San Jose in Breña Baja always celebrates Corpus Christi on the Sunday after Mazo’s celebration. Since the whole thing takes out on a flat, tarmaced street, the tradition is to make carpets of coloured salt, with the altars being much more modest. In recent years, many of the carpets are made from seeds and petals, like the ones in Mazo. Much as I love the petals, I think it’s a…
STARMUS is a unique scientific, artistic and musical event taking place mostly in Tenerife this week, with a truly stellar line-up of speakers and performers. I wanted to go, but I couldn’t afford the time or the money. I say “mostly in Tenerife” because on Thursday Jack Szostak, Brian May, Richard Dawkins, Kip Thorne, George Smoot, Jill Tarter, Alexei Leonov and Neil Armstrong are coming to the Roque de los…
One of the biggest annual fiestas in La Palma is Corpus Christi in Mazo. Catholics all over the world celebrate Corpus Christi, but here they celebrate with the most wonderful archways and carpets decorated with petals,leaves and seeds. On Wednesday evening and night, each village of the municipality makes their own archway with a carpet and a little altar, so Thursday morning is a wonderful time to see them. They’ll…
Today I showed two Buddhist monks (plus three of their friends) around the biggest telescope in the world. The senior one is the professor of Buddhist Philosophy at the University of Varanasi, in India. Unfortunately I can’t remember his name since it was so exotic to me. I did a bit of a double take when I saw that the university professor was wearing Tibetan robes, like the Dalai Lama….
Back in February I showed a Swiss radio journalist around the observatory. To my considerable surprise, he wanted to interview me. The programme is almost completely in French, with a few bits of me speaking English before they fade up the translation, but if you’re interested, you can find it at http://www.rsr.ch/#/la-1ere/programmes/impatience/?date=16-06-2011 Go down to the bottom of the page to “Les télescopes terrestres” (beside the photo of a telescope)…
Most villages on La Palma have an annual fiesta in honour of their patron saint. (They’ve all got patron saints) Most weeks in summer see a fiesta somewhere or other, and this weekend it’ll be Puntallana, in honour of St John the Baptist. On Saturday there’s a livestock fair from 10 am to 5:50 pm, the usual farmer’s market from 10 am to 2 pm, bouncy castles and other kids’…