Remembering castles I have visited and saying good bye to Virtual Tourist. Visiting Rosenborg Schloss in Copenhagen

I visited Copenhagen in May of 2005.   2005 was an unusual year for me.  My ex partner and I were into the tenth year of our relationship and it was a rocky year.   I think we both realized things were changing in our relationship but we were not sure where it was headed.   We were both holding onto something that we knew was slowly coming apart.   We traveled to Copenhagen together but spent very little time together in the city.  He had a business conference he was attending.  I was part of an internet travel group called Virtual Tourist.  I was planning to meet a group of friends from the site who lived in the Copenhagen area.  I had not met them in person but was looking forward to meeting them for the first time.  He was not overly interested in meeting my online friends.  So between his business conference and my spending times meeting new friends we spent very little time together. We did have some good times on the trip.  We spent several days in Norway and enjoyed ourselves.  But for most of the time in Copenhagen we saw little of each other.  It was truly a time of transition.  Our relationship did not endure the rest of the year.  Looking back in hindsight I can see it all starting to end here in Copenhagen.  This photo of me in front of the Rosenborg Schloss is the perfect memory from the experience.  It's just me standing alone in front of a beautiful palace having my photo taken by a complete stranger.  And although beautiful the photo is flawed.  The person taking the photo blurred the photo and cut off the very top of the palace towers.   At a glance all looks good but close up you can see the problems.

Before our visit ended I took my ex back to see the castle.  His photo of the Rosenborg Sloss came out much better than the one taken of me.  It was perfectly cropped.  It was in focus.  The color was beautiful.  And there is no one in the photo.  It just the palace by itself.  Coincidence?  I don't know.  But looking back all these years later I can see the symbolism and the difference in the two photos.

I enjoyed.my time meeting new friends from the internet in Copenhagen.  My buddy Claus became a life long friend.  I still see him on occasion when I travel and we are in the same city.  We have great times together and have shared many experiences over a drink.   I also met my friend Jon.  We are still internet friends and have met several times again while traveling also.  And I met a delightful lady named Charlotta.  We no longer meet on that old Virtual Tourist site but she and I do talk frequently on Facebook.    The friendships endured.  The relationship with my ex partner ended.  It's been my gain.  The web site we all met on just announced this week that it is closing down.  All of the conversations we shared on there will be deleted.  Our photos will be gone.  But our experiences will live on.      There were a lot of stories shared between friends on Virtual Tourist.  But this is the first time  I have shared this one.

Internet friendships are real.  And they can endure.    Jon. Claus, and Charlotta with her family and me.  Copenhagen 2005

Visiting Karlstyn Castle - May 2004

I was talking with some of my travel friends in a little list I made on Facebook yesterday about our mutual love of photography and travel.   I have been very fortunate in being allowed to travel and see so many fascinating places.  For the start of the new year I have decided to look back at some of the great castles I have seen and share some stories about them. 

One of the first castles I was able to visit was Karlstyn Castle in the Czech Republic.  I had read a lot about the castle when I was preparing for a trip to Prague.  I had read that it was close to Prague and that it was one of the most visited castles in the Czech Republic.  So I was very excited about visiting this castle.  In my mind I had imagined one of the great castles that inspired the castles in the old Disney cartoons.  But I was a little disappointed when I finally got to see Karlstyn Castle.

I was in Prague and had a day to myself to do a day trip out of the city.  The guide book I was using suggested that it was not difficult to reach the castle and suggested skipping the tour groups who would rent bus tours to Karlstyn.  The guide book gave me good directions to the train station where I could buy my tickets to Karlstyn and go on my own without a group of tourists.   .  I was still a novice traveler and was still learning the ins and outs of exploring Euorpe so I was very thrilled with myself for finding the correct train station with no help from anyone else.  The station to Karlstyn was outside of the city center where there was a lot less English spoken than in the city itself.  This should have been my first red flag that I was in trouble.  I walked into the station and went to the ticket window and tried to ask for a ticket to Karlstyn.  I did not think there  would be any problem because there was a photo of the castle in the window at the ticket booth.  I slowly asked for one ticket to Karlstyn.  The ticket agent just looked at me.  I repeated again very slowly "One ticket to Karylstyn.   I still received just a blank faced expression.  Then the ticket agent said to me very rudely "Česká ! Česká !"   Speak Czech.   Now the panic sets in.  I was outside of city center.  No one was speaking English and I had angered the ticket agent.   But I tried again.  I pointed to the photo of the castle on his booths window and raised one finger to indicate I wanted one ticket to go see the castle.  I said politely "One".   The man pointed to me and said again "Česká ! Česká !"   So I gave up.  I took the tram outside of the station back down to city center.  At the tram stop there was a man, who spoke some English, and was selling tickets to go to Karlstyn for the next day.  Defeated, I bought the ticket and took the tour bus the next day.

The tour advertised that it was in seven languages including English, Italian, French.  So I felt comfortable that I would have no problem.  On the day of the tour the tour guide only spoke two languages.  He spoke English and Česká.   The  only people who spoke English on the bus were me, two Australians, and the guide.  Everyone else spoke different languages and they were not happy.  The tour guide handed them printed out information in their language about the tour and asked them to follow along reading as he talked to us in English.  This did not make the three of us very welcome in the group.    After some arguments over the arrangements and the language problems we were on our way.  We arrived to the little village in the photo just above.   The bus parked in the village and we had to walk up a large hill to get to the castle.  It was a good hike and some of the people on the bus were not young so it was difficult for some of them.  We had lunch in Karlstyn and there was a lot of grumbling about the language problems and the hiking.  The three of us who spoke English were the least favorite of the group.  But during the lunch meal the beer started to flow and people stopped grumbling and I did get to meet two Russian couples and have an interesting conversation with our broken languages.  The Italian speaking  members of the tour never did calm down though and were angry for most of the tour.  It did make for an interesting day.

The castle itself was empty inside.  There was not a lot to see.  It was not very exciting at all in my opinion.  I was expecting it to be renovated and beautiful inside.  So I was a bit disappointed.  But it was my first castle.  And one of my first experiences traveling in a foreign country. So my expectations were a little over the top.  I probably would have enjoyed it much more now.   So all was not lost.  All these years later I still prefer not to take guided tours.  I like the challenge of my finding my own way around, trying to communicate with the locals, and not sharing my experience with arguing tourists unhappy with their guide.    I returned to Prague in 2015.   It's much easier today.  It's very touristy.  There is no problem finding train stations or purchasing tickets.  But I am glad I was there to have the experience before the infrastructure was there.  It left me a good story to tell and something I will never forget.  

Historically the Karlštejn Castle was founded by Czech king and Holy Roman emperor Charles IV (Karel IV.) in 1348, the same year when the king founded Prague's New Town and Charles University. The hill-top castle surrounded by forests was built to hold the royal treasures and coronation jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, and served as the king's retreat. The Czech coronation jewels were also kept there for almost 200 years during and after the Hussite wars in the 15th and 16th century

New Year's reflections - 1997 to 2017. It seems like a long long time

Hard times are only the other side of good times

But if you ever wished hard times were gone

You know what it's like to wish good times would come

And don't it seem like a long time

Seem like a long time, seem like a long, long time (recorded by Rod Steward.  Written by Theodore Grant Anderson)

Larry in Provincetown 1997

On the beach in Provincetown 1997

I am reflecting on the new year.  2017.  After the disaster of an election in 2016 I can't help but wonder what will happen in the new year.  Twenty years ago in 1997 I bought a house with my ex partner.  Times were quite different.  Two gay men buying a house together in the suburbs was an oddity in small town Catonsville, Md.  Our realtor was very excited to be working with a gay couple.  She sensed gay dollars.  She was hoping for lots of referrals from our gay friends.  Gay couples were a new commodity  When we settled on the house she placed an advertisement in the local real estate paper with the head line Welcoming the new couple to the neighborhood with a photo she had taken of us.  She had asked for a photo saying she always like to keep photos of her clients.  We had no idea she was going to put our faces on the front page of the local real advertisement to find gay clients.  We had mentioned to her we were having a commitment ceremony in a few months and she said she would love to attend, so we invited her.  At the reception she handed out business cards to all of our friends.  We were not very happy with her.  And she received no referrals from us.  After moving into our new house every time we met a new neighbor we always heard "Oh your the two guys who bought the house on the corner."   We were an anomaly.  We had a very curious neighbor across the street.  We called her our Gladys Kravits.  She tried every way possible to get invited into our house.  She would drop by and knock our door on occasion to borrow something and would strain her neck trying to see inside of our house.  We never let her in.  A few years later we had the tail of a hurricane blow through our area and we lost our power in our house.  Luckily for us she still had power on her side of the street.  She offered to store our perishable food in her freezer.  It was kind of her but it also gave her the chance to finally see inside our house.  She rushed in to help us move our food and her neck was stretching in every direction to take in all the gayness.  All she saw was a typical living room.  Some family photos of us and out children.  And she saw our kitchen and our refrigerator.  I was never sure what she was expecting.  It does seem like a long time ago.  

I was still just coming out in 1997.  I was 45.  I had been out for a few years but it was still a growing process.  My mother was not thrilled with my coming  out.  It was all but impossible for her to accept it.  When my ex partner and I bought the house the reality of it all finally hit her  She lived 40 minutes away in an even more conservative area than Catonsville named Havre de Grace, Md.  She did not want anyone where she lived to know that I had moved to Catonsville with another man.  She never came down to see my new house.  My two daughters who lived with me would go back to Havre de Grace every weekend to visit with their mother.  She would drive them back to my house on Sundays.  My Aunt Louise would drive down with her so she would not have to drive back alone.   My Aunt usually sat out in the car because, like my mother, she did want to come into my house.  Finally one Sunday she had to come in because she needed to use the bathroom.  I showed her around the house and then she left.  The next day I received a phone call from my mother asking about the expensive plants I had in my house.  I laughed and asked "What expensive plants."  My mother said my Aunt told her we had some very nice expensive plants in our house.  We had one large ficus tree in a planter that had belonged to my ex before we met.  This did make me laugh.  All that gay affluence.  And yes it does seem like a long time ago.

My mother passed away a few years later and never did see my house.  The relationship with my ex ended ten years later in 2006.  I sold my half of the house to him and he took possession of that very expensive plant.  Even this now seems like a long time ago.

My husband Mark and I met in 2007.  We are celebrating ten years together this year.  We were married in 2013.  I would never have imagined this to be legal back in 1997.   We bought our home together in 2012.   Marks cousin was our realtor.  Families are a lot  more accepting now.  Not one of our neighbors ever addressed us as the two guys who bought the house in the middle of the block.  All the neighbors wave.  One family brought us a plate of brownies when we moved in.  The people directly next door come over in the summer and have beers with us on our deck.   We were invited to a holiday dinner at their home last month.  Times have changed.  

Now after the elections this year and with  the alt right conservatism flooding over the country we can't help but be nervous.  But we will never hide again.  I will never allow anyone to use my photo in their advertisements just because I am their gay client again.  I will not be an anomaly again.  We have fought many battles to be accepted over the years.  We can not go backwards.   I will not allow my gay daughter and her wife to be treated with the hatred and disgust I experienced.   We will be fighting a battle these next four years but we will remain victorious.  

They joking say domesticity isn't pretty.  But it beats the hell out of just being "those two guys who bought the house on the corner."

Now I'm 64

Summer 1967. The summer of love they called it. It was my 15th summer. Sqt. Pepper was the number one record. I bought it the first week it was released in the record department at Sear's at Price's Corner in Wilmington Delaware. I played it a lot that summer and got to know each lyric personally. But I usually skipped over the song When I'm 64. I didn't really relate to it. It sounded kind of old fashioned and very different from the other songs on the album. My mother was 40 that year. My father was 45. So 64 was not something that meant anything to me. It didn't even seem like a distant future. It was just part of the title of a song I skipped over.

I'm 64 today.  It's still not one of my all time favorite songs.  But I do understand it now.  How did Paul McCartney in his 20's understand?  The genius of The Beatles.  Only I didn't quite see the genius of the song at 15.  

8th Grade Art History and Rome 2016

  

Surrounded by at at the Vatican Museum my last day in Rome

My father could sketch a little.  My cousin Junior, his nephew, was an artist who did beautiful water color landscapes. My brother's daughter Amanda draws beautiful portraits.  My sister could draw a little.  My ex wife drew very well.  My daughter Katie is an excellent artist. The Sampson's had artistic genes.  MY MOTHER COULD NOT DRAW.  She had absolutely no talent  at all for drawing.  My Aunt Louise, my mother's sister, could not draw.  My mother's mother, my beloved /grandmother had no artistic talent at all. The Roth's could not draw.   My name may be Sampson but the lack of artistic ability is pure Roth. I can not draw anything.  Even my stick men look like a five year old drew them. 

My two nightmares in school were gym and art class.  I could not catch a soft ball or throw a football.  I was raised in a holiness church and I can you now I experienced sanctification praying to the Holy Spirit to keep that softball away from me in the outfield.  Whoever said you can't pray in school never stood next to me in gym class.  Had it rained every time I prayed for rain on gym day my home town would have been washed down the Chesapeake Bay many years ago.  My junior high and high school gym teachers were good men.  They never made fun of me or made me feel inadequate.  Although I already felt that way they never encouraged it.  I always was graded a B in gym class.  Years later I talked with one of my gym teachers and asked him why he always gave me a B.  Obviously I was not a B student.  He told me "You always came to class.  You wore your gym suit and you took a shower. And you never gave me a problem." 

My seventh grade art teacher was never so kind.  She knew I had no artistic ability.  She knew her assignments were way beyond anything I could do.  And she never gave me a break.  She assigned us paper mache animals.  We had to use coat hangers, newspaper and wheat paste to create animals.  I was in a panic.  Other students were already molding the shapes of horses and dogs and even fish.  I decided an octopus would be easy.  I took four coat hangers and a ball of newspaper and formed my octopus.  Of course an octopus has eight tentacles and mine only had four.  But I knew I could never mange bending eight arms into place.  My teacher never corrected me until I was finished and we had to present our projects to the class.  When I presented mine she asked "What is that?"  I said an octopus.  She said it has four legs and looks like a camera on a tripod.  I just wanted to crawl under the table and hide.  Another time she assigned us to make mosaics. We had to draw a picture and color it with pieces of construction paper mosaic style.  Once again I was in panic mode.  I could never draw a picture much less color it with pieces of colored paper mosaic style.  I ended up drawing a big head much like the heads on my stick figures.  I gave it a large head of hair that flipped up on the ends.  I was making That Girl which was a current hit TV series back in the those days.  When she was grading the finished project once again I was asked "What is this?"  I said "That Girl".  She told me "That is not any girl I have ever seen."  I have a feeling if my gym teacher had been there he would have understood exactly who it was and why I made it and would have graded me his usual B.

My eighth grade art teacher was the best.  She knew not all of us were talented but she assigned projects we could at least try to work on with some success.  She also taught us about art history.  She taught us about the appreciation of art not just the creation of it.  We were a small rural school.  Going to Baltimore City was a big journey for most people in my home town.  Mrs. Smith, the art teacher took us on a field trip to Baltimore to see The Agony and The Ecstasy, the movie about Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel.  I was fascinated with the movie.  I learned about the great artists of the period and got to see their masterpieces.  And this little gay boy also got to see Charlton Heston in a toga  through most of the movie.  I was spellbound.  So there I sat watching every stoke of his hand and every movement of Charlton Heston recreating this great Michelangelo's masterpiece.  We were in the huge and beautiful Mayfair Theater in Baltimore.  Everything about this experience spoke to the little boy from Havre de Grace, Maryland.  Sadly now the Mayfair Theater sits in a shambles in the inner city of Baltimore.  I have taken photos of it on several occasions still remembering the school field trip.

Mayfair Theater, Baltimore 2015I

I made my first visit to Rome in July 2016 fifty years after junior high school art class.  The appreciation for classic art that I learned from Mrs. Smith has remained with me all of these years.  When I travel. I want to experience the food and the art from the location I am visiting.  So Rome as a dream come true.  From the wine, to the pasta, to the Bernini angels I overdosed in Roman culture.  The highlight was on my last day in Rome when I finally go to see the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo's masterpiece.  The room was crowded.  People were standing shoulder to shoulder with no room to move.  But I didn't mind the crowds.  I was back at the Mayfair Theater and twelve years old again.  I could see how Michelangelo created the scaffolding and climbed to the top of chapel exhausted to finish the finger tip of God touching Adam.  There were signs posted saying no photography.  But there were people snapping cell phone photos all around me.  I didn't want a cell phone photo though.  I wanted a real photo for this special moment.  So I worked my way to the center of the room and lifted my camera up, with no flash, to take my photo.

My photo from the Sistine Chapel - July 2016

I had my moment.  Actually only a second.  I was  tapped on my shoulder by a security guard and was told no photos allowed.  I explained I did not use a flash. He said very abruptly "Turn it off." When he left I turned quickly to sneak a photo of the back wall which had Michelangelo's The Last Judgment.  As I snapped the photo the guard returned and said to me "Turn off NOW."  So I  did.  And I departed the chapel after having a very special moment with the arts.  I can't help but feel my seventh grade art teachers spirit was guiding that guard to me just to harass me once more.  But my eight grade art teacher was there also standing next to me smiling.

My photo of The Last Judgement - July 2016

Empty Tombs and Memorial Arches on South Mountain Maryland

Memorials and monuments fascinate me.  When I travel I take many photos of monuments and memorials.  I learn more history than I could ever learn from a text book by researching the stories behind the monuments I photograph.  Not only do the historical stories fascinate me but I am  also fascinated by the detail on the monuments.  When I photograph a monument I rarely just take one photo of the entire monument.  I also take closeup photos of the details on the monument.  The artist who created the memorial put the minute details there for a specific reason that is lost to casual viewer.  

On South Mountain near Burkittsville, MD there is a very unusual monument dedicated to noncombatant newspaper war correspondents.  Burkittsville is famous today for being the setting for the movie The Blair Witch Project. Historically South Mountain is known as the site of the Battle of Crampton's Gap.  It is one of three gaps on South Mountain where the Battle of South Mountain had been fought between Union and Confederate Forces during the early encounters of the Maryland Campaign.   

The monument was completed in 1896.  It is fifty feet tall and forty feet wide. The Moorish arch at the bottom of the memorial is 16 feet tall.  Above the Moorish arch are three Roman arches.  Each arch is nine feet tall and six feet wide.  The arches represent Description, Depiction, and Photography.  Next to the arches is a zinc copy of Bertel Thorvaldsen's Mercury About To Kill Argos.  This was created by the J.W. Fiske Company. 

Above the arches are two horses heads.  

On either side of the main arch are the heads representing Electricity and Poetry.  Under the heads are the words Speed and Heed. 

The monument is fascinating in itself. It's located on the Appalachian Trail makes it of interest also.  But the story and controversy connected to the monument are what truly make it fascinating to me.  The monument was built by George Alfred Townsend who was a war correspondent and novelist.  He bought the land on South Mountain and built home for himself at the site of the Civil War battle.  He built the arch as a memorial to himself and other war correspondence.  There are 157 names of war correspondences on the memorial.  However the names of those included on the monument have been questioned.  Timothy J. Reese, who is a historian and resident of Burkittsville, Md claims that many names do no deserve to be included, while many names that should be included have been ignored due to Townsend's prejudice towards the Confederate journalists of the time.  I have included an excerpt from one of Ree's articles at the end of this blog. 

Along with his home Townsend also built a tomb for himself on the property.  Ironically the tomb sets empty.  Townsend's wife died and was buried in Philadelphia.  Townsend died April 14, 1915 and was buried next to his wife in Philadelphia.  

Townsend's empty tomb

The story and the monument are both fascinating.  There is a lot written about George Alfred Townsend if you are interested in learning more about the man who created a controversial monument and left an empty tomb.

Below is the excerpt from Timothy J. Reese's 
"The Arch bears 157 names, compiled with unmistakable personal bias. Thirty-three of them cannot be identified. Twenty-two have no business being there at all, they being Townsend's personal friends, large contributors to the project, or persons with whom Townsend wished to ingratiate himself. Names were compiled through an imprecise, word-of-mouth method of random collection conducted by Townsend and his network of veteran news cronies. As a result, many names are absent, incomplete, misspelled, or misstated. Several prominent Union and Confederate journalists do not appear at all, overlooked or, in the latter case, omitted altogether due to Townsend's bitter anti-Southern bias. - See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1711#sthash.tc05ZDMw.d

Information from the Reese's article was taken from this link.    All photographs included in this blog are my personal photos.

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1711

16 Tons On A Rooftop in Cascais, Portugal - 16 Toneladas - Noriel Vilela

My father was not musical.  Not even a little bit.  He could not carry a tune.  He would sing in the car sometimes.  It was usually some old country song.  It did not matter what the song was because everything Dad sang sounded the same.  Dad was a monotone.  But he loved to hear Tennessee Ernie Ford sing.  Dad never bought music.  I don't think he ever entered a record store.  But he did own some Tennessee Ernie Ford albums.  Now my Dad was not a church goer either.  But he loved to hear Tennessee Ernie Ford sing gospel music.  He would ask me to put on his Ernie Ford gospel album and he would sing along in his monotone.  He would sing along to His Eye Is On The Sparrow and How Great Though Art with Ernie.  Both songs sounded the same when Dad sang them but that didn't matter.


Tennessee Ernie Ford had a big hit record in 1955.  It was called 16 Tons.  Anyone who grew up in the 1950's and 1960's will recognize this record just listening to the first few notes.  There is a flute playing and then a little bit of snap to the beat and Tennessee with his bass voice starts to sing.  The song is about coal mining and the great depression.  My father liked this song a lot.  He would sing it in the car and try to do Ernie Ford's deep bass voice.  It still sounded like Dad's monotone voice but you could tell the sound meant something to him.  Growing up during the depression I am sure the lyrics meant a lot to him.


"You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt"


Mark and I went to Portugal in the spring of 2015. It was our second trip to Portugal and our second time to stay in the ocean front city of Cascais. Cascais is a beautiful small resort town with many small bars and restaurants. We stayed at an ocean front hotel named Hotel Baia. The hotel had a sign in the lobby saying there would be a DJ on the rooftop lounge on the weekend. This sounded like the perfect way to spend an evening and watch the sunset. So we found our way to the rooftop bar.

The view was beautiful The drinks were cold and comforting. It was a wonderful way to end a busy day of walking in the heat.

I decided a strawberry daiquiri would be a great choice for my cocktail. Something about the ocean breeze and the cold strawberry drink appealed to me. Mark decided to have one also. We sat down in two reclining deck chairs and waited or the D.J. to start playing his music. Then out of nowhere I heard that opening flute introduction that was unmistakably the opening notes to the song 16 Tons. I thought for a second it was the daiquiri going to my head. But no. It was definitely the opening to 16 Tons. For a moment I immediately thought of my Dad and how he loved to sing that song. Then I was suddenly slapped with reality. I was on a rooftop in Cascais Portugal. I was not at home listening to some old country radio station. And this was not Tennessee Ernie Ford singing. It was an upbeat dance version with some deep voiced man singing in Portuguese. Mark asked me "What is that song? It's so familiar." Then he too realized it was 16 Tons.

Suddenly you realize just how small the world really is. I had been to Casais before so the city was familiar to me. I had heard the song 16 Tons many times so it was familiar to me. But it all became very surreal and unfamiliar to see the two being combined together into one memory. Other than going to Italy in World War II my Dad never traveled. But one day in May 2015 on a rooftop in Cascais he was with me once more.


Click on the link at the top of this blog to hear the Portuguese version of 16 Tons Mark and I heard in Cascais. It's fascinating to discover something new but also something very familiar.