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South America

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Parent Category: Travel
Category: South America
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In October 2011 our little group: Sonia, Craig, Wendy and Richard visited Bolivia. We left Puno in Peru by bus to Cococabana in Bolivia. After the usual border form-filling and stamps, and a guided visit to the church in which the ‘Black Madonna’ resides, we boarded a cruise boat, a large catamaran, to Sun Island on the Bolivian side of the lake.

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Parent Category: Travel
Category: South America
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In October 2011 our little group: Sonia, Craig, Wendy and Richard visited Peru. We flew into Lima from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. After a night in Lima we flew to Iquitos.

Read more: Peru

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Parent Category: Travel
Category: South America
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In October 2011 our little group: Sonia, Craig, Wendy and Richard visited Brazil. We entered Brazil from Argentina near the Iguassu Falls.

Read more: Brazil

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Parent Category: Travel
Category: South America
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In October 2011 our little group: Sonia, Craig, Wendy and Richard visited Argentina. We spent two periods of time in Buenos Aires; at the start and at the end of our trip; and we two nights at the Iguassu Falls.

Read more: Argentina & Uruguay

Travel

Italy

 

 

 

 

A decade ago, in 2005, I was in Venice for my sixtieth birthday.  It was a very pleasant evening involving an excellent restaurant and an operatic recital to follow.  This trip we'd be in Italy a bit earlier as I'd intended to spend my next significant birthday in Berlin.

The trip started out as planned.  A week in London then a flight to Sicily for a few days followed by the overnight boat to Napoli (Naples).  I particularly wanted to visit Pompeii because way back in 1975 my original attempt to see it was thwarted by a series of mishaps, that to avoid distracting from the present tale I won't go into.

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Fiction, Recollections & News

Dune: Part Two

Back in 2021 I went to see the first installment of ‘DUNE’ and was slightly 'put out' to discover that it ended half way through the (first) book.

It was the second big-screen attempt to make a movie of the book, if you don’t count the first ‘Star Wars’, that borrows shamelessly from Frank Herbert’s Si-Fi classic, and I thought it a lot better.

Now the long-awaited second part has been released.

 
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Screenplay by Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts
Based on Dune by Frank Herbert
Starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler' Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista
Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Souheila Yacoub, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem
Cinematography Greig Fraser, Edited by Joe Walker
Music by Hans Zimmer
Running time 165 minutes

 

 

Read more: Dune: Part Two

Opinions and Philosophy

The reputation of nuclear power

 

 

One night of at the end of March in 1979 we went to a party in Queens.  Brenda, my first wife, is an artist and was painting and studying in New York.  Our friends included many of the younger artists working in New York at the time.  That day it had just been announced that there was a possible meltdown at a nuclear reactor at a place called a Three Mile Island , near Harrisburg Pennsylvania. 

I was amazed that some people at the party were excitedly imagining that the scenario in the just released film ‘The China Syndrome’  was about to be realised; and thousands of people would be killed. 

Read more: The reputation of nuclear power

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