“What man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Artemis, the image of which fell down from Jupiter?” – Pliny the Elder, Natural History, XXXVI, xxi, 95.

Ephesus was also an important center for early Christianity. From AD 52-54, St. Paul lived in Ephesus, working with the congregation and organizing missionary activity. Acts (19: 1-40) says in Ephesus God accomplished mighty things through Paul. Essentially, Paul the Apostle declared only Christianity was necessary for salvation and depicted the world outside the Church as under judgment. He preached that gods made by hands are not gods at all. Thus, Paul became embroiled in a dispute with the local silversmiths’ guild, whose livelihood depended on selling statuettes of Artemis in the Temple. Instigated by one silversmith, Demetrius, a riot broke out. Paul, who was also a Roman citizen, afforded privileged legal status, escaped Ephesus.

A passage of the Gospel of St. John (19: 26-27) suggests that the Virgin Mary may have come with St. John to Ephesus. Now located in the hills about four miles above present day Ephesus, Turkey, the House of Mary, is believed to have been the Virgin Mary’s last home.  The Virgin Mary, who was declared to be a Sign of Godin the Qur’an (23: 50), is revered by Muslims. The House of Mary, also a place of Christian pilgrimage, has been visited by the three most recent Popes, including Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (currently Pope Benedict XVI).

I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.
– 1 Corinthians iii, 6.

Such a diverse population had but one common denominator: everyone was subject to the whim of the Sultan. For example, an architect built a castle in Marmaris, Turkey for the Sultan which is today a popular tourist attraction. Unimpressed, the Sultan showed his displeasure by beheading the architect. As Caliphate, the highest position in Islam, the Sultan, or “lord of kings”, served as the Empire’s sole regent and was considered the embodiment of its government. In short, the Sultan’s power was absolute.

When Topkapi Palace was built for the Sultan in Istanbul between 1472 and 1478 the compound included buildings for his Imperial Harem. Meaning “home of happiness”, the Harem was the place where the Sultan lived with his wives, women, female slaves and children. Usually, there were 300-500 women in the Harem, but that the number rose occasionally to 700. Not surprisingly, the Imperial Harem was an important power at Ottoman court. Ruled by the Valide Sultan, or Queen Mother of the Sultan, the Harem would often become involved in state politics. In rank after the Sultan came Valide Sultan, next came the Sultan’s wives having different titles like 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd etc. The Haremagalari, in charge of Harem security, came next in rank. Finally, the Grand Vizier, or State Prime Minister, and the Seyh-ul-Islam, or head of the Islamic hierarchy found their place in Imperial protocol.

Aimée du Buc de Rivéry (born in 1763) was the daughter of a wealthy Martinique plantation owner and the cousin to Napoleon’s wife, Empress Josephine Bonaparte. According to legend, in 1784, on her return to the Caribbean after attending convent school in France, Aimee was kidnapped by Barbary pirates, enslaved and sold to the Bey of Algiers. Captivated by her beauty, the Bey saw an opportunity to win the Sultan’s favor. He presented the girl to Abdülhamid I. She was fair, demure and intelligent. The Sultan named herNakşidil, converted her to Islam, made her his favorite and she became his 13^th wife. In 1789, when Abdülhamid I died, his son, Selim III, wanted Nakşidil to stay in the Harem since they got on well and he shared his secrets with her. Soon assassins sought to kill her increasingly favored son. Nakşidil saved her son by concealing him inside a furnace. Nakşidil’s son, Ghazi Caliph Sultan Mahmud II,became Sultan following Selim III and thus until her death in 1817, Nakşidil was Valide Sultan, Queen of the Ottoman Empire.

“While lions were trembling in my crushing paw
Fate made me fall prey to a doe-eyed darling.”

- Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, world conqueror, 1520-1566.

The island of Delos, isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece. Delos had a position as a holy sanctuary for a millennium before Greek mythology made it the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. During the third century BC, Apollo became identified with Helios, god of the sun. Evidently, Apollo came to the Aegean from Anatolia during the Iron Age, c. 1100 to 800 BC. Homer pictures him on the side of the Trojans, during the Trojan War. Apollo was the protector god who wards off evil. The possibility that the name was inherited has been confirmed by inscriptions in western Anatolia, c. 1280 BCE: Aplu Enlil, meaning “the son of Enlil“, the Babylonian god of the sun.

In literary contexts, Apollo represents harmony, order, and reason, characteristics contrasted with those of Dionysus, god of wine, who represents ecstasy and disorder. The Greeks thought of the two qualities as complementary: the two gods were almost brothers. Apollo is often associated with the Greek ideal of moderation and virtue that opposes gluttony. On one occasion, Apollo fell in love with Cassandra. He promised Cassandra the gift of prophecy to seduce her, but she rejected him. Enraged, Apollo indeed gifted her with the ability to know the future, with a curse that she could only see the future tragedies and that no one would ever believe her.

I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself, and knows it is divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophecy, all medicine, is mine,
All light of art or nature; – to my song
Victory and praise in its own right belong.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Hymn of Apollo“, Verse VI, 1820.

In 1530, Spanish Emperor Charles V gave Malta to the Hospitallers in return for one falcon yearly rent. The island’s lonely outpost was a stepping stone for Turks to invade Christiandom and a convenient hub for the Hospitaller corsairs, commissioned to interrupt infidel commerce and to enslave seaports. Malta became a thorn for Turks. On May 18, 1565, Suleiman again attacked the Hospitallers with a standing army of 28,000. The Hospitaller defenders included 500 Knights and 3,000 Maltese men-at-arms. The first month’s siege of Fort Saint Elmo cost the Turks 6,000 men. Finally breaching the main Hospitaller fort at Birgu, the Turks were decimated by the Knight’s ferocity. After five months, Spanish reinforcements led by Don Garcia de Toledo ended the siege and the victory was celebrated by all the Christian monarchies of Europe.

Hospitaller Knights took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The Knights owed their obedience to their Grand Master who was subject only to the Pope. This stratagem avoided interference from any Christian state by granting the Order its own sovereignty. The Order had eight tongues from France, Provence, Auvergne, Aragon, Castile, Italy, Germany and England. The Grand Master was elected for life and was subject only to the authority of the Pope. The Order fostered a sense of nostalgia for the medieval notions of chivalry and the rank of Knight became the exclusive preserve of the European nobility.

As years passed after the 1565 victory, corruption and internal dissension undermined the effectiveness and reputation of the Order. A wealthy Knight claimed poverty by pledging his assets to the Order. A chaste Knight took care of his children but never married. And the Knights self-serving obedience to their Order showed no compassion to the people of Malta. On June 9, 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte, while on his way to Egypt, stopped briefly at Malta and ordered the Hospitallers to leave. Grand Master von Hompesch sailed away without a fight.

“Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea.”

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Secretary to the Civil Commissioner, Malta, 1804.

By 1906 Gaudi had become a living legend, the most famous architect working in the Iberian Peninsula. Eccentric, egocentric and focused, there was no doubting his genius. But there was a gathering backlash. Gaudí’s originality was ridiculed by his jealous peers. Even so, as time passed his work became more famous. Today, Gaudi stands as one of history’s most original architects.

The Gaudi myth of the hermit and the dejected beggar dates effectively from 1914 on. In subsequent years, Gaudi’s appearance changed.  He became like a shadow, appearing more translucent. He changed from his usual model of shoe to his own invention of esparto grass soles with leather uppers held together with elastic. His suits hung off his hollow shoulders, the overused pockets collapsed, while his trousers flapped around thin legs. One day Gaudi was mistaken for a tramp and offered a limosna – alms.

In autumn 1925, Gaudi finally made the decision to live in his La Sagrada Familia studio. Around 6 pm the evening of June 7, 1926 following his habitual route Gaudi walked across Barcelona looking unusually distracted. The Number 30 Tram, unable to slow down, hit what the driver described as a drunken tramp. Stopping briefly, the tramp was pushed to one side and the tram continued on its way. Two pedestrians went over to help the victim. There were no papers on him and just a handful of raisins and nuts in his pockets. Four times they tried to flag down taxis to take him to the nearest hospital but each time they were refused. The following morning, Gaudi was found by his assistants with a Gospel in his pocket and his underpants held together by two safety pins.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
- George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950.

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

- William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene 3.

“The location of the temple is singular: it stands at the top of a long, wide valley, on a hill that is isolated but surrounded by rocks; and it has got quite a wide-ranging view over the village, but a limited one over the sea. The fertile but sad region is all cultivated, but you cannot see one single house in it. Numberless butterflies swarm on the thistle in bloom. The wind blew among the columns as in a wood, while birds of prey flitted, chirping over the cornices.” – Goethe, A Journey to Segesta, Sicily, 1787.

” Beauty is truth, truth beauty

That is all ye know on earth

And all ye need to know. “

- John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn, 1819.

Now, as twilight fades over the British Empire, few remember Menorca was once occupied by the British. At its height in 1922, the British Empire had held sway over one-quarter of the world’s population and approximately a quarter of the Earth’s total land area for over a century. In 1756 a French army commanded by Louis François Armand du Plessis, duc de Richelieu landed near Ciutadella and marched across the island to lay siege to the British at Mahon which eventually surrendered. Following this defeat, the unfortunate British Admiral Byng was shot before the mast on the quarterdeck of HMS Monarque in the English Channel for failing to engage the French fleet and thereby lift the siege. This incident provoked Voltaire’s famous quip: “In Britain, it is wise from time to time to kill an admiral in order to encourage the others.” (Candide, 1759) To mark the occasion, Richelieu had a sauce called mahon-esa, based on the local aioli sauce, served at the victory banquet in Paris. This delicacy, which his chef had invented while on the island, has become today’s ubiquitous “mayonnaise”, still a favorite after 250 years.

“Could mayonnaise now be forever?”

-Anonymous.

By Peter Barton

November 22, 2009

1. You fund a chair in the Cornell Literature Department and host the annual William H. and Jane Torrence Harder Lecture and Garden Party at Cornell Plantations each September. Yet you graduated Cum Laude in Economics at Cornell then went on to similar scholarship achievements at The Wharton School. Had you to do it over again, would you be a Literature major? No. I was able to read literature at Harvard University’s Extension School for ten years.
2. As I recall through the years you were an advocate of short story and essay writing or even short flash quips on what you felt were evocative social commentary and topical urgencies. Does the laconic form suit your temperament or have you just not had the time to contemplate a novel or some other sort of long form narrative? Reading a lot makes your fingers itch. I’ve tended to writing essays.
3. You lived for many years in Concord, MA right in Walden Woods. In fact we walked several times through Bear Neck Hill where Thoreau sat and made notes and meditated on the natural order of things. Now you are on a three-year seafaring venture focused around the Mediterranean. Can I assume that nature still informs your literary scholarship or are such environments simply the backdrop for a more social and philosophical viewpoint? Sailing is a perfect form of meditation, living with nature.
4. You were intricately involved with Wall Street and even pioneered the FirstCall electronic Wall Street research worldwide distribution among other successful business ventures. And you have put together so many venture capital investment companies and groups including a million dollar capital fund partnerhip for the Lennox-based Shakespeare & Company. Is your writing meant to reconcile the gap between the writing life and corporate culture—and by ‘reconcile’ I mean in the mathematic metaphor of a true connection which disturbs the gap between two otherwise oppositional standpoints on living your life? I have always invested in people, not business strategies. Shakespeare is in a class by himself writing about human nature. There is nothing to reconcile.
5. Your sailing vessel is named S/Y Freesia; where did you get the name? How long is she? She has been calling you to sea for many years, so now how do you get along? Is she the right fit and fiddle for your dream voyage? S/Y Freesia was named after the flower. She is 76 feet long and all that I need to travel the world.
6. The Mediterranean ports and cities sometimes evoke a stark contrast between past and present; everyone today wanting to live a contemporary life style with all the gadgets and toys of the time, fresh architecture and so on. Are you enticed by the historic aspects of this journey or are you a thoroughly modern kind of voyager—yacht clubs, grand hotels, James Bondian amenities? Life aboard S/Y Freesia is simple ocean going fare. Which way and with what force is the wind blowing today?
7. Where does Asian philosophy fit into the present tense of Torrey Harder? You have been reading into Buddhist literature but also come from a tradition grounded in European and American writers like Emerson, Rilke, Wordsworth and what might be called secular humanist and nature-bound writers—the Green Earth and Transcendentalism. Is this another gap you seek to reconcile formally, east and west, nature and the divine plan, or are you simply drawn into this sense of a secular spirituality through what Rilke called ‘external equivalents in nature that replicate internal experiences ’? Henry David Thoreau was a Sanskrit scholar at Harvard and a lifelong Buddhist.
   Rilke also wrote:
   “Rose, pure contradiction, joy
   To be nobody’s sleep
   Under so many
   Eyelids.”
   -1926.
8. How is your management company faring in your absence? By that I mean, have you set things up on automatic pilot or do you rely on key thinkers and core operatives to handle the day-to-day affairs. A lot of what you engage in can be quite volatile as evidenced in the recent financial upheavals and shifts in asset wealth investments. Fortunately, my thirteen company Presidents have run my companies. I don’t do anything. Of course, high speed Internet is everywhere.
9. You had a lot of dreams when we were classmates in Ithaca. In fact you were one the bigger dreamers I knew in those days even though I was in the Art and Architecture College. How would you rate your dream success rate? I mean did they all come true, just some, or are you still a seeker after goals creative and financial, perhaps spiritual as well? I think you can let your dreams go by sitting quietly abiding and focusing on your breathing. Having compassion and a spiritual component to life is critical.
10. Physically your sea voyage will come to an end. Do you think you will be able to settle back on land satisfied? Or are you planning some other type of seafaring challenge, the Pacific Rim, say, or south to the Indonesian Islands or Istanbul to Rhodes? Istanbul and Rhodes are in the Mediterranean. S/Y Freesia will sail in Greece and Turkey next summer. Isn’t every present moment impermanent?

The House of Bonaparte was to be an imperial, royal European dynasty with members of his family on the thrones of the Kingdoms of Italy, Spain, Westphalia, Holland and Naples. The dynasty also made very powerful enemies with England, Russia, Germany, and Austria. Within ten years the House of Bonaparte collapsed under its own weight.

Following his Russian defeat and the Treaty of Fontainebleau, Emperor Napoleon I was exiled to Elba where he arrived at Portoferraio on May 3, 1814 with a personal guard of six hundred men. Despite luxurious accommodations high above Portoferraio, Napoleon felt more comfortable sleeping on his field army cot (photo attached). Napoleon’s stay on Elba is the basis for the famous English saying: “Able was I ere I saw Elba.”

“Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

- Lord John Emerich Edward Dalton-Acton, 1^st Baron Acton, Royal Victorian Order, 1834-1902