Photo Albums

I am using new photo-gallery software and creating new photo albums and moving the old ones into that system. Some of the albums on this page have already made the transition; for the others, time will accomplish all. Please visit the new gallery with the link at the right.

In late October, 2003, when our Israeli friend Eli was visiting, we made a small pilgrimage to Emmitsburg, Maryland, a short day trip that we had enjoyed once before. Emmitsburg, a small town just south of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is known mostly for its association with Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton (or "Mother Seton"), the first American-born citizen to be sainted by the Catholic Church. Mother Seton arrived in Emmitsburg in 1809, where she established a religious order, The Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph.

There are two lovely, meditative spots to visit: The National Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, the oldest grotto recreation in America (located on a wooded hill behind Mt. St. Mary's College), and The National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, named a "Minor Basilica" in 1991 by Pope John Paul II. And, while we were there, we stopped at the roadside fruit and vegetable stand of the voluble "Mr. Natural".

On our trip to Rome in 2001, we managed a few side trips outside the city. Certainly memorable was our trip to see the Gardens of Ninfa. Ninfa is in the Pontine Marshes, a couple hour's drive southeast of Rome.

The gardens were created only in the late 1920s, early 1930s within the crumbling but picturesque ruins of a medieval city. Created originally by a princely family, it is now a state-run botanical garden, famous for its water channels. It is only to be seen by appointment, but fortunately for us, when we arrived there was a tour group who had made an appointment and allowed us to tag along.

We're not putting captions on the pictures right now, since they'd only reiterate the obvious about how picturesque each bend in a path can be. However, we'll point out that the first two pictures in the album show Jim, Renzo, Lucio, Isaac, and Jeff, the five of us whom Lucio graciously offered to drive in his tiny, tiny Fiat. Now, that was a trip to remember.

Another one of our day trips on our Roman Holiday in 2001 was an hour-long bus trip northeast to Tivoli, where we took in two historic sites: the Gardens at Villa d'Este and the ruins of Hadrian's Villa.

Villa d'Este, originally a monastery surrounded by malaria, was inherited by the d'Este family in Renaissance times. The Villa is renowned for two things: Liszt, who once stayed there, and its gardens, built on the hill behind the Villa. When they built the gardens, they solved the problem of channeling an abundance of water by creating an incredible fanatasy of fountains and streams.

Hadrian was our favorite Roman Emperor (2nd century), partly because he was so cute, and partly because of the romantic story of his devotion to his lover Antinuous, tragically killed young in a boating accident. He detested Rome, so he built himself a new capital city to live in and work from, known now as Hadrian's Villa. The ruins, partly restored, were quiet and mysterious the day we visited.

For this day trip during our Roman visit in 2001, we took a train north from Rome to the first city in Umbria: Orvieto. Orvieto is a medieval town, founded on the site of an Etruscan fortress. The town is built on top of an outcropping of tufa, an unusually soft stone that hardens on exposure to air. Hence the gothic cathedral, which dominates the town, is built half of tufa; the facade, finished only in the 19th century, is decorated with (older) allegorical carvings and splendid (newer) mosaics.

The town is reached from the train station via inclined railway. Besides the cathedral, Orvieto is noted for its ceramics (painted with arabesques and other folk motifs) and its white wine.

A couple of years ago, I (Jeff) discovered on a cruise-ship vacation, that it's a nice idea to take pictures of our meals. Food and eating contributes much to the shape of a vacation, and recalling our meals with the aid of photographs is fun.

So anyway, on our Roman Vacation in October 2001, I took photographs of most of our meals. (The ones that escaped were not deficient; occasionally I was simply hungry and consumed the photographic subject before I could record it.)

This album then, is our eating tour of Rome, seen, as it were, through our stomachs. Our starting point, in the photograph here, is a fresh-fish stall at the market (biggest in Rome!) just a couple of blocks from our home in Rome, the apartment of our friends Renzo and Jim.

In June of 1993, at Midsummer, we visited Matts and Anders in Ortala, Sweden. (That's Ortala there, on the east coast of Sweden, just to the left of Väddö, about and hour from Stockholm and Uppsala.) We had a wonderful, restful, 2-week visit with them in their village, only occasionally venturing out to see sights.

This album is a little tribute to Matts and Anders on the occasion of their third Wedding Anniversary. They were married on 6 January 1995, just days after it finally became legal in Sweden.

[Jeff:] I'm getting older, I'm starting to get a wee bit more nostalgic, and besides, I've always enjoyed looking through my parents' shoeboxes of old photos. On our most recent visit, I had a chance to scan some of those old photos, so here's the beginning of a family album, something I could never quite manage to do when it required books with thick pages and little gummy corners to hold in the photos.