Category: Uncategorized

Peter the Great set out to create a city that would be the envy of the world and to take the Romanoff Dynasty to a new level. His success can be seen everywhere in St. Petersburg.

The Czarinas Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine the Great created an astonishingly beautiful palace in a town that, at one point, was named for the most eminent writer of Russian literature (who was the grandson of Peter’s black general) – Alexander Pushkin.

St. Petersburg has more beautiful buildings than you can possibly want to look at. It’s reputation is fully justified.

But, then there are some unusual sights, like this odd looking bird! Can anyone tell us what it is?

A highlight of our day, however, was a visit to the Cathedral of Peter and Paul. It is the burial location of the royal family all the way from Peter the Great to Nicholas II and his family (interred here after their bodies were discovered in the 1980s). It’s now a museum, so our guide was puzzled as to why there seemed to be a religious service in progress, including wonderful singing by a Russian choir. We learned that there was currently a meeting in St. Petersburg of the Russian nobility and they had requested a service in what had been, after all, their personal cathedral.

Russia’s largest and most famous art museum got its start when Catherine the Great started a buying program in the 1760s. This was after she maneuvered herself onto the throne over the corpse of her late husband, the Czar. She lived well. This is the small throne room.

Using the wealth generated by the 99.999%, the royal family went shopping for art every year until the October revolution of 1917. The Hermitage then hit the jackpot when the Bolsheviks “nationalized” the amazing collections of other members of the nobility. The final major source of treasures was the war booty scooped up by the Red Army as it rolled into Germany in 1945. What Hitler had seized was now Russia’s, as long as they kept it confidential for 50 years. So, they unveiled it in 1995.

There’s a lot to see. The number of Gaugin paintings was especially surprising. Being part of a group prevented us from drowning in it all. Not only are the buildings spectacular, what they hold is just as impressive.

The traffic is also quite impressive. It’s been taking our bus an hour to navigate the 5 or 10 miles to downtown St. Petersburg. This gives us a chance to take in some sights along the way. Here’s the Peter and Paul fortress where Peter the Great founded the city in 1703 and a fisherman engaged in a timeless pursuit.

Posted with Blogsy

We’ve just arrived aboard the Viking Rurik, with perhaps three minutes of sleep, to visit St. Petersburg and sail through inland waterways to Moscow. In case you didn’t know (we didn’t), Rurik was a Viking nobel chieftain invited by the Slav tribes to bring a bit of law and order to this area about 1200 years ago. The Rurikid Dynasty ruled the roost for 700 years. They are why we call ancient “Rus” Russia. Seems like a solid start to us and is the best you’ll get from us when we’ve been up for over 24 hours. Stay tuned.

Posted with Blogsy

Living on the “outer cape” of Cape Cod is living on the frontier, the frontier of land and water and the frontier of towns and wild places. Here, we are on a slender, hilly bridge extending far out into the ocean, towards Georges Bank and just south of that whale haven, Stellwagen Bank, while – yes – the Wampanoag talk of whale hunts well before Moby Dick made a name for himself. Then, the quieter sides. A quarter mile of flats lays glistening off to the west as the sun sinks into the bay and boats dot the sand, waiting for the tide to turn, and people pock the flats digging up the shellfish. Osprey, heron, cormorants, ducks, geese and fishermen in kayaks, waders or canoes help themselves to the fish splashing about in too many kettle ponds to count, while haughty swans claim the bounty of our salt pond for themselves, driving off their competition under the noses of the NPS park rangers.

We now have a small beach on our pond, thanks to the drought, where all the paw prints betray the party the raccoons had last night after they tired of our roof. The raft of twenty some ducks seems to drift by aimlessly, while every day there is a raucous feeding frenzy towards the center of the pond by some birds we’ll need to get closer to identify. Black raspberries growing wild by the house are already an early July memory, as the days become shorter. By the road, summertime cyclists make their way to and fro.

The frontier seems to be the place God’s creatures love to congregate and feed either their stomach or their soul . . . maybe both.

Posted with Blogsy

Wildlife refuges are for wildlife, but it was people taking refuge. Delicate negotiations dislodged a family of geese occupying the path. Some slower moving creatures agreed to be photographed.

Emma is set for summer. A really primitive cabin is grand when it’s nestled in the woods and named for a bird. It’s even better when steps away from a bustling summer camp kitchen complete with fun boss and teammates. Tennis, anyone?

The sky was full of enormous kites at First Encounter beach on the bay. About a dozen of them. Riders reached tremendous speeds, executing snowboarder tricks with huge altitude. Spoke with one of them as he walked his kite back to his car for something to better control his pony tail. It was like watching somebody handling a Macy’s Parade balloon put money in a parking meter. The water at the ocean’s Coast Guard beach may be colder (always), but it’s always worth it.

Spending time admiring the wonders of far away sharpens our appreciation of what’s familiar. Or, we hope it does. New Jersey is lush and abundant with rabbits everywhere. No sage brush. With no time to admire all that, we have resumed packing, opened the pool for inspection and moved forward with the buyer of our New Jersey home. Jim and Emma have made the trek to Cape Cod to take care of some business before driving Emma to Maine for her summer job. The Cape is easy to like. There’s a fisherman’s lean-to on First Encounter beach with due celebration of a striped bass. Final shot from our deck this evening. Home Sweet Home.

June 2, 2012. Mortar boards in the air. Smiles all around. Emma and her classmates at the Principia Upper School gave us all a reason to celebrate. Now it’s on to Haddonfield and the other changes just ahead.

We’re back to more regular 4G service and other indicators of western civilization, like more movie theaters. The Big Sioux River at Sioux Falls has been encased by the city and manicured. It is a relic of the last time a glacier went through, the gorgeous warmth of quartz, some quarried by the inmates to build a territorial prison, so they could be confined in the Dakotas, rather than Detroit. There are many more enormous spray irrigators and big fields of corn, once we’ve traveled back this side of the Dakotas. Then on to St. Joseph, Missouri, the eastern hub of the Pony Express. A business that lasted just 18 months struck a romantic chord in all of us and is an irresistible metaphor for American grit and enterprise. Bill Cody was one of the riders. Now, back to the Gateway City with much to think about. We’re looking forward to celebrating Emma’s graduation before heading back to the east coast.