Tag Archives: Nature

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Turkey – Mount Koressos, House of Mary

When you travel in groups compromises are always necessary. When the group disagrees you can sometimes divide up or sneak off on your own for a while. Other times you just have to deal with it. When you share hotels, cars, buses, trains, and meals with your companions, it’s generally not a good idea to fight all the time. I’ve been on trips where this happens and it truly kills everything.

Being in Turkey I had about five-hundred things I wanted to do, history being at the top of my list. So when we were headed to Ephesus I was fired up. We only had one day there. I could spend six days in Ephesus and not get bored. But then, other members of the group wanted to take most of that one morning and visit the supposed House of Mary which is near Ephesus. I hear this and I’m like, “Oh, uh, …” [checks watch] (I did indeed wear a watch then, which seems strange now.)

I was raised Irish / English / Sicilian Catholic, so you know it’s seriously in my blood. But I was also raised with a light touch of it. My own Grandmother would frequently talk with us about this or that doctrine, Pope, etc, that she disagreed with, alongside her own take on life. It’s a very liberating American take on religion. Nowadays, depending on the barometric pressure outside, I can either truly believe or am an atheist or whatever. A lot of it depends on my mood. So basically I would not consider myself very religious, but I really do try. In this Turkey travel group though were several ultra-hyper religious types. So they wanted to go see the House of Mary and were very set upon it.

Given how much of Ephesus was on my brain I could have protested. I let it go in the name of cohesion. This was the right choice. I figured it would be nice to see the mountains, maybe say a prayer, and generally just enjoy the ride. This was exactly what happened. I don’t regret it.

The full titled House of the Virgin Mary sits atop Mount Koressos which is a few miles from Ephesus. It’s a small house and religious shrine. By which I mean it’s a religious shrine that reminded me a lot of the shrines in Asia, specially Japan. As in, it’s a commercial tourist destination. There’s very little religion about it. In say Japan, sometimes you’ll be walking around temple grounds and there’ll be these people hocking Hello Kitty fascism toys from stalls. I always found this odd, to me a dead quiet church is my pinnacle of prayer. But in many cultures it’s not a big deal to meld commercial and religious ideas on the same site. This is the case with Mount Koressos.

It’s like going to the Mary exhibit at Disneyland. There are several cafes, a wishing wall, tourist buses everywhere, magic water, it’s quite the atmosphere. And this place has quite the crazy tale as well. My first thought was, “There’s no way Mary was there.” I mean, what do I know? But still, it didn’t seem quite likely to me. I get it, Popes have visited this place, but still. Feast your brains upon this tale of discovery:

– Anne Catherine Emmerich, German nun, mystic, and later saint, has a bunch of visions which she imparts to the brains of others.

– Clemens Brentano, author, writes books based upon her visions about Jesus, etc, etc.

– In 1852, Brentano provides a rough description from a vision of a house near Ephesus that John supposedly built for Mary where she lived out her days.

– In 1881, French priest, Indiana Jones copycat, and lunatic Julien Gouyet uses this book’s description to find and identify the house on top of Mount Koressos. Nobody believes him.

– But by 1891 at the urgings of Sister Marie de Mandat-Grancey, folks get onboard with this idea and the house is made a shrine and taken under management. The first Pope shows up within a decade. Half-a-dozen other Popes have also visited.

So is one to believe this tale of visions, translated through a kook author, and a bunch of people wandering around the 19th century Ottoman countryside with a book in their hand? I’d have to say I don’t. I’m pretty sure that whatever Mary was that she died close to her birthplace and is buried out there. But whatever, it’s all good, people can pray anywhere. That’s the cool part about prayer.

And whatever the house is, it is indeed neat to visit. It’s very old and probably a good example of the style and architecture of ancient dwellings in this part of the planet.

 

Mary House.jpg

Side of the House of the Virgin Mary

 

When there, I kind of separated myself from the group and puttered around. When you go inside the house it’s a converted chapel, very small. I didn’t take a picture inside as it didn’t seem right. I prayed for a short bit and then was on my way. It was a nice moment, but not what I would call any kind of religious experience.

 

800px-House_of_Virgin_Mary2.jpg

Not my shot, taken from Wikipedia. Note the very ancient hallowed c-grade velvet rope, two Apostle endorsed codex plastic information placards, and Papal holy water blessed exit sign

 

Outside there is a wishing / prayer wall that folks can leave notes on. There are thousands of notes. There is also a water source that is said to heal or grant wishes or whatever. I did not drink the water

For me, the ground was the better experience. This was my chapel visit.  This was my Mount Koressos:

Forest.jpg

I’ve got dozens of various shots of nothing but the woods from all across the world. Two of my favorites are on my desk, one from American and one from Japan. I’m always struck by the differences and similarities between them. Wherever you are, the woods are always similar enough that you can recognize ideas, feelings, trends that join you to that remote location. In the sense that the woods near your own home and country do much the same. It’s that spark of fellowship and belonging that most closely identifies us as part of one human race and planet. It’s only there for a moment, but it’s a good feeling. Nature, God, whatever, does that to you. Amen.

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never talk to strangers

I’m kind of an introvert, and go on my merry way.  But nobody can know this if they’ve never met me.  So when somebody gets in my face out of the blue I kind of wonder what planet they’re living on.  They could be talking to anybody.  Why would anybody want to talk to me anyways?

What if I had a medical condition?  What if I turned out to be a salesman and wasted a half-hour of their day hocking ties to them?  What if I was a closet serial killer?  What if I could care less what these people had to say?  What if I let them in on the gig that Santa isn’t real?

I guess they don’t care.  It’s like they’ve got this ‘on’ switch inside their brains.  They can’t help themselves.  They instinctively interact with their fellow human without any coherent thought.  This can be a neat thing sometimes, I guess, but it can also get very weird very quick.

Today as I’m getting in my walk during lunch (I take my lunch break for exercise and eat at my desk) a guy steps in front of me and stops me.  He then proceeds to ask me a bizarre obscure question about why a downtown building is located in one place instead of the other.  Like why the builders chose that one spot.  Eh?

I’ve got no idea what he’s talking about.  He doesn’t look like he’s criminally insane, he appears a perfectly normal person.  But him stopping me like that, and the weird question were rather off the charts.  So I told him I didn’t know and was on my way swiftly.

And what was it, some day earlier this week, I can’t remember which.  I’m walking through the grocery store parking lot.  I’ve got my one big reusable bag.  I’ve also got a fist full of plastic bags which had reached end of service life.

Once upon a time you could put those old plastic bags in the local curbside recycling.  They banned that in my town, so you have to put them in the plastic bag recycling bin at the grocery stores.  I mostly use the reusable bags at the grocery store.  But will occasionally get plastic bags because they have oh so many uses other than carrying groceries (eat it bag tax politicians).

So I’ll use the plastic bags until they are unserviceable and then recycle those at the grocery.  I suppose the grocery store could just put them in the trash later, for all I know, but it’s all I can do.  Recycling is such a crap shoot.  If you doubt this, just do some reading online to find out how much of that glass you recycle is actually not currently recycled today.  This is why you should get canned beer and box wine.  They’ve fixed the can / box quality issues folks, it’s cheaper, and cans and boxes are 100% recyclable.

Anyways, so I’m strolling through the grocery parking lot with both types of bags.  A car viciously pulls right up next to me on the passenger side.  This guy is shouting at me from behind the steering wheel.  In the 1.5 seconds of mental processing time, I’m wondering where I can run, hide, or fight.

But eventually I determine that he’s shouting at me about how awesome it is that I’m recycling.  I guess he saw me carrying the old plastic bags, I guess?  I keep walking, all I offer in response is my most deadpan, “Okay.”

Then he peels out like he was escaping a robbed bank.  There was no mocking or irony in this dude’s voice.  He was dead serious.  Guy actually did an aggressive drive by on his fellow man just to voice his approval of supposed recycling.

If a brick had been at my feet, I’d have picked it up and chucked it at his car.  You can’t recycle broken rear windshields, the planet is worse off now, and it’s all your fault.  That would’ve been my robotic / lame 1986 action movie line to this idiot.

There’s a reason you tell kids not to talk to strangers.  Even us adults end up dealing with folks who in one way or another, just don’t seem wound right.  I mean, I’m a lunatic, but I’m pretty sure if I stop somebody on the street cold, my reasons and demeanor are legit.

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enjoy the zoo while you can

A child was endangered, a gorilla got shot, people are now angry about both, and in the end I think the only thing that’ll matter in the long run is this is just yet more justification of why we’re all bound for the crypt as a human race.

I’ve got no idea what my point of this post is, I’m just a bit frazzled, do or do not bear with me.  It’s your call.  Your were warned.

There is a ever growing path in society to just go around and dispense with things that offend people:

– You’re not supposed to play tackle football anymore because it’s dangerous.  Do folks conceptually understand just how perilous driving a car is?

– You’re not allowed to criticize Erdogan anywhere on the planet anymore without getting sued or charged, even though he’s essentially a dictator.  Even Frau Merkel is in on this plan.  Did she happen to forget what opinion the Stasi took on such matters when she was a kid?

– Do you have a varying political opinion from your friend, co-worker, or acquaintance on the street?  Shame on you.  You should be silenced.  We must all agree on everything.  Or else.

– If you happen to every once and a while prefer unhealthy food, then you’re just not understanding that one day a giant 300 pound strongman will be appointed by the courts to stand over your shoulder and hit you with a stick for not eating a pre-approved, organic, sustainable food option.

– If you love the zoo?  That just means you hate animals and want them to suffer.

– Down with squirrels.  Because why not?

When I was a young lad my Parents lost me in the middle of Disney World.  I seriously remember looking around and having lost track of where I was with none of my family in sight.  I must have been about eight or something.  Not knowing what else to do, I just sat down on a bench figuring they’d be back at some point.  And sure enough, probably about fifteen minutes later my Dad strolls up and all was well.

But think of all the wonderful things that could have happened to me:

– Fallen into the It’s a Small World river and drowned.

– Run amok pawning candy off total strangers.

– Got myself kidnapped by the Goofy mascot who would then have taken me to his gingerbread house.

– Proposed marriage to the princess and demanded to remain in this World forever.

But now because a child falls into a gorilla enclosure, the universe has apparently collapsed.  Folks with either too much time on their hands or no appreciation of the planet’s (or their own) actual problems feel the need to detonate the lives of the kid’s parents.

It’s literally international news.  These parents are going to have their lives and reputations detonated by the trolls.  In our brave new world, social media no longer allows you to make mistakes.  You have to suffer for being a flawed human being.  Which means you have to suffer for drawing air from the atmosphere.  Because we’re all flawed human beings.  What a wonderful moment for humanity.

I suggest, that if folks have an issue with these parents making a mistake, they need to put down the fucking stone.  But I don’t really get a vote.

Yet that’s not enough for some people, for since a gorilla was killed, we now need to bang on the zoo drum.  For you see, the zoo is evil.  It captures wild animals and put them in a cage for our own amusement.  It’s positively barbaric.  If that gorilla had not been in the zoo, it’d still be alive.

Except that it wouldn’t.  Because it would have died.  Because with some rare exceptions, almost every animal lives longer in a zoo then it does in the wild.  Do you know why?  Because wild nature is a freaking thresher.  It consumes life with glorious abandon.

Depending upon your viewpoint, it could also be said humanity consumes life with glorious abandon.  You know what won’t help with that?  Closing zoos.  Think we already care almost nothing for the planet?  Wait till four year old Timmy can only read about tigers in a book.  Because the tiger zoo was banned in 2036.

And only Timmy’s rich classmates’ parents (who were the elitists that demanded all the zoos close) have the cash to take their kids on a tiger safari, in which they’ll have to be encased in bubble wrap surrounded by armed guards.  Because life is dangerous you know.  In 2037, kids won’t be allowed to do anything.  I fear for this future.

Shit happens.  Parents make mistakes.  Zoos make mistakes.  Kids make mistakes.  I make mistakes.  You make mistakes.  Your very act of driving a car is more dangerous than anything you do.  Even if you frequently eat or drink poorly to the point you endanger your own life.  You should be allowed to run your mouth to folks about anything without fearing the lawyers or secret police show up at your door.  But you should also be wary of breaking out the social media bat to club somebody you’ve never met.  And the zoo is still a great place.  Because it teaches kids about nature in a manner they’d never experience otherwise.  And in the end this benefits nature.

And in the end I’m going to lose this fight though.  I’m going to get overruled by governments, outrage trolls, do-gooders, and all the others to whom the previous paragraph is viciously offensive.  So enjoy the zoo while you can, I guess.

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all hail the cage fighter of the sky

Usually my morning commute is a blindingly dull sea of brake lights accompanying the desire to acquire a new occupation, a rocket sky car, or a method by which I might transfer my consciousness to my desk while my corporeal form remains at home with the dogs (telework).

Spring, in all it’s lovely glory, is also an awful time for the radio.  Sports is hard to listen to when it’s not football, my hockey team is out, and I still can’t magically wrap my brain around following 162 baseball games a year.  All of the news, especially NPR, is a sea of insanity as if the universe revolves only around Clinton or Trump even though I’m quite sure my local mayor has more of an impact on my life than they do / ever will.

I’ve been told by folks who have equally insane commutes that the secret is to get into podcasts.  That these are somehow the superior cure for the brake lights.  I’ll admit, I haven’t tried this yet, but might.  But honestly I’m not so sure about this whole podcast or blog thing.  I get the impression that people who write blogs or do podcasts are weird idiots.

Anyways, so there I am this morning when all of a sudden I get a ringside seat as a mockingbird dashes out of the trees to cage fight a crow I can only assume dared get too close to the nest.  This went on for at least a minute.  As the crow continued to flee, the mockingbird pursued for at least a good hundred yards across the sky.  Little dude wouldn’t let up even though the crow was three times his size.

I could write twelve pages on the pros and cons of the film Ender’s Game, but this reminded me of a line in that movie:

“Knocking him down was the first fight.   I wanted to win all the next ones too.”

The mockingbird won all the other fights this morning too.

When I was an enlightened young lad I used to bird watch, for whatever reason.  Now I’m just a moron who reads indoors, watches movies, or plays video games.  But if you have watched birds for any length of time, you’ll know this is typical mockingbird behavior.  They’re aggressive, they don’t take it from anybody.  Luckily for us, they have not acquired the ability to wield firearms.

Cheers my friend, you made my morning.

mockingbird

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i thought i’d met a sorcerer

I made a daring escape from the cubicle yesterday because it was just gorgeous outside.  So I walked around for a while.  Everybody was out, which was nice to see.  As I’m headed back toward the building, this guy emerges from a side door.  He looked like Santa Klaus, that is, if Santa Klaus wore a business suit and overall looked like a sorcerer.

He takes two steps out, throws some crackers on the ground, and starts mumbling a few phrases to himself.  Then after about five seconds he turns around and walks inside.  So I’m like, oh, he’s feeding & talking to the birds or something.  But I look around, and I see no bird or animal or anything in sight.

So I make it a point to walk over, stand over the crackers, and look in every direction for anything that would eat said crackers and I don’t see anything.  Hmm.  So maybe the sorcerer was doing some kind of incantation and the crackers are going to turn into a bird?  Or maybe he just left them there for a bird to get later?  Or maybe he’s a crazy man who throws crackers on the ground and mumbles to himself?  I for one have done far crazier things than that.  But I went back inside because I didn’t have an answer.

I left later that day, via that side door, to check on cracker status.  Sure enough, there was a squirrel right where the crackers were.  And the crackers were gone.  When I opened the door he ran off.  So I guess Santa was feeding the squirrels.  Or, or, just maybe, the crackers turned into a squirrel after all.

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Happy New Year

Today the sun came out for the second day in a row, which is pretty cool considering it spent the previous 11 days hiding behind thick clouds and rain.  The temperature also dropped about 30 degrees, so for the first time this winter it actually feels like winter.

Does this mean we’ll soon see this again out back for my youngest to frolic around in?

snow

Perhaps.  Who knows what 2016 will hold for us.

But I know one thing is solved already, giant squids!  Did you know they saw one just rolling around Japan three days ago?

And in today’s ultra-second-reaction-zone you’re like, oh, that’s neat.  And you unthinkingly move on to the next article.  But then you’re like, wait, what?  Giant squid!

giant squid

Yep.

Except nobody seems to care, eh, where was the clickbait mania over this dude.  He’s so awesome.

Hey remember all the days where every 8 months you’d see a new search for the giant squid adventure documentary on National Geographic or Discovery?  Finding the giant squid was the nature equivalent of discovering Sasquatch, at least before he sold out to a meat processing ad company.

Seriously, here’s a documentary from 1994 entitled Sea Monsters: Search for the Giant Squid.

Now nobody cares.  Well I care!  We love you giant squid.  Happy New Year giant dude.  What does 2016 hold for you?  What does 2016 hold for any of us?

Will Santa put a giant sloth under my bed, just to open the year for wackiness?  Who knows?  But I’m anxious to find out what this year holds for us all.  Let’s go, friends!

giant sloth

“I have been provided with a prepositioned list of all your naughtiness.”

“Oh.  Uh, …, want to pound some beers creepy giant sloth?”

…

“Yes.”

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what is that?

Do you ever go through your camera’s memory, and you’re like, “what the hell is that shot?”  This doesn’t happen to me often, mostly because I don’t take many pictures.  But it sure happened here.  I had to conduct detailed forensic analysis to find out where they flowers came from.

And by detailed, I mean beer assisted.

flower1

It’s at my Parents place.  I can tell by the sliver of brick on the right, which is the side of their house, and the touch of concrete on the left which is their walkway.  It took me forever to figure this out due to:

a) beer

b) the Where’s Waldo of the brick hiding in the lower right of the shot beneath the shadows laid by the plant

For those of you who are a bit young, Where’s Waldo is the most popular smartphone app of 1982.

flower2

I’m going to have to show these to Mi Ma in a few days and ask her what these are.

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Chicago – again & again & again & a t-rex

All your carefully laid life plans are worthless.  The universe is driving, you’re just in the backseat.  Sometimes you’re screaming, other times you’re back there giggling.  It’s all good.  As long as somebody decent like Santa Claus is driving, and not some type of coked-out-Aztec-death-god, you’re probably doing okay.

Last year I got it in my head to travel to Chicago for the first time in some sort of joyful ride to stave of mental insanity.  It was a highly successful journey.  And I wondered when I’d be back in Chicago.  I figured many, many years.

No, one year.  For work decided my new travel location would shift from Texas to Chicago.  So whereas a trip to Chicago was so very, very unique, now I’ll be there all the time.

This is of course a very good thing, I hope.  Hopefully work doesn’t detonate my view of the cooler things in life I experienced there.  But I did try and start things off on the right foot.

I got to Chicago a day early, before work, to avoid any difficulties in getting there on time for the first day.  So I took that early day and went back downtown.  I visited some of the restaurants I went to the last time, because I’m a big loser and wasn’t willing to risk a new place just yet.

But the one difference was I went to the Field Museum.  They have a ton of stuff there, most of it great, and I might write about some of the exhibits later.  They also have a t-rex.  They named it Sue after the lady who found it.

Sue

It’s the largest, best preserved t-rex bone pile on the planet.  The Field Museum paid nearly $8M to take it off the hands of the dude who’s land Sue found it on.  When you read about the legal drama that unfolded to bring this skeleton to Chicago, it’s enough to make you yearn for the scene in Jurassic Park where the lawyer gets eaten whilst he was seated upon the can.

This was the only photo I took at Field, but the shot doesn’t do it justice.  It’s a huge creature, but yet at the time I still remarked to my lunatic brain, “Wow, I thought it’d be bigger.”  I truly did.  So this of course does further confirm that I’m an idiot, as this is a seven-ton monster.

An interesting note is that’s not Sue’s actual skull.  The real skull is on the second floor in a glass box.  It’s simply too heavy to put on the actual skeleton without running a pole to the chin, which was probably a wise aesthetic choice.  They figure Sue was about 28 years old when he or she checked out to Dino Valhalla in a dry stream bed, bound for history.

It would have been quite the view if you could actually see one of these dino dudes for real.  So I have this idea, to bring the dinosaurs to life.  We’d probably need to clone them or something.  So I figure we can get their DNA from some Dominican amber.  We grab the dino DNA from the blood inside the mosquito inside the amber.  Then we get some geneticists to do their thing.  And when I have their results, I use their complex data to build a big robot dinosaur.  What am I supposed to do, breed a live one?  Do you have any idea how high that food bill would be?  Sue would eat, like, four or five cows a day, probably?  And think of how much beer Sue would drink, and I’d have to buy it, because I can’t say no to a seven ton monster.  Who’s got the cash for all that?  Not me.

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peppers unto happiness

My Brother gave me a Thai red pepper plant last spring because he is well aware that I like spicy cooking that melts my brain.  Unfortunately I travel so much for work and have so little direct sunlight into my place that the plant didn’t reach full quality this year.  Maybe next year if I leave it outside.  But I took three smallish peppers to cook with tonight before I leave again for work tomorrow and through the weekend.

 

Thai pepper

I yanked a pair of Indian recipes off Saveur so we’ll see how this goes.  I’m cautious but looking forward to trying some new techniques.

 

peppers

As you can see, the addition of four random habaneros should tell you how wrong my Bro was about my preferred level of spiciness.  I also have all those usual Indian dry spices.  And some cayenne, which I have sitting atop a spice pedestal under a white light ready for action.

 

But the below is his work, both in terms of growing, photos, and bottling.  He’s above my level of pepper awesomeness.  I’ll try and get there.

bro peppers

bottles

His peppers are: “Ghost, Thai, Scorpion, Choc. S.B., Trinidad Perfume, 1 Reaper”

His bottling is a Caribbean recipe.

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Absurdity of the Week! Expert Studies!

The results are in! Extensive use of exclamation points can lead to hypertension and diabetes! Surveying approximately 1,400 adults across multiple demographics over a six year period, our study confirmed that the act of engaging the shift key and simultaneously overextending one’s pinky finger resulted in increased stress to the body and ultimately early heart disease!

My Guests’ brutal solution to this problem is to swap the location of the period and exclamation point on the keyboard so that every time you’d normally type a period, you instead get the exclamation point! They shall require this change to all the planet’s keyboards by the end of 2018! Or else. Please ensure you cooperate, for they truly desire to keep liquidation to an absolute minimum!

After all, you think coffee is bad for you? Just wait until my Guests carry out their vicious plans. Even a good old cup of coffee won’t save us from their wrath!

It’s enough to make you want a damn sweet beer! Or to try and escape your hated cubicle so you can go walk downtown and maybe get some tasty fish & chips to celebrate your Friday!

Just be sure you wear a hat so that bright sun doesn’t melt your brain inside your skull!

And don’t drink anything, not even one beer, with your lunch because then your boss(es) would get mad at you for being drunk on the job!

And when you get home be sure to tell your significant other that you need vegetables only for dinner so you can cleanse your palate of all that fried food!  Then the two of you can plan a weekend family gathering at the beach for an awesome time! Don’t forget the sunscreen, everybody loves a decent tan.

But if you see a Goth kid on the beach, be sure to give them a hug! Because apparently Goth kids are at risk for depression!  Who knew? I’m awfully glad this study told us that. Otherwise nobody would have known!

experts

keep going; we’re awaiting the next results with baited breath