Marche juggler

Canals and Alleys of Venice

Nobska Point Lighthouse, Woods Hole

 1828, rebuilt as 40 foot iron/brick tower in 1876

The lighthouse was automated in 1985 and the house is now the residence of the Commander of the US Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England based in Woods Hole. 

dusk ferry to Martha's Vineyard....a jeep invasion underway??

Mind the gap

I'm a Lumberjill and I'm Okay

These are the members of the Colby College Woodsmen Club, a team that competes in traditional woodsmen skills with other college teams in Maine and the Northeast.  Cross saw, bow saw, chain saw, ax-throwing, log-rolling, pole-climbing, log hewing, log throwing----it's all here!  Think of it as a track & field meet for lumberjacks.  It was a total treat to hang out with them during their daily team practice yesterday. 

The ceiling of their clubhouse is covered with the plaques and awards this epic team has accrued over decades.  Nice axe rack.

Any activity that requires specialized footwear is okay in my book.

 

Lastly, I did not expect to be throwing axes when I got dressed in the morning.   And, I kid you not, that is my second throw----almost a bull's-eye (although not quite from regulation distance)!

Yowzer! nice blue bench

Here's another bench-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden pic, brought back to life by a coat of paint in a great color.  Nicely done Pop.

A few of you have noticed what a blog slacker I've been lately.....I have an excuse.  On top of extra busy day job and getting my house ready to rent, I've moved---from a city of 100,000 people outside of Boston, to a seaside village of less than a 1000 people on Cape Cod---Woods Hole.  I would post requisite pics of "adorable harbor", "sweet gray shingle cottage" and "gorgeous sunset" but the cord that connects my camera to computer has been lost in the move.  Many interesting things go on in WH (mostly involving the science of oceanography) so, despite local consensus that there is no place more boring than the Cape in winter, I hope inspiration will be found.

In the meantime, I continue to search for cord.

Needs flying reindeer?

A collection for the Land Santa?

Ten Things Italy Does To You....

1.  You realize you need a town bike with basket and full fenders, even though you already have a road bike and a mountain bike.

2.  You finally understand why ricotta is used in desserts.

3.  You fantasize about roaring off on your Vespa when the light turns green.  Of course, you are in a motorcycle pack.

4.  You get your RAA (recommended annual allowance) of second-hand smoke all at once.

5.  You develop a "thing" for Italian men in lycra on beautiful bikes.

How cute is this....father and son in matching team jerseys and helmets.

6.  You return home with a renewed commitment to your exercise regimen.

7.  You realize Italian is the most beautiful language in the world and you resolve to learn it.

8.  You dig all your high heels out of the bottom of your closet and wear them for a week (until you realize you don't have the genetic mutation that allows Italian women to walk in four inch heels along cobblestone streets).

9.  You realize you have met a true artisti....and he makes your cappuccino every morning (Grazie Dominico!).

10.  You vow to return as soon as possible.

View from room 242, Hotel Mamiani

[This is my 200th post!  I dedicate it to my Italian hosts and new friends Simone and Mateo and to the wonderful staff at the Hotel Mamiani in Urbino.]

The Ultimate in Historic Preservation

I wonder if William Morris, the founder of the modern historic preservation movement, would have enjoyed a visit to the famous Gubbio Section in Italy.  I know you are probably wondering, what the heck is that?  It is an outcrop of rock (see pic below) that preserves a record of deep time, a sequence that somehow escaped being eroded, subducted, buried, washed away, blasted to smithereens, etc.  Here in a deep gorge in the mountains near the medieval town of Gubbio, one finds the beautifully preserved boundary between the Cretaceous Period, the time of the dinosaurs, and the Tertiary Period, the time of mammals rise to dominance (we rule!).

 It is at this famous outcrop that Walter Alverez, Jan Smit, and their colleagues found the telltale evidence for the asteroid impact that slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago bringing with it years of darkness, firestorms, a collapse of the food chain, and the demise of the dinosaurs that had roamed the Earth as the largest vertebrates for over 160 (!) million years.  I first learned of the asteroid extinction hypothesis as an undergraduate, the year it was proposed --- it was considered a profoundly outlandish idea at the time.  Probably the only reason anyone paid any attention at all to it was that it was authored by a Nobel Prize winning physicist, Luis Alvarez, geologist Walter's father.  Thirty years later the hypothesis is widely, although not universally, accepted within the scientific community (as a comparison, I would say there is more scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic global warming).

The reason the boundary layer looks like a slanted hole (the rock layers are tilted) is that for decades geologists and others have been digging further and further into the cliff to get samples of the extinction layer.  The guy in the lime shirt is Jan Smit, one of the original proposers of the asteroid impact hypothesis.

 Even though it is the most famous outcrop in the world, this is still really only a place to set a geologist's or naturalist's heart aflutter.  But anyone would appreciate Ristorante Bottaccione, located a few hundred meters down the road.  Here we (about 70 of us!) had a fabulous multi-course lunch on a shaded outdoor patio with many bottles of wine.  We pored over the two Gubbio guest books that have been kept by the restaurant since the first one was started by Walter Alverez in 1976 (he and his colleagues published the hypothesis in 1980 after discovering extraterrestrial iridium in the boundary layer).  A record of the many geologists and Earth Science groups that have visited the outcrop over the years, these books are filled with names of scientists, famous and otherwise, along with their doodles, reflections, comments, etc.  A few years back a museum in France scanned them in their entirety as an epistemological record of the evolution of the asteroid impact hypothesis.  Like my visit to Red House, it was a great feeling to finally visit this amazing place.

The first page of the first logbook...Walter Alvarez at top of list.

Walking around Urbino, Italy

One of the gateways entering the walled city. 

 Urbino is an ancient walled city in the Marche region of Italy.  A World Heritage Site with a history extending back to the time of the Romans, it reached its pinnacle of influence during the Renaissance under the patronage of Frederico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino.

View from entrance of Raphael's childhood home.

the main piazza....grappa central

The Ducal Palace on horizon.