Ivan Karp as I saw him @ OK Harris in 1984                      &n… Read full post »

           Ephesus (Ephesos; Efes) is arguably the most famous and most significant ancient site of the Mediterranean world, with a history that spans Greece, Rome, Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire. Once a city of a quarter million souls, this five-thousand year… Read full post »

        I met Güler Bener at a book-signing/lecture that my buddy Byron Ayanoglu recently gave in Bodrum for the translation of his book Crete on the Half Shell (Istiridye Üstü Girit in Turkish). The lovely lady, a long-time resident of Bitez's A… Read full post »

In the beginning there was only slime.

It oozed green from the bowels of the earth, bubbling forth, 

celestial song heralding the moment

Please  start over  & watch  with this music for full effect. 

In comedy,… Read full post »

      Cactus bristles with exuberant beauty, color, enchantment and a menacing covering of thorns, very much like life itself in these troubled times. Unlike other flowering thorny-plants, including the rose, the cactus offers no solace, no fragrance, no friendliness… Read full post »

Museum specialist Sema Sagat had a very bright idea for a new showcase of one of the delights of Bodrum, Turkey. Working with the maritime traditions of this timeless Aegean port 

—famous since antiquity when it was known as Halicarnasus, birthplace of Herodotus, the f… Read full post »

The view from my second story window gives me an eyeful of Bitez Bay on the south-eastern Aegean coast of Turkey. I usually check it out to see if the bay is calm or somewhat wavy. If the conditions are right I hop down to the… Read full post »

 "The early bird gets the worm," goes the old saying, and my day begins with my red-breasted sparrow, whom I have nicknamed Chookey (a cutesy name for a very cute customer) who comes to visit me every morning in Aegina, looking for the crumbs of cake I scatter his… Read full post »

Be careful what you wish for because you just never know if you will get it. I, for instance, have been the traveling friend of both tame and untamed cats and dogs. I have always enjoyed Greece and Turkey for this very reason because sooner or later I… Read full post »

I travel to the Mediterranean for another winter of self-discovery in the birthplace of self-discovery. These days of Greek financial disaster, continuous general strikes, enormous discontent, justifiable panic and ever-present uncertainty, getting where you want to get to in this country is… Read full post »

  SW Thailand

 Photography is a matter of measure. When the interrelated elements of the image are correct we capture time, spirit and place in an unforgettable moment that stays with us a lifetime.

 When the first signs of fall greet me with a cooler day heralding autumn,… Read full post »

 1

 2

        … Read full post »

There is a road leading into the mountain in the Laurentians, about an hour north of Montréal, called Loup Garou. This translates as Werewolf. Being an X-Filer even before there was X- Files, I naturally set out to figure out the basis of this name. (There are no base… Read full post »

There are faces on the trunks of olive trees

because olive trees are alive

they are life, they are the life-giver

I am all alone in the orchard

all their attention is on me

BELOW: Music to watch these images with. 

      With so much death and so little to look forward to, our victories pale in comparison to the regenerative nature of Springtime. Here's looking to a future where the best memories are still written in stone, gracing the landscape; hope of  a distant heaven our on… Read full post »

Aphrodite 

I come to Aphrodisias to find Aphrodite

to find love to find beauty to visit

the great lady

A goddess of the first order

a sister of Zeus, the mother of us all

with thunderbolts

    of… Read full post »

Pamukkale is Turkish for “Cotton Castle” and refers to an otherworldly geological miracle in the heartland of Anatolia, a world-heritage site that is visited by millions of tourists annually. It is a cascading sequence of snow-white calcium-deposit —travertine&m… Read full post »

           Mosaics were the original form of Pointillism.

I met a gentleman on the beach the other day and we were talking about progress and how everything has changed yet again over the last thirty years mostly in terms of housing. He was telling me th… Read full post »

  During this St-Patrick's week I have been searching for four-leafed clovers trying to bring good-luck to  the people of Japan in their troubled times. I was somehow hoping I could prevent a total meltdown of their nuclear reactors and stop the fall out or anything else castas… Read full post »

 A young girl and the original  "babe" Medusa in Didyma 

Turkey is finally ready for its close-ups. In the past, in its glory days as the epicenter of two successive empires (the Byzantine and the Ottoman), it had been on the front-burner of world-dominance for mo… Read full post »