The Continuing Adventures of Dr Dzoe

There it is, across the Nile from the Tulip’s dock in Luxor, the hill that contains the Valley of the Kings. And there it is, our destination this morning. But first, a lesson in the funerary practices of ancient Egypt.

A pharaoh would not only have a tomb: he would also have a temple attached to that tomb.  The purpose of his temple would be to provide a place for people to make offerings to him so that he would intervene for them with the gods of the afterlife. In the early days, this temple would be attached to the tomb.

But later, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom (roughly 1500-1000 BC) decided that a pyramid was an open invitation to grave robbers and it was better to put their tombs in a hidden valley.  With the tombs hidden away, it no longer made sense to put the temple next to the tomb.  So the pharaohs had their tombs built a few miles away outside of the Valley of the Kings, where most of the New Kingdom pharaohs were buried.  Most of those temples are in ruins, as they were built on the flood plain.  But there’s still some impressive remains.

Such as the Colossi of Memnon.

These are twin seated statues of Amenhotep III, about the only thing remaining of his funerary temple.  (Their name is deceptive: it comes from later Greek visitors deciding that something so grand had to be associated with Agamemnon.)  I looked on these and said, “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”  (Click here if you don’t recognize the line.)  Though strictly speaking, this was not Shelley’s inspiration for his poem: supposedly, that was another statue about a mile from the Colossi. The statues are rather impressive.  The Egyptians built on a monumental scale, and these monuments are 60 feet high.

Here’s another picture:

And after that quick photo stop, we all went back to the bus and drove the dusty road up to the Valley of the Kings.  The tombs looked like this:

Well, sorry.  I can’t show them to you.  They don’t allow cameras in the Valley.

Suffice to say, Julie and I went into five tombs including King Tut’s, which was by far the least impressive of the five.  But his mummy was on display, so I was able to pay my respects to the late lamented boy king.

The tombs were beautiful, with walls covered with art and hieroglyphs showing the pharaoh’s trip to the afterlife.  It’s amazing, the amount of work that went into these works of art, works that were not meant to be seen by anyone other than gods and dead kings.  But at least it kept artists employed: think of it as an ancient Egyptian stimulus package.

We were wandering up one part of the valley, looking for the chance to see the tomb of one particularly noteworthy pharaoh, Tutmose III, known due to his military prowess as the Napoleon of Ancient Egypt.  I knew it was closed for that day, but I wanted to get a good look at it.

One of the guards, a skinny man carrying a big rifle, offered to let us climb up to the tomb.  (Tutmose had his tomb built high up a defile, a vain attempt to discourage tomb robbers.)  The guard let us climb under a rope, up a narrow staircase, and down another staircase to the gated entry to the tomb.  Quite the strain, but pretty neat.  As we were on our way back, he smiled and held out his hand.

Secluded spot.  Man carrying big gun.  Lots of places designed to hold bodies.  Request for baksheesh.

Needless to say, I did not stint.

(I’ve heard that many men who offer you camel rides near the pyramids pull a similar stunt in which they take you out into the deep desert before asking for baksheesh.  Mark Twain wrote of a similar situation in which the guides who took him up the pyramids waited until they were near the treacherous, steep top before asking for payment.  I expect Herodotus suffered similar shakedowns when he visited these parts.)

A positive outcome: Julie was starting to fade due to the heat and lack of sleep, but after climbing up that rickety staircase she had an adrenaline rush and an accompanying second wind.

Anyway, here’s a couple of pictures from outside the gate.  You can get an idea of the conditions in the valley: hot, dusty, and very dry indeed.

 

After the Valley of the Kings, we went to the funerary temple of Hatshepsut.  Hatshepsut was an interesting figure.  The widow of King Tutmose II, she decided that she wasn’t ready to turn over power to the teenaged Tutmose III.  So she ruled Egypt as a female king.  (The Egyptians did not have a concept of queen.  The closest they came was the King’s Chief Wife, but you can’t really be a ruling Chief Wife.)

But because a female king wasn’t really kosher,  she had monuments made showing her as a man.  Further, she spread word around that her father was the god Amun, the chief god of Egypt.  (This kind of retroactive godly parenthood was common among pharaohs when there was any question of their legitimacy.)  Her funerary temple, framed by cliffs and with a pleasing symmetry, is regarded as possibly the finest piece of architecture from ancient Egypt.  I certainly liked it.

As part of her self-deification, Hatshepsut had told the story of how she was nursed by Hathor, the mother-goddess who often took the form of a cow.  Here’s a depiction from the wall of the temple.

After that, a hot and dusty morning, we returned to the boat for some rest.

And another example of the dustiness of the desert: I brought two identical pairs of shoes with me.  The shoe on the left is the one I wore to the Valley of the Kings.

*****

In our first hotel in Egypt, there was a model of a model found in Tutankhamun’s tomb of the boy king riding in a boat.  The model was titled, “King Tut in a Boat.”  The phrase stuck in my mind, and I decided that I had discovered my new epithet.

You hurt your toe.  “King Tut in a boat,” you shout, and feel a bit better.

You are surprised.  “King Tut in a boat,” you exclaim.

It’s a good all-purpose phrase, and I intend to use it where once I might have been tempted to use harsher language.

*******

Monday evening we visited Luxor Temple as the sunset and the lights came on.

King Tut in a boat!

Imagine a road lined by sphinxes.  It leads to a vast edifice with entrance flanked by an obelisk and a pair of seated statues in various states of decay.  You pass through the entrance and find yourself surrounded by a row of columns of enormous girth and height.  Past that is another set of columns, slightly smaller than the first but of more delicate design.  All around is statuary, some vast, and bas reliefs, many of extraordinary beauty.

King Tut in a boat!

It was amazing. These photos don’t really do it justice.  But they’re the best I have, so I share them with you.

Our guide Karima said, “Luxor took only a short time to build.  It only took about 200 years.”

200 years.  A short time.  What a country!

One of the results of the shift in our schedule is that our tour itinerary is way out of whack.  The original itinerary started us at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the greatest museum of Egyptian antiquities in the world.  A strong start, followed by a few more days in Cairo.  Then we would fly to Luxor, see some more spectacular sites.  Then, when we had been going strong for several days, it would be the Nile cruise, a chance to relax in the middle of the vacation.  Finally, we fly back to Cairo and see the Pyramids, a grand finale for our trip.

But with our new itinerary, here it is just the third day of the trip and we’re already in the slow day.  We had a grand total of one planned site seeing trip today, and that was first thing in the morning.  After that, the day is all about relaxing.  Which is nice, but I’m sure would have been much more welcome after six days of touring instead of after two.

Our first stop was the Edfu Temple.  This is another temple built during the era when the Greeks ruled Egypt.  It’s also the best preserved temple in Egypt.

We took horse buggies to the temple.  They looked like this:

The drivers all call them “Feraris.”  “Would you like a ride in my Ferari?” they shout, causing me some confusion at first.

Before leaving, one of the local shopkeepers came up to me and wrote “Joe” in Arabic on my hand.  At least, my tour guides said it says “Joe.”  So as long as they are not in on the joke, he didn’t write “Idiot.”  (And if you happen to read Arabic and know otherwise, please don’t disillusion me.)

Then it was the temple.  A marvelous design.  Two things stood out for me at this temple.

First, there was the mix of Greek and Egyptian styles.  The figures are still in Egyptian stances, but the bodies are bit more anatomically correct, reflecting the Greek interest in the beauty of the human figure.

Another more amusing example: the Greeks insisted on adding these rain spouts to the temple, because that’s what they do back in Greece.  In spite of the fact that if there’s one thing you don’t need in Egypt, it’s a rain spout.

The second thing that really stood out to me was the beauty of the hieroglyphs.  Each one is a small work of art.  It reminds me of a medieval illuminated manuscript in stone, which rather makes sense because, like the illuminated manuscripts, the Egyptian carvings are holy writings.

Note in the above example the beauty of the letters.  Note also that the letters stand out of the stone, which means that the carver had to carve away the stone to leave only the letters.  This is clearly more difficult than carving the letters directly in the stone (which is done in many cases).

Here’s a couple of random pictures from Edfu.

After that, it was back to the boat.  We were back by 10, and, other than another lecture by Heba, we were pretty much done for the day.

But we did get to cruise the Nile.  Which was marvelous, and which left me many opportunities to photograph scenes from the river.

Remember that the Nile was historically the highway of Egypt.  Boats of all sorts have traveled the river for over five thousand years.  You still see a wide variety of boats engaged in various pursuits, cruising, fishing (which they do by spreading out a net, then repeatedly hitting the water with an oar, then pulling in the net), carrying cargo, or just ferrying people across the river.

One amusing stop was the locks at Esna.  These are huge canal-style locks that we passed through.  While we were delayed there, vendors in small boats came next to our vessel to sell various items to the tourists.  They would throw the items in plastic bags up onto the boat three decks high and start negotiations.  If a price was agreed to, the tourist would toss down the money in a bag.  If not, you toss back down the item, and the boatman hopes that you have a good arm, or his wares are now floating in the river (which happened often).

I proudly bought two woolen shawls for 120 Egyptian pounds (roughly $24), only to be chagrinned when, near the end of our time, the vendors were desperately selling the same items for 40 pounds each.  Oh well, that’s 80 pounds for the shawls, 40 for a unique commercial experience.

Here’s one of my favorite things that I saw on the river.  A man was washing his goat in the Nile.  After I got my shot, I noticed that he actually had a small herd of goats, and he was bringing them one by one to the river to wash them.

Our guide Karima told us later that there’s a Muslim tradition where the well-to-do will buy a goat to give to the poor during a certain religious festival, and that this is a good time for goat herders.  My guess is that this man was cleaning his flock in preparation for market.

Here’s another picture that captures an important aspect of Egypt:

The ancients called Egypt the Red Land and the Black Land.  The Red Land is the desert that is most of the country.  The Black Land is the narrow strip of fertile land that surrounds the Nile.  Watered by the Nile and, before the building of the Aswan Dam, fertilized by the river debris during the annual floods, the extreme fertility of this part of Egypt is why a great and wealthy civilization formed here.  Where the red and the black lands meet there is a sharp divide: you can cross from farmland to desert in a step.

The boat docked at Luxor near the end of the day.  I went for a small walk and found a village nearby.  A man gave me a small tour, where I found myself and my camera the object of delight for a cute group of children.

Then it was dinner and a costume party.

Then I wrote this entry (though I’m only posting it two days later), and to bed.  Monday was going to be a big day, and it was only six hours away.

When I first read the itinerary of this tour, there were a few key items.  The Pyramids!  Karnak!  Valley of the Kings!  All that neat King Tut stuff!

Then there were the lesser items.  All those temples from the Greek era.  Edfu.  Philae.  How boring.  I mean, those things aren’t even 3000 years old – how interesting can they be?  (Yeah, I know.  At home, a 200-year-old house gets a big fancy plaque.  Here I’m not impressed by ten times that long.  But you know, this is a really old place.)

But it turns out that a two thousand year old temple can be pretty neat.  And two of them in one day is double the fun!

First stop, the Philiae Temple.  This is a temple to Isis that is in an island near Aswan.  An island, of course, means a boat ride.  And so on the river we go, on a boat much like this:

The temple is marvelous.  There’s a colonnade leading to a large edifice carved with gods.  Then comes an inner courtyard where worshippers could bring offerings, and finally an inner sanctum where only the priests would go.  Everywhere you look there are carvings of the king making gifts to the gods, surrounded by hieroglyphs saying stuff that I would describe had I actually learned to read them this past year.

In the deepest sanctum, there was a relief of the baby god Horus standing next to Isis, his mother.  Much of the iconography of these two are similar to later Christian art showing Mary and the baby Jesus.

One of the interesting things about this temple is the way that later people marked it up.  First, the Christians who lived in Egypt defaced a number of the pictures of gods.  In several cases, the carved the Coptic Cross in critical areas.  Here’s an example.

But there were many later examples as well.  Here’s a piece of graffiti that got me excited.  This was written by one of Napoleon’s soldiers who came to Egypt when the French invaded in 1796.  At that time, France still used the calendar put in place during the Revolution.  Which is why the text reads that it is 13 Messidor on the sixth year of the Republic.

We also managed two entertaining interactions with Egyptians.  First, a rather grizzled fellow insisted on having his picture taken with us (for baksheesh, of course).  As he stood close to us, he leered and said, “Two husbands, one wife.”  Julie did not seem amused.

Second, as we were leaving, I was thirsty.  So when I heard one of the local shopkeepers shouting “Water!  Water!”, I shouted right back.  I bought a bottle of water, we had a laugh together, and he gave me a free pack of gum and a picture.

After that, we went to the Nubian museum, a lovely museum that includes artifacts from Nubia, many of which were found in the mad rush of archaeology that preceded the flooding by Aswan Dam.  We saw several lovely pieces.  And who knew that Nubians were so handsome?

We then got back to the boat where we discovered that they like making towel animals.  I’m a big fan of that particular artistic medium.

Then we were off, floating down the river to reach the temple of Kom Ombo near evening.  This was another temple from the Greek period.  In this case, it was to Hathor and to Sobek.  Sobek is a crocodile-headed god: as our guide, the superb Karima told us, the Egyptians had gods that represented their greatest wishes and their greatest fears.  One of their fears is crocodiles.  Thus, a crocodile-headed god who specializes in keeping away the crocs.  Apparently it worked, though it took a while: ever since the building of the Aswan Dam, there are no more crocodiles in the lower Nile.

One thing that I enjoyed was the cartouches.  These are oval-shaped badges in which the names of the king were written.  There were marvelous examples at Kom Ombo that still held much of the original pigment.  (The Egyptians originally painted their temples.  Whenever you see a picture of an Egyptian temple, imagine it not of bare stone, but painted in garish colors as they originally were.)

I learned enough hieroglyphs that I’m able to recognize a few cartouches.  Ptolemy is one of the, which is good because there were about 20 Ptolemies and they all use the same basic cartouche.  But this set seemed strange to me – there were three different cartouches, which is strange as any king typically used only two different ones.  (The Egyptian kings had as many as five names, but only two that they put in cartouches.)  I pointed this out to Heba and Karima, and they cleared up the mystery: two of the cartouches belonged to Ptolemy, the third to his wife, Cleopatra.  (Not necessarily the Cleopatra: they had seven different ones.)

(Yeah, I’m a geek.  Does that surprise you?)

Here’s a few more pictures from Kom Ombo.  Note that the sun set while we were there, thus the lovely light.

I’m now living the pharaoh’s life, cruising down the Nile on a pleasure barge complete with beautiful scenery, abundant tasty food and beverages, and a boat full of people here to cater to my every need. I’ve even got a massage scheduled for after lunch.  Sometimes life is good, and this is definitely one of those times.

But I am a bit behind on blogging due to connectivity issues.  So this will describe the events of Friday, our first full day in Egypt.  And a marvelous day it was.

It was a day that started awfully early.  Due to the shifts in our schedule, we were on a ridiculous timeline.  Up at 2:00 AM, onto the plane by 5, a touchdown at Aswan where we sat on the ground for an hour, then off to Abu Simbel.  Good thing I was still jetlagged: getting up at 2:00 AM wasn’t much different than getting up at any other time would be.  (This is the Joe patented cure for jetlag: get your system so discombobulated that it will accept any sleep you give it.)

After all that, we reached Abu Simbel at around 10:00 AM.  What a terrific place!  This is the site of two temples: one built in honor of Rameses II, who was king of Egypt for 60 years around 1200 BC, and one honoring his wife, Nefertari.  Rameses’s temple looks like this (note the people for scale: those statues are 60 feet tall):

Or that’s how it looks today.  Around the time they were building the Aswan High Dam back in the 1960’s, they realized that Abu Simbel, which is near the southern border of Egypt, would end up under water.  So there was a great engineering effort made to move the two temples up the hill.  Here’s a model showing the original location and where it was moved:

And here’s several pictures of the two temples.

After that, we flew back to Aswan.  In ancient times, Aswan was the southernmost city of Egypt.  (The Egyptians occasionally conquered parts of Nubia, which is south of Aswan.  But Aswan marked the border between Nubia and Egypt proper.)  It was also the location of the first cataract, or the southernmost point of the Nile where the river was always navigable.

Now Aswan is the location of the High Dam, built by the Egyptians in the 1960’s to control the Nile and free them from the endless cycle of annual floods.  And that was our next stop:

After that, we joined our boat, the Tulip.  She was docked in Aswan, in view of Elephantine Island (where the ancients built temples and fortresses).  The river here is beautiful, with scenic tombs overlooking the water where sail the feluccas, small boats that cater to tourists.

Then a little down time, which meant I walked around Aswan a bit.  Nothing much to report about that walk: it was hot and dusty and I retreated quickly to the boat for a short massage and a lecture by Heba, a doctor of Egyptology who is accompanying our tour.

After lunch, we went on a ride on a felucca.  Here’s one of the crew members steering the boat:

Even Julie enjoyed it, which speaks to how calm the Nile is.

I, of course, loved it.  (And of course I skipped wearing the life jacket.)

The best part for me, however, was when the captain called me over and let me steer.  It took a lot more force than steering my Candy Cane, but oh, what fun!

Then dinner, and then a chance to try out some of the photography tricks I’ve learned this summer.

And here’s one last picture, of the show of Nubian dancers and drummers that we watched at night.

What a terrific first full day!

As you may know, I took this past summer off.  Mixx had come to an end and there was no reason to rush into something new.  I’ve been wanting to take a summer off for years, and this seemed like the one to take.  I’ve been saying I’m “pretired” – kind of like being retired, but you know you have to go back to work someday.

The summer has involved a lot of travel.  This week is the climax: the trip that, to a large extent, the summer has been building to, in research, in purchases, in preparations of various sorts.  That’s a trip to Egypt.

Julie and I are in Egypt now, on a tour run under the auspices of the Smithsonian.  We got here this morning, joined our tour group, and I’m sitting in our first hotel while Julie does some yoga.  My first trip to Africa, and oh, how I’ve been looking forward to this journey.

But things in Egypt are a bit unsettled.  If you’ve been reading the news, you know that the country is going through a period of civil unrest.  26 people were killed in riots over last weekend and no one knows when the next shoe is going to drop.  It’s an interesting place to be right now.  (Though I emphasize that we’re perfectly safe.  Things have calmed since the weekend, and they aren’t letting us anywhere near trouble spots.  And the Egyptians that I’ve encountered have all been perfectly friendly.)

Due to this, the trip has gone through a number of changes.  We’re still going to see all the big sites originally planned, just not in the original order.

Anyway, here we are, the first day, and the tour guides scheduled a little downtime to let people get over jet lag.  Downtime!  Hah!  I scoff at the concept!  I’ve had big plans of how to use these few hours, to wander about Cairo and get a jump on some of the big tourist attractions.  Maybe even stop by the Egypt Museum and let King Tut know we’re coming.

Alas, because of the various itinerary changes, we’re not taking our downtime at the hotel in the middle of Cairo as originally planned.  Instead, we’re on the outskirts, so the Boy King will have to wait.  Instead, I went for a walk through the nearby neighborhood, an urban-residential area full of apartment buildings and small shops.

Which, as it happens, proved to be fascinating.  Here’s a few things I learned about Egypt:

1. The artists support the revolution.  Here’s a couple of scenes from a wall of revolutionary graffiti that I spotted:

And they recognize the part that social media played as well:

2. The Egyptians enjoy their greenery.  Here’s a few pictures of the parks, verdant medians, and patches of trees that can be found on the streets of Cairo:

But here’s the interesting part of this, something that took me a little while to realize.  Egypt is a desert.  Cairo gets about three inches of rain a year.  So all that greenery requires that someone irrigate the grass or water the trees.  Here’s a comparison of two pieces of land: the foreground is not irrigated, the background is.

And sure enough, look a little closer at the park and you see this:

3. The street signs are all in Arabic.  (Makes sense: that’s the national language, though it did negate the value of the map that I got from the hotel.)

But the signs on stores are in both Arabic and English.  Some commercial signs are only in English.  I have no idea why this is so.

4. The children of Bast are still doing well in Egypt.  And because that’s what the internet is all about, I hereby present you with pictures of cute kitties (probably the only time you’ll ever see such a thing on this blog).

And a logistics note: I’m going to try to update this regularly.  But I’m not sure we’ll have internet connectivity everywhere that we’re visiting.  So don’t be surprised if I miss a few days here and there.

We ended our road trip with three nights in Niagara Falls.  We stayed on the Canadian side at the Marriott Fallsview and Spa where we had a terrific view of the falls from our room.  This is the view that awaited us on our return each evening.

Niagara is full of the sublime and the ridiculous.  The sublime, of course, is the falls and the various sights along the Niagara River, including a class 6 rapids and a whirlpool.  The ridiculous is all the tourist attractions that have sprung up in the area, including casinos (I ended up losing around $40.  Though I was a big winner the first night – I was ahead a whole $2.50), wax museums, and displays of the antics of the local daredevils.

They do make the most of the falls, though.  There’s ledges where you can stand right next to the falls:

The Maid of the Mist, a set of boats in which you can ride right up to the falls:

A walkway where you can walk next to the rapids:

And a rotating restaurant atop a tower where you can dine 60 stories above the falls:

And here am I, next to a picture of Annie Taylor, the first person to survive a trip over the falls in a barrel.  She was a 63-year-old school teacher who hoped to achieve fame and fortune by her feat.  Fame she got, at least in Niagara.  Fortune, not so much: her agent took the barrel and traveled around with a younger woman playing the part of the daredevil on the grounds that no one would pay to see the old woman, and Annie died in poverty, begging drinks on the streets of Niagara.

But of course, one comes to the falls for the falls.  And to take one’s picture by the falls.  Which does not disappoint.  Here’s my favorites from the trip:

(Julie tells me that anyone can take a picture of their face against the falls.  But who takes a picture of their foot?  I suppose I do.)

Important safety tip.  When photographing a couple of vastly different sizes, put the big one in back!

And so, after a long day’s drive, ended our Great Northern Roadtrip.  Next stop, Egypt!

I’m a bit behind on blogging.  More to the point, Julie and I had a nice big trip that I still haven’t described.  Let me toss out the quick details.

The primary motivation of the trip was a somber one.  We drove up to my mother’s home town of Salem, Massachusetts, to meet up with my sister Sara to scatter the ashes of my parents.  For this, we chose the pier at the Salem Willows, one of my mother’s favorite places.  The Willows is an old fashioned amusement park which now has a couple of rides, two arcades, and some restaurants.  It’s seen better days, but it’s still a fun place to visit.

The Willows also has a small beach and a pier the reaches out into Salem Harbor.  On a rainy Thursday, we took the ashes of my parents to the end of the pier and scattered them on the waters.  We poured out a can of Budweiser (my father’s favorite beverage) and a box of General Tso’s chicken (a favorite food of my mother).  We then stood for a while on the pier and watched the current take my parents last remains out to sea.  A sad moment, but it suited my parents’ memory.

While in Salem, we took Sara’s daughter Marjorie to the YMCA playroom (which was excellent: if you ever find yourself in Salem with a 3-year-old to amuse, you could do a  lot worse).  Marjorie is a cutie, and tons of fun to be with.  We also had dinner with my Aunt Joan and Uncle Chuck and their kids and grandkids, visited with my Uncle George and Aunt Laura, and had another dinner with Joan and Chuck.  And finally, we visited the Peabody-Essex Museum, an excellent place full of artifacts from around the world.  (Salem was a major center of the Chinese trade, and many of the more curious items brought home by her sailors are now in the Peabody-Essex Museum.  If you ever find yourself in Salem, make sure you take a break from the witch-related tourist schlock to visit the Peabody-Essex.)

Then, after three nights in Salem, we hit the road and headed west.  The next stop was Schenectady, New York.  My cousin Joan lives there, and we had a wonderful dinner with even more wonderful conversation at her house.  I had a great time catching up with Joan, who I have seen all too rarely over the past few decades.  For me, a special bonus was getting to know Joan’s husband Martin.  While I had met him on a couple of occasions years earlier, this was the first chance I had to sit down and really talk with him.  We had a lot in common, both having spent a lot of time working on engineering teams of one sort or another, often working with folks from around the world.  All in all, it was a stop well worth making.

While we were in the Schenectady area, Julie and I also stopped and visited the Saratoga Battlefield.  The battlefield is beautiful, on the shore of the Hudson River, spread out over a large area.  The battle itself included several clashes and fortifications, and the views and quite scenic.  I recommend it.

Here’s a deer we saw on the battlefield.  Occupied with eating his apple, he didn’t seem to care when we drove up right next to him to take a picture.

And here Julie and I are set against one of the lovely battlefield vistas:

It’s only when looking at pictures like this that I realize just how large I am compared to Julie.  Now you can see why I call her my better third!

While driving away, we saw this lovely barn set against a beautiful dusk sky:

Then it was off to our next stop.  That was Seneca Falls, New York.  In 1848, Seneca Falls was site of the meeting that started the American women’s suffrage movement.  Julie was particularly interested in visiting given her recent interest in that area of history.  There isn’t much left of the church where the meeting was held, but the visitor’s center was nice and we got to visit the Elizabeth Cady Stanton home.

But in addition to women’s suffrage, we found a special bonus to our visit.  It turns out that Seneca Falls was most likely the inspiration for Bedford Falls, the setting of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  It seems that Frank Capra visited Seneca Falls when preparing to make the movie.  Further, several of the locations mentioned in the movie are nearby.  Finally, there are several locations in town that seem to be inspirations for sets in the movie, including the bridge where George met Clarence:

Then it was back to the road, on the way to our final stop.  But that will have to wait for another blog post…

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to economic matters.  And on one particular item that’s in the news lately, I have my own plan for fixing the deficit.  The Washington Post is asking folks for their deficit plan, so I’ve decided to write it up and send it in.  But you get it first!

Note: if you’re not interested in ugly economic stuff, just move along now.

So here it is, the Dzikiewicz plan for wiping out the debt.

Let’s start with an observation: I really don’t think this is as hard as people seem to think.  After all, we had a surplus as recently as 11 years ago.  We can get back to that with a few simple steps.

First step: diagnosis.  How did we get from surplus to debt?  Looking at the numbers, the following things are new since 2000:

1. The economy tanked.
2. The Bush tax cuts.
3. The unfunded Bush initiatives, primarily the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also the Medicare drug benefit.

In addition, there’s one continuing problem that drags on our economy and budgets, and that’s:

4. Medical inflation.

So our plan needs to fix these four items.  We can do that by taking the following steps:

1. To fix the economy, we need a big stimulus.  Yes, this will result in worse deficits in the short term.  But it will improve the economy and thus reduce deficits in the long term.  And as an extra side-benefit, it will put people back to work.

Ideally this stimulus will work to improve the national infrastructure, which needs a lot of work.  But for economic purposes, that’s not necessary as long as the money gets spent on things being made in America.  After all, the most effective economic stimulus in American history was WWII when the government borrowed a lot of money and used it to buy a lot of stuff and blow it up.  If we can’t get any other kind of stimulus in place, let’s have a trillion-dollar fireworks display (American-made fireworks only) – that will get the economy going.

2. Let the Bush tax cuts run out.  Simple, really.  We don’t even have to do anything to make this happen – just refrain from extending them.

3. Quit with the stupid unfunded wars already!  We could do this with discipline, but we probably will need some institutional reforms to make it stick.  After all, there’s nothing that politicians and Americans like more than cheap short wars, though they usually fail to realize that cheap short wars have a nasty habit of turning into expensive long wars.  How about a constitutional amendment requiring a super-majority of Congress to approve military action?  Or some other thing – that’s a longer discussion than I want to have right here.

4. Countries with single-payer national health plans have considerably less medical inflation than do we.  Medicare, a single-payer national health plan, has seen less medical inflation over the past 40 years than private sector health plans.  That leads to a simple solution: a single-payer national health plan covering everyone.

Do these things, and avoid doing anything stupid, and you can fix the deficit.  It’s not really that hard.

And so our trip comes to an end.  We came home on July 27, which in English terms is 24/7.  Rather appropriate, given the pace of the trip, and especially of the last day.

First there was one last stroll through London:

Then the cab ride to Heathrow, a long plane ride home, and, for me, a drive to Charlottesville to drop off Andy.  I ended up back home at 1 AM local time, which is 6 AM London time.  24×7 indeed.

A few reflections on London:

• Kate and Diana most enjoyed the Much Ado production.
• Andy loved the Victoria and Albert.
• Julie enjoyed all the theater.
• My favorites were Leeds and the various views of St Paul’s.
• I did not much care for the bus tours.  Everything felt too rushed, and I prefer the greater flexibility that comes from having a car.  The one upside was that I could not have gotten everyone to out at 8 AM unless we were on a fixed schedule.
• Our hotel, the Crowne Plaza St James, was excellent.  A short walk to Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and Big Ben.  A few issues with the rooms, but the staff dealt with them quickly and competently.  A nice, though expensive, breakfast buffet.  All in all, highly recommended.
• What a terrific trip!

Our last full day in London.  That’s probably just as well, because I’m getting tired.  I plan to sleep for about a week when I get home.

For our last day, we had a fun day with little siteseeing.  Instead, we hit the markets.  First was Camden Market, which was hugely fun.  Everyone had a good time – even me, though the only things I bought were orange juice and a short and much-needed massage.  I didn’t realize how much my neck hurt from carrying around the camera until the masseuse was digging his fingers into it.

Here’s Kate at the Stables Market in Camden Market:

Then it was to Portobello Market, which was a lot less fun, consisting mainly of stalls of antiques and food surrounded by huge mobs of people.

We then returned to the hotel to drop stuff off and take a short break, then it was off for a walk through the Green, Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens.  Quite pleasant.  Diana took the opportunity to climb a tree – here she is.

Can’t see her there?  Try this closer shot:

Finally, it was dinner, and then we went to see “Love Never Dies,” the sequel to “Phantom of the Opera.”

Two things you should know.  First, I love musicals.  Second, I hate “Phantom of the Opera.”  The plot is at best semi-coherent and drops many of the things that I used to love about the old Phantom movies (no acid in the face!).  And then there’s the Phantom.  In the scene early on when he lures Christine to his underground lair, and she swoons on his bed in her diaphanous nightgown, all he does is sing to her.  Poor Christine!

But everyone was in the mood for this show, so I agreed  to go.  And to my great surprise, I kind of liked it.  Much more than the original Phantom, anyway.  To be sure, it’s an incredible cheese-fest, complete with oversinging and melodrama around every corner.  And then, it’s set in a freak show on Coney Island (Julie and I saw one of those just three weeks ago, and had a great time too!).  But those elements were kind of fun, in a so-bad-it’s-good kind of way.  In fact, my one complaint about the show is that it dragged a bit in the second act when it started getting too serious – it really needed more mustache-twirling and oversung melodrama.  But overall, kind of fun.  (But if you want to see it, better go soon – it’s closing here in August, and given that it wasn’t a London success, I don’t expect to see it in New York any time soon.)

Of course, I couldn’t take pictures in the show.  So to represent the freakish nature of the Phantom, I give you this picture of Kate’s rather freakishly limber arms.

And so ends our touring.  I’ll do a wrap-up post tomorrow or Monday (tomorrow is going to be a busy one, what with traveling and all), so stay tuned!