Sarajevo Gypsy (Roma)

Julia and I are walking in the evening in the ancient Turkish market when I am accosted by an old gypsy woman.  She pushes up to me, her left hand cupped in begging up against my chest. Her right hand she slips into the front pocket of my jeans to snare my wallet.  I slap it away.  Of course, she is unaplogetic. It might have worked.  Julia is unaware of the swift interaction until I mention it to her.

Commonplace, I know, but I am left shaken by the odd intimacy between perpetrator and victim.

Dateline: Solin and Sarajevo

Two days back on Brac, then off to mainland Solin and a few days watching Slavko build a beautiful white stone wall in grueling heat. Then drove Bella Bijela 2 (Bakica) thru mountainous, treed countryside to Sarajevo.  We just arrived and have a great room with kitchen, on a hill with a balcony that overlooks the city.

Some photos of our trip to Lastovo

Showing the island archipelago, the old town of Lastovo and its famous medieval chimneys,  the bay we stayed by, our host in his agriculture plot showing me his grapes, and a nice bounty he presented to us as we left.

Land of the Lotus Eaters

Lastovo: rugged, wild, green, hilly, remote.  We sat alone on terrace of our pansion at night with full moon shining on an islanded sea, eating delicate white fish and drinking local white wine.  Felt very much like Room with a View or some other 'English in Italy at the end of the last season before the War' lyric.  

Chugged out of the harbour the next morning on a small, aging ferry with a single auto aboard, eating mali plavac grapes, and tomatoes from our host's agriculture plot. In my imagination, we were on a tramp freighter crawling between exotic ports under a hot sun across an indigo sea.  It did not take too much imagination.

Autumnal Equinox

That moment of perfect equilibrium.  Can you feel it?

Sage Standing in the Fire

A soothing morning.  Soft overcast, short sleeve temperature, the air is clean and moist and cool, tiny ferns greening on my wall, and the earth is for a moment appeased by the downpour two nights ago after four months of relentless, scorching sun.

I was reading about life in Byzantium in 1000 a.d.  A perfect time, if you had money, for arts and culture and good living.  Safe from external threat, it was the greatest city in the world.  A dazzling place of shining stone, eastern inspired architecture, glittering mosaics.  No wonder Yeats held this as an ideal.  (Well, too many priests, maybe,)

I dreamt last night that I tried to warn a Byzantine family that it would all come crashing down in a or two hundred or so years, but I was unable to suggest a remedy or course of action.

Retreat

After melting my kitchen circuit trying to put in a light switch, I retreat to the waterfront for a beer.  I tell Julia, well, no cooking for a while!

Lately

A little visit with Ivo and Liljana at their castle by the sea, me in 6th century church ruins atop Vidova Gora,  Julia in a prehistoric watering pond......

TO BEE AGAIN

The Making of Fine Brandy!

Our neighbors jars of delicious! cherry and walnut brandy steeping in the sun for 10 weeks or so.

Fwd: Behind the house

Ben Grimes and family,  back from Africa,  buys 25 acres in North Carolina.  He intends to do organic gardening.  Here's a photo of some old tobacco sheds on his property.  His garden will start by the tall grass.


-------- Original message --------
From charles grimes <charlesgrimes9@gmail.com>
Date: 09/08/2013 1:59 PM (GMT+01:00)
To John <jhurd@qsoup.net>
Subject Behind the house

Milna

Its not all fun and games!


-------- Original message --------
From Julia Hurd <julia@qsoup.net>
Date: 09/06/2013 3:56 PM (GMT+01:00)
To 'John Hurd' <jhurd@qsoup.net>
Subject photos today

Zoran's couch and our doors

Just before noon and the cactus are prickly

-------- Original message --------
From Julia Hurd <julia@qsoup.net>
Date: 09/03/2013 5:39 PM (GMT+01:00)
To 'John Hurd' <jhurd@qsoup.net>
Subject first 2013 photos around Milna

Here are some.

Squeamish? What Supermarkets are for......

-------- Original message --------
From slavko gusic <manjige@gmail.com>
Date: 09/01/2013 3:38 PM (GMT+01:00)
To jhurd <jhurd@qsoup.net>
Subject Re:

O, man, you should have been with us yesterday, Ivan and me went to a village called Muc, to buy me a young goat. He persuaded me to haul it alive in Solin, and than by his house he slaughtered it after we had a few beers. I hoped it will be concealed somewere, but he killed and skinned it right in front of the house, and all neighbour's watchful eyes!!

Barbarian style!

It worked out good at the end, already cut, packed and frozen.

Enjoy the weather and sea . . .

Slavko