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Today I had the real pleasure of being with Nives Fabecic Bojic, one of the most knowledgeable Croatian guides, on a short field trip to Solin. Four months ago, as excavation began on the construction of a new Cultural Center near the post office in Solin, the remains of a surely fabulous Roman villa were discovered. While Split’s Diocletian’s Palace still has some mosaics that can be enjoyed, none of them are as gorgeous as what construction workers found here. In addition to the mosaics, the wonderful remnants of a classical hypocaust, the ancient Roman equivalent of today’s hot air, circulating underfloor heating system, was also unearthed.

The most stunning mosaic found so far is this gorgeous peacock, an early Christian resurrection symbol, since Christians believed its flesh would never decay. The symbol implies that the owner may have been a Christian and thus would date the villa from the 4th or 5thC AD

The actual site, near the Solin post office, is in the middle of a residential/commercial district behind the main street that runs parallel to the Jadro River in Solin. The mosaics are covered with plastic to protect them. When we were there, we carefully rolled them back and gently splashed some water on the mosaics to bring out their marvelous colors and intricate patterns.

The entire mosaic is much larger, the peacock is in the center surrounded by a circled. (Photo by Vladimir Dugandžić/Cropix, Slobodna Dalmacija)

The hypocaust’s pilae stacks are in the center of this semi-circular room. An important feature in every opulent Roman villa, a hypocaust (from the ancient Greek hypo or under and caust, or burnt) was created to regulate the heat in a Roman bath. Enormous public baths had gigantic hypocausts. In villas, the bath was just a single room, whose floor and walls were ingeniously heated. First, an underground furnace was constructed, fed by wood. Then, to direct its heat, an array of clay tile chimneys called pilae stacks were built. Mounted on top of these small circular chimneys was the floor. The elevated floor itself was heated and the open airspace around the pilae allowed the heated air to flow up the walls as well.

The total area of the site is probably less than 500sq. meters and not all of it has been excavated, so I will update this post so we can all enjoy the newest discoveries!

The peacock mosaic is under the blue tarp towards the rear of the site

In the eastern corner, also covered by a tarp, is another wonderful mosaic, this one featuring a lotus blossom motif.

Simple elegance. still beautiful after more than 1600 years!

No one is quite sure when the site will be fully explored, but when it is, it will be a marvelous new addition to the Roman wonders that are both above and beneath the surface all over this part of Dalmatia.

Solin, a small town just 10 minutes from Split, was originally called Salona, the ancient Roman capital of Dalmatia. During Emperor Diocletian’s time, circa 300AD, it was a major city of as many as 60,000 people, so the chance of finding the remains of an opulent villa like this one, just outside the ancient city itself, is one more reason why more protection and funding is needed to ensure that Croatia’s rich cultural legacy is preserved.

What other treasures lie below today’s highway that cuts off Salona’s ancient harbor from its metropolis as well as under the sidewalks and streets of Solin’s modern central business district is anyone’s guess.

But like the famous line from the X Files, with my one word addition: the truth is still out there!

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November 2022 Update:

When this was written, just six days after the “war” in Ukraine was treated like a media event. And my comments were based on these first few weeks when it seems every international media was trying to beat each other, and us, into submission with hysterical reports of anything that resembled “war”.

Now that it has been more than a year, the devastation IS in fact, far worse than anyone could imagine. The savage, inhuman intensity of Russia’s targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure is beyond comprehension and is totally inhumane. Russia deserves the global condemnation it has received. So in retrospect, this blog seems quite bizarre. But I am leaving it up because at the TIME it was was written, it was what I believed was true and had to be acknowleged.

Here is the original text:

I’ve been watching RT, CNN, FOX, BBC and Al Jazeera during the past week trying to see how the world’s media views Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after six days.

The award for overt racism, fear and war-mongering goes to CNN, the network with the largest on the ground presence in Ukraine.

How embarrassing to see Clarissa Ward, whose riveting UN appearance several years ago told ambassadors that as a veteran war correspondent she had “never seen anything as horrific as what was/is going on in Syria”, practically in tears interviewing middle class Ukrainians about how tough life is in Kiev.

Aleppo in Syria after being bombed from the air repeatedly

A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

To CNN and other media outlets, the “sense of shock” in Ukraine is “overwhelming, seeing these people walking, pulling their suitcases in the freezing cold” who “may never return to their homes!”

With 44 million people, Ukraine is a huge, well populated country. The fact that 2.8 million have left is tragic, but it’s 5% of the population. And most of them will have homes to go back to.

By comparison 6.8 million Syrians were forced out of their homes our of a population of just 13 million–almost 50%!

Long forgotten are these Syrians, Afghani’s, Iraqi’s, etc. whose homes were completely blown up and family members murdered and with only the clothes on their back and some plastic bags had nothing to look forward to but living in squalid tents for years to come.

And no Western country waiting to welcome them with open arms, hot meals and place to stay like the Ukrainians.

Watching Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer talk about “families ripped apart”…..”soldiers taking children and babies and putting them on the train”…people “standing in the train for hours” is like watching rabid dogs foaming at the mouth waiting for food scraps.

Gosh this is so much worse than being on an overcrowded, leaking boat on the Mediterranean! Those poor people, on a train!

Thank goodness that when the Ukrainians arrive in Poland, they are greeted with food, water, free housing and welcome smiles!

Unlike African migrant refugees who make it to Europe on foot and then are too often greeted with rifle butts by “border guards”.

Wrong color, wrong religion.

But the death toll could be catastrophic

While the loss of a single life in this absolutely avoidable conflict is tragic, that an invading force of 200,000 soldiers has somehow inexplicably managed to kill less than 500 people in the first week means either they are terrible shots or far more likely, that civilians are clearly were being wantonly targeted.

Although this has changed dramatically since the first weeks and apartment blocks have been attacked, and civilians are now being ruthlessly killed, the media’s Euro-centric focus on “atrocities” as “the worst since WW2” underscores their inability to somehow consider African and Middle Eastern atrocities as comparable.

While the footage of dead bodies strewn along the streets of Bucha is appalling, it can’t even begin to compare to the actual death toll of migrants, Iraqis, Afghani’s, Africans. etc.

Sorry, we can’t stop traffic, not enough dead people yet (Brendan Hoffman photo)

“DID YOU HEAR THAT?”

Seeing teams of CNN reporters sensationalizing “another explosion” hour after hour (some reporters actually say “did you hear that?”) as if it were the Apocalypse, and repeatedly showing a dozen bags, is just plain sick.

How dare you get so close!

The big news this week is that Russian missiles hit a military training base, just 12 miles from the Polish border, which CNN says is a “major escalation”–as if a military training base is somehow off limits?

The hysteria at CNN is as delusional as Trump claiming he won the election–to quote various CNN commentators: “this is the worst Europe has seen since the Second World War”.

Putin is Hitler, watch out Europe, he is coming for all of you! (BBC photo)

Apparently CNN forgets the almost FOUR YEAR siege of Sarajevo that began in 1992 that left 11,000 mostly Muslim people dead. And the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in the 1990’s Homeland War that killed more than 500 civilians and 1000 soldiers.

Images that should have horrified us of gassed Syrians and murdered Afghani’s “accidentally killed” by a botched US airstrike don’t count.

Almost all of the reporting focuses on “what could have been a disaster” but actually is something very different, like one clip with a verbal warning that what we are about to see “can be disturbing”, showing TWO DEAD RUSSIANS, as the reporter almost vomit because of “how horrible this all is”.

It’s pathetic to see Matthew Chance showing the “horrific” damage from shelling as he points to a lamp post (I am not making this up) and says “look, this lamp post is melted” from the bombing.

To make us feel sick, we are shown a pregnant woman being carried in a stretcher who later died, or Sara Seidner at a Polish animal rescue clinic holding a baby goat (seriously) telling us that it is a “member of the family” and is a “war refugee”.

Of all the media I am watching, Al Jazeera is the clear winner–clear-eyed and doing its best not to soup up the “news” with video of shrapnel in the street as if shrapnel were bodies. FOX of course blames it all on Biden. And RT blames it all on the US for being so pushy about supporting democracy over communism.

But CNN’s real crime is using its influence as “the most watched cumulative TV news source” with 56 million viewers, to foment such overt racism and hysteria.

IT’S ALL ABOUT CIVILIZED WHITE PEOPLE

Like all mainstream media, somehow we just have to believe that this war is totally different because “It’s not just Ukraine, it’s all Europe”.

Them vs. us. Them, The niggers, the kykes, the Mics, the Wops, the Slopes, the Spics.

Us. The Ukrainians. Our blue-eyed, white Christian brothers.

Uh oh, this is really serious!!

Not migrants: more than 22,000 mostly Black and non-European Muslim migrants have died at sea in the Mediterranean since 2014, but the mainstream media gave them barely a glance and of course no foreign government got sanctioned or accused of being so inhumane that these poor folks risked their lives to risk death to sail to a better life.

Not Bosnians, Again, not an invasion in its 6th DAY, but a FOUR year siege of Sarajevo that began in 1992 that left 11,000 mostly Muslim people dead. And the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in the 1990’s Homeland War that killed more than 500 civilians and 1000 soldiers.

Not Iraqis: 66,000 Muslim civilians were killed by US weaponry, another 100,000 plus soldiers. Sanctions? Why bother, we’ll just install a puppet government like Putin wants to do in Ukraine and build the largest US Embassy in the world (because clearly we care so much about the Iraqi people).

Not Yemeni’s: 6,900 Muslim and other non-Christian civilians were killed since 2018 by Saudi-backed militia, using US weaponry. And despite the bin Laden family; the direct Saudi 9/11 connection and their perfect human rights record, sanctioning a country that bought $110 billion of US weapons last year and will buy $350 billion over the next 10 years is laughable. After all, they have so many enemies and need all that firepower.

Not Syrians: 159,000 Muslim civilians since 2011. Nobody cares that Aleppo was bombed out of existence. Sanctioning Assad? Easy peasy–but why bother?

Not Afghanis: US airstrikes have killed at least 22,000 Muslim Afghani’s since 2011. The heroin trade we never killed, nor did we sanction the Pakistani government who helped fund the rebels.

This is only a partial list, but it underscores the failure of the West and its mainstream media to truly treat the world as one.

Are we supposed to believe that some wars, some genocides are more acceptable than others?

The real tragedy here is how Ukraine is being used as a sacrificial lamb to justify NATO from becoming irrelevant.

That the US and its allies refused to allow Ukraine to proclaim neutrality like Finland or Sweden, knowing full well that being part of NATO with the possibility of having troops and missiles all along its huge border with Russia would be suicide.

Of once again reminding the world that people are always less important than politics.

And that the only people who do matter are white.

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I’m a long-time admirer of Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Alien, Thelma and Louise, Kingdom of Heaven and more).

So when I read that after Scott heard that the scriptwriters of The Last Duel were Matt Damon, who stars as the Norman knight Jean de Carrouges, and Ben Affleck, who has a major role in the movie, and said “…I knew I was the only one who could direct it”, I was hooked.

Tonight, I just returned from seeing the film and I have never been more disappointed in my entire movie-going life—which started with the Wizard of Oz.

Rather than launch into what was wrong with this film, let’s start with a question: 

What do all of your favorite films have in common?

The answer:  A great story.

Sure the directing, acting, music, etc. is critical, but if the story–the screen-writing–is poor, not even good acting can save it.

And this is just part of what’s so horribly wrong with The Last Duel.  

The script is beyond terrible.

Most egregious and downright stuperous was listening to actors using 14th C “language” in one scene and then 21stC language in another.  Sometimes in the same scene!

And when a scene screamed for some emotional content, we get blank stares and dumbed down dialogue so wooden and telegraphed I found myself gasping with disbelief.

How was it possible for any of the actors, much less Scott, to allow this to happen?.

And it’s not like they had trouble coming up with the story.  The movie is not only based on historical fact, but on a book!

For those who don’t know, The Last Duel is about a real event–the last duel in France which took place in Paris in 1386.

The two combatants were the Norman knight Jean de Carrouges and squire Jacques Le Gris.

Carrouges had accused Le Gris of raping his wife Marguerite and when he couldn’t get justice at a lower level, he went to King Charles VI to appeal and request a duel.

The duel wasn’t some simple jousting event. It was a fight to the death.  As a court and King-approved judicial “remedy“, whichever combatant was still alive at the end of the duel would be declared the winner, as a sign of God’s will.  But if Carrouges was killed, as punishment for her false accusation, Margeurite would be burned alive.

Whoaa….sure sounds like the makings of a really good story!

Because rape was so common during the Medieval period and women were treated like chattel, coming forward and accusing a man of rape was more than courageous. 

This is why the movie was billed not just as a Ridley Scott action-packed 14thC epic, but the harrowing story of a woman brave enough to stand up and tell her truth at the risk of being burned alive during a time no woman would dare.

Since the writers and director decided to do this project because they felt it resonated so much with today’s #MeToo era, I was really looking forward to how they would weave Marguerite’s courage into the whole story.

Their total failure to do so, or to elicit any real empathy for the plight of women not only in Medieval times, but since time began, is the real tragedy.

It’s one thing to actually be pretentious or to aim so high and miss.  But since no one involved in The Last Duel seems to have a clue about what it’s about or how to tell the story, I have to believe they just lost their way.

Somehow Scott couldn’t even figure out a way to tell the story straight.  So he decided to give each of the three protagonists time to tell their version.   By creating three movies, The Last Duel drones on for almost 2.5 hours.   It needed 90 minutes tops.

His decision was fatally flawed because the conclusion of the movie is obvious,.  The Last Duel isn’t portrayed as a mystery.  What each character feels or says can’t add depth or resonance to what every person in the theatre knows: Marguerite was raped, period.

One would think that with Harvey Weinstein still fresh in all our memories, Scott and company would have had more sense.  If the subtext of the movie is to shine a light on the relevance of what happened in 1386 to today, you don’t need mirrors.    

But Scott thinks we do. 

So just in case we did forget, among all the movie’s distractions (rivalry between Carrouges and LeGris, lots of battles, venal officials) Scott introduces each chapter with explanatory text on the screen introducing each protagonist—but when it’s Marguerite’s turn, the words “ the truth“ stay on the screen just a few seconds longer. 

Like, oh gee, the movie is so long and so bad we may forget it’s about rape, not the duel?

Having made the decision to make a 2.5 hour movie, with such wretched dialogue and wooden acting, Scott tried to save the day with what he does best—epic battle scenes amped up with bloody sword play and lots of Dolby surround sound metal clashing; sweeping overhead shots of castles and countryside and more.  

While the battle scenes and watching horses galloping fiercely into fabulous castles added authenticity, they couldn’t save Affleck’s acting (he is blond in this movie) or watching the 18 year old Charles VI  (the mad king) act totally composed and speaking legalese like a true monarch and then acting idiotic a few scenes later (his first recorded actual historical mad “event“ was years after the duel).  

But perhaps the most damning thing about this movie is the crucial scene where Marguerite tells her husband that she was raped.

It’s so embarrassing to watch, it’s as if Affleck and Damon had no clue how a woman expresses herself. 

And then having to watch this same scene three different times just made me cringe.

The movie should have ended with the duel and its aftermath–the victor, bloody but proud, being applauded by thousands of real extras as he rode through the streets of Paris.

But Scott couldn’t resist taking us back to a beautiful, calm Marguerite watching her little son frolicking in a sunlit garden…and ends it with close up on her face.

Oh gee, wasn’t it awful that she got raped?

And aren’t we all so very glad that she’s so happy now and has a toddler and didn’t get burned alive?

 

 

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Fruit Square, known as to locals as Vocni trg (“fruit square” in Croatian) is named for its former use as a bustling outdoor table market where women from surrounding villages came to sell their fruit. For many Splitcani, Fruit Sq. is remembered with great affection as central part of a famous local TV series, Velo Misto.

This old photo show Fruit Square in its heyday as a place where fruit sellers could come and set up their tables

The Milesi Palace with another view of the Marko Marulic statue, seen through a cut in the Venetian walls from the waterfront, facing north

And in front of this palace, on its own pedestal, is the famous 1925 statue of Marko Marulic, the father of Croatian literature, by Croatia’s most celebrated artist Ivan Mestrovic (saved from the Nazi’s by the Pope, in WW2, he first escaped to Switzerland and then to the US where he taught and later was personally given US citizenship by then President Dwight Eisenhower).

15thC Venetian tower, used not only to keep the Turks at bay but to keep unruly Split citizens from getting rebellious ideas. Mestrovic’s famous statue of Marko Marulic, the father of Croatian literature is in the center of the Square.

Like clockwork, the pigeons wait in front of the Fruit Sq. Professional Exchange Office as well as on the ledge above, waiting for their breakfast

“Wait, I’m coming”

Like any well-trained bird, animal or human, the hungry children all come to mommy and wait for their chance to chow down. Not to worry, there is enough for everyone.

“Breakfast is served!”

What I am still amazed at is knowing that every day they will be fed in front of the Marulic statue, they still line up at the exchange office front door.

Another one of so many marvelous delights that makes living in this extraordinary 1,700 year-old living city so endlessly enjoyable.

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Since the 13thC, Split’s iconic St. Lawrence’s Square, known today as the Pjaca (“pee-yatsah”), the “People’s square” (Narodni trg in Croatian) as it has affectionately been called for centuries, has been a favorite gathering point not only for locals but visitors from around the world.

The Central Hotel corners the Pjaca and since opening as a restaurant in 1776 and then a hotel in 1890, it has long been acknowledged as the city’s first cafe/coffee house. While the hotel has been shuttered for more than a century, its expansive, shaded outdoor terrace offering coffee and beverages throughout the day and night as well as traditional Dalmatian cuisine (their pasticada–“past-ti-chada–a slow-cooked richly marinated beef stew was always excellent) has kept it alive.

The new Central Hotel, in the Pjaca

UNESCO protected

Like Diocletian’s Palace itself, the Pjaca and other parts of the historic old town core are protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site. This is the reason it has taken more than three and half years for the hotel’s renovations to be completed. Almost every detail, outside and in, had to be approved by conservators to ensure that all historical details were preserved. In mid-May, all 35 rooms, including a 60sq. meter executive suite, will officially open to the public

But before we go into the hotel and see what has been created, let’s talk a bit more about why the Pjaca is so important to Split’s cultural and historic life.

To help orient you, the Pjaca is located at the western end of Kresimirova street. This street connects the Iron, or Western, gate of the walled imperial “palace” fortress of the Roman Emperor Diocletian to its heart, the Peristyl Square, where Cathedral of St. Duje and its famous bell tower are located.

The Old Town and Diocletian’s Palace from above. The North or Golden Gate of the Palace is in the middle of the straight wall next to the green park area at the upper left. The tall bell tower of the Cathedral is the center of Palace. The open rectangular area in the center, below the bell tower, is the Pjaca. Notice the dark area in the right corner of the square. This is the West or Iron gate entrance to Kresimirova street. Photo is from RaST.hr

Diocletian’s Palace has been continuously lived in since it was finished in 305AD. But after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 7thC and the sacking of Salona, the capital of Roman Dalmatia just 6km from Split, the Palace became home to refugees. Much later, under Byzantine rulers, people from around the region moved in and began using chunks of the Palace to build their own homes. Later still, wealthy merchants and aristocrats arrived to build their own palaces inside the walls, especially during Venetian rule.

Life inside a fortress

After almost 1000 years of living inside a fortress, the once wide, elegant Roman streets became a warren. A grand palace became filthy, over-crowded and unruly. All of these problems forced the early citizens of Split to act. Their response was to move west, pushing through the Iron gate to create the open square that is now the Pjaca. Very quickly, they continued to move west, settling what is now the Varos area, Split’s first neighborhood.

From its humble beginnings as an open square, the Pjaca grew to become the growing city’s most important political center. Opposite the Central Hotel is the splendid Old City Hall and Rector’s Palace, which has undergone a major $4 million restoration this year. Built in 1443, this Gothic masterpiece was the administrative and judicial seat of power for the Venetians, who ruled this part of Dalmatia for more than 400 years.

View from one of the rooms, the just-restored Old City Hall, with its Gothic windows, is in the left hand side of the window pane.

Old City Hall was completely restored in 2021

“According to archaeological reports, the foundations of  Old City Hall conserved an ancient line of centuriation which predates Diocletian’s Palace, as well as an old Roman road which ultimately lead towards the Western Gate of Diocletian’s Palace. Excavations showed that the site was once occupied by pre-Romanesque style houses, which were built after the construction of St Lawrence’s church and surrounding graveyard in the 6thC or 7thC A.D. During the 12thC and 13thC, after the formation of the autonomous Split commune, there were noticeable expansions of pre-Romanesque houses. After the occupation by Venetian Republic, People’s Square received a new appearance after St Lawrence’s church was demolished to make way for the new dominating gothic City Hall and Rector’s Palace.” Photo and commentary: RaSt, Split.

The best cafe interior in Eastern Europe

The Central’s wonderful outdoor terrace, always in the shade because of its cavernous roll out awnings, has been spruced up with new tables and chairs and more importantly, with Fabia coffee. It’s the only cafe in Split that offers this famous Viennese brand and the reason it was chosen was to honor the Central’s award in 1920 as the “best cafe interior in Eastern Europe” . The Austrian heritage can be seen inside the hotel as well with custom railings, red carpeted stairways and period details.

The interior cafe/lobby of the Central

Dazzling lobby

As you step inside, the first thing you see is a dazzling tile floor. Not just any tile floor but a custom designed, one-of-a-kind pattern that is like nothing else in Split. Made in Italy, it marvelously celebrates the Central’s old world ambiance. The lobby serves as both an inside cafe/front-desk reception area and extends the full length of the building to become a breakfast area for guests.

What a fabulous floor!

Nevena Cikes, the general manager, asked her assistant Branimir to show me around. He began by taking me through the kitchen to a small door in the wall that I thought would be a cold cellar or maybe where they grew mushrooms?

Two secrets

Surprise, there in front of me was the restored remains of a still working Roman drain connecting the Pjaca to the Peristil! It’s one of many such underground wonders that Romans left us that wind their way under and around the Palace. But seeing the pumps actually working was amazing.

Inside the drain, the spillway extends all the way to the Peristyl;, part of a vast network of Roman drains

Next, it was to see another Central secret–a charming ground floor outside garden terrace, accessible from the street through a narrow door as well as from the lobby.

The narrow entrance to the Central’s ground floor outdoor cafe is on Maruliceva Street.

Planted with lemon and orange trees, it’s an oasis of calm–the perfect place to chat and drink and be surrounded by the fragrant smell of citrus.

Accessible from the street through a narrow door or from the lobby, the outside ground floor Lemon garden is an oasis of calm

Earth tones and great views

We went upstairs next. Although there are only three floors, the Central has elevators as well as several spacious interior staircases and foyers. The attention to detail was extraordinary–take a look at this radiator cover that few will ever notice.

Fitted into the bottom of stairwell, an exquisite radiator cover!

As we entered the first of several rooms the first impression was again, how understated and elegant they were. No chrome and glam, just warm earth tones, lots of extra pillows and wow, really great bathrooms–including the first truly walk in shower (no glass door or partition) that I ever saw!

Adjoining rooms for families. Warm wood herringbone floors, earth tones, great Pjaca views

A Split first–a walk in shower without a partition!

Some of the top floor rooms revealed their steeply gabled ceilings and for those who like the idea of sleeping in some romantic garret attic with great views, you will be thrilled!

Sleeping in the attic!

One of the many charming details, aren’t these great shutters? That’s Old City Hall in the left window pane

And the views from all the windows are just great–with the newly-restored City Hall and street life waiting to be enjoyed. Branimir then showed me and adjoining room suite, perfect for families, before ushering me into the Executive Suite, a 60 sq, meter palazzo that felt like your own apartment.

The Executive Suite, a 60 sq. meter apartment of your own

Although I liked it, the piece de resistance was its killer bathroom. Have a look:

what a glorious bathroom!

Rooftop terrace, too!

Looking towards always green Marjan hill

The view towards the Peristyl, with the Cathedral belltower

Before we left, we went up to the Central’s roof terrace. I love the roof terrace at the Cornaro, but the Central’s, being even closer to the water, was more intimate with such terrific views in almost all directions–the Cathedral bell tower, Varos, the harbor. The plan is to have dinners up here as well as small events, concerts, readings and more.

Perfect for people watching

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When I first started View from the Riva in 2009, when I moved to Croatia, I didn’t even know the term “blogosphere”. But I quickly found out that what I enjoyed reading were called blogs and the people who wrote them, bloggers. Now that we have just passed our 100,000the reader, I decided to go back and see which of my 300 blog posts were read the most.

Since I rarely use View from the Riva to complain, it was interesting to see that my review of the 2Cellos, which was not positive, was way up there at number 6. The only other surprise was number 3, a story about my tea and sweets with the imam and his wife of Split’s Muslim community. Alas, number 10, Bakra’s sublime pizza, is no longer, the original owners having sold and now the place is an upscale bistro with trendy interior decor that is little distinguished from any big city eatery.

To all of you who have taken the time to read and comment, thank you! I admit I have been terribly lazy about posting new blogs in the past few years and promise to do better in the future!

2989 DiscoverSplit! tourist newspaper premieres!

2870 Split’s surprising Sunday Flea Market

2635 Split’s enduring Muslim community

2523 Zagreb to Split by train–wow!

2.198Fabulous peka at Konoba Idro in Trogir

1,766The 2 Cellos, not even one Yo Yo Ma

1.765Kuwaiti billionaire’s $100 million yacht Samar motors into Split

1,683 Celebrating Split’s last filigree master

1,643 Island-hopping the Adriatic aboard the M.V. Magellan

1,599 The best pizza in Split!

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I really enjoy Split’s magnificent turn of the century National Theatre. It’s located at the the beginning of Marmontova street, set on its own square and framed by part of the massive city walls built by the Venetians during their 400 years here. While it can’t be compared to Split’s ancient 1,700 year-old legacy, the National Theatre is still a marvelous part of the city’s cultural and historic landscape.

The current theatre today is set back from its original entrance

The photo above is from the early 1900’s; the one below is a postcard from 1899!

Before the theatre was built in 1893 the square was actually a pond fed by an underground stream. A fabulous reminder of its watery beginnings is still inside the building! As you enter the lobby and go down a flight of stairs to the cloakroom there’s a corner stone you can lift up (if you know where!) that reveals a drain with running water!

Since 1893, the square has had several different designs–the current one dates from 1979. What conservators have unearthed is the earliest construction–the end of a graceful curved driveway where horse drawn carriages arrived with their guests and the remains of stone street light foundations, most likely, gas or oil filled lamps that later became electrified.

Davor Vukovic, who is the theatre’s PR director, was kind enough to share some of the earliest known illustrations of the theatre and the wonderful color postcard from 1899.

For those of you who have never been inside, you will be in for a real treat, a gorgeous theatre with rich ornamentation, soaring balconies with private loges and a dazzling chandelier that must be raised and lowered to change it’s bulbs.

Here are several images of the glorious interior, the second photo is by Lidija Lolic

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Like most of us, the President-elect doesn’t mind showing his anger

Three years ago, I wrote this and I think it needs to be posted again….

Living abroad teaches you a lot about your home country.

As I get older, I fondly remember growing up green as grass and how life seemed so much more simple, more wondrous–limitless possibilities!  Imagine my joy discovering sex, drugs, rock and roll all pretty much at the same time in college after having been way too skinny and miserable in high school. Talk about visceral experiences that shape a country, a character–what a couple of decades they were for me–from the Beatles, Kennedy, Vietnam, Black Panthers, Nixon, dot.com and my beloved Dodgers actually moving to LA!

I started paying much more attention to politics after college.  Hard not to.  So when Jimmy Carter put on his sweater and asked Americans to turn down their thermostat to help cope with the OPEC energy squeeze, I was impressed.  We began heating with wood and coal, recycling, doing our part to make America great again.

Alas, clearly I was in the minority, because Carter got booted out only to be replaced with Reagan and Bush–and ever since, American politics never quite seemed to get back on track.  Obama was the sea change we all craved, but he never lived up to his inspiring oratory and remained oddly aloof for a guy who can shoot 3 pointers wearing a suit.

This year, experiencing the US Presidential election from the warm confines of a 1,700 year-old Mediterranean seaside city was totally bizarre. Not just because I had to get up at 3AM to watch the debates but because American presidential politics had devolved into a mean-spirited, reality game show. Instead of substance we got one-liner put downs and tweets.

I knew Trump would win.  Not by much, but it did not matter–the nerve he struck was deep and wide and laid bare the wounds that I feel America has never really tried to heal.  And while it is pretty refreshing to see him poke a finger in the Establishment’s eye by “breaking with historic protocol” telephoning the President of Taiwan (which the NY Times and the US State Department reacted to with hysterical disbelief), his freestyle “my way or the highway” mantra scares the hell out of a lot of Americans.

And like most of us, he can also be happy.

Trump’s US (as in us educated mostly white folks) vs. THEM (as in everyone else) rhetoric also caused more than a shudder outside America, where many people still remember hearing stuff like this from some of history’s most sinister figures.

The sharp right, global, neo-nationalist political shift is clear.  But its roots are less so, which made me think about what’s really going on here and why America seems to be such a very different country than it was when I was a kid….or is it?

What haunts me is the “us” vs. “them”.   We’ve all heard this before.  It’s the Jews, the Irish, the blacks….them.  Those people.  Monkeys, Micks, Kikes, Spics. Dagos. They just aren’t “real” Americans.

Could all of this posturing still really be about race?

The idea about creating “pure” Americans, Russians, Germans, Chinese, etc. has always been the Holy Grail of some truly warped minds.  Despite “experiments” to cull the weak, castrate “deviants”, inter-breed Aryans, etc. it’s disease, poverty, war, forced migration and inter-marriage that trump “purity” every time –but somehow a lot of people still believe that racial purity is something really worth striving for, and worse, “protecting”.

Worries about race, often obsessive, have been part of American culture since our forefathers arrived on the Mayflower.  Instead of celebrating their great good fortune that these “brown-skinned savages” taught them how to stay alive instead of killing them on the spot, Mayflower immigrants worried more about how to keep white and Protestant.

Although the Indians called these European newcomers, “paleface”, the epithet was benign.

Naive and gullible, native Americans signed treaty after treaty with the U.S. government, landowners, private companies and others believing they and their pure way of life would be “protected”. Betrayed by the “Great White Father”, it didn’t take long for their paleface oppressors to become “white devils”.

Tribe after tribe was stripped of its property and its pride, forced to live on worthless “reservations” and eventually tracked down and murdered en masse.

To me, America’s native Indians were white people’s first “niggers” and the planned extinction of almost an entire race is still the greatest of American shames.

But I digress.

No one argues that we are not a nation of immigrants, but the nostalgia many have for all those who arrived as “good people” fleeing “bad people” (as Trump likes to say), is yet another way America chooses to forget its often bloody, ruthless racist history against immigrants, people of color and the poor.

Instead of helping hands welcoming the waves of Greeks, Chinese, Italians, Irish, etc. who arrived, they were often met by some pretty nasty Americans eager to take advantage of them (watch Scorcese’s film “Gangs of NY” to get some idea).  Ghettoized and exploited, immigrant America was far more of a crucible than a melting pot.

Unlike the millions who have immigrated here, Americans born here have never lived under tyranny–worried about coming home and finding their parents “disappeared”; watching friends being butchered for not being the right tribe, religion, sect.

Fact is, most Americans take their freedom for granted.  Equality and justice are part of our Constitution. But for more than 80 years after the Constitution, blacks were still enslaved and still being lynched for as much as looking “the wrong way” at a white woman until the 1960’s.

Justice and equality in America for people of color on the lower end of the economic scale is not the same as it is for even poor whites.

Despite being a nation where most of us respect and follow the rule of law, some “justice” is too often at the point of a gun.  In some cities, murder is an everyday reality, no big deal. With tens of millions of handguns, rifles and assault weapons ready and waiting, along with the right to use them whenever you want, no wonder more than 1000 people a month are killed by handguns in the US and another 20,000 each year shoot themselves to end it all.

End it all?  Wait a minute, America is a country where you can be anything, isn’t it?. Where the 2016 average median household income was $55,000/yr.  Where the starting salary for college grads at Amazon, Google, facebook etc. this year is over $100,000!

How can a country that promises so much and makes good on many of its promises be so uncivilized to allow such carnage?

Because this election finally made it painfully clear to me that the root cause of what ails America is its racism–not bad trade deals or an economy built almost entirely on credit.

All Americans know what happens to white collar “criminals” who fleece stockholders for billions and whose Ponzi schemes and reckless management force thousands of employees out of work–a wrist slap or a fine.

For Americans with education, money and the right color, gentle justice is a given–compared to 69% of black American high school drop outs who risk going to jail during their lifetime (only 13% of their white brothers will).

In fact, one in three black Americans will actually go to jail. And despite accounting for less than 13% of the population, blacks are 37% of America’s inmates.

America is not the only country that uses violence to solve its problems.  But when it comes to mayhem and murder, we are really good at killing each other. For those of you who don’t know much about the only war to be fought on American soil since the American Revolution, the sheer numbers of Civil War dead still defy comprehension:

“Nearly as many men died in captivity during the Civil War as were killed in the whole of the Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands died of disease. Roughly 3% of the population, an estimated 750,000 men, lost their lives in the line of duty…”

I believe that the aftermath of the Civil War is still with us.  Despite being beaten, the South was punished economically, politically and socially for decades.  Like Germany after WW1, there was no healing or even an attempt to heal.

As my friend, a retired college professor, poet and writer puts it, the “chickens always come back to roost”.

The peace that followed the “war to end all wars” lasted less than 40 years.

In less than 8 hours, using just single shot rifles and bayonets, 25,000 Americans died at the Battle of Antietam in the Civil War

Although the Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, American blacks, Mexicans, Asians and other people of color (and now especially Muslims), still suffer from wounds they have absolutely no responsibility inflicting.

The real American tragedy is that way too much of this abuse is now so woven into the fabric of everyday white American life it goes unnoticed.  Too frightened or privileged to understand it, we choose to become politically correct or incorrect.

Even today, when I go back to the states and into a department store where I could be stuffing my pockets with goodies, my black friends are watched like hawks—“can I help you?”

“No, he’s just looking and by the way, he makes $3,500 a week at Microsoft.”

For decades, banks and other “equal opportunity lenders” drew “redlines” to keep blacks and other minorities out of certain neighborhoods by denying them mortgages if they wanted to buy property there.  Now “illegal”, such practices still go on with a wink and a nod.

As does the practice of purposely selling homes or renting apartments in “white” areas to blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and others to purposely drive prices down allowing speculators to make a killing re-selling them at fat profits.

Rapturous crowds, praising the Lord and Jesus, for their new savior

Whether it’s a KKK hood, priest’s collar, Brooks Brothers shirt, Muslims on the Haj–white has always been the color of innocence, of good, of purity.  Of all things righteous. 

Black?  The color of the devil–dirty, bad, evil, foul-smelling, foretelling of something nasty.  Not to be trusted.

Unable to sit at lunch counters, in the front of a bus, stay in many hotels until 1964, blacks resorted to “non-violent sit-ins”.  Here angry whites pour food on them and sympathetic whites to show their contempt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I remember being 12 years old, living in New Jersey, going on a family vacation to Virginia Beach, We had to take the ferry from Delaware.  One side of the ferry the seats were totally filled with all black people and the other side with all white people.  And the two drinking fountains at the front of the ferry? One was marked White and the other Colored.  To me this made no sense because living for years in NYC and then New Jersey, black people were like, black.  Big deal.  Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella were still my heroes.  So I took a squirt from the Colored hoping maybe it was chocolate flavor.  

Nope, same as White.

So I get off the ferry waiting for my parents to bring the car and go up to a guy fishing and pull on his pants, “hey mister, why are all the black people on one side and the whites on another”

And he spits.

Then, in a southern drawl I will never forget, says, “well, lemme tellya son, yo here in da south and these people smell and carry disease, an that’s why we keep ’em separate and call ’em, niggers”.

Well, folks, this is the kind of lesson one rarely forgets.  And repeating it to my mother made it indelible. A tremendous slap across the face, accompanied by a “don’t you ever say that again!”.

The year was 1955.

Zoom ahead 50 years and my friends are still being followed around in shops and discriminated against in employment, where they can live, and on and on.  If you haven’t seen the 2013 movie “The Butler”, which begins with a black cotton farmer being murdered in front of his son because he dared ask why the farmer was screwing his wife whenever he wanted, it’s a history lesson of America’s racial sickness.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Since Americans cannot talk about race openly, we masquerade our deep seated fears of being raped, held up, living next to, working with, marrying, etc. by using politics and religion to defend our “rights” to think and act the way we do.

What about the Constitution? The Bible?

Our racism is so hard-wired and pervasive, it allows us to watch Africa disembowel itself with murder, disease and tyranny while coming to the rescue of any European, South American, Balkan or even Asian country.

Black and white.

And yellow.

Enter China.

When it comes to racial purity, the Chinese are some of the truest believers on the planet, but they are neither black nor white.  It’s the reason I think they are so welcomed in Africa–yellow skin making friends with black skin–helping with education, training, economic support in return for getting raw materials they lack.

As Trump would tweet, “smart, very smart!”  And it is and they are.

Now compare how we whites deal with Africa?  Remember when Belgium owned the Congo? And how long Apartheid was openly supported by America and many European countries?

And what was the source of slave labor that created so much early American wealth and kept England rich?

Still blinded by our racism and our continuing failure to learn anything from history, we now pay others to do our dirty work–which basically means brutally repress and foment the wanton murder of non-whites all over the world who are either in the way of “progress” or simply don’t want to play by our “democratic” rules.

Eager to play proxy, our “allies” are so encouraged to buy American weapons, we are now the biggest arms merchants on earth.

No country is too poor or too rich.  Don’t have the cash?  We’ll lend it to you or take your commodities at dirt cheap prices to help pay for those advanced jet fighters you will never use “defensively”.  And it doesn’t even matter if  your country doesn’t really need our weapons–surely, you will know who to sell them to since our Congress may not allow us to do so.

So in Africa, we provide millions in military support to tyrants like Robert Mugabe and other despots who loot their countries and murder their citizens.  The reason is always to help them “defend” their country against”terrorists”–citizens who want to take their country back, and maybe even make it great again, like Donald Trump.

Who was one of the biggest buyers of our weaponry in 2016?  Peaceful, prosperous, “democratic” Qatar! Do they need them?  Do they have lots of enemies nearby?  Nope, they are our squeaky clean poster boy, quietly selling them on to friendly, sectarian religious fanatics to “keep the peace in the Middle East”, and clearly earning a fat profit in the process.

Pakistan and Egypt are also in the top 10–despite impoverished economies.  And both are brutal regimes where anxious citizens living in fear of their own government is a given.

So now we have a President whose dream is not Martin Luther King’s.  A President who thinks life is all about dollars and cents, getting the best deal, fighting force with force.

Bereft of nuance and basic political acumen, Trump is the proverbial bull in the china shop.  Yes, he will break a lot of stuff, but he will also be looking out for his own kind, which now includes folks he was never chummy with.

As Joe Biden said, maybe he should read it  (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Maybe it is me who is still naive, but I really hope he comes around.

When he first met Obama, who he claimed wasn’t even born here, he realized he was smart, nice and even cool–but now thinks he was tapping his phones.  Born and bred in New York City, Trump has known and hired lots of blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and other minorities, so at least he’s not completely clueless.

And while he still sees things mostly in black and white, dollars and cents, he also believes that the people ALREADY here, the “good people” who are of all different colors, are way ok….Americans!

Maybe it will dawn on him that people who look and act like these multi-colored, multi-religious Americans living outside the US may also be good people…but their rulers “not so good people”.

Maybe he will understand that racism, not trade, is the great divide.

But unless he and the rest of us honestly make the effort to face our racism, we will be forever be at each others throats all too willing to blame “others” whenever things get tough.

Instead of worrying about a lousy trade deal or building a wall, Trump and the rest of us need to realize that way too often it really is all about race and that while it’s one thing to fund proxy wars abroad to keep us white, isn’t facing a Second American Civil War the far greater danger?

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Nothing quite prepares us for self-analysis than a near-death experience.

As we recover, still feeling half alive, we realize that somehow every moment we used to take for granted is now really important–the heady perfume of wisteria in bloom; sitting on a rock jetty watching the sun slip into the sea; the sound of soft rain on the roof–life!

Covid 19 has brought many of us as close to a near-death emotional experience as we will ever have.

Like Kubler-Ross wrote decades ago, we are all going through similar stages of our collective new reality–denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance.

For me, having lived overseas for the past 20 years, Covid 19 has meant a chance to more deeply immerse myself into what’s important and why.

                       

One of the joys of living in a foreign country is being able to experience an entirely different quality of life.  In so doing, it’s impossible not to make comparisons to life in the country you left.

Sadly, I have watched America steadily become more and more dysfunctional.  A country whose citizens are consumed with a different kind of pandemic—schizophrenia.

                                                                                We is you and me

A nation of almost 325,000,000 exhibiting the best and worst of all that we expect from a democracy whose Constitution begins with the words “We the people…”

A democracy that promises all of its citizens that freedom is their most cherished and protected human right.

Now that the US death rate has passed 70,000 and the percentage of those infected who have actually died is greater than China, where it started, the disconnect between reality and political posturing has entered a whole new phase of schizoid delusion.

As a country we have never been so divided.  So viscerally angry at each other.  Death threats against doctors who advise wearing masks?  Presidential tweets cheering for armed mobs to “free” their state?  The new normal isn’t social distancing it’s social intimidation and a quadrupling of anti-anxiety drug prescriptions.

Why so many Americans still believe what they hear and see from their government is no longer the issue.

We’ve gone way beyond anxiety, denial and anger.

Americans with guns are in state capital buildings; we shot and killed a health worker who was trying to tell someone to wear a mask and now, depressed because we are only getting $600 a week in government-issued unemployment checks, we are being told that China has caused all of this misery on purpose.

As I sit here overlooking the sea, almost as beautiful as this photo taken above Makarska, my thoughts are how important it is to let go of all of this.

Let go of our obsession with the superficial; our constant quest for more; our acceptance of racism; of lies; our growing isolation from the rest of the world; our refusal to learn from history; our deep need to find someone or thing to blame; our shocking violence.

 

      We are all alone, together.

What’s really important isn’t some new revelation about why we have lost ourselves.

It’s simply going back to find what Plato said we should do 2,400 years ago:,

“Know thyself”.

Knowing ourselves means accepting what’s good about who and what we are, and why we act and believe the way we do, as well as what isn’t.  And then doing the work to fix what’s bent, broken, missing.

We are all born full of wonder, love, trust, innocence, acceptance, laughter.

We are not born killers, racists, demagogues, consumers, liars, schizophrenics.

All of these diseases, like Covid 19, are caught, taught, learned.

Painful as it may be to confront our own weaknesses and what we have forgotten, if we don’t, we will continue to suffer as a people–not just being forever jealous, miserable, angry, worried, but cannon fodder for controllable diseases and continuing to follow, trust, elect and believe people we know we shouldn’t.

If we don’t, we will continue to be afraid to change, afraid to love, afraid of each other.

Covid 19 is a rare chance to embrace Kubler-Ross’s acceptance without actually getting sick.

A time to listen to our heart, change, learn and love ourselves and others

 

 

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The historic core of Nin, surrounded by the sea and beautiful sandy beaches

To many Croatians, Nin is respected and admired as where Croatia began–their country’s oldest royal town, the seat of famous dukes and even kings, like Tomislav, Petar Krešimir IV. and Zvonimir.  And Catholics know the town not only for being a diocese more than 1000 years ago, but for its most famous bishop, Grgur of Nin, whose statues are here, in Varazdin (another royal town) as well as in Split. 

One of the many artifacts in the town’s splendid indoor and outdoor archeological museum

But except for sun and beach worshipers who come here to enjoy the country’s longest sandy beach, Nin’s 3,000 year old history and culture is still waiting to be discovered by most tourists.  The problem is that Dalmatia has so many treasures–magical cities, towns, national parks, islands, more–that even Nin has a tough time being a “must” when most tourists only have a few days.  So, maybe after reading this, when you come to Croatia, Nin will be on your must list!

Queens Beach, more than 3km long and all sand!

The story of Nin begins in the 9thC BC when it was founded by an Ilyrian tribe of Liburnians. Despite its tiny size (today Nin only has 3000 residents), complete with a charming medieval old town on its own island connected by stone causeways to the mainland, Nin has witnessed so much glorious history and so much destruction (ransacked and burned in 1646 to save Zadar), its story really is the stuff of legend.

It was so important during the Roman era (its name was Aenona) that in the second half of the lstC AD, the Emperor Vespasian commissioned not only a monumental forum, but also the largest Roman temple on the Adriatic coast–whose foundation stones are still here today, along with a spectacular column 17 meters high!

The temple is really enormous, but without scale it’s hard to really appreciate just how enormous it is. Just look at the house near it and the cars. The column is 17 meters high! The outside circumference of the temple was 33 meters in length and 23.5 meters in width. The shrine inside was divided into three areas, separated one from the other by two columns on each side.

The town’s splendid museum, indoors and out, is located on the island.  It’s beautifully arranged and filled with marvelous artifacts, jewelry, glass, marble and even two restored 11thC Croatian wooden boats!  A chunk of a Roman era vessel, whose wooden beam, frame and planks were held together by an intricate system of ropes, like the ancient Egyptians used, is also here.  

At the top of the photo you can see conservators working on pieces of the boat that are kept for later use during the restoration process. 

Just a short walk from the museum is the 9thC Church of the Holy Cross which is open so you can enjoy the now empty, but restored interior.

9thC Church of the Holy Cross

The streets in and around the old town are nicely paved and easy to walk around and enjoy.  We had a spectacular lunch at Stara Kuzina (the old kitchen), one of several places to sit inside or out and enjoy the handsome surroundings.

In addition to its history and culture, the town is famous for its saltworks and you can even tour a salt museum.  Salt was like gold in ancient times and although many of the pans now use commercial machines, some are harvested by hand using similar tools that have been around since Roman times.

Almost as well known as the town’s famous sandy beaches is its medicinal mud.  Blue black in color, you can see lots of folks slathering it on all over to enjoy the benefits.

The town suffered some tremendous damage last year due to violent wind storms and has spent a lot of time, money and energy cleaning up the mess and making what’s here even better.  One of the causeways has been completely rebuilt and should be open by June.

And the town received the coveted European Destination of Excellence (EDEN) award which should also help bring more folks to enjoy its many attractions.

From Split, it’s less than 2 hours to get here and well worth the toll road fee of $10.  You can take the more leisurely coastal road, of course.  The closest big city is Zadar, well worth a visit before or after.  But if you love the beach as well as history and culture and great cuisine, renting a flat for a week or just for a few days and making Nin your headquarters will surely be a great treat!