The Southwest’s Indigenous Food and Films

I don’t think I’ve shared this video of a cooking demonstration from Agave Heritage Festival in Tucson here yet.

It seemed fitting to post this on Indigenous People’s Day (which I’m glad is gaining traction over Columbus Day!), since the recipe includes several local ingredients originally used by the Native American tribes in this area.

Also, unrelated to the video, we went to an IPD screening of two documentaries by Diné (Navajo) filmmakers at the Heard Museum yesterday. Both films were really great!

Heard Museum

You may get a chance to see them too, since they’re traveling around on a Navajo Films Documentary Tour starting in November, and one of the films, The Mayors of Shiprock, will air on the World Channel November 6.

Heard Museum

If I can track down tour dates, I’ll put them on the next Happenings List.

September 25, 2017September 25, 2017

Around the Baggage Carousel

We definitely thought we’d sleep on the overnight flight from L.A. to Paris.

But we were mistaken.

Instead, we arrived at Paris-Charles De Gaulle airport in an exceptionally groggy state with an hour to get through the passport line, collect and re-check our baggage, and catch our connecting flight.

But we were misinformed.

Our bags wouldn’t be coming down the luggage conveyor we were watching so intently. By the time we realized they were booked through and already on the plane for Madrid, we almost didn’t make the flight, arriving breathless at the gate as final boarding calls were announced.

The plane took off, and we could see the Seine below us through breaks in the clouds.

A couple hours later in Madrid, we found ourselves once again staring down a baggage carousel, so we could switch airlines for our last flight.

It was around 11pm when that flight landed in Rome, and we went – one more time – to wait for our bags.

And that is how you tour three European capitals’ baggage claim areas in one day.

August 28, 2017August 28, 2017

Virtually Visit Italy

If you can’t take a plane to Italy, there are still ways to see the sights from where you are.

Museums and monuments sometimes have “virtual tours” that allow you to see 3D views of a place and (usually) click to navigate through it – like Google Street View but inside.

A group of Russian photographers has taken incredible 360-degree photographs around the world. You can probably get lost in their site, AirPano, for days. I’ve linked to some of the AirPano pages for Italian cities (below).

Skyline Webcams allows you to search for live camera feeds of public places by country or category (city views, landscapes, etc.) I’ve included a few live cams from Italy in the lists below, but there are lots more on their site.

Florence

Uffizi Gallery virtual tour (museum of Renaissance art)
Florence AirPano
View from the cupola of Brunelleschi’s Dome
Take a virtual selfie with Michelangelo’s David

Milan

Duomo (cathedral) webcam

Naples and Pompeii

Pisa

Leaning Tower of Pisa AirPano

Rome and the Vatican

Rome AirPano
Colosseum webcam
Quirinale Palace virtual tour
Trevi Fountain webcam
Vatican webcams
St. Peter’s cupola webcam – view from Piazza Risorgimento
Saint Peter’s Square webcam
St. Peter’s Basilica virtual tour

Venice

Where would you like to “travel” to without leaving home?

Happy virtual trails!

*Not mobile friendly.

Photo credits —

Florence (Duomo): Petar Milošević • CC BY-SA 4.0
Florence (David): La Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze
Naples: Italy Guides
Rome: Vatican City State
Venice: Regata Storica

August 7, 2017August 7, 2017

July 2017 Photo: Hot

I was sitting in a sunny patio at Hotel Congress in Tucson, occasionally switching seats as the shade shifted.

Overhead was their fabulous vintage sign, which also happens to sum up summer in Arizona in its first three letters: HOT.

July 17, 2017

June 2017 Photo: Reading Room Light

columns illuminated by skylights in the Great Reading Room of Burton Barr Library, Phoenix

I didn’t post a lot of photos in June, but I did post one from the summer solstice celebration at Burton Barr Library (the same day as my solar cookie baking experiment).

The reading room is designed with columns under sky lights. Once a year, at solar noon on the summer solstice, the reading room sky lights line up perfectly to illuminate the columns below them.

Unfortunately, this past weekend a monsoon storm caused a fire sprinkler to burst, flooding all five floors of this beautiful library. Most of its collections remain intact and clean-up crews sprang into action right away. The City of Phoenix is hoping it will be able to start reopening parts of the library soon.