Ibiza: stopping 'progress' is no longer an option

One day recently — September 18, to be exact — I saw a small news item that said 47 years ago, to the day, Jimi Hendrix had died.

Under normal circumstances, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have known where I was when I heard that Jimi Hendrix had died. In this case though, I know exactly.

Fred's Bar was in a small town on the Balearic island of Ibiza. In 1970, Ibiza was at the dawn of what was to become a massive tourism industry. We used to go to Fred's for breakfast every morning walking down a remarkably undeveloped street from the building where were staying which wasn't quite finished.

I used to read the International Herald Tribune while I had my tomato and cheese sandwich and a lovely frothy cup of café con leche. Most things were still cheap in Spain but not the Herald Tribune. We couldn't afford to buy it every day but I bought it two or three times a week and I savoured every word even though it was a very business-oriented paper and often quite boring. I was probably never so well-informed on the subject of international business as I was then.

It was there that I read of the death of Jimi Hendrix and I remember it so well. It was on the front page and it must have made quite an impression on me, a small story tucked in among the war, the appointments of big business executives, the ubiquitous news that followed the ups and downs of petro-dollars. The story of the death of a genius musician must have seemed almost out of place.

In the past 47 years, Ibiza has become known as "party island" for young Europeans. I don't think I would recognize it today. We used to walk to the beach every afternoon along a dusty little road, past small family farms where the families were often gathered around a big outdoor table enjoying lunch.

On a busy day, there might be a handful of other people on the beach but just as often, there was no one. An empty beach.

Today, I'm pretty sure most beaches look more like this.

When I started writing this, I thought it was just an interesting little memory anecdote, the reason I remembered where I was was when I heard of the death of Jimi Hendrix. I didn't know it was going to be another look at unsustainable tourism. I've written about that here and here — about Shakespeare's hometown and about Iceland. I make the point again, sadly, because there are so many wonderful places in the world to visit but so many of the places can't take any more.

Spain was early to tourism over-development. Throughout the '60s, the Mediterranean coast of the mainland was mindlessly built up with miles and miles of characterless highrise buildings (I'm looking at you, Benidorm), magnets for sun-seeking vacationers from northern Europe.

There was little regard for heritage or history but it seemed not to matter. The tourists kept coming. The development on the Balearic Islands began with Majorca, then Menorca, then Ibiza. The smallest island, Formentera, is in the earlier stages of development but it's getting there.

Many people still don't take this kind of issue seriously. "You can't stop progress!" they bellow. This is not progress but there's no point arguing with people who hold that view.

But just look at two views of the Old Town of Ibiza:

1970

2017

Not progress.

There were two other headlines/stories that I remember reading in Fred's Bar. Janis Joplin died on October 4. And on October 5, James Cross was kidnapped from his home in Montreal by the FLQ, marking the beginning of the October Crisis.

That was definitely the headline that had the greatest effect on my own life, both there in Spain and far beyond.

There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run

In the summer, William and a bunch of friends went to Montreal for Osheaga, the big music festival on the old La Ronde/Expo '67 site. They all got there by different modes of transportation — William drove up with a couple of guys in a van, leaving Halifax in the late evening and driving all night. Some of the other guys flew in or drove with other people. Once they got there, they all joined together and lived in a pre-arranged apartment.

They had a grand time at Osheaga. They had been at Evolve in New Brunswick just a couple of weeks before and I think if William had to choose, he might choose Evolve just because Osheaga was so big.

Here's a small part of the Osheaga crowd — a photo I borrowed off the Internet.

But it was great; they heard some good music and got lots of sun and enjoyed themselves a lot.

When it was over, some of the guys had to go home, including the ones that William had driven up with. But as it happened, William and a couple of his closest friends decided they'd like to have a couple more days in Montreal — and who wouldn't? So they settled in and did some sight-seeing and played tourist.

A few days later, he texted me. "Where do we get the train?" William has taken trains in Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and England. In any of those places, his question would have made perfect sense. I would look it up, tell him which station to go to, tell him what time the trains were leaving.

Unfortunately, in our country it's not simple. I told him to go to Central Station under the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, go to the ticket office and see what he could find out. It was Thursday.

When he got back to me, he said, "No train today. The train tomorrow is sold out."

I had checked it out by that time: departures from Montreal Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Three trains a week.

I take this quite personally. This train — the Ocean, formerly the Ocean Limited — played a significant part in my life. I lived in Montreal as a young woman and I travelled back and forth on that train several times a year. I was on a first-name basis with the porters and the sleeping car staff.

This is one of my most-used photos, I'm sure you'll agree.

I use this one too for winter stories:

I not only travelled by train but I took people to the station and waved them off and I met people who were coming to visit.

The train was there and we assumed it would always be there.

People accuse former Prime Minister Stephen Harper of saying, "Give me 20 years and you won't recognize this country." But Stephen Harper didn't say that. It was Brian Mulroney — Prime Minister from 1984-1993 — who said that. I remember him saying it because I very clearly remember thinking, "Why wouldn't we want to recognize our country?"

Mulroney did a lot of damage to this country and one of the things he did was decimate our train service. In October of 1989, the New York Times reported it this way with the headline Trains To Be Cut In Canada.

Even today, all these years later, the details are shocking to me:

TORONTO, Oct. 4 — The Canadian Government said today that it would cut passenger train service by more than 50 percent nationwide, touching off bitter protests in a country that was stitched together by railroads in the 19th century and where trains and the people who ride them are the stuff of national folklore.

The cuts, from 405 trains a week to 191 in the heavily subsidized rail network, had been expected for months because of Government budget cuts. . .

The Government-owned Via Rail Canada Inc. would end up offering little more than skeleton service in wide areas of the Maritime Provinces, along Canada's Atlantic coast, and in the western provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. Northern Ontario would be hard hit, too, as would parts of Quebec. . .

More than 2,700 of Via Rail's 7,300 employees would lose their jobs as a result of the cuts, but a confidential Via Rail report, copies of which were leaked to Canadian newspapers, said that nearly 60,000 Canadian jobs depended on passenger rail services, nearly 30,000 of them in tourism, and that many of these might be in jeopardy, too. . .

Mulroney said the cuts would be irreversible and he was right. In many places, the tracks were pulled up promptly. In other places, they've grown over with weeds poking up between the ties and the rails rusted and broken. He stressed, over and over, that this was all about money. We couldn't afford our trains.

But getting rid of the trains was not good transport policy. I'm sure the research has been done (I'm not going to look it up right now) that shows the loss of our freight trains and the vast increase in the use of tractor-trailers on the highways has not been a more efficient or a cleaner alternative.

As for passenger service, William's is only the most recent story. There are many stories throughout rural Canada where the loss of rail service went far beyond inconvenience.

William got a flight home to Halifax, by the way. It was cheaper than the train ticket would have been.

And that's a whole other story.

James Joyce, Sigmund Freud: a Sistine Chapel encounter

It's interesting when you go to the theatre and when you're walking up the street on your way home, you talk about what you've read by James Joyce, you reminisce about your visit to the Sistine Chapel, you share what you know about the progress of the development of Artificial Intelligence, you tell a corny Freud joke — all subjects directly inspired by the play you've just seen.

The play was the world premiere of Unconscious at the Sistine Chapel, produced and performed by the 2b theatre, part of Eastern Front Theatre's Stages Festival.

The play was held in the theatre-like space in our brilliant library which gives me a chance to show it to you in case you haven't seen it:

The play is imaginative and original. It recreates the Sistine Chapel with the use of projectors and beams the unmistakable Michelangelo masterpieces on to the ceiling and walls of the stage area.

[It] tells a story about buried urges, artificial intelligence, and an unlikely encounter between Minna Bernays and Nora Barnacle, accompanied by their respective partners: Sigmund Freud and James Joyce. A parallel contemporary story features a young academic and a brilliant entrepreneur who clash over how to fill in gaps in the historical record, what makes history come alive, and who should be able to tell these stories.

Funny, smart, and sexy, the play imagines a collision between two of the great revolutionary thinkers of the modern period, and introduces us to the women who inspired them, challenged them, and were ultimately eclipsed by them.

You can see why our conversation on the way home took the turns it did.

When we visited the real Sistine Chapel, we did so in the company of several hundred other people. We all remember the stentorian tones of the security fellow who stood up on the altar and bellowed SILENZIO! every few minutes. It didn't work and the cacophony in there was not surprising, with all of us packed in like sardines. As well as calling for quiet, he was warning "No photos! No videos!" which we dutifully obeyed although we were the only ones. Most people around us were clicking and whirring as though the man was talking to everyone else but not to them. It's quite rude when you think about it.

I've been reading for years that the vast numbers who visit the chapel can't help but have a negative effect on the art. There are often more than 20,000 visitors in a single day and art experts say that the breath, sweat, dust and pollution brought in by such crowds are doing permanent damage. It seems hard to know what the solution is to this problem.

Everyone would like to see the chapel looking like this:

And this:

For most people though, it's like this:

Meanwhile, back in Halifax, Unconscious at the Sistine Chapel runs until June 26 and if you're anywhere near, I definitely recommend it.

The past and the present at Shelburne Museum and Farms

A word of explanation: I was doing some work on my archives when I came across this piece and was stopped by the words "Donald Trump" in the first paragraph. I also saw the words "the new age of vulgarity." It seemed worth reading and even more when it turned out not to be about Donald Trump at all.

This piece was written in 1989 after a trip to Vermont that Dan and I took that summer. It was our first time to visit Shelburne — the Museum and the Farms. We loved it and we've been back a couple of times, most recently in the summer of 2013 when all three of us went.

This column was published in The Daily News September 26, 1989 and the photos are from early August 2013. They seem to go well together though.

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Nowadays, we read — usually with contempt and disgust — about the shenanigans of the very rich, the likes of Leona Helmsley and Donald Trump and Malcolm Forbes. It seems there's a new age of vulgarity and that people with vast wealth have lost all notions of graciousness.

But if the Helmsleys and Trumps and Forbes and their ilk are tasteless and ostentatious — and they are — they're certainly not the first generation of American big spenders.

In Vermont recently, we stayed in Shelburne, a small town in the northwest corner (near Burlington) set on the shores of Lake Champlain.

Shelburne is famous for two big attractions: the Shelburne Farms and the Shelburne Museum. Sounds pretty ordinary, doesn't it? But as examples of spending huge amounts of money and as tourist attractions, which is what they are now, I truly found each of them to be one of a kind.

The Farm is a 1,000 acre agricultural estate built in the 1880s by Dr. William Seward Webb and wife, Lila Vanderbilt Webb as their summer residence. (Both the Webb's and the Vanderbilt's money came from railroads.) Dr. Webb bought up many small Vermont farms to accumulate his land because he wanted to found a model farm and develop new methods of agriculture that would be of use to his neighbouring Vermonters.

His farm was fashioned by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who designed New York's Central Park, with every lane, every rise of land, every tree part of a careful plan.

The barns were designed by the best-known architects of the day, with special attention paid to the buildings that could be seen from the house so they would blend easily into the grounds and the foliage.

And the house. The house has 110 rooms, rolling landscaped gardens, a lily pond and a spectacular view of Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains on the other side. It took one railway car of coal a day to heat.

The coach barn, which is the most attractive outbuilding since it's fairly near the house and Dr. Webb didn't want to offend his guests with an ugly structure, once housed 150 vehicles — every possible carriage, coach and sleigh that was available at the time.

Today, the farm is still working and is managed by a foundation. The house is an inn and restaurant, the rest of the estate is a tool for teaching and demonstrating the stewardship of agricultural and natural resources. The farm is famous for its cheese — it has a large mail-order business — and I can vouch for the excellence of that cheese.

Just up the road a piece is the Shelburne Museum, lifelong project of the Webbs' daughter-in-law, Electra Havemeyer Webb. Her project is described as “a collection of collections” and I can't do any better than that.

At the age of 18, Electra came home with her first cigar store Indian. Her mother said, “What in the world have you done?” She replied, “I've bought a work of art.” It was the beginning of a collecting mania that continued for decades until she finally needed a place to put all her stuff.

So she started to drag buildings from all over Vermont to house her various collections. Today, there are 40 buildings on 45 acres containing an enormous amount of Americana — not just cigar store Indians but carousel animals, dolls, antique furniture of all sorts and ages, quilts, tools, paintings, a complete old railway station and a private car of the sort that rich people used to travel in, a Lake Champlain paddle steamer (for which she built a series of canals and a railroad to move it overland from the Lake), the last covered bridge in Vermont and a lighthouse (both of which she had dismantled, moved and rebuilt, board by board). And I've only scratched the surface.

Even with all this, to me the most amazing thing is that after Electra died, her children wanted to make a monument to her. So they took apart her New York City Park Ave. apartment — walls, ceiling, floors, furnishings, everything — and moved the whole thing up to Vermont and into a house they'd built for this purpose. You can go in and take a tour and see how the really rich lived and you can also — right in this small, Vermont town — look at priceless paintings by Renoir, Rembrandt, Monet, Manet, Corot, Goya, Courbet, Degas and family friend Mary Cassatt.

These are fascinating experiences and there seems to be something more acceptable in the way the Webbs spent their money, compared to how the very rich today spend theirs.

But I suppose it also doesn't hurt to remember that while the Webbs were living their memorable lives, a great many people in the United States were living in abject poverty: immigrant women and children were virtually slaves in the garment districts, there were many homeless and unemployed, there were people working to reduce the 80-hour work week, and black Americans were just one generation away from official slavery.

I guess there were worse ways to spend a fortune than the Webbs chose, but surely some of it could also have been spent in better ways.

I loved looking at your dishes, Your Majesty

Her Majesty celebrated a birthday today and in honour of that, I'm going to show you some of her pretty dishes.

These beautiful pieces are part of the exhibition in The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace. There are also paintings, antique exotic furniture and other random beautiful things. We visited the gallery last fall and found a nice combination of art and history.

We start with a gravy boat and move on to a tureen:

gravy boat

tureen

tureen and extra pieces

I would serve tea every day if I had such beautiful tea service sets as these:

forget-me-not

I love to set a pretty table and I don't mind being a little flamboyant but maybe this would be going too far.

What would I serve on this platter? Fruit, I guess. The nachos probably wouldn't be appropriate here although I think I see red peppers – and a tomato.

And what would I use this for?

mystery piece

Or this?

mystery piece 2

I think it's safe to say that none of these beautiful pieces is dishwasher safe so being the practical person I am, perhaps I'll just be happy to look at them and leave them on Her Majesty's shelf and let her worry about them.

Meanwhile, we're definitely art lovers but William and I always grab the opportunity to have a little rest on a comfy bench:

The best thing I ever ate. . .

There’s a television show that airs on the Food Network called The Best Thing I Ever Ate. I’ve never watched it but I’ve seen its promo, many times. It involves Food Network chefs reminiscing about something wonderful they’ve eaten while a variety of culinary samples are paraded across our screen.

I don’t think any of their choices look particularly appealing but it’s all a matter of taste, isn’t it? Literally.

And I began to wonder what my response would be if I were asked: What’s the best thing you ever ate?

Well, let me tell you.

Years ago, on a trip to Portugal, we had landed in Lisbon late in the evening and decided to get up early and head for Faro, the capital of the Algarve, much to the south. We got to the train station just in time to be herded aboard — we heard the conductor use the word “Faro” so we assumed we were in the right car — and in spite of a crushing crowd, we managed to get a seat. A wooden seat, if I remember correctly.

We figured that once we got going, there would be some kind of vending service available — we’d had nothing to eat or drink since the night before — and we’d be able to get a cup of coffee, at least.

About 15 minutes into the trip, all the people around us began hauling food out of their bags from under their seats: spicy, garlicky sausages, cheeses, chunks of crusty bread. Bottles of red wine and water. They looked at us very kindly and offered to share their food but we didn’t really know quite what to do and we thanked them and tried to look as if we had already eaten.

The train was old and slow and a milk-run. It chugged through the Portuguese countryside and stopped at most towns and villages. If we hadn’t been in such need of food and coffee, it’s possible we might have enjoyed the scenery and the atmosphere.

At one point — I have no idea how long into the trip it was — when the train stopped, most of our fellow passengers stampeded off and returned minutes later laden with food and drinks from a platform outside the station. If only we had known what they knew!

It was early evening when the train pulled into Faro. I picture us being the only passengers getting off but we probably weren’t although many of our fellow travellers had disembarked at different stops along the way and the train had definitely emptied out. Faro seemed quiet and dusty and deserted. I felt we should have been riding in on horseback.

(This is a generic picture of Faro. It still looks quiet.)

We walked from the station to the centre of town — exhausted from sitting on those wooden seats all day and, of course, hungry and thirsty — and went into a dim little bar. The waiter brought us cold beer and we managed to communicate to him that we’d like some food too. He was solicitous but we were able to understand that the kitchen was closed. He gestured encouragingly, however, and seemed to say the equivalent of, “Just a minute, I’ll see what I can do.”

He disappeared and came back in a few minutes and placed a plate on the table. There was a crusty roll with a piece of meat inside — meat fried in olive oil and garlic. The oil was soaking into the bread — and that was it. Bread, a piece of meat, olive oil. The meat was not melt-in-your-mouth but it was not tough. It had texture and resistance. It could be chewed.

I cannot begin to describe how good that sandwich was. I can taste it to this day, as I write about it, and I can hear the crunch of that crusty roll as I bit into it. I have tried many times to duplicate it in my own kitchen but I’ve failed. I never expect to succeed.

I’ve eaten in many fine restaurants and been fed by family and friends who are excellent cooks — and I’m a pretty good cook myself. But I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything that I remember and can describe with such relish as that simple sandwich in Faro. It’s the perfect case in point for the expression, “Hunger is the best sauce,” — which I’m interested to see is usually attributed to Cervantes in Don Quixote.

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*This piece is from my archives. It was originally published at Sharon Fraser and readers have enjoyed it so I thought it was time to share it again.

A sculpture garden with both bronze and wood

A few days ago, one of my Facebook friends posted a photo she had taken at the University of Arkansas which she was touring with her college-bound son. The photo was a sculpture made of wood, twisted into cone shapes with doors and windows, about 12 feet high. I recognized these sculptures although I had never seen them before.

In the summer of 2013, our family was in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of the stops on a meandering road trip. Our prime reason for being there was the Basketball Hall of Fame, our second Hall of Fame in as many days. Yes, we had come from Cooperstown, NY, where we enjoyed a visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Both were fun in different ways. The Basketball Hall was much more interactive and William got to work off some energy there and have lots of pictures taken.

William keeping the great rivals Michael Jordan and Larry Bird separated.

When we left the Hall of Fame, we were walking on a quiet street in Springfield when Dan led us into a pretty park/courtyard. We discovered we were in the company of some old friends. We were in the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Garden at the Springfield Museums. Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) was born in Springfield.

Sculptor Lark Grey Dimond-Cates, who is also Geisel's step-daughter, created the endearing bronze sculptures of Dr. Seuss and his most beloved characters for the Springfield Library & Museums Association, located in the heart of this city which is on the Connecticut River in Western Massachusetts.

Here's Dr. Seuss with The Cat in the Hat and other characters in the background and below.

"You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch."

As we stopped to look at The Lorax and to read the inspiring inscription that accompanies him, we got our first good look at the large sculpture made of twisted wood that was behind him.

When we did our research on the sculptor, we found he was Patrick Dougherty and that he's made these wood sculptures all over the world. I can't begin to describe them all so please go have a look at them. They're really interesting!

This is the one at the University of Arkansas – this photo is from the website:

I'm glad to have a chance to look back at another of our enjoyable trips but I also appreciate how it came about. I liked that Kyran Pittman – from Newfoundland but now from Arkansas – posted a photo with some sculptures that I, here in Nova Scotia, recognized because I'd seen his work in Springfield, MA.

There's an interconnectedness – a small-world-ness – that I find very enjoyable.