A renaissance man for the twenty-first century!
As artistic a snap as I thought I could take of some snails on a stick in a salt marsh, just outside the medieval city walls of Aigues-Mortes, in South France. Just think, when the medieval Crusaders set out from here centuries ago to conquer Jerusalem, the great-great-great snail parents of these snails were probably here, doing the same thing!
THEN, between 1914 – 1918
NOW
NOW, in color
COMMENTS:
What strikes me as amazing: Still two tramlines after 110 years – and still the cables that run laterally across the bridge. And although it is not obvious, a possible analogy with Covid. If this snap was taken in 1918 the Spanish Flu would be raging and killing zillions, so it could be many of the people shown here had the same kinds of feelings we felt with Covid in the beginning.
I spent a few days cleaning up the apartment that I was leaving – and once an hour or so I’d sit outside and relax, and everytime I went out I’d put a little piece of cheese on the railing for him to eat! The problem is: was I training the crow or was he training me? I’d sit out there – watch until he came and ate his little piece of cheese. Then . . . he’d come even closer to me and just STARE at me until I felt guilty and put out a second piece of cheese for him . . . and then a third.
THEN:
NOW:
NOW in color:
THEN: Vor dem Bundeshaus, 01.01.1915
NOW:
And in color
COMMENTS:
Very nearly the same after around 115 years! The older lamppost was taller – it probably needed to illuminate more. And in the old photo you see a black metal attachment to the bottom of the wall. Since the doors are reset quite a distance I am assuming this is not a door stopper but a shit scraper, but probably officially called a show scraper (or in German, Schuhkratzer).
Continuing the series, I took this picture in a lot of pain. Because . . . the previous picture I took was standing with short pants and sandals in a patch of some kind of plant that caused my legs to catch on fire!
Then:
Now:
Now in color:
Comments:
I was first pretty pleased with myself that I took a modern snap and compared it with an historical one.
But I was fooled!
It is TRUE that the building to the left has a so-called “pediment” (triangle) – it is TRUE that both snaps look similar – and it is TRUE that Tram 9 as shown in the old snap still exists and runs next to the statute today. But in fact, the original snap shows the Bubenberg statue positioned on Bubenbergplatz, something that no longer really exists! Apparently it was moved in 1930 to the Hirschengraben, where it is located today.
So this is just a complete coincidence that the old snap looks like the new snap!
In an upcoming blog I will show what Bubenbergplatz looks like today – and your eyeballs will EXPLODE!
I actually learned about this in the geology class I took at Ohlone College back in 1983 – a river meanders and then the meander cuts itself off. In this case there is a medieval village down below. It’s so far off the beaten track in south France that I think it would take anyone 3 hours to get here. And it is a damn scary drive: I spent over an hour driving on narrow switchback roads high in the French mountains – so narrow, if you’d run into another car, someone would have to back up nearly a kilometer!
For reasons I don’t understand – and neither does ChatGPT – you’ll find a surprising number of pictures or statues of elephants in the Schwabian region of southern Germany. ChatGPT speculated that a large number of Schwabians participated in the Crusades, where they most likely encountered many elephants – so that’s the reason.
I guess you could be forgiven for thinking that this was a huge space man – which I originally did – until I realized that in fact it is a race car driver, in front of an automobile store in Biel.
It usually frustrates me when I see strange antennas – looks like more than a base station:
Continuing the series,
Continuing the series,
Continuing the series,
Continuing the series,
Continuing the series, here is a snap of La Couvertoirade, a village in Southern France that dates back to the 1200’s. The templars were a group of fighters first started in 1119 in Jerusalem, during the Crusades. After around 1300 the templars fell (well, they did not really fall, like falling on the ground – they “fell” in the sense of all getting slaughtered by King Philipp IV of France, for corruption and having too much power) – and a somewhat older group (a religious order called the Knights Hospitaller) took over the city. Believe it or not, it was not until the 1980’s that people got smart – and in this case “smart” means “let’s make the village pretty so we can sell souvenirs to hoards of tourists!”
Believe it or not, Charlie Watts — drummer for the Rolling Stones — lived here:
Somewhere around Solignac, overlooking the Étang de l’Or
Another snap of the “Maison Carrée” – or square house – a name I really think seems a bit sad. It would be more wonderful to use the original Roman name — unless, of course, they also called in the Square House!
