Tales from the Man who would be King

© 2014 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

As with previous installments in this series, I'll borrow from my diaries. I'll also add other commentary. I've deliberately chosen to not include any photos, as you can see pictures (and plenty of other information) by following the on-line links.

Ireland

Official Name: Republic of Ireland (Éire); Capital: Dublin (Baile Átha Cliath); Language: English and Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge); Country Code: IE; Currency: Euro (previously, the Irish pound [punt])

My first trip to Ireland was in 2001 and started with a flight from the US to the Shannon Airport outside Limerick. After two nights there, we spent two weeks driving around the southwest counties of Kerry and Cork, staying with host families and Farmhouse Bed & Breakfasts. [Speaking of limerick, "There was a young man from the sticks; Who took to writing limericks; But he gave up the sport; Because he made them too short."]

[Diary] At Foynes we toured the Flying Boat Museum. (Foynes was the eastern terminal of the Trans-Atlantic flying boat services of the 1930s and 1940s.) Then we wandered along the Shannon estuary. We pulled into a picnic area and noticed a metal arch at each end of the pullout that we decided was to let cars in, but to keep out gypsies and their wagons. Travelers (the more polite term for gypsies) had quite a presence in Ireland.

[Diary] Contrary to our guidebook, our host suggested we explore the Dingle Peninsula by going over the Conor Pass first rather than at the end of the day. We stopped many times to shoot video. What a picturesque drive it was. At one point we climbed the rocks to a mountain lake. Dingle, a busy port town, was at the end of the pass. A bottle-nosed dolphin, Fungie, had taken up residence in the harbor and provided hours of amusement for tourists and locals. We decided to continue our tour and explore the town later. Of particular interest were the 5,000-year-old beehive dwellings made of stone and used by the early Christians.

[Diary] After dinner, we drove south on the Ring of Kerry, turning off to a beach overlooking the Inch Peninsula. The wind whipped up the waves in the ocean, but the more sheltered marshy area was quite calm. Many of the fields in which crops were grown were protected by two-to-three-foot hedges/fences. Watching the gale force wind that day showed us how practical this idea was. A house under construction had partially collapsed due to the wind.

[Diary] Next stop was Muckross House, built in 1843, visited by Queen Victoria in 1861, and given to the Irish Government by an American, Senator Vincent. We strolled around the stately home, through the vast gardens and into the craft center. Ladies View, so named because Queen Victoria and her ladies visited this spot, offered a spectacular look back up the Killarney Valley. We stopped in the town of Kenmore and walked to a ring of stones which supposedly had ties to the Druids. Quite a few sites have been excavated in different parts of Ireland.

[Diary] In June 1985, an Air India jumbo jet blew up off this Irish coast. Near the town of Ahakista, the Irish people created a memorial garden with flowers, a sundial and a wall on which the names of all the victims are inscribed.

[Diary] We donned hiking boots and coats and set off to see the stone circle that was part of the walking trails on the Sheep's Head Peninsula. This part of the trail had been opened the previous year by the U.S. ambassador to Ireland. We traipsed across tundra-like terrain, through the prickly heather, furze, and ferns. After about 25 minutes, we came to a stone stile and back onto a road that eventually lead to our farm.

[Diary] At 10 am, we left for Blarney and the famous castle. We decided to try lesser roads, and were surprised to find the best road of our trip so far. With only a few minor hitches, we pulled into the castle parking lot at 11 am. The entrance fee was reasonable at £3.50. The grounds were quite extensive, and the castle rather imposing up on the hill. The line to climb to the top to see/kiss the Blarney Stone was quite long, but it kept moving, and we chatted with others in line. Many of these folk were on organized tours, seeing the UK and Ireland in 10 days. (We were glad we chose to take our time.) We were inside the castle as the first rain of the day descended upon us. By the time we came outside at the top, it had stopped. Some of the stones were quite slippery and required extra care. The myth suggests that kissing the stone gives one the gift of the gab. I passed, as the Jaeschkes don't need any help in that department!

[Diary] Cobh (pronounced Cove) was our next destination. We circled around Cork, and, again, despite some confusing road signs, we found the N25 and Great Island on which the port town of Cobh can be found. This was the last port of call for the Titanic, and many of the 2,000 victims of the Lusitania (sunk during WWI) were buried there. Many Irish immigrants left their homeland from this port.

[Diary] Our next B&B was Killmuckey House, an impressive old home on a beef and dairy farm. We were the only guests, and so had the pick of the three rooms. We chose the brightest one. After cups of tea, we read and relaxed, a perfect way to spend part of a vacation. The weather continued to alternate between warm, sunny periods and showers. It was truly a charming, peaceful setting. At about 7 pm we drove into Castlematyr to find that the only pub serving food had closed its kitchen early. We drove to the shore at Garryvoe and, from a mobile kitchen, enjoyed sausages, fish and chips and a burger by the beach.

In December 2009, as one does, I met a Dublin-based couple at the Tourist Office in Caen, Normandy, France. We'd gone there to get information only to find it closed on Mondays, so we got talking and exchanged contact information. A year later, when I was making plans to go to Belfast, I decided to add on a week of play in and around Dublin, so I sent them mail to see about meeting up with them for a meal. They responded and invited me to stay two nights, and I accepted.

[Diary] At noon, we dressed warmly and ventured out. Although it was quite cold, the sun was shining and the wind was not blowing. We drove to some scenic overlooks and then to Howth, a suburb with a large harbor for fishing and recreational boats. It was quite busy there with people eating brunch/lunch and shopping at the open-air market. We walked out on the sea wall to the small lighthouse and then around the town a bit. At the market, we ate bratwursts at the German food stall and then stopped at a nearby café for coffee, chai latte, and pastries. I had a very nice buttered scone with jam.

[Diary] I'd made a plan to tour some cultural sites, and the first stop was the famous Trinity College Library, home of the equally famous Book of Kells, perhaps the finest illustrated book of the four Christian Gospels: Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John. For €5, I got an audio guide, which made the visit much more interesting. The self-guided tour ended in the Long Room, which housed some 200,000 of the library's books shelved between two long rows of busts of famous Irish scholars. The oldest harp in Ireland was also on exhibit. It's the one featured on Irish Euro coins.

[Diary] Next, it was on to Dublin Castle and Christchurch to have a look, and then to St. Patrick's Cathedral (or should I say St. Padraig's Catedral?) where Jonathon Swift was buried. Next up was the National Museum (Anthropology). The good news was that admission was free; the bad news was that it too was closed on Mondays. Nearby was the National Gallery. The good news was that it too was free; the bad news was that it was open! I tried very hard to appreciate the paintings, but failed to get excited. Across the street was a statue of Oscar Wilde, so I went to pay my respects only to find the area cordoned off for repairs. However, I did manage to get a glimpse of his head through the trees. It was not my day, apparently.

[Diary] At 8:15 am at my Bed & Breakfast, I went down for breakfast where two young Egyptian men were eating. I ordered a cooked breakfast half of which I packed for Ron (as in "later on"). I had noticed a set of framed quotes from famous Irish literary people, mounted on the wall. The one that most amused me was from George Bernard Shaw, "Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire". Hmm.

I walked to the River Liffey and along one bank looking at some interesting architecture both old and new. What caught my eye was the new Samuel Beckett Bridge that looked like a huge harp hanging over the river with the cables being the strings. I came to O'Connell Bridge, which has the distinction of being wider than it is long. I strolled up the very busy O'Connell Street passed the stainless steel millennium Spire to the Garden of Remembrance, which honors those who helped win Irish independence in 1921. Opposite was another gallery, so I decided once again to try to increase my art-appreciation quotient. The best I can say was that the gallery had seats in every hall, so a weary traveler with bad knees could sit and rest and look at the paintings. The coffee shop was wonderful. I spent a whole hour there keeping warm, sipping very strong coffee, and working on some Sudoku puzzles.

I wandered through the main shopping streets to the river and back to Dublin Castle and the Beatty Library. Mr. Beatty was an American who had made his fortune in mining, and had lived much of his life in London and Dublin. Along the way, he collected a variety of things including very rare and ancient manuscripts most of which had some religious significance. He donated that collection to Ireland and the Library was built to house it. I was impressed with the man and the small collection that was on display.

[Diary] It had rained during the night and the leaf-covered sidewalks were a bit slippery. I walked to a rather swank hotel nearby, which was my closest tour pick-up point. The coach arrived at 9:30 and set off to pick up 25-odd others at various hotels and meeting places before heading out of town at 10:30. First stop was the Hill of Tara, at one-time the home of a large complex of wooden buildings from which the whole country was ruled. There is not much to see there now apart from old markers and mounds, however. From there, we drove down into the Boyne Valley where in 1690 the Protestant William of Orange (husband of Queen Mary) defeated his Catholic father-in-law, deposed King James, at the Battle of the Boyne.

At New Grange, we stopped for three hours. From the visitor's center, we rode a small bus to the huge earthen mound that had been excavated only 50 years earlier, perfectly preserved from when it was constructed 1,000 years before Egypt's pyramids were built. We went inside the narrow passageway and saw a simulation of sunlight coming in through a shaft above the entrance at noon on the midwinter's solstice. (To experience that on the actual day, one must be a winner of a national lottery for that purpose.)

[Diary] I rode the light rail to the seaside town of Bray, where I found a B&B for two nights. Next morning, I headed south along the boardwalk to Bray Head. It was a steady climb up a paved road and the view back over the town and its bay were great. The cliff-top walk south to Greystones was 6 km, and having nothing better to do I set out. There had been rain a few days earlier, so the path had mud in places, but it was not too bad. The path was 50+ feet above the train line, which in turn was 50+ feet above the Irish Sea. The hillside kept most of the wind away until the 4-km mark where the trail topped the cliffs and was completely exposed to the elements. There were only a few people out and I met up with two women from Belfast, a German family, and four young women from Slovakia. Near Greystones, the path had collapsed into the sea and a detour with tall fences on either side had been built across a farmer's field.

[Diary] Breakfast was a big affair with two sausages, three rashers of bacon, an egg, toast, tea, and juice. As was my usual practice, I ate half and packed the rest into my emergency ration kit. Back in my room, I packed my bag and finished my novel. I spent quality time with the resident dog, an aging Labrador who bonded with me in seconds. Then I bid farewell and stepped out into a glorious day, especially for November. The sun was streaming down and there was no wind. I had plenty of time, so I walked along the boardwalk watching people with dogs playing in and near the water. At the marina, a flock of gulls, geese, and swans fought for the bread people were feeding them. I walked out to the end of the seawall that protected the marina, and chatted with a retired woman who was very friendly. After a while, three of her friends joined us and we sat and chatted in the sun, lamenting the fact that no one had brought tea and scones!

The UK

Official Name: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Capital: London; Language: English; Country Code: GB (although UK is used as an Internet address suffix); Currency: Pound sterling. Great Britain is the island containing England, Scotland, and Wales.

England

Well now, where to begin? I've been to England and London many times. From the dozens of diary pages I've come up with the following handful of extracts:

[Diary from Bath] I rode a taxi to my very swank hotel, the Bath Priory, a member of a small luxury hotel chain. The normal rate was about £250 pounds (US$400) per night, but we had some sort of corporate deal that made it halfway decent. We had very special individual service, the whole nine yards; it was a bit posh, in fact. I expected I'd have to say "Please" when I ask them "I say old bean. Could you please pass the bloody potatoes?'" All the rooms were named for flowers; I was assigned "Marigold".

That night, a company hosted a reception for 25 people. It was a rather nice affair. Being in a private dining room, and most of us being your typical technical computer nerds, we didn't wear ties or jackets, apparently, a rule inviolate in the main dining room at dinnertime. (In fact, I'm sure that some didn't even wear socks, although I don't remember that being a requirement in the posted dress code.) Well it was a typical up-scale restaurant: the more expensive the dish, the bigger the plate, the smaller the serving, and the more artistic. In fact, I'd say that the appetizer and dessert looked more artistic than most art I'd seen, but, then, I'd been known to have my taste in my mouth!

Off the entrance hall there was a medium-sized parlor/reading room, with comfortable chairs, paintings and books. They had a collection of Robert Louis Stevenson's work, a set of 1910 11th edition Encyclopedia Britannica, Diaries of The French Revolution, lots of English classics, and so forth. Just the sort of thing a country squire would have. (I made notes for my dream house plan.)

The adjacent larger parlor was, how shall I say, overrun with large deep comfortable chairs and cushions, many oil paintings (of people paying polo, cricket and rugby, of military officers, and numerous other topics), objects of art, and other quaint stuff. From here, one could exit onto the patio that overlooked the croquet lawn, fountains, and large garden. As the sun shone down, I must say that it did look rather impressive, what! (I made more notes for my dream house.)

[Diary from Oxford] We arrived in a slight drizzle, but that stopped as we left the station. We boarded a double-decker bus for an orientation tour of this university city. We were the only passengers, so we sat upstairs in the open, next to the guide. After the tour we started a walking tour at Christ Church, the best known of the many colleges there. While there is one big university, and all the students mix in for classes, they live and dine in their own colleges, some of which date back many hundreds of years. Christ Church has the big cathedral built by Cardinal Wolsey, who then fell out of favor with Henry VIII, who then suggested to Wolsey that it would be good for his health to give it to the King, who made it his own design. (Oh it's good to be King!) Lewis Carroll (author of Alice in Wonderland) was a math tutor there, and numerous references to his characters are embodied in stain glass in the dining hall.

Back in Australia, my first car was a Morris Minor, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that William Morris had started out in Oxford with a bicycle shop and then built his first cars in a factory on the edge of town. This lead to the world-famous Mini, which BMW had taken over and launched a new model. (Shagadelic Baby! as Austin Powers might say.) The MG (Morris Garage) sports car was also well known.

[Diary from London] We set off for Abbey Road to see the studios made famous by the Beatles, although, it turned out, those studios were already quite well known for other reasons. We walked on the famous Zebra crossing that is featured on the Beatles' album "Abbey Road". … Then it was on to King's Cross station, and Saint Pancras, the wonderful church/train station next door. After a short walk we were at the British Library, opened only two years earlier. It houses the Magna Carta, an original Shakespeare folio, some very fancy Korans, numerous other literary treasures, and, last but by no means least, Beatles lyrics written on airline napkins and scrap paper. In the multimedia room we looked over some rare books that have been digitized, including Da Vinci's notebook. He wrote his Italian backwards (right-to-left), so you needed a mirror to read it. Of course, the computer reversed it for us.

[Diary from County Kent] From Hastings we took a 15-minute ride to the town of Battle, some six miles to the north. The Battle of Hastings actually took place there in 1066 resulting in William the Conqueror's whipping Harold, but only just. Apparently, after killing all those Saxons, William decided to build an abbey on the site as part of his penance. In the years that followed, the town of Battle grew up around Battle Abbey. At the battlefield tour office we bought our tickets, got our audio wand, and headed out around the grounds, museum, and battlefield for a narrated tour. The audio wand allowed us to get commentary from the point of view of a Saxon soldier, a Norman knight, and Harold's wife who was part of his medical support team. Of course, the two sides had different versions of the story.

In May and June of 2005, I hiked the Thames Path (184 miles/294 km) along the Thames River. For details, see my essay.

Scotland

My family and I spent a week there using a Brit-Rail pass. We started out in Edinburgh were we spent two nice days playing tourist (visiting the castle and its Mons Meg cannon, Holy Rood Palace, and so on) and eating pub food. Next was Aberdeen, the center for North Sea oil activities. In the north, we spent half a day in Inverness where I bought a beautiful woolen sweater hand-made by a craftswoman from the remote islands. [As I write this, it's snowing and tonight's temperatures are forecast to be below zero Fahrenheit, so that sweater might come in handy, especially if the power goes out!]

We had a delightful and low-key weekend in Kyle of Lochalsh staying in a private home. From there, we took the short ferry ride across to the Isle of Skye and a bus down to Armidale, and the ferry back to the mainland and Fort William.

We'd been making up our plan as we traveled, but once we discovered that Glasgow was hosting an international garden festival, we found it impossible to find any accommodations in that area. As such, we looked at the map of the area 50+ miles to the northwest of Glasgow, and picked a place where we'd get off the train and try to find a place to stay there. As the train pulled out of the station we found ourselves the only ones who got off, and that the station was unmanned. There were signs to two neighboring villages: Tarbet and Arrochar. Although both were within a short walking distance, we chose the closer one, Tarbet. On the edge of town we found a B&B with a nice room, so we signed up for two nights. Although our choice of train station had been purely arbitrary, we found ourselves in the town that tourists use to visit the famed Loch Lomond, whose banks were "just down the hill from the pub". We did the obligatory boat tour of the loch, only to be "attacked" by two Royal Air Force jets that were practicing a bombing run on the dam nearby. To have jets come at you upwind at only hundreds of feet over your head, and then have a sonic boom hit you after they were well passed is quite an experience, not to mention cause for an underwear change!

On the final day of our rail pass, we spent the afternoon walking around Glasgow.

Wales

Our visit here started in Bangor, where we stayed two nights in a B&B. Next up, we were hosted by a 40-something single man who lived in a converted country chapel. One novel feature was that the front door was a typical heavy wooden church-door affair, and the key for it was "hidden" under a stone on top of the wall, in plain view! On our final morning, we helped our host repair bicycles in his bike-rental shop in town. After that, we had a rest day while staying at a country pub. We were the only guests and the publican was happy to have the company. We enjoyed walking on rights-of-way across fields, and eating lunch in front of a roaring fire.

We stayed with a second host family where the wife worked while the inventor-husband ran the house. We were introduced to several different kinds of tandem bicycles, wild-berry picking, and sleeping in a tent in the garden. The final host was a country doctor husband and wife, who were out on their rounds each day. He was a Quaker and she was an atheist, an interesting combination. This was not long after the Chernobyl disaster, and the people of this Welsh village were hosting 20–30 children from the affected area, to give them a psychological as well as medical respite. The last night of the trip was spent in Cardiff. [This was our first time as a family staying with hosts from Servas International.]

Northern Ireland

I've been to Northern Ireland only once, for a business conference in 2010. To get there, I flew into Dublin and took a bus to Belfast. I departed by train back to Dublin. Although it rained hard much of the week I was there, I was able to visit some of the countryside and to sample some great food and hospitality.

[Diary] … The Europa Hotel was a rather posh place with a grand lobby complete with open fireplace radiating quite some heat. The staff was ever so happy to have me as a guest for seven nights at the paltry cost of £90 per night, taxes and full breakfast included. However, internet access was not. I rode the lift to the 9^th floor and opened the door to my room. As soon as I saw the bed, I thought there must be some mistake. Although it was a double, it was designed for two leprechauns! And the writing table certainly had character; that is, either the legs had different lengths or the floor was uneven. Tea- and coffee-making facilities were provided, as is the typical British Commonwealth custom. I unpacked and settled in. I'd been "on the road" 17½ hours.

Now I'm sure some readers will be interested in knowing whether it really is safe these days in Northern Ireland. I must say that I had been wondering that myself, so I picked up a daily paper in the hotel lobby and here's the stories splashed across the front page: "Officers injured in bomb ambush" (police officers were bombed as they responded to a burglary call); "Hunt on for kidnap gang"; and "Dentist trial to start later this month" (a dentist and his lover were to go on trial for murdering their previous partners). There was one bit of good news, however. The Farming Life insert proclaimed, "Beef producers look to happy new year." Well, that was a relief; just when I was starting to think this might be a dangerous place. [One factoid I learned that day was that my hotel, The Europa, had been bombed or threatened more than 35 times during The Troubles, which ended in the late 90's.]

[Diary] … On our free day, a colleague and I rented a car. After a long drive, we came to the main natural attraction of Northern Ireland—Giant's Causeway—an extensive basalt rock collection of 4-, 5-, and 6-sided vertical columns of rock formed after a huge volcanic eruption some 60 million years ago. We hiked down to the water's edge and climbed all over the formations along with other tourists. Then we climbed a trail and hiked a ways to see a huge amphitheater containing some of the tallest and best column sets. Then we hiked up to the top of the cliffs and into the teeth of a strong and cold wind back to the visitor center. After all that exercise and the cold, we were well and truly ready for a hot meal, and we settled into the hotel nearby for a great lunch.

[Diary] … I walked with a group of fellow conference delegates to the town hall where some 50 of us were given a guided tour. The rest of the delegates joined us afterwards and we all had drinks and appetizers to the sounds of a string quartet. From there, we moved into a large dining room and sat at circular tables of 7–8 people. The deputy Lord Mayor gave us a rousing welcome in a very good speech, and then the food was served. To start with there was hot pan-seared salmon with herbed potato bread and dulse (seaweed) cream. The main course was braised Northern Ireland lamb shank with champ (mashed potatoes with herbs), spring greens (beans), and baby carrots and caramelized shallots, served in Bushmills (local whiskey) and red currant jus. Dessert was Irish rhubarb and champagne crème Brule with Grenadine (liquor), roasted rhubarb and Irish butter shortbread. That was followed by tea and coffee. Throughout the meal, waiters served red wine from France, white wine from Chile, and bottled water from England's Blenheim Palace grounds (Churchill's ancestral home near Oxford).

Some speeches followed, a man played traditional tunes on different flutes, and four colleens danced some traditional steps accompanied by recorded music. I sat next to a retired Irish couple and we spent the evening discussing all kinds of topics relating to the Republic and Northern Ireland. It was quite an interesting history lesson.

[Diary] … The skies turned dark soon after we departed Belfast and rain fell. Several Irish Republic delegates and I talked most of the 2:20-hour train journey to Dublin comparing all sorts of things in our respective countries, and getting an Irish history lesson as we crossed the famous River Boyne.

Conclusion

Although I'd be happy to visit or revisit numerous places in Ireland and the UK, I have only one major thing on my bucket list for that part of the world. And that is a visit to Yorkshire. Yes, I might have a romantic notion of it from James Heriot's books and TV series, "All Creatures Great and Small", but I'd like to go anyway. I must admit, however, that I have also thought about hiking the Hadrian's Wall path. Yet deep in my heart I know that truly is a crazy idea.

I'll end with the following anecdote: A Scotsman and an Englishman were talking about the relative merits of their heritage, and the Englishman said, "By God, I was born an Englishman, I've lived as an Englishman, and I'll die as an Englishman!" To which the Scotsman replied, "Have ye no ambition?"

© 2013 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

Several years ago, I moved out into the country. By that time, I'd been without cable/pay TV for a couple of years, relying instead on a digital antenna for 30-odd free, over-the-air channels. However, at my new location, the antenna could not pick up any signals. After thinking about the implications for no more than 30 seconds, I decided that my life would be just fine with no TV reception at all. And so, I turned to my reference library, which had been gathering dust for many years. After a cursory glance, I settled on a couple of books on introductory mathematics, including one from my Year 12 High School class in 1969. [By the way, in Australia the abbreviated form of the word mathematics is maths, while in the US it is math. Go figure!] Yes, Dear Reader, I've been reading math books for recreation, but then, I've never been accused of being normal!

In this essay, I'll refresh your memory about some basics, and probably introduce you to some formal terminology for the things you've been using for years. As you read, you might find it useful to refer to some related essays, including the following: August 2012, "What is Normal: Part 5. Numbers and Counting Systems", December 2012, "Symbols and Marks", and March 2013, "What is Normal: Part 6. Weights and Measures".

There is not a test, per se, at the end of this essay; however, as you'll read in "Conclusion", Never say Never!

Basic Arithmetic

For most of us, the term literacy implies the ability to read and write. However, in general, it also includes the idea of proficiency with basic numeric operations. We know these collectively as arithmetic, so that's where I'll start. [According to Wikipedia, arithmetic is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics.]

The fundamental operations one can perform on pairs of numbers are addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, which are represented by the symbols + (plus), − (minus), × (multiply), and ÷ (divide), respectively. [Not surprisingly, calculators and computer programs that emulate calculators have these mathematical symbols as keys. However, only the first of these symbols appears on a standard computer keyboard. Yes, there is a "-" key, but that's a hyphen; from a typesetting viewpoint, the minus character is wider. One of the most common uses of writing these operations is in computer programming, where the corresponding symbols typically used are +, -, *, and /.]

Let's start with the simplest kind of operation, addition, and consider the following expression, which contains two terms, the whole numbers 1 and 2:

1 + 2

The result—called the sum—is 3. Technically, both terms are called addends. Addition is commutative; that is, the two terms can be swapped over without affecting the result.

Let's look at subtraction:

5 − 1

The result—called the difference—is 4. Subtraction is not commutative; 5 – 1 is quite different from 1 − 5. The left-hand term is called the minuend, while the right-hand term is called the subtrahend.

Here's an example of multiplication:

2 × 5

The result—called the product—is 10. Even though multiplication is commutative, the terms have different names, the left-hand one being the multiplicand while the right-hand one is the multiplier. (Sometimes, both terms are called factors.)

Consider the following case of division:

13 ÷ 5

The main result—called the quotient—is 2, and the secondary result—called the remainder—is 3. Clearly, division is not commutative. The left-hand term is the dividend while the right-hand one is the divisor, except on Wednesdays between 10 and 11 pm, when they are known as Jack and Mary, respectively. [I'm just checking to see if you really are reading this carefully.]

Oftentimes, we'd like to have an arithmetic expression that contains more than two terms. To understand the meaning of such expressions, we need to know about associativity. Consider the following:

3 + 5 + 2

In this case, the 3 and 5 are added first, and the result is added to 2, giving 10. We say that addition is left-associative. We can write this explicitly using (redundant) grouping parentheses, as follows:

(3 + 5) + 2

(Subtraction, multiplication, and division are also left-associative.) What if we reposition the parentheses, as in:

3 + (5 + 2)

No problem, we still get the result 10. A similar situation occurs with two multiplications, but not with two subtractions or two divisions.

Consider the following expression:

3 + 5 × 4 − 1

Now we have several different operators. It turns out that multiplication and division have (the same) higher precedence than addition and subtraction, which have the same lower precedence. Adding redundant grouping parentheses to indicate precedence and associativity, we get:

(3 + (5 × 4)) − 1

which results in (3 + 20) – 1 à 23 – 1 à 22.

We can override precedence using grouping parentheses, as follows:

(3 + 5) × (4 – 1)

which results in 8 × 3 à 24.

Zero, Negative Numbers, and Infinity

The concept of zero has been around for a good while. In general, people aren't unduly confused by a count of "none". However, negative numbers cause some people great confusion. How can you have fewer than none of anything? [Note carefully that I did not say "less than none". See "Conclusion" below.] Of course, some of these same people have overdrawn their bank accounts, so they really have experienced having fewer than zero of their own dollars!

The idea that revolutionized things with respect to numbers was the invention of the number line, a horizontal line containing a point for each number with equal spacing between whole numbers. In the drawing below, the line segment shows –5 on the left and +5 on the right. However, as shown by the arrows, the line extends indefinitely in each direction, and we talk about the line's so-called "limits" as being minus infinity (–∞) and plus infinity (+∞), respectively.

When we think of numbers simply being points on this line, zero is just another point, and so are negative numbers. And it certainly helps us deal with arithmetic expressions such as 4 – 6, whose result is –2. It also allows us to deal with numbers whose values are "between the whole numbers". [It's also useful to use this line to represent historic time. The point 0 represents the Birth of Christ, with the year 1 AD starting immediately to the right, and the year 1 BC ending immediately to the left. As shown, there is no year 0, only a time-instant of zero.]

There is one unusual kind of division expression, that having a divisor of zero. Just how many zeros are there in any value? In general, mathematicians consider the result to be undefined. [In most modern computers, a negative whole number divided by zero results in minus infinity, while a positive whole number divided by zero results in plus infinity. This allows computers to do useful work with infinities even though they really don't exist. Of course, we mere mortals might then ask such questions as, "If infinity is the largest value, why can't I add 1 to it?" and "If there are infinity zeros in 1, how can there only be infinity zeros in 2? Should there be twice as many zeros in 2?" Of course, the correct response to these questions is, "Shut up and eat your vegetables, smarty pants!" And to make things really interesting, zero divided by zero results in a NaN, which stands for "Not-a-Number". Of course, computers can do useful things with these as well, but I wouldn't lose any sleep worrying about that if I were you.]

Fractions

According to Wikipedia, 'A fraction (from Latin: fractus, "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight-fifths, three-quarters.'

A fraction is written with a numerator overtop of a denominator, separated by a horizontal or slanted line; for example, ½, ¾, 3/8, and 27/100 represent a half, three quarters, three eights, and 27 hundredths, respectively. In general, if the value of the numerator is smaller than that of the denominator, we have a proper fraction; otherwise, we have an improper fraction.

I live in a non-metric country, and on the ruler I have in front of me I see divisions of ½, ¼, 1/8, and 1/16 of an inch. Some typewriters even had the first two of these as keys; however, I've never seen them on a computer keyboard. In my world, I see fractions on a regular basis. Some examples are:

• When I write a check to pay a bill (yes, I'm old-fashioned), as well as writing the amount as a number, I must also write it in words, except that the fraction dollar part must be written as a fraction. For example, a check for $23.76 would say "Twenty Three dollars and 76/100". [By the way, if you use Microsoft Word, it provides a field code that can convert a financial amount expressed as a number into the corresponding text for a check.]
• Last week, I bought gasoline and the price was shown on an advertising board outside the gas station. It said, $3.57 9/10 per gallon. Clearly this is a marketing ploy in that the fraction is not so easy to read and you are supposed to think the price is $3.57 when it's almost $3.58. My guess is that most commuters don't even notice.
• Originally, the U.S. dollar's value was based on the value of the Spanish real, a silver dollar that could be divided into eight parts. As a result, when the U.S. stock market began, stock values were based on one-eighth fractions. [In the US, an eighth was called a bit—a value of 12½ cents—so a quarter was worth two bits. Such usage of this term occurs in literature and in the lyrics of popular songs.]

In every-day English, we usually use fraction to mean a small amount, as in, "He only saved a fraction of his take-home pay." Most likely, that fraction would be significantly less than 5%.

From the deep, dark recesses of my mind, I recall a puzzle from my early school days. It goes something like this (and clearly is intended to be spoken rather than written): A man is locked inside a room that contains only a table. How does he get out? Well, he rubs his finger on the wall until he develops a sore—a homophone of saw. He uses that saw to cut the table in half. Now two halves make a whole–which is a homophone for hole—and he crawled out that hole.

Percentages

According to Wikipedia, 'a percentage is a number or ratio expressed as a fraction of 100. It is often denoted using the percent sign, "%"'. For example, did you know that 76% of all statistics are made up on the spot? Of course, this is a joke; it's actually 59%! So, by writing 76%, I mean "76 out of every 100", or, written as a fraction, 76/100.

Here in the US, most states (and some cities and counties) levy a sales tax on most items sold commercially. In my state, Virginia, that rate is 5.3%; that's 5.3 cents for every 100 cents ($1) of the purchase price. Now what confuses many foreign visitors to the US is that the amount of sales tax is not included in the advertised price. So when they see something on sale for $4.99, they hand over $5 to the cashier expecting to get one cent change. However, they are politely told they need more to cover the sales tax. Now, strictly speaking, 5.3% of $4.99 is 26.4 cents, but as we have no coins of smaller value than 1 cent, that gets rounded down to 26 cents, making a total bill of $5.25.

Another common use of percentages is in tipping. In the US it is pretty standard to tip a waiter 15% for decent service at a table. However, if one is eating at a counter, 10% is about right. That's 15 and 10 cents, respectively, for every dollar of the bill.

Every day in the news, we're told how high the unemployment rate is, as a percentage. In some areas it's as high as 15–20%; that's 15–20 out of all able-bodied people of working age.

Then there's the interest rate on savings accounts and loans.

Short of doing a (possibly) complicated calculation, how then is one to calculate exactly or to estimate a percentage? In most cases, one can get a reasonable estimate. In the case of a 10% tip, one simply calculates one-tenth of the total by taking the total and moving the decimal place one position to the left. For example, a 10% tip on a bill of $15.67 is $1.57 (after rounding the 1.567 up to 1.57), which when added together comes to $17.44. In the case of a 15% tip, calculate a 10% tip then add to that half as much again. So, a $15% tip on $15.67 comes to $1.57 + $0.77 (or $0.78). In the case of the 5.3% sales tax, calculate 10%, then halve that to get 5%, and then add a smidgen. Of course, calculators or apps on a mobile phone will do all this for you, but if you don't use your "little grey cells" occasionally, don't be surprised if they atrophy.

Back in the 1960's, I recall my father having a Ready Reckoner, which according to Wikipedia, is a book "aimed at traders that catalogued the results of various routine calculations such as the percentages or multiples of various sums of money."

Weapons of Math Instruction

A number of years ago, soon after airport security started to get Über-serious here in the US, the following, very clever, piece of writing appeared. [Unfortunately, I have not been able to track down the author's name.

At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney General John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult.", Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like "x" and "y" and refer to themselves as "unknowns", but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.

"As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every triangle," Ashcroft declared.

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."

"I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence," the President said, adding: "Under the circumferences, we must differentiate their root, make our point, and draw the line."

President Bush warned, "These weapons of math instruction have the potential to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex."

Attorney General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would say, read my ellipse. Here is one principle he is uncertainty of: though they continue to multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenuse tightens around their necks."

Conclusion

Back in the 1980's, I used to fly through Boston's Logan airport (BOS) on a very regular basis. At that time, the city had a growing problem with teenage pregnancies and young girls subsequently dropping out of high school. To that end, there was a very clever advertising campaign, signs for which were posted on the jet ways going to/from the planes. Next to a picture of a pregnant girl was the text, "Make sure your daughter learns how to add and subtract before she learns how to multiply!"

Regarding my earlier comment about tests and "Never say Never", I'm reminded of the orientation night I spent at my son's high school the week after he started his freshman (first) year. As a group, the parents spent 10 minutes with each teacher with whom their child was taking a class. The math teacher said, "Before you tell me that you learned all this stuff when you were in school, but never ever found a use for it, consider the following" and he projected one of Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons. The picture showed a man waiting for admission at the Pearly Gates of Heaven. St. Peter said that although the records showed the man had lived a decent life, before he could be admitted, he had to answer one question. "Two trains are going in opposite directions …" Many of us have been faced with such questions in school math class, so you just never know when you might need something you learned a long time ago. [In my case, 16 years after I was exposed to differential calculus for the first time, I actually found my one and only use for it, in a computer program I was working on that monitored and controlled hydroelectric dams. Who'd have thought?]

There's an old joke about asking a lawyer a question like, "What answer do you get when you add 10 and 15?" The lawyer replies, "What answer do you want?"

I'll end with one of my pet peeves: People insist on misusing the term number when they really mean digit. A number is made up of one or more digits. A number cannot contain another number! Now that you've been reminded about this, watch out for the number-vs.-digit police (who sometimes double as the fewer-vs.-less police as well).

© 2013 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

In the first installment in this series we visited Italy. This time, we'll take a quick trip around Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

In each installment, I'll borrow from my diaries. I'll also add other commentary. I've deliberately chosen to not include any photos, as you can see pictures (and plenty of other information) by following the on-line links.

Denmark

Official Name: Kingdom of Denmark (Danmark); Capital: Copenhagen (København); Language: Danish (dansk), also Faroese (føroyskt), Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), and Bornholmian (bornholmsk); Country Code: DK; Currency: Danish krone (kr. or DKK)

From my first visit in Denmark more than 20 years ago, up to my most recent, I've very much liked this country. My main reason for being there has usually been to attend conferences in Copenhagen, and I've used that as a springboard to go off and visit the countryside. Most often, I've flown to the capital and taken the train out to the Jutland Peninsula, to the island of Funen, or to the north of the main island. Once, after a week in Copenhagen, my family and I took the boat train south to Germany, then we trained across Northern Germany, spent time on a Christmas tree farm in Jutland, visited Lego Land, and spent time in Odense (Hans Christian Andersen's home town), before getting back to Copenhagen.

Denmark is a country of islands. On one trip, we spent a delightful weekend on the island of Avernakø, off the south coast of Funen. We stayed with a host family who were renovating their house, and all materials were brought onto the island on a small ferry. About 100 people lived there and that island and a neighboring one used the local school. We were there for an annual festival for which a village from somewhere else in Denmark was invited to come and play against the locals in a game of soccer with much beer drinking (a favorite Danish pastime).

You might know that Denmark has long been active in providing peace-keeping forces in various hotspots around the world. One day as I was driving around Jutland with my Danish friend Paul, we came over a hill and there ahead of us was a group of huge tents with the Red Cross symbol on each roof. When I asked what this was, my friend told me that it was a camp for Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka. Yes, really!

My dear friends Hans and Anne Lise come from Ollerup, a town on the south coast of Funen. I first met them when I hosted them in Virginia. They were leading a retired group of Danes on a folk-dancing trip. I've since visited them numerous times. Each morning at Hans' house we lowered the pennant—a very long and narrow rendering of the national flag—that flies overnight, and we raised the Danish flag. Then in the evening, we did the reverse. (This same flag design has been in use for more than 700 years, and was since adapted by all the other Nordic countries.)

There are a number of "must see" places in Denmark: Roskilde for the Royal Tombs and Viking ship museum; Hillerød for its castle-in-the-lake and gardens (one of my all-time favorite places in the world); Copenhagen for its pedestrian shopping area, Tivoli, and Little Mermaid; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

I've long been interested in Queen Margrethe II who is a very capable monarch. She's a talented painter and illustrator, and some of her work was used in the Danish edition of The Lord of the Rings. According to Wikipedia, she is fluent in Danish, French, English, Swedish and German. And for me, there is a royal Aussie connection: Crown Princess Mary hails from Tasmania.

During my most recent visit to Copenhagen, I joined a group for dinner right in the heart of the pedestrian zone, Strøget. The maître'd showed us to our table and she proceeded to tell us, in English, the specials of the day. When she was done, I asked her if these dishes were "just like Grandma used to make", and without hesitation, she replied, "These are like your grandma wished that she could make!" It was an excellent answer, we got great service, and we left a big tip.

As you may know, Greenland and the Faeroes are also part of Denmark. Up until 1917, what are now known as the US Virgin Islands (St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas) were owned by Denmark, which then sold them to the US for $25 million in gold.

While giving a lecture in Copenhagen on "internationalization", the process of designing and implementing computer software for multi-cultural and linguistic environments, I made the mistake of saying that "the Danish alphabet has three extra letters". One attendee politely raised his hand and informed me that there were in fact no extra letters, they used and needed them all. Of course, what I meant was that the Danish alphabet was the basic 26-letter one used by English with three more letters (å/Å, æ/Æ, and ø/Ø).

[Diary] … Ollerup is the home of a world-famous gymnastic school, and each semester, they take in several hundred students, including some from other countries. I had visited the school on a previous trip, but the students were on break, so nothing was happening. However, this time, they were putting on an end-of-semester show for the locals, free of charge. We got front-row seats to watch 250 young men and woman aged 18–21 go through dance and gymnastic routines. It was awesome. Afterwards, there was coffee and cake, and community singing from books that were passed around to the guests. A choir of 45 students gave a performance. (Some years ago, via the same program through which we'd hosted Hans and Anne-Lise, we hosted two lots of gymnasts from that school.) By the time we left the school, it was after 22:30, and we stopped off on the edge of a forest to hear nightingales singing. Back home, we each had a small glass of port to round out the day. Lights out at 22:45 after a great day.

[Diary] … All too soon, it was lunchtime, and we ate in the gazebo in the garden by the pool. It was a traditional frokost (lunch) in the style of a smørrebrød (smorgasbord), with dark bread that contained all our daily vitamins, with all kinds of meat and vegetable pieces to pile on top, including, of course, pickled herring. We washed that down with cold water into which had been squeezed just the right amount of lime juice. The only thing missing was a string quartet playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons!

[Diary] … The sun was streaming down and all was right with the world, at least in our little corner. We got in the car and drove off to Christiania, an alternate lifestyle community on an old unused military base near downtown Copenhagen. We walked around there for some time taking in the sights and smells. From there it was on to the waterfronts of several islands where we walked around the new opera theater and watched the water taxis and tour boats go by. We also parked downtown and walked along a canal looking at all the private boats and barges tied up there. We finished up on an old pier where we ate ice cream while watching a large cruise ship leave its berth.

[Diary] … Back home, Lene began preparing food to be cooked on the outdoor grill. [It's very likely someone coined this phrase before me, but, a few days ago, it occurred to me that the Danes not only eat to live, but they also live to eat! Food and drink certainly play an important part in their everyday lives.] We ate in the gazebo out by the pool. To start with, we had sticks of hot asparagus, which we dipped into butter and salt. Then came ears of BBQ'd corn smothered with butter and pepper, a peppered steak and a salad. Sometime later, we drank some Hungarian sweet wine with ice cubes, and, to finish off, we ate some chocolate. Afterwards, we walked around the neighborhood. Lights out at 22:30 after another great day.

Finland

Official Name: Republic of Finland (Suomi, Finland); Capital: Helsinki (Helsinki, Helsingfors); Language: Finnish and Swedish (suomi and svenska); Country Code: FI; Currency: Euro (EUR), formerly Finnish markka (mk or FIM)

Finland is the 6^th largest country in Europe. 10% of the country is covered with water and there are more than 187,000 lakes and 160,000 islands in those lakes and offshore. 65% of the country is forest and about 8% is cultivated. For many years, Sweden and Russia fought over what is now Finland, with Russia last having control. However, when the Russians were distracted by their revolution in 1917, the Finns declared independence and formed a new country. Given the Swedish history, the Constitution makes the country bilingual with a 5% Swedish-speaking minority.

My first visit to Finland was in 1992 with my family. From Helsinki, we took a new Finnish train to St. Petersburg, Russia, where I gave a series of lectures and workshops over a 2-week period. When we came back, we had a 1-week Finn Rail pass. We headed north to Rovaneimi and the Arctic Circle, where we visited Santa Claus, in person! He spoke quite a few languages and received more than 500,000 letters each year from kids all around the world. From there, it was on to Savonlinna, the home of the famous castle and opera festival. And, you guessed it, we arrived during the festival without any reservations for a place to stay. However, we found one 500 meters from the castle. From there, we went back to Helsinki and to Turku, the old capital nearby. On the day we flew out, international leaders from the G8 Group (or some such) were arriving, and airport security was, shall we say, over the top!

I returned 10 years later to attend a conference hosted by the Finns. However, instead of holding it in Helsinki, which would be convenient for everyone, especially the Finns, they held it some distance north of the Arctic Circle.

[Diary] … We boarded a Finnair DC9 for the hour and a half flight north. Seating was open, and we managed to get the bulkhead with plenty of legroom and a spare seat between us. A snack was served. If you look at a map of Finland you will immediately see that it is covered in glacial lakes, and I mean covered, especially in the east toward the Russian border. And there was no shortage of trees; this was lumber and paper country.

We landed at Ivalo at 9:45 pm. This was the main airport for Lapland, and we were more than 250 km north of the Arctic Circle. The plane had its own staircase, which the flight attendant operated. It came from the belly of the plane and unfolded quickly. I had never seen such a thing before on such a large commercial plane. We had a short walk to the terminal, which was a large log cabin. The luggage took all of two minutes to arrive, and we stepped outside and loaded it right on to the bus. Standing right there was a large reindeer, complete with a full rack of antlers. He posed for photos and wandered about the parking lot.

[Diary] … I was wide-awake at 3:30 am, and it was between twilight and daylight outside. I got up at 4:30 am, and went for a brisk walk around the resort village. It certainly was fresh out. A few people were also out, but I suspect they had not yet been to bed! The last eating-place had closed at 4 am. That weekend was some sort of motor cycle get-together here, and I counted at least 200 bikes parked nearby. They sure came in a multitude of colors, shapes, and sizes, with many of them being very fancy touring bikes.

[Diary] … Once I went off to work, Jenny and friends went on an organized trip to a reindeer herder's farm. The herder, Maarco, was dressed in traditional costume. All the Sámi people (the Lapps) had the colors red, blue, green, and yellow in their dress. Blue was the dominant color, and represented the water. Red was for fire, green for the trees, and yellow for the sun. Firstly, they saw, up close, the five reindeer he had fenced-in close to his house. The large male had an enormous rack of antlers. The others were younger or female and had varying size antlers. Reindeer were trained to pull sleds, but were really not tame animals. Even though these five see people several times every day, they were still quite skittish. They enjoyed a snack of freshly cut silver birch leaves.

Next, the women were invited into the wooden teepee where they enjoyed tea and cake. They asked questions of their host and learned about life as a reindeer herder. This was most informative and interesting. Then they enjoyed a reindeer roping demonstration. They all tried their hand. Jenny was the only one actually to rope the stationary, wooden reindeer; the others had the right idea, but just didn't throw hard enough. They concluded their visit in the home of the herder. They saw reindeer skins, shoes filled with straw for warmth, costumes worn by children and adults and different means of transportation used in the snow.

[After a week in the Arctic, we took a high-speed boat from Helsinki to Estonia, where we spent 8 delightful days mostly staying with host families.]

Eight years later, I returned for another conference and an extended holiday.

[Diary] … Around 10:15, I bought a 3-day Helsinki Card at the front desk, and headed down to the waterfront to where 3 large cruise ships were tied up. I walked along to the ferry terminals at Market Place. My next ferry was scheduled to depart in 10 minutes, and soon we were on our way to the Suomenlinna island complex. The ferry ride and all museum admissions were covered by my travel card.

Construction on the fortifications was begun by Sweden in 1748. However, in 1808, the Russians took control and ran the place until 1917 when Finland declared its independence. The weather was overcast with a stiff breeze blowing, but I was well prepared with outer coat, cap, and hood. I started with the church and then moved to the visitor's center where I saw a 25-minute film about the history of the complex. Next came the two huge dry docks where many of Sweden's warships were built. I climbed down stairs to the bottom of one dry dock.

I stopped off to tour a submarine built in 1933. Yellow and purple flowers were everywhere and the tall grass swayed in the breeze. Several places looked and were idyllic. For the most part, I took the back paths poking around all kinds of back street places. Some 800–1,000 people live on the island and a Naval School still operates. However, in 1991 the military parts were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The stonework certainly was impressive and the tourists were out in force as were locals having picnics on the grass. There was even a nice little secluded beach well out of the wind.

I dropped by a small art exhibition and then visited the Customs Museum where I had a long chat with a pleasant young woman who was studying museum management at university. My final stop was a military museum.

I was back at the ferry terminal at 16:30 and my legs were very much looking forward to a rest. The ferry arrived 10 minutes later and we were on our way back to the mainland. As I got off the ferry light rain fell, and by the time I got back to my hostel my jacket was getting damp.

[Diary] … I decided to start out with a 90-minute bus tour of the city, which departed at a tourist kiosk not far from my hostel, at 11:00. We had a full bus and each of us could listen to the audio guide in a selection of 12 languages, including Latin (yes, you read right) and two dialects of Finnish.

The bus was almost full, but no one cared to sit next to me despite the fact that I'd put on deodorant. [Perhaps I should have put on some trousers as well!] I sat at a left-side window while following the directions of the audio guide. The bus had a video camera mounted on top of the dash and several TVs throughout the bus, which enabled us to see what was happening ahead as we went along. I'd not seen that before, and I thought it was a good idea.

We drove around to the waterfront to see pleasure craft, parks, and the special platforms where the locals go to wash their large rugs in the sea each summer. At a large shipyard nearby, 60% of all icebreakers are built, along with numerous cruise ships. We stopped for a look at the Rock Church, a Lutheran Church built into a large rock formation with a dome full of windows providing natural light. Much of the ceiling was fitted with 22 kms of copper wire wound around. We heard about the various levels of education in the country. School is compulsory between 7 and 16, and is free with a hot meal served at lunchtime each day. As Finland is a bilingual country, everyone is taught Finnish and Swedish.

There is a large park dedicated to the world-famous Finnish composer Sibelius, and we stopped there to look at the abstract monument built in his honor. Three students from the Sibelius Music College were performing for the tourists playing trombone, cornet, and horn. We drove past the national parliament where we were told that the Finnish women were the first in Europe to vote, back in 1930. After that, we ran into a long procession of people in folk dress, and the police stopped the traffic for quite some time to let them cross the street.

[Diary] … and soon I was in my hostel kitchen making milk coffee and snacking. A young Russian woman dropped by, but had difficulty figuring out how some things worked. She spoke no English and I can count my Russian vocabulary on one hand, but we managed to communicate. It's all in the hand gestures. Besides, if they don't understand, you simply talk louder, right?

[Diary] … I headed for the Olympic Stadium. I found the entrance to the stadium tower and rode an elevator the 11 floors to the top for a great look over the city. Japan had been awarded the 1940 games, but as it was at war with China, the games were given to Finland instead. However, the Soviet Union invaded Finland in 1939, so the 1940 games were cancelled, as were those in 1944. London hosted the 1948 games and, in 1952, they were held in Helsinki by which time some of the facilities were 12 years old.

[Diary] … The trip involved many activities, the highlights of which were sea kayaking in a 2-man kayak with Juha, and then spending four great days with him and his wife, Johanna, at their cabin in the country for the longest day/St. Juhannus Day festival holiday. Each day, I cut wood and we enjoyed an hour in the wood-fired sauna. Ask a Finn and they'll tell you that the way a house is built is to start with the sauna and build around that!

Iceland

Official Name: Iceland (Ísland); Capital: Reykjavik (Reykjavík); Language: Icelandic (íslenska); Country Code: IS; Currency: Icelandic króna (kr or ISK)

Back in 1987, I had to attend a conference in Paris, France, and I wanted to take my wife and 3-year-old son. Back then, one of the cheapest ways to get to Europe from the east coast of the US was with Icelandair. However, that required being routed through Reykjavik in both directions, which adds on quite a few hours to the flying time. However, not having been to Iceland, we stopped over in the capital for three days on the way over, but just changed planes on the way back.

We arrived around 6:30 am at the brand new Keflavik international airport. We drove by bus to the (now) domestic airport near the capital. Although I should have expected it, I was startled to see lava fields in every direction with house lots literally carved out of the lava. Of course, the only trees were those planted near houses.

As it was summertime, it was twilight all night, with cars driving around with parking lights only.

One day, at great expense we rented a 4-wheel drive vehicle and set off into the countryside to a famous geyser. We saw beautiful fields of grass with Icelandic ponies grazing. Another day, we lazed in the hot, thermal pools, although I could only stand in very shallow water in the third-to-hottest one.

By the way, Iceland is green and Greenland is icy; you figure it out!

Norway

Official Name: Kingdom of Norway (Norge); Capital: Oslo; Language: Norwegian (norsk) and various Sami dialects; Country Code: NO; Currency: Norwegian krone (kr or NOK)

Although my first visit to Norway wasn't until 2003, I went three more times over the following four years. And I very much enjoyed each visit. The first time, after my business ended, my wife and I spent a delightful week driving across to Bergen with Gunnar and Sonja (who we'd met in St. Petersburg in 1992), staying in self-catering cottages.

[Diary] … Plenty of traffic slowed our journey towards their cabin on a lake two hours to the north, but the picturesque scenery kept us occupied. On the way, we stopped at an orchard and picked 8 kg of plums and 5 kg of apples. Their cabin was comfortable, warm and in a pretty, rustic setting and ideal for relaxing. It came complete with outdoor plumbing, and 12 volt lighting powered by a solar panel. Gunnar and I went fishing, and put in nets. We caught two fish by rod. After a fine dinner of stroganoff, Gunnar and I played backgammon. (This became an evening ritual, with three games being played each night for the next week.) We slept well under fluffy down quilts.

[Diary] … Next morning, we had nine fish in our nets, mostly bass and trout. (Many of them became dinner that evening.) After Sonja's "cowboy breakfast" of kidney beans, bacon, eggs, bread and coffee, we packed up and left by noon, a civilized time to be starting the day's adventures. We traveled northwest towards the mountains, and saw many, very long, narrow lakes. We visited a very old wooden church (stavkirke) built in 1188. There had been an event there that day, with people in period costume. A lady entertained us by playing an old stringed instrument. At 3 pm, we had a late lunch at a picnic table by a creek. We stayed in two fairly basic cabins by a rushing river next to a sheep farm. Many of the sheep wore metal bells, which tinkled constantly as they grazed. The shower was in a separate communal building. We ate fresh fish with potatoes and salad.

[Diary] … Instead of taking the new (not to mention expensive toll) 24 km tunnel through the mountains, we decided to take the windy, narrow road 43 km up and over them instead. The scenery was spectacular! At the town of Flåm, we took a railway trip 20 km, rising 800 meters through 20 tunnels; it was stunning.

[Diary] … After leaving Bergen our trip took us south and east towards Oslo. We rode across the fjords on two ferries, and then drove along the shore of one fjord until we reached a small town called Sundal. We took a 45-minute (each way) hike to the glacier that was visible from our cabin. It was a great walk. The view of the glacial lake and the glacier itself was worth the effort.

My second visit was to the beautiful city of Trondheim.

[Diary] … The Norwegian Air flight from Oslo to Trondheim took 50 minutes. We broke through the clouds to see rolling hills with forests and small farms, whose barns were all painted blood red. (Although such small farms are not economical, the government encourages traditional farming by providing generous subsidies.) The airport is small, but busy with budget airlines flying both domestic and international, as far away as the Greek islands. Trondheim is the 3^rd largest city in Norway, and a former capital. It is more than a 1,000 years old.

[Diary] … That evening, our hosts provided a formal dinner at a rather up-scale restaurant called Credo. There was no menu; the chef decides each day what to serve, and you eat whatever he has decided, although in my case, being allergic to shellfish, they did make some substitutions. There were many courses; fortunately, most were quite small, but even then, I really didn't need the main one. Then came some disgustingly smelly cheese and a nice desert.

[Diary] … Once again, our host provided a social event. A large bus pick up partners at the hotel then picked us up at the meeting site, and we drove to a village out of town. There, we were given a tour of a museum that consists mostly of wooden buildings moved there from towns and farms in the area to recreate times gone by. Our host was quite entertaining and sang traditional songs. An exotic dinner of old-style wild game followed.

[Diary] … Once we reached the Norwegian coast, the ground was about 10% covered in snow as far as the eye could see. And the mountains to the west where white. We followed the big fjord right up to Oslo, and out my window, I got a great view of the downtown area and royal palace. As the Gardemoen Airport is some 50 kms north of the city, we flew over the suburbs, then forests and farms, complete with their classic blood-red painted barns. Most lakes and a few narrow sea inlets were still frozen. The airport is rather new and very nice, in the usual Scandinavian style architecture of wood, glass and steel. There was a long walk from the gate to the baggage hall, but once I got there, my bag came out right away.

Sweden

Official Name: Kingdom of Sweden (Sverige); Capital: Stockholm; Language: Swedish (swede); Country Code: SE; Currency: Swedish krone (kr or SEK)

My first visit was in 1990, and it was a quick trip over on the ferry to Helsingborg from the Danish town of Helsinor. I was on Swedish soil all of four hours. I noticed that while the Danes had all the good food and wine, the Swedes had all the furs, cars, and jewelry. Because of this, the ferry crossing the narrow straight between the two countries was loaded with each group crossing over to buy the other's specialties.

It wasn't until 20 years later that I returned, this time to Stockholm. It was wintertime with very low temperatures and cold wind. As it was not conducive to playing tourist, I added only one personal day to my business trip. I spent quite a bit of that at the museum for the famous warship Vasa, which sank in 1628 and was raised, largely intact, in 1961.

Conclusion

I'd be happy to go back to any country in Scandinavia; however, I must say that during my most recent trip to Denmark I fell in love with that country all over again. So much so that I have two trips on my Bucket List. Trip 1: A circle starting in Copenhagen, across to Sweden, then to the Danish island of Bornholm, to the German island of Rugen, and back to Copenhagen. Trip 2: A walking trip around the island of Aero, off the south coast of Funen, and possibly around some other islands in the area.

The taxes in Scandinavia may be high, but the countries have excellent social systems, strong currencies, and a high standard of living. They can serve as a good model for others.

© 2013 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

On a cold, winter's day in February 2013, I was sitting in a doctor's waiting room watching a big-screen TV. All the news and weather channels were tracking two huge storm systems that were converging on the US northeast, and it was going to be a big (and expensive) disaster. As I watched, I started to think about the impact these storms would have. People would lose their houses and cars, and maybe everything they owned, and even their lives. Businesses would close indefinitely and wages would be lost. If hotels and restaurants were open, there'd be few guests. And so on. What would the cost of all this be and who would/should pay?

I was raised in a semi-desert area of rural South Australia. About the only natural disaster we experienced there was drought on a regular basis and an occasional (small) bushfire. [My, how that eucalyptus tree oil loves to burn!] Of course, from radio, television, and newspapers, I knew that other parts of the world suffered from all sorts of weather-related and other devastating natural phenomena, but they were as remote as those "starving children in India" of whom our parents spoke when we wouldn't eat our vegetables. Even the disasters in other parts of my own country were "off in some other world". However, once I moved to and traveled around the US, these problems got much closer and I got to experience some of them firsthand. Likewise when I started traveling to other countries.

Unlike most people, for the past 29 years, I've worked mostly from home. Without a daily commute or a fixed schedule, bad weather has rarely concerned or impacted me. However, it has "knocked on my door" a few times, as I'll discuss below. And at the end of the main essay, I share my Disaster-Preparedness Plan.

Snow and Ice

While I find that ice is not so nice, I am still fascinated by snow. I was 17 years old when I first saw snow, and I tried skiing without knowing anything at all about it, especially regarding how to stop! The good news was that for the most part, snow in Australia doesn't fall in major population centers; you have to drive up to the mountains to see it and to take advantage of it. Now, however, I experience it each winter and have done so for more than 30 years. Following, are a number of snow and/or ice incidents I recall:

On January 13, 1982, an Air-Florida jet crashed on takeoff from Washington National Airport, and it hit the 14^th Street Bridge over the Potomac River; that bridge is a major road from Washington DC to Virginia. The crash was compounded by the Federal Government having let its DC-area employees out early due to the extreme weather, many of whom would ordinarily take that bridge. A friend of mine was living with me at the time and working in DC. It took him some 10 hours to get home the 22 miles (40 kms), and all along the way he saw cars on the edge of the highway that had run out of gas.

One winter, I drove to Raleigh, North Carolina, on a Sunday afternoon and arrived at my hotel as snow was starting to fall. By morning, we were snowed in by the "great Raleigh blizzard of 2000", and the city was shut down. (It wasn't that North Carolina didn't own snow removal equipment; the problem was that all that equipment was in the mountains several hours west, and of course the blizzard completely immobilized the Interstate highways.)  Fortunately, the power and Internet service stayed on. Ordinarily, the hotel restaurant served only breakfast, but staff managed to produce several meals each day for the three days that we were stranded indoors.  (Amazing how many ways there are to serve waffles and bacon!)  Other people in town to attend the same meeting as I were in similar situations in hotels nearby. Finally, streets were plowed and we managed to find a room where we held a 1-day meeting (instead of the planned four). 

From pretty much my first personal encounter with ice, I guessed how dangerous it could be. On a couple of occasions I tried to back out of a parking space covered in ice and started sliding ever so gently over towards the neighboring car. One's instinct is to accelerate even more, but of course, that only makes the slide worse!

Regarding freezing rain, I'd parked my car in a parking lot in the morning, but when I came out to go home that evening, a slick layer of ice had formed from the rain. As I stood there trying to unlock my car door, I felt myself start sliding towards the car door. Instinctively, I put out my hand, and my thumb absorbed the full weight of my body pushing into the door. That thumb was very badly bruised and only semi-operable for several weeks.

One autumn, my city resurfaced a major road near my house. However, that winter when snow fell, we had sunny days during which the snow melted into the road surface where it refroze overnight. As you know, water expands when it freezes, and by the end of winter, the new road was completely ruined and had to be resurfaced (again!) the following spring.

The winter before I arrived in Chicago, the city had had a 1-in-a-100-year storm. Whole streets were bulldozed clear and many cars were never seen again.

Twice in 28 years, my townhouse development was snowed in so deeply that we had to have earth-moving equipment come and clear it out by the truckload. The up-side was that the big lake nearby froze over completely and the kids were able to skate. However, the resident ducks and geese were unable to get to the water.

When my son was going to school, we had more than a few snow days when school was delayed one or two hours, or was cancelled. [My friends in central Maine used to laugh at the idea of snow days. "Why don't you just drive them there on the snowmobile?" they'd ask.] With a stay-at-home Mom and with Dad often there too, we didn't have to scramble for emergency childcare like many other parents.

It's amazing to think of the cost of de-icing, plowing, snow removal, and spreading salt or sand, and having all the necessary equipment on hand just in case it is needed.

For many years, I provided consulting services to a paper company in Maine. It generated most of its own power from steam and hydro. In the case of hydro, snow on the ground is money in the bank! And the longer it stays there the better. Have an early spring thaw, and some of that water will be wasted as it has to be let over the dam.

Needless to say, few drivers are trained to drive on snow or ice. The first winter my son had his license, I took him to a large, empty parking lot to get some practice at driving in snow, but without other cars—and crazy drivers—around.

Earthquakes

The magnitude of an earthquake is often measured in terms of the Richter scale, which is logarithmic, not linear. For example, a level 6.0 is ten times the power of a level 5.0, which, in turn, is ten times the power of a level 4.0.

My first, but indirect, encounter with this kind of event was when I visited Antigua, the old capital of Guatemala. Now, it's a thriving tourist destination and a place to learn Spanish. However, many years ago, it suffered a number of big quakes, which destroyed thousands of buildings including lots of churches, many of which remain in a partially collapsed state.

The earth moved beneath my own feet not on my first kiss, but as I lay in bed around 2 am in Kamakura, Japan. Over breakfast, I asked my host if indeed there had been a quake overnight, and she replied there had, perhaps a 3.0, but "that happens all the time". Okay, if you say so!

On 2011-08-23, at 1:51 pm, Eastern Time, a level 5.8 earthquake occurred in the greater Washington DC area, and it lasted for 45 seconds. I was working at my desk at home and knew right away what it was. After the first tremor, I stood up and then the second one hit, and that did rock me. Being "a cool, calm, and collected kind-of-guy" I took the backup memory stick from my computer, grabbed my hand-held computer and my wallet and keys, and went outside to the parking lot, where I stood with several of my neighbors. I had just had a lot of repairs done on my 3-level townhouse in preparation for its sale, and my first thought was that work might have been undone. Fortunately, it was not; the whole house had moved all as one. However, in the weeks following, I did get earthquake coverage added to my insurance policy "just in case".

In September 2013, I was lying awake with jetlag in my hotel in Tokyo when my bed started to move. And then the metal coat hangers in my closet started to knock together. I immediately knew what it was, but it was quite gentle, and the whole hotel tower moved as one. Next morning, the front desk staff told me they thought it was a level 2.0 although at the epicenter it had been 5.0. [Note that like some other countries in earthquake zones, rooms in many western-style hotels in Japan come with a flashlight that charges off the main power. It's there to help one find one's way during a power outage caused by a quake.]

Rain and Floods

Back in 1956, the River Murray that ran through my home town (in South Australia) had its biggest flood since dams were built on it. I was not yet three years-old, so have no recollection. I do, however, remember lesser floods during my school years. For years, local-area residents had been pleading for a bridge across the river, and one was finally built. However, the government couldn't afford to raise the level of the access road to the bridge for the several miles that road ran across the flats. Subsequently, when the river flooded, the road leading to the bridge was closed. Sigh!

More than 30 years ago, I had my first adventure trip, to a primitive jungle camp on the Amazon River in northeastern Peru. We started out at Iquitos, the provincial capital. There, I visited a shanty town made up of rickety old shacks that were built on large log rafts. The residents threw all their trash out the open windows. And when the rainy season came, the river rose some 40 feet (12 meters), the houses-on-rafts simply raised up with the water, and all the trash was washed away. It was great town planning!

The most rain I ever experienced at once was 7 inches (175 cms) in a few hours. And although trees and power lines came down around the city, and the lakes overflowed, the power stayed on in my neighborhood. Fortunately, I lived at the highest point of my development, so flooding wasn't a problem and no sewage backed up in my drains.

High Winds, Hurricanes, Typhoons, Tornados, and Cyclones

For many years, I lived in a neighborhood that had many, tall oak trees. Apparently, they are shallow-rooted, so when high winds blew, some trees came down. I had the "pleasure" of helping cut one up with a chainsaw after it fell in my development's playground. I also spend a memorable 4^th of July holiday one year helping friends cut up and remove a number of tall trees that had come down in a mini-tornado.

Some 6 weeks after a huge hurricane swept across Florida, I went to visit the Emerald Coast (to witness a friend compete in an Iron Man triathlon qualifier race). As my plane approached Pensacola, I noticed something unusual about the houses. Many of them had bright blue roofs. As it happened, these were blue tarpaulins that had been provided by the US Army Corps of Engineers after the storm had damaged much of the city.

I've experienced 3 typhoons now, two in Tokyo and one on the Korean island of Jeju. The second one, in Japan, flooded much of the subway system and caused my group to cancel its evening harbor-cruise dinner.

In the summer of 2013, I visited the Pacific coast in both Washington State and Northern California for the first time. I was surprised to find that both areas had tsunami warning signs and sirens high up on poles to sound an alarm. In the case of Crescent City, California, the tsunami that resulted from the earthquake (and subsequent nuclear reactor disaster) in Japan, damaged shipping and facilities in its harbor after having crossed the whole of the northern Pacific Ocean! Similarly, that area was damaged and someone was drowned in the aftermath of the 1964 Good Friday quake in Valdez, Alaska.

Once while driving in the US southwest, I saw a tornado way off in the distance, but that was close enough for me. Then several times in my own area, there have been tornado warnings and a couple actually touched down and caused damage, although not too close to my house. However, now that I no longer have a basement, I have no good place to hide if one hits.

On Christmas Day, 1974, Cyclone Tracy devastated the city of Darwin in the north of Australia. It was a monster system and the biggest the country had ever experienced.

High Humidity

I'm not a fan of high humidity, but I've visited the tropics on numerous occasions. Now I happen to be a non-recovering book addict, and I'm also a big watcher of videos. So imagine my horror when I stayed with a host family in Vera Cruz, Mexico, whose house had no air conditioning, and found their large book and video tape library beset with mold. Many of the tapes were no longer playable, and many books had black pages and were falling apart! C'est la vie!

Conclusion

According to the 14 June 2013 issue of USA Today newspaper, "With $110 billion in damage, 2012 was the second-costliest year for weather and climate disasters …. 11 separate weather and climate events that each had losses exceeding $1 billion in damage. … Hurricane Sandy ($65 billion) and the year-long drought ($65 billion). … In all, the US has endured 144 weather/climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The total cost of these 144 events is more than $1 trillion."

Don't forget that each time you curse at harsh winter weather, that some people's livelihoods depend on it, for example, ski resorts and all those snow-removal workers and contract companies. Besides, snow replenishes the underground water supply that so many of us rely on.

American humorist Mark Twain once wrote, "Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." How true!

When it comes to weather, what we really want is the Goldilocks variety, not too hot and not too cold, but just right!

I'll leave you with the following poem that I learned way back in elementary school:

Whether the weather be fine,
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold,
Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not!
[Anon.]

Weather Emergency Planning

Contact Info:

1. It's all on computers, so if I have no power, I can't get at it. Have a printed list of emergency contacts.
2. Make sure pocket-computer version is up to date; however, that will lose power after a few days.

Utilities/Appliances:

House is all-electric, so a long-term loss of power is far-reaching. Should I buy a small generator?

1. Refrigeration:
   1. If it's cold, leave frozen stuff in freezers and/or put in ice boxes in the garage, outside, or in snow
   2. Otherwise, set priorities on what will thaw and spoil first, and cook that and store cooked/uneaten stuff in a cold place
2. Cooking:
   1. Gas camping stove; check that I have enough gas bottles and matches; ensure that the gas cooking area is adequately ventilated
   2. Pot-belly stove top
      1. Read the instruction book
      2. Make sure I have a supply of (dry) wood
      3. Get kindling, newspaper, and matches
   3. Can opener
   4. Use thermos to keep liquids hot/cold
3. Heating:
   1. See "Pot-belly stove"
   2. Extra bedding (Arctic sleeping bag)
   3. Clear snow away from heating/air-conditioning unit, if the power is on
4. Lighting:
   1. Gas lantern; check that I have enough gas bottles, matches, and spare mantles
   2. Candles
   3. Flashlights and spare batteries (hand-cranked flashlights)
   4. Charge cordless flashlights
5. Telephone:
   1. Old-style land lines run off the power on the phone line, so loss of power does not automatically mean a problem, but trees could be down on phone lines
   2. New-style land lines via fiber optic cables typically have an associated battery pack that supports 6–8 hours of talk time
   3. Can recharge my cell phone from my car cigarette lighter plug provided the car runs, that is. (Don't run the car in an enclosed garage though!)
6. Radio/TV:
   1. Have a portable radio and spare batteries
   2. Car radio, provided the car runs, that is
   3. No power or internet/fiber-optic connection, no TV
7. Internet:
   1. None if the power is down
   2. Maybe none even if the power is up, but the cable is cut somewhere

Food:

1. Have dry goods and cans on hand
2. Energy bars, nuts, dried fruit, chocolate, peanut butter
3. Rice and cups-of-noodles are good, but require hot water
4. Crackers and cookies
5. Eat less!

Water/Fluids:

I have a well, and that has an electric pump; so, no power, no water! No toilet after one flush. No shower. No laundry

1. Have 3 gallons of water/per person on hand
2. Some canned food is in water/liquid
3. Have a store of Gatorade
4. Fill the bathtub and other containers beforehand
5. Get water from melted snow

Cash:

1. Check emergency stash; can't swipe credit cards anywhere if there is no power.
2. Make sure I have smaller denomination bills (notes)

Mail Service:

I can get to my mailbox, assuming mail is being delivered.

Medical/Safety/Hygiene:

1. Emergency phone numbers
2. First-aid kit
3. Prescription medications and eyewear
4. Fire extinguisher
5. Create outdoor pit toilet, if possible

Business:

1. If I'm supposed to get out to travel, tough; cancel if I can notify clients
2. Otherwise, if no phone or internet, then tidy up my home office, catch up on reading, and do some of those long-overlooked administrative tasks

House Access:

1. County snow plow clears the public street, but that might not be a high priority
2. Trees/limbs down on road or on/around house
   1. Chainsaw (have gas/oil on-hand)
   2. Hand saw(s)
   3. Gloves
3. Snow shovel to get out of garage, front door, deck doors

Vehicle:

1. Have the gas tank full (gas stations can't pump if no power)
2. Have sufficient spare gas on hand (in lawn mower gas container)
3. Find a safe place to park if coming home and can't get in my street or driveway
4. Know how to open the garage door without any power
5. Store in my vehicle:
   1. Water
   2. Some energy bars
   3. First-aid kit
   4. Pad and pencil or pen
   5. A blanket
   6. Extra set of mittens or gloves, wool socks, wool cap
   7. Battery jumper cables
   8. Basic tools including a hammer, pliers, and rags
   9. Knife
   10. Matches

© 2013 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

Welcome to a new travel series, titled, "Memories of …". I'm starting with Italy, my first ever stop in Europe.

In each instalment, I'll borrow from my diaries. I'll also add other commentary. I've deliberately chosen to not include any photos, as you can see pictures (and plenty of other information) by following the on-line links.

Rome (Roma)

My first time there was in 1979, when I spent several days visiting the obligatory sites. I didn't return until 30 years later, when I wrote copious notes about my experience. It was April and, surprisingly, very hot and humid.

[Diary] … Through the trees, the Coliseum loomed into view. It was built at the bottom of a valley between several of Rome's hills, and I approached it from one of those. There were lots of tourists, mostly in groups with guides. Near the entrance, a number of men were in full centurion costume complete with swords, and, at regular intervals, they lured passers-by into photos. Off to the side, I saw one Roman soldier smoking a cigarette. Perhaps that was the real reason behind the decline and fall of the Roman Empire!

Now I'm sure you are up with your Roman history, but just to freshen your memory, here are some details. Construction of the Coliseum was started in AD 70 by Emperor Vespasian (known to his good friends as "Bruce"). He up and died in AD 79, leaving the completion to his son, Titus, who had the opening ceremony in AD 80 with a 100-day celebration that saw the slaughter of 5,000 animals. The completed structure had tiered seating and 80 exits (called vomitoria, I kid you not). 240 wooden masts were erected to hold up a vast set of sailcloths over much of the open top to protect the spectators from the elements. A fire in AD 217 devastated the upper levels and wooden arena. Of course, the operators had neglected to take out insurance. (Don't you just hate that when that happens?) In the years following, there were other fires as well as earthquakes, all of which inflicted damage. At one time, the main arena could be flooded, so they could recreate famous sea battles. Seating was segregated by class, and gravediggers, actors, and retired gladiators were banned from attending. Really!

[Diary] … I walked the full length of the Circus Maximus, home track of the Rome Chariot Grand Prix. Much of it was grassed, and people were out lying in the sun or picnicking in the shade. In several places, I came across pieces of coconut husks, which I thought might have been dropped by African swallows on their way to England. (See Monty Python's "Holy Grail" for details.)

[Diary] ... It was a long walk from the Metro stop to the Vatican City, and, as you might expect, it was wall-to-wall vendors along the way, interspersed with guides trying to sell their services. I walked around St. Peter's Square taking pictures and shooting video. It wasn't too busy. Then, I went through security and joined the hour-long line to go up to the top of the dome of the Basilica. Fortunately, that line was in the shade. There were some 550 steps up to the top, and one had two choices to get there: pay €5 entrance and climb the whole 550 or, pay an extra €2 and ride an elevator and walk the last 320 steps. I took the elevator option.

[Diary] ... My first stop was the famous Fountain di Trevi where I watched Neptune rule over his domain. People were constantly throwing coins over their shoulders into the fountain. Tradition has it that doing so means that one will return to Rome. I took some photos and video and then rested in the shade watching the tourists and listening to the many different languages being spoken around me.

From there, it was on to the Pantheon, a temple that was built by Hadrian starting in AD 118. It was very well preserved, primarily because it had been covered in bronze and lead for many years, although, later, that cladding was taken away to be used in other building projects. The dome was as big as St. Peter's, but quite plain inside. At its top, there was a 28-foot hole, which was designed to allow one to commune with the Heavens from the inside. Being a sunny day, the sun streamed in and cast a tube of light down onto a large painting on one wall. Apparently, it is something to experience when it was raining and the water came through.

The Dolomites (Dolimiti)

I was on a driving trip with my family. From Bavaria, we drove south through Innsbruck, Austria, and then up through the famous Brenner Pass into Italy. We spent the better part of a day driving on steep mountain roads before going east and north into Switzerland. Along the way, we stopped off at a glacier where I was very surprised to see ice worms living in the ice!

Milan (Milano)

I've been to Milan twice. The first time, I was very adventurous and I stayed at a youth hostel, where I shared a dorm room with a group of guys from Peru. (Who'd have thought I'd get a Latin-American Spanish workout in Italy!) The cultural highlight of that visit was a look at Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting The Last Supper. I also remember the Linate airport being fogged-in such that I missed my connection in Frankfurt.

On my second trip, I was riding in a taxi from the airport to my hotel when the driver asked me if I was in town for the big fashion show. As I looked down at my hiking trousers and boots, I wondered what about my dress made him think I was in the fashion business.

[Diary] … In the bathroom of my hotel, I noticed a cord hanging down the wall by the bath, and thinking it activated the ceiling fan, I pulled it. As soon as I did, I noticed a small sign further up the wall, that said "alarme", and I knew I'd done something wrong. Sure enough, within seconds, the phone on the wall rang and the front desk was asking me (I suppose they were, as they spoke in Italian) if I'd had an accident in the bath. I politely informed them that everything was okay. [Considering how many accidents do occur in bathrooms, it seemed like a sensible idea; however, I'd never seen it before.] Afterwards, I had the sneaky suspicion I'd learned—and subsequently forgotten—that lesson during my previous trip.

Portovenere

[Diary] … At La Spezia, I learned that there was a train strike for the service around Cinque Terra, so it was on to Plan C. (Always have a Plan B, even for Plan B!) So, unexpectedly, I took a bus to Portovenere (which was not on my destination list) where I had two absolutely wonderful days!

… We pulled into the small town of Portovenere where the bus route terminated. It was the end of a number of major hiking trails that came south from Cinque Terre, and given the beautiful weather, it was no surprise that the hikers were out in force. I walked 100 meters into the town where I found a friendly young policewoman who spoke passable English. She gave me some directions for the tourist office (which didn't open until 16:00) and some accommodation tips. I soon found my Shangri La, the hotel Genio. It was built up a steep hillside with lots of steps and terraces that overlooked the main plaza. The friendly front-desk assistant, a Russian called Igor, was happy to give me a very good rate for two nights if I paid cash. Breakfast on the terrace between 08:00 and 10:00 was included as was high-speed Internet access at his desk—and all for only €65 a night. Igor took me to see Room 6, way up the back with its own little garden under fruit trees. It was a very nicely appointed double room with en-suite bathroom, all quite modern and spacious. I accepted his offer and went down to check in. By the time I unpacked and settled in it was 15:30. A church clock chimed at 15-minute intervals.

[Diary] … When I came out the alley, I was in (another) St. Peter's Square, at the end of which was St. Peter's church, built in 1277 on the site of earlier temple ruins. It was constructed from black and white marble. I went inside, out on several balconies hanging over the cliff, and up onto the roof from where I could see north up the coast to Cinque Terre. Nearby was Byron's Cove, which had a connection with the English poet, Lord Byron. It was flanked by some very interesting geology consisting of nearly horizontal thin layers of rock. At the entrance to the cove, a man played music on an electronic keyboard.

I walked back into the village on the high street, which was a little further up the hill. It was entirely residential, with people hanging their washing on lines across the alley from upper floors; all the clotheslines were on pulleys so the clothing could be pulled out and back in from a window. There was an old public drinking fountain in one small plaza, and several tourists were gathered there. I chatted with a Dutch family, the daughter of which was living in Australia. I also spent time with an Irish couple from Dublin.

I decided to stay another day and night, so made plans on how to spend that extra time. Late morning, I headed up the steep hill to see the castle. It was quite a climb, but I paced myself. Fortunately, there was plenty of shade and places to sit and rest along the way. The castle was an impressive structure built way up high, and it was in wonderful condition. I took some great photos and video of the town and surrounds. Nearby was the main church and cemetery, and I toured both. I was most interested to see a mailbox at the cemetery. I was pretty sure there wouldn't be in-coming mail, and wasn't sure who'd be sending any out either! I thought perhaps that it might be the "dead letter office".

Back at my hotel, I had a small picnic on the terrace and read for several hours before fading. I tried napping, but only managed to close my eyes, so I lay in the sun reading my novel.

At 15:00, I went down to the tour boat office to enquire about the 15:30 tour around the three islands nearby. They needed eight passengers minimum before they would go, and, so far, they had only seven. I checked back at 15:30, and they had about a dozen, so I paid my €10 and went on-board. It was a very large boat with three crewmembers, and I went upstairs out in the open. I shot photos and video and picked up a few things from the narration, which was in Italian. On one island, there was a large concrete bunker built by the Germans in WWII. There were also remains of Austrian fortifications from WWI. The islands were very rugged, and the largest had hiking paths that quite a few hikers were using. Forty five minutes later, we were back at the dock.

Cinque Terra

[Diary] … At the Portovenere waterfront, I bought a 1-way ticket on the ferry to Vernazza. The ferry departed promptly at 11:00 with cloudy skies and a light sprinkle of rain. Occasionally, the sun broke through and warmed things up. We headed up the coast with our first stop being the southern-most Cinque Terra town of Riomaggiore (which I referred to as rigor mortis whenever I couldn't remember it). The boat struggled to keep close enough to the rocks to let the people get off on the constantly moving gangway, but not so close that we'd be on the rocks. It was quite a feat to watch, and I took photos and video. All the while, the waves crashed on the rocks, occasionally splashing the passengers getting off or waiting to get on. Although the ferry serviced the second town, Manarola, we didn't stop there. And the ferry doesn't service the third town, Corniglia, at all. We arrived in Vernazza right around noon. It was easier getting off the ferry there.

Vernazza was crowded with day-trippers, many of whom had come from a cruise ship anchored in Livorno. My first order of business was to find a place to stay for at least two nights. There were no hotels, but there were quite a few rooms, mostly in private houses. Well, it was a bit like Goldilocks; beds too hard, too soft, none available, or only one night available, and so on. On the fifth try, I succeeded. I rang the bells of two places in the same building, but no one answered. And just as I turned to leave, an elderly lady arrived on the street, smiled and chattered away to me in Italian. She seemed to be the proprietor of some rooms, so I followed her up some steep stairs. She showed me a large room with double bed, en-suite bath, and plenty of storage and a table with chairs. Very quickly, I used up my Italian, but she understood I wanted a room for one person for two nights. The price was €65/night, cash, no breakfast included. We sealed the deal and she took my passport to go off and take down my particulars. Once I'd unpacked, I met her husband who spoke some English. They were both very friendly. The room was way back in a quiet corner.

Within 50 feet of my front door, I found a small supermarket, a cash machine, and an Internet café. I refreshed my emergency rations with milk, peanuts, cheese and peach/mango juice. Nearby was a very narrow alley, which I set out to explore. I soon found a coin-operated laundry, which had a book exchange with most books in English. As I spied several candidates, I raced back to my room to get two books and swapped them.

[Diary] … At 08:45 am, I packed my gear for the hike to Monterosso, the next and northern-most town in Cinque Terre. By 09:00, I was several hundred yards up the path waiting at the Park Ranger's hut for him to arrive. He wandered in at 09:10 and sold me a 2-day pass to hike the National Park trails; cost, €8.

The first 20 minutes it was very steep. I did get some nice photos and video of Vernazza, however. Everyone I'd talked to had told me that that was the toughest section of the trail, and I believe it. I climbed a lot and went up and down a few times along the way. I saw only four hikers going my way. For the first hour, I hardly met anyone coming from Monterosso; the hikers had either come through earlier or had a late start. However, passed the halfway point, things got a bit busy especially on some of the narrower parts of the trail. Almost all the people I met were Aussies, Canadians, or French with an occasional smattering of Americans.

I saw terraced vineyards in which bamboo poles were used as trellises. There were many wildflowers, and the occasional smell of their perfume was welcome. At one point, I could see all four towns to the south.

I ambled into Monterosso at 11:20, 2:10 hours after starting. My only thought was to get some ice-cold whole milk, and it took a bit of searching. Finally, I bought a carton and that, along with a nice ripe banana, replenished my body. I walked around the old town taking pictures and video, and then went through the tunnel to the new town. Both had beaches with requisite chairs and umbrellas for rent. I sat in the shade and read my novel with my boots off.

As they say, it's the journey not the destination, and that surely was the case with this town, so, by 12:20, I was at the train station waiting for a train to take me back to Vernazza. It arrived and I got on for the supposed 5-minute ride. I got talking to an Aussie couple, and when the train stopped five minutes later a large group of us thought that was our station (and it was), but we were in a tunnel and it was dark out all the windows. By the time we worked out that we should move to another carriage whose doors opened, the train was pulling out. Okay, no problem, we all said; we'll simply get off at the next town and go back. Of course, it wasn't a local train and didn't stop for three stations. So, unexpectedly, we were at the southern-most town, Riomaggiore. We had to wait there 40 minutes for a northbound train that stopped at Vernazza.

[Diary] … At 7:45 am, I was ready for some hiking, and I headed off on the steep steps out of town headed south. I took a little less than 90 minutes to get to Corniglia. Apart from a workman repairing the trail, I saw nobody until I met two young women near the end of that leg. It was cool and overcast, and there had been light rain during the night. I alternated from a sun hat to a woolen cap. The level of difficulty was similar to the day before, and I went from right around sea level to some 650 feet up. Corniglia was just waking up as I arrived. A few tourists were heading to the train station, which was 300 steps down from the town. (There was a bus for those happy to pay and save the effort.) I certainly was happy to be going down the steps rather than up.

After that, there was more traffic, especially as the path to Manarola was almost flat as well as wide. It was so easy I had to stop myself from breaking into a run. In Manarola, I stopped at a little coffee place and sat at a table under a large umbrella, where I sipped a milk coffee. It was so good, I had a second one. I chatted with three women from Salt Lake City, Utah, and we exchanged information and tips about travel. It was a great break.

The path from Manarola to Riomaggiore was even easier, and I was there in no time. As I approached the town, very light rain fell intermittently. The skies stayed grey and threatening, but it didn't result in any serious interruption. I toured the whole town including right down to the waterfront where a ferry was arriving. I spent several hours there sitting in the sun, reading my novel and chatting with a number of different lots of people, including some from my home state of South Australia.

Lucca

[Diary] … My host, Carmine, arrived at the station in his car to take me to his apartment. After we finished supper, we walked around the old city visiting a number of plazas and monuments including the relatively new bronze of well-known local-boy Giacomo Puccini.

[Diary] … At 09:30 am, armed with a tour map, I headed towards the northern gate of the city wall. It was quiet out with only a few tourists. Mostly it was people opening up shops and setting up stalls. At the Piazza Santa Maria gate, I visited the tourist office and got some more information, especially about Sunday hours. The young lady was ever so happy to also rent me a high-speed internet cable for €1/10 minutes, so I hooked up my netbook computer and checked my email and phoned the day host I planned to meet the next day.

As I was leaving the tourist bureau, I spied the bicycle rental place next door, and, suddenly, the 4 km-trip around the top of the city walls didn't seem so arduous, especially not at €2.50/hour. I had to leave my passport as security and in return I got a bike and lock. The proprietress took me out the back where she asked the repairman to fix me up with a bike of size suitable for my height, and he did.

I headed up the ramp to the top of the wall, and, pretty soon, it all came back to me, and I was on my way, in a counterclockwise direction. However, it occurred to me that made it harder to see inside the walls as I was riding on the far right side of the very wide road, so I reversed direction. And to make it a bit more challenging, I took out my video camera and shot while riding, keeping one eye on the road and the other through the camera's viewfinder. Large trees all along the route provided plenty of shade.

There was no need to change gears, as it was quite flat. I stopped at a number of places to take photos and to look around. In no time at all, I had completed the loop. Only once did I come close to an accident; an unsteady young Frenchwoman was pulling out from the side and failed to look in both directions, and blocked me off completely.

Back at the start, I went down the ramp to street level, and put my video camera away, ready for "Toad's Wild Ride" (the "Wind in the Willows" ride at Disneyland) around the streets, scaring children, pets, and little old ladies. By that time, the tourists were out in force. Although the streets were paved with small cobblestones, they were still a bit rough. I went back around the city in a counterclockwise direction poking around in many back streets and narrow alleys. By the time I got back to the rental place the novelty had worn off and different parts of my body were aching. However, it was a good workout.

I started my walking tour by heading for the Contrini Pfanner Palace and gardens. I toured the rooms that were open for display and then walked around the garden. Two rows of statues lead to a fountain surrounded by lots of flowers in full bloom. I sat in the shade and contemplated life in a palace with a walled garden. From there, I went to the central square and church, Piazza San Michelle, and then on to the elliptical Piazza Anfiteatro. On the way home, I rescued a bottle of iced-cold Coke to have with my lunch—a tuna and sun-dried tomato roll—which I ate back in the apartment with a breeze blowing in one window and out the other. Life was good.

Pisa

[Diary] … I stopped on a bridge over the Arno River to take some photos and video. Eventually, the crowded streets gave way to the "Field of Miracles", which opened out before me. At the left end was the round baptistery. In the center was the large cathedral. And to the right was the famous Leaning Tower, and it surely was leaning. The more I looked at it, the more I thought it was going to fall, right then! The buildings were set in a long rectangular park that was mostly covered in long green grass.

I walked around the buildings and up to the old city walls and one gate; however, I declined to go inside. I thought about going up the tower, but there was a 2-hour wait and it cost €15, so I decided not to. In any event, those who did go up the very steep steps could only go outside on the smaller top level.

Siena

[Diary] … After a train ride to town, I rode a bus to the city center and started to look for accommodation. Not seeing any and not finding anyone who knew where the tourist information office was, I asked a couple of tourists if they could recommend a cheap hotel nearby. An American guy did, and, in five minutes, I was standing at the registration desk of the Albergo Tre Danzella, barely 50 yards off the edge of the main plaza. Yes, the man would be pleased to give me a very large double room for two nights at the incredibly low price of €49/night, cash or credit. Breakfast was not included and there was a share bathroom for each five rooms. I checked it out and it was just fine, so I signed up.

I unpacked, splashed some cold water on my face, and sat and rested for a while. It had taken quite a while to get there from Lucca. After I was restored, I walked to the main plaza, where the bright sunshine fell on the tower and half the square. It truly was a magnificent sight. People sat all around the plaza in the sun eating ice cream, talking, and sleeping. Around half of the plaza there were outdoor restaurants doing a roaring trade.

Each July and August, riders race horses bareback around the edge on dirt that is trucked in. The whole event takes only several minutes, but people start getting into position 12 hours ahead. I took some photos and video and then sat by the fountain. I met a young Aussie couple that had been traveling 6 months and had more than a year to go. We exchanged some travel tips and sat talking for a good long while.

San Gimignano

At 09:20 am, I was on the bus headed for the well-known hilltop town of San Gimignano. Very soon after we left Siena, we were in the countryside among rolling hills covered in forest with cereal farms and vineyards all around. It was a pleasant drive that lasted 1:10 hours.

The town had many very tall towers and was built on a hill. I walked around looking in a variety of shops. I stopped to shoot video and photos especially of the surrounding countryside. I hiked up to the top of the highest hill where I found an olive grove and some old town defenses. I sat in the shade for some time listening to a man play a variety of flutes. In a courtyard nearby, I sat again, to hear a young Florentine woman in traditional dress perform on a large harp. We chatted a while between tunes, and I bought one of her CDs. On the way back down the hill I stopped to watch a woman painting; she had a large collection of watercolors for sale. She was a grandmother originally from New Zealand, but now living in San Gimignano, enjoying sitting in the sun painting, talking to the tourists, and selling the occasional painting.

I sat in the shade and had leftover pizza for a late lunch, and then I walked some of the quiet back streets taking photos of doorknockers, signs, and such things. Back outside the walls, I found the bus stop, but people waiting there told me I had to buy my ticket back in the town. Well, when the bus came, the driver said I could ride to the next town and pay there, so I did. On arrival, I paid and after a few minutes wait, transferred to an express bus headed for Siena. It was a very comfortable air-conditioned double-decker bus. I sat upstairs at the front where I had a bird's-eye view of the countryside.

Conclusion

Certainly, there are other places in Italy I'd be happy to visit; however, only one area has any priority. That is Venice, in conjunction with Trieste, and the neighboring country of Slovenia, along with northern Croatia. Arrivederci!

© 2013 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

In Part 3, we looked at nouns. This time, we look at pronouns. A pronoun (abbrev. pron. or pr.) is a word that can be used in place of a noun or noun phrase.

Subject Pronouns

Let's start with the most common kind of pronouns, those that indicate who or what is doing something; that is, the personal pronouns used as the subject of a sentence or a clause:

Some examples are:

• "I love ice cream!"
• "You may go to the movies tonight."
• "She is busy right now."
• "It was already broken."
• "They were late."

In most cases, we must first establish the noun being replaced before we can use the abbreviated, pronoun form. For example, in the sentences above, to whom or what do you, he, she, it, we, and they refer? And in the case of you, is it one person or more than one? However, once the noun is established, a pronoun can make things much simpler. For example, "The President came on stage. He thanked everyone for coming; he gave a great speech; and then he received a standing ovation." As we see, once the subject noun is established, all subsequent pronouns that could possibly replace that subject, do so. Consider the following: "John came to the picnic. Bob came too. However, he was late." Presumably, Bob arrived late. If, in fact, it was John, we'd need to use John instead of he. However, if we replace Bob with Mary, the he would now refer to John.

English had the archaic second-person thou (singular) and ye (plural). The word thou is still seen in literary and Biblical contexts, as in "Thou art my God."

While I is always capitalized, the other subject pronouns usually are not. But, of course, English is full of exceptions. For example, "He was married to She Who Must be Obeyed!", and "I know that He is the Chosen One!"

When a noun phrase includes multiple subject pronouns or such a pronoun and a noun, and the pronoun is I, that pronoun goes at the end of the list. For example, "You and I have been invited to the party." And "My parents and I went to the movies."

You might have heard we being used in an unusual manner. For example, Her Majesty might ask one of her subjects, "And how are we today?" (In fact, your family doctor might say the same thing.) Of course, the correct reply: "We is fine, you foxy Mama!" Apparently, such uses are known as the patronizing "we". Then there is the royal "we" (or Majestic plural), the editorial "we", the author's "we", and the non-confrontative "we", all of which you can read about here.

Object Pronouns

Many sentences contain a predicate having a direct and/or indirect object. The personal pronouns used as objects are:

Some examples are:

• "We saw them at the theater."
• "Mary gave it to me."
• "The man helped her to find us."
• "I last spoke to you on Friday."

Like most subject pronouns, we must first establish the noun being replaced before we can use the abbreviated, object pronoun form.

English had the archaic second-person thee (singular) and ye (plural). The word thee is still seen in literary and Biblical contexts, as in "With this ring, I thee wed." When referring to God, for example, Thee is capitalized.

When a noun phrase includes multiple object pronouns or such a pronoun and a noun, and the pronoun is me, that pronoun goes at the end of the list. For example, "Father gave the tickets to you and me." and "Uncle Jack gave my parents and me a ride home."

Here are some common, but very wrong, examples:

• "Me and Jimmy went hunting." Correct form: "Jimmy and I went hunting.", because the pronoun is in the subject.
• "Him and me each shot a deer." Correct form: "He and I each shot a deer.", because the pronouns are in the subject. [We could say, "The deer were shot by him and me." or more simply, "The deer were shot by us.", but that doesn't say clearly that we each shot one. Perhaps we both shot all of them, 25 times, after drinking a case of beer; BURP!]

Reflexive Pronouns

When an object is the same as the subject, we have a reflexive situation, and as the object will be a pronoun, its reflexive form must be used. The reflexive pronouns are:

The Royal "we" equivalent is ourself, and the indefinite version is oneself. For example, "One can always improve oneself."

Some examples are:

• "I appointed myself arbitrator."
• "He patted himself on the back for a job well done."
• "They voted themselves out of office."

The reflexive form of thou and thee is thyself.

It is not uncommon to hear people mistakenly use a reflexive pronoun with an unrelated subject. For example, "Please send a copy to Mary and myself." The correct pronoun is me. On the other hand, the opposite mistake can be made; "I'm gonna catch me a wascaly wabbit!" Of course, the correct pronoun is myself, but who are we to argue with the dialog of a Bugs Bunny cartoon? [For that matter, many country (and other) music songs introduce such mistakes intentionally to get the words to rhyme.]

The reflexive pronouns can all be used as corresponding intensive pronouns to add emphasis. For example, "I did all the work myself!" The difference here is that the pronoun can be omitted without losing any meaning, whereas in a reflexive context it cannot.

Reciprocal Pronouns

The terms one another and each other are reciprocal pronouns in which members of a set perform a reciprocal action on other members of that set. Examples are, "They helped each other put on their armor." and "They competed with one another for the prize."

Dummy Pronouns

A dummy pronoun is one used where a noun or noun phrase is required syntactically, yet none is needed or even exists. For example:

• "It is hot."
• "It is clear that …"
• "It rained itself out!"

Possessive Pronouns

Conveniently, possessive pronouns indicate possession. These pronouns are:

For example:

• "The blue car is mine." "Mine is green."
• "Which containers are yours?" "Hers have her name on them."
• I believe this is theirs." "No, theirs was the red one."

The archaic version is thine.

Demonstrative Pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns are used to distinguish one or more things from a set. For example:

• "This is my hat."
• "Are these your gloves?"
• "She goes out in public in that?"
• "Are those clean?
• "Please pass me that one."

Indefinite Pronouns

There are numerous indefinite pronouns; these refer to unspecified things. Examples include one; no one, everyone, someone, and anyone (and their -thing equivalents), and none, some, neither, and both.

Relative Pronouns

The relative pronouns are which, that, and who. For example:

• "He arrived late, which was rude."
• "The DVD that I bought yesterday was on sale."
• "The man who left early was a retired military officer."

There has been, and continues to be, a debate about the use of that vs. which. Here is the rule I use: If the pronoun and whatever immediately follows it is necessary to qualify the noun to which it is being applied, use that without a comma; otherwise, use a comma, followed by which. For example, in the following:

• "Painting Number 10, which the artist painted while drunk, sold for $1 million."

could just as easily have been written instead as:

• "Painting Number 10 (which the artist painted while drunk) sold for $1 million."

or

• "Painting Number 10—which the artist painted while drunk—sold for $1 million."

The fact that the artist was drunk at the time has no bearing on the intended meaning. Removing that clause is just fine.

On the other hand, in "The car that is standing at the curb is mine.", the qualifier is needed.

Interrogative Pronouns

Finally, we look at interrogative pronouns, words used to ask a question. Examples include:

• "What is today's lunch special?"
• "Since when?"
• "Who stole my cheese?"
• "To whom shall I address the letter?"

The word who is a subject pronoun while whom is its equivalent object version.

Conclusion

I'm reminded of the old joke in which the English teacher asks an inattentive student, "Give me two pronouns." Caught unawares, the student replied, "Who? Me?"

Over the years, I've recommended highly Patricia T. O'Conner's book Woe is I. Should the title of a book on English grammar contain an incorrect pronoun? Of course, like so many other examples in that easy-to-read book, this one is a pun on the very subject it covers.

© 2013 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

Most of us have assets and liabilities. We pay bills on a regular basis. We pay rent or a house mortgage. We have one or more bank accounts and credit cards. We file tax returns. We have insurance policies to cover a variety of things. However, much of what we do in these regards is in our heads, possibly with a few things marked on a calendar (possibly using our own particular shorthand). What happens then, if we are temporarily or permanently unable to do those things? How will someone else figure out how to do these things on our behalf?

A common situation is one in which a person is one of a couple and various housekeeping and record-keeping chores are divided between the two. If one partner was unable to do any of the things he normally does, could the other do them instead? If a person lives alone, who would do these tasks for them? If you are the executor of an aging parent's estate, where will you begin to sort out their lives when they die? And if an estate is paying its executor, it's easy to see how a large chunk of that estate could be spent in figuring this out.

If you have any sort of footprint on this planet at all, you will benefit from having some sort of written—preferably recorded electronically—instructions describing the myriad of things one would need to know to perform the personal administrative things you do on a regular basis.

I created such a document as part of my estate planning, and it is intended to serve as an aid to my estate's executor and to those who hold Power-of-Attorney rights if I am unable to make my own healthcare or other decisions prior to death. I update this document every six months, and send a revised copy to my executor and to those who hold various Powers of Attorney. I keep printed copies in my home safe and my bank safe-deposit box. The master copy resides on my main computer, and I might update that more frequently than twice-per-year, in which case, it's important that the most up-to-date version actually be used.

So, not long after you have been given your last rites, someone will be looking for your last writes! Do they exist and, if so, how will anyone find them? This essay proposes a series of things you would do well to document for your own situation.

Getting Started

At least the following items are needed to get the other information and things one might need in dealing with another person's business and personal interests:

• Access to their house and/or office
• Access to their computer(s)
• Access to their home safe
• Access to their safe-deposit box

Personal Data

1. Legal name; also common names, if they are different. (Lots of people have nicknames that they use every day.)
2. Place and date of birth
3. Citizenship(s), passport number(s), and expiration dates
4. Any Federal or official personal identification number (such as the US's Social Security Number [SSN])

Contacts

Having all personal and/or business contact information available in one place, which is maintained by a computer program, is best, especially if it is searchable. However, this requires considerable discipline to maintain, and probably doesn't exist for many (most?) people. (Clearly, this assumes that the executor has access to the computer skills needed to do this.)

The more organized such a contact list is, the less that has to be put in the Last Writes document. That document simply need mention some key names that can be used as indirect pointers into the computerized contact database.

[I maintain my contact database in Microsoft Office's Outlook program. I use categories to group contacts having connections, as such "legal", "medical", "banking", "insurance", "auto repairs", and "house repairs".]

Calendar/Appointments

Like Contacts, a calendar is best maintained by a computer program. However, this requires considerable discipline to maintain, and probably doesn't exist for many (most?) people.

[I maintain my calendar in Microsoft Office's Outlook program. Not only does it keep track of my personal and business activities, I use its recurring-event facility for reminders of things that have to be done on a weekly, quarterly, or annual basis, for example. And I use it to raise alarms up to two weeks in advance of an event.]

Close Relatives and Family Information

• Name of spouse/partner and date and location of marriage/union/divorce
• Names of parents and siblings
• Names of children

Close Friends

The people on this list would be notified in case of death or serious/long-term disability.

Main Employer/Employee and Business Contacts

The people on this list would be notified in case of death or serious/long-term disability.

Landlord (if renting)

• Owner name and contact information
• If applicable, property manager name and contact information
• Amount of rent, rent frequency, and payment date
• Method of payment (perhaps it's automatically debited from a bank account)
• Amount of security deposit
• Length of lease
• Location of lease document

Mortgage (if buying)

• Mortgage company name and contact information
• Amount of payment, payment frequency, and payment date
• Method of payment (perhaps it's automatically debited from a bank account)
• Location of loan documents and title

Will

• Name(s) of legal contact(s) and executor
• Date when the most recent will and all current codicils were drawn up
• Location of copies of the most recent will and all current codicils

Powers of Attorney (PoA)

• Name of durable medical PoA
• Name of durable general purposes PoA
• It would be useful to provide extra guidelines with respect to being in a long-term coma and the use of "Heroic measures"

Financial Accounts (Joint and Separate)

• Checking account(s)
• Savings account(s)
• Retirement account(s)
• Non-Retirement investments
• Credit Card account(s)
• Location of any computer files used to track financial accounts
• Location of any computer files used to track invoices/accounts payable
• Details of any unsecured loans made to family, friends, own business

Computer Systems and Backups

Many people own a desktop computer as well as a laptop or tablet computer. They might also use their phone for email and messaging. These tools all have usernames and passwords. Some people also have their own domain names and websites. Such facilities require their own hosting companies, usernames, and passwords.

Most email facilities allow copies of all messages sent and received to be retained and possibly archived somehow.

[I own the domain RexJaeschke.com and have the website www.RexJaeschke.com. I maintain my email accounts on my own computer using Microsoft Office's Outlook program. At the end of each month, I permanently delete all personal mail messages from my Sent Items and Deleted Items folders that are more than 30 days old. Of the remaining messages, each of those having attachments totaling 1MB or more are inspected. All such attachments that are transient in nature or for which a copy was stored separately on a hard disk, are removed and the parent message re-saved without them. I then use the Archive option of Outlook to save all messages that are older than 30 days. This results in one archive file per year stored on a hard disk. The current email database and archived mail files are backed-up as part of the monthly computer backup.]

A similar situation may exist for Instant Message (IM) accounts.

It has been my experience that too few owners of computers have an adequate backup strategy. [I backup all my data every month with copies going onto three big disks that are stored in my office, in my fire safe, and my safe-deposit box. For more information on this topic, see my December 2010 essay, "Technology, Unplugged – Part 2".]

Income Tax Records

• Name of tax preparer
• Location of copies of past tax returns and correspondence
• It's a good idea to scan past returns and correspondence into computer files, so the paper copies can be shredded

Safe-Deposit Box (at bank)

• Location and number of box, and location of key/combination
• Copy of will
• Birth certificate
• Marriage/divorce documents
• Title(s) for vehicle(s) and house(s)
• Off-site computer data backup disk(s)
• Other valuable things (such as coins and family heirlooms)

Fire Safe (at home/office)

• Location of safe and key/combination
• Copies of various papers, including will and codicils
• Passport(s)
• Copy of Title(s) for vehicle(s) and house(s)
• Computer systems usernames and passwords
• On-site computer data backup disk(s)
• Bank ATM/Cash Machine and credit card ID numbers
• Emergency cash

Business Assets

• Computer systems
• Software
• Technical/reference Books
• Furniture
• Intellectual property

Assets

• Real Estate
• Vehicle(s)
• Cash and investments
• Checking account
• Savings accounts
• Retirement accounts
• House contents
• Accounts receivable

Liabilities

• Home mortgage(s)
• Vehicle loan(s)
• Personal loan(s)
• College tuition loan(s)
• Credit card accounts not paid in full each month
• Home Equity line of credit
• Any big-ticket item being financed (such as furniture or appliance purchases)
• Major monthly bills
• Any loans or other liabilities where you are a co-signer or guarantor

Insurance

• Medical and Prescription
• Dental
• Optical
• Life
• Automobile
• Disability
• General Liability
• House contents
• Renter's coverage
• Computer hardware and software loss coverage
• Business liability (plus Errors and Omissions coverage)

Memorandum re Asset Distribution

Generally, a will doesn't cover everything, just the main things. As such, it's good to have more documentation about who gets what with regard to the more personal stuff.

• Computer backup disk(s)
• Computers, other hardware, and software
• Books (technical, reference and fiction)
• Music/video (audio tapes, CDs, and DVDs)
• Travel diaries (audio, hard-copy bound books, and electronic versions stored on a computer)
• Home movie recordings
• Family Photographs
• Family tree books and hometown history books
• Collections (such as stamps and coins)

Miscellaneous Notes

• Organ donation
• Funeral arrangements
• For cremation, location where ashes should be buried/scattered
• What to do with any website or blog

Conclusion

The more someone's Last Writes document contains the better. And while it won't help the person who has passed on, those left with the task of winding up an estate will be most grateful.

© 2013 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

In Part 1, we covered Ancient Civilizations and Old Sites and Religious Places and Artifacts. In Part 2, we covered Royal Hangouts and Military-Related Places and Things. In Part 3, we covered Museums and Art Galleries, Libraries, and Aquariums.

Gardens

When I think of an impressive garden, I immediately think of Het Loo Palace, in The Netherlands. During Napoleon's occupation, the gardens were buried under rubble and used as a horse parade ground. Fortunately, when restoration work was started, the original plans were discovered and the beds and their ingenious irrigation system were rebuilt.

For many people with green thumbs, Britain's Kew Gardens (or, more formally, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) is the Holy Grail. In 2012, while visiting the southwest English counties Cornwall and Devon for the first time, one of my main stopovers was the Eden Project (see left), a huge reclaimed clay pit with extensive outdoor gardens and two enormous controlled-climate, geodesic dome structures. Amusingly, the brochure claims they have "the largest rainforest in captivity".

With 140 acres, the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona is worth a visit. I happened to do it late on a Sunday morning where brunch was served to the sounds of a string quartet. That certainly aided the digestion.

While not built as a garden, per se, nonetheless, Tucson, Arizona's Biosphere 2 is impressive. This self-contained living system was an experiment in building colonies on the moon or on some other planet.

I've seen many cultivated gardens, but when it comes right down to it, it's hard to beat nature. For that, I'll take the rain forest in Central or South America, or a big patch of desert with saguaro cactus such as that around the Wild-West movie studio Old Tucson in Arizona.

Theme Parks

In the US, we have Disneyland (in Los Angeles, California), and Disneyworld and EPCOT Center (in Orlando, Florida). These definitely are for kids of all ages. Universal Studios has a number of parks as does the Busch beer group with its Busch Gardens. Just north of San Diego, California, in Escondido, there is a fantastic wild-animal park in a several thousand-acre setting that approximates each animal's native environment. On the backside of the main island of Oahu, Hawaii, is the Polynesian Cultural Center.

Copenhagen, Denmark, boasts its Tivoli Gardens, and on the Jutland Peninsular, there is the original LEGOLAND, with its very own airport just across the road, really! The 1:25 scale model of Dutch life at Madurodam is near The Hague, and is definitely worth a visit, even if you don't have kids with you.

Parliament Houses and Capitals

In 2000, my son and I sat in on interesting debates at the House of Commons and the House of Lords in London. More recently, I toured Canada's Houses of Parliament in Ottawa. I've also toured the Senate and House chambers of the US Capitol, and listened to a debate in the House of Representatives.

On my travels around the US, I've visited many of the state capitols. While in Carson City, Nevada, I got to sit behind a bulletproof glass wall to watch one of the chambers in full debate. That state's legislature sits for no more than 120 days every two years, but members only get paid for the first 60 of those days. [Wags suggest it might be better if they met for two days every 120 years!] Apparently, during several sessions, business ran right up until midnight on the 120^th day, at which time the members voted to stop the clock or to adopt more than 24 hours in that day. Sacramento, California's Capitol (see left) certainly is impressive. While Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, I dropped by his office and got one of his business cards. [A visit to the old Governor's Mansion nearby is worth the effort. It was last occupied by Governor and Mrs. Ronald Reagan.]

During one visit back to my own state capital, Adelaide, South Australia, I dropped in to the lower house to hear a debate in which everyone was in agreement, and it wasn't about pay raises for members either!

To me, one of the most impressive parliamentary buildings is Germany's Reichstag in Berlin. Although its dome was destroyed, the building has been beautifully restored to its former glory with a clear-glass dome. The tour to the rooftop is worth the effort. And the large vertical sculpture-like sail inside the dome is actually an enormous set of mirrors that tracks the sun and channels its light down into the main chamber.

National Parks and Historic Places

While hiking the Thames Path, I rested for a few days in/near Oxford where I visited the Duke of Marlborough's home, Blenheim Palace. Winston Churchill was born there, and he and his darling Clementine are buried with numerous relatives at the Bladen cemetery nearby. Oxford is indescribably beautiful; just go visit it! Twice I've visited Runnymede, to see where the Barons forced King John to sing the Magna Carta. While touring Scotland, by sheer accident, my family and I got off the train to find that we were in a village near the famed Loch Lomond. So we spent several great days there.

Odense, Denmark, on the large island of Fyn, is home to Hans Christian Andersen's House. On a 3-day layover in Iceland, I got to see an enormous geyser erupt, right next to me. It sure is a pristine country. While crossing the Patagonia in Chile and Argentina I got to see several glaciers up close, as well as a large iceberg that had broken off and run aground way downstream in the desert. If you'd like to tour a very comfortable 100-room castle, Toronto, Canada's, Casa Loma, is a good place to start.

In a word, the national, state, and local parks systems in the US are fantastic! To name a few, I've been to Yellowstone, Yosemite, The Badlands, The Black Hills, Luray Caverns, Wind Cave, Western Grand Canyon, and Mt. Rushmore. The bison herds in Custer State Park, South Dakota, and on Ted Turner's ranch in Montana are worth a look. Niagara Falls is pretty impressive as well.

A visit to Hearst Castle in Southern California will show you how to build a nice "little" country place, which, at one time, had the world's largest private zoo. Not to be outdone, the Vanderbilts constructed their country estate, Biltmore, in North Carolina. Much smaller, but nonetheless impressive, homes include Mount Vernon (George Washington) and Monticello (Thomas Jefferson).

To see the OK Corral where that famous wild-west gunfight took place, and Boot Hill cemetery, go to Tombstone, Arizona. The oldest European settlement in North America can be seen at St. Augustine in Florida.

And last, but by no means least, Texas has The Alamo, near San Antonio; Judge Roy Bean's famous bar and sometime courthouse in Langtree; and the Texas School Book Depository, from where Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly assassinated President Kennedy.

Odds and Ends

If you like heights, checkout out the Tokyo Tower (see left), Paris's Eiffel Tower, and Toronto's CN Tower. [You can also walk out in the open across the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge while tethered to a safety rail, something I have yet to do.]

Yes, the Amazon River is impressive, and yes, it has piranhas, Cayman alligators, and leaky dugout canoes. (I know, because I was the one bailing out the water!) Some butterflies I saw were the size of a dinner plate! I also encountered a friendly, and quite large, tapir.

At 1,000 meters, Angel Falls near Canaima, Venezuela, is the world's tallest waterfall. It definitely is impressive especially when viewed from the window of the 727 aircraft that took me up the valley. [For some interesting information about that area, read Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World, and watch the movies Arachnophobia and Up.]

Two instantly recognizable mountains are Japan's Mt. Fuji (Fujiyama or Fuji-san) and Seattle's, Mt. Rainier. In the former case, there is a mailbox at the top for climbers to post letters! [So let me get this right. Someone climbs up there to post a letter, and then someone else climbs up there and retrieves it to take it down to the post office. Hmm.]

If you are in the mood to visit a prison as a tourist, Alcatraz and Folsom are worth the effort. While the former is no longer in operation, the latter is, and you can take photos or video, so long as you don't include any guards or prisoners in your shots. Really! And, yes, Johnny Cash did perform there.

If one was very wealthy, fed up with English society, heard voices in one's head telling one to get away from it all, one could do like Edward James, and go to a remote jungle in Mexico and build huge, surreal sculptures and a gothic-style mansion. [I spent a couple nights in his mansion, which was being converted into a hotel.]

Olympic Stadia/Villages are worth a visit. I've seen those in Montreal, Canada; Helsinki, Finland; and Beijing, China's, famous "Birds Nest" (see left). The Beijing Water Cube swimming center certainly is impressive.

The Cape Canaveral space base in Florida is something to see. [I always wanted to go watch a shuttle launch, but never made it. I did, however, get to see up close a shuttle atop its Boeing 747 Mother Ship.]

Conclusion

There is an old saying that goes something like, "Those who can, do, while those who can't, teach!" While I have great respect for most schoolteachers, I certainly would apply a modified version of this adage to art (and book and music) critics. Frankly, I never have been interested in hearing what the critic thought the artist "must have been thinking", when they executed some particular work, or whether they were "on or off their medications".

I started Part 1 with a mildly disrespectful attitude toward Kulcha from an Aussie's perspective. Such attitudes were hardly discouraged when in 1973 the Australian Government paid a princely sum for Jackson Pollock's painting Blue Poles. "Trust us; it's a national investment", they said of the abstract painting, despite that the average person in the street thought their kindergartner had done something better. Soon after its purchase, paint started to peel and it needed substantial restoration work. C'est la vie!

So, what's still on my bucket list? The Pyramids and Sphinx in Egypt; Canberra, the capital city of my native country, Australia; actually going inside the White House; Vancouver Island, Canada; the island of Bornholm in Denmark; hiking hut-to-hut in the Swiss Alps; certain parts of Greece and Turkey; Andalusia, Spain; Morocco; New Zealand; Slovenia; Yorkshire, England; going the full length of the Danube River on a working barge; and some driving trips in the US to visit various Presidential Libraries.

So, after visiting all these places and seeing all these things, am I more sophisticated? Probably, but I still get confused when there is more than one knife and fork at my table setting!

I hope this series has helped improve your Kulcha Quotient.

© 2013 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

In Part 1, we covered Ancient Civilizations and Old Sites and Religious Places and Artifacts. In Part 2, we covered Royal Hangouts and Military-Related Places and Things.

Museums and Art Galleries

I've long had a saying, "If you don't understand it, it must be art!" And that certainly has proven true when I've looked at many paintings and sculptures. Without a doubt, there are times when I'm sure that my taste is entirely within my mouth! In any event, I've seen so many museums and art galleries that it's hard to know where to begin, so I'll charge right in going by country in no particular order.

After seven or eight trips to Denmark, I finally got to visit the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. It stays open one night each week when the restaurant serves a fine dinner. I enjoyed the exhibits and the food, as well as looking at the Danish-made "practical/wearable art" on sale. On a separate trip, I dropped by the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, and as it was a slow day, a curator invited me for a behind-the-scenes tour where staff were restoring a ship. It's hard to imagine one taking such a small craft across an ocean.

Mainz, Germany, is a state capital, and was home to Guttenberg and his printing press. In fact, in 2000, he was named Man of the Millennium. The museum dedicated to him is worth a visit. [By the way, Mainz is just a short train ride from Frankfurt airport, if you should ever have a long layover there. However, should you ride there by train, be sure to keep in the half of the train that goes to Mainz rather than Wiesbaden, another state capital just across the river (he says from experience).]

Canada is home to some interesting collections. If you are in the Hull/Ottawa area, go see the (quite new and beautiful) Canadian Museum of Civilization. The greater Vancouver area has plenty of things to see, including: Vancouver Maritime Museum and its St. Roch, the first ship to completely circumnavigate North America; Queen Elizabeth Park with its geodesic dome; and the extensive collection at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, which covers all the Pacific Island nations as well as New Zealand's Maoris and Australia's Aborigines.

In the US, the greater Detroit, Michigan, area hosts the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, the Holy Grail for transportation enthusiasts. The village contains the original buildings or homes of some famous Americans. The Rodin Collection at Stanford University is worth a look as are the campus grounds. During my first year in the US I lived in Chicago, so I just had to make a pilgrimage to the Chicago Art Institute to see Andy Warhol's famous soup cans. Dale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor. I first became aware of his work during a visit to the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, where his sculptures were placed throughout the garden (see the photo to the left with the blue and orange sculpture). Fairbanks, Alaska, has the University of Alaska Museum of the North. Seattle's Museum of Flight is definitely worth a visit as is Boeing's tour of the B747, 767, 777, and 787 assembly lines. On a visit to Santa Fe, the state capital of New Mexico, I dropped by the Georgia O'Keefe Museum. This often-misunderstood artist was well ahead of her time. New York City boasts many cultural centers: Ones that immediately come to mind are The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); American Museum of Natural History (which includes the Hayden Planetarium); the Ellis Island Museum, which shows how the millions of immigrants arriving there were processed and often given Anglicized names; The Guggenheim; and Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. The National Gallery of Art is on the Mall in downtown Washington DC. During the summer, the fountain water runs down the outside walls of the underground cafeteria. I especially love the outdoor sculpture garden next door, whose very large fountain becomes an ice-skating rink in winter. On a motorhome trip through South Dakota, I stumbled on the Mammoth Site museum near Hot Springs, build over a dig with partially exposed, complete skeletons of numerous mammoths. One of the best known, most visited, and free museum and gallery complexes is Washington DC's Smithsonian Institution. [The donation of the original funding is most interesting.] Opened in 1976 for the Bicentennial, the Air and Space Museum is the most-visited museum in the world, complete with touchable piece of moon rock and magnificent movie theater. The nicely renovated Museum of Natural History is also impressive.

The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, is world-famous. (My Russian guide asked me to keep quiet as we bought tickets, as foreigners were charged ten times the price of Russians!) I have never been a fan of gold or gilded anything, and this place was "over-the-top" in this regard.

During various trips to beautiful Oslo, Norway, I visited Norsk Folkemuseum, the Viking Ship Museum, the Kon-Tiki Museum, the Nobel Peace Center, and Holmenkollbakken, an impressive ski jump (pictured at the left).

Dublin, Ireland has plenty of culture, which includes museums with peat-bog mummies, and the Book of Kells ("an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin") and harp (the symbol of Ireland) in Trinity College. The bridges over the River Liffey are especially worth a look. The new Samuel Beckett Bridge is built to look like a harp, complete with numerous cables as strings.

The UK has loads of places for art and old stuff. For me, the Number 1 place has to be the British Museum where I always visit the Rosetta Stone, which allowed scholars to first understand Egyptian hieroglyphics. Outdoors, along the Embankment (an area on the north side of the Thames River), I like to visit the Cleopatra's Needle obelisk and its adjacent sphinxes. There is a shrapnel hole in one sphinx that resulted from a bomb dropped during WWI. Prior to last year, I'd never visited any of the Tate galleries. However, during a vacation in the county of Cornwall, I stopped off at the Tate St. Ives. (It's not often that pieces in galleries grab me, but two did there: a piece of paper covered in tea stains around the image of a tea cup base, with colored ribbons stitched around the stain's edge; and a long cloak covered in used tea bags. You probably have to see them to understand.) A companion gallery is The Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden. (I can safely say that nothing of that acclaimed artist's work interested me, but I was very impressed with all the large and complex spider webs in shrubs in the garden, most with working spiders!)

If you are ever in Tokyo, Japan, the place for museums is Ueno Park. Standing there in front of the National Museum of Western Art is one of Rodin's Thinker sculptures.

To visit all the biggies in Vienna, Austria, would take much more time than most visitors can spare. Highlights for me included Schloss Schönbrunn, the former summer residence of the Habsburgs (the Palm House indoor garden was especially impressive); Hofburg Palace, a sprawling complex of buildings and grounds where the Vienna Boys' Choir performs, the President and Chancellor have their offices, and there are numerous museums and the national library; Hundertwasserhaus, "a fairytale-like house with onion spires, green roof [as in trees and gardens growing on it], and a multicolored façade is one of the city's most frequently visited landmarks (It was designed by flamboyant Austrian artist Fruedensreich Hundertwasser as a playful take on usually dull council housing)"; the Upper Belvedere Palace built in Baroque style with extensive gardens (there are three floors of paintings with many works by Gustav Klimt including his famous The Kiss, along with masterpieces by other notable painters); and the world-famous Spanish Riding School. [The horses were originally brought from Spain, hence the name. Later, many came from a stud in Lipica (spelled Lipizza in Italian), in modern-day Slovenia, hence the name Lipizzaner.

Like many European capitals, Paris, France, is "right up to here" with art and museums, far too numerous to enumerate here. To me, for its small size, the Musée d'Orsay is hard to beat. Built in a former railway station, the building is as interesting as its contents. (See photo at left). Then there's the Musée du Louvre. I freely admit that before I first saw the Mona Lisa, I was expecting it to take up a whole wall it was so "big" in story. But, in reality, it's really quite small and when there is a crowd around it, it can be hard to see! One exhibit there that interested me greatly was Hammurabi's Code, a "well-preserved Babylonian law code, dating back to about 1772 BC" carved in stone. [Americans are often portrayed as "being in a hurry", and a very funny cartoon along those lines shows an American tourist telling his taxi driver, who has just dropped him at the entrance to the Louvre, to "Keep the engine running, I won't be long".]

During one trip to Milano, Italia, (he pronounces with appropriate hand gestures) I dropped in to see DaVinci's Last Supper. [I recall a very funny sketch on US TV's Saturday Night Live in which Father Guido Sarducci, a comedian dressed as a Catholic priest, shows the host a copy of the bill for said supper, which he'd bought at a flea market in New York City.]

Libraries

Okay, I admit it; I'm a non-recovering bookaholic, so let's start with the Grand Daddy of them all, the Library of Congress in Washington DC. It was started when the US Congress bought Thomas Jefferson's entire personal collection, in 1815. According to Wikipedia, "The collections … include more than 32 million cataloged books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 61 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America, including the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, a Gutenberg Bible (one of only four perfect vellum copies known to exist); over 1 million US government publications; 1 million issues of world newspapers spanning the past three centuries; 33,000 bound newspaper volumes; 500,000 microfilm reels; over 6,000 comic book titles; films; 5.3 million maps; 6 million works of sheet music; 3 million sound recordings; more than 14.7 million prints and photographic images including fine and popular art pieces and architectural drawings; the Betts Stradivarius; and the Cassavetti Stradivarius." And unlike most libraries, one can't ordinarily borrow books, as they are there for research purposes. In my numerous visits there, I have never actually looked at any of the regular collection. What impresses me are the extensive murals and tile work, and the view of the main reading room and statuary from the overlook halfway up the dome.

The British Library "is the national library of the United Kingdom. It's a major research library, holding over 150 million items from many countries, in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 2000 BC." Originally part of the British Museum, it moved to its own, new home in 1973, right next door to the beautifully restored St. Pancras railway station. The huge bronze sculpture, NEWTON, in the courtyard is worth some study. For me, the highlight was a sort of National Treasures room that housed manuscripts from Beowulf, various Gospels, a Gutenberg Bible, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, copies of pages from the Magna Carta, some very beautiful Korans, and the lyrics of a Beatle's song hand-written on an airline napkin. In one room, I paged through a digital version of some of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. [He wrote left-handed, and back-to-front, so a reader needed a mirror! I ask you, is that normal?] During one visit, I got to go on a behind-the-scenes tour of the restoration area where I watched someone restoring a 1,500-year-old Japanese scroll. The Radcliffe Camera in Oxford is a most striking building; it houses the Radcliffe Science Library. (See photo above.)

Dublin, Ireland boasts the Trinity College Library, which I mentioned in Part 1 with respect to the Book of Kells. Not far from there is the Chester Beatty Library, which holds the Islamic and Asian works collected by the American mining magnate.

Weimar, Germany, is home to Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek (Duchess Anna Amalia Library). The original building is something to see although quite a bit of it and its collection was destroyed by fire just weeks before the contents were to be moved to the new building across the plaza.

I have a particular interest in US Presidential history, and have visited two presidential libraries: Richard Nixon's in California and LBJ's in Texas.

Aquariums

Once you've seen some really spectacular ones, all others pale by comparison. Monterey, California, is home to Monterey Bay Aquarium; Orlando, Florida, has the EPCOT Center's The Seas; Chicago, Illinois, has the Shedd Aquarium; and Bergen, Norway, has an impressive aquarium.

Conclusion

In Part 4, we'll look at Gardens, Theme Parks, Parliament Houses and Capitals, National Parks and Historic Places, and a few Odds and Ends.

© 2013 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

For most of us, I suspect that while we vaguely recall being taught the grammar of our native language, for the most part, we don't remember or care what the formal rules are. We just "know" how to speak in an acceptable way even if it might not be quite correct. When someone says to me, "We done that yesterday." I know that they really meant, "We did that yesterday." From a practical viewpoint, language is more about communicating than correct usage. That said, it doesn't hurt to know how to—and to intentionally—speak and write correctly. People will judge you by the way you speak and write. [For a tongue-in-cheek look at my thoughts about grammar, see "Rex on English and Writing".]

In contemporary English, there are eight parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, conjunction, preposition, and interjection (sometimes called an exclamation). In this and subsequent essays, we'll look at each. Note though, there will not be a test at the end!

Note that not only did I write, "In English …", I wrote, "In contemporary English, …". The rules may differ between languages, and may even have changed during a particular language's evolution. And then there are different conventions for different dialects.

Many words can be used as more than one part of speech, for example:

• "I bought a drink." (noun) / "I drink coffee." (verb)
• "The early bird catches the worm!" (adjective) / "The plane arrived a few minutes early." (adverb)
• "All children are admitted free." (adjective) / "They gave their all." (noun) / "That's for all of us." (pronoun) / "The instructions were all wrong." (adverb)

Although this series of essays is about English parts of speech, in the spirit of normal, I'll make occasional comments about interesting differences with other languages. Besides, if you ever try to learn another language, sooner or later you'll run into concepts and conventions, some of which are quite different from those in English, and which might not even have an English counterpart.

For many years, many American university students were encouraged—indeed required—to buy a copy of William Strunk, Jr. and E.B White's The Elements of Style. For anyone interested in a more current and eminently readable alternative, I suggest Patricia T. O'Conner's Woe is I. From that book, you can learn something practical each time you open it over a cup of coffee, even if you read only a few sentences or paragraphs at a sitting. [Thanks much Scott for that book, a gift that keeps right on giving!]

Getting Started

As far back as I can recall a noun (abbrev. n) has been the name of a person (e.g., man and Mary), place (e.g., street and Paris), or thing (car and Parliament House). We can extend that definition to include other concrete things such as actions (swimming), as well as abstract things such as ideas (joy) and qualities (honesty).

Nouns can be classified as either proper or common. A proper noun refers to something unique, and, typically, it is capitalized. Examples are John Lennon, Amsterdam, the Earth, Google, the Pacific Ocean, and the Pyramids of Egypt. All non-proper nouns are common, including earth when it refers to the soil rather than the planet. Pets usually have names, and they are often considered members of the family. As a result, we treat their names as proper nouns too. And while racehorses are generally not considered pets, they too have proper-noun names. [Some would argue that a proper noun may consist of a single word only; they refer to multi-word proper nouns as proper names. Using that model, examples are the White House, the Kingdom of Norway, and Doctors without Borders.] Proper nouns and names that identify people may take on titles, as in "Dr. Livingston, I presume" and "Sir Richard Francis Burton". In English, the days of the week and the months of the year are proper nouns, so are capitalized. [This is not the case in Spanish or French.] Interestingly, the season names—such as summer and spring—are proper nouns, yet that are typically not capitalized. Also, while the Unites States of America (often abbreviated as America) is a proper noun, a person from that country, an American [spelled with a leading capital letter], is not, since it doesn't refer to a unique thing.

Verbal and Adjectival Nouns

Many nouns have their root in a corresponding verb. For example, swim leads to the verbal nouns swimming and swimmer, and organize leads to organization and organizer. Some nouns have their root in a corresponding adjective. For example, lonely leads to loneliness, likely leads to likelihood, and absurd leads to absurdity.

Countable Nouns

Another form of classification for nouns is countable vs. uncountable. A countable noun can occur in the plural form, can be combined with numbers, and can be used with an indefinite article (see later below). For example, dog allows dogs, three dogs, a dog, several dogs, and every dog. An uncountable noun is, well, a noun that isn't countable! An instance of the countable noun computer belongs to the family having the uncountable noun name, equipment. We cannot say equipments, each equipment, or use numbers with that word.

A common mistake in regard to countable vs. uncountable nouns is with the use of the comparatives less and fewer. One can have less ice (uncountable) and fewer ice cubes (countable), but one cannot have less ice cubes. One has less time, but fewer hours. Interestingly, the opposite comparative for both words, more, can be used for both countable and uncountable nouns. Can a noun be used in both countable and uncountable contexts? Absolutely! For example, "I eat fruits", and "Some fruits are tropical".

Noun Phrases and Clauses

Simply put, a noun phrase is a phrase that can serve as a noun. For example, "The big black bear attacked the hive of angry honeybees." Likewise, a noun clause is a clause that can serve as a noun. For example, "I know that the flight time to London is five hours."

Collective Nouns

A collective noun is a singular noun that names a group of two or more things. For example, "A committee might have many members" and "She bought a set of wine glasses". Now, when it comes to the names of collections of birds and animals, without a doubt, English has a very large and exotic set. Yes, we all know about a flock of sheep and a school of fish, but what about a congregation of alligators, a bellowing of bullfinches, a gulp of cormorants, an escargatoire of snails, a chattering of starlings, and a gam of whales? To see a long list, click here. [A pet peeve of mine occurs in sports reports in the British Commonwealth. Take the game of cricket (PLEASE!). Sentences like, "England were all out for 95 runs", abound. Now the last time I looked, England was a singular place—it's not multiplying is it? Eek!—so I believe it should be, "England was …". The thing that does exist in the plural is the players on the English team; in which case, "The players on the English team were …" is what was really intended.]

Noun Adjuncts

A noun can modify another noun, in which case, it is a noun adjunct. Examples are oak tree, fruit salad, door key, and chicken noodle soup.

Plural Forms

We've seen examples of both singular and plural nouns, but what are the rules for turning the former into the latter? I remember well when I first read through my introductory German book, which said, "There are eight common ways to form a plural." That seemed unnecessarily complicated, until I started looking at the idiosyncrasies of plurals in English. Yes, there are the obvious ones, adding an s (cat/cats) or es (peach/peaches). But then there are all those "little" exceptions, of which English is so fond: baby/babies, shelf/shelves, man/men, child/children, goose/geese, mouse/mice, person/people, criterion/criteria, and on ad infinitum! And sheep and deer serve in both roles. (So does fish, but fishes does exist.) And then there are nouns retaining their foreign origins. For example, cactus/cacti, forum/fora, opus/opera, and chateau/chateaux. However, if you look in an American-English dictionary, don't be surprised if you find the following: cactus/cactuses, forum/forums, opus/opuses or opera/operas, and chateau/chateaus. Sacrebleu!

Some nouns exist only in the plural form, such as eyeglasses, scissors, shorts, and trousers. Now these all come in "pairs", even though they each represent a single object. Yet we use them in countable contexts, as in "I want to buy some shorts", even if we intend to buy only one pair. However, when it comes to using articles or numbers, we really need to say "a pair of shorts" or "three pairs of eyeglasses", for example.

Quite a few nouns are hyphenated, and care must be taken when forming plurals. For example, three-year-olds and six-packs both have the s at the very end. However, brothers-in-law, commanders-in-chief, and attorneys-general all have the s after the first word.

When multiple nouns are involved, more than one word can have plural forms: for example, gentleman farmer/gentlemen farmers.

Regarding plurals, I'll leave you with the factoid that Japanese doesn't have them! Of course, if that were the end of that story, that would be way too easy, so they invented the concept of counters, which go along with the actual count, and describe some fundamental aspect of the object. For example, in English we might say, "I have three books"; the Japanese equivalent is something like, "I have three flat/bound-thingy book". The word book stays in the singular.

Articles

English has articles: the indefinite articles a and an, and the definite article the. Articles go before nouns or noun phrases to indicate any one non-specific thing or one or more specific thing(s). Examples are "a woman", "an apple", and "the men on horseback".

Fortunately, when one learns a new noun in English, one needn't attach an article to it. Okay, but why mention this? Well, more than a few languages classify their nouns as having grammatical gender. For example, in Spanish, which has two genders—masculine and feminine—one learns el señor (the man) rather than just señor, to reflect that a man has masculine gender. You might say, "That's obvious; of course a man is masculine!", but note that, similarly, one learns la casa (the house) instead of simply casa, because a house has feminine gender. All nouns in Spanish have one or the other gender; that's just something to which you have to get used. [At least the gender of a great many Spanish nouns can be determined by the noun's ending, something not true in German. German has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter, and of course, each has its own set of articles. Sigh! My favorite example is der Mann (the man), die Frau (the woman), and das Mädchen (the girl). For some reason, German boys are considered masculine while German girls are neuter! See American writer, Mark Twain's, humorous essay called, "Die Schreckliche Deutsche Sprache" ("The Awful German Language"), in which he put the worst possible spin on that language, but in an entertaining way. And as you might have noticed, in German, all nouns are capitalized.] By the way, Old English nouns had gender!

For the most part, articles are quite straightforward; however, the choice between the two indefinite articles is worth a mention. Simply stated, "Use a when the following noun [phrase] starts with a vowel sound; otherwise use an." Note carefully, that I wrote "vowel sound", not "vowel". Not all vowels are pronounced as vowel sounds. For example, regarding nouns with a leading vowel:

• an apple
• an egg but a ewe and a eucalypt tree
• an Indian
• an orange but a one-way street
• an umbrella but a union

And for nouns with a leading consonant:

• a house but an honest man and an heir, as in the latter two cases, the h is silent.

In American English, the h in herb is generally silent whereas in British English it is not, resulting in an (h)erb and a herb, respectively.

In older, period-English dialog, one often comes across "an hotel". Considering the word's French origin, hôtel, where the h is silent, one can see why a supposedly sophisticated English person might drop the h.

Actually, the rule stated above assumes the article is followed directly by the noun [phrase]. However, while "an orange" is correct, so too is "a big orange". So it's the sound of the first syllable of the word following the article that really matters.

As it happens, an article is not, in fact, one of the eight parts of English speech. So what is it then? I've searched numerous on-line places and comprehensive paper dictionaries, and not one of them actually answers that question. All they say is that a and an are indefinite articles and the is a definite article! As best as I have been able to figure out, articles are used as adjectives. That said I have seen example of these words used as adverbs.

Although not a grammatical gender issue, due to political correctness, gender-specific nouns like actor/actress are being used less often with the masculine form being used instead for both. On the other hand, with more woman running things, some people classify committee leaders as chairmen/chairwomen, or they simply use chair. However, my experience has been that more and more words ending in -man (such as chairman) are being used for woman as well as men. [The politically correct chairperson didn't appear to get much traction.]

Conclusion

If you have made it this far, no doubt you'll have found that the humble noun is much more interesting that it first seemed, right? No? Surely, the list of animal-group names alone was worth the read!

Stayed tuned for more than you want to know about pronouns and other exciting parts of speech. Now, about that test …