The Fires of Vesuvius

This is how a history book should be written -- to inform, to encourage the reader to think, and to entertain. Anyone planning to visit Pompeii who wants to get beyond the standard guidebook clichés should read The Fires of Vesuvius beforehand, taking it along on the trip as well. It will be equally riveting for anyone with a serious interest in the world's most famous historical ruins.

The coach tours instruct their captive audiences that Pompeii is an ancient Roman town "frozen in time," a step back into A.D. 79 when it was buried by ashes from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Obviously there is some truth in that, but as author Mary Beard shows in various ways, it is by no means entirely true.

For one thing, even motor coach lecturers point out that most of the murals and other artwork decorating the Pompeiian villas are no longer in the ruins, but on display in the Naples archaeological museum. And a damn good thing that is. Few would have survived had they been left in situ. 

Beard includes reproductions of several old drawings of ancient wall paintings and sculptures. The originals are now gone or severely faded. Archaeologists, historians, and art lovers mourn them.

When first excavated in the 18th century the buildings were in considerably worse shape than they are now, after much restoration. Damage from an earthquake in 62 had not been completely fixed when Vesuvius erupted, and the volcanic ash collapsed roofs, which in turn destroyed many interior furnishings. Frozen in time, but a time when a lot of the city had been trashed.

We don't know how much of the evidence uncovered was looted or lost after seeing the light for the first time after some 1,800 years. As if that weren't enough, the city was literally bombed by Allied aircraft in 1943! Why? Beard doesn't say. Of course many sites of historic importance were also blown up in the world wars, the most famous being the abbey Monte Cassino (founded by St. Benedict in 529)  in the campaign to take Rome. But at least Monte Cassino was a military target, believed occupied by the German army -- although there has been controversy about whether that was so at the time of the destruction. Were there German units touring the temples and brothels of Pompeii?

But such considerations make up only a small part of The Fires of Vesuvius. The author concentrates on what is still available to see now, with a historically informed enthusiasm. She seems to have read everything ever written about Pompeian history by ancient and modern authors, although she says her lists of sources are "inevitably selective"; the impressive bibliography includes works in several languages.

Beard wears her learning lightly. Although writing with enough detail to satisfy the curious non-specialist reader, she's no show-off. Her style avoids academic jargon, using ordinary but evocative language. Here's a sample:

One of the hardest things to recapture [for the modern visitor] is the combination of gaudy brightness and dingy gloom that characterised Pompeian houses of this type. The vast majority were originally painted in vivid colours, which have in many cases now faded to, literally, pale imitations of what they once were: deep reds to washed-out pinks, bright yellows to creamy pastel. 

And it was not just a matter of coloured walls. Though the original ceilings rarely survive, where they have been reconstructed (by piecing together the fallen plasterwork found on the floor) they also are sometimes ornately decorated and coloured in rich hues. ... Like the Pompeian street, many a Pompeian house would have been, in our terms, an assault on the visual senses.

The assault was perhaps mitigated by the general darkness. For while the sunlight would have streamed into the atrium through the open roof, and into the peristyle garden, many other rooms had little or no access to light -- except what they could borrow from those internal sources.

External windows, she says, were generally few and small. No wonder we have found so many once-hanging oil lamps.

The Fires of Vesuvius examines Pompeii, and a few nearby areas, from many angles -- streets, shops, residences, religious rites, fun and games, politics (even managing to make the last more interesting than you might think). The famous houses of ill repute (probably not scandalous at the time, although sited in their own "red light district" so to speak) and the gladiatorial games are given their due but not emphasized for the sake of sensationalism. 

Graffiti seem to have been scrawled all over town, including on the internal pillars of the Basilica in the Forum. Some were electioneering "posters," some sexual boasting, some silly jokes, pretty much like what might appear today on billboards or rest room walls.

Mary Beard is a professor (or whatever the proper term may be) at Newnham College, Cambridge. Newnham, incidentally, is where one of the distinguished early leaders of the Society for Psychical Research, Eleanor Sidgwick, taught.

Beard is a media celebrity in the U.K., where she has written and presented the BBC TV series Meet the Romans.

Visiting old haunts

The recent vacation trip included visits to several historic houses. On such occasions, I generally ask the guides or caretakers if any apparitions have been seen. You might be surprised how often the response is yes, with a detailed description of the revenants, either first- or second-hand.

My wife and I went to see some stone houses, among the oldest in the United States, built by Dutch settlers in the 17th century at New Paltz, New York. One house, I was told, is still inhabited by a previous resident from long ago.

Even more interesting was the Wilson Castle, near Rutland, Vermont.

It's the sort of eccentric place I love, with elegant touches and furnishings that suggest individual tastes, not a designer showpiece. The grounds, and the view of the Green Mountains, are lovely.

Wilson Castle also has invisible former inhabitants who have moved to the Other Side but drop by frequently.

I learned about them from the young man who led us and a few others on a tour. (Incidentally, Wilson Castle is almost unique in that you can actually wander around the rooms — albeit with the guide present — and not be restricted to peering in from behind ropes at the entrance.) 

As soon as we arrived, I told the guide that my wife and I were interested in the decor but that I was especially keen to hear about paranormal events going down on the premises. Normally I am skeptical of guides who bang on about "haunted" houses. Not that I necessarily disbelieve they are haunted, but I tend to suspect the stories are embroidered or invented to give the tourists a thrill and enhance the house's billing as a mysterious attraction. 

Our guide, however, who had lived in the house for four years, was obviously intelligent and not given to recounting "legends." He further won my confidence by expressing his distaste for "ghost hunters" who show up frequently. (A team from a TV program, in fact named Ghost Hunters, had taped a segment in the house recently, and our guide was not complimentary about their methods.)

Here are some of the activities that he had personally experienced.

When he carelessly draped a jacket over the back of a chair, he returned to find it folded neatly on the seat. One of the departed residents was quite the neatnik.

He heard the sounds of footsteps when he was alone in the house. Lights turned themselves on automatically.

The Wilson family had been musically inclined, and installed no fewer than three pipe organs in the building. Our guide had heard them being played by unseen hands. (As the old song goes, "I hear music and there's no one there.")

One room had been redecorated. He could sense the disapproval of one or more spirits.

I rather admired his sang-froid in living alone in the place. Spirits almost never physically harm anyone, but they can toss things around (which apparently was not the case there) and make a lot of racket if they're mischievous (i.e., poltergeists). We're surrounded by spirits all the time: some of them are in the room with you at this moment. But I like to be able to see my company. At the very least, if I had to live in the Wilson Castle, the organ player and I would need to reach an understanding.

Report from the north country

Home, after a vacation (by car, mainly on secondary two-lane roads) to the Hudson River Valley, western Vermont, and the northwest corner of Massachusetts (Williamstown and the Berkshires).

I won't try to describe it all, but a few observations might be interesting.

This is an unusual, perhaps unique, part of the country. It isn't "New England" -- most of New England isn't New England, having lost its Yankee roots to industrialization, waves of immigration, and big corporations. But the area I visited is recognizably historic and traditional.

Lots of small towns, many of which seem to be thriving. Of course I don't know, just from driving through, what life is like for their residents. Probably the Great Recession has taken a bite out of their lives, as it has of most people's. But I was impressed, and not a little surprised, at the enterprise and civic pride on view. Some towns that I recalled as decrepit from my last visit decades ago, such as Glens Falls, N.Y., now look pretty spiffy.

The architectural heritage is amazing. Some villages (we're talking about ones far from the interstate highways) seem hardly to have changed in a hundred years. Colonial and Victorian buildings, both residential and public, line the streets. Even more heartening, they aren't crumbling, but are lovingly restored and used. People live in them and do business in them.

As if that weren't enough, most of these towns are towns in the original sense. In most of today's America, what looks like a town on the map, a little dot, actually turns out to be a highway strip of cheap-jack modern construction and malls on either side of a decayed old center. I saw little of that. Instead, old-fashioned clusters of houses near enough to each other to provide a sense of neighborliness but separated enough for privacy. I'm probably idealizing, and the reality may be different, but in appearance they are the traditional core of what we once were as a nation.

Churches: a fantastic variety of styles, from typical white wooden miniatures to grand edifices of stone and brick. Lots of Victorian gingerbread detailing and stained glass. I couldn't tell if they still have much in the way of congregations, but they look like they are still a functioning part of the community. (For once, I think the much misused word "community" might actually apply.)

If you're wondering about the politics of the area, which at least in Vermont have the reputation of being ultra-liberal, I didn't see much evidence one way or another. There were far fewer Obama bumper stickers than in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, although that might be only because everyone knows everyone else is an Obama backer and it isn't necessary to proclaim it.

Of course there are signs of political correctness. The Shelburne Museum in Vermont, dedicated to Americana, had a special exhibition of "crazy quilts." Dating from the latter part of the 19th century, women stitched them together from lots of mismatched patterns in random configurations, delightfully playful. The descriptions on the wall were mostly informative and, presumably, historically accurate. But one annoying sentence "explained" that these offbeat creations were a reaction against the rigid and conformist lives women had to endure.

Must everything worthwhile now be defined as an act of rebellion? Did the women who made crazy quilts actually say or think, "I'm going to make a quilt to throw off oppression and gender roles, by golly"? To imply that they did seems to me patronizing. Maybe they made them that way just for pleasure, with no ideological message.

Similarly, in an exhibition of 19th and early 20th century toys, a display case showed children's savings banks. Some were ingeniously mechanical, involving humans or animals tossing pennies into slots. The label acknowledged that they were cleverly designed, but -- I'm quoting from memory, but I think this comes pretty close -- "unfortunately, some of these devices made fun of political and racial minorities."

Huh? Since when is it taboo to make fun of political factions? That's supposed to be one of the glories of our system. You know, free speech. As to racism in kids' banks, perhaps so, but nothing in the display seemed to bear out the statement. There was a bank with three black baseball players, a pitcher, a batter, and a catcher: if the batter missed a penny tossed by the pitcher, the coin went into the catcher's First National Tummy Bank.

I could see nothing demeaning about it. The players were not caricatures. They could just as well have been white. The curator apparently just assumed that if a toy featured black figures, it was bigotry.

But on the whole, I came away from my travels with a feeling of having seen something of the American soul that is rapidly vanishing elsewhere, neat old towns that still have a well-functioning center. Current politics aside, it is no exaggeration to say that this is a conservative part of the country. Conservatism isn't just about the size of government; it involves a connection with a past that is still part of the present, expressed in physical surroundings as well as tradition. By that measure, the mid- to upper Hudson Valley and adjacent parts of Vermont and Massachusetts are surprisingly conservative.

From Coxsackie, New York

Coxsackie. Dutch name, like many around here. From a long time ago; today I saw, in New Paltz, a half dozen stone-walled houses built in the early 18th century.

This is the Hudson River valley, 20 miles south of Albany, but still basically out in the country. One thing I like about upstate New York is that the cities don't sprawl as much as they do elsewhere. Especially Albany: it's part of a triangle that includes Troy and Schenectady. If you were locating a business, where would you pop it? Exactly -- bang inside the triangle. Outside, there are still a lot of farms. Houses with big, I mean big, lawns. Too bad about the winters.

I like upstate. The people are friendly and unpretentious. It's 30 years since I've been here and I'd forgotten the beauty of the landscape. Hills and cleared land mingled. Puffy Ruisdael clouds modulating all over the gray scale.

So far my better half and I have visited two historic houses, both in Tarrytown, not far north of New York City, but already half in, half out of the urban mindset. The two couldn't have been more different. Lyndhurst is a neo-Gothic mansion that went through three families and wound up as a "cottage" for Jay Gould, job description Robber Baron. The interior -- done to his taste, I suppose -- is impressive. I disliked it. Lots of 19th century luxe, so-so taste, no warmth. A nice place to show off in, entertain the other nobs in, tote up your profits in.

Washington Irving's house, Sunnyside, is charming. It bespeaks an artist's sensibility. Not grand, but comfortable and a real home. My mind wandered during the guide's spiel, as usual, but I seem to have picked up that Irving helped design it himself, and his muse was influenced by the many years he spent in Europe before he returned to settle on the slope above the Hudson. Call the style Dutch-Mediterranean-English cottage. It's a writer's house, lots of books around, in easy reach, not behind glass in fancy cabinets.

The porch is made for sitting and contemplating the river. Today the Hudson was mostly calm, a light breeze making wavelets as if an invisible hand were plucking a harp. The commuter train runs between the house and the river, but the railroad was there in his day, too, and while it might have disturbed the peace he made a good few dollars from selling the right-of-way. Irving was an immensely popular writer, both at home and abroad, the first American writer to be taken seriously in Europe. Yet although he made decent money for a writer, he didn't shy from spending it, and the iron tracks perhaps added to as much as detracted from his satisfying vista.

His one and only lady love died of consumption and he never married. But he was hardly alone at Sunnyside, which was occupied by his (again, if I remember right -- I keep being distracted from guides' practiced talk) brother and about six nieces. His own passing was as gentle as you like: in bed, in his favorite room, with relatives in constant attendance.

We visited the old Dutch church at Sleepy Hollow, just north of Tarrytown, with a huge cemetery the likes of which will never be recreated in modern times, land prices being what they are; we can't afford enough room for the living, much less the dead. Some of the weathered tombstones have flags and markers to indicate the graves of people who fought in the Revolution.

We were told that Washington Irving got the idea of the Headless Horseman in his story from a real incident in the war. A Hessian soldier rescued a baby from a burning house. The soldier was later decapitated by a cannonball, and although he was an enemy and the child's mother was a patriot, she was grateful enough to see that he was buried in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery. Washington Irving is interred on rising ground that overlooks an oddly empty spot with no mortuary monuments. They say the headless soldier lies there. They say that, still, after so many years have come and gone.

The Vortexas Rangers

One place I spent some time in on my recent visit to Arizona doesn't seem to be obsessing about the Mexican reconquista. Maybe Sedona doesn't much identify itself with Arizona, or the United States. In some cases, it doesn't identify itself with this world.

Sedona -- about an hour and a half's drive northwest of Phoenix -- has two claims to fame. The first is its visual richness: fantastically shaped, huge cliffs and buttes in layered colors, from brick red to somber gray to luminous. Throw in Oak Creek and you've got cracking scenery almost everywhere you look.

Unsurprisingly, Sedona first attracted visual artists as residents. Max Ernst, one of the two or three greatest surrealist painters, made the town his home in the 1940s.

The second wave of migrants to Sedona, as residents and visitors, came with "New Age" believers. It was discovered that, they say, the area has a half-dozen or so "vortexes" where lines of spiritual energy coalesce and create particularly strong psychic and healing powers. And that's the aspect of Sedona that's most evident nowadays.

Like most towns that have a special attraction for people, Sedona has been developed into a kind of theme park. Vortex World. While the area's natural beauty is certainly part of its allure and helps keep motels and resorts afloat, it's the psychic business that forms the town's economic backbone.

On the two main commercial highway strips, the standard T-shirt and souvenir shops are almost outnumbered by outlets for psychic reading and healing, crystals, massage, vortex tours in jeeps, yoga centers, a few New Age bookstores, rounded out with tattoo parlors. Other psychics work from their homes. The sheer proliferation of these businesses must make for some jolly intense competition. How do they all pay the rent? Does everyone who lives or passes through Sedona receive wisdom from Illuminated Masters, get healed, get a massage, and add a tattoo daily?

The psychic chamber of commerce distributes maps showing the location of the vortexes. My wife and I drove up Airport Road to find one of them, but oddly, no sign that we could find marked the exact location. I believe that is national forest land, and the government can't quite bring itself to acknowledge the Vortexas Rangers.

For someone -- such as your blogger -- who accepts the reality of psychic phenomena, including clairvoyance, mediumship, and psychic healing the spectacle presented by the psychic industry in Sedona gives rise to mixed feelings.

While earnest merchandising of "spiritual" goods and services can seem a little crass, there is no reason why crystals with various declared benefits or, for that matter, healing shouldn't cost. Spirituality + capitalism = New Age. Or perhaps, spirituality + New Age = capitalism.

A more serious concern, in my view, is the trendiness of the psychic trade. How many providers are just trying to cash in on the boom? If we limit the discussion to people who claim psychic powers, my experience in Sedona and elsewhere tells me that almost all are sincere in believing that their unusual talents are for real.

It also tells me that some are fooling themselves, and that most find that their mediumship and healing abilities come and go unpredictably. When they're hot, they're hot; not, not. Gamblers and baseball players know when they're on and when they're in a slump. But a baseball player who scores a hit one out of three times is considered an excellent team member. No one accuses him of being a fraud for striking out on two-thirds of his visits to the plate.

And when the mental gateways to the higher spiritual planes steadfastly refuse to open, does a psychic hand the client back the money and say, "Sorry, my guides have taken the day off"? If any ever did, it would be nearly unique. No, they just wing it.

Ever since the fad for spiritualism in the 19th century, there has been heated debate about whether psychics are for real or faking it. But most are both.

Arthur Koestler, the novelist who devoted the latter part of his life to psychical research, wrote:

When I was hunting gurus in India, I came back enriched with one insight. It was: "Never ask whether 'that holy man' is a charlatan or really holy. Just ask to what extent he is a charlatan and to what extent holy. Never apply an all-or-nothing criterion."

Showmanship comes in the moment you get into the eye of the public. Exposed to the public eye of unlimited numbers of followers, you have to apply some showmanship. On bad days, when nothing works, you would be superhuman if your would not resort to 'corriger la fortune' by a few tricks. (Parapsychology Review, May-June 1973.)

When consulting psychic workers in Sedona or anywhere, it is wise to keep in mind that:

1. Some are more talented than others. There is no foolproof way to determine which is which in advance.

2. Even the best are inconsistent.

3. Keep an open mind. Record the session if you can. Sometimes information you receive via a medium that seems to make no sense or be wrong will be valuable later. My experience with healing is limited -- I did have one session in Sedona -- but I'd say remember this: the healing takes place with subtle energies and works on the non-physical or "etheric" body that your physical body manifests on the material plane. The results might not be dramatic or immediate.

Finale

Piazza Garibaldi, Parma

The Italy visit has been the subject of a bunch of posts now, and I recognize that when reading about other people's vacations, a little goes a long way. This will be the last about the trip. But I don't want to end the account on a sour note such as the previous entry, on Venice's misbehavior.

I quite enjoyed Parma, the last major city we spent some time in. It has its own style, which is partly French. The French ruled here in the 19th century, and in fact Napoleon I's widow, Marie Louise, lived out her life as the Duchess of Parma. She was and apparently still is popular, to judge by all the things named after her (including a restaurant where we ate lunch, with a view very similar to that in the photo above).

Aside from that, the French influence can be felt in what I can only describe as Parma's rationality, by Italian standards. The streets and signage almost make sense, and there are even a few wide, straight boulevards. The main parking garage near the historic center is actually underground, rather than a concrete bunker as in most Italian cities. In fact, the garage has a feature I've never seen anywhere else: each parking space has a sensor in the roof, which turns on a red light if occupied, green if unoccupied. From your car you can quickly spot the available spaces. Maybe I'm indulging in cultural stereotypes, but that strikes me as French rather than Italian.

It's a cultured and musical city. An annual Verdi festival was just winding up. Verdi was born here (as was Arturo Toscanini). They've made a fine art museum out of the rather forbidding old Farnese Palace. It includes a drawing of a woman's face by Leonardo (or "attributed to" Leonardo), hardly larger than a page of a hardback book. Whether by the great man himself or an assistant or follower, it is one of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen.

The palace building also contains a splendid Renaissance theater, built almost entirely of wood. It was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1944. By 1956, the Parmans had rebuilt it exactly as before. It's questionable whether that would be done today under comparable circumstances, say, a terrorist demolition. "Jeez, shame about that. But look, prime real estate in the city center, wow! Let's clear the rubble and get on with a mall. I've already had inquiries from Benetton and Dolce & Gabanna."

Plus, in the same city, you get a marvelous Duomo (cathedral), medieval baptistry, and other interesting churches …

If I've been a little hard on Italy in these postings, it's mainly because I'm disappointed the country doesn't always do right by its own cultural heritage. Otherwise, my only serious complaint is that the direction markings in cities are poorly designed, either telling you too much or not enough, and informing you only once you are already at the decision point rather than before so you can plan. But that's the verdict of an outsider; Italians may see their way as perfectly normal and sensible.

I'm looking forward to the next visit. Arrivederci, Italia!

Venice is sinking itself

All the famous sights are still there — San Marco, the Doges' palace, dozens of remarkable Gothic-Renaissance-Byzantine churches, La Fenice, the palaces on the Grand Canal. What is gone, at least for now, is the mystique, the atmosphere. It has been replaced by ugly commercialism.

You emerge from the vaporetto near Piazza San Marco and head toward the world's most famous piazza, the "drawing room of Europe," with its sophisticated cafes where aristocrats and artists and visitors have admired the view and checked out one another for centuries. If you haven't been to Venice in a long time (it was 30 years in my case), shock sets in. The pavement from the boat landing to the piazza is lined end to end with cheap-jack souvenir stalls of the sort you see in the aisles of shopping malls, peddling gadgets and tatty jewelry.

Nor does it end there; the coffee mug and T-shirt stands spill over into the space between the Grand Canal and the Piazza, beside the magnificent Doges' palace. Aside from their revolting contrast with the world-famous architecture, the shoddy, circus-like sales booths impede the movement of the vast numbers of people thronging the city's center, causing more congestion.

At the other end of the commercial scale, big business — mainly expensive fashion — has gotten into the act. At any given time, some of the buildings in Venice are covered with scaffolding for repairs, annoying but necessary for preservation. These days, though, the scaffolding is hung with huge banner advertisements. The medieval streets and canals, the church towers shrink to secondary roles next to giant pitches for models in their underwear.

Below is a shot I took of the famous Bridge of Sighs, where convicts were led from the court in the Doges' Palace to the prison next door and sighed as they got their last look at the city and its lagoon.

On the left is a wall of the Doges' Palace; to the right is the former prison; that bit in the top center is the bridge. At the moment, it serves as a commercial for Geox, whatever that is.

True, the ads on the restoration sites are temporary, but when the work is done, others like them will appear on different sites undergoing repair.

And it's also true that this commercial rape isn't everywhere in Venice, you can get away from it, it's only in the popular tourist spots. But while much of the city's interest lies in out-of-the-way neighborhoods, the fact is that the end-to-end souvenir shops and garish ads deface the areas that have been Venice's heart and soul for hundreds of years: not only the Piazza of San Marco, but such traditional strolling paths as the Riva degli Schiavoni and the Zattere on Dorsoduro, across the canal from San Marco.

Oh, and the graffiti. You see more graffiti in European cities then anywhere in the U.S. except the worst, half-abandoned neighborhoods. In Venice, walls (including those of churches) and bridges (including the famous Rialto) have been "tagged" like a New York subway car in 1980. Practically the only buildings I saw not defaced by graffiti were the offices of the Questura (local police). It is unimaginable that any city in the United States today would allow its treasured monuments to be marked like tatooed New Guinea natives. But Europeans are so much more tolerant and open-minded, so understanding of the need for young artists to express their creativity, than we uptight Yanks.

Your blogger in the traditional pose
viewing the Grand Canal.

In the past, Venetians were fiercely proud of their city, as they had every right to be. When its independence was lost after 800 years in 1797 to the Austrians and later to the French, they were devastated. Later they fought, and some lost their lives, to get it back. What does it say about the present city politicians that they have allowed their city to be turned into a combination of Disney World, thrift store, and bridge underpass?

Most of the relatively few Venetian residents who remain are probably disgusted with the state of things, but Italy is not a place where you fight city hall. One consolation is that all the conditions I have mentioned could be reversed some day if politics or values change.

This is certainly not meant to discourage anyone from going to Venice. It's still a city of artistic and architectural marvels, and despite my disappointment at some aspects of it, I'm thankful for having been privileged to visit again.

Lake Garda

What is it about large lakes clasped by mountains that brings up in us feelings we can't fully explain, which the 19th century romantics called "the sublime"? Is it the effect, in a single vista, of three of the four "elements" (earth, air, water) in no small measure? Whatever -- Lake Garda, northwest of Verona, like its near neighbor Lake Como, have attracted the rich and artistic since ancient times.

We arrived in Sirmione, at the southern end of Lake Garda, shortly before sundown. Once we got past the parking hassle that is typical of Italy, Sirmione quickly proved entrancing. It has a medieval castle on the water's margin, well maintained period houses, churches, and commercial areas. A good place to stroll, especially as dusk lowers its shade and Garda becomes a field of diamonds sparkling on purple velvet.

Catullus, the Roman poet, had a villa here. There is an archeological dig that is recovering its remains, which can be visited, although we didn't because of the lateness of the hour. The location must have appealed strongly to Catullus's finer sensibilities; this is a long way from Rome, many days' journey in his time. That he felt safe in traveling to this remote place and living here shows just how secure its citizens felt under the Roman Empire in its early years.

I was pleased to see that Sirmione has a Hotel Catulle. As a would-be classicist, I like to see modern commercial enterprises that know their history. In Rome, on a previous trip, we stayed at the Mecenate Palace hotel, named after Maecenas, Augustus's associate and patron of the arts, on the Esquiline Hill where Maecenas had his house and grounds.

Earlier in the day we drove up the western side of Lake Garda, which has been beautified with various non-native subtropical plants like oleander and bougainvillea. It resembled southern California in places. We passed through the famous resort town of Saló, which must have been cracking in its day: fine old mansions, gracious-looking hotels, exuberant public buildings, monuments, and spaces. I imagine it hit its peak just before the Great War.

It's still attractive, but unlike Sirmione -- where, I would guess, its very rich residents have imposed restrictions on new construction -- Saló and environs are sadly overdeveloped. It's the usual syndrome in ritzy places where money overcomes aesthetics. Large, flossy new hotels, luxury apartment buildings, shopping malls, high-end car dealerships. They can't quite overcome the charm of the area and haven't completely blocked the views of Lake Garda, but they make you heartsick for the loss of the atmosphere of tranquil refinement it surely once had.

At Gardone Riviera, just north of Saló, we paid a visit to the Vittoriale degli Italiani, the strange mansion that was home from 1922 to his death in 1938 of Gabriele d'Annunzio, the eccentric novelist, poet, playwright, pilot, lover of actress Eleanora Duse, and for a few years leader of his own army. I haven't read any d'Annunzio, although I have an old copy of his novel The Flame of Life that I picked up at a garage sale in Tucson and will get around to one of these days.

The Vittoriale fully met my expectations for being over the top. Guidebook writers are invariably condescending about the place, letting you know of their own superior taste by putting down that of d'Annunzio. Well, it is something of a madhouse, filled to overflowing with ornate exotica. After d'Annunzio survived a murder attempt (he was thrown out of a high window, possibly by Mussolini's thugs because Il Duce was afraid d'Annunzio might be a more popular political rival), he turned the Vittoriale into his surrealistic retreat.

Almost no natural lighting slips inside because d'Annunzio had an ocular condition that made sunlight painful. The rooms are mostly surprisingly small, made more confining by the profusion of decor, and you have to duck to get through some of the doors. There are two waiting rooms with separate entrances: one for people he wanted to see, another for those he didn't.

As for all that "tasteless" accumulation of objets d'art -- yes, it's overwhelming, lily gilding, sometimes garish. But individually, the pieces are often lovely and unusual; the furnishings archaic and unique. Whatever his character failings (it's still debated whether he was a prototype of Mussolini), you can't visit the Vittoriale without acknowledging that he was strongly driven by his muse. He loved objects that appealed to his artistic sense, so much that he couldn't, apparently, bear to part with any of them even when they turned his home into a dreamlike museum.

One of the many half-lit rooms contains a tiny bed. D'Annunzio left instructions that his body be placed here for a day after he died, on the bed he called "something like a cradle, something like a coffin."

The New Rome

Ravenna.

What was the capital of the Roman Empire? Rome, you say, of course. True, but so was Ravenna, for a brief period as the Western Empire tottered on its last legs. In 402, the Emperor Honorius packed up and moved the capital here, to Ravenna. His sister, Galla Placidia, seems to have been in charge of things for a while.

She built a final resting place for herself, rather small -- possibly even an emperor's sister didn't command the resources for a larger one by then -- but it was showy enough, all the walls and ceiling covered with mosaics. It still stands, with a sarcophagus that historians say isn't really hers, but the glittering stars and deep blue sky on the ceiling are almost close enough to touch, a heaven that seems to be within our grasp.

We visited Galla Placidia's mausoleum today, and three other monuments and basilicas of late antiquity: San Vitale, the "Orthodox" Baptistry (so called because the establishment Athenasians were in charge of it, in contrast to the "protestant" Arian sect of Christianity), and San Appolonare Nuovo. All contain richly decorative mosaics that were intended as messages of spiritual urgency.

Those other monuments were built around a century later, after the Western Roman Empire went into its final sleep, during a period when Ravenna was ruled by Ostrogoth kings and later by exarchs from Constantinople.

Regardless of whether one is a believer or not, all these works of art are inspirational: they seem to glow from within: they contain the world of their time and place that mattered to rulers and ordinary people, from Jesus and saints to the oriental opulence of the Emperor Justinian, the Empress Theodora, and their richly adorned courtiers. But there is also "pure" design, landscapes, clouds, birds, swags of fruit, even geometrical and abstract ornamentation.

It's something of a miracle that they have lasted for one thousand five hundred years, so that we can gaze with wonder on them just as when they were created.

In these buildings, we are at a turning point in history, between the trailing artistic motifs of classicism and a new, almost entirely different way of seeing and feeling that we call Byzantine. The sense of craft being exercised at a cusp of ages can be seen in another, less important but interesting, way. Some of the saints and individuals portrayed carry scrolls, awkwardly unrolled. Others, even in the same scheme, hold the cool new thing, a book (codex).

The earlier, more traditional mosaics are expressive in a way that seems more natural and has been "modern" since the Renaissance. The people who are pictured gesture and relate to one another. Comes the Byzantine and we are in a new mode of seeing, thinking and worshiping.

The ordinary falls away: there are, at least in art, no more trivial moments, only very serious ones. The people portrayed, mostly in groups, are statuesque, formal, seeming to float more than stand. Jesus, the saints and apostles, the exotically robed aristocracy of Constantinople, look directly at us. Through us? We are such stuff as dreams are made on, they seem to say, and only the light of God can open our eyes to what is real.

RD

Day three

Padova.

Or in English, Padua. Why the different English versions of perfectly simple Italian names? Is "Padova" unpronounceable? Or for that matter, "Livorno," transliterated into the ridiculous "Leghorn"?

Anyhow, yesterday was spent mainly in transit from Milano (why "Milan"?) to Padova, with a side trip to the southwest portion of Lake Garda, a subject I will take up later, probably after returning to home base.

The north is nothing like the conventional version of Italy. Until Julius Caesar placed it under his tender care, it was not even part of Italy; they called it Cisalpine Gaul ("Gaul this side of the Alps"). What I've seen so far reminds me sometimes of France, sometimes of California, sometimes of Anyplace and No Place.

Padova is the pits. Not a half-measure of romanticism, no warmth in the people, ugly modern architecture and half-upgraded 19th century buildings. Of course there is what is called the Centro Storico, the historic center, but it consists of a few medieval monuments almost lost in a sea of commercialism and student quick-this-quick-that (it's Europe's second-oldest university town, but college students are the same everywhere).

We are staying here for two reasons. The first was bad planning on my part: to save money by not kipping down at one of Venice's dreadfully overpriced caravansaries. The NH Mantegna in Padova is up-to-date, mercilessly chilly in ambience.

But there is Giotto. The second reason we came here.

Giotto's frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel are a wonder. Even the sour taste of driving around for a half hour in the congested downtown trying to find it and parking half a mile away -- this city hasn't the first idea about how to accommodate art lovers -- dissipated once we were admitted to the chapel. (At least, in the off season, we didn't have to reserve three days in advance, as visitors are advised to do in summer.)

The paintings cover the entire chapel, a bold and yet intimate evocation of the artist's pictorial and psych0logical genius. No description I have read gives a very good idea of the chapel, and I won't try; part of its marvelous quality is how it all works together.

Tomorrow, our first foray into Venice.

London scenes

Trajan's column, sculpture cast court, V&A

Some of my experiences in London this past week are recirculating through my head, like a song that keeps returning. I set down here a few notes for those who are planning a visit or who are interested in London.

The Victoria and Albert

After spending the morning at the Byzantium exhibit (described in the previous entry) I hopped on the Tube and alighted at South Kensington. After lunch at an Indian restaurant I remembered from a previous trip -- Indian food in central London is generally of a high standard -- I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, known as the "V&A," or as the world's attic. The latter description is not too far-fetched. It is filled with no end of arts and crafts, like a gigantic house owned by the most obsessive, long-lived collector imaginable.

If there is some sort of handiwork you fancy -- silver, glassware, costumes, German medieval and Renaissance wood carving, name it -- you're in for a peak experience at the V&A, but don't forget to bring emergency oxygen. By the time you have looked on the products in your field of interest, from century after century, in display case after case, room after room, you may find your head spinning, your knees week, your feet groaning, and be ready to plead for a stop to it.

I first headed, as planned, to the sculpture cast courts. They contain a collection of casts made in the 19th century of famous and not-so-famous sculptures from throughout history. Other than not being made of the original materials, they are actual-size accurate models that you can study at your leisure, many of them more closely than you could the real items. Trajan's column from Rome, an amazing pictorial record of the Emperor's military campaigns carved in low relief, can hardly be seen in situ because it is, understandably, fenced off to protect it; but the model in the V&A is bang in front of you. Not only that, but the installers sawed it in half so the middle part is nearer to eye level.

Minbar, a sort of Muslim pulpit,
from a Cairo mosque. Jameel Gallery

The newest room at the museum is the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, added with much acclaim in 2001. It would be a cheap shot to suggest that the Jameel Gallery is a symptom of the Islamization of Britain. The world of Islam has produced marvelous art and craftsmanship, and the V&A's new gallery offers examples that are well worth getting to know.

The intricate geometric designs, the richly patterned carpets, the elaborately decorated Korans -- fabulous stuff. And has there ever been a more beautiful form of writing than the old Arabic script in the illuminated manuscripts on view here?

The British Museum

You want to see the Parthenon sculptures, of course. I have a couple of times before, but this was the first time I felt that I really appreciated them.

Heavily damaged, missing some of their surviving pieces (which are in Greece), and out of context, the sculptures are not necessarily easy to warm to. They consist of three different elements: metopes, from the roof, which are low relief carvings of scenes of fighting between centaurs and Lapiths (a mythical race); the frieze, a continuous scene of a procession, which ran all around the outside of the temple; and the pediment sculptures.

The metopes are technically skilled but limited in variety; not especially compelling. The frieze is much more interesting, but hard to comprehend. Because of the need to display them facing into a room, when they were originally facing out from the building, their aspect is reversed. Besides that, instead of running continuously around, they are placed on two walls opposite one another. But even damaged, and with pieces missing, the frieze contains graceful carving and communicative details.

The remains of the sculptures from the east pediment and the west pediment face each other on opposite sides of the hall. Again, they would have originally faced in opposite directions, but here that's not much of a problem. The east pediment sculptures are the greatest glory of the whole group, and even in their broken state convey a moving sense of the highest ideals of the people of the Athenian city-state.

The other rooms devoted to classical artifacts are first-class too. I was delighted to be able, once again, to look on the justly celebrated Portland Vase from ancient Rome -- the most beautiful of its kind I've ever seen.

The museum is generally horribly crowded. Get there when it opens to have a few precious moments to look at its wonders in relative tranquility.

Victoria Hamilton

Twelfth Night, with Derek Jacobi and Victoria Hamilton

I had read "Shakespeare's" Twelfth Night, but never seen it performed, even on television. (The quotes around "Shakespeare" are because I am one of those nutters who are convinced that the actor-manager from Stratford had at most a small hand in writing the plays published under his name.) It does not strike me as one of the author's better efforts, but seeing it played in a West End theater almost made me change my mind. Almost.

The U.K. is going downhill fast in many ways, but in acting it's enjoying a Golden Age, has been for some years. Why this should be so in a culture that is otherwise moribund is an interesting question, one to which I have no answer except perhaps that the English have always been avid theatergoers and there is a solid tradition that is maintained in schools like the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Anyway, you could probably cast 500 plays simultaneously with excellent actors from the country's major cities.

Needless to say, Derek Jacobi was a treat as Malvolio. I'd never seen him on stage before, and never in a semi-comic role, which he pulled off with great élan. Jacobi and Anthony Hopkins are probably the greatest all-around actors since Olivier, and it's only because neither has ever had as much glamorous appeal as Olivier that they don't have the same worshipful following.

I was just as keen to see Victoria Hamilton playing Viola. She is not well known in the United States, although much respected in British theatrical circles -- well, she would be, to be cast alongside Jacobi, wouldn't she? Hamilton provided the only light and humanity as Cordelia in Richard Eyre's otherwise nearly unwatchable King Lear for TV, and was also outstanding playing her namesake in the historical soap opera Victoria and Albert. I was not disappointed. She offered comic aplomb and touching lovesickness in this Twelfth Night. The rest of the cast was mostly excellent, although I thought Indira Varma (who played Titus Pullo's ill-fated wife in the HBO Rome) was a bit too coy and superficial as Olivia.

Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne

The National Gallery

Before and after Twelfth Night, I was able to spend a little time in the National Gallery (fortunately only a five-minute walk from the theater). This gallery of paintings is in every respect worthy of the great nation that Britain once was, and one would like to think, might someday be again.

I began in the Dutch section where I was reacquainted with "old friends" by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Metsu, Teniers, De Hoogh, and Jacob van Ruisdael. The latter is my favorite landscape painter of all time, and I usually have his paintings to myself, because he is anything but a crowd pleaser. But those swelling, metallic clouds -- the somber shadowed countryside with a spotlit patch of sunlight -- the liquid silver streams ... these chilly views of Holland are sad, contemplative, Zen-like in their perfect stillness, catching eternity in every branch and leaf.

After the play, I returned to the gallery to those geniuses of the Italian late Renaissance, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, all astonishing colorists in their individual ways. No matter how many times I see it (I guess this was the fourth time), Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne blows my mind. But I made it a point to absorb some of the master's other, less spectacular pictures, which were also compelling my admiration ...

When it was announced that the gallery would shortly be closing, at 6 p.m. A disappointment because the museum normally stays open until 9 on Wednesdays, but it being New Year's Eve ...

I used the last few minutes to try to impress on my mind one Tintoretto that I really wanted to "keep" -- but I find now that I cannot recall it, even its name. More time, more time, please.

But that's London. There is always so much more, just around the corner. You can't quite grasp its essence, it is too big, too varied, elusive. You leave impressed beyond words, but London is not yours, will never be yours, will only allow you glimpses of its own past magnificence that lingers in places, and the treasures it holds from every civilization since humans began making things that would last longer than their individual lives.

It is older than you in your present incarnation and will not yield all its secrets. So this city that began as Londinium, for the Romans who braved the back of the northern wind, bids you to return to know still more of it, but not enough, not ever enough.

Flying to Byzantium

Incense burner in the shape of a church,
gilded silver, 12th century

When I arrived in London for a brief post-Christmas holiday, I learned that the Royal Academy was presenting a special exhibition of the art of Byzantium (modestly renamed Constantinople by the emperor Constantine), which has become synonymous with the Eastern Roman Empire that survived a thousand years after Rome itself fell off the edge of history. The exhibit went on my short list of things to see, and after a night's recovery from the degradation of economy class air travel, I headed straight to the historic Academy building in Piccadilly.

The half dozen or so rooms where the objects are displayed have been sensitively lit -- very subdued overhead lighting, only the art itself clearly visible. This creates an aura of mystery in keeping with the other-worldly spirit of the works, and although the space was crowded, visitors seemed to catch the mood and mostly spoke in near whispers.

The subjects of the pictorial art are familiar: they would become central to the painting and sculpture of the European middle ages. But this is Christian iconography with a difference. The Eastern love of ornament in rich colors, precious metals, and jewels dazzles the eye. No puritanical simplicity here.

Ikon of Archangel Michael

The spectacular elements in the religious art are intended to convey through the senses the transcendent beauty of a greater Reality than we normally know in our earthly lives. Gold was the closest they could come to suggesting Heaven's radiance.

But it's hard to doubt that the people of this Middle Eastern Rome loved brilliant materials for their own sake. The jewelry and faded remnants of costumes that make up part of the show accord very well with the mosaic portraits that have survived of those magnificent show-offs like the emperor Justinian and his empress Theodora (6th century).

In its more prosperous days -- the civilization had its ups and downs, of course -- Byzantium could well afford its flamboyance. Justinian didn't do things by halves in filling his territory with wonders of art and architecture. Will Durant writes:

He began now one of the most ambitious building programs in history: fortresses, palaces, monasteries, churches, porticoes, and gates rose throughout the Empire. In Constantinople he rebuilt the Senate House in white marble, and the Baths of Zeuxippus in polychrome marble; raised a marble portico and promenade in the Augusteum; and brought fresh water to the city in a new aqueduct that rivaled Italy's best. He made his own palace the acme of splendor and luxury: its floors and walls were made of marble; its ceilings recounted in mosaic brilliance the triumphs of his reign, and showed the senators "in festal mood, bestowing upon the Emperor honors almost divine." And across the Bosporus, near Chalcedon, he built, as a summer residence for Theodora and her court, the palatial villa of Herion, equipped with its own harbor, forum, church, and baths.

Most of the large-scale artistic and architectural achievements of Byzantium have vanished or are in ruins (although the great cathedral of St. Sophia survives, as a mosque). But the collection at the Royal Academy includes some flabbergasting examples of craftsmanship.

Several pictures are made in a technique called micro-mosaic, which I had never even heard of. Mosaics are decorations or illustrations made entirely of fragments of colored stones, glass, and jewels; for those meant to adorn walls, the constituent bits (tesserae) are usually about thumbnail size. But the micro-mosaics are pieced together with tesserae almost as tiny as sewing stitches. The finished pieces are like cloth woven entirely of jewels.

Illuminated manuscript on parchment,
12th century

I don't know what it's doing there, but the Byzantium exhibit includes one of those portraits from North Africa in the heyday of the original Roman Empire that were painted on the coffins of the deceased. They are particularly fascinating because they are, as far as I know, the only surviving paintings of that era meant to represent what specific people actually looked like. The dry air of the region is said to have preserved the wood and paint that would long since have decayed elsewhere.

Roman portrait on cover of
wooden mummy case, A.D. 55-70

These paintings, especially of the women, tend to look startlingly modern. As far as what is pictured of the lady above, she would not have been out of place as a spectator in the Royal Academy exhibit.

For all its longevity, Byzantium eventually weakened, for the usual reasons -- unstable politics, religious upheavals (it went through its own period of iconoclasm), and wars that drained its treasury and its best genes. Constantinople was even trashed by its fellow Christians in the fourth Crusade. The West was always suspicious of Byzantium and dithered about sending aid in times of greatest danger, including the last, when Constantinople was besieged by the Ottoman Turks. In 1453, this last descendant of Rome fell to Islam. Sic transit gloria mundi. (I don't know the Greek equivalent, but it would be more appropriate, because the Byzantines were not long in dropping the Latin which few of them could speak well and adopting Greek as the language of their empire.)

Inevitably, but appropriately, the explanatory signage in the exhibition rooms at the Royal Academy quotes from Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium":

... I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

SoCal is so-o-o Cal

A certified Obama-free posting™ !

No artificial ingredients

Last week's base of operations for Mission: Vacation was San Diego. This account of the visit has no particular point to make; it's just a few observations, which might be interesting if such things interest you.

San Diego fits Southern California's traditional image much more than Los Angeles. (And Southern California generates most of the clichés about California, although the state is quite different north of the Bay Area, and the Central Valley is in another galaxy.) L.A. pretends, or used to, that it is a laid-back place of fantasy and leisure, but it has never seemed so to me. It's as charged-up and edgy as New York. Much of San Diego (hereafter abbreviated S.D., as the locals do) looks like L.A., especially in residential neighborhoods, but the vibe is different. I can't say what goes on under the surface, but San Diego still puts on a pretty good show of being an island of casual hedonism.

You might expect to find S.D. in crisis, like the rest of California, as Randall Parker has been telling us about lately in ParaPundit. Picture its high-class, seaside village La Jolla, as blonde trophy wives offer themselves on the streets for a loaf of bread. Former $3 million houses fall into ruin. A globalist multi-billionaire rides through the streets in a coach drawn by four matched white horses, with his family crest emblazoned on the doors. He holds a scented handkerchief to his nose, tossing the odd coin to the ragged urchins in their hand-me-down Georgio Armani rags.

It's nothing like that, of course. California may well be turning into a Third World country, but one characteristic of Third World countries is that the rich still have their enclaves of beauty and luxe. So far that includes La Jolla and good neighborhoods like Coronado. They remain lovely -- in the case of La Jolla, breathtakingly beautiful like the French Riviera (and as expensive).

Expensive to live in, but not necessarily to visit. We didn't stay in La Jolla, but probably could have afforded to on a modest budget just by forgoing the palatial hotels in the center of the village. We did have lunch in the inexpensive and charming Osteria Romantica, very authentically Italian, very good food in a casual but pretty little trattoria setting. Wonderful Italian pop music from the '50s and '60s plays in the background. I recommend you dine there if you're in the area. You'll thank me for it.

People in S.D. on business have a reason to kip at one of the high-rise chain hotels on the waterfront, but why would any vacationer in their right mind stay in the seedy tourist shakedown area called the Gaslamp Quarter when the city offers so many more pleasant locations?

Almost anywhere outside the Gaslamp, something gladdens the eye. Balboa Park, where we spent a good deal of time, is one of those rare famous sites that are just as they should be, that cannot disappoint. Unlike Chicago and San Francisco, S.D. retained the wonderful buildings from its World's Fair early in the last century, and the Andalusian-style architecture is garnished with lush tropical flora.

Point Loma is at the end of a peninsula that gives you a spectacular view of S.D. on one side and the Pacific on the other. To get there you drive through Fort Rosecrans Military Reservation. On the hillside are row after row of stark white headstones marking the graves of those who died in service to their country. At the lookout point near the Cabrillo Monument (for the Portuguese sailor who led the first European expedition to these shores in the 16th century), we watched as an aircraft carrier made its way from the naval base and headed out to sea. At the nearest point to us, it entered a fog bank that was creeping in from the ocean and disappeared into it -- a fantastic real-life magic trick.

Natural beauty, which much of S.D. offers in abundance, needs to be leavened with human qualities. In that respect S.D. may have a few lagging indicators.

On a superficial level, people are pleasant enough. Sometimes almost maddeningly so. Everyone in the tourist industry -- not only at the car-rental desk, which is natural, but waiters, hotel personnel, car fetchers (I detest valet parking, but it's hard to avoid in S.D.) -- is dying to give directions and sightseeing tips.

This became something of a problem. I was fairly familiar with the city's geography and attractions, even places I hadn't been to, but my wife had only visited S.D. once before. To the question, "Do you know how to get to [or know about] ... ," the immediate answer from the pair of us tended to be a simultaneous yes and no. This presented our would-be helpers with an awkward dilemma. It was also evident that they were disappointed when their steering was unneeded. Eventually in the interest of good relations I just belted up and accepted directions and advice.

It's easy to dismiss the locals' helpfulness as a job requirement, and surely training in the "service industry" is part of its motivation, but there is an outgoing dimension to the native Southern California personality that makes the welcoming touch only partly artificial. I can't imagine any amount of training that could elicit such a beneficent attitude among workers in similar positions in, say, Boston or New York.

Nobody appeared to be in any hurry, a pleasing difference from most U.S. cities. It's probably a different story inside the elite institutions like Scripps and Salk, but the average San Diegoan seems to have a little of the manaña mindset.

S.D. does not strike me as a setting that encourages deeper personal attachments. I saw no couples (straight or gay) walking hand-in-hand. In restaurants it's mainly groups, even groups of families. With so many activities and enjoyable pastimes, possibly few feel any urgency about pairing up. Maybe that makes sense for the young, but it becomes a habit, and I wonder how much satisfaction people take in group scenes as they turn middle aged. S.D. has the virtues, but also the drawbacks -- for some -- of an extroverted culture. It can't be that comfortable long-term for those with serious intellectual interests. For a place of its size, it has few bookstores.

One day we drove to a town called Temecula about an hour north. It's famous for wineries and in a scenic mountain valley, but exemplifies the oncological growth that has nearly ruined many places in California, even outside the Mexican Invasion belt. Temecula has an old part of town that has been tourist industrialized into a self-parodying Old Town. Meanwhile the new Temecula that has grown up around it is appalling, wineries or no. Other than a large Abbott Labs facility, it consists mainly of huge shopping malls. One of them, a monstrous blight called the Promenade, is probably larger than the whole town was 30 years ago, and has all the inevitable big-box stores (Macy's, JCPenney, The Gap, Old Navy, &c.) arranged in a pattern that is maddeningly confusing to navigate.

Although we edited from our itinerary most areas of S.D. that should be avoided, it was impossible to ignore some of the cracks in the glittery facade of Southern California. There is a part of the city just north of Balboa Park, logically named North Park. About 1987, I visited friends who lived there. At the time North Park was, though not ritzy, the kind of respectable lower-middle-class neighborhood that has all but vanished. Today it is, according to one guidebook, "up-and-coming," although "down-and-going" would be more honest. That is, North Park is now very "diverse," which in California means Mexicanized, with outposts of the homosexual, punk, and Goth subcultures.

What drives to such extremes so many people who live in what is, for the most part, the attractive and benign environment of S.D.? At the Trader Joe's grocery, my purchases were rung up by a 20-something woman who was very pretty -- except for the tattoo that covered her entire right arm, up to the shoulder. It was the multi-colored picture sort of tattoo, like a comic book page.

I don't get it. Épater les bourgeois, okay, stand out from the crowd, sure. But how can a good-looking person, in a locale blessed by plentiful sunshine and exotic flowering plants, surrounded by the material aspects of the good life, feel so desperate to fit in with some scarcely imaginable peer group that she turns herself into a circus freak for the rest of her life?

Are we never satisfied?

No. We are not satisfied, even in an environment that can be mistaken for an earthly Eden. We try out substitutes, however bizarre, for what we need, but no substitute will do.

Whether we know it or not, we want Eternity.

On an obviously different level, I enjoyed myself immensely on the trip. Southern California still has a lot to recommend it for a visit. But despite having spent 10 years of my life in California, it and I have grown in different directions. I still feel, as worldly places go, "at home" in Santa Fe (although I haven't lived there since 1991) and Tucson, but California is now too foreign in too many ways.

That leaving-behind is probably good for my spiritual development. This world of sense phenomena is not my true Home. I must learn, to love, and to leave it.

French government site warns against U.S. no-go areas

A French government Web site is bluntly honest about parts of U.S. cities that its country's tourists ought to stay away from.

In its "Advice to Travelers," the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères offers guidelines for Places to Miss, complete with maps. (Click the tab labeled "Sécurité"— French for "safety" as well as "security.")

The heading says, "The increased risk of terrorism should not make you forget that the principal risk remains criminality." Scroll down to see the city maps. I've translated some of the descriptions:

Boston: "Avoid foot traffic at night in the districts of Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury." It also warns of the "revival of juvenile delinquency."

New York: Be vigilant in tourist areas like Times Square and the Statue of Liberty, "as well as in airports, railroad stations, the subway, restaurants, museums, and certain hotels on the West Side. Do not go alone in Harlem, the Bronx, and Central Park at night."

Washington: "Avoid the northeast and southwest quadrants, as well as the bus stops and Union Station at night. In the tourist areas of Georgetown and Dupont Circle it is a good idea to be vigilant at night. The Anacostia area is not recommended either by day or night."

Pittsburgh: Les lieux dangereux
(circled in red), according to the French government.

"Baltimore is considered a dangerous city except for downtown."

"Detroit: The center is not recommended after offices close."

New Orleans: The warning is long and boils down to, avoid most of the city and be on your guard everywhere. "Do not hesitate to take a taxi, even for a short distance."

Los Angeles: "Large areas are to be avoided, notably the east, south and southeast districts, such as Watts, Inglewood, and Florence" and caution should be exercised in tourist areas. In the West Side (much of which is considered posh) watch out for aggression, carjacking, burglary in hotels and on private property.

The site also counsels French visitors on the dangers of "natural catastrophes and meteorological dangers," hurricanes (ouragans), tornadoes, seismic risks, floods, seaside hazards, and shark attacks.

Mais oui, but still, the Euro fort, the dollar faible … there's never been a better time to visit the USA!

Good on the French authorities for warning tourists about some of the less savory realities that the tourist industry glosses over. And it's not anti-American prejudice. The French government is equally forthcoming about the "sensitive urban areas" at home.