So, What's an Argonaut?

Paestrum, Italy

According to legend, Paestrum was established by Jason and the Argonauts. The Greek temples there were devoted to Poseidon, Athena and Hera. The site is located on the road linking Agropoli to Battipagli in the province of Salerno.


The excellent state of preservation of the Paestrum ruins is attributed to abandonment of the area due to malaria and marauding Arabs. Admission is 5€, 6€ with the museum. The lady selling the tickets says, “Museo? No Museo?” Eventually I catch on and go for the Museo option.

 The Museum has many fine examples of pottery, statues and frescos. You can see soldiers carving each other up and the blood is still red on some of the artwork.



The site was rediscovered about the time of the American Revolution and was an important stop on the “Grand Tour”.

The Argonauts were mythical sailors on the ship Argo.



We drove back roads out of Paestrum on the way to Sicily. In a small mountain town the inhabitants seem to consist entirely old men in 1940 dress styles and old women in widow’s black. I ask Mrs. Phred to adopt this style of dress for life if anything happens to me. After a long negotiation, she promises me a week.

In 1944, an American officer surveyed the location for a potential airstrip. Somehow, he recognized the historical importance of these old stones and located the strip in another place.

Burning the Tax Collectors

Tropea, Italy

We arrive in ancient walled city of Tropea after dark. We plan to leave for Naxos, Sicily in the morning. Our objectives are limited, walk on the beach, eat gelato, view the coast from the Chiesa dell'Isolla church on the hilltop and take pictures of ancient doorways.

We run into an unexpected bonus: an outdoor concert at 11 PM and lovely fireworks until midnight. The explosions are over the water and close to our balcony.


The cobblestone streets at dawn seem ready for a Nazi staff car to roll around the corner.



Every year on May 3, a festival called “I tre da cruci”- the three crosses, takes place in Tropea. Its name originates from the three wooden crosses which were placed in the church of the souls of purgatory after the collapse of the small, holy buildings where they were originally located. The feast relives events in the history of Tropea.

 During the festival, the expulsion of the Saracens is re-enacted, and specifically, the capture of the tax collector who was hated by everyone because he rode around the streets of the town on camel to collect taxes.

 The infidel, represented by a puppet stuffed with fireworks, is chased by the “bourgeoisie”, who in the end manage to expel him and light him on fire.

The Senior Prom

It's a reason to dress up. Due to my strangely tubular somatotype, the pants are both tight to button and tend to slide off...perhaps suspenders would be in order.

 Here's Mrs Phred, back in high school.

 She hasn't changed much...

Most take the prom as an opportunity to be wacky.

The ladies tend to be more serious.

Line dancing?

Tomb Raiders

Siem Reap, Cambodia

We begin the day with the Ta Prohm Temple. This is where Angelina Jolie filmed "Tomb Raiders" when she played Laura Croft.

After discovering all these lost temples in the jungle, they decided to leave just this one with some of the trees intact as a sop to popular taste.

Lately, however, they are clearing away more of the vegetation and working hard to restore the temple to a closer approximation of its original appearance.

The trees of this temple have tempted many writers to wretched excess. For example, this quote from Maurice Glaize (a scholar of the Angkor period culture).

On every side, in fantastic over-scale, the trunks of the silk-cotton trees soar skywards under a shadowy green canopy, their long spreading skirts trailing the ground and their endless roots coiling more like reptiles than plants

There are so many wooden steps and tourists wandering about the temple that most photos I take need to be heavily cropped to eliminate the modern anachronisms.



Mr. and Mrs. Phred mug for the camera.

This is only one of the fantastic construction projects  of Jayavarman VII . The temple was called Rajavihara ("royal temple"), today known as Ta Prohm ("ancestor Brahma"). It is also called the Jungle Temple. The foundation was laid in 1186 A.D. and the site was abandoned after the fall of the Khmer Empire for nearly 400 years.

The second temple we saw today was the more delicate pink sandstone temple called "Banteay Srei".

We must have seen 50 beautiful temples in the last month.

From now on we will refer to any more temples as ABT (Another Beautiful Temple).

They're shipping us out to Hanoi in the morning....

1947 Flying Saucer Crash at Roswell

Roswell, New Mexico

Did President Bush authorize the demolition of the World Trade Centers and fire a missle into the Pentagon to inflame American public opinion and permit military incursions in the Middle-East?

Who killed JFK? The Mafia? The Cubans? The CIA? Lee Harvey Oswald? Gray-type aliens?

Were the moon landings filmed in the Mexican Pinacante desert?

What really happened to Princess Diana?

Who or what is responsible for crop circles and cattle mutilations?

What really happened to Amelia Earhart?

Who killed General Patton and why?

Did a UFO crash in Roswell in 1947? Was there a cover-up? Have they been trying to reverse-engineer a saucer in Area 51 in Nevada? Was the saucer powered by a magnetically contained fusion engine that was controlled by alien thought waves?


The Roswell UFO museum has lots of "evidence" (newspaper clippings, affidavits and personal eyewitness accounts supporting a saucer crash and somewhat inept and heavy-handed government cover up. Even copies of "top secret" documents describing the crash and quotes from military men like George C. Marshall and MacArthur showing a belief in and threat from extra-terrestials.


Flying saucers are a little like God, something you are inclined by your nature to believe or not...If a saucer did crash in 1947, the government would certainly have covered it up at the height of the cold war to keep the Commies (and the public) in the dark...but on balance, I think that the distances involved in interstellar travel make me doubt that there was a saucer crash...anyhow, I enjoyed spending three hours in the museum...the research library in the back is very impressive...

Roswell was the original conspiracy theory.