Time to take the rest of the winter off. Not from living my life (I hope), but posting. Long enough to be a genuine hiatus: back in mid-March. Of course, it won’t really be spring in northern Illinois even then, but the odds of a blizzard will be low.

Where did that word come from, anyway? Hiatus, that is. Latin: opening, aperture, rupture, gap.

But I always like to go back a little further, if possible.

*ghieh-

Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to yawn, gape, be wide open.”

It forms all or part of: chaos; chasm; dehiscence; gap; gasp; gawp; hiatus; yawn.

Till then, a selection of items, in honor of the chaos and gawp of the next month or so.

I snipped this a few months ago when pricing a room. Maybe things have changed since then, though I doubt it.

Yea, a $90 room! Competitive with a motel. Wait, not so much. Why would I stay at a random peer-to-peer room unless it’s either competitive on price – the original deal with the tech, as I recall – or so interesting or well-located that it’s worth the extra fees? Talk about drifting away from what made the platform attractive, once upon a time.

A view from the Getty Center about 18 months ago. Wonder what I’d see now.

One more mid-century scan: my mother and brothers, before I was born, at the Colosseum in the mid-50s. Must have been a chilly day in Rome.

I stood there myself, maybe at that exact spot, but not till 1983. Call it the Flavian Amphitheater, my henna-haired high school Latin teacher Mrs. Quarles would have said. 

Once upon a time, as recently as the early age of photography, it looks like you could wander right in. Those were the days.