This part of Italy is called “Cinque Terre”, or five towns. They are primitive tourist towns near a national park with miles of hiking trails, part of the Italian Riviera on the west side of the peninsula.
We had some bad luck – there was a rail strike on Sunday, which delayed our arrival, and then rains the night before last which caused them to close all the trails. The hillsides can be very dangerous.
Luca Brasi, it turns out, does not sleep with the fishes.
Consequently, we rode the train yesterday to the five towns, Rigamortis, Corningware, Motorola, Vernazza and Monty Python. Those are not the real names (Vernazza, where we stayed, is the actual name), but that was the only way I could remember them.
Today we travel to Milan, and from there fly home tomorrow. It has been so much fun, but we’ve been gone so long. Italy is like a drug, with its climate and food and wine. The people are beautiful to look at and friendly. The place is affordable. unions are strong, and jobs like bus and train work, waiters and cooks are all held by Italians. There is no need for tipping, as the jobs pay well enough to support them, due to the unions. The trains run on time (when not on strike). The water is clean and fresh, the European coffee is a treat by itself. We don’t eat much, and locals don’t seem to either, so we don’t see too many overweight people (except Luca).
I hope you all have a chance to travel, as we have. We know we are fortunate souls.
Among the many ghastly offerings given us by PBS, America’s answer to how to stay uninformed and really, really not know it, is a guy named Rick Steves. He is to travel as Doris Kearns Goodwin is to history, all over it like the Rio Grande – a mile wide and one inch deep. His shows offer a brief glimpse of various places, most often in Europe. It’s all done with aging white people in mind, with excellent tips on how to pack (he sells a line of travel books and luggage).
My favorite scenes are those where he pretends to have walked a long staircase to a monument (more often restaurant), gasping for breath after having done the last five as the camera waits. The end of each show is outtakes, or bloopers. Goodness gracious, the humor.
Anyway, we are in Ljubljana, Slovenia, victims of Rick Steves. We bought it, and even rented a car to drive here.
Slovenia is a pretty place, Ljubljana (pronounced “all right Rick, you got us”) is a moderate large city that has awoken in the last 25 years to cars and western dress. At the center of it is an area where cars are not allowed, and which contains fancy clothing stores, restaurants, one of them damned cathedrals (a small one), and three bridges over Ljubljanica River (designed by a famous local architect – if you want to know more, consult Steves. He’s all over Giolvanni Picco.)
Not to be too hard on Ljubljana, a nice place, a bustling city with a long history and many nice things to see and do. But the concept of our trip here, to see the area at the City Center with its shops and restaurants, was Stevism, silliness, a mistake. It is like deciding to visit Colorado, and instead of spending time in the Rockies, spending your whole trip at the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder.
Today we are heading north, if we can find our way out of here. This is the first time we’ve rented a car while traveling abroad. It is a mixed bag … we have freedom, but not really. We are bound to roadways with thousands of other cars. We waited for long periods yesterday due to line painting crews at work, backing up traffic for miles. I think that is known as “the illusion of progress.” Steven Weinberg, the astrophysicist, mentioned this. He noted that it takes as long now to drive from one side of Manhattan Island to the other as it did in the old days of horse and buggies.
We’ll head up to Lake Bled, another Steves recommendation, and with that in mind, will drive by it without stopping. We are all caught up on modern dress and modes of dining. Ideally, we’ll wander through the less well-known parts of The Julian Alps and Northern Italy, stopping who knows where for the night.
One very favorable thing to report to anyone wanting to travel Europe: Once we got out of Switzerland, it got very affordable. Fifty euros will get you through a whole day, including meals. Lodging is cheap. Yesterday we stopped at a grocery store and bought two bottles of wine, crackers and vegetables, and the bill was nine euros (about $7 $11). The wine is not top-shelf, but for my palate, fine wine is overkill. I cannot distinguish between a Cabernet and a Chevrolet. And frankly, in this part of the world, bad wine is a rarity.
A little chunk of history here – war before the advent of aircraft was about high ground.
In the early days of World War One Austro-Hungary occupied parts of what is now northern Italy, and perhaps thinking itself overextended, withdrew from Cortina and built fortifications along parts of the Dolomites where valleys might allow Italians to invade in the wake of the withdrawal.
We walked through some of the fortifications today. The loss of life was said to be large, though I’ve not found any numbers (World War One was a slaughter so large that the conflict in the Dolomites might be a footnote).
Notice the high mountain on the right – Il Castelletto. It is the high ground over a valley that looks down over a potential invasion route for Italian forces. All we read in the area say that casualties were devastating on both sides. The mountainside itself was bombed to great effect.
”The Dolomite mountains have become a legend and will be remembered not only for the blood that was shed there, but for the kind of warfare that was engaged: it did not set anonymous armies against each other as it did on the Russian Front – it was a war of man-against-man that valued heroic individual actions.
In addition, the idle moments that soldiers were forced to undergo because of the extreme conditions and severe winters in the high mountains provided time to study the adversary who – during the pauses between one battle and another – sometimes assumed a human face: conversations between “tenemies” – the exchange of cigarettes, letters, Christmas wishes – are now the stuff of legends.” (L. Palla)
Morning in Cortina, Italy. A waiter last night asked me what a sophisticated urbanite like myself was doing in a rustic setting like this. I told him we’d be trekking in the nearby mountains. Also, I asked, where are your women?
The Geneva portion of our trip has two purposes, to reacquaint with our daughter, and get accustomed to the time change. We have done both, and have a good feeling about it. I now wake up as the sun rises, just like back home, my head full of surprises and ambition.
Yesterday we took a good long time to achieve the day’s goal, a swim in the Rhone. We managed to do other things, like a farmers’ market and long lunch eating food I’ve never eaten before. The menu was a wide variety of different things, like fish and shell food and weird things that grow here and there thrown them together with a spice or two. There was nothing familiar to fall back on so I ordered smoked salmon, uncooked, along with a mixture of salad, shrimp, tomatoes, avocado and other things I do not understand. It tasted good, took a long time to eat, and of course the wine complemented the meal to such a degree that I now better understand the popularity of wine. Club soda works as well, but wine is a complement to all the other favors and a relaxant. Only a small few drink it for its intoxicating powers.
The night before we sat with a view of Jet D’eau, Lake Geneva and Mount Blanc, with a full moon of course, and ate tapas – eight different dishes before us including figs, mangos, tuna, lamb, tofu … the meal was not to satisfy the appetite so much as the palate. American restaurants load you up with one or two things, pizza or beef and french fries, far more calories than we need. The French are more about dining than eating.
We did finally make it to the Rhone yesterday for a swim. I’ll add a photo or two later. It was an affair for the younger crowd, with hot young bodies displayed, swimsuits barely covering torsos, grabbing on to tight young asses and saying “naked” to the legal limit. The girls were pretty too.
I like to say things like that for my son’s benefit, getting all salacious only to disappoint him with latent homosexuality. Then he can cover his eyes and say “Dad! in the manner of Sylvester the cat’s son prior to putting a bag over his head and saying “Oh the shame if it.”
So we got to the place where the Rhone flows out of Lake Geneva, hit the water, icy cold, and quickly adapted and simply floated downstream to a dock where we climbed out, walked back and did it again. It was delightful. The water was clear and clean, the current fast enough to move us along without scaring us.
The average age was probably 22, hundreds of youth, so that our aging bodies were invisible to all but our own kind. There was one woman who was topless. She was everyone’s grandma, so used to being invisible that being topless in public seemed the natural thing to do. “Look away!” I thought.
We met a couple our age, Aussies, and much like us as possible. They are retired and traveling, fit and off to do the complete Mt. Blanc circuit, 100 miles over twelve days. They will be with a group. Both he and I eschew the group travel setting, as the slowest members always rule, but he was given no choice in the matter, and like me, will probably find the experience to be great fun. They are then off to Malta for “a change of pace” before returning to their home, a thirty hour journey by plane, including changes.
One more day here, and then we are off to Zermatt, the Matterhorn (for viewing, not climbing), and points beyond. The photos of yesterday’s event are on my wife’s iPhone. I’ll see if anything is worth reproducing later. I tried to avoid those tight young asses, and the young girls too, and capture the whole scene. We’ll see how it turned out.
We are off tomorrow on yet another journey of a lifetime. We have to do it while we can. This time we are off to Geneva, Zermatt, the Dolomites, Ljubljana, Florence, Cinque Terre, and finally Milan. It’s a return visit to Florence for us. That place, with its history and culture, is a magnet.
Once one the ground we’ll be using our favorite forms of transportation – our feet, and the amazing European train system.
I’ll probably be writing throughout. I don’t sleep a whole lot compared to other mortals and have time in the early morning for this purpose.
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This blog, more than anything, is my personal journal. I’ve been asked why I do not simply write and keep it under wraps, like a diary. I don’t get that at all. I have had to change my name to a nom de plume recently, as there are some nasty people out there. But understand, that has nothing to do with other bloggers or commenters, all of whom have good manners mostly, or just somewhat, like me.
Paul Marshall is my “porn name,” our middle name coupled with the street we were born on. If you were born on a numbered street, it’s a little more difficult, but do try it on your own … it usually sounds porny. I don’t know why.
My writings here go back to 2006, and the changes in my outlook during that time are a trip on a vine over a chasm – hoping like hell for a safe landing. Just asking a question leads to a whole new outlook. I know all about security in moderate views, how hiding from exposure to ugly truths leads to a more stable existence. However, once the question was asked, I was on the vine. The destination is no safer than a return journey.
I now have the ability to go back and review my own thoughts from 2006 to now, not knowing then where I was headed. I cringe at times, but am forgiving. It’s a journey.
Perhaps the greatest movie I have seen in my time was the Godfather, Part 2. But the best was Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks’ masterpiece. Below is a scene encapsulating American politics. (Important back story for the viewer: the town is Rock Ridge, somewhere in the west. The townspeople are frightened by evildoers. Everyone in town shares the last name “Johnson,” and all of the Johnson’s support and agree all the other Johnson’s. There’s an ice cream store in the middle of the town with a large sign that says “Howard Johnson’s – One Flavor”.)
[Sorry about the ad, but this is The United States America, where advertisers are free to interrupt any gathering at any time for any purpose. Hell, they even get to target kids!]
In the post below regarding the 2000 election I wrote
The 2000 election: Al Gore won, so that the ascension of George W. Bush was yet another coup. I have no regard for Al Gore, and so don’t imagine the policy differences that resulted from Bush holding office over him mattered much, but I stand to be educated.
In other words, there were no history-changing differences between the two aristocrats that were involved in the 2000 coup. Had President Al Gore been aboard Air Force One that day has it flew at low altitude around the country without fighter jet protection, having been given an ultimatum complete with nuclear launch codes to demonstrate the power behind it, he too would have capitulated.
But the coup plotters had apparently been planning 9/11 since at least 1997, so getting their team into office was probably seen as essential to get the right people in position to pull it off. There had to be moles in place throughout the military and in various civilian agencies for the plot to succeed as it did.
Would they have been able to pull it off without having captured the presidency in 2000? I do not know, of course. But I suspect, given that they went so far as to threaten the Supreme Court into making one of the most embarrassing and baseless rulings in American history to get Bush in power, they thought it mattered.
I do not for a second think that George W. Bush was trusted with any information surrounding 9/11. He was a deer in the headlights. Cheney? Perhaps. But this is the United States of America. We do not investigate these crimes, and so will not know for many years to come the manipulations behind that event.
Below is a satellite photo of the seas and coastline of New York and Canada on 9/11/2001. The inset shows Manhattan. See the smoke dust trail from the World Trade Center.
Below is the pathway of a hurricane Erin, shown above, in the days up to and after 9/11/2001. It remained stationary during the events of that day.
Below is an NBC weather forecast on 9/11/2001, as shown on TV screens even as the hurricane was present.
Finally, below are graphs from various reading stations in Alaska of fluctuations in the earth’s magnetic fields on 9/11/2001. Note the small blip at about 12:45 UT (8:45 EDT), and then a large and ongoing disruption at 14:00 UT (10:00 AM EDT) on that day. These blips coincide with the “planes” hitting the first tower, and then WTC2 turning to dust, and continue until WTC7 disappears that afternoon. Apparently, in addition to “planes” hitting the buildings, we also witnessed a magnetic event.
Here’s a conundrum: The National Assessment of Adult Literacy is a complex document with a large body of information from which one can draw inferences and conclusions. It concludes that only 13% of American college graduates (in 2003) “can perform complex and challenging literacy activities.”
Among those activities would be the ability to understand the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. In other words, only 13% of the public is capable of understanding that only 13% of the public is capable of understanding the assessment.
I am going to draw some inferences about that in the post that appears below this one. I wanted to keep this post short, as I know full well that if an entire post does not appear on the screen when someone clicks on this site, readership falls off dramatically. Longer posts are like homework assignments.
I don’t fancy that people should read what I write. That’s a narcissistic notion. Rather, I simply know that if I write beyond a few short paragraphs, people don’t read. That’s all.
These attitudes you have adopted – I know they comfort you. You are indifferent and incurious about the important events of our times. You are smug about it, thinking yourself wise to be so. But I must advise you that from a distance your attitude is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Such is the nature of our society that people actually capable of critical thought are stigmatized as being the dumber ones, perhaps even suffering mental illness.
The phrase “conspiracy theorist” originated in the bowels of the CIA in the late 1960’s in response to a large part of the population not believing the official story of the murder of John F. Kennedy. The phrase itself is a PSYOP, or …
“[a] planned operation to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.”
We are governed by PSYOPS. If you, the reader, automatically assume that “conspiracy theorists” are wrong and dumb and mentally deficient, you’ve been successfully gamed. You are the victim of a PSYOP.
We are all tested from birth. The school systems is designed to survey the herd and pick out the ones capable of certain tasks – soldiers, workers, bureaucrats. The culling process does not seek “intelligence*” so much as useful abilities. Based on testing we are routed to various occupations even as we imagine we self-select our careers.
The idea that our schooling system teaches us critical thinking skills is absurd. That is not why it is there. If tasked to do so, it could perform that service. In fact, exclusive schools used to train our privileged youth do indeed teach these skills. But the leadership class does not want a general public capable of critical thought. Quite the opposite. Those of us who survive schooling and who do indeed learn to use our minds in a critical fashion are set aside for derision and abuse.
It may appear that I am engaged in contradiction, at once saying that the public is not capable of drawing correct inferences from information, and at the same time that the majority of the public does indeed disbelieve the official story regards the JFK hit.
It is true that a majority of the public does not buy the official story. It is also true that majority of the public, even knowing the official story to be false, does not grasp the staggering implications that naturally follow.
As a result, while knowledge of a lie is widespread, the implications of that lie are bottled up, and we go on with business as usual. We suffer the same fools in our political class, unaware of the real power that stands behind them pulling their strings. We endure criminal activities on a massive scale pulled off in broad daylight by our military class. We suffer from advertising and psychological manipulation from the business world. And we allow the news media to keep it all bottled up by means of distraction.
To those of us who grasped the significance of the murder of JFK, it appears that the task of the overlords has gotten easier. Events like 9/11, Boston and most recently Charlotte are pulled off with frightening ease. Cover stories around 9/11, for instance, don’t withstand five seconds critical examination and yet stand unchallenged by the majority of the public.
The red stuff is called “Tempera”
Reading is key, of course, not to be told what to think, but to gather raw data and make critical connections. There’s never enough, and we never know all we should know, perhaps jumping to conclusions based on inadequate data.
With the Boston false flag operation, for example, it is easy to see from photographs that the injuries were fake and the participants mere actors, but wait a minute! WHY do we have access to such high quality photography? Why was it not bottled up at the source? Surely those who pulled of this operation were able to keep control of the images. That was the whole point!
There is a famous photograph of three ‘tramps” being led from Dealey Plaza by a fake cop on 11/22/63. Two are suspected to be E. Howard Hunt and Charles Harrington, Woody’s dad, a professional hit man. But wait a minute … agents of various stripes monitored everyone in the Plaza that day, and every available photograph was confiscated. Most never saw light of day. Yet we have that set of photos, clear and concise, taken by a professional photographer, and released to the public. Why?
It has to do with intelligence – private researchers have uncovered a tremendous body of data, enough to draw conclusion about the who and why of that day. But there exist smarter people, drawn from our best schools and trained in deceit on a high level. So the class of curious citizens, those capable of dealing with the complexities of the major events of our times, are systematically diddled by people of even higher intelligence. The photographs are real enough, but the inferences deliberately misleading.
No way out, you say? Hall of mirrors? Puzzle palace? Perhaps. What else to do with our lives – stop thinking? That is not an option.
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*I have seen a list which appears to be to be comprehensive detailing nine types of intelligence. Our testing regime focuses only on three, logical-mathematical, linguistic, and spatial.
