Here you can browse through my blog posts prior to February 2022. Currently I'm sharing my travel experiences, candid opinions, and what's on my mind solely on my Facebook page. — Rick

“COVID and the Anti-Vaxxers”

“COVID and the Anti-Vaxxers”  

JK, it’s a 13th-century image of hell from the Florence Baptistery. Europe has suffered through many plagues and pandemics over the centuries — and in the Middle Ages (before they had the miracle of vaccines), they thought it was God’s anger or the devil that was making their lives miserable. They had no science to ignore — unlike today, when many in our society insist on bringing this avoidable misery upon our community. 

Back then, life was “nasty, brutish, and short,” leaving medieval people obsessed with what came after: Will I go to heaven or hell? And this mosaic made it crystal clear what the fate of the wicked would be. You’d be sent to hell, where souls were devoured by horned ogres, chomped on by snakes, harassed by Spock-eared demons, and roasted in eternal flames.  

Florence’s Baptistery is even older than this 13th-century mosaic. Built atop Roman foundations, it’s the city’s oldest surviving building — nearly 1,000 years old. The Baptistery is best known for its bronze Renaissance doors (including Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise”), but its interior still retains the medieval mood. It’s dark and mysterious, topped with an octagonal dome of golden mosaics of angels and Bible scenes. 

Dominating it all is the mosaic of Judgment Day. Christ sits on a throne, spreads his arms wide, and gives the ultimate thumbs-up and thumbs-down. The righteous go to heaven, the others to hell. 

Of course, no one in medieval times knew exactly what hell was. Even the Bible lacked specifics, describing only a place that’s dark, underground, fiery, unpleasant, everlasting, and segregated from the realm of the blessed. 

The mission of the artists who did this mosaic: to bring hell to life. It’s a chaotic tangle of mangled bodies, slithering snakes, and licking flames. In the center squats a bull-headed monster, with his arms outstretched like Christ’s demonic doppelgänger. He gorges on one poor soul, grabs the next course with his hands, and stomps on two more souls, while snakes sprout from his ears and tail to grab more victims. 

Graphic details like these were groundbreaking in pre-Renaissance times. We see the beast’s six-pack abs, braided beard, and wrinkled red robe that echoes the flickering flames. The damned have naturalistic poses — crouching, twisting, gesturing — and their anguished faces tell a sad story of eternal torment.  

This mosaic’s realism proved to be hugely influential for proto-Renaissance artists like Giotto, and the building itself inspired Renaissance architects like Brunelleschi. And shortly after this mosaic was completed, a little baby named Dante Alighieri was dipped into the baptismal font just beneath it. Dante grew up well aware of this hellish scene. When he wrote his epic poem, Inferno (“Hell”), he described it with the same vivid imagery: craggy landscapes, mobs of naked wretches, a Minotaur in the center, and so on. Dante’s motifs inspired other artists over the centuries (such as Giotto and Signorelli) who created Europe’s altarpieces, paintings, novels, and illustrations. These shaped the imaginations of people around the world. And much of it can be traced to Florence’s Baptistery, and to those anonymous artists who labored here in the 13th century, determined to give ’em hell. 

Pre-Raphaelites and The Lady of Shalott

As Europe starts opening up to travelers again, it’s more exciting than ever to think about the cultural treasures that await. For me, one of the great joys of travel is having in-person encounters with great art — which I’ve collected in a book called Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here’s one of my favorites:   

This woman’s haunting face makes it clear right away that — despite the sumptuous beauty of this painting — it doesn’t tell a happy tale. The Lady of Shalott knows she’s floating down a river to her doom. 

The English artist John William Waterhouse depicts the dramatic climax of a legendary tale. The Lady of Shalott had spent her whole life shut up in a castle near King Arthur’s Camelot, forbidden to even look outside, upon pain of death. She could only observe the world indirectly through the reflection in her mirror. But one day, the handsome knight Lancelot rode by. She was so smitten that she broke the rules and looked directly at him. Now she’s followed his tracks and boarded a boat, releasing the mooring chain, as she sets off into the unknown to find her beloved, whatever the cost. 

The riverside landscape — the reeds, the inky water, the darkening atmosphere, even birds in flight — evokes the melancholy beauty of the moment. Ms. Shalott burns brightly, her white gown and red hair radiating from the dark background. Waterhouse focused on evocative details, like the Lady’s wispy hair, pearl necklace, lightly rumpled dress, and cupped hand. For the Lady’s face, he painted his own wife. The colors — reds, greens, and blues — are bright, clear, and luminous, glowing like stained-glass windows. 

The whole scene looks medieval, yet it was painted during an Industrial Age when Britain was leading the world in new technologies like electricity and trains. While Victorian Britain sped forward, its artists looked to the past. Waterhouse was inspired by a group of British artists called the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” who reveled in painting medieval damsels and legendary lovers with heartbreaking beauty. 

The Pre-Raphaelites hated overacting. So — even in the face of great tragedy, high passions, and moral dilemmas — this Lady barely raises an eyebrow. But her surroundings speak volumes. Night is falling, foreshadowing her dark destiny. The first leaf of autumn has fallen, landing near her thigh. She brings the bright tapestry she wove in captivity, with scenes of the comforting world of illusion she once knew. Now she’s guided only by a dim lantern on the prow, a small crucifix to fortify her faith, and three fragile candles — only one of which still burns.  

Victorians of all ages knew this Romantic legend (which was also a best-selling poem by Tennyson). Everyone could read their own meaning into the painting: The Lady has chosen to leave her safe-but-deluded existence to pursue truth. She’s following her heart, despite the dangers. She’s taking the risk to find intimacy, love, and sex even at the expense of losing herself in the process. The expression on her face shows a mix of fear, hope, vulnerability, and a realization that — whatever comes — this is her destiny. 

She lets the chain go. Then, “like some bold seer in a trance,” wrote Tennyson, she goes “down the river’s dim expanse.” In the legend, the Lady of Shalott’s boat headed downstream and washed ashore at Camelot, where Lancelot saw it and mourned for her. She had succumbed to the curse of seeing the world as it is. 

Elgin Marbles — The Parthenon Sculptures

As Europe starts opening up to travelers again, it’s more exciting than ever to think about the cultural treasures that await. For me, one of the great joys of travel is having in-person encounters with great art — which I’ve collected in a book called Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here’s one of my favorites:   

For 2,000 years, the Parthenon temple in Athens remained almost perfectly intact. But in 1687, with Athens under siege, the Parthenon was used to store a huge cache of gunpowder. (See where this is going?) Pow! A massive explosion sent huge chunks of the Parthenon everywhere. Then in 1801, the British ambassador, Lord Elgin, carted the most precious surviving bits of carved stone off to London, where they wow visitors to this day — the “Elgin Marbles.” 

London’s British Museum shows off the statues and relief panels that once decorated the top of the Parthenon’s now-bare exterior. The reliefs, carved in about 430 BC, are part of the 500-foot-long frieze that once ringed the temple. They show 56 snapshots from ancient Athens’ most festive occasion: a grand parade up the Acropolis hill to celebrate the city’s birthday. 

The parade begins with men on horseback, struggling to rein in their spirited steeds. Next come musicians playing flutes, while ladies dance. Distinguished citizens ride in chariots, kids scamper alongside, and priests lead ceremonial oxen for sacrifice. At the heart of the procession is a group of teenage girls. Dressed in elegant pleated robes, they shuffle along carrying gifts for the gods, like incense burners and jugs of wine. 

The girls were entrusted with the parade’s most important gift: a folded-up robe. As the parade culminated inside the Parthenon, the girls symbolically presented the robe to the temple’s 40-foot-tall gold-and-ivory statue of Athena.  

The realism is incredible: the men’s well-defined muscles, the horses’ bulging veins. The girls’ intricately pleated robes make them look as stable as fluted columns, but they step out naturally — the human form emerging from the stone. These panels were originally painted in bold colors. Amid the bustle of details, the frieze has one unifying element — all the heads are at the same level, headed the same direction, creating a single ribbon of humanity around the Parthenon. 

The Parthenon’s main entrance was decorated with a grandiose scene depicting the moment when the city of Athens was born. These statues nestled inside the triangular-shaped pediment over the door. It shows the Greek gods lounging around at an Olympian banquet. Suddenly, there’s a stir of activity. The gods turn toward a miraculous event: Zeus has just had his head split open to reveal Athena, the symbol of the city. (Unfortunately, that key scene is missing — it’s the empty space at the peak of the triangle.)  

These pediment statues are realistic and three-dimensional, reclining in completely natural and relaxed poses. The women’s robes cling and rumple naturally, revealing their perfect anatomy underneath.  

A final set of relief panels (the so-called metopes) depict a Greek legend that sums up the entire Parthenon. They show the primeval Greek people brawling with brutish centaurs. It’s a free-for-all of hair-pulling, throat-grabbing, kicks to the shin, and knees to the groin. Finally, the humans get the upper hand — symbolizing how the civilized Athenians triumphed over their barbarian neighbors. 

In real life, the Greeks rallied from a brutal war, and capped their recovery by building the Parthenon. The treasured Elgin Marbles represent the cream of the crop of that greatest of Greek temples. And they capture that moment in human history when civilization triumphed over barbarism, rational thought over animal urges, and order over chaos. 

Granada’s Alhambra

For me, one of the great joys of travel is having in-person encounters with great art and architecture — which I’ve collected in a book called Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here’s one of my favorites:   

Nowhere else does the splendor of Moorish civilization shine so beautifully than at the Alhambra — this last and greatest Moorish palace in Europe. 

For seven centuries (711–1492), much of Spain was Muslim, ruled by the Islamic Moors from North Africa. While the rest of Europe was slumbering through the Dark Ages, Spain blossomed under Moorish rule. The culmination was the Alhambra — a sprawling complex of palaces and gardens atop a hill in Granada. And the highlight is the exquisite Palacios Nazaríes, where the sultans and their families lived, worked, and held court.  

You enter through the fragrant Court of the Myrtles, into a world of ornately decorated rooms, stucco “stalactites,” filigreed windows, and bubbling fountains. Water — so rare and precious in the Islamic world — was the purest symbol of life. The Alhambra is decorated with water, water everywhere: standing still, cascading, masking secret conversations, and drip-dropping playfully. 

As you explore the labyrinth of rooms, you can easily imagine sultans smoking hookahs, lounging on pillows and Persian carpets, with heavy curtains on the windows and incense burning from the lamps. Walls and ceilings are covered with intricate patterns carved in wood and stucco. (If the Alhambra’s interweaving patterns look Escheresque, you’ve got it backward: The artist M. C. Escher was inspired by the Alhambra.) Because Muslim artists avoided making images of living creatures, they ornamented with calligraphy — by carving swoopy letters in Arabic, quoting poetry and verses from the Quran. One phrase — “only Allah is victorious” — is repeated 9,000 times.  

The Generalife gardens — with manicured hedges, reflecting pools, playful fountains, and a breezy summer palace — is where sultans took a break from palace life. Its architect, in a way, was the Quran, which says that heaven is like a lush oasis, and that “those who believe and do good, will enter gardens through which rivers flow” (Quran 22.23). 

The Alhambra’s much-photographed Courtyard of the Lions is named for its fountain of 12 marble lions. Four channels carry water outward — figuratively to the corners of the earth and literally to the sultan’s private apartments. As a poem carved onto the Alhambra wall says, the fountain gushes “crystal-clear water” like “the full moon pouring light from an unclouded sky.”  

The palace’s largest room is the ornate throne room — the Grand Hall of the Ambassadors. Here the sultan, seated on his throne beneath a domed ceiling of stars, received visitors. The ceiling, made from 8,017 inlaid pieces of wood (like a giant jigsaw puzzle), suggests the complexity of Allah’s infinite universe.  

The throne room represents the passing of the torch in Spanish history. It was here in the year 1492 that the last Moorish king surrendered to the Christians. And it was here that the new monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, said “Sí, señor” to Christopher Columbus, launching his voyage to the New World that would make Spain rich. But the glory of the Alhambra lived on, adding an elegance and grace to Spanish art for centuries to come.  

Today, the Alhambra stands as a thought-provoking reminder of a graceful Moorish world that might have flowered throughout all of Europe — but didn’t. 

Lascaux’s Prehistoric Cave Paintings


As Europe starts opening up to travelers again, it’s more exciting than ever to think about the cultural treasures that await. For me, one of the great joys of travel is having in-person encounters with great art and architecture — which I’ve collected in a book called Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here’s an ancient favorite:   

The caveman man cave at Lascaux is startling for how fashionably it’s decorated. The walls are painted with animals — bears, wolves, bulls, horses, deer, and cats — and even a few animals that are now extinct, like woolly mammoths. There’s scarcely a Homo sapiens in sight, but there are human handprints.  

All this was done during the Stone Age nearly 20,000 years ago, in what is now southwest France. That’s about four times as old as Stonehenge and Egypt’s pyramids, before the advent of writing, metalworking, and farming. The caves were painted not by hulking, bushy-browed Neanderthals but by fully-formed Homo sapiens known as Cro-Magnons. 

These are not crude doodles with a charcoal-tipped stick. The cave paintings were sophisticated, costly, and time-consuming engineering projects planned and executed in about 18,000 BC by dedicated artists supported by a unified and stable culture. First, they had to haul all their materials into a cold, pitch-black, hard-to-access place. (They didn’t live in these deep limestone caverns.) The “canvas” was huge—Lascaux’s main caverns are more than a football field long, and some animals are depicted 16 feet tall. They erected scaffolding to reach ceilings and high walls. They ground up minerals with a mortar and pestle to mix the paints. They worked by the light of torches and oil lamps. They prepared the scene by laying out the figure’s major outlines with a connect-the-dots series of points. Then these Cro-Magnon Michelangelos, balancing on scaffolding, created their Stone Age Sistine Chapels. 

The paintings are impressively realistic. The artists used wavy black outlines to suggest an animal in motion. They used scores of different pigments to get a range of colors. For their paint “brush,” they employed a kind of sponge made from animal skin. In another technique, they’d draw the outlines, then fill it in with spray paint — blown through tubes made of hollow bone. 

Imagine the debut. Viewers would be led deep into the cavern, guided by torchlight, into a cold, echoing, and otherworldly chamber. In the darkness, someone would light torches and lamps, and suddenly — whoosh! — the animals would flicker to life, appearing to run around the cave, like a prehistoric movie. 

Why did these Stone Age people — whose lives were probably harsh and precarious — bother to create such an apparent luxury as art? No one knows. Maybe because, as hunters, they were painting animals to magically increase the supply of game. Or perhaps they thought if they could “master” the animal by painting it, they could later master it in battle. Did they worship the animals?  

Or maybe the paintings are simply the result of the universal human drive to create, and these caverns were Europe’s first art galleries, bringing the first tourists. While the caves are closed to today’s tourists, carefully produced replica caves adjacent give visitors a vivid Stone Age experience. 

Today, visiting Lascaux II and IV, as these replica caves are called, allows you to share a common experience with a caveman. You may feel a bond with these long-gone people…or stand in awe at how different they were from us. Ultimately, this art remains much like the human species itself — a mystery. And a wonder.