January 1st, 2007 ... I made it.
"RocketPost" was the intended application to publish this darn thing (I thought it worked in conjunction WITH "Movable Type" ... but, well, we'll work on that ... would like to have a way to put imagery up ... anyone? Anyone?
Had to get this entry in ... sorry for the lack of commentary ... but had to have SOMETHING down before the 1st day of 2007 ends.
Okay ... $o I can get a picture onto the thing ... now we could u$e some help getting the expen$ive 'RocketPo$t' program to work ... thu$ far, 'Movable Type' doe$ the trick ... Chief's not happy ..
'FILE' PHOTO BY: MATTHEW (June 2006)
Taking Ben to Rome today; got a late start ...
... photos to phollow tomorrow ...
Here are a few of the pictures taken last nite by Matt & I ... we got a late start (everybody was sick today!) and didn't get to Rome until after the sun had gone down ... tried 2 'geocache ' hunts, but both were inside "gated" areas that had already closed (what's WITH you people?!). 
Night panoramic ... Matthew's camera
Fontana di Trevi .. also taken w/Matthew's camera
... a different angle of the Colosseo, taken with Motorola cellphone!
Pix of Ben in Pompeii from earlier today (hey! I'm a poet and I don't ... nevermind) ...
-- Love, Dad
** BONUS PICTURES just for you because you're the lucky visitor to this page!!!!
... marking the parking spot?
Technical support provided by Evenlink.Com ....
Shameless plug division.
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Sophia Loren |
Sophia Loren quotes:
"A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view."
"After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It's better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life."
"Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical."
"Everything you see I owe to spaghetti."
"Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go so much further than people with vastly superior talent."
"I am against all war."
"I can't bear being seen naked. I'm not exactly a tiny woman. When Sophia Loren is naked, this is a lot of nakedness."
"I think the quality of sexiness comes from within. It is something that is in you or it isn't and it really doesn't have much to do with breasts or thighs or the pout of your lips."
"I was so skinny, they gave me the nickname stechetto - the stick. I was tall, thin, ugly and dark like an Arab girl. I looked strange. All eyes. No flesh on my bones."
"I'm a giraffe. I even walk like a giraffe with a long neck and legs. It's a pretty dumb animal, mind you."
"I've never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don't understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now."
"If you haven't cried, your eyes can't be beautiful."
"It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true."
"It's a mistake to think that once you're done with school you need never learn anything new."
"Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life."
"No press conference announcing a last film. I'd just steal away. Best way because, if by chance after two or three years something interesting comes up, I would not - like Sinatra - have to say: "Well, I've thought it over and decided to come back."
"Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got."
"Sex is like washing your face - just something you do because you have to. Sex without love is absolutely ridiculous. Sex follows love, it never precedes it."
"Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner."
"The facts of life are that a child who has seen war cannot be compared with a child who doesn't know what war is except from television."
"The two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty."
"There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age."
"When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child."
"You have to be born a sex symbol. You don't become one. If you're born with it, you'll have it even when you're 100 years old."
"I wish there had been a man like Chief Musser in my village when I was a young girl. I would surely have married him, gone anywhere with him and made him happy for the rest of his life. I would not have wasted all of this time with all those silly movies, being an international superstar, sex symbol and all these other dull and boring things. Oh yes! I would have been absolutely content just to be with him. He is 100% "my kind of man!*"
ROME, Italy (AP) -- Oscar-winning film producer Carlo Ponti, who risked excommunication to marry Sophia Loren and later fled his native Italy to avoid fraud charges -- has died, his family said Wednesday. He was 94.
Ponti died overnight at a Geneva hospital, his family said. He had been hospitalized about 10 days earlier because of pulmonary complications, the family said in a statement.
The Milan-born Ponti had studied law and worked as a lawyer in his hometown before moving into film production. In 1956, the film "La Strada," which he co-produced, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. 1965, he was nominated as producer for the Best Picture Oscar for "Doctor Zhivago."
Other well-known movies produced by Ponti include "Blow-Up," "The Cassandra Crossing," "The Verdict" and "The Squeeze." Among the directors he worked with were Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard and David Lean.
But it was his affair with the young ingenue Loren that captivated the public rather than his behind-the-scenes work with the world's top filmmakers.
Ponti was married to his first wife, Giuliana, when he met Loren, who was nearly 25 years younger than him, in about 1950.
They tried to keep their relationship a secret in spite of the huge media interest, while Ponti's lawyers went to Mexico to obtain a divorce.
Catholic wrath
Ponti and Loren were married by proxy in Mexico in 1957 -- two male attorneys took their place and the happy couple only found out when the news was broken by society columnist Louella Parsons.
But they were unable to beat stringent Italian divorce laws and the wrath of the Roman Catholic Church. Ponti was charged with bigamy and Loren with being a concubine.
"I was being threatened with excommunication, with the everlasting fire, and for what reason? I had fallen in love with a man whose own marriage had ended long before," Loren has said.
"I wanted to be his wife and have his children. We had done the best the law would allow to make it official, but they were calling us public sinners," she said. "We should have been taking a honeymoon, but all I remember is weeping for hours."
The couple first lived in exile and then, after the annulment of their Mexican marriage, in secret in Italy.
They finally beat Italian law by becoming French citizens -- the approval was signed personally by French President Georges Pompidou -- and they married for a second time in Paris in 1966.
Despite many predictions that the marriage would founder over Ponti's affairs and the many dashing leading men who reportedly fell in love with Loren, the couple stayed together.
Ponti had several other brushes with the law.
He was briefly imprisoned during World War II for a film considered anti-German. An Italian court later gave Ponti a six-month suspended sentence for his 1973 film "Massacre in Rome," which claimed Pope Pius XII did nothing about the execution of Italian hostages by the Germans. The charges eventually were dropped on appeal.
Kidnap attempts
Though Loren was better known, Ponti amassed a fortune considerably greater than that of his wife -- and again fell foul of the Italian authorities.
In 1979, a court in Rome convicted him in absentia of the illegal transfer of capital abroad and sentenced him to four years in prison and a $24 million fine.
Loren, along with film stars Ava Gardner and Richard Harris, were acquitted of conspiracy.
It took Ponti until the late 1980s to settle his legal problems and finally obtain the return of his art collection, which had been seized by authorities and given to Italian museums.
He also survived two kidnapping attempts in 1975.
Ponti discovered many of the great Italian leading ladies, including Gina Lollobrigida, and had affairs with several of them. "I don't like actors. I prefer women," he said at the time.
In recent years, the couple lived mostly in Switzerland, where they had several homes. Despite reports that he was seriously ill, Ponti attended the 1998 Venice Film Festival to accept a lifetime achievement award for his wife, who was kept away by illness.
Ponti and Loren had two sons -- Carlo Jr., a celebrated conductor, and Edoardo, a film producer. He also had two children from his first marriage, Guendolina and Alexander.
No date was given for funeral arrangements but a statement from the family said it would be a "strictly private" event.
GoOd MoRnIng ...
It's Friday - 3 day weekend for many! Wanted to add this link before I lost it: (have fun)
Not much happened on Saturday ... Lea & Fred left ...
Lea and Freddie left on the 'Freedom Flight' (I think that's an unofficial name, but I could be wrong ...) and after 3+ years returned from Naples, Italy, back to the continental United States. Admittedly, they did and didn't want to go ...
So there were, as usual, tears flowing all around as people who've been a close part of each other's lives and support networks for so very long are now, most likely, gone.
Maybe you'll reunite back in the States, maybe you won't ...
Maybe you'll get to see them again and maybe you won't ...
One thing to remember: both they and you will be living your lives as better lives and enriched lives because you all knew each other ...
Almost all photos by Matthew Musser
Five people ... five crazy people ...
... five shadows, five shadows of five crazy people ... Mike, Dustin, Dawn, John & Matt ...
6 or 7000 feet above sea level! ("... isn't that cool, Dad?!") <koff>
Hotel where Mussolini was imprisoned for a time ...
Matthew the photographer (Photo below by Dawn Baker Burton ... )
The famous 'North Italian Pole' (I made that up ...)
The sun
The End
Ciro ... the genius responsible for the U.S. Navy's official website for Commander Navy Region Europe went to Vienna last Christmas and put some of his photos online (with some shnazzy music!)
CLiCk HeRe 4 CiRo'S sHoW
...
(... cont. from the 14.01.07 entry ...)
With an extensive gear list that included a balaclava, a pair of gaiters, some polypropylene, crampons and an ice axe, there was only one thing members of Club Arrampicata Napoli (CAN) could have been preparing for: snow survival.
Over the holiday weekend of January 13-14, CAN members ventured 4 hours north to the Gran Sasso National Park to brave the cold realities of winter mountain survival and see the views from atop of Gran Sasso. The mini-expedition consisted of overnight bivy and two days of extensive hikes up to an altitude of around 7k feet with some technical Grade 4 sections (a rating based on difficulty, 5 being the most difficult).
The group expected deep snow covered trails thick enough to practice building snow shelters but were surprised to find icy paths and melting patches of snow. Although the snow was minimal, the weather was certainly cold with temperatures dipping below freezing. They improvised the trip, practicing crampon snow travel techniques, ice axe self saving procedures and, above all, alpinist tricks-of-the-trade to stay warm.
“The best part of the trip,” reflected Dustin Burton, “was learning safety techniques that has given me the confidence to save myself and my family if we were ever stuck in a winter storm. Especially, since the rash of winter disasters that have hit many American’s this season, be it family caught in the cars in snow storms or mountaineers caught during an expedition. Now I know what to do to survive.”
The diverse group of CAN members making this trek included Marine Gunnery Sargeant John Woodward, Navy Lieutenant Dustin Burton, Dawn Baker a contract employee with Commander Navy Region Europe, Michael Dong and Matthew Musser, both civilian family members. As with this trip, CAN membership and event participation demographics span all age groups, touch every skill level but maintain one constant thread: people who have a passion for the outdoors.
Though Club Arrampicata Napoli centers around rock climbing, it goes beyond that sport. At the crux, it is about exploring the beauty in nature around Naples, Italy, and Europe.
Club meetings are held the first Tuesday of every month at the support site gym at 6:30pm. The club rock climbs as a group on the 1st and 3rd Saturday of each month.
From left to right: Dustin Burton, Michael Dong, Matt Musser and John Woodward begin their ascent up Gran Sasso. (Photo by Dawn Baker)
(From left to right) Michael Dong, Dustin Burton, Matt Musser and John Woodward traverse a steep grade as they continue their ascent up Gran Sasso. (Photo taken by Dawn Baker)
(From left to right) Michael Dong, Dustin Burton, Matt Musser and John Woodward traverse a steep grade with crampons. (Photo taken by Dawn Baker)
(From left to right) John Woodward, Michael Dong, Dustin Burton and Matt Musser celebrate a successful ascent. (Photo taken by Dawn Baker)
Sacrifice comes home
[Phillip Carter, Thursday January 18, 2007 at 3:09pm EST]
The Orange County Register reports that Army 2LT Mark Daily was killed in action in Iraq this week. An IED killed him and three of his soldiers in Mosul while they were serving with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. 2LT Daily joined the Army through UCLA's Army ROTC program, graduating in 2005 as that program's Distinguished Military Graduate. He went to Iraq out of a sense of personal duty, writing on his personal website:
"If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience, then consider me the exception," he wrote.
Update: The full note, written on Oct. 29, 2006, is posted online.
Michelle Malkin: The immortal words of 2LT Mark Daily
Blue Monday ... Today is the most depressing day of the year. If you woke up today feeling suicidal, don't worry! It's totally normal and should pass within 24 hours. Unless you're a Saints fan. Then you should probably go ahead and kill yourself now ...
Blue Monday - BuzzFeed
Commander, Navy Region Europe
Navy's oldest Sailor,
musician Forziati retires from NSA Naples
By MC2(AW) Shaun Knittel
Naval Support Activity Naples, Italy
Until Jan. 25, Master Chief Musician Douglas D. Forziati was the oldest Sailor in the Navy. Admiral Henry Ulrich, Commander, Allied Joint Force Command Naples, and long time friend of Forziati, spoke at the retirement ceremony held at Joint Force Command in Naples, Italy.
As a career Navy musician Forziati has been around the world and back again, representing the U.S. Navy for 30 years. That all changed when the master chief traded in his uniform for civilian attire, retiring from the Navy and reminiscing about a career he describes as some of the best years of his life.
“Camaraderie is something I’m going to miss,” admits Forziati. “We all get along wonderfully.”
So how does one become not only the oldest enlisted Sailor but the oldest active duty enlisted member of the United States Navy? At 64 years of age, Forziati is not bashful about telling his Navy story.
Forziati began playing the trumpet at age nine in Springfield, Mass. When he entered junior high school, the aspiring musician practiced with his mentor, Jack Kowal. After graduating from high school, Forziati was turned on to the Navy music program by Kowal. That was the first Forziati had heard of the opportunity that Kowal described as “the best thing going for musicians.”
In December of 1960, Forziati enlisted in the Navy as a trumpet player and toured with bands in Japan and San Diego, California before he was honorably discharged in 1964.
Forziati took a 17-year hiatus from the Navy. While playing the civilian gig, Forziati earned a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from Westfield State College, in Westfield, Mass., and continued to peruse a music career.
In 1981, Forziati was playing trumpet in a road band in Cape Cod, Mass., when he was approached by Chief Musician Mike Mitchell, one of the band’s admirers. Coincidentally, Mitchell was the current chief detailer for Navy musicians. At the time, Forziati was 38. Age 35 is the cutoff date for active duty enlistment, however, if you add the four years of previously served time, that gave Forziati the “loophole” he needed to join the Navy band once again. In 1981, the seasoned musician reported to the Atlantic Fleet Band in Norfolk, Va.
After completing advanced training at the Armed Forces School of Music in Norfolk in 1985, Forziati was stationed in Naples, Italy for the first time, when he was assigned to the CINCSOUTH Band (now the Allied Forces Band).
Forziati became a Navy Chief Musician when he returned to the Armed Forces School of Music as an instructor.
“I love teaching and mentoring,” said Forziati. “I’m a good cop, when possible. Warm fuzzies are always better than disciplinary counseling.”
Returning to Naples, Italy in 1998 for a second stint, Forziati served as Command Master Chief and Assistant Director for the Sixth Fleet Band. Taking advantage of the Navy education benefits, he said, Forziati earned a masters degree in counseling from Norfolk State University before assuming his current position as the Command Master Chief and Assistant Director for the Allied Forces Band.
As a mentor and Command Master Chief, Forziati believes in assisting junior personal with all matters concerning career and family goals, he said, adopting the motto, “Happy at home, happy at work.” As an example of his motto in action, those around Forziati need only look to his successful career and 21-year-marriage to Sally, with whom he has seven children, 18 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Forziati’s retirement ceremony was held yesterday at JFC. Although the Navy had to say goodbye to a 30-year, positive leader and mentor, it’s safe to say that Forziati left a lasting impression on the Sailors who served alongside him.
“My love for the Navy comes from my love of people,” said Forziati. “During my career I was mindful of leading by example and being approachable. My office was always open to anyone for advice.”
This page contains all entries posted to MuSsBloG.Com ... in Gennaio 2007. They are listed from oldest to newest.
Febbraio 2007 is the next archive.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.
