Burger King and Ali Baba

So far Ali is winning. Here's the view from the terrace of our hotel. 360 degrees from Bosphorous to Hagia Sophia AND surround sound when it comes time to call the devout to prayer.
I'm not wearing near enough eye make-up, but other than that all is well. Arrived rest, walked through historic district and along Sea of Marmara. Tomorrow is Mosques and Markets.

Eat and Go

Waiting for the 10 hour flight:
Turkish vocabulary lesson #1
Kadayif
Baklava
and a sandwich crepe-like delight called "Gozleme"

I am NOT going to have fun with the insistent predictive spelling function on this computer.
Perhaps I'll shift from photos of laundry to photos of "gulborek","donner" and the ever-popular "yogurt." If the ghost of Steve Jobs will let me.

Halloween is on its way

On our last day in America before returning for the Election, I realized that I'd be missing Halloween for the first time in my life. The really do it up back East with every house decorating with some sort of pumpkin, Dracula or Skeleton on their porch. Taj did this "imaginary drawing" that I'll carry to Turkey to TRY to explain the tradition of ghosts, ghouls, goblins, Disney Princesses and the occasional policitian.

The Final Details...

While I've taken this little New York, Boston, North Carolina pre-trip art-family-and-friends-reunion, my traveling companions are home completing a myriad of last minute minutiae: list compiling, bill paying, note writing, instruction leaving. Sultans had scribes.

This sweet little pen and ink water color in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is attributed to the Venetian painter, Bellini (memorialized by the refreshing drink combining fresh peaches and champagne) in 1479. Bellini was brought to the court of Constantinople by Royal decree. Story has it that when the Sultan was dissatisfied with Bellini's painting of John the Baptist, he decapitated a slave in his presence to show him what a severed head really looked like.

I'm imagining a foreign country and an even more foreign time. How could "modern" notions of civil rights, personal expression and aesthetics have stood up to absolute power? Did such thinking even exist? Worth pondering: the Byzantine civilization was a star that shown brightly during Europe's Dark Ages. The Classical Greek word "to innovate" was transformed into "to injure." For nearly fourteen hundred years, Christian orthodoxy demanded bending to the yoke of obedience. Six hundred years - and millions of lives later- in modern Turkey, "islam" means "to submit."

When traveling, I always learn at least as much about myself, our time and place as I do about the host country, their history and art. I'll keep capturing images and writing observations. Can't promise learning calligraphy, however.

The ocean is to the EAST

A Painters' Paradise BUT there is something profoundly disorienting to us Californians about having a HUGE body of water on the EAST. It also means that NORTH is SOUTH. And then there is the business of vegetation being tall and bright green right up to the water's edge in the October. Is it climate change or a case of personal topsy turvy?

October's oldsters, oysters,okra

The real deal at Carolina Beach

October's oldsters, oysters,okra

The real deal at Carolina Beach

Southern Wheel of Fortune

The art scene in North Carolina is filled with the unexpected: no boundaries, lots of beaches and internationally recognized artists. LOTS of color, congeniality and comrades in the Acme Art Studios.

BOSTON UNCOMMON

Looks like that ubiquitous Moby Dick of the glass blowing world has been sighted again. This time in the HUGE All American Cafe in the All New American Wing of the Museum of Fine Art. Looks like a giant herb.
Also the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has blasted out the back side of her chock-o-block Venetian Palazzo with a new modern wing, performance space, school, studio and artist residences. All Green and Eco-Artistry from basement to peaked glass roof.
No photos allowed of the 2,500 piece collection so you'll just have to take my word for it.

John Singer Sargent's Room

His dorm? Or maybe it's a hotel. This is way before the era of The Container Store.

Artists in Bean-town

Stopping off in Boston on the way to Byzantium, I got to see favorite nephew, Taj, at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. We had dinner in Boston's Chinatown at the "Golden Gate Bridge" Restaurant. Maybe more original and indigenous fare (like lobster?) tonite. Taj is thriving amidst a sea of students. Everyone seems to be either a student or professor here. His dorm is on of the newest buildings in Boston and certainly more well-organized than John Singer Sargent's bedroom. Spent the whole day (with a pause for a lecture on Byzantine Art at Mass Art) at the Museum of Fine Arts across the street from Taj's dorm. Isabella Stewart Gardner today. I've been told there is a rare portrait of one of the Sultans. As I read about any one of them, the expression "what a piece of work" is a complete understatement.
Seems that the first order of the day is to kill all your brothers and their children. Glad I didn't have to do that. Taj is too fine a young man. The Buddhist monk we met yesterday as he was working on a sand painting said that he had a good and generous heart.
I couldn't have said it better myself.

MTA to the MFA

Who knew that Tulips were originally names after the Turbans worn in Turkey. Perhaps John Singer Sargent did. I'm thinking that museums are our new churches. Trinity Church on Copley Square was practically deserted while the Museum of Fine Art is teeming with activities:demonstrations, tours, lectures, classes,viewing, listening, dining all until until 9:45 pm.

Natural pearls from MUSSELS

One pearl in every $10,000 mussel shells. And, perhaps, only in months that end with an R. The gradation is astonishing.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

If you ever say "I don't care ONE IOTA"

> A delightful bit of Byzantine History and printing trivia:
> In 330 AD, Constantine the Great set out to make Christianity the religion of the Empire. there were disputes, executions, excommunications, graffiti and riots over the interpretation of whether Jesus was son of God or was he simply sent for the purpose of Incarnation. Constantine himself proposed the insertion of the word "homoousios" (meaning 'of the same substance' as a way of determining the relationship of son to father) into the Nicene Creed. This was in explicit contradiction to the prevailing Arian belief that the son was "homoiousios" ('of like nature' ) with the father. The theological debate over the single IOTA went on for another half century until the Ecumenical Council confirmed a new creed - and threw in a bonus that, henceforth, clergy would be exempt from taxation to sweetened the deal.
So it appears that interpretation and taxation go waaaay back.
> Dot your iotas (iotae?) with that knowledge and, as Buddhists implore, PAY ATTENTION.
>

A New York Original

Possibly one of the oldest restaurants in America - a 1884 2-story building in a cavernous valley of skyscrapers. It could be called defiant were it not for the friendly staff, a stuffed dog on a shelf, somebody's ashes in a box behind the bar and "Cadillac" burgers ostensibly loved by Frank Sinatra, nat King Cole and Johnny Mercer. Their philosophy of food: If something's not broke, don't fix it.

Paristanbul??

No! It's the best of both: pre-dinner kin-keeping (calling Mom's) at Beyoglu Turkish restaurant on 3rd at 81st and breakfast at Pain Quotidien near ABC Carpets - fortifying oneself for Turkish carpet research - coffee and soft boiled egg $13.50, no charge for attitude or ambience.

Pre-school of the Arts

Start them young and they'll rack up LOTS of Pencil Miles (I wonder what the benefits are...). Only in NYC???

Letterpress alive in Lower Manhattan

Have you heard of Bowne? They got a grant to renovate this printing house in South Sea Port Lower Manhattan. Of course, they sell cards and ephemera from Pomegranate in Petaluma and Cavalini of San Francisco but it is an operational shop with LOTS of enthusiasts.
And do you know the origin of the term "...it doesn't matter one iota"? It's a Constantinople (Nicean, actually) story. Ha!

Eat, bathe, tan?

In some sort of order this is done four blocks from the World Trade Center and two blocks from Wall Street. Why go to Istanbul?

Before During After Bronxville