Monthly Archives: October 2022

Ancient Olympics Site Sparks The Imagination

by Woody

Zeus was the God of the Sky in ancient Greek mythology, so it seemed like a smile from the heavens to visit Greece’s Olympia ruins – including the Temple of Zeus – under a cloudless sky as blue as the nearby Ionian Sea.

Adding a divine wink, my wife and I were there on an early September day, the exact time on the calendar the original Olympics were held beginning in 776 B.C. Still, it was difficult to imagine these historic grounds in their former glory because all that remains are toppled stone blocks scattered about like colossal headstones in a cemetery of disrepair.

Among the ancient ruins at Olympia with Lisa.

One area, however, does remain largely as it once was: the track stadium. Visitors today can even use the special entrance, called the Krypte, with its stone archway still intact overhead. To be honest, however, the stadium that awaits across this threshold is underwhelming. Unlike the breathtaking Colosseum in Rome, some 300 miles due south, Olympia’s “stadium” had no seating structure. Instead, two grass slopes rising up gently the full length of the track on both sides provided Standing Room Only for 45,000 spectators.

The dirt track is not an oval but rather a long-and-narrow drag strip measuring just over half the width, and nearly twice the length, of a modern football field. Start and Finish lines of white marble mark off a distance of 192 meters – called a “stade” – with races ranging from a sprint of one length to 24 up-and-backs equaling nearly a three miles.

The “Krypte” entrance used by ancient Olympic athletes.

Before competing in footraces, as well as events later added such as the long jump, javelin, wrestling, and boxing, athletes rubbed olive oil over their bodies and then dirt.

“Other than a dusty sheen,” noted our tour guide, Nicolette, a sandy blonde whose olive skin was undusted, “they competed fully nude.”

A javelin toss from the track’s Krypte was Olympia’s most important building, The Temple of Zeus. Nearly a matching bookend of the Parthenon in Athens, the temple had 38 limestone columns, each 30 feet high, surrounding the perimeter and supporting a marble-tiled roof that shone as white as a full moon. The centerpiece inside was a 40-foot tall statue of Zeus, made of copper and bronze and covered with gold, and considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The statue was stolen in the 5th century and later destroyed in a fire. Seven decades later, the temple was fully razed by a pair of earthquakes. Standing among the present rubble it is again hard to envision the glory that once rose here.

The historic starting line made of marble…

Speaking of glory and imagination, at the track visitor after visitor toed the two-foot-wide, inch-high marble starting line posing in runners’ crouches to have their photographs taken. More than a few let their visions run further, literally, by bolting into sprints as if a starter’s call had just bellowed.

Most of these Olympic daydreamers were men of middle age or older. One even shuffled with a quad cane. Not surprisingly, their initial dashes typically slowed to a jog by the halfway mark and became a walk for the return stade.

Invariably, except for the gentleman with the cane, the competitors resumed a sprint for the final 10 meters or so, always beaming as if the champion’s olive wreath was up for grabs.

Watching them, for I did not join in, I could not help but smile as well – with thanks that they did not take their ancient Olympic daydreams so seriously as to run wearing only olive oil and dust.

To be continued next week with more about olive oil…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

 

Gondolier Lorenzo and ‘Anna Silvia’

by Woody

Head to toe, Lorenzo looked as one imagines a Venetian gondolier should.

His outfit included a flat-brimmed straw boater with a red hatband; loose-fitting, short-sleeved, white-linen shirt over a polo with traditional horizontal stripes of navy and white; black pants and black rubber-soled shoes. Oh, yes, and seemingly a song on his lips.

On the recent Italian afternoon of our 40th wedding anniversary, my wife and I were excited to celebrate with an authentic gondola ride. As we strolled toward a long ticket line, a charismatic gondolier intercepted us and guided us to the nearby dock where his long and narrow boat with high-rising stern and bow was moored.

Celebrating our 40th anniversary in Venice with a gondola ride thanks to Lorenzo.

No sooner did we sit down on a thinly cushioned loveseat bench than I began to wonder if we had been hoodwinked into an unseaworthy vessel for it tilted to the right, and greatly so. A heavy wake from a passing motorboat taxi would surely have us taking on water.

Not to worry. When Lorenzo took his position, standing above and behind us atop the left-hand side of the stern, the boat largely righted itself thanks to his wiry-framed weight. Not only is this imbalance by design in all gondolas, the keels purposely curve slightly to the right because rowing with a single 13-foot-long oar, always mounted on the starboard side, naturally pushes the boat leftward.

Rowing, by the way, is actually a short motion called “stirring”. Thanks to the forearms of a blacksmith, Lorenzo effortlessly stirred the gondola through the “streets” of Venice, as the canals are called. In truth, he only made it look easy.

“I’m 62 and getting too old,” he said at one point as the thermometer’s mercury approached 90 degrees. “It’s a young man’s game. It’s physically taxing and takes more effort that it looks like.”

Lorenzo with his 13-foot-long magic wand of a boat oar.

Lorenzo can still turn back the pages of the calendar. Not only did he turn the oar into a wizard’s wand, he sometimes assisted his steering by dancing on the wall like Fred Astaire in the most memorable scene in “Royal Wedding.” Specifically, Lorenzo would lift and place a foot on the side of a building rising from the water and push off. The gondola, despite measuring 36 feet in length, fishtailed gracefully to turn on a dime around blind corners.

“Gondolas are all handcrafted only in Venice and cost very much money,” said Lorenzo, whose black beauty originally belonged to his father. The floating family heirloom, in accord with the local custom of bestowing gondolas with two female names, was christened “Anna Silvia” after Lorenzo’s mother and sister.

“My dad died much too young at age only 52,” the boatman continued, noting sadly he thus inherited his father’s boat – and job – “at age only 18.”

With more than four decades experience, Lorenzo gave us a masterpiece tour. Here was Casanova’s Palace; there was the home believed to have been the residence of Marco Polo; here was Libreria Acqua Alta, the self-proclaimed “most beautiful bookstore in the world”; there, passing overhead, was the Bridge of Sighs, its name coming from the poet Lord Byron, who wrote: “I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; a palace and a prison on each hand.”

And here, inside the bow of “Anna Silvia”, was another quote, painted in black upon a carved olive wreath of gold, from a poem by Dante: “Lo Bel Pianeta Che Ad Amar Conforta.” Translation: “The beauteous planet, that to love incites.”

Certainly this beauteous city, and our smooth-as-a-magic-carpet ride with Lorenzo, incited anniversary love.

To be continued next week in Olympia, Greece…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

By Any Nickname, Venice Is Lovely

by Woody

Our Italian gondolier, Lorenzo, told us Venice has nearly as many nicknames as bridges.

This is an exaggeration, for spans over the canals number nearly 400, but Lorenzo did easily spit out a mouthful of sobriquets: La Serenissima (The Most Serene), Queen of the Adriatic, The Floating City, and The City of (take your pick) Canals / Water / Bridges / Love / Masks, the latter relating to the annual Carnival.

Not to quibble with Lorenzo, who shares his name with Jessica’s lover in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” and whose own family roots reach down through the shallow waters of the canals deep into the earth below, but I always thought Paris owned trademark rights to “The City of Love”.

Lisa and me beginning our trip in beautiful Venice, Italy.

And yet after an hour gliding as serenely as an autumn breeze through a labyrinth of canals, I concluded that all of the nicknames are fitting – most especially, perhaps, The City of Love. After all, my wife and I, seated together on a narrow wooden seat, on a Venetian afternoon as sunny and warm as the Ventura day we exchanged wedding vows exactly 40 years earlier, at one point floated past Casanova’s Palace.

To be sure, there is much to love about this enchanted city. Upon our arrival less than 24 hours before, after checking into our hotel after a long, long, long night, day and evening of travel, we found a nearby trattoria – cozy Italian restaurant. It was well past 9 o’clock when we were seated at a table for two on the patio, under the stars with an orange half-moon rising, the lapping water of the Grand Canal a short stone toss away. The pasta and desserts, all homemade by Maria the owner, were as perfect as the setting.

The following day, our actual anniversary, we visited St. Mark’s Square and the magnificent Basilica di San Marco. Thereupon, we took to heart – and feet – the sage advice a dear friend of mine, a travel writer who has visited the four corners of the globe, always reminds me of before I embark on a trip: “Be sure to turn down a hidden alleyway, or go inside a quiet doorway off the beaten path, because that’s where you’ll find some of the most memorable experiences.”

A view of the Grand Canal from the Ponte di Rialto Bridge.

Venice has pedestrian alleyways off of alleyways off of alleyways. Getting lost in this funhouse-like mirror maze was how we found a quiet doorway to a small shop that was like a museum exhibition of hand-blown glassworks made on nearby Murano island. The breathtaking pieces ranged from elegant goblets and bowls that seemed as delicate as butterfly wings; to graceful butterflies themselves; to a resplendent turtle the size of a couch cushion and an even larger dolphin, both featuring swirling currents of blues and greens within as if filled with colorful seawater.

Less beautifully, the canals are so opaque they seemed filled with wet paint. This filled Lorenzo with great sadness.

“The water was so clean during the worst of the pandemic,” he recalled, referring to the Grand Canal, “we saw dolphins.”

Meanwhile, the inner canals – measuring one to two meters in depth, depending on the tide – were so crystalline that a gondolier peering down from his standing perch could see to the water’s bottom with such clarity as to accurately call a coin heads or tails.

Alas, motorboat traffic has returned fully, and with it the green-sheened murkiness, causing 62-year-old Lorenzo to lament: “Man never learns. Man is a dummy.”

Taking a gondola ride with Lorenzo, however, was a smart decision – to be chronicled further here next week…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Vacation Photos – Less Can Be More

by Woody

Third try was indeed the charm.

After twice having a dream vacation canceled by the coronavirus nightmare, my better-half, who is half-Italian, and I finally made it to the land where her family roots reach deep into the fertile soil. Specifically, we sailed fully around the thigh-high boot setting out at Venice, through the narrow Strait of Messina at the toe, up the western coast and over to Barcelona with nine port stops en route.

The starting and ending bookends proved to be our favorites, although perhaps this was partly because we spent extra nights in both and were thus able to explore them a little more fully than the daytime destinations.

The ancient Colosseum in Rome was definitely photograph worthy!

A cruise, in my view, is sort of like speed dating in that you learn who (or where) you want to get to know better. In this case, we didn’t ask Croatia and Albania for their phone numbers. Don’t get me wrong, the former’s Old Town Dubrovnik – with white marble streets and forts of stone so magnificent “Game of Thrones” filmed myriad scenes there – was memorable, yet an afternoon inside these historic walls was plenty. Similarly, a few hours sufficed at the ancient sites of the Olympics in Olympia, Greece, and the Pompeii ruins near Naples, Italy.

Our two ports in France – Villefranche-sur-Mer and Toulon – are both gorgeous coastal locales, but to be honest we much prefer Ventura’s similar charms so feel no strong gravitational pull to return. Rome and Florence, however, like Venice and Barcelona, already beckon us back for longer sojourns.

In the coming weeks, I will share here some snapshots-in-words of my favorite experiences from our two-week trip: from memorable people and meals to the canals of Venice to the Colosseum in Rome to the breathtaking La Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, and more.

Speaking of snapshots, my cell phone camera kept freezing with the command: “Out of Storage. Free Up Space.” Just my luck…

…good luck, that is.

In these old lands I was forced to go old-school. Instead of mindlessly snap-snap-snapping endless digital photos, I was forced to point-and-shoot judiciously. It was like going back in time and using a camera with film that comes in 12, 24 or 36 exposures. Instead of paying to have prints made, I had to spend time deleting files.

So it was I found myself taking in the sites, and sights, in their full grandeur through naked eyes instead of miniaturized on a pixel screen. Thus, I found myself absorbing the scenes and memorizing the moments before selectively choosing the very best ones to photograph.

In this reframed frame of mind, it saddened me to see so many others touring these goosebump-inducing historic places, even a museum filled with Picasso artwork, while largely squinting at their tiny cameras. They seemed more concerned with reliving these experiences in the future rather than living them in the present. One romantic couple we encountered seemed to be experiencing their entire gondola ride through the canals of Venice digitally instead of actually.

Conversely, instead of hundreds of photos, so many as to be overwhelming, I came home with only a few “rolls” of selectively snapped images to be developed at Fotomat, so to speak. This was a silver lining, as mentioned, for it seems to me that too many pictures is like not being able to see the forest for the trees. Indeed, the graceful stone columns in La Sagrada Familia are meant to invoke towering trees, a forest of them, something one might miss if looking through a camera lens.

To be continued next week…

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com