Musings

I wanted colorful.

Posted at 10:09 PM | Comments Off on Satiddy night lights

Workers are reloading new shelving units in our upgraded local TJs, including the fridges. We saw one fella working from photos to get the cheese layout correct…or at least familiar to the shoppers (and stockers).

Posted at 9:44 PM | Comments Off on New reality

Over last week and the weekend we binge-watched “The Residence,” which we thoroughly enjoyed…and recommend. Tonight, we tried the first episode of “The Mountain Detective,” which took us to terrain (French Alps) we haven’t visited…interesting, and worth seeing another episode…a plan for tomorrow.

Posted at 9:53 PM | Comments Off on Eye candy (kinda sorta)

Daffies laid snugly in a box, ready for a vase in your home.

Posted at 10:06 PM | Comments Off on Enjoy spring 🤣 🤣 🤣

It’s a little early for irises to be blooming, unless you visit the Georgia O’Keeffe show (closing, what?, tomorrow?). She painted a single iris on a very vertical canvas. It looks rather different cropped like this.

Posted at 10:09 PM | Comments Off on Cropped iris

Once upon a time, this was a busy business, I’m sure. Now: nothing (beyond graffiti tagging).

With populations, demographic analysts may talk about central places, that is: places with clusters of residents. I’m thinking there are business central places, too. This one is a has-been, a now-unbusy business. Also, this is what cycling looks like.

Posted at 8:38 PM | Comments Off on ∆/t

Flower center.

Georgia O’Keeffe: White Flower, 1929.

White Flower, super contrasty, altered. The “grooves” that section the petals are interesting; I didn’t notice them standing in front of the painting, although they are plain as day. Instead, I noticed the subtle shading of the colors…yellows, blues, blue-greens…and the background in the upper corners.

Thanks, MSM, for suggesting this High adventure.

Posted at 7:57 PM | 1 Comment »

Clever signage from our trip that I neglected to post…as in, I already had too many photos selected for the day’s post…. The letters and symbol were cut from the sheet metal, when the light was bright, produced a…what’s the opposite of a shadow? A pass-through of light?

Posted at 8:34 PM | Comments Off on Castilla y León art

We got to see the sunrise while at the airport…waiting.

Finally, we took off!

[Insert hours and hours of westward movement.]

What a relief to reach ATL, and land!

[Skip discussion of extremely flawed layout of ATL airport…necessitating an at least fifteen-minute walk to get to passport control from our gate, and a fifteen-minute bus ride to the “other side” of the airport from the international terminal to reach the MARTA station.]

Posted at 7:18 PM | 2 Comments »

Our departure…leaving from beneath the looming, snow-dusted Sierra de Ayllón, amid ice-crystals…mostly melted when we got going (lots of sun exposure).

We came upon these round structures in/near several towns, but I couldn’t figure them out. They seem clearly for storage, and the roof is vented, yet there’s only one door, and it’s small. My guess is they’re something to do with grain production…mystified.

Our first stop was Tiermes, which was a large CeltIberian fort that allied with Numancia (and others), and held out against the Romans for longer than other places (probably routed about 133 BC). The Romans remade the settlement, adding homes, a large aqueduct, a forum, temples, and more. The sandstone hill also had earlier Neolithic and Bronze Age occupations. Here’s the southeast gate; all the gates to Tiermes that I saw had a bend like this…I assume offering an additional level of security.

The southern face of the hill is mostly a wall of sandstone. The horizontal rows of holes held beams that made ceilings and floors of multi-story structures.

Here’s a look along the aquaduct from where it (presently) goes into the hill. This is just to the left and above the last photo.

This is the west gate, surely more eroded than when Romans and their CeltIberian predecessors used it…or maybe this was just a Roman gate.

The wheels of carts dug into the soft sandstone, and later eroded into deep trenches.

That vegetated (grassy?) area is the Roman forum. These photos do not do justice to the huge area of this settlement, and I mean huge in pre-Roman CeltIberian times especially. My walking track was almost two miles, and I missed some highlights. Of course, I have not seen the excavation reports, which may describe many unused (often trash-collecting) rooms, as often happens for Puebloan settlements in southwest North America.

Our last stop on the present Tiermes property was to step inside this Romanesque chapel/church, probably built in the late 12th C. I don’t know the date of the interior. There’s no longer any town nearby and I don’t know if there are scheduled services any longer.

Our next place of interest was the Cerros volcánicos de La Miñosa, a very small area that constitutes an unusual micro-environment.

One species typically mentioned is Erodium paularense, or the Paular geranium. This might be it. Interestingly, a few hundred meters away archaeologists have recorded six Paleolithic (meaning early) sites…perhaps because the ancients obtained something important to them from the volcanic zone. Dunno, just hypothesizing.

The pointy hill has a Castro atop, and the other is a Castillo. Off to the right on the slope below the Castillo is the Medieval (as in: most of the central buildings date to…) town of Atienza.

That’s enough for today. Tiermes remains among the most amazing pre-Roman/Roman sites I’ve yet seen.

Posted at 2:31 PM | Comments Off on Best for last?