Video clips of the show projected onto the façade of the cathedral in Santiago July 24 & 25.
To give you an idea.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Santiago de Compostela - II
We're recovering from our disappointment of not having walked in. I'm not sure if it was the fireworks/light-show last night or the mass this morning.
From the street:
From the street:
Santiago de Compostela - 1
We flew in. I can't hide my disappointment.
Lots of others made it.
We made it to mass. This one began with fireworks. That was a first.
And ended with the "Bota Fumeiro" - a famously big incense burner. Then a light show and more fireworks at night. Video in camera that I can't upload here.
Lots of others made it.
We made it to mass. This one began with fireworks. That was a first.
And ended with the "Bota Fumeiro" - a famously big incense burner. Then a light show and more fireworks at night. Video in camera that I can't upload here.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Figueres - Museu Dali
Love this place, but everything is behind glass and very hard to photograph.
Nice stuff. I wish I could have shown it better.
Nice stuff. I wish I could have shown it better.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
BMW Scooter
Here's something you haven't seen before...
A BMW scooter. It must occur to you as it did to me that if you put a sidecar on that thing you could call it a tuk tuk.
A BMW scooter. It must occur to you as it did to me that if you put a sidecar on that thing you could call it a tuk tuk.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Culture and Unity
Very well. Consider the source. I am American, where there is no history and little respect for it.
Catalanes are very sensitive about losing their language. And they should be. Barcelona is a working class city, but also very cosmopolitan. This is where people come to find work. They have come from other parts of Spain - Andalucia and Estremadura. When people leave the farms of Castilla they come to places like this. Now they are coming from Morocco, Central and South America, East Africa and Eastern Europe too; so many of them that it threatens to overwhelm and replace the local culture and even the language.
People have been successful here. Barcelona is among the most prosperous of European cities. But who exactly are the Catalanes? Those who can trace their roots here for hundreds of years? In the countryside many can do that, but in the city not so many.
I've been here now for several days and on the streets of the city I seldom, seldom, hear a conversation in Catalan, It comes as a surprise when I do (you hear everything else). And when I do it's usually the sort of "pidgin" Catalan, containing the simultaneous use of both Catalan and Castillan words, that is characteristic of people who are native to both languages.
It isn't that they don't understand. The first several years of school are taught in Catalan, by law. And all of the street signs, the signs in the shops, are in the old language. To get a job at the train station, or any of the public services, you must speak Catalan, by law - though it seems that nobody does in the course of the day. And to buy a train ticket from a machine I had to operate the displays in Catalan. If there was a way around that I didn't see it.
But young people, especially, just don't address one another in Catalan. There was more Catalan spoken here in the days of Franco when it was actually illegal. Which says something about both the ineffectiveness of such heavy-handed law and the equally ineffective backlash it provokes. Outside the city language seems more normal - less outside influence. I rode a train back from Figueres which was full of students on their way home and they were all speaking Catalan. I don't believe it's in eminent danger of being lost, but it surely will be changed.
Language and culture will inevitably be what the consensus demands that it be. It is beyond the influence or manipulation of ideological or economic interest.
We Americans are used to giving up our past for the sake of unity - our melting pot - even proud of it! Here, if they didn't have a different history they would have to make one up! And they do, in fact, stretch the limits of its interpretation all the time. The differences aren't as great as they would have you think. Catalan isn't the only other Spanish used in Spain.
However, this sensitivity to losing their culture, their language, and the effort to protect it - the exclusion, the demand for autonomy, the preferential treatment given the old order - is seen by outsiders as separatist, protectionist, favoring an established elite, and reactionary. Castillans see Catalunia as their nearest foreign neighbor. Germans describe Spain as the most northern of African countries.
The disharmony created by this effort to preserve their heritage makes consensus difficult and the coordination of policy going forward even more difficult if not impossible. Catalunia isn't big enough to stand on its own. One wonders how they will find their way without that consensus.
I won't argue that something isn't lost for the sake of unity. The economic attack on the Greek government today is an effort to undermine and deprive Greeks of their autonomy. Must the Greeks sacrifice their identity, their heritage and perhaps their language to become another cog in the wheel of European fortunes? And if so where, if at all, does that stop? It's a reasonable question.
To an outsider the difference between this part of Spain and the others - not much. But the difference between Southern Europe and their northern neighbors - magnified to the ^n! Greece (or Southern Europe) is not to Germany what Catalunia is to Spain. There are different histories, different mind-sets, different values and different expectations.
I wouldn't presume to tell these people which choice to make or what they should value. Though I would argue that its as useless to erect barriers against the winds of change as it is to legislate the language people speak.
All of Europe hangs by a thread. Social divisions prevent economic integration and none of these buggers can stand alone. I saw where somebody said they are just looking for a place to crash the plane. That gives European leadership too much credit. The leadership just doesn't want anything to fall on their own feckless heads. And while they dither and posture things become more unbalanced.
The immediate problem is Greece. German and French banks, predominately, lent too much money to Greece at too near German interest rates. Now the Greeks can't pay it back. And with rates now where they maybe always should have been they can't borrow more - and they have to borrow more to continue to service the earlier loans.
Greece exports nothing. Their only source of external revenue is tourism. If Greece cannot sell enough tourist services to surplus countries (Germany) there is no hope of their being able to repay the money they borrowed.
Economically, it's a mathematical identity. If Greece is to run a current account deficit it must run a capital account surplus in balance. Which is the same as saying that for surplus countries to continue to run a surplus - to which they feel entitled - they must continue to finance Greek deficits.
It is the culture of the surplus countries to think of themselves as superior, harder working, and tout their own sacrifice, productivity and competitiveness. Which is to say their ability to exploit the Greek (and other) market(s) to keep their own factories humming.
Spain has a similar problem to Greece. It was also too reliant on tourism and especially construction. But they have a better cushion. They were in better financial condition at the start of this recession and if things were to pick up soon they would manage. Though it's hard to see what would replace that huge construction industry which is on it's knees. Italy exported a lot, but suffers much from new competition, globalization and the importation of cheap goods (and knock-offs).
The solution requires that bondholders suffer losses on Greek debt. And that the EU find a mechanism to transfer money from surplus to deficit countries as we do in the US. Most highway construction, for example is funded by the Feds. There is no European counterpart. Each country is completely autonomous in its funding, but with a common currency (which they cannot devalue).
There are also implications for us Americans. If we are to continue to value our unity and ourselves as a melting pot we must be willing to assimilate new melts and know that it will change our composition too. Maybe even our language. Though that should be easier for us.
Catalanes are very sensitive about losing their language. And they should be. Barcelona is a working class city, but also very cosmopolitan. This is where people come to find work. They have come from other parts of Spain - Andalucia and Estremadura. When people leave the farms of Castilla they come to places like this. Now they are coming from Morocco, Central and South America, East Africa and Eastern Europe too; so many of them that it threatens to overwhelm and replace the local culture and even the language.
People have been successful here. Barcelona is among the most prosperous of European cities. But who exactly are the Catalanes? Those who can trace their roots here for hundreds of years? In the countryside many can do that, but in the city not so many.
I've been here now for several days and on the streets of the city I seldom, seldom, hear a conversation in Catalan, It comes as a surprise when I do (you hear everything else). And when I do it's usually the sort of "pidgin" Catalan, containing the simultaneous use of both Catalan and Castillan words, that is characteristic of people who are native to both languages.
It isn't that they don't understand. The first several years of school are taught in Catalan, by law. And all of the street signs, the signs in the shops, are in the old language. To get a job at the train station, or any of the public services, you must speak Catalan, by law - though it seems that nobody does in the course of the day. And to buy a train ticket from a machine I had to operate the displays in Catalan. If there was a way around that I didn't see it.
But young people, especially, just don't address one another in Catalan. There was more Catalan spoken here in the days of Franco when it was actually illegal. Which says something about both the ineffectiveness of such heavy-handed law and the equally ineffective backlash it provokes. Outside the city language seems more normal - less outside influence. I rode a train back from Figueres which was full of students on their way home and they were all speaking Catalan. I don't believe it's in eminent danger of being lost, but it surely will be changed.
Language and culture will inevitably be what the consensus demands that it be. It is beyond the influence or manipulation of ideological or economic interest.
We Americans are used to giving up our past for the sake of unity - our melting pot - even proud of it! Here, if they didn't have a different history they would have to make one up! And they do, in fact, stretch the limits of its interpretation all the time. The differences aren't as great as they would have you think. Catalan isn't the only other Spanish used in Spain.
However, this sensitivity to losing their culture, their language, and the effort to protect it - the exclusion, the demand for autonomy, the preferential treatment given the old order - is seen by outsiders as separatist, protectionist, favoring an established elite, and reactionary. Castillans see Catalunia as their nearest foreign neighbor. Germans describe Spain as the most northern of African countries.
The disharmony created by this effort to preserve their heritage makes consensus difficult and the coordination of policy going forward even more difficult if not impossible. Catalunia isn't big enough to stand on its own. One wonders how they will find their way without that consensus.
I won't argue that something isn't lost for the sake of unity. The economic attack on the Greek government today is an effort to undermine and deprive Greeks of their autonomy. Must the Greeks sacrifice their identity, their heritage and perhaps their language to become another cog in the wheel of European fortunes? And if so where, if at all, does that stop? It's a reasonable question.
To an outsider the difference between this part of Spain and the others - not much. But the difference between Southern Europe and their northern neighbors - magnified to the ^n! Greece (or Southern Europe) is not to Germany what Catalunia is to Spain. There are different histories, different mind-sets, different values and different expectations.
I wouldn't presume to tell these people which choice to make or what they should value. Though I would argue that its as useless to erect barriers against the winds of change as it is to legislate the language people speak.
All of Europe hangs by a thread. Social divisions prevent economic integration and none of these buggers can stand alone. I saw where somebody said they are just looking for a place to crash the plane. That gives European leadership too much credit. The leadership just doesn't want anything to fall on their own feckless heads. And while they dither and posture things become more unbalanced.
The immediate problem is Greece. German and French banks, predominately, lent too much money to Greece at too near German interest rates. Now the Greeks can't pay it back. And with rates now where they maybe always should have been they can't borrow more - and they have to borrow more to continue to service the earlier loans.
Greece exports nothing. Their only source of external revenue is tourism. If Greece cannot sell enough tourist services to surplus countries (Germany) there is no hope of their being able to repay the money they borrowed.
Economically, it's a mathematical identity. If Greece is to run a current account deficit it must run a capital account surplus in balance. Which is the same as saying that for surplus countries to continue to run a surplus - to which they feel entitled - they must continue to finance Greek deficits.
It is the culture of the surplus countries to think of themselves as superior, harder working, and tout their own sacrifice, productivity and competitiveness. Which is to say their ability to exploit the Greek (and other) market(s) to keep their own factories humming.
Spain has a similar problem to Greece. It was also too reliant on tourism and especially construction. But they have a better cushion. They were in better financial condition at the start of this recession and if things were to pick up soon they would manage. Though it's hard to see what would replace that huge construction industry which is on it's knees. Italy exported a lot, but suffers much from new competition, globalization and the importation of cheap goods (and knock-offs).
The solution requires that bondholders suffer losses on Greek debt. And that the EU find a mechanism to transfer money from surplus to deficit countries as we do in the US. Most highway construction, for example is funded by the Feds. There is no European counterpart. Each country is completely autonomous in its funding, but with a common currency (which they cannot devalue).
There are also implications for us Americans. If we are to continue to value our unity and ourselves as a melting pot we must be willing to assimilate new melts and know that it will change our composition too. Maybe even our language. Though that should be easier for us.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Método Tradicional
Not so long ago all white sparkling wine was called champagne in Spanish as well as English, though the pronunciation was different. When Spain joined the EU the french took exception to the loose use of a word they considered their own. In french champagne is a place. A little place - the use of little c is intentional. But because the french threw a hissy Spanish bubbly producers were forced to come up with a new noun - cava. Don't be surprised by that. The french employ Brigades of Bureaucrats (they probably have a patent on those words too) to come up with words of their own so they might not have to import one. Reverse engineering language, if you will. It would be interesting to know what's lost in translation. After all, if we were to come up with something entirely new to signify "Bureaucrat" and remove the frenchyness of that concept, exactly what significance would be left?
Anyway, today we refer to all white sparkling wine made by the traditional method as cava even if it were to come from some small place in france (unlikely).
We toured bodegas again today and don't worry. There is plenty of cava left for you.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Gaudí Architecture
Barcelona, home to Antoni Gaudí and from whence we get the term that we use derisively - gaudy. Which alone establishes him as being ahead of his time. There is a lot of Gaudí here.
Cathedral a la Gaudí - La Sagrada Familia
The cranes are not there for renovation. La Sagrada Familia is still under construction as it has been now for more than 100 years.
MORE HERE.
Cathedral a la Gaudí - La Sagrada Familia
The cranes are not there for renovation. La Sagrada Familia is still under construction as it has been now for more than 100 years.
MORE HERE.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Karst Topography
Somebody once said that all science was either physics or stamp collecting. I forget who that was. And I have more sympathy for chemists, but he had a point. Geologists are among the stamp collectors. They make up names for things and assign them to... well, some artificial construct which they also make up. To some extent it does help to channel our thinking like that. It gives us a base, a point of departure; an unnaturally simple description of a natural world which is actually quite beyond description. And I love it! I'm fascinated by it!
I tell you that to set up this story. Once there was this Serb, I forget his name too (starts with C - Ciric or something), who described the topography of the Kras region of what is now Slovenia as being a consequence of it's hydrology.
Skraplje: Kras mountains of Slovenia
It happens, as he described, that water (being slightly acidic) permeates and flows through the (basic) limestone massifs that make up those mountains dissolving the limestone and leaving behind a series of caves, sink-holes, and such. He had the foresight to write it up in German, "Das Karst Phenomena". Otherwise nobody would have ever heard of it. Geologists adopted the German. Hence Karst, not Kras.
The coastal mountain range, "Los Picos de Europa", that I've talked about and separates the northern camino route from the Camino Frances, and figures so importantly in the history of Spain, and the soils and agriculture of the entire Spanish meseta; is a limestone massif too. And water permeates it; a magical land. There are placesalong the "Routa de Cares", a pass in the mountain, where water pours forth from the rocks as though they were enchanted.
W
Cares: Picos de Europa
There are other Karst areas in the world.
Notably, southern China
Phang Nga Bay in Thailand. We went kayaking there. This is James Bond Island. Named for the movie.
And outside Le Baux in southern France which gives us our word bauxite - another geological word without a precise definition. (A good geologist will no doubt fudge that imprecision.) I was there once in another geological time. No picture.
But the Greenbrier River Valley... NOT KARST!!! - even though you will find it listed in Wikipedia! Sorry, just because there are sink-holes doesn't make it Karst. No limestone massif. No enchantment. That's the difference. I had an argument with a geologist friend about this some time ago; wrong stamp, wrong stamp placeholder. A mistake that could only be made by a geologist who reads too much and doesn't get out quite enough.
Anyway, we went to a cave near Picos de Europa called El Soplao (cuevas). ENCHANTED!
Want a mineralogical explanation for the way calcite crystalizes? I didn't think so. So then words fail it. Beyond description! But, what a beautiful world we live in! They wouldn't let me take pictures. So, google it.
f/d - all illustrations from internet and not mine
I tell you that to set up this story. Once there was this Serb, I forget his name too (starts with C - Ciric or something), who described the topography of the Kras region of what is now Slovenia as being a consequence of it's hydrology.
Skraplje: Kras mountains of Slovenia
It happens, as he described, that water (being slightly acidic) permeates and flows through the (basic) limestone massifs that make up those mountains dissolving the limestone and leaving behind a series of caves, sink-holes, and such. He had the foresight to write it up in German, "Das Karst Phenomena". Otherwise nobody would have ever heard of it. Geologists adopted the German. Hence Karst, not Kras.
The coastal mountain range, "Los Picos de Europa", that I've talked about and separates the northern camino route from the Camino Frances, and figures so importantly in the history of Spain, and the soils and agriculture of the entire Spanish meseta; is a limestone massif too. And water permeates it; a magical land. There are placesalong the "Routa de Cares", a pass in the mountain, where water pours forth from the rocks as though they were enchanted.
W
Cares: Picos de Europa
There are other Karst areas in the world.
Notably, southern China
Phang Nga Bay in Thailand. We went kayaking there. This is James Bond Island. Named for the movie.
And outside Le Baux in southern France which gives us our word bauxite - another geological word without a precise definition. (A good geologist will no doubt fudge that imprecision.) I was there once in another geological time. No picture.
But the Greenbrier River Valley... NOT KARST!!! - even though you will find it listed in Wikipedia! Sorry, just because there are sink-holes doesn't make it Karst. No limestone massif. No enchantment. That's the difference. I had an argument with a geologist friend about this some time ago; wrong stamp, wrong stamp placeholder. A mistake that could only be made by a geologist who reads too much and doesn't get out quite enough.
Anyway, we went to a cave near Picos de Europa called El Soplao (cuevas). ENCHANTED!
Want a mineralogical explanation for the way calcite crystalizes? I didn't think so. So then words fail it. Beyond description! But, what a beautiful world we live in! They wouldn't let me take pictures. So, google it.
f/d - all illustrations from internet and not mine
Monday, July 4, 2011
Boys and Their Toys
I got to ride in a combine last week (and to look under the hood). The revelation is in the way it works (mechanically). It's beyond the scope of this post to describe that though. Maybe later.
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