The limestone rocks that form the bedrock of the Bois Païolive come from the Jurassic Period, 180 million years ago. Aeons of erosion created unusual rock outcroppings, which the French government back in 1934 declared to be an ecologically protected area. There is incredible biodiversity in the Païolive, but the most notable trees are the […]
The Parc Montsouris was one of four urban green park spaces planned for each cardinal direction under the French Emperor Napoleon III. After the Revolution and the many urban uprisings that followed, Napoleon III undertook a massive revitalization of the capital. The Parc Montsouris, located in the south of Paris, was officially inaugurated in 1875.
“Stop! Here is the empire of death” reads the entrance to the catacombs of Paris. And if you don’t want to see photos of some of the six million bodies buried here, don’t scroll on through these images. Touring the catacombs has to be one of my favorite experiences in Paris. I have never seen
The most visited necropolis in the world is the Père-Lachaise Cemetery. It brings 3.5 million visitors a year, and it is a wonder. The layout is maze-like, with bodies upon bodies memorialized in stone sepulchres. There are paths to find various memorials and graves, but they wind around, turn corners, and go uphill. Père-Lachaise was
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The Museé de l’Orangerie was established in 1852 and specializes in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Claude Monet’s massive murals _Water Lilies_ reside there. I loved Paul Cézanne’s _Dans le parc de Chateau-Noir_, and Marie Laurencin’s works (a rare women artist for the museum) — _Femmes au chien_ is the one shown here.
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Tucked away in an incongruous green space close to a busy thoroughfare in Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania is Lincoln Cemetery, the final internment for tens upon tens of African Americans, buried here at a time when racial segregation was still legal in this country. Although the earliest tombstone dates to 1862, there is speculation that there were
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Shippensburg University hosted a speaker event on the Israel-Palestine crisis in Gaza. Four specialists gave short presentations from their areas of expertise: Dr. Mireille Rebeiz from Dickinson College spoke about international law and human rights; the three other scholars are from Shippensburg University. Dr. David Weaver addressed the military strategy of Hamas and IDF (Israel
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At first glance, these small statuettes seem to have little in common with each other. The one on the left is an Ancient Roman copy of Poseidon from the first or second century, originally made by the Greek artist Lysippos in the 3rd century BCE. The one on the right is a sandstone carving of
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Last Sunday, I got to see a terrific exhibit on early Buddhist art at the New York Metropolitan Museum. Called “Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India 200 BCE-400 CE”, the artworks show, among other things, how pre-Buddhist nature deities and imagery were absorbed by the new religion. In this sculpture — part of
Early Buddhist Art Naga Mucalinda Protecting the Buddha Read More »
The Temple of Dendur is a must-see in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Hundreds of tourists check out this Ancient Roman-era Egyptian building every day, where it stands in an enormous glass-walled room, surrounded by a huge moat of water evocative of the Nile River from whence it originally came. The
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Here are scenes from the High Line of New York City, considered one of Manhattan’s most popular attractions. It isn’t that old: a group called Friends of the High Line formed in 1999 to create the public park, and they attracted enough wealthy donors to create and open it by 2009. The High Line is
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Just to the west of Las Cruces New Mexico, along the I10, is this ginormous statue of a roadrunner. It is built out of completely found materials — stuff like shoes, cell phones, old wire, crutches, headlights, and old toys. Artist Olin Calk created the recycled bird in 1993 to examine “consumption, recycling, and just
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The Franklin Mountains have seen human activity since at least 12,000 years ago, but their name came from a much more recent source, when a rancher named Benjamin Franklin Coons settled in El Paso in 1849 — he was such a heavyweight in the region that locals used to call the city “Franklin” in the
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Here are photos of a sculpture and the cultural museum outside the Mescalero Apache Tribe on the Mescalero reservation near Tularosa, New Mexico. Ulysses S. Grant formally created the Mescalero reservation, comprising almost half a million acres in 1873, and today three sub-tribes of Apaches live there. The Lipan Apache at the reservation arrived in
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The Robledo Mountains lie to the north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and to the east of the Rio Grande continental rift. Much of the exposed rock is from about 280 million years ago (Paleozoic), and the geological footprint is obvious and amazing. You can see a slot canyon in most of these pictures, when
The Mexican flag flies over the city of Palomas, just over the border from the city of Columbus, New Mexico. Today Palomas is a town frequented by American tourists (like me) who cross over to shop and eat — the Pink House (second image) is its most famous establishment. (It even has its own Wikipedia
Today (September 16, 2023) several students from Shippensburg University’s history department travelled with Dr. John Bloom and me to the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, an American Indian site in eastern Pennsylvania. The first slides you see come from the sandstone overhang that made a natural roof for the Meadowcroft encampment, as well as the main area
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The New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art has a fantastic exhibition on the color of Ancient Greek statues right now. When we look at the statues of the Ancient Mediterranean today, we are familiar with the unadorned stone or bronze, like the sphinx from about 530 BCE featured here. However, a team of art
These photos taken last weekend show vistas along the Loyalsocks Trail, one of the many stunning forested hiking pathways in Pennsylvania. Taking its name from the Loyalsock Creek (which translates from an American Indian name for “middle” creek), the Loyalsock trail is nearly sixty miles. The portions shown here include Sones Pond, which was built
Twenty-one years ago in 2001, the Burd Run Nature Trail and Restoration was established to reverse the damaging effects of an artificially straightened stream channel which had caused erosion and environmental degradation. (See second image). Shippensburg University (particularly the Geography and Earth Science Department), Shippensburg Township, the Cumberland County Conservation District, and the Conodoguinet Creek
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