Travel Archives – Page 2 of 28

September 17, 2024September 20, 2024

Greece: Delos and its Hub of Sacred Commerce

Delos was the New York City of its day. All photos by kajmeister unless otherwise noted.

It has always been a bucket list item to visit Greece and its islands, and they were as beautiful as expected and housed boatloads of ancient artifacts. However, they were on everyone else’s bucket list, too. Poor little picturesque Santorini offered up its beautiful blue roofs, but you had to elbow your way in to snap the requisite photo. We tourists need to ration ourselves. Our guide said they had already passed a limit to building construction (for new AIRBNB, hotels, etc).

Just in time, since downtown Thira already looks remarkably similar to the cruise ports of Juneau, Mazatlan, and Malaga. Jewelry, t-shirts, bars. I enjoyed my souvlaki pita and fries, just like they make it in Castro Valley! We are homogenizing these cultures even as we strive to see them.

At Delos, we had a unique opportunity to walk among original ruins, in what has been a two-century ongoing archaeological excavation. Delos was itself an ancient swirl of cultures, so maybe the blender approach is just as old.

September 9, 2024September 28, 2024

The Coolest Thing the Accountants Said (about History)

An original Summa Arithmetica printed in 1494, courtesy of the Sansepolcro library. All photos from kajmeister.

Everything you know about this is entirely wrong, and it’s just getting worse.

Accountants are as interested in words and form as they are about numbers.

Pay attention to Nothing.

Did you get this far in the post? My mentioning that dreaded word–accounting–didn’t scare you off? (yet?) Great! I feel trusted.

I spent three days in Siena, Italy, among the brightest and sagest of accounting historians. They are a terrifically brilliant and friendly lot, and I was privileged to talk a little myself about my research and medieval accounting (love me some Christine de Pisan). I heard a couple of presentations that I thought even y’all would find interesting, so I promise to skip the bits about Michel Foucault, isomorphism, and The Institutional Method. Herein, I shall pass on a few juicy items that you, my blog public, will appreciate.

September 4, 2024September 5, 2024

Gardens of Power

Florence’s Boboli Gardens, photo by kajmeister

They say all roads lead to Rome, or perhaps lead back to Rome in European history. All garden roads seem to lead back to Rome. Where did Italian gardens originate? Roman models. How about Hampton Court, the “other” estate of Henry VIII? English gardens came from Roman models. Palace of Versailles? French gardens copied the Italian ones. But even the Romans would have known about the earliest ones in Persia, like the garden where Cyrus the Great used trees and lawn to demonstrate his power.

In Florence on vacation, our first stop was Boboli Gardens aka the Medici gardens. This was the Renaissance garden of power, which made me think about garden styles and how different styles and different regimes have influenced those garden styles. This is mainly an excuse to show a few vacation photos, but still, who doesn’t like a lovely little garden?