forbidden City, which contains 9999 (said our guide) palaces, all looking much alike. This is where the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties lived. The palaces differ only in size and shape, and they are all the same style (my pictures are on film so you’ll have to wait), some of them better restored than others. As far as I’m concerned, once you’ve seen one Ming palace, you’ve seen them all. After about 2 hours of walking around and through about 4444 palaces, we exited into the Royal Gardens and back into the city. There we encountered the first and only beggars we have seen in Beijing. Some had amputated feet, or were deformed. So much for the Chinese health system. That’s the only time I’ve been “spare changed” in Beijing, although I did see one homeless person sleeping on a bridge near our hotel a couple of nights ago.
After lunch we stopped at a Silk factory, where we saw how they stretch out the egg casings into silk strands. We even got to try it ourselves–a hands on experience. I recalled that I have seen similar small casings under old boards back in Maryland. Next time I see one, I’ll stretch it out into silk strands and see how much I get.
Our last stop was at a cloisonne factory. What an intricate process that is. Workers were transferring drawings onto paper, others were using the drawings to lay out arrays of metal strips, and still others were putting paint into the spaces between the strips. The objects the strips were laid out on ranged from small pots to huge sheets. Finally, the painted cloissone objects were coated with glaze and fired. They all turned out quite beautiful.
Labor is cheap and plentiful here. The number of people doing different kinds of jobs is staggering. The department stores and shops have 2 or 3 times as many clerks as our stores have. I haven’t heard what the average wage here is, but I’ll bet it’s only about $1 an hour. And I hope those silk, cloissone and jade artisans get somewhat better than that.
–rakkity
Michael,
One of our stops on the way to the Ming tombs yesterday was a jade factory. I had no idea what to expect, thinking it would be all solid green statues, but I was wrong. The jade factory guide showed us yellow, white and red jade. A yellow jade buddha was translucent, and seemed to glow from within. Then she showed us a soccerball-sized sphere with 12 holes where you could see that inside there were 8 other nested spheres. I’d seen these things in wood and ivory before, but jade? Must be hard getting the little dremel drills, or whatever they use, inside the outer spheres.
But then we were directed to watch the artisans at work. Two of them were sitting at lathes, picking their way into the innards of nested spheres. The other artisans were also using lathes to make horses, buddhas, necklaces and jewelry of all sorts. The artisans didn’t seem to mind having us peering down at them (through a glass wall). They paused often in apparent contemplation between drillings and cuttings. One slip-up, and a day’s or a week’s work could be ruined.
The factory walls and floor looked like a museum of Chinese art. Some of the jade pieces, like a giant eagle, and a herd of galloping horses, must have weighed a ton. The nicest piece there was of variegated colors (jadite)–gray, red, green–of a great cat with the natural rock colors matching the coloration of a real cat. And his feet were cunningly embedded in the niches of a piece of polished driftwood.
The 9-fold nested spheres are pretty expensive ($hundreds) but I was able to pick up a nice 3-fold nested sphere for $10. I also got some gifts to bring home.
–rakkity
Michael,
The first stop on our tour yesterday was to the Ming tombs. It’s an hour bus ride west of Beijing in a national scenic area bordered by green hills. On the way there, our guide told us the history of the Ming Dynasty. Ming I (14th century) had 20 sons, and he chose the first son to be his successor, but the son died before him. So the old man had to pick another inheritor of his throne, and rather than one of his other sons, he picked the oldest son of his first son. (At that time, the custom of the first son automatically inheriting the power was not in effect.) The grandson was only 6 years old at the time, but his grandfather trained him in the arts and guiles of emperorship for 11 years. In the mean time, he appointed the other 19 sons to govern distant provinces of the kingdom and keep them from meddling with his affairs. By the time of his death, the grandson was capable of taking over the kingdom. Ming II ruled for about 50 years, and his successors continued the dynasty for over 250 years. Only 3 other Chinese dynasties were as long lived as 200 years.
In the late 16th century, a huge burial complex was built to accommodate all of the remnants of the Mings. A rumor came down to the 20th century that the builders of the grave complex were all killed and buried there to prevent the location of the burial entrance from becoming public knowledge. In any event, for 3 centuries, no grave robbers or archaeologists ever succeeded in finding the way in. It was reputed that there were Indiana Jones-style traps and misleading entrances in the complex. Finally in the 20th century, the government succeeded in finding the entrance, and reconstructed tunnels for public access. Most of the actual coffins, remains, and artifacts are now in Beijing museums, but some of the original Ming vases and thrones are still there.
Although archaeologists have excavated the entire area, no remains of the original workers were ever found, and it is now widely held that the rumor about their execution was false.
The current Chinese must revere the ancient emperors, since there are heaps of modern Yuan notes strewed everywhere around the coffins, presumably to bring good luck. Funny cautioning signs in fractured English are displayed here and there–“Don’t scribble”, “Luxuriant grassland please don’t trample”, “No smoking. Fireproofing caution”.
–rakkity
(Blogmeister’s note: I’ve fallen way behind prolific rakkity, and I’m posting out of sequence though I don’t think it diminshes his transfixing travelogues. )
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