It looks like we’re starting to live through societal collapse in real time.  In this past week, we’ve seen the entire air transportation system grind to a halt, the melt down of the most important business communication system, the official return of an infectious disease we eradicated a generation ago, and a tanker ram a docked cruise ship.  (That last one took real talent on someone’s part).  Societal collapse isn’t an instant.  It’s hundreds and hundreds of micro-failures with a loss of the systems that previously existed to repair or correct them and to keep things humming along so that we don’t even notice the problem.  What’s next?  A prolonged failure of the power grid somewhere?  (We’ve had a dry run on that in Texas).  A water system unable to deliver potable water to a major urban area? (Ask Flint, Michigan).  Air and rail accidents due to failing systems and under staffing?  Empty grocery stores due to transportation and distribution problems?  None of these would surprise me in the least. They’ll fall heaviest on those who can least afford the burden but the problems won’t spare those who live in gated communities who think that the rules of macroeconomics and social cohesion somehow don’t apply to them and theirs.

I can’t do much about any of these things.  I’ve gotten too old, too tired, too grumpy, and so I continue with my optimistic nihilism, determined to smile and enjoy what little life I have left while seated comfortably in this handbasket which is on its way to somewhere.  That’s not strictly true.  I can vote, and did in the last midterm.  The blue wave wasn’t high enough to change a whole lot locally but there was still a good 15-20 point swing away from Republicans towards Democrats in Alabama. If there isn’t some significant change in social and economic policies over the next few years (and change comes hard to Alabama leaders), I think the tide will continue to rise. Especially as there is a significant immigration into the state from the North.  Urban Alabama is inexpensive, full of things to do, has relatively mild weather, and is hiring.  The newcomers may choose a side in the football wars but are unlikely to adopt the attitudes present in the fraudulent state constitution of 1901 that still trammel us all, and most of them are not of the Southern Baptist persuasion.

Going back to the headlines.  The airline ground stop story is becoming clearer by the hour and boils down to the administration having gotten rid of the competence in federal agencies in favor of those who will move forward quickly in blind loyalty and won’t care too much about the destruction they leave in their wake.  Rolling out new and only partially tested software across the entire air traffic control system on a Friday afternoon without redundancies or running in parallel with old systems is an invitation to disaster, as any first quarter IT student could tell you.  The most interesting thing at the moment is the silence from the administration after that initial disastrous press conference from the Secretaries of Transportation and Homeland Security.  To me that says they know they screwed up badly and maybe if they hide, the press will move on.  In the meantime, we’re on the third day of stranded passengers and wonky schedules and it may or may not all be sorted out by the time we reach the Thanksgiving travel crunch in ten days. (I’m supposed to be travelling then.  I’m not holding my breath).  I’m trying to imagine Pete Buttigeg if a similar mess had occurred in the last administration.  He would have been issuing routine updates and accepting accountability if his department had made unwise decisions.

In contrast, Microsoft stood up, took responsibility for the recent issues with Outlook. It was related to network capacity upgrades that were rolled out overnight which led to servers going offline which led to automated systems erroneously thinking that they had failed – this initiated a cascade effect.  I’m not enough of a technogeek to completely understand it all but it seems to have been dealt with relatively quickly.  I have seen some chatter that Microsoft’s reduction in force among their senior engineers in favor of younger employees (mainly overseas) may have had something to do with it.  I don’t know enough about that world to want to speculate. 

The measles story is tragic as it is completely unnecessary.  The US received measles eradication status in 2000 after several generations of consistent use of the MMR vaccine which brought the number of immune individuals up high enough so that the virus, if it popped up, could not spread in the population.  Anti-vaccine sentiment, originally a fringe idea on the left wing (Marin county north of San Francisco being the first hotbed in the late 70s and 80s as the anti-establishment hippies morphed into yuppies), and brought into overdrive by the controversies over covid and covid vaccinations has moved into the highest levels of public health policy.  Consequently, MMR vaccination rates in the US, which used to hover around 96-97% have fallen to 92% and lower than 90% in eighteen states.  Anything less than 95% and we lose herd immunity.  The results are more measles cases, more localized epidemics, and ultimately more maimed and dead children.  That 95% isn’t some piece of bureaucratic nonsense.  It’s science.  Measles is so contagious that we have to have numbers that high or it will slip through the cracks.  Personally, given current trends, I’m just waiting for polio to make a reappearance.

I’ve seen the video clips of the tanker hitting the cruise ship in New Orleans.  We were very lucky that no one was killed or seriously injured.  I was raised in Seattle around water and boats and I am at a loss at how one simply rams a tanker into a docked cruise ship unless there was some sort of catastrophic failure of navigation or engine control.  Details are sparse at the moment.  I don’t expect a lot of transparency given the current state of the Department of Transportation.  One of these days, there’s going to be a terrible accident involving one of the cruise behemoths with seven or eight thousand people on board.  It’s pretty much inevitable.  They’re ships.  Ships sink when hubris loses out to physics.

If you’re in Birmingham and have nothing else to do this afternoon, come on out to Eastlake Methodist Church for the last performance of Arsenic and Old Lace at 2:30 PM.  After that, I pack away my police uniform and settle in for some relative quiet as I prepare to wind down my clinical time at UAB.  Fifteen weeks to go.  Who’s counting?  *Raises hand in the back*

Today’s matinee was cancelled.  Covid in the cast.  There was a round during the last week of rehearsals before tech (when I was still in Europe) which had dissipated by the time I returned.  And now it has returned felling a central cast member and a member of the crew overnight.  Backstage environments with people all crowded together in dressing rooms and the wings are a perfect environment for viral disease to spread.  Hopefully it’s missed me and everyone will be back in fighting form, and we’ll get through our second weekend without major mishaps.  Covid remains a significant health issue and has shut down a number of community theatre productions locally over the last few years.  On shoestring budgets and limited resources, understudies are generally not a thing so there aren’t a lot of options when someone goes down. While I was sad not to do the show today, I can’t say I minded an unplanned free and unstructured day.  I mainly noodled around the house working on a few projects.

My role in Arsenic and Old Lace, as one of the beat cops, is a book end plot device.  I and the other beat cop are on about five minutes into the show for about five minutes of exposition.  Then we disappear and I doze in the dressing room for two and a quarter hours until we hit the end of the show where we show up to help tie up the plot. I seem to be specializing in this sort of stage role recently.  My last part was a cameo bookend role as well. They’re easy to do; the greatest challenge lying in not actually falling asleep in the dressing room because, if I do that, I befuddle my mind and the lines for my second scene don’t stick the way they should. I blanked on one at yesterday’s performance.  Fortunately, a cast mate fed me what I needed, and I was soon back on track. I hate it when that happens.  Unfortunately, in my sixty fifth year, my mind is not the steel trap it once was.  Learning a role takes a lot more work than it used to.

Arsenic and Old Lace is one of those American plays that is consistently revived in high schools and community theatres.  It is technically simple, with a single box set.  It has a number of juicy roles.  It’s a comedy… of a sort.  In a lot of ways, it is sui generis.  There’s no other play quite like it.  A black comedy about serial murder and mental illness. The sweet old ladies busy performing euthanasia on lonely old men.  The nephew who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt.  The psychotic murderer with his weasel of a sidekick. The drama critic trying to hold on to his sanity and protect his family when everything spirals out of control.  The play was written in the late 1930s by Joseph Kesselring (who never wrote anything else of major note) and originally produced in early 1941 on the eve of America’s entrance into World War II.  It ran on Broadway through most of the war, not closing until late 1944.  Looking at the work in historical context, one sees that the play is a metaphor for America at the time.  The Brewster family, descended from the Mayflower and decayed into madness, is the country: Projecting one view of itself to the outside world but something else entirely on the inside and in a house built upon dreadful secrets and bodies buried in the basement.  You have to keep the play in period with the war in the background and the aunts as relics of the bygone Victorian era.  If you were to update it to today, the aunts would be aging flower children and Teddy would think he were Ronald Reagan and it doesn’t have quite the same impact.

My introduction to the play (as it was for many) was through the 1944 film version starring Cary Grant and with most of the stage cast recreating their roles.  It was directed by Frank Capra and he took a lot of the bite out of the material and managed to get a subpar performance out of Cary Grant by encouraging him to go bug eyed and overact throughout.  The stage veterans (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as the aunts, John Alexander as Teddy) on the other hand are marvelous.  Boris Karloff played the villain on Broadway but did not do the film.  The film was actually made in late 1941 while the show was running.  Boris Karloff was a producer and the main box office draw so he stayed in the show while the others left for filming.  His part was played by Raymond Massey in the film, made up to look like him.

I suppose I should say something about the midterm elections. I am still processing what I think about all of the results, and I will likely return to the subject later.  I am, of course, pleased at the outcome.  I don’t think there is any way to interpret them other than the people’s repudiation of Trumpism as expressed in the policies of his second term which have been so incredibly destructive to so many of our social institutions.  The Democrats will take both houses of congress with substantial majorities and have an opportunity to reassert legislative power within the constitutional structure of checks and balances.  I am a bit nervous as to how they are likely to do this.  I’ve lived a long time now and I’ve seen the Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory over and over.  The Democratic coalition has many constituencies with very different agendas.  If the leadership allows them to fracture over purity tests regarding ideologies, get bogged down in process at the expense of progress, or continue to govern at the behest of money and corporate donors rather than the needs of the electorate, we’re going to get nowhere fast.

Politics is show business for the unattractive and the same sorts of personalities that require attention and adulation are found in both.  If the Democrats spend their time on talk shows or in televised hearings that lead to nothing, this blue wave will quickly dissipate and return to the sea.  What do I hope happens?  Legislation to codify ethics and close up loopholes that Trump and his administration have exploited to end run the usual norms of government.  Investigations into things that are obviously of dubious legality with real consequences.  The use of the power of the purse to hamstring the administration’s more outrageous excesses. Constant communication with the American people of what steps they are taking and what steps are to follow which will ease the financial disasters that are destroying the middle class.  The release of the Epstein files as demanded by law. Will we get any of this?  Time will tell. 

Trump and his minions are definitely circling the wagons.  I don’t know what the strategy is but the dismissal of Susie Wiles, one of the few adults left in the inner circle in favor of Stephen Miller suggests that he wants to destroy what he cannot have or control.  Things are likely to get more dangerous this next couple of years than less.  Personalities like Trump cannot bear to be told no and can react in very negative ways when that begins to happen.  I just pray that not too may lives are destroyed in the process.  The president has a formidable arsenal of weapons at his disposable for going after his enemies, which now seem to include a majority of the population who voted against him and his policies.  Hang on to your hats.  The winds are going to blow.

As you’re reading newly written words, I’m hoping it’s obvious that I managed to get back home from Europe in one piece.  I don’t have a whole lot to say about the last day or so of the trip.  The ship docked back at Civitavecchia on the morning of the 30^th and the disembarkation process ran smoothly, at least for us.  I’m not so sure about the older woman who was busy vomiting into a plastic bag in the middle of the maze of gateway corridors, especially as her family were all rolling their eyes at her condition.  Leaving her to the echoes of her heaves and the loving embrace of her adult children, we quickly found our bags in the small city of luggage and shared a van taxi into Rome with three other couples.    We were only going to spend 24 hours in Rome as a buffer in case there were delays with the ship so that we wouldn’t miss our flight back to the US.

My wonderful travel agent had booked us into a small hotel in the heart of Rome, right on the Piazza Rotonda, the site of the Pantheon.  When we opened the window of the room, we were looking directly into the front façade of the building and down on the heads of the myriad tourists awaiting admission.  It was rather amazing.  Usually when I open the curtains of my hotel room, it’s an airshaft, a parking lot, or a construction site.  We had no particular agenda and 24 hours to enjoy.  Between the May trip and the few days before the cruise, we had seen most of the tourist sites, so we decided to just explore and go where we felt like.  I let Thomas take the lead as Rome seems to be his spiritual home in the way that London seems to be mine.  We had some good meals, did some shopping at out-of-the-way places, spent a lovely sunset drinking cocktails at a wonderful rooftop bar which put us on a level with all of the bell towers and baroque domes, and wandering the streets, full of revelers just beginning their weekend.  The weather was idyllic: 60s and sunny.  Perfect weather for nosing around. 

On Saturday morning, our last day, Thomas was up early to roam deserted streets by himself.  I slept in a bit longer but did join him for breakfast, a walk through Piazza Espagnol and then over to the Tiber and down past the Vatican.  At this point, it was time to finish packing and head for the airport.  The airport was not crowded, the lines for check in and security were not overly long and we were soon uncomfortably ensconced for the nearly twelve-hour flight back to Atlanta.  Like any long-distance flight, the best thing I can say about it is that it was uneventful.  The customs/border control area at ATL was a bit of a zoo, but I have seen it much worse and we had a little time to catch our breath before the short hop back to BHM.  And just like that, fifteen days, and seven destinations came to an end.

It’s now forty-eight hours later and I am still a bit jet lagged.  My vacation dates were set up around the old itinerary so I have not yet returned to work and will not until Wednesday.  It’s been nice having a couple of days to try and reacclimate to this time zone, complicated slightly by the daylight savings change in the midst of everything.  I’m unpacked, fairly caught up on various domestic chores that have lain fallow while I have been away, and the cats are only giving me the occasional murderous stare now that they know I’m back in their lives.  They only peed on the laundry once which is actually an improvement in terms of the messages they tend to send when I interrupt their personal routines.  I’ve also gotten back to rehearsal on Arsenic and Old Lace which opens on Thursday.  There was a mini-covid epidemic backstage while I was gone so things are a little behind but it’s coming together.  I did learn my lines while away but I’m still a bit shaky on some of the cues.  I should be fine by Thursday.

Tomorrow is election day.  I have an appointment first thing in the morning and then I am heading to vote afterwards.  As I am off work, I’m happy to stand in line if either the feds or the state of Alabama decides to pull any shenanigans at the polls in my racially mixed neighborhood.  I have no idea what to expect in terms of the outcomes or how the administration is likely to react should the results prove a strong rebuke of their policies of the last two years.  I guess I’ll live through the aftermath the way the rest of us will.  One day and one decision at a time.  I am hoping the state of Alabama voters understand the differences between our two major candidates for governor.  The one from the ruling party is one of the few current politicians who can make the current president seem intelligent and lucid.  The one from the opposition party, out of power for decades, is about as close as one can get to a real-life Atticus Finch.  Given that I’ve watched Alabama voters shoot themselves in the foot over and over again over the decades I have lived here, I am not overly optimistic.

I’ve been trying to figure out what this last trip has taught me.  Not in the superficial way of such things as ‘smoked octopus tastes good but has an odd texture’ or ‘three pina coladas on a pool afternoon is one too many’ but in a deeper, more transformative way.  If you don’t learn something by travel, there’s no point in doing it.  Might as well just watch documentaries on the Travel Channel – they edit out all the boring and uncomfortable parts. This journey was centered around a part of the world where Western Civilizations have been around for a very long time.  Rome and Istanbul are both pushing three millennia old.  The Greek Islands have been inhabited even longer.  The people have seen Empires come and go.  Greek, Persian, Roman, Gothic, Muslim, Ottoman; and yet they remain, living in the same places as their ancestors, often in the same buildings, just rebuilt and repurposed as necessary.  The destruction brought by civilizational shifts has been visited upon them time and again.  The survivors pick up and carry on. 

We don’t have that in this part of the world. There’s no city in North America much over five hundred years old.  We have, for the most part, been spared the destruction and carnage of constant wars upon our soil.  And we have two important gifts our ancestors left to us.  The first is that this country was built upon a contract.  A contract that decreed that the population, We the People, are the ones in charge and that we consent to be governed but by structures, laws and representatives to whom we have given authority as part of that contract.  My generation, certainly, was raised on the ideal that the rules we create apply equally to everyone, plebian to president.  In the wake of the destruction of the Great Depression and World War II (which was not so much physical here as spiritual), the people decided to move the society towards a more equitable one, tweaking the rules so that the economy would more evenly benefit the population and creating the great middle class of the postwar years.  There has been a stealth operation over many decades, funded by the subset of the wealthy who feel that we should be an economic aristocracy where only those in ‘the club’ have true political power, that have been working hard to overturn this idea.  And the second Trump administration is the culmination of their long propaganda campaign to convince Americans that government, higher education, an informed and neutral press, and the other institutions that created postwar society are the enemy and should be destroyed, or at least reinterpreted. The Powell memorandum, the Moral Majority, the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, the Objectivist philosophies of Ayn Rand filtering into the highest economic circles through Alan Greenspan, the Heritage Foundation, the Project for a New American Century, Project 2025: all working for the same goal – weakening the pillars of society in such a way that only the society becomes one of the new aristocracy, by the new aristocracy, and for the new aristocracy.  Look at the three campaign slogans used to mobilize MAGA in 2024. ‘Release the Epstein Files’.  ‘No new wars’. ‘Bring our troops home’.  Say any of these at a current Trump rally and you will shortly be escorted out.  The new aristocracy has found that embracing any of these might pose a threat to themselves or their cash flow.  We may find in the aftermath of tomorrow if the current administration has the power to finally break the 18^th century contract, product of the Age of Enlightenment that we have all assumed would be eternal.

The second great gift given to us by our forebearers was the idea that a national identity need not be synonymous with a cultural, ethnic, or religious identity.  In Europe, memories are long and boundaries are sharply defined by language, by custom, by geography.  There’s no particular history of assimilation or acceptance of higher level of identity.  We’ve at least been giving lip service to the ideal that anyone can be and consider themselves an American who comes here and embraces our way of life and is willing to become part of the contract mentioned above.  We’ve hardly been perfect at this, but we have, for the most part kept trying.  And what would America be without German cars, Italian pizza, British TV dramas, and Japanese electronics?  The current administration, with its Gestapo tactics being used against newer immigrant populations, promotion of the idea of ‘heritage Americans’, is trying to undo this work of centuries.  Fortunately, I don’t believe they’ll succeed.  We’ve shown time and again that once we meet the new neighbors, try their food and find it delicious, realize that they pretty much want the same things we do, and are generally decent folk, it’s hard to demonize them.  The kind of centuries-old distrust between identities that existed in Europe and that the Third Reich was able to exploit, don’t exist here in the same way. As more and more outrages by ICE are reported, ordinary folk are starting to understand the cruelty behind the policies.  Trying to decide which of my blue shirts I’m wearing to the polls tomorrow.  Sleep well.  Tomorrow may be a long

Dateline – Naples, Italy

The seas calmed yesterday by late afternoon and were smooth as glass as we once again entered the Straits of Messina between Sicily and the toe of Italy (neither Scylla nor Charybdis being evident).  This was an after dark traverse so it was mainly watching the lights on each shore get closer and closer as we approached the narrows.  Most of this was done through the dining room windows as we had a leisurely meal (duck for me, risotto for Thomas) and followed that up with some time walking on deck to get the food to settle.

When we awoke this morning, we were tied at the pier in Naples.  I have been to Naples before, it was a bit of a rough port town then and such it seems to remain.  We didn’t stay long but rather boarded a bus for Pompeii.  As it was late in the season, the crowds were thin and it was possible to see the ruins without jostling too many elbows.  I had been here before as well, but that was 42 years ago.  Back then, it was pretty much a free for all and you could wander wherever.  Now it is much more regimented and they are strictly controlling the number of visitors to a maximum of 20,000 a day.  (A few years ago, they would routinely admit 70-80,000).  Today, seemed like it was a 3-5,000 day so, when spread over sixty some acres, it wasn’t bad at all.  The ruins were pretty much as I remembered them.  What I like about them is that with the entire city preserved, you can get a feel of daily life which isn’t possible at sites where just a palace or a few important buildings survive.  Thomas, budding archeologist that he is, had never been before and was fascinated by all of what had survived.  He has first hand knowledge of what it takes to get these sorts of physical remains out of the ground intact.

The weather was sunny, but cool so it was the perfect day to be prowling around Roman streets, thermae and fora.  We could have spent many hours there but unfortunately the tour we were on only allowed a few.  So it was back on the bus and a couple of dozen miles later we arrived in the town of Viteri on the Amalfi coast.  It was a picture postcard perfect day.  The town, like Sorrento and Amalfi and Positano dropped from the cliffs down to the azure Mediterranean and it was blessedly empty.  I have seen what happens to the Amalfi coast towns in high season with the narrow streets shoulder to shoulder with thousands of people.  Not today.  It was possible to enjoy the views, some shopping, a nice lunch of pesto and limoncello spritz in a sidewalk café and feel like the town was made just for us.  It was most pleasant.  Then back over the mountains to the ship.

After nearly two weeks of trip, we were a bit fatigued and although we were in port for a couple of more hours, we decided a nap was a better use of time.  More pasta for dinner tonight (carbonara) and then getting the big bags ready for pickup and disembarkation tomorrow.  We are at the pier at Civitavecchia in the morning, need to get ourselves back up to Rome, and then have 24 hours for a last carouse before boarding flights on Saturday for the return flights home.  It may not have been the trip I planned, but it’s been a good one.  Trying to rev myself back up for work and for Arsenic and Old Lace, both of which will be hitting me up the side of the head shortly after I get home.

Dateline – Mykonos, Greece

That’s not exactly truthful.  Mykonos was yesterday and today we’re busy pitching and rolling and yawing as we steam across the Ionian Sea back to Italy.  (Naples, Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast tomorrow).  Therefore, it’s another relaxing sea day.  I am seated in the Solarium listening to the water in the swimming pool slosh as we are buffeted by sea swells and occasional wind gusts of up to thirty knots.  Fortunately, I am a good sailor.  The only time I have ever been seasick was my first night out in the Bering Sea on the oceanographic research vessel I spent a summer on while in college.  (I ran the water sampling equipment on the overnight shift).  I was queasy and threw up the first night and was fine for the rest of the eight weeks or so I was out there. 

So, back to Mykonos.  When I was a young gayling, back in the 80s, Mykonos held a certain mythic status as being the place on the globe for where all the chicest, most elegant gay men would hang out in the summer, parading in Speedos during the day, and dancing in clubs at the waters edge to all hours of the night.  Being a poor student in various degrees of higher education at the time, Mykonos was far beyond my grasp.  Heck, even Ensenada was beyond my grasp. I was also not the physical type who was going to attract the attentions of a wealthy patron who was going to offer me a Pretty Woman makeover and jet me across the globe.  The world has moved on from Mykonos over the years, Gran Canaria seems to have taken its place as the sun and fun destination for rising gay Eurotrash but the name still resonates in the back of my brain.

We arrived in the morning to the first not great weather of the vacation.  There were lowering clouds, it was cool and all day it alternated between the sun breaking through for awhile (but not really raising the temperature) and cool misty rains that were very Seattle in nature.  The ship was tied up at the cruise pier, a few miles outside of the main town and we had not booked any sort of organized tour as our time in port was limited and there was nothing we felt was a must so we had a leisurely breakfast and headed for the shuttle bus into town.  On arriving, we found the town itself charming, if a bit artificial.  It’s obvious that the HOA requires everything be kept to a certain standard which involves white paint, colored trim (originally the colors meant something but now it’s a hodge-podge) and bougainvillea, oleander, and geraniums.  Lots of cafes, art galleries, souvenir stores, resort clothing shops, and the like.  All very lovely but, given the dreariness of the day and the fact that this is the last week of the season with much already in shut down mode, a bit sad.  I might have been more taken with it had I not just come from Santorini and its dramatic clifftop setting.  The geography here was just rolling hills.

We wandered the narrow streets and passageways, climbed the hill for the view, descended to the point with the famous collection of windmills (meeting Petros the pelican in residence and busy preening to the oohs and ahs of the assembled crowd), and found a waterfront café for lunch and cocktails.  (If you think cocktails have played a large part in this trip, you would be correct – I don’t drink a lot in my usual life but I make an exception on vacation.  And, as the child of parents who kept the cocktail hour, I have a reasonable capacity and generally remain quite functional). 

The weather was too iffy and the seas seemed to be a bit rough so we opted not to take a small boat to Delos.  (And there were plenty of the ubiquitous Aegean cats in town for us to make the acquaintance of.  We discovered they are quite fond of fried calamari).  Instead, we completed our shopping for the trip and returned to the boat a bit early for a lie down, more cocktails, an early dinner, and All About Eve, another film Thomas had never seen.  I really have to get busy with his education. I had gnocchi quattro formaggio for dinner that was really quite good.  The food in general on board has been more than passable.  Even the cafeteria has had some items that have been exceptional, especially in the Indian/Thai section which makes me assume that much of the kitchen staff are South and Southeast Asian. 

I, of course, spent some time going over the political headlines from back home.  Most of them are giving me a little bit of hope for the state of the world.  The ouster of Vucic in Serbia (and as on my original itinerary, we would have been passing through Serbia and Belgrade in the days immediately prior to the election, I cannot help but wonder if some political instability behind the scenes was the real reason for the scotched trip), the sound defeat of Bolsonaro in Brazil (and of course the Trump administration is sheltering him), and it looks like Bibi may be down for the count.  We’ll see what happens in our elections this coming week.  I arrive home on Saturday and am off until Wednesday and will be at my polling place with bells on first thing Tuesday morning.  Will the administration try some shenanigans with the results, almost certainly, but from what I can tell the American public is seeing through the lies and the obfuscations and the Republican party is starting to understand that the same old BS is no longer working. Hope springs eternal, or at least from the seas of Mykonos and Delos.

Dateline – Santorini, Greece

Yesterday was a sea day.  We woke up and opened the blinds to find our ship steaming down the Dardanelles and under the massive 1915 Canakkale suspension bridge, the world’s longest which connects Europe with Asia.  From there, we slid past the cliffs of Gallipoli with its monuments to both the Allied dead and the Turkish dead in the botched campaign of World War I.  I don’t know much about the Ottomans in World War I other than they chose the losing side and most of what I know about Gallipoli comes from the 1980s Australian film of the same name which was far too depressing for me to watch again since seeing it in its original run.  It stars a young and dreamy Mel Gibson prior to international stardom and revealing just what an unpleasant ass he truly is. 

From there we sailed off into the Aegean Sea and past various famous Greek islands including Lesbos, Chios, and Naxos.  The day was somewhat cool, but sunny so there was much deck time and I spent a while with my script working on my lines.  Later, after lunch, cocktails were consumed and so much for continuing with memorization.  Thomas went off for a massage in the spa, but that’s not really my thing and so I spent some time writing before dinner.  After dinner, I went to the show in the theatre.  The theatre is gorgeous, they spent a gazillion dollars on an amazing technical set up, and about $1.95 on the writing.  It was about an hour of cut rate Cirque de Soleil choreography to various 80s and 90s pop hits delivered by singers who had some of the worst technique I’ve heard.  Vocal nodes are in their future… probably by next week. It was enough to send me to bed early.

This morning, when we awoke, we were at anchor in Santorini, a small archipelago in the Cyclades formed when the ancient volcano of Thera blew its top and the caldera filled with sea water.  It’s still an active volcano, having last erupted in 1950, but fortunately it was nice and quiet today.  The main island of Thera is about 2/3 of the caldera rim and a steep cliff facing the old crater and a gentler slope on the other side.  We were anchored on the Western cliff side and, after breakfast, the two of us took a tender into the dock.  There is very little at the water’s edge, the main towns perched at the top of the cliff some thousand feet above.  To access, there are three choices, a gondola, walking up some five hundred and fifty steps or, the most traditional, on donkey back.  We chose to be traditionalists, were soon mounted on a pair of plodding donkeys, and up we went.  The weather report had said we were in for rain today and it had rained a tad earlier in the morning so the lovely smell of wet donkey was an accompaniment.  Fortunately, the clouds lessened over the morning and the rest of the day was quite lovely.

Once up top in the town of Fira, we were able to marvel at the views out over the caldera and take in all of the picturesque white Greek towns with their domes and blue roofs clinging to the edge of the cliff.  We decided to just walk and explore on foot, first doing some shopping (I bought a shirt with a pattern of the Greek mati – the omnipresent talisman against the evil eye) and then taking a footpath for a mile or so along the caldera rim, stopping along the way for a lunch of salad and smoked octopus (really quite good) and additional cocktails.  It ended up being a picture postcard perfect day. (Pictures available on Instagram and other posts).  There were a lot of stairs, a lot of hill walking, and it did make the legs somewhat tired but in a good way.  It is the last week of the season so a lot of the tourist accommodations and shops were getting ready to go into off season mode and the towns and paths were not crowded making it even nicer.  We kept ourselves occupied until late afternoon when, as the sun was beginning to set, we took the gondola down the hill and tendered back to the boat for dinner.  We decided to skip tonight’s show (someone impersonating great singers of the past) so as to get some sleep for tomorrow’s shore leave in Mykonos.  But first, we watched Die Hard as Thomas had never seen it.  He gave it a thumbs up. 

Dateline – Istanbul, Turkey

After sailing up the Turkish coast overnight, we awoke to the ship passing through the Dardanelles and into the Sea of Marmara with European Turkey on our port and Asian Turkey on our starboard. We weren’t due to dock for some hours, so it was a nice lazy morning with me working on my lines for Arsenic and Old Lace and Thomas taking a nap. We approached Istanbul shortly after noon, inching our way towards the Bosporus River as it flows out of the Black Sea. We eventually were docked at the cruise ship terminal at Galataport, at the base of the hill along the Golden Horn River which forms the European New City (not all that new as most of it was built in the 19th century). Galataport is a new development as the Turkish government tries to get more and more of the cruise industry to make Istanbul a standard stop. Not only is it the dock for the large ocean liners, it is also an underground bus transfer point and a modern shopping and entertainment district. In fact, it is the very model of a modern major terminal. (Complete with Turkish cats who act as fluffy antiverminal. And passages which could fit your tank or other autos Shermanal…)

We left the boat and headed out on our first shore excursion, a walking tour of the New City under the aegis of our guide Ada (who was something like an Istanbul feral kitten after one too many Turkish coffees). A walk along the waterfront, a ride up the hill in an underground funicular to Taksim Square, a stop for a trial of a local burger specialty (I suspect a member of Ada’s family was behind the burger joint) and then down the main thoroughfare of Istiklal Caddesi lined with boutiques, cafes, bars and other places of upscale entertainment, all with an early 20th century streetcar running up and down the middle threatening to pick off passers by who weren’t paying attention. It was very reminiscent of other major European cities to which I have been over the years with a lot of 19th century European architecture of the Beaux Arts school but with occasional Ottoman flourishes. We stopped for Turkish coffee and, after finishing it, attempted to tell our fortunes in the grounds. I thought I saw two monkeys enacting Shakespeare on the deck of a ship. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to symbolize. Further down the thoroughfare and onto another underground funicular dating back to the 1870s to get back down the hill and then past the bridge over the Golden Horn and back to the ship. We thought about going out for the evening and then decided against as we were a bit tired and knew we had a big day on the morrow beginning early in the morning.

The next morning we had an all day tour exploring the historical Old City with its Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman monuments so we got ourselves up, hurriedly consumed some coffee and left the boat in order to meet up with today’s tour guide, Donkan, who was much more laid back than Ada the day before. He was knowledgeable, had a good sense of the history and the meaning behind most of the sites, but didn’t intrude too much and spent most of his time making sure no one wandered off too far and could not be corralled back into line. Sort of an English Sheep Dog making sure his charges behaved. It was a relatively short bus ride from the port across the Golden Horn River and to the peninsula which was the historic heart of the Empire of the East. We were let out on the open area on top of the hill that was the site of the old hippodrome, site of the famous chariot races. The foundations and catacombs remain beneath the pavements, but the building itself has long been lost. Earthquakes, sacking by the 4th crusade in the 13th century and then the fall and sacking of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century will do that. There are some monumental obelisks remaining and a serpentine column that the Romans brought back from Greece and which was supposedly made from the Greeks melting down the armor of the Persians in one of their 4th century BC victories. My favorite Hippodrome story is that of the Emperor Justinian putting down rebellion and cementing the powers of the Byzantine Emperors for nearly a millennium by blocking the doors on the crowd in the Hippodrome and having his soldiers massacre those trapped inside, an estimated 30,000 casualties.

Byzantine history is incredibly rich but not much studied in the US. Most of which I have picked up comes from reading historical fiction set in the medieval world. I highly recommend the novels of Dorothy Dunnett. Book IV of her Lymond Chronicles, Pawn in Frankincense ends up in Constantinople at the time of Suleiman the Magnificent with much of the last part of the book taking place in the Topkapi Palace. Her House of Niccolo also touches on Constantinople in the years immediately following the fall of the city to the Turks and Book II, The Spring of the Ram, going into great detail about the fall of the last Byzantine Emperor, David Comenos, as the Turks, took Trebizond, the last remaining outpost of the Empire. Guy Gavriel Kay’s Sarantine Mosaic books offer a look at the time of Justinian and the construction of the Hagia Sophia but in a sort of fantasy alternative reality way.

Next to the Hippodrome Square is the famous Blue Mosque built by Sultan Ahmed in the early 17th century and so called for the blue tilework throughout the interior. From the outside, it’s a lovely piece of classical Ottoman architecture, perched high on the hill and looking out over the city and the Sea of Marmara. Inside is absolutely breathtaking with acres of tilework and decorative motifs all in the non-figurative styles consistent with Islamic Art. Every time I looked up into the dome, I saw some new detail. I would have had to lie on my back on the floor for hours to take everything in. From there, a walk around the side of the Hagia Sophia to the Topkapi palace. The palace, seat of the Sultans from the 15th through the mid 19th centuries, is a large complex in parkland built around terraced courtyards descending the hill towards the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara. It’s now a museum, a bit reminiscent of The Tower of London in that there are various wings which you can wander in and out of depending on your fancy. It was a bit of an odd stop on this day as it was the grand opening of a newly renovated wing and exhibition and Erdogan was present to do the ribbon cutting. I did not see him but there was a good deal of police and military presence and certain areas were off limits and we had to leave, when we left, by the back gate and then make our way round and back up the hill on foot. The Ottoman Sultans, like certain other chief executives, seem to have become very enamored of shiny things. (That seems to have been one of the things that led to the collapse of the Sultanate and the establishment of modern Republican Turkey – overspending on gee-gaws and palaces in which to display them). There was a lot of ostentatious jeweled things on display, most of which was impractical. I did like the palace and grounds very much though.

After reascending the hill, it was time for lunch. Lunch on these kinds of tours usually isn’t much. The backroom of a tired old tourist restaurant putting out a watered down version of some famous national dish. This, however, was quite good, a lovely buffet in an upscale hotel’s restaurant and as we were now about 14,000 steps into the day, we ate heartily. After lunch, it was time for Hagia Sophia. It was a bit of a let down. Given that the building is about 1500 years old, it’s in constant need of maintenance. They are in the midst of a huge renovation currently. The outside is surrounded by scaffolding and the green netting familiar to anyone who has traveled in Europe for any length of time. The interior of the sanctuary is filled with enormous steel support columns while everything is shored up. The building began as a church, the seat of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The Ottomans, after taking possession, remade it into a mosque covering over much of the famous mosaic work. The Turkish government made it into a museum a century ago so that it could be enjoyed and marveled at by all faiths. The Erdogan administration turned it back into a mosque in 2020 confining non-Muslim visitors to the upper gallery floor. While I am glad to have seen the space having heard of it forever, I can’t say it currently lives up to its reputation. The surviving mosaics are lovely. One wonders what it must have looked like when it was in its original form.

The last stop, another short walk away, was The Grand Bazaar. This area, begun in the 15th century, now consists of dozens of pedestrian-only covered streets and covers about 7 ½ acres. There are some four thousand shops, 3,900 of which sell cheap jewelry. It was fun to wander through and avoid the overly aggressive sellers but in the end, it’s basically a medieval shopping mall where most of the stores are Claire’s. I will admit I did buy some things to take home, including tchotchkes for my colleagues. Anytime I go some place interesting, I try to bring a little something back as a thank you for having my back while I am away. Then it was back on the bus and back to the cruise port and dinner and a couple of much needed cocktails as we both had sore feet from two days of city walking. We went to bed relatively early. Tomorrow is a sea day, and then on to more Greek Islands. The weather report is not good for the next couple of days so that may change our plans. I’ll check back in from Santorini.

Dateline – Ephesus, Turkey

We woke up this morning to another gorgeous sunny day on the Aegean sea and the Celebrity Ascent was soon sailing into the Turkish port of Kudasai, which is a major resort town on the Southern coast of Turkiye.  The name translates as ‘bird island’ but there were not a lot of birds in evidence other than the inevitable urban pigeons, perhaps due to the large population of feral, but friendly cats.  There is a deep cultural bond between the Turkish population and their cats which are regarded as beloved members of the community and are therefore looked after by everyone.  They’re everywhere but, unlike American strays, are all clean and well fed.  I have heard that this is particularly true in Istanbul but cannot give a firsthand accounting as of yet.  I’ll get back to that one in a day or two. 

We were one of three cruise ships in port, all arriving at roughly the same time so the debarkation and sorting of people into proper tour groups was a bit of a free for all, but we eventually found the sign with our name on it and, following Sude, our twenty-something guide with a Gen Z blasé attitude toward life, we threaded our way through the usual tourist shops and into our van for the forty minute drive up the coast to the ruins of the ancient port of Ephesus.  Ephesus, under the benevolent protection of Artemis of the Ephesians, a mother earth goddess of fertility and nature incorporated into the Graeco-Roman pantheon, has been inhabited since neolithic times but came into its own in the Classical Greek and Hellenistic periods when the Temple of Artemis, rebuilt after being destroyed by fire set by the arsonist Herostratus in 356 BC into one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and remaining relatively intact for the next five centuries when earthquakes, the silting of the harbor and retreat of the sea, and Roman Imperial politics all combined to lead to the decline and eventual abandonment of the city.

Arriving at the upper entrance to the Ephesus archeological site, we were able to spend the next couple of hours descending the ancient processional way through the remains of temples, baths, theatres, storehouses, and the great multistory façade of the library of Celsus which was third only to those at Alexandria and Pergamon in the Graeco-Roman world.  I was fascinated with the geography of the city, confined between two steeply rising hills which made it into a ribbon of civilization along its valley and which also contributed to its success by making sure its water and sewer systems, with miles of terra cotta piping, kept the citizenry hygienic and healthy.  Thomas, with his archeological experiences, was able to provide running commentary on the preservation and excavations. 

At the bottom of the hill, we were treated to something called ‘The Ephesus Experience’ which is a sort of lesser Disney attraction with multimedia surround imagery trying to make you feel you were in ancient times and utterly failing.  Fortunately, it’s included with your admission to the ruins and does not cost extra.  If you ever go, feel free to skip it.  Then it was back on the van to the actual site of the Temple of Artemis which is a little distance away.  Nothing remains but the foundation and a single column reconstructed from pieces to give a sense of scale and, of course, more cats.

Our other stops were at a market offering samples of various traditional Turkish foods.  We both did our best Edmund Pevensie impressions by over indulging in Turkish Delight, even buying more to take with us.  Fortunately, there were no dwarves or White Witches in view.  Then on to a rug manufacturer for a demonstration on weaving techniques and showing off of various carpets (of course available for purchase and worldwide shipping).  The ones I most admired were silk on silk and far out of budget so I politely declined giving them my credit card number and shipping address.  Besides, my two bad cats at home would likely make short work of it.  That concluded our formal tour so we headed back to the bazaar in Kudasai for a lunch of deliciously spiced gyros, feeding of cats from the table, and a dessert of the traditional Turkish ice cream, dondurma, which has tuber flour and mastic in it which makes it much more resistant to melting, but which is sort of like trying to eat Silly Putty.  We both decided that it was a ‘OK, we tried it’ type thing.

The boat sailed out of the harbor, we took a nap, and then had a relaxing dinner.  We decided to skip the show (some sort of Irish singer-songwriter) in favor of turning in early and watching the original Star Wars Trilogy on the entertainment system.  I fell asleep somewhere during The Empire Strikes Back.  It wasn’t a big issue, I know how it ends. While Luke Skywalker and Yoda were lifting fighters out of a swamp and Han and Leia were escaping Imperial Forces through an asteroid field, I took some time to catch up on the most recent political news.  I rather wish I hadn’t.

What stuck out for me?  A president who announced that if you wore a MAGA hat to the polls and voted a straight Republican Ticket, he would send you thousands of dollars.  And people of a certain political leaning were believing this.  Last I checked, what happened in the voting booth was uniquely personal and how would anyone know how you cast your ballot?  Not to mention all the various laws which are supposed to protect polling places from undo political pressure.  A Secretary of Defense whose wish for personal vainglory outweighs common sense leading to the damage of a priceless historical artifact (not to mention the hiding of the actual damage to American interests the misguided Iraqi war has caused).  An Attorney General who refuses to say he will not interfere in election processes despite an oath to the constitution and explicit constitutional language that elections are the province of the states.  A Secretary of State who is making foreign service officials reveal their voting history and refusing to promote those who vote ‘the wrong way’.  A private individual (who violated US immigration law but does not appear to have caught the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE) who appears to be pursuing his own private foreign interventions contrary to the interests of the US through his control of Starlink.  Things will change with the midterms.  How they will change, I cannot predict. I think I will go back to playing with Turkish cats.

Dateline – Chania, Crete

I awoke this morning to a beautiful blue sky and sea and the Celebrity Ascent docking at the port of Souda on the island of Crete.  There’s not much in Souda, it’s mainly a commercial port for the loading and unloading of ships involved in Aegean trade so, when we disembarked after breakfast, we boarded a bus into the town of Chania, a few miles away.  Chania has been inhabited since the days of the Minoans, having been a trading port for the Minoans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans, the Venetians, and a few other groups along the way, each leaving their mark on the landscape  What currently exists is a charming little waterfront city where the people mainly live and work in the new town of the 19^th and 20^th centuries and the tourists flock to the old town, built and rebuilt around a Venetian era harbor framed by old fortifications and a lighthouse reconstructed by the Ottomans.  We walked the town, did some shopping, admired the views and stopped at a harbor front restaurant for a lunch of salad, gyros, and some of the best calamari I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting.  So as to go full Shirley Valentine, we also downed a small bottle of Raki between us. 

After our perfectly lovely time ashore, we meandered back to the bus and the ship and spent a few hours sunning and in the pool.  I must admit I have turned slightly pink but I’m not seriously burnt.  Must remember to pick up some more sunblock tomorrow.  It may be late October, but I am in a sunnier clime and more outdoors than is usual for me.  If this weather holds, it will help me decide that October is the perfect time to visit Mediterranean countries when making future travel plans.  There are rumors of some rains ahead.  We shall see.  I’m sure I’ll enjoy it whatever happens. 

After pool time, a brief nap and then to tonight’s show, a British magician who was pretty darn good at slight of hand and who did a number of illusions of the switch places with the glamorous assistant in the blink of an eye variety.  I could spot the general way in which tricks were done but not the specifics.  I opted for Indian for dinner.  Thought about hitting the casino and then decided to save my money so I retired to write this missive and an MNM column while I was at it.  We’re sailing onwards tonight and are due to dock outside of Ephesus in the morning.  More on my introduction to Turkyie later.

Yes, I am keeping up on the political news which seems to consist, as long predicted, of various parts of the administration doing their best to shape the midterm election results in their image.  Much is being made of non-existent voting by non-citizen voters, there continue to be unconstitutional power grabs of election machinery away from the states, propaganda continues to spew from outlets that should know better.  It’s going to take decades to unsnarl the Gordian knots this administration is laying for the future.  Will we get an Alexander the Great somewhere down the pike?  I certainly hope not.  The last thing we need is a military dictator, even if he wields a terrible swift sword.

Dateline – Someplace in the Aegean Sea

We got up Monday morning, breakfasted, and got ourselves packed.  We could have spent 150 euros on a taxi direct to the cruise port at Civitavecchia, some fifty miles away from central Rome but we decided 5 euro train tickets would be a better use of money so we schlepped our suitcases the few blocks from the hotel to Roma Termini station and found the train we needed.  Most at line at the ticket machine were on the same cruise so we managed to help each other get to the correct platform and off at the correct stop. 

Once we hit Civitavecchia, we all piled into taxis for the quick trip to the pier and into the boarding process.  I’ve been on a number of cruises in my day, but this is my first time with Celebrity and they seem to have gotten the process down to an exact science.  I have never boarded so quickly and seamlessly.  No hurry up and wait.  The usual mob scene of lifeboat drill replaced by some videos and a brief check in so we were in our stateroom within the hour of having hit the dock.  We spent some time exploring the public area of the ship, found the location of the important things, like the bars, had lunch followed by a couple of drinks and settled in for a nap.  Then some time on deck to enjoy the sunset, the dusk and the sea breeze, and the Italian coastline slipping by before dinner at a grill on the top deck. Early to bed.  Both of us are unwinding into true vacation mode.

This morning up for breakfast and time on deck watching us pass through the Straits of Messina with the toe of the boot of Italy on the port side and the Sicilian coast line on the starboard.  The weather continues to hold.  Sunny but not too hot.  I don’t find it sunbathing or pool weather but it’s perfectly acceptable book in a deck chair weather.  It’s a sea day so nothing much to do.  I don’t feel much like participating in the organized activities (although I did come in second in the trivia contest) so it’s strolling, people watching, eating, and the occasional cocktail.  Dinner tonight was lentil soup, roast duck, and crème brulee.  All rather good.  There was a show in the theatre tonight but there were no decent seats available by the time we finished eating and it looked like the sort of Las Vegas revue that I could easily miss so we declined and returned to the cabin early to watch some movies.  MNM needs to get cracking this week.  Tomorrow is our first port call at Chania, Crete.  More about that later.  We plan to explore on our own.

I caught up with the political news earlier today.  As the midterms approach and it looks like the Republicans are likely to be routed, the actions of the administration appear to have been turned up to eleven with defiance of court orders, overriding of laws duly passed by congress, and a rapid attempt to tear down NATO so that Trump can continue to show fealty to Putin.  Then there’s all the usual threats against the social institutions that continue to stand up against him including higher education, the press, and the judiciary.  When the current regime is gone, I still wonder how the enablers are going to try to explain themselves to friends, family and posterity.  ‘I didn’t know’ isn’t going to work as everybody knows what’s going on and ‘I was just following orders’ went out as a valid defense with World War II.  I would like to take a deep dive into some of what’s going on but I’m on vacation and trying to reset my brain, not overload it with things about which I can do nothing.   Be safe everyone.  Anything is possible and nothing makes sense.