Somehow I ended up in Turkey just now on the internet and was enjoying the blogs of several travelers with photos of just remarkably beautiful and historically vital places and structures in a country of crossroads for many different cultures. I dreamily perused the photos, inspired at every click on "next photo," and imagined that this might be the trip of a lifetime. One click of the mouse and I was in Instanbul ...  click - Ephesus, click Pamukkale, click - Hierapolis ... click - but wait, go back to Hierapolis. Didn't the theater at Hierapolis remind me of something familiar? Ah, yes, the theater at Merida, Spain that I had experienced with my sister and daughters as an unexpected treasure of a find on a drive between Barbate and Madrid. Hmmm, and on further thought those theaters looked an awful lot like the theater at Ephesus ... incredibly beautiful works of art, but, could it be somewhat "cookie cutter?" That led me to realize that the arena at Nimes, France looks a lot like the big boy of them all, the Colosseum in Rome. And, upon further exploration online, I see that the top 10 arenas and theaters around the world are remarkably similar and are in Tunisia, Italy, Croatia, Libya, Jordan, France, and Syria ...  major presence in all of what was the Roman Empire.

Which leads me to this question: were these fantastic works of art, these Roman arenas and theaters, these centers for games and art and culture, well, were they the Walmart of that era? Wiped out the mom and pop theaters for the Roman colonnades, and the Route 66's for the Appian Way? The landscape of vast areas of the Roman Empire becoming indistinguishable from each other with the cookie cutter forms perched on every hillside?

So, now I've become a bit disturbed by this syndrome in which I used to stand amazed. I'm not quite as impressed as I was. It truly was the shock of seeing the photo of the theater at Hierapolis, Turkey and realizing it looked oh so very similar to my photo from the nose bleed section of the theater at Merida, Spain that set me in such a disappointed mood. Instead of grandeur, I felt I had beheld the "Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky, Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same." I had beheld the attempt to make everyone and everything the same. Over time it failed, though, and I hope our own attempts to make everyone and everything the same are no more successful.