Dateline Milna: Wednesday

Really slow life here . . .seems like a couple of weeks since I've been
on the internet, I think, but I love what Charles has been writing . .
. drove around the island the last few days visiting old villages . .
.here's a shot of Julia by a little pomegranate in the deserted village
of Smrka . . .one of me hiking near there . . .a picture of one of the
island's self-taught sculptors in his studio (check it out) . . .and
me, when Almir was here and Julia was not, enjoying my gift hammock from
Eliot and Kyra . . . and a photo of our patio caper plant in bloom . . .
big score today, I went to the larger village of Supetar and got some
drawing pencils . . . and I got another bottle of the red wine that I
helped make last year . . .gotta go down to the market now and get some
veggies for dinner . . .

Chaz: Marketing piece

Out in the lights once again . . .

Eliot's Table, Take 2

Another view of Eliot's fabulous table . . . missed this one in the
earlier post . . .

Dateline Milna 8/20

Slow, warm days here . . . Julia works . . . I read, play the uke,
consult Tarot, poke about in my garden, and fret about my roof and the
coming rainy season . . . go for short walks . . .take naps . . . visit
Slavko as he works . . .in the evening we go down to the waterfront . .
. often there is music . . . violin recitals, rock, gypsy jazz-folk rock
. . . we visit our neighbor "Julia", an attorney turned art lover and
gallery owner . . . she has had three different locations for her
gallery since we have been here, but none seemed to work out,(there are
stories there), so now she and her husband have built a lovely little
gallery in their house just behind us . . .the only trouble is that no
one knows that it is there, yet there she sits each evening from 8 to
11, up a dark unlit pedestrian only dead end street waiting for business
to wander by and in . . .

Here are two great photos . . . the one with the dog, I call "Fast Food,
'Cuz It Has to Be . . ." and check out those Conger eels with the
fisherman . . . yummy soup, i guess . . .

Being from Omak

Omak 1967

Being from Omak is like being

From the center of the universe.

Both of them are from way out

In outer space

And once you get that far out

You have just gone too far

Most of the time it felt like the world

Was spinning somewhere too far away

You really had to go out of your way

To get to either place

And once you get there you

Probably aren't aren't turning around back

Being from Omak was just as

Hard as finding the center of gravity.

Life is simple at the center of the universe

When you find your destination

This life is a journey

And I am learning to enjoy the adventure

Even though I 'm big on the remorse

From time to time just to even things out

Being from Omak was like being a kid at the Carnival

Expectant, Bug-Eyed & Pretty Naïve

Just waiting to take another ride with that

Hot new chick from your Literature Class

She is wearing a turquoise gauze blouse

And you're really hoping that you can

Get your hand up her shirt

And feel around in that delicate world

Being from Omak was wanting to drive

Your parent's cars around in the summer at night

And think nothing of nothing but girls

And beer and maybe the bastard who store your cigarettes

Sometimes guys were a bit nerthanderthal

Punching and hitting each other hard

Smoking out in the garage under the hood

Of the car fixing the carburetor and timing your

Chain so you can go faster than any other hood from

Okanogan to Tonasket

Being from Omak made you look up to heaven

To the Center of the Universe

And say why put me here

There must be a reason I'm filling this spot

Some plans must have been made but I have not been told

And I don't understand how I got to this place.

Fate drops us down in our places

I have been told

In a previous life

I must have been out of aces

I had to walk the gang plank

And when I awoke it was like being from Omak

Emily Dickenson & Pythagoras

Ok so know one has said

A thing about Emily

Dickenson + Pythagoras = new heroes

 

You must have an opinion

So why not express it singularly

A way that would strengthen your

Resistance to simple plurality

 

The ancient world knew it all

They have forgotten more wisdom than we

Have learned

They have left their ruins and

Like them we will leave ours

Only ours won't be biodegradable

And not even dependable

 

Pythagoras on his island

Sharpening his stylo and working

His computations and understands

The mysteries of this life

He understands the purpose is to blend

Into the cosmos and leave the land and

The muscle behind

 

Emily Dickenson knew life was more

Supreme when left to Art and white

Dresses worn out doors in the night

Tending her phlox and her lilies

Sitting at her desk and writing and writing

Better than stuck behind the

Muscle of this life almost better than being out

On an island strumming your lute

 

Then there is Buddha by the side of road

Waiting for you to give him the answer

Are you able to sit with all of the strangeness

Of this Life or are you afraid of being alive

 

 

 

 

 

Dateline Milna: Solin

I took the last couple of days -- the hottest of the season -- to travel with Slavko to the ancient city of Solin, on the mainland, to see his progress in building a new home for him and his wife, Nada.  He has the walls and ceiling up and on this trip he was able to run electricity as well as get his doors and windows ordered.  His site is actually above Solin on the highway that climbs to the fortress-town of Klis and then crosses inland into the mountains.  It lies in a sort of bowl, or valley, with a wonderful view of the mountains. We had a small barbeque of pork with bread the first night, then spent several hours drinking beer and playing bocche ball at Greben, the local hang-out for the older set. We stayed on the first floor of his brother's house next to his plastic bag making-and-printing business. I slept in the next day while Slavko worked.  Later, we travelled up into the mountains to a small village where his friend Mate grew up and is now building a vacation home on a small plot of ground bordered by ancient sun-blackened stone walls.  Since the only beer we could buy was warm,  while Slavko cooked beans and sausage in the sun over an open fire, Mate and I  walked a forest path into the old village and lowered the basket of beer into an old cistern full of icy, clear water. We ate almonds and plums from trees in a deserted courtyard while the beer cooled.  Several other men now showed up to share the feast.  They began singing those wierdly, almost chillingly harmonized, 20 second mountain songs. Later while they removed to another house with even more rakija (brandy), I went with Mate and family to buy cheese from a woman in the next village where I heard unearthly chimings in the night, (which turned out to be cow bells). 

Last night - the night of the Perseid meteor shower - Julia finally arrived home from a long stint in the U.K.  We could see the meteorites streaking across the sky just behind our house, quiet now since the neighbors on one side have left and the apartment on the other is unrented. 

Lori Writes: Nootka fishing trip

Lori says:

Just got back from fishing for a couple days up in Nootka sound BC. 
Here are a couple pics from the trip, more to come later, over all I
think we brought home about 600-700 pounds of fish between us!  we had
five of us on the boat, John, his brother Tony, their dad Harvey and
their friend Brad who owns the boat.  We had our limit of kings the
first day in about 1 1/2 hours!   Nootka is on vancouver Island we drive
up to Campbell River , the road is good there, then head towards Gold
River, the road gets real narrow and twisty then at Gold River it is
about 1hr 45min on a primitive mostly gravel road to get to where we
meet the boat, then 20 min to the lodge.  The lodge is floating and with
so many bears around I am glad it was!  We saw several bears, humpback
whales all over, sea otters.  The landscape is unreal.  super deep water
with peaks still snow capped.  Basically wilderness! It would have been
great to stay a LOT longer but now we have to make hay.
Here is a pic of the boat coming to get us.  It is a super nice
Seawolf.. a pic of the fish we cought the first morning, the water at
the lodge was an amazing emerald green, and a pic of us approaching the
lodge.

Eliot and Paul Finish Their Truly Gorgeous Table

Now is this a beautiful, classy piece of fine furniture or what?  And to top it off, it is motorized-  Wow, wow, wow . . .good job, Eliot and Paul!!!!!

Dateline Solin: the Reef

Greben - the "Reef" - lies in the center of a great stone basin several kiolmeters across.  At the top, stark stone walls scorched by the sun in the summer, battered by the bura winds in the winter, rise sheer into the circle of sky.  Farther down, scrub oak and other tough, wiry, prickly plants take hold. From Greben, just past the WC "Pis" in the back,  you can follow the slopes downwards until they debouch -  as it were - into the city of Split and the Adriatic just beyond.

Greben itself is an unlikely structure in a country of the unlikely and improbable.  Constructed of two shipping containers supplemented by plantings and add-on sheds, it seems to be a tiny grocery market situated on a dirt strip alongside the highway climbing to Klis.  Cars roar in and out all day for cigarettes or a quick snack or coffee from the vending machine.  Now and then, older men, for the most part, crowd in and purchase a half-liter bottle of pivo -  Kaltenberg or Karlovatcho or Ojusko - then take it behind the store where a small arbor has been constructed, thickly covered by some sort of vining plant or weed that along with a frequent breeze provides relief from the fierce sun.  In this intimate shade, there is a battered table or two and a few chairs and lots of empty beer bottles and cigarette stubs.  During the day, this is the social center of the neighborhood, as local men joke or bait or rail, often in non-stop monologues.  Many of them are retired or are taking a break from their work in loose free-lance jobs.

If the arbor is already occupied, the men may take a delapidated chair to the shade of some slight trees that run alongside the two bocche ball courts that are Greben's most striking feature.  Drinking their beer, they shout conversations to those sitting across the courts in the arbor, fully participating in the social melee. 

As evening brings some cooling, more men arrive and the focus moves out from the arbor to the ball courts constructed of white painted concrete blocks.  Here games may last all night, with the many on-lookers ringing the courts on homemade benches or chairs, furnishing non-stop comment, advice and admonition.  Losers, of course, buy the beer.

Shannon Updates: Trevor's campaign

Well, as of today there are four people running for two places on the school
board. A couple Trevor is going to have trouble beating though because of
name recognition, but who knows. He wil be a county delegate for the
Republican party however, and is on a first name basis with the republican
running for governor, and is friends with his niece and other family
members. Will keep you posted. Whatever happens he is having fun. So we will
see.

Dateline Milna: Sunday Update

The Sunday church bells ring out transubstantiation, while the Brando-(barbe)que has undergone an Ovidian metamorphosis and now most closely resembles the walls of Troy, stacked neatly behind my little garden shed.  My near-daily baptismal in the Italianated waters of the August Adriatic has rendered me no more pure of heart and yet has been some balm.  At last nights fashion show, I crowded the balustrade with the children and young mothers, watching the skinny models sweep and twirl up and down the marble stairs to an raucous amplified throb.  Almir has taken the autobus in the early morning's caffeination  and I look about in dismay at a whole house to clean before Julia returns.    Instead, I nap.  The caper plant on my patio wall has put out a single delicate white and purple bloom.  Today I have Sunday dinner -- wonderful stuffed peppers at Slavko and Nada's –  and tomorrow perhaps we go to Solin and deal in the magic of cable and power in his new house, looking out at the sun-scorched stone of the Dinaric Alps.

Nadas Favorite Story about Brac

Nada, Slavko's wife, is from Zadar, a good sized city in Dalmatia up the coast from Split.  She is still uncomfortable with life in our small village of Milna on the island of Brac.  Here is her favorite story about Brac:

“A family on Brac had a relative -  a grandmother, as it were – who had moved away some years ago and now lived in America in Chicago.   One day the grandmother died and, according to her will, she was cremated and her ashes sent home to Brac for burial.  Her instructions were sent to her family in a separate mailing.  Now, as sometimes happens, the letter with instructions got delayed in the mail but the urn with the ashes arrived just fine.  Her family unwrapped and opened the urn and stared at it with some perplexity.  “What is this, that Grandma has sent us from America?” they asked each other.  Finally they decided the ashes must be a seasoning, particularly fine judging by the bottle it came in.  They began using it on all their food.  About a month later, the letter with the instructions finally arrived.  “Oh no,” the family cried, “how can we bury Grandma when we have eaten her?”

Dateline Milna: Sunday Update

The thunder and lightning rolling in from Italy brought rain all Friday night and it was still going on at 5:30 a.m. Saturday when Julia left in a taxi for the U.K. for 12 days of business meetings, having a birthday send-off with an anchovy dinner at Slavko and Nada's and then lightning and thunderclaps shaking our old stone house and keeping us awake all night.  So I gave up trying to sleep and was up crawling about in our attic space at 2 a.m. scaring the geckos and looking for the source of our water leaks which are harming our guest room.  Almir had arrived from Sarajevo, vacationing for about a week, and he seemed to have slept soundly through it all.  Now the sun has returned but the sea is chilly.  Today is the annual tug-of-war between Brac and the neighboring island of Solta.  The winner claims honors and – for the next year - the small rock of Mrduja, which lies midway in a channel between the islands.  A huge flotilla streams out from each island in the late afternoon, meeting at Mrduja for the contest, then returns for much music and party-making, of course.