Plague (Peste)

GHenry of Goldfish Broth dropped a plague reference a few weeks ago and it made me remember how much I like the subject. I've always had a keen interest in historical plagues and related archaeology.







The Bubonic Plague occurrences are some of the most horribly devastating, but fascinating, recorded events; even worse than the dreaded Swine Flu.

This cute little guy would be a prime suspect in an outbreak of plague occurring in the Southwest US.

It's a bit morbid, but one reason all this is interesting to me is that if we ever get into a situation where antibiotics are in short supply, or we have a drug resistant pandemic, we could all be in a very similar situation to our ancestors who saw the awful Bubonic Plague.

The crossroads of the East and West in terms of commerce in the Middle Ages was Venice. Along with Marseille and a few other busy shipping ports, Venice has frequently been a 'jumping off' point for infection. In Venice, most visitors know the story of the imposing church of the Salute situated across the Grand Canal from St. Marks square.

The year was 1630 and 46,000 people in the city itself and 94,000 in the lagoons had died in a most horrific way. The Republic of Venice vowed a bargain to build a church if the pestilence would take a hiatus. Strangely enough it did that very year, and the Venetians made good on their word by building a great church. There are also other older plague churches in Venice built as offerings, San Rocco (with its great Tintorettos), San Giobbe, and San Sebastiano.

At some point, the Venetians established the quarantine island of Lazzaretto Vecchio to place the infected who almost invariably died. So whether arriving in a ship as a lowly crew member or a wealthy lord from a palazzo, those with the signs of the disease were taken to the small island. The first graves were proper and they took time to wrap in cloth. But towards the zenith of the epidemic, those responsible for moving the dead (or almost dead) would just dump carts into trenches.

On this island in 2007, workers digging a foundation for a new plague museum uncovered mass graves. Archaeologists have found more than 1500 victims in just the areas dug so far. The new museum on Lazzaretto Vecchio is definitely on my list of things to see this Fall.

Another much older island now covered completely with water had been found in the 1960's with victims from the famous 1348 outbreak, San Marco in Boccalama. Near the same island in 1996, they found two 700 year old barges which might have been used to move plague victims to the quarantine island.

Don't be afraid to see the new Venice plague museum, or have fear of the catacombs in the major cities like Rome and Paris which undoubtedly would contain some plague victims. We are more resistant to the plague bacteria now because our ancestors were the ones who lived. Plus we have antibiotics to help out, for now. The World Health Organization reports 1000 to 3000 occurrences of plague each year.

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Mi auguro che il museo di Lazzaretto Vechio sarà aperto da ottobre 2009. Storia della peste a Venezia è molto interessante.

Glass (Vetro)

In deciding on a Venice itinerary for this fall, I made plans to stop by the famous Domus Orsoni in sestiere Cannaregio. This place makes the best glass pieces for mosaics, and is also famous for their gold leaf crystal. They have nice rooms to stay in, but there are more luxurious places with balconies and terraces on the Grand Canal.















But check out the great golden shower you can get in guest room four at Domus Orsoni...




















I used some of this same 24k Orsoni gold leaf glass in some 3" mosaics I'm making for the new pool to be constructed. The contractor asked if I wanted 'step spotting' tiles so drunk uncoordinated visitors wouldn't fall whilst getting into or out of the pool. Being the hands-on type of guy I am, I decided to make several small mosaics as 'step spotting' tiles and just have those set in instead of boring one color tiles. I'd cover the whole bottom of the pool myself if I had the time, but I want to do the decking and probably carve some statues in carrara marble. So, maybe I'll just let that 'ultimate mosaic' pool part of the dream go for now.

Here is one of the mini-mosaics using gold Orsoni glass, marble and a bit of porpyry in a picture taken from atop a ten story parking garage downtown to make it more dramatic. *dramatic music plays*

















Glass making in the Venice area has a long and profitable history. It has been made there for around 1000 years. From master craftsman to apprentice, the secret recipes of silica, lime, sodium oxide, arsenic, nitrate and coloring agents (or manganese oxide in the case of clear glass) in just the right proportions and in the correct order of processing have been handed down.

One of the Venice glass companies, Barovier & Toso, was formed in 1295 AD. They probably have one of the oldest corporate websites in the world too.

Hopefully, after Luciana's class in Ravenna this Fall, mosaic making with glass and smalti won't be so foreign to me compared with stone and marble. I tried using Leponitt cutters for the first time on the gold glass pieces on Sunday, and it was difficult. Leponitts are spring loaded pliers with two glass cutting wheels that come together to score the glass. Of course, I was using them more like tile nippers, handily crushing the glass underneath.





















If you want to check out a modern glass artisan, go to Valerie's blog because she knows more about it than I ever will. Maybe I can pay Valerie to kiln up some smalti so I don't have to lug back 100kg of glass on the plane?

Does anyone else like the iridescence that occurs on ancient Roman glass? After thousands of years, some of the elements such as copper based impurities float to the surface of the glass giving it the rainbow and shimmer effect. It always amazes me that there is so much Roman glass left, what with glass being breakable and the ancients living with stone floors. Maybe it's thicker?

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Ho fatto i mosaici per i scale della piscina. Usato lo smalti oro di Orsoni, lo spero non rende ciechi a causa del sole.

Wine Tasting, Ancient Style (Assaggio del Vino, Antiche)

Who among us has never gone to a wine tasting party? We're talking about the kind in which the host wraps up bottles brought by party goers, then gives the secret bottles numerical identities, and paper and pen to the guests for writing tasting notes and voting for the favorite.

I enjoy being a bit bipolar in my reviewing technique, mostly for comedy, but if you are going to the trouble of reviewing something, why be bland about it?

If a wine happens to fall below average, I mock it relentlessly with the tasting notes. Things end up on my sheet like 'Old rotten saddle leather ridden by a leaky Cherry Kool Aid Man for weeks' or 'Everything that Cavit strives for, but worse and with a powerful cumin flavor and gorgonzola bouquet'.

But if a wine is better, I skew the results of comments wildly in the other direction. The prose on the notes quickly changes to the likes of 'A wine that thumps you on the head and demands respect. Complex lingering finish with vanilla and currant having just the right amount of French oak aging', that kind of thing.
All of it of course is rooted in a few grains of truth about the wine being tasted.

We have a wide variety of wine available today, but the ancients had a fair selection also. Wine came to ancient Italy from the Greeks at about 600 BC, and has been made there ever since. Pompeii itself was a major distribution port for wine, and if you go there today you can take pictures of the rows and rows of formerly wine containing amphorae like I did.

After Pompeii was destroyed in 79AD, the Romans got a bit protective of their wine trade a few years after that and had vineyards destroyed outside of Italy in 92AD under Emperor Domitian.

Here are some grapes I took a photo of in France near Chateau St. Maur last year that managed to escape Roman uprooting.

At this point, you might be wondering 'how did the ancients get the wine to ferment with no internet and readily accessible Home Booze Kit(tm) or yeast?'
Well, yeast occurs naturally on the grapes. There are recorded instances of birds eating overly ripe fruit and flying erratically into walls because they are over the legal intoxication limit for flying!

Anyway, as the Romans picked and stomped (not in the Country Western music sense), they left the skins in the amphorae with the juice and it happened all by itself. I would like to believe they were smart enough to just pour back part of a bottle into the new batches, so the strain of yeast would become more refined and specialized
over time.

Here is a picture of a remarkably well preserved ancient wine press in Israel, but some have also been found in Italy.

Some random Roman wine fun facts:

• Senator Cato (contemporary of Julius Caesar) wrote extensively on wine, as did Pliny.



• It's documented that sweet white wine was the most valuable in ancient times.



• They used to sweeten some varieties of ancient wine with lead!

I think this weekend, I'll open up a really old vintage Italian wine, unleaded.

Hope yours is good too.

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Quando vado a di festa vino (prova di assaggio), scrivo le osservazioni divertenti circa come i gusti del vino. La storia italiana del vino è affascinante.

Awards, Guitar Riff, and Signs

There has been so much work, vacation planning, and tomfoolery going on for me lately. But I've been able to finally finish my old looking dedication sign.
















Now I can have a pool built around it because, wow, it is really hot outside.



Also, one of my favorite people Zepo Lopez up in Oklahoma has awarded me the 'Blog it Forward' award. You know, now that I see the words 'forward' and 'award' so close together, it kind of freaks me out because they are so similar... It's a good tnihg I'm not dsylxeic.













Anyway, thanks very much Lopez, and I hereby pass the award along to some incredible *and* funny folks:

Grant Miller Media


GHenry at Goldfish Broth


Heather Cherry

Julia D at Homemade Hilarity



As you can see, I've restricted my choices to a narrow band of the available alphabet spectrum this time. So, please read them and comment favorably because if I send people, I might get a coupon or something. Just kidding about the coupon.


But everyone wait, that's not all... I recorded a little goofy guitar riff (not enough spare time these days to record the whole enchilada) for Lopez because she twittered that she was putting in some quality time at a casino. Let this abbreviated riff be a warning to not ever gamble what you cannot afford to lose (Animals House of Rising Sun).






Of course, she is a seasoned poker player from what I've heard. I kind of think that with enough card hands, poker is more of a game of skill than actual gambling. What do you guys think of skill vs. gambling where poker is concerned?

Strange Photos and Sundials (Fotografie Bizzaro e Orologi del Sole)

My camera phone saw a few strange things today. An experimental street light at the Dallas Museum of Art's sculpture garden... Maybe they didn't think it all the way through.




















On the way to work, I saw a horse getting hauled off to jail after obviously being arrested. I wonder what it did? It looked very guilty.
















My elevator on the 48th floor was having all 660 feet of cable replaced because the old ones were fraying and about to snap (kidding, they were reclaiming the much more valuable copper, I think). Maybe I'll run down the stairs this afternoon instead of taking the elevator (stairs actually take 6 minutes and 30 seconds).
















Over by Southfork Ranch, someone left a few stacks of gigantic number 2 pencils, they must have forgotten the sharpener.













Sunlight streamed in this morning and hit my muse bust in exactly the right proportions to make it light up as if intentional. This made me think of how that actually probably only happens exactly right once every year. Kind of like the Office episode where all the characters are watching the screen saver to bounce in *exactly* one of the corners in pure diagonal movement.

And this is the roundabout way of getting to the subject of time in the ancient world. In antiquity there were a few obvious ways of telling time better than looking up and just observing the sun's location.

One way was to burn accurate candles. In order for it to be big enough for a whole city to see, can you imagine the Roman equivalent of Big Ben being replaced each day? But it would probably be nothing but trouble, since Roman candles shoot firey exploding balls all over the place.




















Another way to tell time which had been around for a while was the water clock. But its operation was somewhat sketchy in freezing weather, plus they didn't have electric pumps to refill the water all the time.

The sundials however, were accurate on most sunny days. They even used the sundials to calibrate the water clocks. So maybe it was sundial during the day waterclock at night? Plus, the sundials were portable. Imagine glancing down at this baby on your way to an important business meeting on the Palantine (Collis Palatium).















I might just be motivated enough to build me a proper sundial that throws down shadows and also points out mosaic months of the year. You know, in case my water clock goes dry. Ooops, its a shade past time to go...

Work In Progress and Tour (Lavori in Corso e Chiamata)

Last weekend, I made a bit more progress on the ancient marble sign. Now I only have one line to go plus the thin chamfered marble border I'll be putting around it as a frame. I need to take a better picture with shading for the full effect of how legible from a distance this is, but the sun went behind one of the rare clouds we have in a Texas summer.

I love the way it looks now without any leftover pencil markings, it's more 'real' looking to me now.

Also, my Chi-Ro mosaic is pretty much done. I was thinking about bordering with gold Orsoni tile and offering up to the Vatican in exchange for a special backstage pass for the archaeological area under St. Peters Cathedral. I would be finished with several of these projects by now if not for picking and booking apartments and hotels for Italy. Maybe I'm too particular?

And now, away from the 'normal' format whatever that is... Mr. Condescending asked several bloggers the following questions probably in an effort to determine whose place he wants to visit most with his favorite trailer park family in tow. By the way, to keep it clear, this is no form of invite. If I come back late and you have broken in and are eating and drinking in the media room, I'll be figuratively releasing the hounds on you. Careful, remember this is Texas.

• What books are on your favorite shelf?
• What DVD's are on your favorite shelf?
• What are your TWO favorite cookbooks.
• Select 1-3 recipes you will cook for your special guest.
• What will we be drinking that is available?

To drink, there is water of course, various beverages, and access to this open bar. The expensive stuff is locked away until I know you much better.

I eat out often, but in case I get the culinary urge that actually requires instruction, I put on my official Brinker International chef pants with the black and white vertical stripes and my Chilis corporate tshirt and pull out these two cookbooks.

The first one is Emiril's Delmonico and from it I would recommend the Chicken Delmonico with the house salad. The second cookbook is Todd Wilbur's Top Secret Recipies. This one has always fascinated me because I love copying stuff you get out in restaurants. For example, I never would have imagined putting powdered sugar on fried chicken is how Chick-Fil-A makes its distinctive coating. Anyway, I'd recommend the nice prime petit fillet in the style of Ruth Chris' steakhouse from this book.

As for DVD's I usually throw away the cluttery plastic boxes and just keep them in big binders, but I did have some to put on display. If you squint, you can probably make out 'Rounders', 'Tombstone', 'Gross Pointe Blank', 'La Vita e Bella', 'Better Off Dead', and 'Star Wars' among others (by squint I mean seeing the titles on the movie boxes, not the movies on the screen. You'd have to be on the farthest back row for that to be a problem).

And finally, here is a bookshelf. Can anyone spot the book printed more than 100 years ago? I have various books on mosaic, fresco, history, language, sculpture, music and various literature.

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Il mio segno di marmo quasi è completato. Se visitiate, immagini sopra che cosa là è di fare. Nessuna preoccupazione, ho parecchie pellicole con di lingua italiana. Ciaooo!

Foundations of a Good Pavement

I've been interested lately in the ancient ways of laying down a foundation because I'm thinking of doing a large 80m sq outside pavement that will more or less serve as a canvas for some mosaics I have in mind. Maybe make a few bronze legged ancient couches and such for lounging around said pavement.



The books of architecture by Vitruvius in classical antiquity really cast a light on how they built things to last, and why some of the buildings in the Roman forum are still standing, even with several tons of stone supported for thousands of years. I also think those Seven-Eleven convenience stores on the Appian Way will be there forever because of this.

In Book 7 chapter 1, Vitruvius covers the proper way to lay down a pavement or foundation. First, they hammered the soil down to compact it tighter than your glutes after an hour of squats, and then set a layer of logs on the ground on top of that. Next, at least six inches of stone were set down on the logs, followed by 12 inches of the smaller stone cemented together with lime which was compacted by beating it with wood.

But that's not all... Then an upper layer of another 6 inches, this time more rich in lime, was set with stones and leveled off. Finally the slab pieces or mosaic tessarae were mortared on to that. So back in the day, they used 2/3 meter thick foundations. Very impressive, much more thick and longer lasting than the foundations of today.

And now for something completely different, OtherWorldlyOne (warning, a bit salty sometimes) picked me for another one of those questiony things. I like her comments and blog, so who am I to turn that down? Feel free to do this one if you like.

So here are ten things not previously published about me (that I'm aware of).

• On the piano, I can pick out a note I hear in the first try, but it's always exactly 1 and 1/2 steps off. I blame years of playing the trumpet, which is a B flat instrument to the piano's key of C.
  


• The tops of my feet have absolutely no hair.
  


• I've never had a tattoo or piercing of any kind, and never felt the need to get one.
  


• I karaoke sometimes, but unfortunately I sound similar to Billy Joel.
  


• As a kid, I always wanted to play hockey, but there was not much ice in Texas so I couldn't.



• I was blessed with an unnaturally good sense of balance and can still do an unhealthy amount of skateboarding tricks including multiple 360s.
  


• When I make margaritas, they always use small amounts of Cointreau and pineapple juice, and are always on the rocks because frozen is just not the way to go.
  


• I have never been to South America, even though boat chartering is less expensive there. At some point, I want to go hiking to see Machu Picchu.
  


• I used to be able to throw a really wicked baseball breaking pitch, but haven't tried in a while.
  


• When I was 12 years old, I took the SAT (college admissions test) because Duke University wanted me to.

So there you have it!

Have a great weekend all, I'll be working the marble and studying the Italian if you know what I mean...

PS - Like my ironic subject made in Photoshop?