Showing posts with label Time Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Time Travel. Show all posts

Friday, December 16, 2022

Backlooks

A L O H A From Honolulu! 
Conrad and I were taxi drivers together
here in Honolulu, circa 1990

 There's no fence nor hedge around time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it, if you can remember. How Green Was My Valley
(1941)


How can time take so long,
yet pass so quickly?
Back then I yearned,
and wondered;
Today I have memories
and know.

Grab your coat,

and get your hat

Leave your worry on the doorstep
Just direct your feet
To the sunny side
of the street!
Dorothy Fields



A photograph can be
an instant of life captured
for eternity that will
never cease looking
back at you.
Brigitte Bardot


Looking back, 
my life seems like 
one long obstacle race, 
with me as the 
chief obstacle.
           Jack Paar

᯾᯾᯾᯾᯾᯾᯾᯾᯾᯾᯾᯾᯾ᯒ
Love You,
  Cloudia & Pixie



ever look back, is to see
how far you've come.
 Berta Lippert

[OR if a creepy woman is
sneaking up on you
to take your picture!]

Friday, June 22, 2012

Punta Della Dogana

C I A O !     Welcome to 

Fantasy Venice !

The Royal Fireworks Music - Overture by Handel on Grooveshark































This dreamlike building,
 rising  from the waters of Venezia/Venice
is the Punta Della Dogana.
Built by Giuseppe Benoni
 between 1676 and 1682.











It is very old, and appears in many 
classic paintings. Here on a Monaco
postal stamp is reproduced a famous
work by Guardi that has been
copied many times















Back when Venice was a proud City State
her ships traded far and wide. 
 Great wealth flowed in to her
with the tides of history.
The Punta
 was for many centuries 
The old Customs House
( locals called it 'Dogana di Mare' )
where ships laden
 with the world's goods
paid their tolls to the
 masters of the City.
 Originally in the 14th century
 a watch tower was built here 
in order to prevent tax evasion.

Incidentally, 
the actual Punta della Dogana itself,

 is the wedge-shaped peninsular 
that the building sits on.
It is at the very entrance
  to the Grand Canal.

Above we approach it from the water
as countless mariners have.










  That is the goddess 
 FORTUNA
 serving as a weather vane
atop a gilded globe
upheld by two Atlases.
( Atlas- i ? ) 

There is much hard work
to bear about this globe of ours,
we all ride on the backs
or farmers, mechanics,
all workers.

But dame fortune
rides at the top of all.

With her weather vane
in the shape of a ship's sail
she knows
which way the winds of luck,
and of change
are going 
before any of us below.

Venice
was indeed crowned by fortune
for centuries.

Now
she is sinking.

Shopping malls
and Starbucks
are threatening to finally
push her
cherubic 
[ Fra Lippo Lippi and  Fra Angelico ]
curls
below the lagoon's
surface entirely.












 
Here's our playful gal,
or is she a cruel mistress?













Evening's descent 
makes even this place
look somehow more magical!













One of those numerous pictures of the pile.


Today the Punta is owned
 by French billionaire 

and serves as

The Center for Contemporary Art

" . . . As a center for contemporary art,
 the former customs house of the city 
presents a permanent exhibition of works
 from the François Pinault Collection,
 the institution who wanted and sponsered (sic)
the transition of this masterpiece of architecture,
 so emblematic to the city,
 from its eminently commercial function
 to port of contemporary art
 and ideal venue to share it with the world. "



>  <  }  }  ( ° >

In science fiction
often there was a 'Magic Box'
that could tell,
or show the protagonist,
anything they needed 
to know.


Today we have that Magic Box,
it is called:
The World Wide Web.

Every day, YOU
my magical friends
show me wonders:
New York,
England's farm country,
a horse farm,
Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh,
Jerusalem, Perth,
Vancouver,
and Mumbai.

And yes,
your families,
your lives.

It is all magical 
and wonderful!

Occasionally
we see something
that 'sticks'
in our mind's eye.

We dream about it.

Somewhere, on a blog,
I saw this building;
And journeyed there
in my dreams.

This is my fantasy Summer
Road Trip,
across distance &
time.

Thanks for being my Virgil.
Thanks for riding along.
Magic Indeed!
Comment?
                 Warmly, cloudia



Saturday, April 9, 2011

Hawaii Standard Time

A  l  o  h  a !


 Open Skies?


"Go forth under the open sky,
and listen To Nature's teachings."

William C. Bryant



 Nice beach day!


“The only reason for time

is so that everything doesn't happen

at once.”

 

Einstein





walking out for the day. . . 


"Hope is like a road in the country;
there was never a road,
but when many people walk on it,
the road comes into existence. "

                                            
Lin Yutang



 





. . . Returning home again




"This melancholy London -
I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost 
are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually.
One feels them passing
like a whiff of air. "

                                
William Butler Yeats


><}}(°>


HST? What's that?
Hawaiian Standard Time.
We live 10 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
(GMT-10)
This time of year,
when most of the continental USA is on
Daylight Saving Time,
we are 6 hours behind New York,
3 hours behind San Francisco
(PST-3)
By the time we begin our workday,
it is afternoon back east.
So much for beating the competition!
In Hawaii we tend to rise early,
and go to bed early;
but when visiting New York
our internal clock
makes us night owls!
Midnight?
Feels like noon to me!

This wrinkle in time
has taken much stress out of watching
"live" events since 9-11.
By the time I see it
we know there has been no terrorism.
Mondays during football season
a lot of Honolulu fans slip out of the office
to watch the Monday Night Game
in real-time (afternoon) at a sports bar.
On occasion, one of us gets a call
from a clueless person far away.
Because it is 10am where they are
they never realize that it is only
4am here!

Till we inform them,
and go back to sleep!


          Do YOU know what time it is? (LOL) cloudia













Sunday, November 21, 2010

Any Child Can Grow Up to Be

Aloha!



"Each week, from a different point of view, 
you get another look at God,
 and that's exciting to me."

Della Reese 


Do you recognize the couple from the 1960's?



"You know that being an American
 is more than a matter of where your parents came from.
 It is a belief that all men are created free and equal
 and that everyone deserves an even break."

US President Harry S. Truman 






Here is the same woman with their son.


"I remember my mother's prayers
 and they have always followed me. 
 They have clung to me all my life. "

Abraham Lincoln


><}}(°>


Middle Photo: Stanley Anne Dunham,
 and Barack Obama Senior.

Bottom Photo:
Stanley Anne and her son Barack





The University of Hawaii Foundation is forming an endowment fund that would honor the late Stanley Ann Dunham, President Barack Obama's mother.






The fund uses the name Ann Dunham Soetoro, which she adopted after marrying her second husband, Lolo Soetoro. She also used the name professionally during years of anthropology studies.




Obama was Dunham's first child, born in Hawaii to her and Barack Obama Sr., a UH student from Kenya.




 Dunham died in 1995.


Her second child and Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, said in an interview Tuesday that her mother would have been moved to know that her work in the field of applied anthropology was being honored.



Dunham received a bachelor's degree in math, and a master's and doctorate in anthropology from UH.
During her travels to Indonesia and other parts of Asia, she worked with nongovernmental groups focused on women and poverty, and established microcredit programs in Indonesia and Pakistan.


Dunham concluded after years of studies in Indonesia that the roots of poverty there did not lay with the poor, and that cultural differences were responsible for the gap between less-developed countries and the industrialized West.
Her book, "Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia," centers on the metalworking industries in the Javanese village of Kajar and contends that rice cultivation was not the only viable economic activity in rural Southeast Asia, according to a description by its publisher, Duke University Press.



The endowment will support a professorship in the UH Anthropology Department that will focus on research and teaching on Southeast Asia. 
It also will finance one or more graduate fellowships for students studying anthropology or other social sciences. 

Courtesy: Honolulu Star Advertiser 19 NOV '10

Every parent touches the world through their children. . .
 Thanks for visiting today.
        Please leave a comment!   cloudia


Tuesday, April 20, 2010

More Confession

Aloha!
Glad You Came By Today



Click on photos
Don't be afraid, Puppy. Just get wet!



"A musicologist is a man who can read music
but can't hear it."

Sir Thomas Beecham



Oh! I always thought that this was about a sloppy house painter.



"This is one of those views which are so absolutely absurd
that only very learned men could possibly adopt them."

Bertrand Russell





"The statistics on sanity are:
that one out of every four Americans
is suffering from some form of mental illness.
Think of your three best friends.
If they're okay, then it's you."

Rita Mae Brown

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OK,
Time for more confession.

The travel disruptions in the EuroZone due to Iceland's erupting volcano
strike a chord with me.

Though I always enjoy and feel invigorated by travel,
part of me fears that,
Shangrila style,
something could occur
to prevent me from returning to Hawaii.

Why chance it, eh?