Istanbul: Arrival, recovery, and exploration

the "living room"

We have arrived and even slept, after a fairly brutal journey here. By the time we finally arrived at the Bereket apartments, we were ready to stop. We had been in the air and waiting around airports for about 24 hours. I unpacked and fell into bed rapidly. Even though it was 1 AM, the youth went exploring the neighborhood, and made friends over beer with some kids at a hostel. When I was in Morocco in the mid 80's, we had to seek out alcohol in the Jewish neighborhoods. And if anything, Turkey is even more Moslem. Well, more on that, anon. Even Keelin--normally the first to fall out--managed to stay awake a few hours (since she slept on the longest flight).

The facade of our apartment

A driver met us at the airport and took us to out apartment. They had a bowl of fruit, a jug of water, and a bottle of quite good red Turkish wine (a nice 2006 blend of Cab, merlot, and aligante) waiting for us.

entrance to our apartment

I sit here sipping some bad "3 in 1" Nescafe (sugar, instant coffee, powdered creamer, all in one "product," which reminds me of being in Greece when Nescafe ruled. I am listening to the twitter and chirping of birds (and one hungry cat) and delivery trucks as Istanbul begins to wake up. About two hours ago, I was awakened by the sound of a Muezzin calling people to prayers at the mosque. This is exciting, and I am having trouble not waking people yet. This is not normal on a family trip--I am always the one up until late, sleeping four hours past everyone else.

Our apartment is on a very narrow cobblestone street (and it's carless!). The apartments is extremely light, with some views of the Old City. Around the corner is the Konak Patisserie & Cafe which I am itching to try as soon as everyone wakes up!

view from the bedroom

Our apartment building, a five story walk-up was built in 1885 and has been (seismically too I hope) restored, with ten foot ceilings, fantastic ornate plasterwork cornices, well-worn hardwood floors, some brick walls, burnished old wooden window frames, rear-facing Romeo and Juliet balconies, nice bathrooms with big tubs, a washer, a serviceable kitchen, and satellite TV, a CD player, and (!!!) a high speed Internet connection, which is why I am writing to you at 6 in the morning.

More soon...after all, all I've done in Istanbul so far is drink coffee in my apartment and write to you, Friendos.

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Arriving in Istanbul Thursday night

Our itinerary: Depart Seattle 3:00 pm Wednesday. Arrive Calgary 5:00. Wait for four hours. Fly to London overnight. Wait two hours. Fly to Istanbul, arriving 11:00 pm local time.

I'll write and send pictures when I can...
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On the road to Turkey

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Will C's Homage to President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho

Click to enlarge President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho
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Video: The Old 97's - Blame It On Gravity - The Story Behind The Album

A video on the making of the Old 97's latest album, Blame It On Gravity. The album is very good, and it sounds great!


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TBTL: Too Beautiful To Live: Give it a listen

I keep bringing this up, but you need to listen to Luke Burbank and Jen Andrews on TBTL (Too Beautiful To Live). I am not going to go into any details--if you live in Seattle, tune in Kiro 710 AM from 7-10 Weekdays (with a best of on Saturday), or go to iTunes, or to TBTL.net. These people are reinventing radio.
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Old 97's rock the Showbox in Seattle

The Old 97's played a rockin' show Saturday night in Seattle at The Showbox. The bands that opened--Hayes Carll and I Love Math were also Texas bands. I was not such a big fan of either I love math ( the Old 97's drummer is a member) or Hayes Carll's band. Musically they were very good, but neither bands had very good singing chops...especially when you knew what was to follow. But the audience and the ten people I went to the show with all loved them.

This is my 4th Old 97's show (Stubbs in Austin twice, The Gorge at George, Wash., and Seattle), and it is my favorite so far. They played five songs from their new album, Blame It On Gravity, and a lot of songs from previous albums: Lonely Holiday, Question, West Texas Teardrops, Rollerskate Skinny, Up the Devil's Pay, Designs on You, Barrier Reef, Melt Show, Big Brown Eyes, and a bunch more. Rhett Miller was his usual hip swinging, smoldering glancing self, and the girls and women in the front, near the stage treated him like a latter day Tom Jones (although no undergarments were thrown). The band was in fine fettle--great guitar and drumming, outstanding vocals, doing their dance between serious rock and roll and power pop with a tinge of country. It was a 4 1/2 show between all three acts, and then at about 12:40, the band finished up. And then came back for two encores, totalling about eight more songs. We left happy. I love these guys.

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Three photgraphs of uncontrolled landings

Flying can sometimes be better
Than not flying.

Three examples:

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Alien Lore No. 133 - The KGB UFO Files

An interesting clip from the recently released KGB UFO files. One video in the archive includes video footage of an alleged mass abduction of Russians during the mid-80's.

The declassified Russian archives include several interesting possible UFO recordings... I am trying to locate the mass abduction video right now...



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Happy Father's Day

Dean Ericksen enjoys the seat of honor at this morning's father's day brunch

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All This Is That Farked!

Our article on photographs from Mars yesterday was Farked. What does that mean? Instead of a couple hundred readers all day, a couple hundred a minute show up. It's not like they all become fans and regulars. They don't; Farkers tend to look at the article and then jump back to Fark.com. But just the fact ten thousand people show up is pretty cool. And Fark is an extremely viral site...when you DO get Farked, dozens of other sites (like Reddit, Useless Junk, Digg, etc.) also point their readers to the story, and then some of those readers flag the story). It's happened a couple times before, and it's always welcome. If you own your own domain, you can get hit with some steep charges by your ISP. But if you're on Blogger, no problem...they like all that traffic.


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Mars Phoenix Lander sends photos of face gouged into Martian rock

Tucson, Arizona June 14, 2008
By Mary Houlihan,
All This Is That science editor



-Click to enlarge-

About three weeks after it landed on Mars, the Phoenix lander has transmitted new photographs of geologic features and the planet's surface, including one that appears to show a direct link between earth and Mars.

NASA's $420 million lander may have also located ice in the Martian polar region, in a photo with with rocks and hills trailing into a dusty horizon. Ice, and its parent, water, may be necessary for life, or at least life as we understand it.

"We're getting about twice the data volume we were told to expect," said Peter Smith, Phoenix principal investigator at the University of Arizona.

Mary Houlihan, discussed the photograph of what appears to be a butte, or mesa, with a smiley face gouged into the rock and dust: "Of course, the scientists at NASA and JPL have already dismissed the smiley face as a geological anomaly. However, the question may really be 'did they get the smiley face from us, or did we get it from them?'"
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