(06/11/21)

(06/11/21)

This was one of my highlights.. the Ivy growing over the stone facade, the color gradient of the leaves and that little door with the hourglass. Simple yet evocative, at least to me.

(10-05-2020)

Out on the very end of Charlotte Pier in Rochester, NY. Standing on Lake Ontario effectively. Gave you Canucks the finger (I kid, love ya leafs) and caught a sunset.

"Again.."

Ash escapes yellow steeples

refreshed aspect

to when the eagle clipped it's wings

Icarus tumbles

flailing against fate

would he rather have faced the flames?

At first there was pain

hindsight removed

So absurd it seemed

that laughter took it's place

"Again..."

Here hollow now, it reaches it's ever determined end

Bled like promise preceded

wishing ever that

wings would sprout

and bear us from this fate

This is as good as folks calling arm-chair general observer types "Hoi4-Brains" kek (Also don't know what folks do most games, but I can't recall ever having a revolt in any Civ entry. Do what you can with what you got or get building/expanding)

(06/11/21)

Mausoleum of Rockefeller

Look at this monolith! Walked about it and every member or adjacent member of his family was lined about it (they got flat slabs.. lol).

I mean everyone.. even brother/sister in laws who were tangentially connected. You wanna talk about dynastic patriarchs.. look no further for an American example.

Of note, and you can see it at the corner of the door.. was a wilted bouquet of flowers left there.. maybe it was just me, but being around it I had the sense of being watched.

I think there's a very minute chance of it's authenticity if you bear with me.

2nd century would be Rome at it's maximal extent and I think people don't give enough credit to the amount of osmosis that existed between the Near and Far East at this time.

I know there is the notion of the Silk Road allowing Rome and China to have had chance interactions and trade by proxy or even directly during this period.

Another route that I think deserves it's credit is the (Red Sea->Gulf of Aden->Arabian Sea) the Ptolemies made investments into the peninsular port of Berenice Troglodytica in their time (both for gemstone mining and far flung trade imports) to reach out into this area.

After Egypt was subsumed by Octavian and the Roman Empire was established they continued investments and use, even later elevating Berenice to having it's own prefect signifying it's import/scale of development to them.

You also have the Arab nomads and traders (Sabaeans/Himyar/Hadramaut) and the mirrored East African kingdoms/city states (Aksum/Opone/Mosylon) all making forays into the Greco influenced former satraps of Alexander along the Iranian and Indian coasts and even to Sri Lanka.

I don't have personal study or evidence of Austronesian trade at this time, but I imagine even well before the Majapahit Empires time the Strait of Malacca and the greater Indonesian Archipelago were a hotbed of maritime trade.

Chain this together with the Polynesian expansion who (it is debated) may have reached the Galápagos Islands and Juan Fernández Islands or in a reverse linking may have had some trade links with Chumash expeditions off of the Californian coast and a very tangential avenue for linkage between the Old and New World exists.

Maybe a living Macaw or two exported or some minor depiction of one? Could have arrived in Japan/Korea/China and made it's way along the land route or through the great chain of maritime trade I elaborated? All very speculative, but recent archaeological finds are hinting at a much more inter-connected Old World.

Much more likely to be a fraud as suspicion implies, but reality is bizarre, granular, and coincidental and I get too much fun out of speculating on crazy little niches in history.

(https://pcma.uw.edu.pl/en/2019/04/17/berenike-2/) - Berenike Project excavating the site where they've found oils, spices, and other materials from India including a statue of a Buddha

(https://web.archive.org/web/20170204143633/http://legacy.fordham.edu/Halsall/ancient/periplus.asp) - The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, translation of a travelogue by a trader in these areas in the 1st century

(https://heritageofjapan.wordpress.com/2016/10/01/how-did-3rd-4th-c-roman-coins-end-up-in-the-12th15th-c-katsuren-castle-on-okinawa/) - Of course the Roman coins found back in 2016 that made waves of speculation. Although as has been acknowledged they could have been floating around in coffers from anywhere, or most likely the Ottomans who made great use of the same area for trade and then some.

uhmmm losing my mind a bit, why is there a macaw (new world parrot!) depicted on a supposed roman (2nd century) mosaic sold through christie's in 2003? Am I blind? Are there in fact old world parrots that look more like macaws than I am aware of? No, right? Did I spot a decades old antiques fraud through just...looking for depictions of birds in the ancient world? I don't think the Romans had macaws and that very much looks like a macaw...

"A ROMAN MARBLE MOSAIC PANEL Circa 2nd Century A.D. Composed of minute tesserae in multiple shades of red, green, black, gray and tan on a cream ground, the rectangular panel centered by an elegant water-filled krater with a trumpet-shaped foot, wide flaring mouth and vertical voluted handles, a parrot and a greenfinch perched on either side of the rim, the greenfinch dipping to take a drink, its tail uplifted, a chaffinch on the upper left pecking at a floral, a large partridge below, its wing unfolded, facing right and pecking at foliage, and a pileated woodpecker bottom right, facing left, with additional foliage in the field."