Atatürk overshadows dinner, Kadıköy, Istanbul

It’s hard for me to be interested in American politics - they’re too grand, too complicated, and probably too close to me.  Turkish politics were more immediate in a different sense, to be sure, since I was working at a daily paper.  But they were interesting because they were melodramatic, and because pride seemed so much more important than logic and games of pretense played in the US.  

But I don’t want to write about politics.  I want to write about the New York Times, and how well they have covered Turkey.  I tried to comment on the NYTimes website to compliment Sebnem Arsu, who does most of the reporting from Turkey, but comments were disabled.  I have long been impressed with how well she covers Kurdish issues - everything is complicated, and Turkey is in the American press infrequently enough that some background is needed in nearly every piece.  Arsu consistently does a great job of setting the stage so that the key recent events can be viewed in context.  She makes no accusations, in a country where blame often is being thrown wildly in all directions, it is nice to read her multiple possible truths.  

I was inspired to write this in response to a recent piece of hers from 20 February, “Arrest of Prosecutor in Turkey Exposes Tensions Between Secular and Religious Turks.”  There has since been a spate of arrests (this one’s from 2/22) of military officials - officers, even active ones in the most recent wave - accused of being part of the so-called Ergenekon group plotting to overthrow the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.  These two men frighten me; they say they want Turkey to be a free, Western country.  And I believe them.  But they are also incredibly unpredictable, and the apparent motivations behind their every move are elusive.  

boys in Sulukule, Istanbul

This may very well be the beginning of an autocratic Turkey, the military losing its leaders to political justice.  I will admit that the military was frustratingly archaic in its insistence on upholding various dated, incredibly dated, elements of Atatürk’s Constitution from the 1920s.  So, I’m not married to the military nor the AKP as either progressive or traditional leading powers.  But, the atmosphere I sense from the media here in the US is also familiar - so, perhaps this will all blow over and the recently arrested military leaders will be released in silence in the near future and Turkey will return to its familiar, precarious balance of modern, traditional, free, and insular.  

In the midst of my whirlwind, I want to share a few things that matter to me. 

One of those is Ben, my amazing friend who is an intern in Ahmedabad, India.  He writes a beautiful blog, and his most recent post I thought especially honest, tangible, and timely.  Check it out: it's about keeping your morals, your sense of what is right and wrong, while opening yourself up to new experiences in new places.  Some things are not okay wherever you are in the world, whatever the cultural norms or taboos, and I agree with Ben - poisoning yourself and the world around you is one of those things.  

Another thing that matters is public transit.  And no, that's not a jump - the less cars there are on the road, the more people are biking and walking, the happier people and their neighbors and communities become, and the safer and healthier everyone is.  It's a win-win situation.  Read this great blog post about how texting while driving is not a problem of texting, it's a problem of our auto-centric culture.  

Next comes something a little closer to home: my local farmers' market, at 61st Street at the great Experimental Station, takes food stamps, and it's gotten some great recognition for it.  Here's some more!  It's actually about a new bill in Illinois Congress that would make it even easier for farmers' markets to accept food stamps - the investment and bureaucracy can be a real barrier, as I've seen here at Open Produce.  I can't wait until spring really comes and I can actually go shop at the market!  More importantly, though, there are plenty of people who argue for bringing farmers' markets to food deserts in many parts of south Chicago.  The real problem with this proposal, however, is usually that a hamburger at McDonalds or a bag of chips at the local gas station is almost always cheaper than fresh fruits and vegetables from a market.  It's hard to convince a farmer that it's worth their time to risk going to a new market in a neighborhood where people can't afford to buy their produce.  So, I'm crossing my fingers this bill passes, the sooner the better!  Hooray for steps to eliminate food deserts in south Chicago!  

Beautiful things still matter, like this photo: 

An elderly Afghan man sits outside his farm house as a bird flies nearby in Marjah, in Afghanistan's Helmand province on Thursday Feb. 25, 2010. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

Unfortunately I couldn't make it to the event at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (I was figure drawing at the Smart Museum instead) but Mom pointed me toward the great animated films of Jiri Trnka, and I really enjoyed this 15-minute piece called "The Hand," which is at times light and lively, and at times deeply troubling and foreboding.  Very impressive, and thoroughly enjoyable.  

And don't forget Part 2:

And, in a continuation from my William Kentridge infatuation, check out the great preview of his opera The Nose.  

More about it, including an interview with Kentridge, on the Met's website here.  

"Katowice" by Rafal Milach

"Bytom Bobrek" by Rafal Milach

They make me yearn for summer and parties and pickup games in the alleys of Chicago.  If I don't see it happening, I think I'll have to make it happen, because what else could be so perfect in so many of these spaces?  

One of my favorite captures, from the city walls in Dubrovnik, Croatia: 

Check out Rafal Milach's portfolios here - I'm also a fan of his curious Carp Fishing photos.  

"Fisherman watching the fishing from the shore" by Rafal Milach

Just wish I could see larger images of each of these...grrrrr

An older man was standing next to me when I got back up, and he asked if it looked cooler from down there.  Something about bowling balls.  "Want to get down there yourself?  I'll help you up," I offered.  He smiled, and said I understood just the problem.  He still didn't lie down on the floor.  

As I walked off to the next room, I glanced back and saw him bend at the waist to see what those refracting glass balls looked like from down low.  It just about made my day.  

This kind old gentleman continued to make my day, when he came up to Jeff and Fanny and I in a later gallery, entering us into a conversation about the very nature of art and what should belong in a museum.  (His wife was not interested.)  I dreaded these conversations oh so much at Kenyon, but it was nice to glide around the conversation with someone who came from a completely unknown, and likely different, background, not having read the same essays and sat in the same classes for the past couple of years listening to the same professors and the same lectures.  I tried to convince him that the point really was just what we'd done in the gallery with the "bowling balls" - look at things from a different perspective, ask ourselves different questions, perhaps even those questions about what belongs between these huge white walls and in our collective values.  

He just kept on making my day.  

And, to make it even better, we then walked into a big room with about 8 screens showing William Kentridge films.  Could it be any better?    

Yes.  Because our new friend walked in there, too, and he loved William Kentridge as well.

The fact remains that however nasty the weather - on Friday I made the pretty unsafe decision to bike to REI in the driving sleet and snow, without my glasses, at dusk - when you get to your destination after 20 minutes on your bike in this weather, it feels damn good and satisfying.  And I wouldn't give that up for anything.  

Still, it's wonderful living in a city where I am guaranteed to walk or bike somewhere when I leave home.  Anny recently wrote on her blog about how Charlotteans' conceptions of what is too far to walk are so out of whack - since when do we need to get in the car for the half mile trip to Harris Teeter?  (You know who you are...)

All this talk of transportation makes me think of winter transit in Istanbul - mornings when the wind and weather were bad enough that nobody knew whether the ferries would be running, walking down to the dock and crowding onto the Turyol docks, because those boats ran in the sketchier weather, being smaller and, honestly, probably no safer than the big IDO ferries.  

NYTimes slideshow 36 hours in Istanbul

I will never forget the day it was so foggy you could barely see the bow of the boat from the stern, but we rocked back and forth, crossing the Bosphorus with its foghorn blaring, a man standing on either side of the bow, seemingly looking out to see obstacles or other boats or buoys before the captain in the cabin 20 feet back.  I stood in a prime spot in the front, right at the window in the middle, drinking my tea and calling Mireille to get her to hold the shuttle on the other side so I could get to work on time and without having to take a bus.  

Not quite a bike-able commute.  But there really is nothing to compare to a ferry commute.  Especially one where they serve tea in glass tulip glasses for about 38 cents.  

I've been doing a lot of work at MPC lately on Complete Streets.  (Although I am still infatuated with the idea of Shared Streets that I wrote about earlier and which I still honestly think could work - with some considerable effort to educate the public - in certain Chicago locations, like Polish Triangle in Wicker Park where I also spend a lot of research time.)  We've got two Complete Streets workshops coming up soon, and its an important item on our legislative agenda for the year, so I'm learning a lot.  It turns out Charlotte is nationally recognized for its Complete Streets policy, although it certainly has a long way to go implementing those guidelines on the ground with designers and developers.  While some of the people running these upcoming workshops want to bring in some of the planners from Charlotte, a just-published Benchmarking Report I read yesterday by the Alliance for Biking and Walking says that "Charlotte is the least safe major city for bicycling with 62.7 bicyclists killed per 10,000 bicyclists."  Inshallah, ten years from now when the much-praised Charlotte Urban Street Design Guidelines have had time to be implemented, we will look to Charlotte as an example of a city that successfully turned itself around from being a car-driven city to a multi-modal transit-driven city with plenty of bicyclists and walkers and bus-riders and maybe even - am I dreaming too much? - a well-utilized and integrated light rail network.  

Am I dreaming too much?  Or could that be Charlotte's future?

So, why not indulge in dreaming of my dream job: National Geographic "Explorer in Residence."  Residence where?  the whole world, a world of beliefs and communities, and "ancient rhythms of landscape [...] played out in ritual," and of, as Wade Davis so passionately says, "raw human genius."  

What came to my mind when he said that phrase?  (Prepare yourself for a mental leap typical of myself...)

The street markets of Palermo and Turkey, held up by countless ropes and tarps lashed tightly to drainpipes and window grates and doorknobs on winding streets and dilapidated walls of bustling, dusty towns.  

(Cristina took this one)p.s. 

Let's move a little further east, and lament the fact that not everyone appreciates the basic genius of tradition and community ritual.  

Umida Akhmedova is an Uzbek photographer on trial in her country for taking photographs that "portray a negative image of the country."  The photos are raw, and intimate, and colorful - check out some of them in this BBC slideshow.  The charges carry a punishment somewhere in the ballpark of 6 months in prison or nearly 3 yeas of forced labor.  Officials say the photos "distort reality" and "portray the Uzbek people as backward.  She has been charged with defamation and insulting Uzbek traditions" (BBC).  It shocks me that so many people would rather look at smiling faces and see ignorance and degeneration instead of exuberance and that raw human genius (thanks, Wade) that keeps peoples worldwide alive and exciting.  

More of her photos here, but without captions or credits or anything.  

Livability is one of those invented words I've been throwing around a lot lately.  The Obama administration has been using them to guide all sorts of projects, from housing to environmental work, and now transportation.  There are officially 6 "Livability Principles" that guide coordination between departments and, in my opinion, a nice healthy change from a focus on nothing but efficiency and speed and grandeur to things like healthy communities, affordable housing, and transit options.  

Hooray for livability!  

Yes, dear readers, parts of the canal are electrified.  Which means if a person falls off the raft, they get shocked, and if a fish enters the electrified section, it gets killed.  This is the goal - to stop Asian carp from getting through from the Illinois River to Lake Michigan.  

The interesting issue only starts there.  The electric barriers, being man-made and evidently very technically complicated (you can see what an engineer I am), malfunction from time to time.  In December, they were shut down for days in order to properly fix the electric barriers.  Oh, no! you might exclaim.  What if the Asian carp sneak through while the engineers are busy working away at the scary traps?  Never fear!  The Illinois Department of Natural Resources decided that the best way to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes was to dump tons and tons of poisonous chemicals in the waterways.  

click the map to see it biggerNever mind the effects of these chemicals on the surrounding ecosystem.  Among the tens of thousands of fish found killed from the poison, only ONE was an Asian carp.  

So much for the incredible risk of invasion.  

I find this whole situation to be so ridiculous it would be laughable, if not for the tons of poisonous chemicals and dead wildlife in the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS).  

To make you groan one more time, Michigan has just filed a case that would require Illinois to close the locks from Lake Michigan into the CAWS.  Sure, this would not let the Asian carp through, but it also wouldn't let floodwaters through or - and this is where I really don't understand Michigan's motivations - freight vessels.  Put plainly, this would prevent trade from Lake Michigan into the Mississippi River valley. 

Illinois is, of course, reacting.  And hopefully, through responses from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) of Chicago, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, and the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, Michigan's case won't pass.  

Really, what it comes down to, for me, is the absurdities that we are driven to because years ago we decided to cut a whole and reverse the flow of the Chicago "River."  THe whole situation is an excellent example of how far we've come in compensating for messing with Mother Nature - concerns for runoff, salt costs, jobs, invasive fish, and sewage and water purification are now what guide our policies about the nature of Nature.  What water wants to do is no longer okay - instead we will just keep trying to force the waters to stay in our palms, and it will just keep dripping through our fingers.  

Oh, and I forgot one of the best parts - Asian carp can jump 10 feet out of the air.  So, why don't we just turn the Canal into a big circus?