Going for a ride in the car car!

I had the chance to go to Deruta twice last week -- once with Sharon and then later with Jim.  Deruta is the ceramics capital of Italy, where Majolica ware is created. What is astonishing is the variety of techniques, competence, styles, and colors that are available.  The pots often have adorable swirly handles that are glazed to look like snakes.  The shapes are so diverse, which makes every workshop and store a delight to enter.  There are tiles, amphorae, baubles, ladles, cups, platters...the list goes on.  Not to mention that the drive is also very pleasant.

Given that pictures are worth a thousand words (apparently 768 in my case -- I observe that there's something wrong with my camera now and the pics are damaged...), here goes the essay:

Crucifix outside of the main church

The table & benches in the city park

Detail from the bench.  The faces harken to Renaissance times, when this  was a popular style

Quite a table!

Even the water fountain is lovely

The top of the water fountain

Ceramics work embedded in the side of a building...private house?  Unclear

Look at the frieze!

Closer view of the frieze 

I think this is the cultural office

A small shrine

Another frieze, completely different style -- reminded me of Beaux Arts

The detail on this was extraordinary

Bear in mind that the colors of the glazes are completely different before firing.  Shading is guesswork & experience

The main piazza

Don't you love their Christmas tree?  The local artists contribute the ornaments.

A few examples

I bought a cookie jar here.  The lady was precious.

This was some beautiful tile work outside her shop...sorry about the photo damage, but I thought you could still get a taste of it!

I love all the embedded ceramic work!

One of the main gates into town

Christmas Fun

We walked down to the parking area and there were already a couple of people setting up their own section. We met a man and he took us to his workshop to pick out stuff that we might want for the nativity. The workshop was very stuffy and crowded with old, broken and repaired furniture. We didn't find anything that we thought would be suitable so he took us farther down on another street (what we found out later) under the church.There was a big room and then some smaller rooms jutting off of the big one. The first one was covered in random human bones and skeletons that were put in a corner. There was even a preserved body that had the beard of two-meter tall man intact. The man wanted to be dressed like a monk for when he would meet God, and he did, but he wasn't a monk. He was from the 18th century.

Next we walked into a small room with no windows and it was very dark in there. The "tour guide" told us that it used to be a prison. There were two small tables, a chair and a stone bench. Next we walked into another small area where there was a Roman house. Most of it was ruined, but there were some spots where the Roman floor was still put together and there were the remains of some of the walls. In another corner there were some more bones and towards the back there was a whole woman skeleton. It was really neat to see her just lying down on her back on the floor of the house. I think she was about my height.

We found a table, chairs, a bucket from the 16th century, pots, a lantern in the Roman style and many other things that would be perfect for the nativity because they were so old. Most of these things would have been put in a museum right away in the US, but here they're normal. The next room we went into was full of different artifacts from the church and the area. They were sorted into different time periods and materials. There were clay pots and plaster molds for hands and other body parts everywhere. There were boxes and boxes of just the coolest Roman things that would have been used in everyday living. Apparently there are people still working on sorting all of the artifacts out.

We went down a level where there was another human skeleton with a rat skeleton sitting on it. It was quite interesting. They were both very old, but mostly intact.

After hauling the ancient furniture up the street and to our set-up place, we got everything ready and I went home to create some bread dough. When it was time, we all went down to get dressed in our costumes at the church. All the women, men, and children wore long dresses and the women and girls wore veils. When we were done getting dressed, we headed into the piazza where Mary, Joseph, and the donkey were going to start the procession. We all walked up to the steps of San Fortunato and stayed there while the priest read the Gospel and a song was sung. Then a teen playing the bagpipes started and we all headed out with the huge crowd below us. There were hundreds of people watching us.

Some of the people had torches and there were lots of us dressed up. We processed to the main piazza and stayed there for a little while before we moved down to another street. They ones who were going to be part of the show below in the parking lot went down the short way to finish setting up while the rest of the crowd and torch holders went the longer way. The animals and other families were setting up and we got into our places. There were already another hundred of people down there. We got into our places and went into action. We were the family from the time of Jesus so we were each doing an activity from that time period. Jeremy was making a fishnet and Daddy and James were repairing one. Eleanor was sewing, Mummy was knitting, I was making bread, and Florence was  grinding wheat. The whole crowd made its way down to where we were and there were a couple of hours of pictures and eating from the other people. They were handing out bruschetta (bread that had been cooked over a real fire, smothered with olive oil and sprinkled with salt). It started to rain a little, but it held out long enough. The crowd was told that we were packing up and we got ready to go.

I must say I was only expecting a few people to come watch us and a few unsure looks, but it was much more than that. A lot of people came to see us and I was glad to be a part of it. It was strange to walk into the piazza in the costumes and slippers, but once everyone knew what was going on, I didn't feel so uncomfortable. I was totally having fun when a whole crowd of people came out wearing a costume like mine. With the crowds showing up... I must have had my jaw dropped because I wasn't thinking anyone would be interested in the activity because this is the first year it's ever been done. I was exhausted by the end, but it was worth it. I really had my doubts when Mummy told me that I had to be in this live nativity and procession and that it would be so cute and fun.

Yes, that sheep wasn't very happy. We were all cracking up when this
poor man was trying to get this mad sheep into the nativity area. 

There were a wood workshop and a blacksmith's workshop

This was before most of the crowd came...

We had a real baby for Jesus!

Mary, Joseph, and the donkey

Love,
Ashley

The saga comes to an end

All right... I finished decoding the second message.  It was actually the first obviously useful one!  We have, of course, lost the slip of paper and I don't feel like spending another half hour decoding it again, but essentially it said this: "The Caesar cipher was easy to crack.  The rectangle cipher with mixed columns will be harder."

Does anyone happen to know what a rectangle cipher with rotating columns is?  If so, I applaud you-- you are either in the CIA or in league with my dad.  I looked it up online.  Using the information gathered-- exercise your googling muscle if you are not working with either of the venerable aforementioned-- we finally understood why we had been given the dimensions of a rectangle!  8x10=80 letters, and it was the easiest part of all to find the coded message that fit the criterion.

We wrote the letters out in the rectangle to decode the message.  But we couldn't read it, of course, because it was a mixed cipher.  So we used the only numbers we had been given-- remember that seemingly useless message? "I love you kids seven trillion three hundred eighty million one hundred ninety-two thousand five hundred forty-three"-- to reorder the columns.  And ta-da!  "Congratulations... tell me the name of the street on which this door is found."  We looked at the picture, named the street, and our rather chuffed father rushed out of the room.  He came back with Tic-Tacs for all of us, as well as individually wrapped packages, which ended up containing more candy-- heaven! 

So what if it was the day after that we finally opened our gifts?  As always, Christmas was defined by the universal weeping while opening the present, followed by the universal weeping when it was over.

Happy Third Day of Christmas!

Eleanor

Makin' Bacon

We looked for famous people who used ciphers (based on Michael's clue regarding Caesar).  Came up with Bacon, which worked to get us "Getting so close." There's another that Eleanor's doing now.

When we told MIchael triumphantly that we'd found Bacon, he asked if we'd liked his quote.  Huh?  He said blithely, "I thought you looked up the quote I gave you from Bacon -- the one about trying and succeeding and that sort of thing." Doh.  We had to confess to having used a relatively brute force method.

Thanks to Michael's comment, James has just run off to the giardinetti and we have corrected our number of lamps to 10.

Alexandra

Michael doesn't play fair

This is now our silly joke, because Michael has used (among other ciphers) the playfair cipher, with Christmas Joy as the key word.

So, here's a summary of what we have so far:

The first page includes a simple cryptogram that reads:
"Merry Christmas Eleanor, Florence, Ashley, Jeremy, and James! I hope you enjoy a little Christmas puzzle.  It is only a little one this year.  Love, Daddy."

If you use green text to read as a dot, red as a dash, and blue as a space between letters, the morse of the same paragraph reads "codes within codes within codes, oh my!"

There is also a picture of a Christmas tree, which (from a later clue) is apparently just for fun.

The second page is a crazy paragraph which, when converted into Morse, reads "I love you kids seven trillion three hundred eighty million one hundred ninety-two thousand five hundred forty-three."  We're sure we'll need the number later, but as yet have no clue what to do with it. It has some letters in plain text and some in bold.  We don't know what to make of that yet, but we're continuing to mull it over.

From a later clue, we understand that we're supposed to read every fourth word of the crazy paragraph. When so read, the resulting statement goes as follows: "There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying."

Lower down we have a simple cryptogram under a picture of Fonte Cesia.  When solved it reads "This is Fonte Cesia.  Another thing named for Caesar is this cipher because Caesar like[d] to use it.  For some reason Caesar thought it would protect his messages.  I think you smart children would have read his messages without decoding them."

When the Morse is interpreted, it reads, "Caesar was not the only famous person who used a cipher."

Under the Scrabble board picture is an anagrammatic sentence which reads "Some spaces on the Scrabble board are more important than others." If you use the letters which show up on colored squares, you obtain Christmas.  Using the thinly veiled clue above (including "play fair"), you use the Playfair cipher and Christmas [Joy] as the key word.  Michael had to help us since he had omitted Joy from the clue.

The Morse from this page is "FMH loves codes."

Ashley used the pictures to find another scrap of paper in the Roman wall in town...it's a good thing the pigeons hadn't made off with it!  It included the ciphers that were translated using Playfair to "The Christmas tree picture is just for holiday cheer.  If you want a hint try reading every fourth word." (This referred to the crazy paragraph, cited above).  It also included the key for the bifid cipher.

The crazy number pairs are a hexadecimal code.  We were trying all sorts of things when Michael finally smirked and said, "You don't think I made that code up, do you?"  Aha!  I googled a hexadecimal to ascii converter and came up with, "The width of the rectangle is the same as the number of lamps." Given that this was below a picture of a lamp located in the giardinetti, off ran the kids to count lamps.  Eleven.  The Morse on this set of clues reads, "U should learn the bifid cipher."

Eleanor was the elected bifid decipherer, and using her key and the code below the picture of the Fonte Scarnabecco, she came up with "The rectangle has as many columns [Michael corrected to "rows" verbally] as this fonte has arches." Off they went to count arches.  They came up with 11 or 8, depending on whether interior arches were counted.

The next page (below the picture of one of the prettiest doors in Todi, my favorite!) has a slew of 5-letter words (distinct from the four-letter words to which we have been reduced).  We have not yet solved the cipher, but the Morse reads, "You great kids will do it."  We have also not yet figured out the significance of the letters in bold vs. those in plain text.

So -- not solved yet.  But they've (we've!) been at it for 11 hours and it's bedtime.  Of course, we did stop for dinner....

Love,

Alexandra

Morse and Remorse

We've been morse-decoding and Michael's not showing any remorse, as we deeply feel he ought.  Eleanor's currently trying to decode a bifid cipher.  We've dotted and dashed and found useful hints like "FMH likes codes" and "Codes within codes within codes, oh my" and "I know you great kids can figure it out."

Really?

8 hours and counting....

Alexandra

Late update: Eleanor's result is "The rectangle has as many columns as this fonte has arches" next to the photo of Fonte Scarnabecco.  Huh?

Later update: it's 11:15 and the kids are running to the giardinetti to count lamps.  I used a hex to ascii decoder to learn "The width of the rectangle is the number of these lamps" with a picture of the lamps in the little park.  10 hours and counting.

Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men...

...except for Michael, that is.  We're all cursing him.

For those who have kept up with our blog, you may understand why.  Did you note the apparently juvenile post with nonsense words and photos?  That was Michael's contribution to the family cheer.  I usually proof blog posts before we publish them, and I was a little annoyed to see this post, apparently put together by James (who likes to mess with font colors, etc., and tends to type random letters -- which I delete), up on the blog.  Then I came across some words that apparently made sense & I started correcting the words to improve grammar.  At that point, Eleanor came over to find out what I was fussing about, and said, "Um, that's from Daddy."  And we were off!

To catch up those who don't know us as well, Michael's gift (if you can call it that) every year is to create puzzles to be solved, usually leading to the kids' "real" present.  One year, he strung a beautiful garland with green & red beads, plus crystal and lettered beads.  The kids were supposed to figure out that this was the starting point of their chase.  Yes -- morse code.  Understand, that if you don't start at the right end, it makes NO SENSE.  And later the letters were used for something else.  I've blocked it out...PTSD, I'm sure.

Anyway, the blog is some sort of encryption of something, who knows what.  We've been working for about 4 1/2 hours now, and aren't much farther ahead, with the exception of a few "aha!" moments which have led to answers like "Christmas."  Sigh.

As Florence said, though, it NOW feels like Christmas.  The gifts were great, but it's the frustration, the brain cudgeling that really lets us know that 'tis the season.

In the first flush of enthusiasm

The perpetrator -- isn't our tree cute?

Following up on a picture clue.  It didn't help.

Milling around aimlessly.  

Jim, however, is never aimless -- his camera is nearly always pointed somewhere.

Eleanor modeling the sleigh

Looking for hope by the door -- also pictured in Michael's post

Eleanor's not helping much at this point.

We now have three computers and an ipad to help out.

Ashley's translating red & green letters to morse code...here's hoping!

Love,

Alexandra