Blooming on a new site

See how we are putting our workshop together, piece by piece...

Today I'm finally able to access my Blogger dashboard! Long story, but glad to see the Turkish authorities have come to their senses about free speech online. Everyone should not be punished for the actions of a few. 

So in the past several weeks, we've moved on...to a new home on Wordpress, under our former site name Bazaar Bayar. Please join us for more Tales from Turkey, with news of our handcrafted lives. See you there!

Mardin, Midyat, Diyarbakir, Derik, Hasankeyf...

 

Places we hope to see this May, in the company of friends new and old, staying in ancient "karvansarays" and villages where Abit grew up, where many in his large extended family still live. Details are being determined, and will appear here soon...that is, if the Turkish block on Blogspot is lifted soon.

If you are interested in joining us, please let us know by sending us your email via the sign-up on the upper left...and thanks!

Meanwhile, enjoy some images along with rousing music from the Turkish southeast...

February, california. g r e e n

In my grade school spelling bee days, one of my favorite words was "meander". Another was "Mesopotamia". Portents at an early age that I'd marry a man from that region and settle with him in the valley where that river flows? Perhaps.

But rather than stay settled, we've taken to living out of suitcases this past year. I'm far from Turkey at the moment. Certain that I'll always be a wanderer. Whether through a tumbledown Istanbul neighborhood, or here, in a vibrant vineyard after a week of rain.

Shades of green, bounded by blue mountains...

Sharp cold sun against winter-bared trees.

The sound of running water to calm my racing mind and channel my focus.

It's easy to be lulled by bucolic pastoral scenes, but my urban life awaits.

So for a few more days, I'll relish my favorite color. Green. Pungent, fresh, eye-catching. Invigorating.  

Drawing my attention to where I'm going...

Reminding me to always look up.

And to be assured that, mirrored within, the winter greens of California will always be with me.

The random perfection of Turkey

When asked why I love Turkey, I could take hours to respond, and often do. There is so much to say. But Natalie Sayin of Turkish Travel Blog says volumes in a single post, asking several bloggers, myself included, to submit our favorite photo of this 'addictive' country. Visit her blog, and see for yourself:

How to capture the amazing beauty of Turkey

Thanks, Natalie!

We the people

It’s a barely forged New Year. One in which I vowed to blog less about me, and more about the crafts, the history and the cultural aspects of our work. I’ve even newly defined my vocation as a craftivist, in my designer + writer + treasure hunter chosen life. But that term, a combination of craft and activism, includes my political side. Since the shooting in Tucson on January 9th, my focus has been riveted by coverage and commentary in our rapidly moving Media 2.0 world. I’ve marveled at the sheer wave of evaluation, some of it brilliant, some haunting.

It’s a watershed moment for communication, to relearn how we process the aftermath of tragedy.

I wish I could say I was surprised that yet another crazed guy with an easily purchased gun went after one of our nation’s leaders, but as a child, I remember when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. In Los Angeles, I lived around the corner from where the Manson Gang had murdered a couple; more than two decades later, I shuddered to think of them each time I walked by. What I was doing when I heard of John Lennon’s death is still vivid in my mind. While foremost in my memory because of the sensationalism that surrounded the deaths of these cultural icons, not so famous people are killed in the streets of this country daily.

Whenever I come back to the US after months in Turkey, I’m overwhelmed with how polarized the US has become, while Turkey seems to be slowly more open to discussing differences and conflict. Yet young men gun down leaders in that country as well; there is always talk of conspiracy, of larger groups behind a lone shooter. As a child of the Vietnam War, I can't recall a unified time, an era when atrocities did not happen. The truth to the lyrics to Lennon’s Imagine becomes increasingly clear as I grow older; MLK’s entreaty for his children to be judged “by the content of their character” becomes all the more poignant.

The death of a nine-year-old girl with an interest in politics and an unnerving connection to September 11, 2001 is a wakeup call to our culture. Given the day she was born, she'd be more aware of history than most children her age. Is her death more tragic because she was born that particular day? Of course not. But out of 365, what are the odds that this child, “a Face of Hope”, would have been born on that exact day of national sorrow? There are no coincidences. The Universe cannot possibly scream any louder at us to stop this madness of hatred and vitriol. Osama bin Laden could not have planned our demise more diabolically: we are proving capable of destroying ourselves from the inside.

Barry Blitt for the NYT

So, will we? This past week has been a rollercoaster of emotion. Anger at thinly veiled calls to action: people with influence who place target marks on a map of the US, tweeting followers that ‘reloading’ is how to solve a problem, then claiming not to be advocating violence. Words are tools, just like guns are. Yes, their effect may not be quite so immediate or deadly. But the “sticks and stones…” taunts of childhood have become the schoolyard of our political discourse. We as a nation have to grow up.

Phrases in common usage now – “pulling the trigger” when making a decision, “locked and loaded” when ready to do something – reflect a culture in which violent talk is taken for granted. Nothing which alludes to violence should ever be used so nonchalantly. True, Sarah never pulled the trigger; neither did Charlie Manson. The cult of personality so easily fosters fringe elements. In our worship of celebrity, we give far too much focus to the margins – to the outrageous, the sensational, the obscenely wealthy – to whatever gets the most ratings, the most ‘hits’. Even that term has a violent tinge.

‘Most’ Americans are not aligned with these margins, any more than ‘most’ Muslims are terrorists. Many can’t distinguish between Fascist Mein Kampf of the far right and The Communist Manifesto of the far left. When we’ve been raised as consumers, not citizens, little wonder it’s so easy to confuse. What’s missing from our polarized society is education, compassion and the pursuit of common ground. But maybe that’s where social media can help. The internet may foster a freedom to speak to virtual strangers in ways that heal, "to sharpen our instincts for empathy".

You may say I’m a dreamer, but a brief convo I had with a friend of a friend on Facebook brought the power of such a forum home to me, in the hope that two people with opposing views can have a civil exchange of ideas, even now. She, a gun owner, was adamant that the Tucson shooter was “acting of his own free will”. I countered that “if we all acted of our own free will” we’d have anarchy, not democracy. Her “Free will is the capacity of rational people to choose a course of action from various alternatives” to my “But he was not rational. Something is fundamentally wrong when it was easier for a person with mental health issues to legally buy a gun than to be treated for obvious psychiatric problems.”

Then I took the risk of getting personal. Yes, I know that FB gives too many details of our lives away, but I saw that she lived near Tucson. When I asked, she revealed that she’d been within two miles of the shooting that morning, that she was a recently arrived military wife from a very different part of the country. Aha – how could I not have empathy for someone far from home, so close to a scary situation?

Perhaps President Obama’s somber appeal to the ‘better angels of our nature’ did lift the majority of us to consider this tragedy from a higher perspective, as did a president from an earlier divisive time. “…how we treat one another is entirely up to us."

“But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized - at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do - it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.” It's unfortunate reality that our empathetic encounter may not change our perspectives for long. We look for a “…speedy “closure,” followed by a return to business as usual, followed by national amnesia.”

When Muslims in Egypt are protecting Coptic Christians from attacks, saying “We either live together, or we die together,” and Tunisians have overthrown a dictator to put themselves on the rocky road to democracy, we Americans need to step back from the brink and consider the enormity of what we have to lose.

Yes, I do think more carefully about what I post about Turkish issues on public forums than I do about American ones. I’d like to have the freedom of responsible dialogue regarding both my countries without the fear of being threatened or worse. We must "align our values with our actions", if we are to deserve this great experiment called democracy, to honor our ability to speak freely and not use it to bash each other. “Government is not the enemy. It is our reflection” a wise commenter by the name of Martin Nyberg said somewhere in that deluge of words I read this week.

We are a long way from forming that more perfect union, but We the People have to keep talking..."in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

A HYBRID AMBASSADORS blog-ring project.

You met our multinational Dialogue 2010 cultural innovators last spring in a roundtable discussion of hybrid life at expat+HAREM and followed their reactions to a polarizing book promotion. In this round they offer their thoughts on the recent shooting incident in Tucson, Arizona.


Add your voice to the conversation. Join the discussion on Twitter using #HybridAmbassadors.


More thoughts on this subject from my fellow hybrid ambassadors:

Tara Lutman Agacayak's Enough
Elmira Bayraslı's The Irresponsible Country
Sezin Koehler's The Culture of Violence
Catherine Yigit’s United in Fear

Spanning years, cultures and creativity

Our avatar is a detail from a suzani, hand embroidered silk and cotton textiles traditionally begun at the birth of a daughter for her dowry. A suzani’s circular motifs represent Gardens of Eden, reminders of an abundant life here in an earthly paradise.

These circles imply connection, the arcs of bridges spanning divides and even cultures. Colorful rainbows leading to brighter futures, eternal curves encompassing the hands-on-hips symbol of strong women, as stitched in Turkic handcrafts for millennia. In 2011, we'll take the energy of this sustaining form into creating a culture in which girls and women, from Turkey, but also from around our globe, draw from the strength and beauty of these cultural arts and remake them to empower themselves, their families and their communities. 

It's now 2011 in Turkey, where Abit is, and still 2010 in California, where I am. We're temporarily bridging years for these 10 hours, but I'm eager to get back to being our creative, craftivist force for bridging cultures.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year, wherever you may be!

Manifesting Destiny

It took a random trip back to Istanbul in 1998 for me to recognize that I could create any kind of life I wanted.  I didn’t have to follow the American Dream to ‘success’:  the corporate high salary job, a big house, the nice car with the hefty lease.  I was living a good life in Los Angeles, but one that felt directionless and shallow.  

I was in a multi-cultural city, but that place did not reflect me.

A friend asked me if I wanted to travel with her to Turkey and Greece. I immediately said yes, since I rarely turned down a chance to do my favorite thing – travel. Istanbul had been my favorite place to work, the business trips I’d made there several years before.  The Turks I’d worked with had quite unlike the Japanese, the Chinese, the Indians, the Italians and other nationalities whose offices and factories I’d done business with as a clothing designer.

My agent and his employees in Istanbul went out of their way to make sure I saw their city, whirling me through Sultanahmet, along the Bosphorus, taking me to the latest hot restaurants and nightclubs. I didn’t realize that the agent’s wife Asli was one of Turkey’s top fashion designers at the time, until we were followed around one night by paparazzi and appeared in the local gossip pages the next morning. I was suddenly the ‘famous American designer’ gracing Turkey with my presence.

One afternoon, Asli took me to Pandeli in the Spice Market for lunch. But not until I’d visited the vast closet in her home with the Bosphorus view, donning heels, flowing silk, and a fur coat, since it was late November. Clearly my casual American work clothes had not met with her chic Istanbul standards. Cinderella stories like that never happened to me in the US, even in the fashion business.

With great memories of that amazing city that reminded me so much of a far more colorful and infinitely more social San Francisco, we planned our trip to Turkey and Greece. But just before we were about to leave, my friend went cold on Turkey.  She was afraid to travel the Western Turkish route I’d mapped out, though perhaps Istanbul might be safe enough for her to see before we left for Athens. We agreed to meet on a certain date at the Empress Zoe Hotel in Sultanahmet, near the Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace.  

Once on the road, I was happy to be on my own.  I’ve lost friendships with people who were fine at home but could not handle the daily stresses of travel. I’m most alive when I don’t know what’s around the corner, or where a fork in my path will take me. Traveling with someone who wanted to plan every move would have been agony.

Turkey solo was a challenge.  I’ve never talked to more strangers in my life! By the time I got to the small Aegean town of Selcuk, next to the Greco-Roman ruins of Ephesus, I was talked out.  I’d over-shopped too, and was cursing myself for lugging an over stuffed duffel bag as I struggled up a small lane from the bus station after a bus ride from Pamukkale. Why do Americans think they can see half of Turkey in 1 week’s time? I’d barely scratched the surface in three.

I’ll save the rest of the story for my book. But that day in Selcuk, I met my husband Abit, who has called Selcuk home since the age of 13, though he’s also lived for 10 years in Istanbul and in Belgium for 3. If I’d turned down another street, we never may have met. I might have returned to California, settled back into my life. The life that was comfortable, but didn’t quite feel like mine.

I did ultimately meet up with my friend at the Empress Zoe Hotel, that trip in 1998. As kismet would have it, the narrow wooden building on Kutlugun Sokak, Auspicious Day Street, where Abit and I lived and had our textile shop this past summer -  is right next door.