v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

From our Visit to Dehli's Red Fort

Vallejo Nocturno 2021- At Red Fort, Dehli, India 2011

Some Images from Lisboa 2016

Vallejo Nocturno 2020- Fotos de Lisboa

Walkthrough of Se de Lisboa

I found this excellent video of the ancient Se de Lisboa (Lisboa Cathedral) it's a compelling way to show the character of a structure.

Dinosaur Land

About 38 years ago we went to see friends in Virginia and on our way home we came across a roadside attraction that was out of a John Waters movie. A small amusement park with life size dinosaurs on the side of the road. I took lots of photographs including infrareds but these are my black and whites which I just recently digitized in August. Here's a link for the place which still exists:

Vallejo Nocturno 2020- Dinosaur Land in 1982

Some More Images from South Africa 2008

After the conference in Cape Town, we took a side trip to Franshhoek, a wine region, about a couple of hours from the coast. In addition to its excellent wines the food we encountered in the region was of very high quality with the freshest produce imaginable.

Vallejo Nocturno 2020- Scenes from Franshhouk, South Africa

Some South Africa Images from 2008

Vallejo Nocturno 2020-Cape of Good Hope in 2008

The Most Famous Man in the World after Napoleon

Vallejo Nocturno 2014- Humboldt Statue in Berlin

From Brainpickings an article on Alexander Humboldt:

No thinker has shaped our understanding of the astounding interconnectedness of the universe more profoundly than the great Prussian naturalist, explorer, and geographer Alexander von Humboldt (September 14, 1769–May 6, 1859), who pioneered the notion that the natural world is a web of intricately entwined elements, each in constant dynamic dialogue with every other — a concept a century ahead of its time. His legacy isn’t so much any single discovery — although he did discover the magnetic equator, invented isotherms, and came up with climate zones — as it is a mindset, a worldview, a singular sensemaking sublimity.

Goethe, in his conversations with Eckermann, remarked that a single day with Humboldt enriched him more than years spent alone, enthusing:

What a man he is! … He has not his equal in knowledge and living wisdom. Then he has a many-sidedness such as I have found nowhere else. On whatever point you approach him, he is at home, and lavishes upon us his intellectual treasures. He is like a fountain with many pipes, under which you need only hold a vessel, and from which refreshing and inexhaustible streams are ever flowing.

Darwin asserted that Humboldt’s writings kindled in him a zeal without which he wouldn’t have boarded the Beagle or written On the Origin of Species. Thoreau was an ardent admirer of Humboldt’s “habit of close observation,” without the influence of which there might have been no Walden. Trailblazing astronomer Maria Mitchell, who met Humboldt weeks before his death, marveled in her diary that “no young aspirant in science ever left Humboldt’s presence uncheered,” and his ideas reverberate through her famous assertion that science is “not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.” Emerson, in his essays and lectures, called Humboldt “a man whose eyes, ears, and mind are armed by all the science, arts, and implements which mankind have anywhere accumulated” and saw him as living proof that “a certain vastness of learning, or quasi omnipresence of the human soul in nature, is possible.”

 

From the Bangkok Flower market

This was from a trip that I had to go on for business and took advantage to then go to Cambodia. This was on the way back-a one day stop in Bangkok.

Vallejo Nocturno 2020- Images of Bangkok Flower Market 2009

2010 Hong Kong

In 2010 I went to Hong Kong on business. During the time between meetings I took the opportunity to see this city which I had visited previously back in 2006. In retrospect I wish I had reviewed the fotos earlier and learned from the visit.

Vallejo Nocturno 2010-2020 Hong Kong Scene

Wat Pho-Recling Buddha Temple in Bangkok

Our good fortunes took us to Thailand in 2009 and we were able to visit various Buddhist Temples including the large Wat Pho where one of the largest statues of the Buddha resides. Here is a description of the history of this temple from Wikipedia:

Wat Pho is one of Bangkok's oldest temples. It existed before Bangkok was established as the capital by King Rama I. It was originally named Wat Photaram or Podharam, from which the name Wat Pho is derived.^[4][9] The name refers to the monastery of the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India where Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment.^[6][10] The date of the construction of the old temple and its founder are unknown, but it is thought to have been built or expanded during the reign of King Phetracha (1688–1703).^[6][11] The southern section of Wat Pho used to be occupied by part of a French Star fort that was demolished by King Phetracha after the 1688 Siege of Bangkok.^[12]

After the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767 to the Burmese, King Taksin moved the capital to Thonburi where he located his palace beside Wat Arun on the opposite side of the Chao Phraya River from Wat Pho. The proximity of Wat Pho to this royal palace elevated it to the status of a wat luang ('royal monastery').^[6]

In 1782, King Rama I moved the capital from Thonburi across the river to Bangkok and built the Grand Palace adjacent to Wat Pho. In 1788, he ordered the construction and renovation at the old temple site of Wat Pho, which had by then become dilapidated.^[1] The site, which was marshy and uneven, was drained and filled in before construction began. During its construction, Rama I also initiated a project to remove Buddha images from abandoned temples in Ayutthaya, Sukhothai, as well other sites in Thailand, and many of these retrieved Buddha images were kept at Wat Pho.^[13] These include the remnants of an enormous Buddha image from Ayuthaya's Wat Phra Si Sanphet destroyed by the Burmese in 1767, and these were incorporated into a chedi in the complex.^[14] The rebuilding took over seven years to complete. In 1801, twelve years after work began, the new temple complex was renamed Phra Chetuphon Vimolmangklavas in reference to the vihara of Jetavana, and it became the main temple for Rama I.^[15][16]

The complex underwent significant changes over the next 260 years, particularly during the reign of Rama III (1824-1851 CE). In 1832, King Rama III began renovating and enlarging the temple complex, a process that took 16 years and seven months to complete. The ground of the temple complex was expanded to 56 rai (22 acres), and most of the structures now present in Wat Pho were either built or rebuilt during this period, including the Chapel of the Reclining Buddha. He also turned the temple complex into a public center of learning by decorating the walls of the buildings with diagrams and inscriptions on various subjects.^[9]:90 On 21 February 2008, these marble illustrations and inscriptions was registered in the Memory of the World Programme launched by UNESCO to promote, preserve

and propagate the wisdom of the world heritage.^[17][18] Wat Pho is regarded as Thailand’s first university and a center for traditional Thai massage. It served as a medical teaching center in the mid-19th century before the advent of modern medicine, and the temple remains a center for traditional  medicine today where a private school for Thai medicine founded in 1957 still operates.^[19][20]

The name of the complex was changed again to Wat Phra Chetuphon Vimolmangklararm during the reign of King Rama IV.^[1] Apart from the construction of a fourth great chedi and minor modifications by Rama IV, there had been no significant changes to Wat Pho since. Repair work, however, is a continuing process, often funded by devotees of the temple. The temple was restored again in 1982 before the Bangkok Bicentennial Celebration.^[21]