Dish Walk

One of the more popular recreational trails near Palo Alto is the Dish Hills Walk, up a low ridge west of the Stanford campus to The Dish, a radio-astronomy facility, a two-mile roller-coaster of a trail I enjoyed doing several times, the trail-head just a few hundred yards from Holly and Buzz's house, where we were staying. (Thanks, again, many thanks, Holly and Buzz).

Looking out across the Stanford campus to the Bay

South to San Jose; Obama visited Facebook while we were in

Palo Alto...saw the helicopters flying overhead...

And north to The City

"Yes, but the reception is great..."

Just like Montana

Vicious coastal ground squirrel



Moss Beach, CA

We're back in Rome again. I arrived the 29th of April and Vicki the 8th of May. Of course, nothing during our stay in California could surpass the birth of our grand-daughter Penelope, but, apart from helping Rebecca and Jeremy around the house and with their preparations, we did take a few day trips around Middle California, to Half Moon Bay, to Concord (for a crummy RV show), and all around Palo Alto and Menlo Park and Mountainview and Redwood City.

Moss Beach, at the northern end of Half Moon

Bay

Century-old cedars everywhere; Jeremy and Rebecca had their wedding and 
wedding photos done near here last June

Seals on the beach

Surf was up

Really up

Conglomerate

Everything abloom

Return to Rome

I arrived back in Rome Friday afternoon. Alas, there will be no extensive blog posts, and certainly no pix,  until Vicki gets back in a week. My computer died Saturday, and I am reliant now on such internet shoppes as I can find in town. Sic transit, Gloria. Meanwhile I am now en route to the beatification of Pope J-P2. When in Rome....

Grand-parents!

This morning, April 23rd, at 6:43 PDT, daughter Rebecca gave birth to Penelope, making Vicki and me first-time grand-parents. Mother, daughter, and dad Jeremy are all fine, if a bit fatigued. Penelope scored a 9.9 on the Apgar, and, so far, she likes to sleep. She was born 8 pounds 4 ounces, 19 inches long, a dark-haired beauty. No one who knows Rebecca will be surprised that Penelope was born on Shakespeare's birthday. Vicki and I are elated and so happy we made the journey from Rome for her birth. For the next several days we'll be helping the young family as we can. (Thank you Holly and Buzz for putting us up). I go back to Rome on April 28th, and Vicki will return on May 4th. A few more months of European touring, and we'll be ready for the next big family event: Rachel's wedding with Will in Missoula next August. It's been quite a year; and still going!

Penelope

And dad Jeremy

Penelope and Vicki

Grand-parents doting already

c

Arrivaderci, Roma, For Now

So, after a day of packing, we departed Rome April 3rd and winged back to the States, California, Palo Alto, as noted in an earlier post.

Leonardo Da Vinci Airport, Fiumicino, as Italians know it

Vatican Pinacoteca

We only had an hour and a half left for the Pinacoteca, the painting galleries, and a long list of must-see items from the lectures we have been watching on the history of western art. Here are just a few, plus a few we liked in addition to those on the list.

Giotto, of course

A 14th century resurrection scene, fish returning body parts

from the sea

One of several fresco fragments of Melosozzo da

Forti, Angel Playing the Lute

Domenichino's Last Communion of St. Jerome

Caravaggio's Deposition

Guido Reni's St. Matthew and the Angel--the

best of the Matthews, I think

Reni's La Fortuna

Barocci's Rest on the Flight to Egypt

Peter Wenzel's Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden

The great spiral staircase at the Museums exit; the end of a

great day, well worth waiting for

Vatican Sculpture

Moving on from the Sistine, our main interest was the paintings, but we had to linger a bit with the sculptures, mostly 1st or 2nd century Roman copies of now-lost Greek originals.

Laocoon

Belvedere Apollo

Belvedere Hermes

Part of one of several "animal" rooms

A colossal Hercules that once stood in Pompey's theatre

Nice bowl (seats twelve); nice mosaic

Vicki poses by a statue of the Emperor Claudius (she's read a lot of 
Robert Graves lately)

Incredibly beautiful porphyry sarcophagus that held the body of St. Helen; 
Constantine's mom, who brought Christianity into the imperial family; and to all 
the rest of us

The Verospi Augustus

Sistina Cappella

The Sistine Chapel was crowded as usual, but we found places to sit, study our guidebooks and gaze at the ceiling and walls with our monocular and binoculars. I am almost too embarrassed to post my poor pix because: a) there is a host of excellent ones at the Vatican Museums site and also all over the web, and b) because the Sistine Chapel has an enforced no pix policy. There are always a few guards patrolling the room, indelicately shushing everyone down to a low roar and shouting "no photos" every few minutes. Always in English. As soon as their backs are turned, the cameras resume until some moron who doesn't know how to turn the flash off blasts the ceiling again.

The famous ceiling frescoes

The one photo everyone gets

The last judgment; I like my last judgments more on the lurid side, so I am not a 
big fan of this one; nor of Michaelangelo generally; the last judgment was done 
many years after the ceiling and after the 1527 Sack of Rome, officially, the end

of the Renaissance, in Italy at least; everyone was in a bad mood; later Popes had 
clothes painted on Michaelangelo's nudes

Up closer; this guy was damned for reading

too many eye charts

Love those grotesque mid-turn poses; Daniel

The Delphic Sibyll, one we like

The side frescoes were done a generation earlier (than Michaelangelo) by 
Botticelli and others; here, the temptations of Christ

Handing over the keys to St. Peter

Side frescoe detail; another Holy Circumcision; yes, I have read David Farley's 
An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest 
Town, actually a very good book

We had lunch at the Sistine Bar; alas, it was Friday, so no 
cheeseburger; also no beer, but the espresso was OK

Papal Apartments/Rafael Rooms

The older papal apartments are now called the Rafael Rooms, several of them, noted for some of the most famous paintings of western art. Every square inch of the large halls is covered in Renaissance art and ornamentation, mostly by Rafael and his students, and I'll just post a few favorites.

The Constantine Room is covered in giant murals about the
Emperor Constantine, who legalized Christianity (Justinian

criminalized all other religions a century later); the ceiling, by

Tommaso Laureti is titled "The Triumph of Christianity Over

Paganism" and has always epitomized for me the Church's

historic intolerance and contempt for the older civilizations
...onto which it grafted itself as soon a possible

Rafael's "Expulsion of Heliodorus" (Protestants: you'll have

to find and read the Book of Maccabees to appreciate this)

Pope Leo the Great meets Attila the Hun at the gates of

Rome; after a brief (armed) fly-by of SS Peter and Paul,

Attila decides to maybe sack some other place; actually, the

meeting occurred near Mantua; interestingly, the worst sack

of Rome occurred in 1527, under ther auspices of the Holy
Roman Emperor, His Most Catholic Excellency King
Charles V of Spain; always stranger than fiction...

Right after the triumph of Christianity over paganism

and Seleucids and Huns, one enters a room glorifying the

ancients; here, one of Rafael's greatest hits, "The School of

Athens," with Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Diogenes,

Pythagoras, Archimedes, et aliud; a time when the Church

was trying to appropriate what it could of the ancient world

Closer up: the guy in the foreground left, lavender tunic, was

added later--Rafael's flattering portrait of his contemporary

Michaelangelo

And Rafael himself, right corner, black hat

Not least of Rafael's problems in doing these rooms was the

challenge of working around doors, windows, HVAC, et

cetera; here is the great painting of the arts, literature, and

music, Apollo and the 7 (9? 12? 40?) muses, blind Homer in

blue on the left, and an interesting prominence for Sappho,

lower left

And then there's the ceiling with all the roundel things (a

causal theory of knowledge espoused here?)