San Marino is the third smallest independent country in Europe, with only Monaco and Vatican City being smaller in area. It is landlocked within the borders of Italy, and sits on a high limestone ridge overlooking the Adriatic Sea. The country has its own small army, but we don’t know if it has every been conquered by force. Here are some of the really old fortifications along the crest of the ridge:

The old town within San Marino’s city walls contains several nearly level, narrow streets that run in parallel laterally along the slope below the ridge crest, with steep ramps and stairways connect successive levels as you move up the hill. This would be on the back side of the hill you see in the photo above. Souvenir shops, cafes, coffee shops, gun and weapons shops (want to buy a real crossbow?), and other shops line the streets. Most of the shops have apartments on the floors above them, but given the lack of parking and cost of living, it is not clear how many people actually live within the old town walls. A road rally was in progress during our visit, with a lot of small cars trying to navigate the crowds like you see below.

The view is spectacular from the top of the ridge, and it overlooks the newer parts of San Marino (see photo below). The road up to the old part of town traverses a lot of switchbacks, and if you wanted to defend the high ground, then this was the place for you!

The view to the west was more rugged. We were distracted by the blooming redbud trees, known locally as Judas trees because they bloom each year at Easter. You can’t see it in the next photo, but there looked to be a monastery on top of another ridge to the west, so apparently the founders of San Marino were not the only ones wanting a secure location. This raises a question, though: were would you get water? Maybe cisterns to store runoff from the roofs?

Here is one of at least four fortifications along the crest of the ridge. The castles and some of the walls were built of quarried limestone blocks (somewhat uniform dimensions but not smoothly finished), and parts of the walls were made of rough limestone slabs instead of quarried stone. The old cathedral, shops, and other buildings within the walls were built with more attention to shaping and smoothing the stones. I wonder how far it was to the quarries?

We are well over two years into a changing mix of masks, mandates, lockdowns, rules, restrictions, and “two weeks to slow the spread.” The pandemic seems to be receding in the rear view mirror but our home county recently imposed yet another mask mandate, so I guess it ain’t over until the fat lady sings. History will show how much our government approaches to the coronavirus accomplished, and it will also show how much damage they imposed on our children, physical health, mental health, schools, and economy. It takes time to figure out which data to collect, and it takes time to analyze and understand the data.

While we wait for the truth to come into focus, it seems useful to reflect on what may have motivated officials at local, state, and national levels to take the approaches they did. Why? So we can learn and hopefully do better next time. We all experienced their attempts at managing the coronavirus, but what factors might have come into play in motivating their decisions, or lack thereof? Motives underlie and influence actions, so motives are part of trying to understand the whole picture. In no particular order, here are some thoughts:

Genuine concern for the health of citizens. We live in a cynical age, and it is all too easy to doubt that an elected or appointed official, who knows very few of us on a personal level, would have our best interests at heart. Politics, skepticism, and cynicism aside, many of our elected officials take their service and the needs of the public seriously. Yes, I hear politicians speaking of their amazing leadership more than they speak of their service, but some of them do remember that they work for us. Although they may not know what to do about any and every problem that arises, we would like to believe that they want the best for us as individuals, families, and communities. Hopefully, there are more of these people in public service than it often seems.

Fear of risk. People are often not very good at understanding and analyzing known risks (e.g., the odds of dying in a plane crash), much less new risks (e.g., the odds of dying from an unknown virus). People in our government are not much different from the rest of us when it comes to risks, but they have the additional pressure of fearing the second-guessing, the “I told you so,” and the accusations of failure from their critics and opponents. This leads to a level of unspoken but pervasive risk avoidance that can be counterproductive. Knowledge and wisdom can help mitigate fears of risk, but knowledge takes time to acquire, and wisdom takes even longer. In a world driven by political narratives and impatient news cycles, it takes a lot of intestinal fortitude to take a reasoned approach and stick with it in the face of fearmongering. Hopefully, our leaders know enough to ask for help from multiple sources that reflect all dimensions of the problem.

Love of power. Power is addictive, and we can see its effects as various governors and health officials try to hang on to powers granted or claimed under declarations of emergency. How long does it take before an emergency decays into a crisis and then into a chronic (i.e., long term) problem? In a genuine emergency, like a surprise attack, a hurricane or tornado, or a large, destructive earthquake, emergency powers to respond make sense. But as the crisis drags on and on, at some point it is no longer an emergency but something that needs deliberative attention. A longer term, deliberative approach can consider all dimensions of the problem, implications of proposed solutions, and input from the public. Many states limit declarations of emergency with a deadline of 30, 60, or even 90 days, beyond which the declaration expires. Sadly, California does not have such a limit for things like a health emergency, and some of our officials seem to enjoy the power too much to let go.

Peer pressure. An unremarked aspect of the past two years of emergency management has been how often counties have imitated each other’s response, regardless of whether their circumstances are similar. The same behavior occurred between states, with some applauded and others villainized, according to whether they fell into line with what other states were doing. Such peer pressure effects seemed to trump variabilities in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, and certainly did not wait for clean data. Perhaps other factors were at work. If they were working from a defensible consensus, then better transparency would have explained the approach. However, peer pressure between governors and between health officials (egged on by opinion pieces pretending to be journalism) seems to have played a role, perhaps too much of a role, in how they tried to manage the public as a way to manage the pandemic.

Other considerations? Sadly, many of our officials (and talking heads on the news) hide behind what they claim is science rather than embracing actual science. Actual science includes admitting unknowns, asking questions, and balancing old information against new information rather than squelching information and questions that do not fit the narrative. Many of our officials and their news media allies practice science by bluster, perhaps not realizing that including all the information, including competing theories, would actually improve their credibility and, with time, their effectiveness.

So what’s the point? Our government recently said that they are preparing for the next pandemic. If so, then maybe it would be nice to include lessons learned from this past one. And maybe we need to take their performance into account when we cast our votes in November.

Ravenna, Italy is known for amazing mosaics in its cathedrals, museums, and art shops. More on that in a moment. The city also appreciates political commentary, as shown by this poster we found during our tour of the old town district. Have you ever played Risk? We use to play this board game on long, rainy winter days. It is not a quick game, just as Putin’s adventures in Eastern Europe look to be a sad, drawn-out geopolitical affair.

The Basilica of San Vitale is a 6th century church, and one of eight structures in Ravenna listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. We can’t recall if the structure has a hexagonal or octagonal floor plan (octagonal, I think), but the interior of this church is lined with amazing mosaics. Byzantine-era artists created these mosaics to glorify God and to illustrate events from Biblical history.

Here is a view of the basilica interior with its vaulted ceilings and some of the mosaic artwork. We found a baptismal font on the main floor, suggesting that the basilica is still in use rather than simply serving as a museum.

The next two photos show some of the mosaics created to illustrate persons and events from the Old Testament. The upper left corner of the first mosaic shows Moses at the burning bush, although it looks like many small flames rather than one large one. The upper right corner shows Isaiah. The left side of the middle panel shows Abel offering his sacrifice to God (Gen 4), and the right side shows Melchizedek presiding at an altar (possibly from Gen 14?)..

The upper left corner of the next mosaic shows Jeremiah and the upper right corner shows Moses. The left side of the middle panel shows Abraham hosting the three visitors (Gen 18) with Sarah in the tent behind him. The right side shows Abraham about to sacrifice his son, Isaac, with the ram who would take Isaac’s place nearby (Gen 22). A hand is reaching from heaven to stop Abraham’s knife.

Turning from the religious to the mundane, we saw a number of fishing setups along the waterways, like the one below. The general scheme involved a large net that could be lowered to the bottom of the waterway. The fisherman would leave the net to sit there for maybe an hour or more, and then the ropes on pulleys would suddenly raise it up and out of the water. Then the fisherman would pull it ashore to see what kind of fish (if any) it caught. Probably not as much of a sure thing as fishing with dynamite, but it must have been productive given that we saw dozens of these setups.

Most cruises don’t stop at Sibenik, in Croatia, because the channel to the port includes a 90-degree turn that is too narrow for most cruise ships. Nevertheless, Sibenik (pronounced Shib-nick) is wonderful to visit. The community is welcoming, and the surrounding limestone mountains are home to Krka National Park, with rugged scenery and impressive waterfalls.

The older part of Sibenik includes narrow stone-paved alleys and stairways, interesting shops, and the St. James cathedral. Many of the buildings were constructed with quarried limestone blocks, giving them a solid, substantial feel. We were there on a rainy day, so the limestone or marble pavement was a little slippery, but it was still nice to tour the old part of town.

The baptistry is in a separate room at street level. Those wanting baptism come in through a door from the street. Once baptized they exit through a different door into the church.

The stone building on the right was one of several hydropower plants in which water wheels or turbines generated energy to grind grain or operate a fuller’s mill. What’s a fuller’s mill? See the next photo.

A shaft from the water wheel or a turbine turned a cam or crank mechanism to raise and lower the wooden hammer in the left side of the photo. Freshly sheared wool was put under the hammer to soften the material before further processing to make thread, etc.

Although these waterfalls took the form of several small- to medium-sized falls and cascades, the total elevation drop and flow rate from top to bottom was considerable. We were told that the first commercially productive hydroelectric plant in the world was built at these falls, and generated electricity to power city lights a few days before hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls went into operation.

Here is one of the old hydraulic turbines (also known as water wheels) from the hydroelectric plant. Older turbines were eventually replaced with newer, more efficient turbines to wring every possible amount of energy out of the available hydraulic head (i.e., the difference in water level between above and below the powerhouse) and flow rate (i.e., how much water is available to spin the turbine, usually in cubic feet per minute or per second). Hydraulic turbines are usually custom-designed for each hydroelectric plant according to the amount of hydraulic head and flow rate available for that particular design. The finishing touches on each new turbine are often made by hand grinder to achieve a shape that maximizes efficiency and minimizes the potential for cavitation. Why? Because a small difference in efficiency can add up to a large difference in the amount of electricity manufactured over the life of the turbine.

Explainer: What Key Factors Influence Gas Prices?

The article linked above provides a good explanation of the price we pay for gasoline. We see this kind of analysis repeated on social media, in corporate/legacy news media, and elsewhere. However it does not tell the whole story. For example, the article breaks down the price of gasoline into four parts: the price of crude oil, taxes, distribution and marketing costs, and refining costs, but does not say which category includes the cost of transporting crude oil from the wells to the refineries. They also present the price analysis as a current snapshot in time, and ignore how the situation has changed since the US gave up its net energy independence a year or two ago. To better understand gasoline prices, we need to drill down (pardon the pun) into some details.

First, the article mentions that the price of crude oil is the largest factor in gasoline prices, correctly points out that crude oil prices are driven by the laws of supply and demand, and notes that these market forces act on an international scale. It states that the US is the country producing the most oil, but fails to mention that withdrawal of federal land from exploration, drilling, and production limits US oil production. They also omit the effects of transportation costs and availability, and how canceling or slow-walking approvals for pipelines effectively blocks or impedes the US from using oil produced in Canada. And they do not explore the financial pressures that prevent large and small oil producers from accessing capital to support operations or investments. All of these factors reduce the supply side of the supply/demand equation, driving up crude oil (and gasoline) prices.

Second, the article outlines some of the federal and state taxes that add to the cost of gasoline in the US. There have been rumors of a tax rebate or a tax “holiday” to give consumers some price relief, but nothing has materialized. Notably, there does not seem to be any discussion of permanently reducing the tax burden. Politicians seem addicted to tax revenues, so this is no surprise.

Distribution and marketing come in third. Other than regulatory constraints and permitting challenges, the biggest unmentioned factor in this part of the gasoline price may be a shortage of trucks, drivers, and storage/transfer capacity. If the article is correct in saying that no new refineries have been built in the US for many years, this would aggravate the cost of distribution from refinery to consumer simply because of growing and evolving patterns of gasoline use at some distance from the fixed locations of refineries.

The fourth factor is refining costs. No new refineries have been built recently in the US, the country has been exporting crude oil and importing refined products, meaning additional steps (and costs) in the transportation and distribution sectors. Refining costs are also complicated by boutique gasoline blends required on a geographic or seasonal basis. Why no new refineries? This question was apparently beyond the scope of the analysis.

Some politicians and some of the chattering class in the news media claim that US and state government policies have no responsibility for the rising cost of gasoline in the US, nor do politicians have any way to influence those prices other than to invoke additional restrictions on various parts of the process. However, government policies reduce land available for exploration, drilling, or production. Government policies block pipeline transportation of crude oil, making some supplies unavailable to the US and forcing other supplies to be transported by truck or train at higher cost and higher risk. And government policies distort market forces that would ordinarily provide a more holistic approach to managing costs and risks. Please keep these things in mind when you go to the ballot box in future elections.

We noted that the linked article provided only part of the story. However, this blog post covered only a limited amount of additional information. For example, we did not touch on how hydrocarbons play vital roles in modern materials, pharmaceuticals, and food production. We did not discuss climate change, environmental effects, renewable energy, nuclear energy, conservation efforts, transportation alternatives, or transitions from one energy source to another. The picture is large and complicated, and these are all interesting parts of what the political and news media types tell (or don’t tell) us, so keep an open mind and don’t hesitate to ask questions.

You can find the town of Alberobello a bit inland from the port of Bari, on the east coast of Italy (just above the heel of the boot). Alberobello includes a large number of trulli, or traditional whitewashed stone buildings, each capped by a conical dome made of stacked flat stones. The stone domes are assembled without mortar, usually in an inner layer and an outer layer, with the outer layer tilted slightly outward to protect against rain.

Although we saw several trulli by the ones, twos, and threes along the route to Alberobello, we saw dozens of them sitting in close proximity in the old part of town. They cluster along stone-paved streets, as you can see in the photo above. Fields around town look like red clay with lots and lots of limestone cobbles, rocks, and slabs sticking up through the soil. Farmers pick rocks from the soil to build stone fences around the fields (see fences in the background of the photo below), yet it looks like a new rock comes up to take the place of every rock pulled out of the soil. I don’t envy whomever tries to plow the fields!

The trullo shown above provided a good example of the builder’s art. Most of the trulli did not have a staircase up the outside like this one, nor did they have such elaborate doorways. The layers of stone kept the interior cool in summer, but probably did not hold a lot of warmth in the winter. The original designs were heated with fireplaces, which are not very efficient as space heaters.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of trulli is that they were designed to be collapsible. As the story goes, a regional ruler decided to tax permanent structures like homes and businesses. The locals had plenty of stones to build with, but not much money to pay taxes, so they designed the domes such that pulling out a keystone would cause the whole roof to fall in. If the tax collector came around, they would pull the keystone and, “Look! No permanent structure to be found and taxed.” Of course, it might take three to six months to reassemble the roof, but if the tax collector showed up only once in several years, and if you had no money to pay taxes, it might be worth it! Looks like taxes were not any more popular then than they are now.

Santa Severina is a small hilltop fortress village inland from our port of call at Crotone, Italy. Taormina (see earlier post for Sicily) was fun to visit, but Santa Severina was much less touristy and provided a clearer understanding of a hilltop fortress village. Generally speaking, a stone wall protected the hilltop and enclosed a church (with a bell tower under scaffolding on the left), shops, homes, and a secondary fortress wall around a castle (taking up the middle of the photo) for an additional level of protection. As you can see, the community outgrew the hilltop and started building homes and shops outside the original wall.

Where would you get water in a village such as this? Maybe you could haul it in by oxcart, but the fortress and other buildings were probably equipped with cisterns to save runoff from the roof. Water would be a crucial factor in surviving a siege, though.

The fortress walls and the castle they enclose were conquered and rebuilt several times over the course of local history. The rebuilding shows that the conquerers considered it a good site for defense, and each cycle of rebuilding probably reflected lessons learned from previous defeats. Archeological excavations are still in progress within the castle walls, and show evidence of Roman, Muslim, and Christian occupation over the centuries.

The cross shown above came from one of several graves found during archeological digs within the castle walls. Current thinking is that this cross belonged to a local bishop many generations ago.

Even though the castle included a small chapel, the church was the spiritual (if not physical) center of the hilltop community. It is still in use for worship, teaching, and concerts. The baptistry was in a room adjacent to the sanctuary, and families still bring their infants for baptism.

After visiting the fortress, castle, and church, we had a few minutes to relax in the town square. For better or worse, few of the local shops were open for business. Maybe we were there before tourist season was in full swing. However, we did find a double-shot espresso for a couple of Euros, which was good enough to satisfy the tourists.

What Are the Five Major Types of Renewable Energy?

The article linked above provides a nice, short introduction to the major categories of renewable energy. The authors believe that renewable energy will inevitably become the predominant source of electricity around the world. However, it ain’t necessarily so if it means trading reliable for renewable. Regardless of how much the power grid needs maintenance and updating, if the energy sources are not reliable and available, in aggregate, 24/7 we will have blackouts and brownouts, not to mention the problem of coming up with enough electricity to charge everyone’s electric car. And, as you might expect, there are some additional questions lurking behind our utility bills:

Since we were talking about reliability, let’s ask which of these five types of renewable energy are available on demand at any hour of the day or night, any time of year. Without some way to store energy for when it is otherwise unavailable, it looks like wind and solar don’t measure up. Biomass and hydro might be limited by available resources, but geothermal seems the most likely choice if we want reliable energy availability. Meanwhile, we need ways to store truly large amounts of energy, whether centralized, distributed, or both, to get us past the hours or days when our preferred renewable source is unavailable..

Next, let’s look at costs. As we noted in a post several months ago, it is notoriously difficult to calculate complete life cycle costs for energy generation. It can be helpful to let the marketplace help sort out the options, although the state and federal energy agencies have gone to some length to impede this sorting process. Nevertheless, the linked article does try to rack up a cost per megawatthour for each of the five types of renewable energy generation. However, their “levelized cost of energy” number is incomplete since it does not include things like siting costs (price and amount of land needed), the cost of decommissioning and dismantling at the end of the generating system’s useful life cycle, or the admittedly even more difficult to estimate cost of environmental impacts.

None of this is to say we should avoid renewable energy or stop its continued development. Instead, think of this as a call for market-informed development that is a little smarter than what we have seen so far from the special interest groups and the government agencies.

Sicily is home to Mount Etna, one of the most active volcanoes in Europe. Hey, for all we know it is one of the most active volcanoes anywhere. Etna was erupting earlier this year, so we were in hope of seeing some kind of eruption (even just a little venting of steam and ash?), but it was not to be. Here is our best view of Mount Etna:

Our consolation prize was a visit to Taormina, a striking town built on terraces on a mountainside above the sea. The village centers along a main street (designated a pedestrian zone) that is narrow, congested, and difficult to photograph. The only cars we saw were mostly small, and traffic seemed limited to the next terrace above and next terrace below the main street. Here is a local church looming above the pedestrian zone, and backing up to the street on the next terrace up:

Just as in Florence and Rome, it seems like any place you excavate to start some new project, you have a good chance of running into unexpected artifacts or ruins from centuries before. In California, we have to take into account factors like shrinking/swelling clay, potential slope stability issues, or seismic risks; but in many of our ports of call you have to add archeological finds to the mix of things that could stop your work. For example, here are the remains of a small ampitheater discovered when a property owner started excavating to build a foundation:

Taormina has many charming side streets (well, actually stairways) branching off of the main pedestrian route. Here is a typical stairway up towards the next terrace. They use flowers and other plants to dress up the homes and businesses, but we never saw anyone watering the flowerboxes. Maybe their version of a Mediterranean Climate includes rain?

We were told that Sicily is famous for its citrus crops, and particularly for its thick-skinned lemons. Here was the display at a local market:

Despite the cloud cover and cold wind, Taormina was great to explore. I will protect the guilty by omitting the photo, but the local businesses also included some gelato shops that provided a blood sugar boost as we completed our trek to the end of town and back.

We are into early summer here in Livermore and have begun harvesting the fruit of the land. More specifically, we picked our apricots and are midway through the season for our raspberries and boysenberries. This is a drought year (again!), so the crops are smaller than normal. Fruit and berry quality seem good, though, and it has been years since we have had to do anything to control pests or diseases.

We have two kinds of apricot trees: one Katy, an early producer, and two Blenheim (I think), which are more of a mid-season commercial variety. The Katy tree set a lot of fruit but then dropped all but about two apricots. It was like someone reminded the tree that we are in a drought and there would not be enough water to support a normal crop. The two Blenheim, on the other hand, dutifully carried their already-small crop of fruit all the way to the end, when the birds started pecking at the ripening ‘cots. At that point we declared victory, picked the fruit, made jam, and saved a few for eating. Yum!

We prefer freezer jam when it comes to berries. The jars shown above are the first of three or four batches for the season, depending on how many of the berries find their way into pies or cobblers.

Boysenberry vines act like weeds; so much so that some people advise pruning them with a lawn mower each fall. We don’t go to that extreme, but do appreciate the hardy, self-armored character of the vines. Never mind that I look like I lost a cat fight after picking the fruit.

For some reason the raspberry freezer jam, shown above, is almost as dark as the boysenberry jam. We process the whole fruit rather than trying to strain out the seeds, and you can see the evidence in the texture of the product.

Later this season we expect to can tomatoes, our largest crop of the season (other than citrus). When I think back to how my grandparents processed food, it is clear that our work is pretty small compared to their almost-industrial-scale food canning. I remember rows upon rows of canned tomatoes, green beans, beets, and other foods. No freezer jams, but canned fruit to round out meals built from canned vegetables. That is how many of us lived 50-60 years ago. Maybe we could go back to those techniques if necessary, but it is nice to have the luxury not to have to grow and preserve all of our own food. Another dimension of blessings and riches from God’s hands.