Lift spirits now -->
... 
Click here to return to Meander Home page
Meander, with us, to the "most beautiful island in the world"
Story and photos by Daryl Black
Daydreaming at work one afternoon, when lunch is making its way through your system and your eyes are getting heavy, a saturated horizon of blue meets another, yet darker shade of blue. One is sky, one is water, and against the sea is a backdrop of blazing white structures soaring into the air. Grape vines grow on trellises among the houses. Stucco walls make the perfect backdrop for semi-tropical flowers and infinity swimming pools that hang over the earth’s edge. The dream is real. In our century, it is featured in nearly every travel magazine, and Europeans have been drifting there for centuries when the rigors of a dank and dreary winter become more than the spirit could bear. Santorini or Thira, is one of the Greek Cyclades island complex and a flight of two hours or less will get you there from almost any 
point on the continent.
Because Europeans take their holidays so seriously, travel agents put packages together for their clients that are quite reasonable. Since my husband and I were visiting friends in Belgium, we left from Brussels on an Olympic Airways charter flight and arrived on Crete in less than two hours. The island would serve as our base for a week. Santorini is 70 nautical miles from Crete and we rose early one morning to make a quick day visit to what has been called "the most beautiful island in the world." I was here, as were so many before me, to photograph what I could in an unfortunately short period of time.
To maximize the time on the island, which definitely was not enough, we took the FlyingCat 4, a fast catamaran, which made its way from Heraklio to Thira in roughly an hour. Since the cities are on top of this volcanic island, our choices at the dock were to ride donkeys, walk, or take a taxi. Our friends weren’t keen on hiking and knew we would have more time if we took a taxi, so we hailed the next vehicle which happened to be a late model Mercedes with a hefty engine. The driver knew what he was doing and used the car to its fullest, blasting around curves and people as if he were James Bond driving one of his exquisite Astin Martins. After that ride and some reassembling, we took a short walk to the center of Oia and found a restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean. It was high time for liquid refreshment.
As a photographer, I am thinking at this point about a timetable and working back from our return ferry ride. I’ll be violating one of the primary rules of photography - never shoot between 10 and 2 during the summer. Granted, it was September but the light was still very bright. I’d never get away with it in the Southwest, except when using isolated light. But I was forgetting that we were basically at sea level and there is a huge difference between 300 feet and my home at 8,000.
After lunch, our friends, who had toured Oia before, went sightseeing on their own while I got serious about shooting. My husband acted as camera sherpa, carrying the camera and film I wasn’t using at any given time while I worked with the other in color or black and white. Vaults and domes and arches and gates were everywhere as we made our way up and down stone stairways that cover the island. The people who live on these islands must have great calf muscles. It was a toasty afternoon and the fair tourists from northern countries fried as they walked the cobble
s of Oia.
I soon discovered that it is difficult to take a bad photograph on Santorini. It is usually a person who is referred to as photogenic, but this place is definitely photogenic. We stumbled upon the most incredible things - a blue gate between white walls overlooking matching blue water. Arches frame stacks of houses of pink and blue and yellow that hold a magnetic pull on my camera. Kitchen interiors with blue and gold and red plaster, with black and red clay cooking implements. A windmill that appeared to barely hang on to its volcanic base. Flags hanging on lines hung from church bell towers. One stairway led to another and to doorways of the houses where 6,000 people live. It is a photographer’s paradise, a place that can and is photographed again and again in every light and every season and thousands of different ways.
I also quickly learned that some of the more commonly photographed scenes or building had crowds gathered around them. Turning a corner at one point, we came upon hundreds of people, most armed with cameras, some with tripods, photographing a blue-domed church with bougainvillea at the top of the stairs that seemed to extend over the dome. Waiting was not an option so we proceeded up the street and found a small, plain blue gate that thou
sands of people had passed during the day. Attached to two walls stuccoed white, it belonged to someone who had the most startling view of the Mediterranean. To answer a question asked again and again, the sea really is THAT color. People who have made the trip, nod their heads and smile. Sometimes, it pays to move away from the most frequented scenes and find the details when you travel.
Walking along the street and quickly looking into shops filled with ceramics and jewelry, posters and a lot of miscellaneous stuff intended to attract the tourist, I turned my head to the right and saw what was an opening to a former restaurant. Like the most vivid oil painting, the colors were lathered on the walls with strokes so bold that they were difficult to ignore. But people just walked by as if it wasn’t there.
The afternoon was slipping away and getting warmer as we worked our way down to the end of Oia where a windmill had been made into a restaurant. The Cyclades are dotted with windmills, some still working and others memories of the function they performed. Beneath the mill were layer upon layer of houses hanging onto the island, in blues, yellows, pink, terra cotta, built and altered as families expanded and changed. I could have spent years photographing the nooks and joints where buildings come together and challenge the eye to find them. But it was time for another riveting taxi ride down to the sea and to view Santorini from a distance. If only I could shoot it at sunset.
Story and photos © 2005 Daryl Black
See more of Daryl's photography here.
~~~~~
By Daryl BlackThe human memory is a funny thing. Particularly peculiar when one tries to conjure something that happened forty years ago. When I emailed my sister saying I was going to write a piece about our "road trip", she began listing things I should mention. Some things were quite vivid to her and others to me, and some couldn’t possibly depart either of our brains because they were so profound.
It was the summer of 1965. My sister had graduated from high school and was about to enter the University of New Mexico in the fall. I was entering ninth grade, the end of junior high school. Despite and perhaps because of our age difference, we did not get along. That is an understatement. She was a brain; I was fluff and very social, and we probably were at once a bit embarrassed and envious of one another. What inspired us to take an extensive road trip together was an intense need to get away from a controlling and selfish mother. So it began. An unsupervised road trip in a 1960 Ford Falcon with windows wide open for air conditioning. No longer its original baby blue color, my sister chose bright gold for the Ford. It was a rolling New Mexico flag.
We were both in the Girl Scouts and were pretty good at things like camping, hiking, building fires and cooking over them, which made trip preparations fairly easy. Pack plenty of jeans, socks, underwear, rain gear, maps, an old army tent, pots and pans, and sleeping bags. No sun screen in those days. Just zinc oxide for sunburned noses and calamine lotion for bites. What we didn’t pack, was collected along the way, including layers of dust from ages past.
Our route took us from Albuquerque to Hyde State Park outside of Santa Fe, down to San Ysidro and northwest to Cuba, Blanco Trading Post, Chaco Canyon, Aztec Ruins, Salmon Ruins, and north to Mesa Verde, Colorado. This area of the Southwest is rich in history, geology and beauty. It is a treat for the inquisitive mind and the spirit.
But in 1965, things were a bit more primitive. The first night we spent at Hyde State Park. It wasn’t just raining but pouring. We had planned barbequed chicken for the evening and could barely keep a fire going long enough to thoroughly cook the chicken. When we finally did, the sauce was so completely burned and glued to the pan, that it took us two days of scrubbing with pine cones, rocks, and sand to make it passable for cooking any other food. As I recall, a woman who was camping alone in a van took pity on us and gave us some of her food as well as fire starter. Thus, the carbon chicken.
Of course, one of the conditions of the trip was that we called home very night. Dad wasn’t really worried. Somehow I think he knew this would be a seminal trip for us. But Mom wanted to know we were surviving the road and each other. Our first telephone search involved driving down to Santa Fe through the rain and fog to the Plaza and it was downright frightening. Anyone who has driven the road to Santa Fe Ski Basin knows how interesting it can be in bad weather. And my sister was a relatively new driver. If only our mother had only known how squirrelly the trip down the mountain actually was. But our old Army tent was dry upon our return and we slept like babies.
The next couple of days proved interesting due to the blame we were placing on each other for the under/over-cooked chicken. We bickered constantly. The road from Blanco Trading Post to Chaco Canyon didn’t help. 30 miles of wash boards, holes and rocks. The windows open, dust and bees flying in and out of the car at will (or not), things in the car flying out. A true miracle that we didn’t have a flat tire and I honestly don’t know if we could have done anything about it if we had.
In the summer of 1965, Chaco Canyon was a magical place. It still is and every park ranger worth his or her salt will tell you so. Then, the campsites were few, services very nearly non-existent, the water almost so hard that it’s surprising it was still liquid, and the nightly ranger talks truly wonderful. I think those talks instilled in us the habit of attending them whenever we find ourselves in a national park. We tried to hike to every ruin we could and to this day, despite my own degree in anthropology, my sister knows more about the park than anyone I know. She can name the different ruins and the stone work contained in them. I simply appreciate their beauty and photograph them. Having asked recent visitors to Chaco about the road, it apparently is still challenging. But sometimes the road makes a road trip.
We spent a few days in the area, and saw Aztec Ruins National Monument as well as the privately operated Salman Ruins near Farmington. Somewhere along the way, we picked up a copy of Navajo Native Dyes, by Nonabah G. Bryan and Stella Young (unabridged republication of classic 1940 edition by Dover Publications) which would be used upon our return to dye wool with tumbleweeds and assorted other native plants, much to our mother’s chagrin. Cooked tumbleweed is slightly stronger than cooked spinach, only for dying, it boils much longer. The odor was, shall we say, amazing? Somewhere between school cafeteria and the laundry hamper. 
After New Mexico, we headed to Mesa Verde and once again, the "road" was a big part of the trip. Being susceptible to motion sickness, the road up the mesa made a big impression on me. Unlike the Chaco road, this one was well paved but very curvy, and since I was yet to get my learner’s permit, my relegation to the passenger’s seat was permanent. Once on the mesa top, another of the jewels of the National Park system was revealed to us. Spruce Tree House, Cliff Palace, Balcony House. Up and down the trails and into dwellings occupied by the Anasazi nearly a thousand years before our feet tread the area. Following in their footsteps and those of Richard Wetherill, the archaeologist who discovered Mesa Verde and directed the initial excavation of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. His is one of the great names in Southwestern archaeology. It occupies the same part of my brain as Adolph Bandelier, kivas, T-shaped doorways, and the most common crops of the time - corn, beans, and squash.
Somewhere along the road, on another hot summer day and after my sister and I quit arguing about the burned fry pan, intellectual differences, and nearly being washed out of our tent by a near flash-flood at our Mesa Verde campground, we became friends. You get close to people when you spend a good portion of the day with them in a metal box on wheels. Days turn into nights around a campfire and meals shared, and turn back into days when lively conversation and laughter, and easy and uneasy silences become as much a part of the trip as the scenery. We learned what we already knew - we were different but, on the other hand, had things in common. Threads such as interest in the Southwest and its cultures, the world of nature and gardening (my husband says "Who talks for two hours on the phone about flowers?"), art, and basics such as cooking. And we learned how to talk to one another when we needed an attentive ear. The road trip of 1965 got us through high school and college and established a friendship that will accompany us forever. I would, by the way, highly recommend the places we visited, windy and rugged rugs, dust and flash floods, undercooked food and all. Our national and state parks and monuments brim with beauty, history, and culture. They are well worth the visit. There is nothing like a good road trip around the American West.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Author of A Place Like No Other: people of an enchanted land (2002, Sunstone Press) photographer and writer Daryl Black is a self-described late bloomer. Although she was interested in photography and writing as a teenager, she didn't publish her first photograph until December 1980. She has worked in radio and editorial capacities since then. Her photographs and writing have been published in New Mexico Magazine, The Santa Fean, The New Mexican, the Albuquerque Journal, Organic Gardening, Rocky Mountain Gardener, Adventure West Magazine, and The Walking Magazine, among others. In 1995, as part of a photography course project, she began to photograph people around New Mexico. The project developed a life (and mind) of its own and eventually evolved into A Place Like No Other. It was a labor of love. Black recently did a similar project, photographing over 100 people involved in the planning, design, and building of the new public library in Farmington, New Mexico. Details are her interest, whether they are parts of a flower, tree bark, or wrinkles and smiles. She lives with her husband and assorted wildlife in Taos County. See more of Daryl's photography here.
Story and photos © 2005 Daryl Black
AUTO
Beware the driver with the cell phone
July 12 , 2005
1ST EVIDENCE OF EFFECTS OF CELL PHONE USE ON INJURY CRASHES:
CRASH RISK IS FOUR TIMES HIGHER WHEN DRIVER IS USING A HAND-HELD CELL PHONE
ARLINGTON, VA — Common sense as well as experience tell us that handling and dialing cell phones while driving compromise safety, and evidence is accumulating that phone conversations also increase crash risk. New Institute research quantifies the added risk — drivers using phones are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. The increased risk was estimated by comparing phone use within 10 minutes before an actual crash occurred with use by the same driver during the prior week. Subjects were drivers treated in hospital emergency rooms for injuries suffered in crashes from April 2002 to July 2004.
The study, "Role of cellular phones in motor vehicle crashes resulting in hospital attendance" by S. McEvoy et al. is published in the British Medical Journal, available at bmj.com.
"The main finding of a fourfold increase in injury crash risk was consistent across groups of drivers," says Anne McCartt, Institute vice president for research and an author of the study. "Male and female drivers experienced about the same increase in risk from using a phone. So did drivers older and younger than 30 and drivers using hand-held and hands-free phones."
Weather wasn't a factor in the crashes, almost 75 percent of which occurred in clear conditions. Eighty-nine percent of the crashes involved other vehicles. More than half of the injured drivers reported that their crashes occurred within 10 minutes of the start of the trip.
The study was conducted in the Western Australian city of Perth. The Institute first tried to conduct this research in the United States, but U.S. phone companies were unwilling to make customers' billing records available, even with permission from the drivers. Phone records could be obtained in Australia, and the researchers got a high rate of cooperation among drivers who had been in crashes.
Another reason for conducting the study in Australia was to estimate crash risk in a jurisdiction where hand-held phone use is banned. It has been illegal while driving in Western Australia since July 2001. Still one-third of the drivers said their calls had been placed on hand-held phones.
Hands-free versus hand-held: The results suggest that banning hand-held phone use won't necessarily enhance safety if drivers simply switch to hands-free phones. Injury crash risk didn't differ from one type of reported phone use to the other.
"This isn't intuitive. You'd think using a hands-free phone would be less distracting, so it wouldn't increase crash risk as much as using a hand-held phone. But we found that either phone type increased the risk," McCartt says. "This could be because the so-called hands-free phones that are in common use today aren't really hands-free. We didn't have sufficient data to compare the different types of hands-free phones, such as those that are fully voice activated."
Evidence of risk is mounting: The findings of the Institute study, based on the experience of about 500 drivers, are consistent with 1997 research that showed phone use was associated with a fourfold increase in the risk of a property damage crash. This Canadian study also used cell phone billing records to establish the increase in risk. The Institute's new study is the second to use phone records and the first to estimate whether and how much phone use increases the risk of an injury crash.
Taken together, the two studies confirm that the distractions associated with phone use contribute significantly to crashes. Other studies have been published about cell phone use while driving, but most have been small-scale and have involved simulated or instrumented driving, not the actual experience of drivers on the road. When researchers have tried to assess the effects of phone use on real-world crashes, they usually have relied on police reports for information. But such reports aren't reliable because, without witnesses, police cannot determine whether a crash-involved driver was using a phone.
~~~~~
AUTO THEFT DATA
October 19, 2004
(Excerpt from the Highway Loss Data Institute)
CADILLAC ESCALADE & NISSAN MAXIMA ARE TOP THEFT TARGETS;
REPORT SHOWS VEHICLES MOST LIKELY TO HAVE THEFT CLAIMS
ARLINGTON, VA -- The 2002-03 model Cadillac Escalade EXT, a luxury pickup, and the 2002-03 model Nissan Maxima, a midsize sedan, have the highest theft claim rates among newer passenger vehicles. The Escalade and Maxima have theft claim rates 7 to 8 times the average for all cars. These are the latest insurance theft loss results for passenger vehicles 1 to 3 years old published by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"This is the second year in a row that an Escalade is among the vehicles most likely to have a theft claim," says Kim Hazelbaker, HLDI senior vice president. "Both the Escalade pickup and SUV also top the list of vehicles with the most expensive theft claims, indicating they are top targets for thieves."
The Escalade's theft losses are the highest even though this vehicle is equipped with a standard antitheft ignition immobilizer. An immobilizer is built into a vehicle's electronic ignition system and is supposed to prevent the vehicle from being started without the proper key.
Thieves go after custom wheels: "One reason the Escalade is a top target is that some are equipped with expensive accessories like custom wheels," Hazelbaker says. "Stolen Escalades are sometimes found resting on blocks without their wheels."
Some custom chrome wheel and tire packages can cost more than $10,000.
The Escalade's antitheft immobilizer system is an early version that may not be as effective as the systems in other vehicles. The Insurance Bureau of Canada doesn't certify the Escalade's immobilizer as meeting the Bureau's antitheft standard because thieves may have found a way to defeat it. Such immobilizers also don't meet antitheft requirements in many other countries.
Maxima headlights are stolen: The Maxima's theft claim frequency increased dramatically after Nissan began equipping this car with expensive high-intensity discharge headlights as standard equipment in 2002. While the Maxima's theft claim rate was 8 times higher in 2003, compared with 2001, the average cost of each claim went down. This indicates that, in many cases, the stolen cars were recovered with damage or that items such as the headlights were stolen from parked cars.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
"Investigators tell us the high-intensity discharge headlights are often stolen because they fit into earlier Maximas that were sold without such lights," Hazelbaker says. "This car was redesigned for 2004, and its new headlight assemblies don't fit previous generation models. It's too early to tell if the 2004s will still have a theft problem."
HLDI results are the only reported theft results based on the number of insured vehicles. Information on theft losses published by the National Insurance Crime Bureau and CCC Information Services doesn't take into account how many of each vehicle are insured, so the most popular vehicles on the road tend to top these organizations' lists of most-stolen vehicles. In contrast, HLDI identifies vehicles with the worst theft losses by counting the number of claims by make and model relative to the number of each make and model insured, indicating which vehicles are most likely to be targets.
Long-term trends in insurance theft losses: Overall theft losses (stated as average loss payments per insured vehicle year) reflect both how often theft claims are made for a particular vehicle and the cost of the claims.
Since 1980, overall theft claim frequencies have declined while average insurance payments per theft claim have increased. But these trends have leveled off in recent years.
MORE INFORMATION FROM THIS SOURCE
