The Continuing Adventures of Dr Dzoe

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!

Like many women, Julie travels with a well-stocked purse.  One thing she’s just taken to bringing is baby aspirin, having recently read that immediately giving baby aspirin to someone who is having a heart attack can make a huge positive difference.

But that’s not the only attacks she’s ready for.  This trip, she’s also carrying a set of watercolors and a sketch book in case, as she says, she gets an Art Attack – a sudden urge to draw something that she sees.

She hasn’t had an art attack yet.  But tonight at the Tate Modern, I had one.  Upon encountering this piece:

I decided to try a technique I’d read about in camera books.  You set the camera to an exposure of 1-2 seconds, and while the shutter is open you zoom in the lens.  The result is something like this:

The shadow is Kate, who happened to be walking by.

Coincidentally, she was also walking by when I tried it with another piece of art:

And so I made it through my art attack, without even needing an aspirin.

If you were to ask me what is the most beautiful place that I’ve ever visited, I’d be hard pressed to pick just one.  But somewhere on my short list you would find Leeds Castle.

Leeds is a castle associated with various queens of England.  The castle is nice, but the grounds are stunning.  Every viewing angle is carefully designed to maximize the visual pleasure.  It’s a treat to just wander the grounds with eyes soaking in the scenery.

Today we went on our second bus tour of this trip.  The first stop was Leeds.  Here’s a few pictures I took there.

See what I mean?

The second stop was hardly a stop at all but instead a drive through Dover.  We drove by the major sites and stopped for a ten minute photo op.  Here’s Julie and me with the cliffs in the background.

Then it was off to Canterbury where we visited the cathedral, and where I made a point of reading the Canterbury Tales while riding the bus into town.  Funny stuff – that Chaucer fellow has a real future ahead of him.

Much of the cathedral was off-limits to visitors as there was a school graduation going on (this is graduation week in England, and we’ve seen groups of robed students throughout our travels).  The downside: we did not get a chance to see where Thomas Beckett was killed.  The upside: there was live organ music in the cathedral for much of our visit.  And there were still plenty of lovely things to see.

And by the way, this is the gyrations your humble photographer goes through to get a shot like this:

Given my knees, and figuring in the weight of the camera and flash that I carry around all day, you should appreciate how I suffer for your enjoyment!

Then at last we stopped at Greenwich where we took a boat ride up the Thames to the heart of the city.  The boat was a strange thing, jet propelled and making several stops at various docks along the river, feeling like a subway-on-the-water.  But the scenery from this water-subway was a lot better than had it been underground.

I am happy to report that London Bridge did not fall down when we passed beneath it.  (Not that this is a picture of London Bridge, which is a rather boring thing to look at.)

Then it was time for dinner, then a visit to the Tate Modern, London’s best modern art museum, which is open late on Fridays.  Much fun was had by all.

What’s my favorite thing I saw at the Tate?  Actually, it wasn’t a piece of art at the Tate at all.  On leaving the Tate, we crossed the Millennium Bridge, a lovely walking bridge across the Thames.  And at the end of the Millennium Bridge is a marvelous view of St Paul’s, as previously mentioned one of my favorite buildings in the world.  So I was able to bask in the view of St Paul’s at dusk.  Marvelous!

It’s getting late, and we have an early morning tomorrow.  So just a quick recap.

First I went off on my own on an early morning jaunt to the Churchill War Bunker.  This is the underground shelter that housed Churchill’s government during WWII.  I had visited there back in 2001 but had read that they added a new Churchill museum.  It did not disappoint.  Nice stuff for the history geek.

On the way, I spent a little time sitting in the beautiful St James Park, a place where every view is perfectly choreographed and where even the waterfowl are scenic.  Here’s one of their pelicans.

Then we all met up at Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard.  It’s an interesting ceremony, but it’s probably the worst example of crowding that we encountered in London.  This is definitely tourist season – there are vast crowds of people in the various places we’ve been, and this was an example.

Then it was off to Westminster Abbey via St James Park.  Here’s Andy and Kate against one of those choreographed views.

I love Westminster Abbey, a place where vast numbers of really famous people are buried.  There are not only all those Shakespearian monarchs (Elizabeth I, Mary, Mary Queen of Scots, Henry V, Henry IV, Edward the Confessor, Edward I, Edward III, Richard II – okay, not all of those are in Shakespeare plays), but there’s also Darwin and Newton.  No photos allowed, though, so no photos here.

Then Diana took a break from crowds while Julie, Andy, Kate, and I visited the British Museum.  Here’s a couple of pictures from there.

Then it was dinner, and we all went to see “Doctor Faustus” at the Globe Theater, a reproduction of Shakespeare’s Globe.  Here’s the kids in our box.  Well, sort of, anyway.

And one last note: I love London cabs.  We never have trouble getting a cab.  It’s cheaper for five of us to ride a cab than the Underground.  And unlike American cabs, you can fit a family of five in one taxi without any problems.  Of course, two of those five have to sit backwards, and given that Diana and Julie get motion sickness when riding backwards, I’m pretty much always one of the two.  So here’s a standard view of one of our cab rides.

In America, we know that right is right and ever shall be.

Sadly, other countries haven’t achieved the same realization.  Even some of our best friends in the world, places like England, haven’t discovered this simple truth.  They persist in following a wrong course, even though they have our sterling example set before them.  They will only accept that right is right if there is no other option.  At all other times, they refuse to recognize that right is right.

I refer, of course, to the proper side of the road for driving.

But every now and then a man has an itch to put aside the right and drive on the left side of the road.  They tend to frown on that sort of thing when you’re driving the Beltway, so today I took the opportunity to take a turn to the left.  And so we rented a car and drove to Windsor Castle, a place where I’ve wanted to visit since Julie and I came to England in 2003.

Windsor didn’t disappoint.  It’s a magnificent castle – absolutely huge, with plenty of medieval defenses and a lovely chapel – practically a cathedral – that featured the graves of a number of people that excited me.  I got a chance to stomp on the burials of Charles I and Henry VIII, two kings that I particularly despise.  (I take my history seriously!)  And I got to pay my respects to several of whom I think better, including George V and VI and Henry VI.  Here I am with guidebook in hand and the Round Tower in the background.

The living quarters at Windsor are also quite nice.  When Julie and I visited England last, we visited a number of palaces and occupied castles.  With the exception of Brighton Pavilion, which is a delightful place, they tended to feel awfully stodgy.  But we rather liked Windsor, even if there are an awful lot of portraits of Charles I hanging there.  (Then again, Julie rather likes Charles.  One of my complaints about the man is that he was a profligate spender, leaving England bankrupt.  But one of the ways he spent all that money was by patronizing artists, something of which Julie approves.  And something that tends to leave you with lots of portraits of yourself.)

Meanwhile, Kate got a chance to join the guard.  Here she is, learning how to march.

Wipe that smile off your face, Private Kate!  You’ll never make it that way!

In the evening, Julie, Kate, Diana, and I went to see “The 39 Steps.”  This is a comic version of the classic Hitchcock movie, performed by a manic cast of four.  Diana did a project on it in a stage management class and wanted to see it.  It was a fun show, but not amazing.

Meanwhile, Andy decided he wanted a day by himself in London.  I’m not sure what he did all day, but I suppose I’ll find out tomorrow.

And a last note about the weather.  It’s been terrible.  Every day it’s rained at least some.  In fact, we never know when we go into a building whether it will be raining or clear when we get out.  We’ve taken to carrying umbrellas everywhere, and picking up new umbrellas to replace damaged ones.  Here’s a typical view from our touring.

Ah well, nothing’s perfect.

When I travel on a tourism vacation, I typically put together a long list of things to do.  This includes the top tourist attractions of wherever I visit, or things that I really want to see for my own reasons.  I rarely get to see everything on the list, but have fun trying.

Kate has her own list for this trip.  A rather unusual list, which should surprise nobody who knows Kate.  Today and yesterday have been great days for Kate for knocking items off her list.

• She minded the gap.
• She heard somebody say, “Bloody hell.”
• She ate fish and chips.
• She saw a fuzzy-hat guy.