Watching the closure of the Winter Olympics 2026 on TV, I was surprised to see that the ceremonies were coming from the ancient Roman coliseum in Verona.
Oddly enough, I visited the amphitheatre just a few years ago prior to an Adriatic cruise from Venice.
Thanks to preparations for a concert within the amphitheatre at the time, the internal scene was too cluttered for a photograph of the interior. Better luck next time!
Coliseum Exterior
Eighty two years ago, on January 27, 1944, Russian soldiers liberated the concentration camp of Auschwitz in Poland.
Cattle Car Memorial, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel
NEVER AGAIN!!
Iran seems to be on the boil once again.
Below are two legacy photos that I shot during a traverse of that country from Turkey to Afghanistan in 1971………eight years before the revolution of 1979!
DEAD CAMEL ON THE ROAD BETWEEN TEHRAN AND MASHAD
IRANIAN BUS BREAKDOWN BETWEEN TABRIZ AND TEHRAN
Meet the new boss! Same as the old boss???
Here’s hoping for better luck this time!!!
Saint Stephen was the protomartyr of the Christian faith. His festival is celebrated on what is called Boxing Day in the anglosphere.
He is perhaps best remembered in the Christmas carol, Good King Wenceslas.
“Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen”
I had never heard of the signifigance of Stephen or his feast until my visit to Jerusalem several years ago now.
SAINT STEPHEN’S GATE, JERUSALEM
Formerly called the Lion’s Gate because of the relief carvings about the upper arch, the gate is one of seven open gates of Old City, Jerusalem.
I recall backing up, and backing up again, patiently waiting for tourists to exit the scene and get the picture framed correctly. To my amazement and complete ignorance, I must have been standing near the exact spot where Stephen was dragged out and stoned to death by the Pharisees! Full story Acts 6-7 of the New Testament.
Fond memories of happier times.
A spectacular beach playground within the city limits of Sydney.
A plaground for all ages!
A place to relax and let your hair down
I recall watching an American TV series of a US military JAG unit. In one episode, a very attractive and buxom female military lawyer/officer is sent to Australia to defend a US sailor in a civil trial in Sydney. Accompanying her is a young male paralegal sergeant. She briefly reconnects with an old Australian boyfriend who for old times sake takes her to Bondi for a quiet Sunday afternoon at the beach. Here she tries to fit in, somewhat uncomfortably, by laying topless like all the locals on the beach.
Quite by happenstance, her lowly sergeant out taking in the delightful local sights of the beach (“Hey Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore!!”), accidentally encounters his embarrased boss and stops to say hello! Despite numerous hints to move along, he stretches out the enounter for as long as is socially possible. Perhaps not the best career move!! But no doubt worth it!!
Very humourous!!
Nothing humourous about last weekend.
Bondi Beach now joins that litany of infamy, 9/11, Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, Ariane Grande concert, 7/7, Nice truck attack, German Christmas markets and many other events far too numerous to mention. The name of Bondi will now be forever tainted with evil.
What an atrocity!!
CANADIAN WAR MEMORIAL, OTTAWA, ONTARIO
REMEMBRANCE DAY.
Wait a minute. You’ve got it wrong. It’s not until tomorrow moron!!
What the hell is the matter with you??
Get with the program!!
In my defence, those of us born or living in the Great Lakes basin, November 10th, 1975 will always be remembered for the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald……..“when the Witch of November came stealing!” This year marking the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, makes it all the more poignant.
Working one summer back in the 60s for an Algoma Corp furnace in my hometown, I recall being despatched to the bottoms of their iron boats along with bulldozers as part of a crew to clean up the last dregs of the cargo from the Minnesota iron range up in Duluth. Back when the “Rust Belt” was all shiny and new before China and Korea would lay it low.
Mark Steyn’s blog today has an excellent article on Gordon Lightfoot’s almost instantaneous genesis of his surprisingly enduring and haunting hit, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.“ So the “Big Fitz” gets a song for the ages and the Titanic gets….nothing. Odd that!
So universal is its fame, that as I sit here typing, the Monday Night Football announcer on ABC covering this week’s clash from a cold and blustery Great Lakes steel town, Green Bay, Wisconsin, quotes several passages of Lightfoot’s poetry with absolutely no need of interpretration or attribution. Such is the song’s penetration into the public mindset.
Poetry and football, …….who’da thunk it??!!
Check it out here:
https://www.steynonline.com/15706/the-wreck-of-the-edmund-fitzgerald
I have personal memories of Gordon back in his early days as a local hero in the coffee houses on the Yorkville edge of the University of Toronto campus. Long before he would become an international star, we shared the same retail bank across from UofT’s Varsity Stadium on Bloor Street. We’d often stand patiently in the same queue. Too timid to make a direct approach, I would admire the frills of his trademark leather jacket in silence. It wasn’t until I got to the solitary teller that I’d be filled in on his comings and goings. “Gordie’s going to New York, did you know?” or “Gordie’s going to LA.” Funny how we all wanted a piece of him even then. So much for client confidentiality!!
Gordon’s classic is all the more poignant for me as less than a year later I would be involved in a North Atlantic tragedy that would claim 13 lives of a 15 man crew on the merchant vessel Gabriella which foundered on the night of October 26, 1976 off Newfoundland’s infamous Cape Race (of Titanic fame!).
“Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes into hours?”
No, I’ve landed at the “Eagle”.
The “Eagle” is perhaps the most famous of all Cambridge pubs. Oddly enough it wasn’t until my recent visit in September, that I actually finally stepped in to order a pint. Call it precognition or whatever, my brief visit seemed to be especially well timed.
“Drink In Some History”
Cambridgeshire is as flat as the Canadian prairies. Given its proximity to the continent, it became home to famous WWII airfields. I especially enjoyed the preservation of all the ceiling graffiti from the now dead airmen of that unmitigated disaster.
“THE SECRET OF LIFE“
Dr. James Watson died last week at the age of 97.
His fellow scientist, Francis Crick, made the first braggadocious announcement of their discovery of the “Secret of Life”……..DNA… to lunchtime patrons here at the Eagle. Probably not the most scholarly of audiences!
However, given that the Eagle is just a short walk down Free School Lane from the famous old Cavendish laboratory, the Eagle’s patronage was no doubt more scientific than your average British pub.
Cavendish Laboratory, Free School Lane
Free School Lane, central Cambridge
The brief stroll down the lane towards the Eagle.
A free day in London! A daydream of mine during my four years of working in Mayfair. What to do when you are so spoiled for choice?? It didn’t take me too long to come up with an idea. Time to make amends for something I’m almost too embarrased to admit as a graduate in Electrical Engineering. On an almost daily basis I used to trod down Albermarle Street. Never once did I drop in to visit the Royal Institution’s Faraday Museum.
In my defence, it was always a bit out of the way. Coming out of Berkley Square, I would head up Hay Hill and make a right turn on Dover Street, never missing the opportunity to walk through the foyer of the famous Brown’s Hotel to see how the other half live and exiting on the hotel’s Albermarle entrance to miss the Faraday by about 80 yards down on the left.
Albermarle has historic connections to Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde who ended up in prison as a result of losing a litigation stemming from his membership in the Albermarle Club.
Franklin Delano Rooseveldt and his wife Eleanor spent their honeymoon in Brown’s. Writing home to his mother, he proudly proclaimed that it was the most expensive in London. Forget the Ritz, I’m reliably informed that London’s best afternoon tea is served at Brown’s. Should you win the lottery and are in need of a guest, let me know!!
(Remember to click on individual images to display full screen)
WALL CLOCK, FORTNUM AND MASONS, PICCADILLY
Walking up from Pall Mall through the Piccadilly Arcade (who can afford this stuff?), I pass Fortnum and Masons on Piccadilly at exactly the stroke of noon and for the very first time in my life catch the appearance of the two butlers normally hidden in their sentry boxes. I take this to be propitious.
THE ROYAL INSTITUTION
MICHAEL FARADAY
THE PERIODIC TABLE
Researchers of the Royal Institution were responsible for the discovery of 10 elements in the periodic table.
STRUCTURE FACTOR TABLES, KATHLEEN LONSDALE 1936
In 1936, Kathleen Lonsdale published a book, composed entirely of her neat handwriting, entitled “Simplified structure factor and electron density formulae for the 230 space groups of mathematical crystallography” on behalf of the Royal Insititution. Whew! Hope you got that!! Probably never made the New York Times best seller list.
For me, it brought back nightmare memories of a third year engineering calculus exam! Nevertheless, it was heartening to be reminded that the human mind is capable of extremely complex scientific concepts without the modern aid of quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Congratulations Kathleen!
A MOCK UP OF FARADAY’S LABORATORY
