Gadir - Gades - Cádiz - Phoenician Gateway To Europe

 

The Oldest City, Thought By Archaeologists To Have Been Established By the Phoenicians About 800 BC.

Courtyard of the Cádiz Convent Turned Boutique Hotel.  This Is Where We Stayed. Once Admitted Inside the Very Thick, Wide Walls, It Was Soundless, and Nearly Lightless Unless Using Electric Light.  The Massive Gates and Doors Are the Only Means for Entry and Departure, and are Equally Thick.

Back To Madrid - Horses Are Resting

      . . . . As my personal record of this Viaje it is necessary to include more foto notas from Madrid, as Madrid was our first city on the itinerary.  It was an excellent preparation for all that came next, including getting over the worst of jetlag in the comfort of the 5 star Hotel Prado.  Additionally to the comfort, it was location.  The famous Neptune Fountain is in the circle plaza outside, and a few steps away, cross the street, walk through the tipica big Hispanic city leafy, flowered, grass covered with public toilets, cross the street on the other side, and there you are: at the Prado Museum.

At this time at least, Spain is inexpensive,  which is why we could do this trip as 4 and 5 stars -- the dollar is so strong against the Euro.  However, this isn't the case for changing money. Big fees are charged, so we used cards almost exclusively.

Spain was vastly less expensive than anywhere in the US, particularly NYC.  Last night at our local, we had only wine and an appetizer last night at our local. It cost significantly more than any full meal with wine we had in Spain, including the most 'splurge' meal we had in Cádiz, in one of the very best restaurants in Spain, with an international clientele. 

And, ya, the wine last night was not near the quality of the Spanish terroirs; Europe doesn't tax wine and beer to death as the US does, nor must they it travel across the ocean, or even land -- so much of it is made near the restaurants. Many of restaurants have on their wine list wines available only in that particular restaurant-bar-taberna, meaning a special relationship with the vintners.

First Cena (Dinner) in Madrid, a restaurant that specialized in regional wild mushrooms.  Along with the wine, of the Castile Terroir, this may have also been the very best, most delicious meal we had on this journey. The plates and other dishes all had individual regional mushrooms and surrounding plants as their design.

As she cannot go on such a viaji, the bird pin placed on the design was gifted to me by as friend in her place right before we left. She has for a year been fighting cancer, with extraordinarily difficult treatments, who is scheduled for surgery very soon. 

 The pin was always in my cross body bag. Throughout the journey, at different meals, I clicked this Bird of Passage and texted the fotos to her in real time.  She said they picked up her spirits after yet another round of chemo.

Alvaro de Bazan y Guzman (1526-1588), a hero of Lepanto, 33 years as General Admiral of the Spanish Navy, never was defeated.  I was so excited to encounter this monument to him in an enclosed courtyard on our way to visit the 9th C Muslim Wall remains.  The Battle of Lepanto truly was a one of those most significant events in history.  Though almost a draw in terms of lives and ship lost, it did prevent the Turks from moving into the western Mediterranean.  It also increased, not only Spain's, but Europe's anger and disgust with France. She was not at Lepanto. Thanks to Francis I, France was allied, as she'd been for long, with the Turks.  Something we don't hear much of over here in terms of European history. Spain was one of the few European nations to send help to the Siege of Malta against the Turks.  France was begged to, but did not.

Most of all, I think, I was excited because I knew who Alvaro de Bazan y Guzman was! I didn't need to read the plaque to find out, I just needed his name. I knew about Lepanto and the Great Siege of Malta!  I felt the same way so often in the Prado, looking at portraits of different Spanish court grandees painted by Goya -- I knew who people such as Godoy and Floridablanca were.

This was the first time I noticed that Spain's historic sites have information plaques in Braille as well as print. It was the same at the 9th C Muslim wall remains.

This is one of Goya's historical interpretation of the battles with the French invasion forces. This one features Egyptian Mameluke Imperial Guard cavalry regiments. Yet another stupidity of Napoleon.  By the supreme Católica God who gave Spain back to the Christians after more than 7 centuries, how could he think the Spanish would passively accept a takeover that centered Muslim fighters?
[This is not my photo, as no photography or recording of any kind is allowed in the Prado.]

This Is Not the White House. The royal palace in Madrid, not far from the 9th C Muslim Wall remains.  This was the weekend, and tourists from near (Spain) and far were present even as closing time was imminent.  No, one cannot go in.  Not sure though, whether the flag meant the king was in residence.  This palace is surrounded by vast gardens that are essentially woods. The Spanish kings were even more insane about hunting than the English and French ones. This tradition has continued into the present: recall the Spanish royal scandal not that long ago regarding members killing elephants.

Madrid, our first Flamenco performance in Spain.  We were seated next to a lovely Japanese American couple from Seattle.  This was their final night before flying home from their vacation, which began in Fez, Morocco.  They liked Marrakesh much more than Fez, and Spain more than that. The wife is a Flamenco aficionado, who takes classes back in Seattle.  El V and I were the only audience members who masked.

Red is Passion.  See those hands clapping that distinctive Flamenco cracking rhythm? Despite the late 19th C Spanish officials and intellectuals, and later, Franco's repressive attempts to stop the prevalent popularity of Flamenco music and dance with foreigners and tourists, it was a failure.  At this time there is no national Spanish music at all, except Flamenco.  It is everywhere.  Students come in droves from everywhere to study in every city in Spain, though particularly in Sevilla and Granada, of course.  No matter where you are, you will hear casual Flamenco clapping as men and even little kids practice, even in train stations.

From my seat I had a splendid view of the dancers' feet.  The dancers are percussionists.  They and the musicians and singers are on a particularly constructed platform called a tablao (pronounced tabl-ow! ow like meow). This platform is actually a drum head, with air space between it and the 'ground' that makes for a resonator, as the belly of a non-electric guitar is a resonator.  'Tablao' is used interchangeably to refer to the stage-platform and to Flamenco itself.

You Can Drink the Tap Water in Spain

      . . . .  Madrid's tap water made all the difference for recovering from dehydration caused by jetlag, adjusting to the altitude, and thorough upset of usual metabolic routines.  I drank gallons and gallons.  Recall, high altitude also promotes dehydration, which dehydration in these circumstances makes jetlag, lack of sleep and metabolic interruptions so much worse.

Madrid's on a plateau surrounded by impressively jagged mountain chains.  It was spectacular as they appeared out of the clouds, snow-covered points and sides, as we were in that long descent to the airport. I recalled how moved and impressed I was waking to the view below of southwestern France, the vast forests, mountains, ravines and farmlands.  It was the same this time, except it wasn't Gaul, but Iberia, and it looked in terms color and soft shapes like all those paintings we know -- except this was real.  Then, suddenly these ominous mountains  . . . with steep ravines and foothills seemingly impassable except to those who know.  This is a Transhumance world.  There is even an upcoming festival in Madrid to celebrate the ancient Iberian Transhumance way of life.  El V recorded me, it turned out, face pushed against the window, eyes wide, repeating, "Wow," over and over.

It moved me, like that flight over southwestern France, this in my own eyes revaltion of what Spain is, it's history going back at least to the Phoenicians, the Romans and the Visigoths, particularly about Madrid, why it is here.  Recall, there is so little Islamic presence in the region as to only a single archeological artifact's survival of their barely there footprint, the antipodes of Southern Spain. Knocked me out, it did.

The observance of Women's International Day -- there is a lot to say about that, because we were right in it.

Can't believe we've been here just about 48 hours, as months of activity feel have happened.  However, jetlagged, needing to adjust to altitude, and the disruption of usual metabolic routine, while NO usual exercise, though a lot of walking is going on, up and down -- remember those mountains, hmmmm?  Plus eating so well, and o lordessa, in heaven, drinking wines made right here.

In the meantime too, when it comes to hotels, restaurants, art and entertainment, Madrid is so inexpensive, particularly compared to NYC.  Don't forget, that like the other European nations, i.e. the EU, Spain supports art and literature and entertainments.  We have nothing like this in the US.  In fact, in every way it feels like re-entering civilization from a long sojourn in a failed and toxic state, where we may all die any day from starvation, homelessness, disease, violence public and personal, climate catastrophe, and most of all plain all out stupidity.  In comparison to Madrid, even the avenues around the Met look grubby and shabby.

So much has happened already, including a whole day at the Prado, meetings with various people, drinking the best wine, and falling down unconscious -- not from the wine but from jetlag and altitude adjustment as well as arriving w/o sleep reasons.  Tomorrow is day trip to Toledo, which Spain took back from Islam in 1085, and which was the capital, as far as that would go, of Christian Spain, until Philip II decided to make this nothing place on this plateau his capital of his kingdom.

Gads, I love this!

I have some fotos, but am too tired to do the work to present them here now.

O lordessa it is wonderful to be here!

I could live here.  Easily. 

Spanish Is A Loving Tongue (A Nod to Great Singer, Joe Ely!)

      . . . .  The word used in Spanish for 'dressage' is 'doma.'

Essentially, it is the Spanish who gave us 'dressage' , which, ya, we all know, but just in case we didn't I thought I'd mention it.  People forget that in the 16th Century, Austria and the Habsburgs were inherited by the Spanish throne, which is why it is called the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Think about what this all means in terms of the history of the breeding of the horses themselves, who came from Spain in the 16th C. 

Doma vaquera riders usually choose breeds such as the traditional PRE (Pure Spanish breed) or Lusitano (pictured above), Thoroughbred-crosses or Arabians. These breeds are usually brave and calm, yet spirited and able to maneuver with lightning quickness. (Credit: olgaIT)

Here's an interesting piece from Dressage Today, concerning contemporary developments out of the Spanish-Spanish dressage techniques into the New World generally, and particularly the US West, called doma vaquera.  

In Spain, doma vaquera is also connected with the art of bullfighting. Both the work in the bullfighting arena and with cattle requires speed, quickness, agility and a high degree of collection from the horse. Unlike in dressage riding, where riders ride with one (snaffle bridle) or two reins (double bridle) in each hand, doma vaquera requires the rider to hold the reins in one hand, typically the left. The right hand must be free for work, such as holding the garrocha, a long pole designed to distract the bull. The discipline of bullfighting from a horse is called rejoneo. The horse for rejoneo is a doma vaquera horse that performs movements such as piaffe, passage, terre-a-terre, jambette, pirouette on three legs, etc. 

The Reads of Winter

      . . . . The books I've read or tried to read, or listened to, or read aloud in the last 2 1/2 months begins with The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger (2015) by Greg Steinmetz.

 Jakob Fugger der Reiche (1459-1525) in der Kunst

This man, born before the fateful 1492 voyage of Christof Colón, active throughout most of the 16th century, was Europe’s first millionaire, who was not a royal. Silver and land were the pillars of his wealth, made by lending to European monarchs, particularly Philip II, funding their wars and their rivalries.  They almost always lost; he almost always won, gaining control of what had been their silver mines and cities, making him all that much richer.  Much if not most of the hot flow of gold and silver coming into Seville via Philip II’s flotas from the New World, ended up in Fugger’s accounts as well.  This is how men who worked with money could become millionaires w/o being a monarch.  Fugger’s story is the birth story of capitalism, allowed by the vast rapine of the unbelievably vast rich riches of the New World, and the equally unbelievable stupid behaviors of monarchs.  It is a fascinating tale, even as it is a tragic one, particularly for African and Native Americans, as both the new worlds and old were transformed by floods of gold and silver. his book filled in a big missing space in the transformation of finance that allowed for the coming European era of industrialization and the finale of the medieval eras.

The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgewood and the Transformation of Britain (2021) by Tristram Hunt couldn't have existed without the Age of Fugger. Wedgewood well represents the changes to Europeans’ culture of the material life, the birth of mass production and industrialism, financed by what happened in the 16th Century, providing for the first time ornamental, decorative and often plainly useless, non-functional objects even to the lower middle classes as markers of status.  Not only did this brilliant fellow with quite poor health beginning with childhood tuberculosis of the bone in one of his legs get the whole world desiring English -- his! -- pottery, including the French, but received accolades for the quality and beauty of his works from Chinese porcelain connoisseurs. To more easily and far less expensively to receive the quality of clay his works needed he was instrumental in his region developing the canal system -- which also allowed his products and himself to get to London much more easily, quickly and safely. The Grand Trunk Canal system cost a billion dollars to build, in today’s money.  Not only pack pony breeders, owners and suppliers, objected to the project, but so did many ‘conservative’ lords and others, as being a waste of money. But if potters of luxury porcelain products weren’t important enough to get it built, the surge in coal mining in the region was. Josiah himself, who played an important role getting their route and connection to Liverpool approved and funded by the local lordships, was concerned it would put his potteries too much on the map, easy to visit (which is true), and thus catch the eyes of those who imposed taxes on large businesses.  The canal would make his business grow ever larger.

Currently I'm  reading The Story of Russia (2022) by Orlando Figes. A less large book than many who attempt these matters, less than half the size of Simon Montifiore's really wonderful Romanovs -- and Figes starts at the start -- long before the Mongolian incursions and conquest, and gets Putin and Ukraine in it as well at the end.  It explains so much about Putin, Russia and the Ukraine war.

Before the Figes I did get to read The Lion And The Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy (2022), by Alexander Rose. This is the same author who wrote Turn: Washington's Spies, from which the AMC 4-season scripted drama was adapted. If one wonders how the rebels came up with the idea of building a navy in Liverpool -- recall that Liverpool was Britain's greatest center of the African slave trade and everything that went with it, from shipbuilding to insurance to the forging of manacles and shackles.  It was no coincidence then, that Liverpool was also Britain's primary port for Southern cotton, and where the British Cotton Exchange was located.  These Brits provided so much money and assistance, not to mention encouragement, to confederate James Bulloch, the honcho from Georgia.

While reading Lion and Fox, I was listening to Edmund Morris's The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979) -- I've read the second and third volumes of Morris's award-winning biography, but hadn't read this one as I'd read other biographies of TR's earlier years prior to becoming POTUS). In this first volume of his biography of the (then future) POTUS, is included TR's uncle, who is one of the two central figure in The Lion and the Fox. SSo all through, as in the past, when I evaluate anything regarding Teddy, I take into account first that TR's beloved mother, Mittie Bulloch was a confederate, who would, if she could, do anything for the Rebels. As it was she did send lots of supplies and money, not only to her family on the plantation in Georgia, some of which went without doubt to her brother's efforts in Liverpool. She kept it up until public opinion forced her husband -- an ardent Northern unionist, instrumental in many ways to the Union war effort -- to stop her. Upon which, Mittie took to her room as a permanent invalid. Such an affecting scene when she was finally reunited with her brothers in Liverpool 2-3 years after Appomattox.  Her indulgent, adoring husband was taking her -- and thus the family- on a European tour for the sake of his wife's 'nerves.'  There, Mittie regained her nerves,and Teddy met his 'bully uncle James' for the first time.  Teddy hero worshipped his uncles -- the other one was working in Paris with Slidell.

For much of January my workout book (this is when I listen to audio versions of books) which I've nearly come to the end of, is In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire (2021) by Laurence Bergreen.  So much I never dreamed of I've been learning about the run-up to the Spanish invasion and what 'the Battle of the Armada" actually was.

Sir Francis Drake, (born c. 1540–43 circumnavigated the globe. Unlike Magellan, his global circumnavigator predecessor, Drake survived to continue fighting and plundering, pushing Spain to declare war on England, sending the ill-fated, infamous Armada.

By no means was it a single battle of a single day or even of a day and night and another day.  It went on for weeks. Elizabeth and her Lord Burley treated the navvies who save England from the Armada's invasion like shyte, just starting with refusing to pay them, then leaving them often literally naked and penniless, to try to get home.  Cynically, Burley figured the fewer of the men who survived the fewer the Queen needed to pay somewhere down the line when she might get around to it.

Prior to the Drake biography I listened to the audio version of Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe that Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign  (2007) by Stephan Talty. 

Sir Henry Morgan (c. 1635-1688), Welsh privateer

Morgan was almost two centuries post Drake, but the Spanish were still the Catholic bane of England and fair game, most fair game, nay the game to which the Brits were entitled, if only for the sake of religion.  Drake's trajectory continued almost up to the age of Bourbon Spain -- which had so many of the same problems and errors as did Phillip II's Spain when it came to a navy.

Which brings me to our current read-aloud to each other before lights out, an old one history, Bourbon Spain 1700 - 1808 (1989) by John Lynch, part of a many-volume academic series of the history of Spain, for which series Lynch is the general editor.

Among the works waiting for me are The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East (2022) by Nicolas Morton that tells me all sorts of things I've wanted to know about the region and the period, told from the perspective of the then established medieval kingdoms in the near East, from Europe and from that of the Mongols.  It's wonderful, but I haven't had time to read it yet.  Also there's Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran (2011) by Dilip Hiro, which will help in my doomed desire before I die to get some geographic, cultural and historical sense of this vast region about which, alas I know nothing. ]

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I read two novels in January!  Two! This after having read no fiction at all for a long time -- nothing appeals or keeps my attention. 

I do admit alternate, historical sf/fnal Babel: An Arcane History (2022) by R.F. Kuang, though it enthralled me for at least 300 pp. as no sf/f novel has been able to do for in decades, didn't quite carry me all the way to the end. I skimmed the final fifth (it's a long novel). Everything about Babel, from the issues of translations, which is part and parcel of our own household, to having one of the primary four characters as young Haitian woman speaking of the issues of her native Kreyol -- which in our own history has only in the last decade been recognized as a language, and which el V has learned -- language is a primary tool, like religion, for imperialists, is My Stuff. In other words, Babel is about something that authentically matters, historically and presently. However, the novel as a novel would have been better reading if about 100 pp. had been cut out. The plotting and characterization was good, but, and I know this sounds odd -- there was too much of both.  Or more accurately, the book repeated the points already made about the characters and their relationships, how hard they have to study, how overwhelming the amount of work, several times in every chapter, which wasn't necessary, and that felt rather amateurish.  But Babel certainly lived up to its title, and I gave the novel enormous credit for that. In the end all the figures we meet in this alternate history sf/fnal novel, wherever they are from or go, or what they do, are as incomprehensible to each other as the Old Testament humanity are to each other with the failure of their tower planned to allow them to conquer heaven.  No matter how much and deeply language was studied, whether to fuel exploitation of others as well as the planet, it dd not provide a solution to this, which brings violence always.  One understands this so well, living with pre-lingual children, their outrage and frustration that no matter how they try we don't understand what their issues are (so much of the time). In the end too, no matter how well planned the resistance to the colonial metropole's power is, in the end, centuries later, we are still waiting for the day of reckoning, Likely the ends of such empires and colonialisms only arrive with full out global calamities such as what happened in the 6th century, and then the consequent Dark Age births the nascent new colonialisms and slaveries. I am the one who said that, not Kuang. She's very young, and thus barely able to raise the fortitude to face squarely in her own novel her characters' specific failure to reverse the plundering of their language, culture and worlds to which they'd been born, before being plucked for Oxford's imperial translation college of Babel. The exception to being ripped out of one's own world and thrown into another is, of course, the white English gentry-small aristocrat girl, who, extremely gifted with language deploys her gifts to have a life different from that decreed for young women of her social status and wealth. 

Deepti Kapoor, author of Age of Vice

The second novel is Age of Vice (2023) by Deepti Kapoor, a great big gangster-thriller set in Northern India, and particularly, New Delhi. It's the first novel in years I have read to the very final word in order to find out who did what and why -- I'm not quite sure even so I have it figured out.  This too is a long novel, but I managed to gallop through it during four nights of reading (there's a lot of white space in a lot of sections, which helps).  This novel has received enthusiastic reviews for the most part, though some have said it is 1) too long; 2) melodramatic for the sake of melodrama, and implausible -- but the pace is so fast and the text goes downs so easily one hardly notices. Lee Child is among the pros who have enthusiastically endorsed it, and so has Marlon James. I do not know if Age of Vice is published in India.  The author lives in Portugal.

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Now, of for mid-season Mardi Gras Postmambo-"For the Funk of It" style, and much, much, MUCH else. Hope the weather cooperates despite much rain expected,  Back next month, to get ready for Spain.

The First Act Of Transition Often Is Farcical -- As Well As Bloody Hell

      . . . . "The first act of history is often farce,” Kyle Harper muses in The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease and the End of an Empire (2017), regarding the ascension and fall of emperor Maximinus in the 3rd C.

This emperor was the first of the "barracks emperors", those put in power by the army (paying off the army).  This particular guy was such a clown that the army that put him there, took him outta there, not that long after.

In other words, people breathed a sigh of relief that this fool was gone -- the creator of the farce he was making of Rome, to those of the Empire, and those outside of it, by his behaviors and stupidity -- only to be succeeded by worse and more competent usurpers, opening that long period that essentially led to the first partitioning of the empire, as so much of what Romans had been used to for hundreds if not thousands of years, began to disappear, along with population and institutions.

[Or, as Dr, Jeet Heer muses, romperisto is not the Mussolini, he's the Gabriel d'Annunzio who heralds the arrival of fascism.]

Endemic pandemic is inevitable for cultures as the Empire was in that century, dense, urban and widely connected -- and are experiencing climate change, all of which happened at the end of the Roman Warm Period, or Roman Climatic Optimum (RCO). This period ran from approximately 250 BC to AD 4, so much so that Theophrastus (371 – c. 287 BCE) wrote that date trees could grow in Greece if they were planted but that they could not set fruit there.

The Antonine Plague Decimates Rome

These beneficent conditions change for good in the mid 3rd century as the empire transitioned into late antiquity, losing its resilience to recover from various crises due to the pressure of pandemic diseases and climate change.  

The Fate of Rome is astoundingly good, with all sorts of pointers as to what we're facing and up against, the same now as then (differences being mainly germ theory and vaccines, as well as being able to study the past with technology beyond even Roman imagination) as he traces the combination of pandemic and climate change's effects on the Roman empire -- and the whole world for that matter, since the world's connectivity had NEVER had such global through lines before, and there had never been so many cities, not only in this empire, but in the Asian empires too.  With those cities came relentless push into the habitats of the wild -- and so, pandemic.  There hadn't been any, previously, at least in the west before the 3rd C, as any evidence for same is missing from both recorded records and forensic archaeology.  The West and the East seemed to mirror each other during the era of the third Century - 6th-7th Centuries C.E., as Michael Wood observes in his The Story of China: The Epic History of a World Power from the Middle Kingdom to Mao and the China Dream  (2020). Coincidentally Wood's book is enthusiastically blurbed by Tom Holland, author of Persian Fire (2005), which thoroughly enthralled me as well.

Harper's latest, Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History (2021), is likely just as good Fate of Rome -- and contains some of the same material one would guess. shows that the story of disease is entangled with the history of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism. He is particularly concerned in this books with the relationship between poverty and health. Perhaps, partly, because as good as The Fate of Rome is, it got no attention in the media, whereas, of course, this later one, while we are in our own era's pandemic, has.

Harper is professor of classics and letters at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425 and From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity. He lives in Norman, Oklahoma.

https://time.com/6103612/covid-pandemic-vaccine-smallpox-eradication/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Postmambo Colombia Music Seminar - Trailer. And HORSES!

      . . . .  I keep forgetting to put up the trailer for the Postmambo Colombia Music Seminar, which is coming right up.

People are so looking forward to this trip, for a multiple of reasons.  As activities are outdoors, the restaurants are open sites, travel within the area will be open to air, and the group is small enough that people can can move --masked -- in separate vehicles -- people feel secure.  The weather is terrific now too.

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     . . . . It's been non-stop busy here.  Even this weekend of splendid weather -- about to break for the more usual July of 90+ temperature and humidity -- it was a small, local arts community in New Jersey, with its own gorgeous theater, where the organization provided a showing of Tierra Sagrada to its community.  Trying to decide whether to go to Lisbon in the fall, for the annual WOMEX conference, where Tierra Sagrada will be part of the film festival.  Plus there was the 4th of July uptown in our friends courtyard garden, el V's bd at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where we got to view the just opened exhibit, Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color.  These were reconstructions of pieces that we've always seen a white and bare of any color at all.  On occasion, the original, as we have it, was shown next to the reconstructed color pieces.  I took this occasion to use the Android's camera for the first time.

Northern Bowman, Persian or Scythian

The city's exploding with music events, with musicians coming in from Latin America, particularly.  Last night it was Brasil, at Central Park's Summer Stage.  It was the most successful event the series has had so far this summer.

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     . . . . Non stop anxiety here due to the raging covid numbers, and the fool of a mayor who succeeded the previous fool of a mayor.  All the officials gravely intone -- finally forced to admit that the numbers in the hospitals alone has us in extreme high risk category for infection -- we should maybe consider wearing masks indoors.  We are surrounded by people having to deal with this, while their beloved relatives are in hospital with other conditions and then contract covid from the staff, and they are not allowed, then, to see their relatives.  Which means they can't keep monitoring how their relatives are being treated.  In one case, there is a doctor who insists on giving the patient an epilepsy med.  She doesn't have epilepsy, and it turns her into a zombie -- and thus incapable of protesting anything they do or don't do for her.  Why yes, we just received two new boxes of high quality masks from amazilla.

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      . . . . Non stop rage and despair on most other fronts.  What fools -- when not just outright evil, which there is no doubt most of them are  -- these jerkwaddies who have counted coup on the country, and what greater fools are us, who have allowed it and done nothing.

A map of Persia, indicating major settlements, regions, and mountain ranges, as well as the march of the Ten Thousand (dotted line).

     . . . . I take consolation from Xenophon's Anabasis -- the March of the 10,000 -- and Tom Holland's Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (2005 -- so author's filled with 9/11 Clash of Empires interpretation of everything).

Additionally, I have become immersed in the splendid novel, Grand Hotel Europa, from Dutch author, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, originally published in Europe in 2018, and translated and published here this last month. The presiding genius of Grand Hotel Europa is Clio, as the lost lover, muse of European history, particularly Italy and Central Europe's. Though not exactly historical fiction, it's difficult to imagine someone who takes historical fiction seriously not being at the very least intrigued by the novel.  It's very long, so I fear its beguiling aspects may begin to pale at a certain point, but if this is the case, I have not yet reached that point.  Michele Hutchisson's translation fulfills the shimmering, yet transparent beauty of the prose, which wins as much admiration as the reader can provide.

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     . . . . Watching Indian historical epics, during long hot nights, which not only sends me constantly looking at my World Atlas -- such a huge book, it is fortunate the bed is near my screen -- while marveling at the integration of elephants as not only known and usual, but essential elements of the societies in such a variety of ways -- but teaching me about a whole new breed of horse, the curly-eared Marwari warhorse.

These horses appear to have been bred originally -- perhaps starting in the 13th-4th centuries, post the Mongolian-Turcic conquests of Central Eurasia -- in northwestern India, crossing some Arab stock with 'native' equines and the horses of the Mughuls and the  Khanates.  They became signature horses of the various northern kingdoms such as Jodhpur (Marwar) region of Rajasthan, and by the 17th century then, the horse of the kingdoms of Maratha Empire, which at its zenith covered all of Central India, most of the western seacoast, the Doab, that fertile land between the Ganges and its greatest tributary, the Yamuna.  I think it was the Brits who called it "Hindustan."

These horses, while large and powerful, thus warhorse, also need far less water and forage than most horses.  This is more than useful for an empire that encompasses extensive desert and rough infertile ground. The mares typically are larger than the stallions.  They have loyal and courageous natures, are said they would not leave their rider even when he was killed in battle.  It is also said that when engaging an army that used war elephants, fake elephant trunks would be fastened to their bridles, which confused the elephants into thinking the horses were baby elephants, allowing the riders to attack the elephant unexpectedly. The favorite coat for the cavalry warhorse is said to have been 'pinto', as we see in the painting above.

So it is again, when all else fails, horses still give me delight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     . . . . Listening via streaming to a Cali, Colombia radio station.  It is all over the music festival Postmambo will be attending, among other activities.  The things we can do these days ....

The Dark Ages On Three Kings Day

     . . . . Today is Three Kings Day, the day which begins the count down to Mardi Gras. 

In Roman Catholic countries, and here, in New Orleans, we eat King Cake.  We have some, from Mille Feuille, our local French bakery -- which makes all the very best of everything that it makes.  It feels all the more important to observe King's Day since, for a very long time, 01/6/21 will be thought of on this date, in the USA  

Mardi Gras's comin', BAAAAAAAAAABEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Doncha fergit it!

In the meantime, even in the Dark Ages, surely, at least in the monasteries, Three Kings Day a/ka/ Epiphany was observed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     . . . . A long time ago, 1938 in fact, Robert Graves, who made the Empress Livia live forever, thanks to his character of Emperor Claudius, the BBC, and actor Derek Jacobi, way back in 1972, published an historical novel of another age, a different Roman Empire, a newish religious era, titled Count Belisarius.

For newcomers to these names, Commander Belisarius is an historically lauded general of the 6th C -- 505 - 565. He was part of the times that historians have called Europe's "Dark Ages." This is the century that has been the favorite chronological location for Britain's King Arthur.

Looking through this so readable novel, it differs in so much from what the current historians of his time and actions I've been reading for the last ten years.  This was another effective military commander badly treated by a fearful, jealous Byzantine emperor. But even so, Graves seems to be wrong, deliberately or otherwise, about much of even the small, basic stuff we do know about the Commander.  For one thing, Graves has chosen, according to himself, to present this story as a Legend, a Romance in the mode of the Arthurian cycles as written in the Medieval period.  Partly that is due to Graves depending on Procopius as his major source -- as do all, of course, including respectable historians -- but Procopius is infamous for all the axes he grinds in his Secret History, his prejudices, his personal antagonisms, his conscious pay-back and sheer malicious joy in blackening reputations. Though he loved Belisarius, oooo how he hated the Empress Theodora!

Unlike Graves's two Claudian novels, which I've read several times, this is a first read of Count Belisarius. I'm starting to think  Gore Vidal's Julian (the Apostate) - 1964, and Robert Harris's Cicero Trilogy, were influenced by this earlier book, particularly with Vidal's structure, and Harris's choice for narrator.

It's been a bright spot in these damned Omicron-coupled-with-insane politico clowns weeks, to feel I've finally gotten something of a handle on the Gothic, Vandal and Hunnic wars of the 5th century, and some of the 6th century, for both the western and the eastern empires (which, by the end of the 5th century, the western empire was in the agony that transformed it into the states that became Europe). 

I'm really understanding why it is so many archaeologists and historians warn, "Be grateful you were not born in the 6th , 7th -- a century that brought Bubonic Plague to Constantinople and Europe, among all the other ordeals and horrors -- and 8th centuries -- though honestly, for So Many, the 5th and 9th + centuries don't look all that good either. At least in the 9th century Europe got Charlemagne and his dreams of a unity Christendom (he failed, as Christianity and all religions fail at that sort of unity), culture, civilization and knowledge.

I'm trying to get a firmer grip on the Goths in the Danubian lands, Italy, Africa, Gaul and Iberia prior to the Arab explosion in the 7th century. So dark, the written information so scarce -- and all of it biased as heck

I do not think I shall ever get even a slippery grip on the Persians -- there were so many iterations of the Persians, starting so far back, and going on for many eras.  So very very VERY many eras. To this day so many in Iran speak Farsi-Persian, as well as speakers of Dari Persian throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Looking at the stat NYC covid map: there are large parts of the boroughs that are more than 50% infected -- or just positive?  They don't tell us that. Our nation hit 1,000,000 new cases today.  Yes.  One MILLION. So, we are not at all out and about these days. 

Plus. it's cold here.

Though not as frigid as it will be the weekend, and this weekend won't be as frigid as next week.  Tomorrow morning we have Maybe Snow. Tonight we're doing serious comfort food for dinner.

Some hearty red Spanish wine.    

Vacation, Friends, Delta, Postmambo, NOLA Reconnect, Books, TV, But In The Beginning We EAT!

      . . . . It's been a long time, so much going on, but in the end, IT'S ALL ABOUT AUGUST, which is all about -- 

CORN ON THE COB & HERITAGE TOMATOES!  Am I right or am I right? Reveling and gorging, with the best pots of beans, salads and sausages.  What a month this has been for eating, which has all been done at home, or even the first week, spent  at our Saratoga's friend's house. Delta made sure of that. We were not then and are not not now though, in the least deprived staying away all together from restaurants again.  So much delight in getting our produce and other foods at the Green Markets (and O! the green markets up Saratoga way!), and then, cooking together, as B and S and I did each day, with much lubrication provided by Host S's wine cellar, B's brought-alongs, local beers from the Saratoga Minogue's Beverage Center, and any and all music anyone could possible desire or have a yen to hear.

     Every second of Saratoga was more than splendid, even while asleep. The nights dropped into the 50's.  We slept with windows open.  The air was fresh and good smelling, any time day or night. The weather was just what one wanted for an August NYC getaway.  Then we came home, to roaring surges of Delta, and fearing yet again They will steal Thanksgiving and the rest of the holidays from us.

Back in the City though, and back in our grooves. Every time we think, "Well, maybe we don't need any more Postmambo Movie Nights, or any more NOLA Reconnect events, because people will be going out now -- well, no.  Our Host S provided such a moving tribute to how important these Postmambo activities and events have been for him in the pandemic.  Postmambo and his dog -- his gf lives in another town, and has a full-time job, so he's alone mostly.  Imagine, being up there, snowed in, blizzards howling round these past two winters.  "Some very dark days," he said, and said nothing else.  It was kind of emotional for me to be watching Summer of Soul from Harlem, 1969 (film July 2021), and Leningrad Cowboys (1993, Helsinki) films in company with him, el V and Ben, people who have attended to many music events together over the years, and now doing it only by screen again, thanx to jerkwaddies who won't wear masks or get vaccinated, and watching in the same place Steve is when doing NOLA Reconnect and Postmambo.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

READING

Non-fiction

El V and I continue bedtime read-aloud of Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000 (2009); I continue for myself with Judith Herrin's Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe (2021), 

both of which go so well with the content in the review of The Selected Letters of Cassiodorus: A Sixth-Century Sourcebook (2020) translated and edited by M. Shane Bjornlie, in the latest London Review of Books.  Cassiodorus -- bridge between Late Antiquity Rome and the following eras of murdrous kinglets, want-to-be emperors, etc.  Also the surviving literature, with emphasis on 'surviving', as it seems the 5th century is where everything changes and transmutes, assisted later by whatever literary focus Charlegmagne's scriptors possessed, thus what was lost. Reading this is far more interesting to me probably, than reading the book itself, as I'm not a Latin scholar.

Fiction

The Germans of antebellum New Orleans, how much have we thought about them?  Of course Germans arrived in New Orleans in the 1830's and 1840's as they did in so many cities here, such as St. Louis, progressive labor and political activists, bringing the information, messages and means of Revolution -- and then fleeing from the failure to overset the crowns and oppressions of Old Europe's old Empires and Kingdoms.  They also brought their arts and culture, as we see here in this astonishing work, The Mysteries of New Orleans by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein, translated and edited by Steven Rowan (2002).  It was originally serially published in 1854 and 1855, and then unavailable until 'rediscovered' in 1990. Why did it disappear? From the opening paragraph of the "Preface and Acknowledgments":

This edition began as a whim and ended as an obsession.  The memory of Reizenstein and his notorious book was preserved primarily by J. Hanno Delier. [ftn.1] It has long been known that Ludwig von Reizenstein wrote a book about New Orleans which offended the taste of its time and was quickly withdrawn from circulation; more could not be said. It is safe to assume that the book, Die Geheimnisse von New Orleans, remained unread for more than a century until 1990, when I managed to reconstruct almost of it from the microform files of the Louisiana Staats-Zeitung . . . .

We learned of this work via last week's NOLA Reconnect session which focused on the Spanish language newspapers of New Orleans.  However, as the featured scholar of the non-English newspapers of New Orleans's history further informed us, there were others, not just French, which we expect, of course, and Spanish, which still too few people think about, as for some reason the deep Spanish history and roots of New Orleans remains overlooked by American History (particularly by those who have positioned themselves as gatekeepers as what the narrative of US history is supposed to be).  German and Italian were among those publications in other languages.

As this cover art for the 2002 translation informs us, among the culture and traditions the Germans gifted to Victorian USA, is the gothic manner and sensibility.  Not only did that map finely upon New England's (think, Hawthorne), but so obviously, once one's attention is caught, with that of the most 'gothic' city of the nation, New Orleans. Late nineteenth Century New Orleans author, Lafcadio Hearn, with a tessara of backgrounds, wasn't New Orleans's sui generis. 

Three times a week, I am most satisfactorily re-immersed in the first novel of Sharon Kay Penman I had ever read, When Christ and His Saint Slept (1994).  am not re-reading the novel though, I am listening to it.  Be assured, this is a wonderful book to accompany 2 1/2 hour workouts!

This is a lively novel, deeply researched, which makes understandable to a non-scholar how and why the nineteen-year bloody tragedy, known as the Anarchy, descended upon 12th C England and her people after the death of King Henry I. Since I first read When Christ and His Saints Slept, I have learned a very great deal about everything even remotely connected with these years, and not only in England. I confess this has allowed for an even greater pleasure in the narrative, and admiration for Penman.

As is Penman's manner, the women are half of the principal characters, starting with Empress Maud, also named Matilda, daughter of King Henry I, to whom he bequeathed his crown, and Matilda, the queen of the usurping successor, Stephen, Henry’s nephew, and Maud's cousin. In many ways, as Penman shows the succession of back-and-forth battles, the successes and failures on both sides, this is as much a women’s war as it is that of their lords.  As women, they have to fight on multiple fronts, not only battlefields.

The set pieces of terrible violence make the suffering of the average Englander clear, as, per usual, lords and their ladies are spared the worst, except on the battlefield, and even then they can often be ransomed instead of just killed. That this civil war indecisively juttered on for nineteen years, despite so many furious, grim and grisly military encounters, leads the reader to consider, perhaps, most of the protagonists lacked any talent for strategy or for building coalition.  All of the men appear to be more than competent warriors, but as war commanders and statesmen, maybe not?  This includes Empress Maud-Matilda too. We see at each turn that failures emerge out of character defects of all the protagonists. Medieval nobles and royals were the not trustworthy or faithful to anyone, much less their inferiors, despite chivalric pretense, which was viewed as weakness if / when a figure practiced such behavior outside romances.

The blood of William the Bastard runs fast and thick in the veins of all the protagonists, that wild, fierce, cruel, violent and stubborn heritage, that cannot brook any thwarting of their will from any quarter, that will never compromise or negotiate. With Henry II’s coronation, Henry I’s grandson, and an Angevin – Plantagenet as well, this was the blood that would rule England and remained convinced for centuries their divine right to rule France as well. The more I read along in this novel, the more I see the same kinds of arrogant treachery and punishment, such as a willingness to use starvation and destruction as weapons upon one’s own people England that the Normans wreaked upon the English in the years and decades after Hastings – the plundering, and the theft too. The English did the same in France in the 14th Century during the Hundred Years War. Plantagenets Edward III and his son, the Black Prince, are historically (in?)famous for what came to be called chevauchée, but that sort of warfare was not by any means a new addition to tactics and armaments. It took until the 15th century before that Plantagenet blood was replaced in England’s royalty – though the desire to rule France as well continued through the 16th Century, with or without blood heritage of the Bastard and the Angevins.

One inevitably considers: if in 1066, Harold and his army hadn’t been so exhausted at Hastings, having just fought and won a previous hard pressed bloody battle against the Danes hundreds of miles away, from which they force marched immediately back south to take on the Bastard, mayhap England might have remained firmly within the North Sea and Scandinavian sphere of influence, and not have gotten pulled into those of France and Europe. How much blood and treasure England would have been spared, perhaps, if that hadn't happened. Yes, that would be a big alternate history, That Penman did not write alternate history, but did her best to bring us in a readable narrative what we think we know, I am deeply grateful.

Books, There Are Many!

     . . . .  Spending the holiday weekend trying to catch up. It only took until 1 AM from arriving at the Miami airport when They Said get there for the 2:35 PM flight, until into the next day to get home.  At one point the plane even turned around on the runway and went back to the gate and all the passengers deplaned again, and sat in the terminal for hours.  A long, masked day.  But at least Miami Airport had food places and good coffee.   So now we're trying to get ready for Thursday's Zoom Postmambo Meet-up, which is, el V's birthday, and the following Thursday's Postmambo Movie Night, as well as other things.

~~~~~~~~ In the Meantime -- About Money and a Librarian!

     . . . . By chance this spring I've been listening to several books of financial history. which inevitably becomes the history of political and mercantile corruption and crime, financial busts, bubbles, panics and depressions, corruption, wars. Among these histories is Ron Chernow's (1990) The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance.  Needless to say, a great deal has changed in the perspectives of the history of banking and the finance and 'investment' industries that devoured the banking business since the passing of another 30+ decades. This is equally true for the much later books such Liaquat Ahamed (2009) Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World.

But even in Ahamad's book, the reader learns, if only peripherally, about Bella da Costa Greene, the Pierpont Morgans's private librarian for their great collections here at the library and museum Pierpont built at Madison Avenue.  

Learning of Bella da Costa Greene, who was born into a black activist family as Jim Crow tighened its noose of the US, and to have her career -- as woman yet! -- had to pass for white, of course this signaled an excellent entry point for an historical fiction for somebody to write (not me).  Evidently others thought a fiction featuring this fascinating figure was something to do too, and did it.

Here in The Washington Post (paywalled) we have an interview with the co-authors of The Personal Librarian, Heather Terrell and Victoria Christopher Murray.

~~~~~~~~  Reading Histories:

    . . . . Chris Wickham's (2009) The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000. This book’s first section covers the same ground, though with a different perspective in some areas, as the also read-aloud, Peter Brown's (1971) The World of Late Antiquity. The perspectives are very different generally, since Wickham’s work is firmly within contemporary data based, statistical, demographic, archaeological, linguistic, etc. work that has changed historiography so much in the last half century. I also relatively recently, i.e. this year, learned a great deal of the late Roman Empire in Douglas Boin's (2020) Alaric the Goth: An Outsider's History of the Fall of the Roman Empire. 

These histories fit well into June's discussion on Bret Devereaux's blog "Collection" -- The Queen's Latin: Or Who Were the Romans Part I, and so far, Part II.  Though he does seem (so far) to ignore that Alaric, despite how Romanized in all ways that he was, was refused citizenship, and even advancement beyond a certain level, in the army -- quite like what George Washington with the Brits in the French and Indian Wars. 

What is clear, past, and present, is the two opposing arguments continue about the Roman West vs. East.  Continuity / transition vs. Sharp change / fall? 

Both of these depend on one's perspective as to Western vs. Eastern Empire, Latin Empire vs. Greek Empire -- the same fiber, weave and cloth, or different from the beginning?

I've been reading continuously the newer "Roman" histories for the 'general' reader over the the last few years, such as Adrian Galsworthy's (2016) Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World, and James O'Donnell's (2009) The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History.*

However, my reading in Roman history is fertile preparation ground for my real recreational historical interest,**  the transition from late antiquity to the middle ages -- Goths! Vandals! Visigoths! Ostrogoths! and mine real favorite, the Merovingians (along with, later, past the scope of this book, the Mongols and Turks)! Franks! Norse! --  which Wickham's book determines to cover in detail. One does have to consider this is 600 years, and the book's less than 700 pages, which might mean a page per year? It doesn't really work out that way, thank goodness, but still, this is Big History, of which, ah-hem,  I'm in favor. And certainly anything Wickham misses here, he's covered in his other works.

The one thing we know certainly is the 6th century was a terrible time into which to be born. One signal that informs us of this: we have less written documentary evidence for the 6th than just about any other century of "Europe" except the 4th. This would explain then, too. why the Western Church possessed more land in "Europe" in the 6th C than it has ever since. But in the last decades we've fortunately been able to learn some of what is not in the tiny written record of documentary history, from historical archaeology.

I'm still waiting for the history of Merovingian Gaul, and Visigothic Spain.

~~~~~~~~~ Reading Fiction

     . . . . It took a long time this year for a novel I wanted to read to show up one way and another.  Fortunately for me I have acquired the final three novels in Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series set in the regional of the fictional Sicilian city of Vigatta -- The Sicilian Method (2020) – third to final Montalbano.  The Cook of the Halcyon, and Riccardino are the last two titles, both published in the US in 2021. the Author died in 2019.

Mr. Camilleri prepared years ago for the end of the Montalbano series.

“I finished him off five years ago,” he said in 2012. “That’s to say, the final novel in the series of Montalbano is already written and deposited at the publishing house. When I get fed up with him or am not able to write any more, I’ll tell the publisher: Publish that book.”

Also, the latest Martin Walker’s  a Bruno Chief of Police series set in past and present Provence, The Coldest Case. I've been looking forward to this since finishing up all the previous Bruno novels by the end of last summer.

~~~~~~~~~~Ranking First Half 2021 Reading

     . . . . Now that half of 2021 has passed, I can speak definitely as to which books were my most enjoyable, most informative reading, for the first half of this year:

Robert Irwin's (2018) Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography;

James Grant's (2019) Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian;

Marie Favereau's (2021) The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World;

And already, the history noted above, Chris Wickham's (2009) Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 - 1000 qualifies.

~~~~~~~~~

* Oddly, as much as I respect and appreciate Mary Beard's work, I find reading her books a chore. Not her fault, but mine.

** Just in case: my professional specialization is the history of the colonial Americans, and the history of the United States, via the lenses of the African Slave Trade and slavery in the Americas, and specifically the slave system of the United States.