CATHOLIC ROME

Rome is a beautiful city and you also see some of the most interesting and colorful outfits from Catholics all over the world.

I definitely want to go back to Rome some day.    I had so much fun there, bu did not have enough time to see a whole lot.

Pilot dies on Overseas Flight

There have been some crazy stories about airline flights this past year.  We had the pilot land inthe Hudson River in New York,  the disappearance of a Flight from South America to France and now a pilot dies on route  to the US from Brussels.   I love flying, so this is very interesting to me.

Reminds me of a flight I did coming back from Cancun coming into O’Hare.   We landed very  far from the main part of the Airport and had to geton busses that took about 30 mimutes to get to the gate going around the airport on a highway.  We were told nothing, but assumed there was something wrng with the airplane.

Condolences to the pilot’s family and a job well done by the crew to get the plane on the ground safe and sound.

wcbstv

Where the Hell is Matt??

Here are couple  interesting movies that I found over at The Anchoress.  I never heard of this guy before.  But he has his own website called Where the Hell is Matt.

Goes to show that everyone around the world love to dance and have fun. 

Destination: The Maldives

After seeing the shark feeding film I got curious about the Maldives island country.  Turns out it is SW of  India in the area of Sri Lanka.  It was devastated by the 2004 tsunami, but since it has no continental shelf the waves peaked at 14 feet.  So – even though it is the flattest country in the world, only 20 or so people died.    

Here is some information about the Maldives tourist industry from Wikipedia.

Natural Beauty

Maldives is famous for its natural beauty which includes the blue ocean and white beaches, accompanied by pleasant temperatures. The climate of the Maldives is ideal for visitors to get engaged in water sports such as swimming, fishing, scuba diving, snorkeling, water-skiing and windsurfing.

Due to its extraordinary underwater scenery and clean water, Maldives is also ranked among one of the best diving destinations of the world. [1]

Overview of a tropical resort

A Maldivian tourist resort

A tourist resort in the Maldives consists of an exclusive hotel on its own island, with its population entirely based on tourists and work force, with no local people or houses.

These islands developed for tourism are approximately 800 by 200 metres in size and are composed of sand and coral to a maximum height of about 2 metres above the sea. In addition to its beach encircling the island, each island has its own "house reef" which serves as a coral garden and natural aquarium for scuba divers and snorkelers. The shallow water enclosed by the house reef also serves as a large natural swimming pool and protects swimmers from the ocean waves and strong tidal currents outside the house reef.

The buildings on a typical resort includes rooms and suites reserved for use by its guests, restaurants, cafes, shops, lounges, bars, discos and dive schools. A portion of the island also contains staff lodgings and support services such as catering, power generators, laundry, and a sewerage plant. On-island shops offer a wide range of products, such as souvenirs and artifacts. The resorts offer a wide variety of activities such as aerobics, volleyball and table tennis.

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

And here’s some info from the official Maldives website:

1,190 coral islands, forming an archipelago of 26 major atolls. Stretches 820 kilometres north to south and 120 kilometres east to west. 202 are inhabited, 87 are exclusive resort islands.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

And here is to die for – a choice of places to stay:     http://www.universalresorts.com/  Be sure to click on the locations listed along the top.

And here is a place called Blue Lagoon:    

More photos of the Blue Lagoon – check out the scuba photos http://www.kuramathi.com/photogallery.html#

 

And a cruise ship for travelling around the islands mainly to scuba that looks like The Belafante from the Bill Murray movie "The Life Aquatic starring Steve Zissou".   Wonder if the safety officer sings David Bowie songs in Portuguese?

Julia   

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Exercizing Away Those Evil “tooooo men”

American response to the Japanese exercize program from YOuTube I posted below.

The bad American "tooooo men"  also make an appearance.

Julia

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Fun with Latin and “Rome” on HBO

I’m still mourning the passing of HBO’s wonderful series "Rome".  So I was perusing HBO’s on-line info about that series.  There is a guy called "Rome Historian" who helped with keeping the scripts authentic.  He has been blogging during his time in Rome for the fiming.  Here are two posts that should be fascinating to fans of "Rome" or Rome.  [My comments are in Italics. he he he]

Oct 24, 2006  Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum

I like a good acronym. And heard a great one the other day. A script for a love-story, someone confidently told me, didn’t hold up because it lacked URST. Of course I had to ask. URST, he re-iterated. And then, somewhat pityingly, ‘You know URST. UnResolved Sexual Tension.’

I hadn’t seen the script, but it seemed plausible to me. I was confident, not even having read a line, that it didn’t fall down because it lacked CIL, another favourite acronym of mine. But then that’s because CIL stands for Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, and not many scripts in Hollywood fail for lack of that.

The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, or Body of Latin inscriptions, is an immensely bulky, immensely tedious, and very wonderful thing. It cannot be read, it can only be dipped. It currently runs to 17 volumes in about 70 parts and is growing all the time. It contains every known Latin inscription from the entire Roman Empire, some 180,000 of them to date.

The CIL is stuffed with acronyms because that’s the way inscriptions worked. Carving on stone is a laborious business, and of course space is also at a premium. So everything was abbreviated. It’s worth knowing a few of the commoner acronyms because it’s surprisingly easy to decipher some inscriptions once you do, and that adds hugely to the fun of wandering around Roman ruins.

The best known of course is ‘SPQR’ which stands for ‘senatus populusque Romanus’, or ‘The Senate and People of Rome’. But you will also often see ‘VLMS’, which stands for ‘votum libens merito solvit’, or ‘he willingly and deservedly fulfilled his vow’. This means that the writer promised to create the monument on which the inscription is carved as a gift to some god, in return for favour perhaps, and has now fulfilled that promise. A third formula I particularly like appears on tombstones, ‘STTL’, ‘sit tibi terra levis’: ‘may the earth lie lightly upon you’.

And herein lies the charm, and value, of the CIL. In amidst, literally, all the dry stones are hints of emotion and feeling we can find nowhere else. When surviving literature is dominated by the sentiments of the rich Roman male, inscriptions are a priceless resource for hearing other ancient voices.

One example: CIL 13.1983. Found in Roman France and dedicated by a labourer to his wife on her tomb. “To the eternal memory of Blandinia Martiola, a most faultless girl, who lived eighteen years, nine months, five days, Pompeius Catussa, a plasterer, dedicates to his wife, who was incomparable and very kind to him, this memorial which he had erected during his lifetime for himself and his wife…You who read this, go bathe at the public baths of Apollo for us, as I used to do with my wife. I wish I still could.”

How tenderly and truly that comes across the centuries. Anyone who’s ever suffered a bereavement or a break-up can recognize that ineluctable sense of pain: ‘I wish I still could’.

Now that would make a love-story.

Posted by: RomeHistorian Oct 24, 2006 1:50 PM EDT

Here’s the other post that might grab your attention:

Oct 30, 2006  Seize the Day

You don’t hear Robin Williams speak Latin too often. So when he does it’s worth mentioning. He’s not exactly fluent, in fact he only seems to know one phrase, but I shouldn’t think he’s bothered. He’s hardly about to apply for a job at the Vatican. As the inspirational teacher Professor Keating in Peter Weir’s ‘Dead Poets’ Society” he loses his job in tragic circumstances for encouraging his pupils to ‘make their lives extraordinary’. In the central scene he leads them out of the classroom into the school’s chilly main corridor. Confronting them with the sepia photographs of generations past he urges on these teenagers a sense of their own mortality. Do what you can now, he says, because your lives will soon pass as theirs have done. Seize the Day. Carpe Diem. As Mrs Doubtfire he tries an alternative version. When his false-teeth fall into a glass of water, temporarily undermining his – already unconvincing – drag disguise, he shouts to distract attention. Carpe Dentum. Seize the Teeth. Those who have already seen the Peter Weir film are in on the joke. That you can make a joke out of a Latin tag at all testifies to its familiarity. The phrase, taken from a poem by the Roman writer Horace, is one of very few that have really passed into our language. It’s now most often used as a byword for irresponsibility and short-termism, as if the uncertainty of tomorrow excuses any behaviour today. The original context is far subtler than that. The poem in question, the eleventh Ode in Horace’s First book of Odes, is a complex mixture of the fatalistic and the celebratory. ‘Don’t ask’, it begins’, ‘what end the gods have in mind for you and me…don’t go consulting Babylonian astrologers to find out.’ Here’s the fatalism, a chill tone that is intensified in the next few lines. ‘It could be that this is the last winter Jupiter has granted you, this winter that now pounds itself to exhaustion on the crags of the Tyrrhenian Sea’. In the central part the celebratory tone cuts in. ‘Wise up, have a drink, stop making long-term plans’. And finally the poem turns lyrical. “dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.’ ‘Even as we’re speaking envious time escapes us: seize the day, trust as little as you may in the morrow.’ It’s a beautiful piece. So concise but so varied. An invocation to merry-making, but a melancholy merry-making. No wonder it’s endured. For it captures the essence of the past and its hold on us, the pathos of the past, in a way that Peter Weir conveyed perfectly. That our mortality is always upon us, Horace argues, is not an invitation to recklessness nor a counsel of despair, but a call to cherish while we still can the deepest values of life: companionship, happiness and love. If something stands between you and those things, remove it. And don’t do so tomorrow, but today.

Posted by RomeHistorian 2:35 PM EST In the combox one comment reveals that the word "carpe"  indicates something even deeper than "seize".  I enjoyed this post a lot, however I would just like to point out that "carpe diem" is the most mistranslated phrase in perhaps all of Western literature. The verb "carpo, carpere" means "to pluck" or "to harvest," sometimes "to enjoy [that which is harvested]. This goes along with the other horticultural imagery in Horace’s Odes I.11, such as "spem longam reseces [trim back tedious hope]" and "vina liques [strain the wine]." Horace wrote incredible poetry.

So it seems the phrase "carpe diem" means something like "harvest and enjoy and make use of this day" .  Wonderful advice from a dead white guy. It’s a lot like the advice to young girls in a more recent English poem to "gather ye rosebuds while ye may".

Here’s the link to the Roman Historian’s blog where he explains "fasces", background characters in the series and many other things that will make your viewing of "Rome" or your trip to Rome more fun.   The first post on June 12 2006 is at the bottom on page 2, but it isn’t really necessary to read them in chronological order.

http://boards.hbo.com/forum.jspa?forumID=800001151&start=15

Julia  

Sami Wedding in Lapland

Couldn’t resist just a few more Norway photos, also courtesy of Aftenposten.  These were taken at a Sami wedding.  You may have heard of them as Laplanders, a term the Sami people despise.  The wedding united not only two families, but also the sizable reindeer herds owned by each family.

Mathis A Buljo and Sara Kristine Turi celebrated a traditional sami wedding this month, and Aftenposten’s weekly magazine, A Magasinet, was invited along. The following photos provide unique insight into colorful traditions of the country’s indigenous people, set against the stark white landscape of Norway’s far north.

PHOTO: STEIN J BJØRGE

The bridal pair walk into church in Kautokeino, Finnmark, laden with silver and gold jewelry and with all eyes on them.

PHOTO: STEIN J BJØRGE

 

Mathis and Sara walked hand-in-hand into their wedding reception. Mathis had slaughtered several reindeer and picked lots of cloudberries for the wedding feast.

PHOTO: STEIN J BJØRGE

Some of the younger guests appreciated a bit of fresh air as the late winter sun set in the background.

PHOTO: STEIN J BJØRGE

Enough bad news in the world.  DIdn’t these photos make you smile a bit?       

Source:  http://www.aftenposten.no/english/bildeserier/article1260501.ece?start=1

Julia, descendent of Severt Severtson 

Don’t Cry for Argentina

The Next Hot Place is . . . . . . . Argentina!!!   An economic crash 5 years ago made it a cheap place to visit and many visitors are staying.  Musicians and other artists from all over the world are making Buenos Aires into a very vibrant scene.  I wanna go. 

Here’s some of an article in Newsweek about what’s up with Argentina these days. 

The Capital Of Cool

Hip, happening Buenos Aires is luring writers, artists and musicians from around the world.

By Brian Byrnes      Newsweek International        Jan. 15, 2007 issue –

An invasion of foreign artists is transforming Buenos Aires into an emerging international capital of cultural cool. Like Prague in the 1990s, Buenos Aires offers chic on the cheap and is attracting scores of musicians, filmmakers, journalists, designers and even sitcom writers from abroad. Hundreds, if not thousands, have spilled in from the United States, England, Spain and beyond, helping to bring the capital out of a period of deep cultural isolation after an economic collapse five years ago. Champagne-fueled fashion shows and gallery openings keep the city’s glitterati on a 24/7 social schedule. Casting agents scour bars looking for young English or Mandarin speakers for the dozens of foreign commercials regularly being shot in the city. A-list actors like Colin Farrell, Natalie Portman and Benicio del Toro have all vacationed in town recently.         

[snip]

A large number of the recent transplants first got interested in Buenos Aires after meeting Argentines abroad in Europe. In Barcelona, Spanish filmmaker Moisés Torne was struck by the ingenuity and panache of the Argentine immigrants he met who had fled the country’s economic meltdown. So when he needed a new place to jump-start his career, Buenos Aires became an obvious choice. Torne, 37, has directed several videos for Argentine musicians and uses Web sites like YouTube and Flickr to market his material worldwide. "Argentina now is like Spain was in the 1980s," he notes. "It is coming out of a period of severe economic depression, and that has created a really restless artistic movement which has encouraged me to stay." That’s not all: "Let’s face it; it’s really cheap, too."

Argentina has a storied film tradition, and in recent years its movies have been gaining international acclaim, winning top honors at the Berlin, Stockholm and Tribeca film festivals. Local critics and directors confess that the economic crisis sparked a series of self-reflective feature films that examine both local and global themes, such as Rodrigo Moreno’s "The Guardian," about a bodyguard who subsumes his own identity to the minister he protects, and Jorge Gaggero’s "Live-In Maid," about a wealthy woman who loses her fortune—and eventually her maid—in the economic collapse. This creative environment appeals not only to natives but also to foreign filmmakers feeling constricted by Hollywood’s conventions. "We felt an immediate connection with Buenos Aires," says Jane Hallisey, a screenwriter and film producer who moved from New York to Buenos Aires in 2003 with her Swiss partner and fellow cinéaste Tomi Streiff, to escape the grim, diminished work environment of post-9/11 New York.

City officials welcome the expatriate influx but insist that factors other than the affordable cost of living are driving the phenomenon. "There are lots of cities that are just as cheap as Buenos Aires," says Silvia Fajre, culture minister for the municipal government. "But this city has an intense cultural rhythm that you just can’t find anywhere else in the world, so we’re glad that foreigners are taking part." Local artists seem to like it as well; for them the new arrivals can mean a boost in international exposure and sales. "[Foreigners] recognize that something fresh is happening in the arts scene here, and they’re really contributing to it," says Argentine painter and visual artist Mariano Molina, 36.

Foreign artists are also laying roots outside the local art scene. Nonprofit organizations like HelpArgentina, the Working World and InsightArgentina were all started by young Americans in Buenos Aires over the past five years. Australian journalist Lucy Cousins and her English colleague Kristie Robinson recognized an untapped market for a socially and environmentally oriented publication. So they started The Argentimes, a biweekly English-language newspaper that debuted in June and has a circulation of 5,000. "We always knew that expats would read it, but we never expected the Argentine readership to be so big," says Cousins, 27. "We get e-mails every day from English teachers here telling us they use the paper as a learning tool. The warm response from the Argentines has been overwhelming." That’s the kind of reception every expat craves from her host.

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

Julia   See the whole thing at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16500159/site/newsweek/   

St Maarten

St. Maarten is a wonderful place.  There is so much to do there that I never got to do all of it.  I never got to got to St. Barts, Saba, or any of the other Islands in the area.  I only got to go diving once, but I did see a couple of bug turtles and moray eels.

I was kind of bad that the World Series was going on while down there.  We had to watch the Cards play so it kind of hampered some of the stuff we did.  But all in all I had  a great time and want to go back ther and do some of the things we never got to do while down there.

Here are some pictures I took while down there.

One of the best restaurants I have ever eaten at, except maybe in Rome.  I had a great Carbonara there.  It was in Grand Case on the Fwence side

Beautiful Marigot.  It was a very cool town even though it was on the Fwence side of the Island.

Here is the beautiful Catholic Church in Marigot.  My mom has got some pictures of the outside when whe was there 3 years ago.

Here is the Yatch I am going to buy when I win the lottery

Here is Front Street in Phillipsburg on the Dutch side.

This is where I hung out alot drinking Captain and Coke at the Pelican Key Resort.

And finally here is the brand new Princess Juliana Airport in Simpson Bay.

Stix

Slow Travel like Slow Food

H/T  Amy Welborn who is sharing info gleaned in prep for a trip to Italy.  check out this great site for travel buffs that isn’t all cluttered with hotel ads. It’s almost a group blog.

What is Slow Travel?: Slow Travelers stay in vacation rentals around the world – apartments, villas, houses, cottages, cabins, condos that you rent by the week. Other terms used for these types of rentals are self-catering, tourist rentals, holiday rentals, holiday cottages, agritourism (Italy), Gites (France).

Basing yourself in a vacation rental makes for a different, slower, vacation. You stay longer in one place and get to know one area in depth. The extra time in a place lets you find a favorite coffee shop, get your groceries at the local stores, go to the weekly market – the things you would do if you lived there.

The Slow Travel web site gives you the information that you need to book a slow vacation.

Slow Travel is a community of people who like to travel and experience new places! This website contains our reviews for vacation rentals, hotels and restaurants, our trip reports, and our travel information.

We have 1200+ vacation rental reviews, 1000+ hotel reviews, 1300+ restaurant reviews, and 300+ trip reports. New reviews, trip reports and content pages are added every month. There are 6500+ pages on the website – lots to read!

Posted by Julia