The Acropolis Up Close

Finally, this morning, we visited the Acropolis of Athens. For many years I have wished I could see this very famous place, including the most famous temple, the Parthenon, and the Erechtheion, which is the temple decorated with the breathtaking caryatids (female statues holding the structure on their heads). Our tour was planned for us to arrive early in the morning to avoid the heat and the crowds. Huge numbers of tourists were in fact there with us, but we understand that four cruise ships were about to send thousands more tourists later in the day. 

Walking up the rather steep stone path.

Beyond the trees we could look upwards towards the temples on the top.
The major structures were built during the Greek classic era, in the 5th century BCE.

A stadium is alongside the path: it was built much later by the Romans, who always used arches.
(Classic Greek architecture doesn’t use arches.)

Every column is amazing!

The Parthenon is the iconic Greek Temple. Its construction started in 447 BCE, and it was completed in 438,
with some of the decorations completed a few years later. An amazing speed for such a masterpiece.
There’s a lot of history here about wars, generals, politicians, and the great artist Phidias.

The Cariatids at the Acropolis are copies. We saw the originals yesterday at the museum.

Every view is breathtaking.

More photos of the Parthenon

The steps up to the building have an interesting feature: they bow upward in the middle,
which creates the characteristic look of the building from a distance.

The history and foundational nature of this place would make a profound discussion. Years ago, in college, I took an entire year course on Greek archaeology, with many classes on the Parthenon and its builders and its architectural features. As I walked around I could remember much more of this course than I thought I would. However, I won’t try to repeat all that here today.

It was a wonderful experience that I’ve always hoped for.

Leaving the Acropolis

As we walked down the slope to reboard the bus, we could see that the crowd was becoming ever more dense. Too dense, in fact, for more photos: people stopping to take selfies were holding up the people behind on the stairway. The sun was strong and the temperature was rising, as well. We were happy that our tour had been planned to take place first thing in the morning. 

As I say, I have always dreamed of visiting here.

No ancient Mediterranean archaeological site is complete without its resident cats.

Blog post and photos © 2025 mae sander

The Acropolis Museum

A wonderful museum full of treasures of the ancient Greek world.

Athens and the classics of ancient Greece have been a dream of mine since I was in high school. This morning (Friday, July 11) we landed at the Athens airport, and this afternoon we visited the Acropolis Museum. The museum opened in 2009, and it contains wonders! Its mission is to preserve some of the fragile masterpieces, as well as to display the riches of Athens. Here are a few of my photos (without much documentation!)

When the excavations for the modern building began, of course they found layer upon layer of earlier constructions. In front of the entrance, you look down into remains of a Roman city.

A modern model of the sculpture on the pediment of the Parthenon.

Archaic statues. (I will post more about them eventually.)

The porch of the Erechtheion temple on the Acropolis is supported by cariatids, that is

sculptures of women who support the structure on their heads. These statues were degrading badly

due to air pollution and acid rain, and special laser techniques were devised to clean them.

The Parthenon seen from the museum.

Huge windows on the top floor provide a magnificent view of the Acropolis.

Photos © 2025 mae sander

The Acropolis from Afar

 

The Acropolis as we fist saw it from the roof of out hotel on Friday, July 11.

Morning: moon over the Acropolis on Saturday, July 12.

Photos © 2025 mae sander

Part Way There

 

We flew from Michigan to Boston this morning. Our flight to Athens is predicted to leave on time. With any luck, we’ll be traveling soon!!

Does Life Follow Art? Or What?

 A Short Read

Today: news that Grok, an AI bot inside X (Twitter) has begun producing antisemitic comments to relatively ordinary questions: 

“The comments were part of a flood of offensive responses offered by Grok in recent days that shocked even users who have become accustomed to offensive speech on X.   In a statement posted on xAI’s account for Grok, company officials said they are ‘aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts.’ They said they would improve Grok’s training model.” (source)

A story by Israeli author Etgar Keret, from the collection titled Autocorrect, had an incident very like this, though set in the future when all information comes from a bot named Sigmund:

“Simple queries on Sigmund, the most popular search engine of the day, received peculiar answers that occasionally bordered on trolling: a young man from Stuttgart wondered where he could buy cut-rate designer shoes and was told he’d be better off barefoot. An elderly woman from Wisconsin asked when Thanksgiving would be celebrated that year and was answered wryly: ‘Whenever you’re feeling most thankful.’ And a Chinese student from Shanghai University who wanted Sigmund to recommend the best antidepressant in the world was given the chemical formula for hydrogen cyanide.”

The very short stories in this collection make many pointed observations about life in modern times, especially in Israel, where things seem to me to be even more off-kilter than what we are living through now in the USA. 

Review © 2025 mae sander

Detective Kosuke Kindaichi: Another Japanese Mystery Story

Good reading: The Little Sparrow Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (1902-1981). His detective in this novel, Kosuke Kindaichi, is eccentric, as I have found him in several other novels from a very long and permanently popular series. The action takes place in a village somewhere in rural Japan in 1955. The suspense builds as a series of murders baffle the local people and all of the professional detectives involved in trying to solve them. 

Kindaichi’s appearance conceals his brilliance, as witnessed by his colleague: “Inspector Isokawa looked at his friend, who, as usual, appeared dishevelled in his tired white-and-indigo kimono, which he wore with a pair of threadbare summer hakama.” This description also hints at the preponderance of details from Japanese life that may seem challenging to the modern American reader — but these details create a wonderful traditional atmosphere in post-war Japan. In my opinion, it requires patience and determination to read these novels — but it’s worth doing.

At the beginning of the novel, as is usual with many Japanese translations, the editors supply a list of characters in the village where the action takes place. In this novel, the list has 30 of them, grouped by families; most of the families have more than one identifying name. Also included: the names of several policemen and the detectives, including Kosuke Kindaichi, who is the principal character in the numerous novels in this series.

The breadth of descriptions and variety of personalities in the story create a vivid picture of village life — as experienced by the non-local detectives. I find this fascinating (as always in this series of books). I especially liked some of the food scenes, for example:

“It had already gone eleven o’clock by the time Kosuke Kindaichi and Inspector Isokawa stepped out of the bath and sat down to a hearty breakfast. The meal was comprised of miso soup with nameko mushrooms, salt-grilled salmon, stewed vegetables, and an egg each—and although it was an altogether simple affair, the delicious miso soup filled their empty stomachs.”

Other details involve the geography of this small place: in fact, the solution to the mystery, as of course reasoned out by Kindaichi, involves much trekking around on foot and on bicycles. The reader is offered a great amount of information about how the various houses and farm buildings (especially a winery where a terrible sour wine is made) are placed. 

The map is essential: 

A map of the village where the action occurs. 

The novel includes many examples of Japanese culture, such as a scene near a statue of the folk god Jizo.

I was quite intrigued and googled for images of this child-like god, who wears little clothes that people make for him.

Seishi Yokomizo (1902–81) was a famous and much-loved Japanese mystery writer, and Detective Kosuke Kindaichi -- who appears in many of the author's other novels -- has been in a variety of TV shows in Japan, and even in video games. The novels are currently being republished: this is a recent edition, published last fall. All those I have read are great for suspense, clever plotting, character development, and depictions of a now-lost culture from the mid-20th century.

Blog post© 2025 mae sander

Weekend Fun

French Detectives

“Murder In…” — a very long series that we just started.

“L’Art du Crime” — sometimes far-fetched, but usually fun.

Both of these series have subtitles, of course, but I can still sometimes understand what they are saying in French. Both have tons of local color! French provincial towns and cities or Paris and the Louvre. All great to see.

Celebrating the Fourth of July

More Fireworks Photos

I love fireworks! So glad for this unofficial display in our local park.

Saturday Afternoon Ride in the Countryside

The corn is growing in the fields not far from our small city.

Reading fiction and essays 

Homage to Kafka: Ten Short Stories

a cage went in search of a bird

I can’t read all these stories one-after-another, the way I read a regular anthology, because the writers were doing homage to Kafka. Therefore most of the selections are very weird, surreal, and frightening. Characters are trapped or they are uncomprehending, or they are desperate to control their own circumstances which have gotten away from them. The fear and dislocations expressed here seem to outdo Kafka, whose 100th death anniversary they were written to celebrate — he died on June 3, 1924. Some of the stories seem more like Italo Calvino than like Kafka because they are not only surreal but they double back on themselves in a self-referential way.

If somehow you decide to read this collection, consider yourself warned!

Homage to Nobody: Essays by Rebecca Solnit

Essays by Rebecca Solnit: all written before the current administration took over.

The world was already becoming strange and disastrous when these collected essays were written a few years ago, many during or just after the pandemic. The book was published in 2025, but the author’s position of cautious optimism about the future of a number of issues (even climate change) and about the possibility of political action to mitigate them seem depressingly retro. I can’t bear this optimism in view of this past six months of rapid decommissioning of positive endeavors of the US government and the replacement of responsible officials with lackeys who oppose the earlier policies and are only destructive.

The more I read these essays from the past, even with a few author’s notes written in 2025, the more I simply find them painfully obsolete. The small possible changes played up in Solnit’s essays are now obliterated by our newly powerful backwards-looking and kleptocratic government. The possibility, for example, that there could be some way to counter fossil fuel dominance has been utterly cancelled along with the defunding of most government-funded projects to overcome it and the re-empowering of the interests of the fossil fuel industry. Ditto social change. Ditto environmentalism. Optimism is now simply crazy.

The more I read, the more I find myself speed reading because Solnit’s rosy view that small changes will counter big trends has become so impossible. Virtually all positive actions for racial and social justice, environmental protection, higher education, and many other virtuous initiatives once taken by our nation have been brutally cancelled in just half a year by the new administration. Horrifying!

Some depressing quotes:

“A standard complaint of the right: the real victim is the racist who has been called a racist, not the victim of his racism; the real oppression is to be impeded in your freedom to oppress.” (p. 81)

  

“The Covid-19 pandemic was, like the climate crisis, a reminder that we are interconnected and that what we do as individuals and together affects the whole; that’s a scientific fact rather than a political position, but those who reject the facts treat them as political opinions (and in some versions of the libertarian worldview, everyone gets to have their own facts).” (p. 59)

“Of course, in the face of the climate crisis, sticking with the status quo isn’t an option. We either make the changes science has shown are necessary and engineering has made possible, or we let runaway change of the worst kind devastate people and places.” (p. 155) 

“All mining needs to be done with respect for the land and people in the vicinity, but the impact of mining for renewables needs to be weighed against the far more devastating impact of mining for and burning fossil fuel.” (p. 144) 

Don’t bother to read this book — it no longer speaks to our current situation, and there are much more important issues to think about! Of course I hope that some miracle will stop the current effort to create a totalitarian and anti-progressive government in Washington, but I have no rational reason to expect this outcome.

Quote for Today

“More than 80 years ago, as France was under occupation and repression, America welcomed exiled researchers, offering them a helping hand and allowing them to keep science alive. And now, in a sad reversal of history, some American scientists have arrived in France in search of a space for freedom, thought and research.” — Éric Berton, president of  Aix-Marseille University, quoted in the Guardian.

Sunday Morning In My Garden 

Blog post © 2025 mae sander