Enjoying Hometown Friends in Istanbul

 Brian Smith and me

One of the fun parts about living in Istanbul is so many friends come through town as tourists. This summer it was my  Ames, Iowa high school classmate Brian Smith and his very fun wife Fazia Ali. So many giggles! Brian is so in love with Fazia. It's moving to see. They have been married for 19 years.

Family friend Bahar

and Brian's wife Fazia

Brian is a Pulitzer-prize winning photographer. His first magazine photograph appeared in LIFE Magazine when he was a 20-year-old student at the University of Missouri.  Five years later, Brian won the Pulitzer Prize for his photographs of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. Yes, that's right, at age 25!

Because Brian started achieving so early and for so many years people are always asking him for advice and he is happy to provide it. Here's an example from his blog where he shares Secrets of Sports Photography: his favorite Olympic Moments.  It is great storytelling of jawdropping images we will all remember.

Lately, Brian has specialized in celebrity portrait photography. I love hearing him talk about his book project "Art and Soul: Stars Unite to Celebrate and Support the Arts." The book grew out of the desire of entertainment professionals to share in a deeply personal way how they had been impacted by the arts. Truly, some of the most iconic celebrities are featured. I dare you to look deeply into Ann Hathaway's eyes in Brian's portrait and not want to say "yes" to whatever she asks for! You can thumb through 15 of the portraits on the Amazon site and vote for the ones you like. All of these portraits were also featured at the Library of Congress. The stars hand-carried the book to Congress to advocate for more funding for the arts.


















This fall Brian will have a new book coming out called "Secrets of Great Portrait Photography: Photographs of the Famous and Infamous." Along with instantly iconic photos like this cover shot of billionaire space entrepreneur Richard Branson, Brian shares the stories behind the photographs and how he connected with his subjects to create such unforgettable images.

I admire my classmate's work and his willingness to mentor so many young photography professionals coming up. Brian gives speeches all across America on photography topics but also on just getting started as a professional. I enjoyed the storytelling in this webinar: "Stop Waiting for Your Big Break." He frequently is invited to share on this and other topics in person.

After coming to Istanbul, Brian and Fazia went on to Athens. I LOVE this photograph he took of her there.

"My Goddess Rocks the Acropolis"

Brian Smith on Twitter: @briansmithphoto

Brian Smith on the web: http://briansmith.com/

The book that made me crazy with homesickness for America

Aldo Leopold

I have a young teenage friend here in Istanbul who pines to be out in the Turkish countryside among apple orchards, tending herbs, growing living plants and enjoying nature. Instead, he's growing up in a city of 15 million! That has to make his summers out in the country just that much more special.

I tried to think of English-language books that I could share with him that spoke to this inner calling of nature. "Walden" of course, by Thoreau. "The other side of the mountain" by Jean Craighead George, one of my own childhood favorites. To this day I still remember how much I savored reading her young adult novel about trying to live off the land by oneself as a teenager in the woods. Instead, I gave him a book, even though I hadn't read it myself. I had, however, heard mentioned over and over again as one of the best in the American canon for nature writing: "Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold.

"Sand County Almanac"
 has sold over 2,000,000 copies

"Sand County Almanac" proved too difficult for his intermediate English. So he gave it back to me.
Having always meant to read it because of its steady, growing reputation, I opened it up and began.

"Sand County Almanac" is divided into a year of observations about living on a Wisconsin farm and the natural life that goes on there through the seasons. Aldo Leopold, the Iowa-born author, was a professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Wisconsin when he wrote it. He would retire to his "tired-out" farmland and shack on the weekend with his wife and five kids. Before his professorship, he was very active in the United States Forest Service writing the first fish and game handbook ever and proposing the first National Wilderness Designation ever for Gila Wilderness Area.

Thank goodness, I was going home to America within the month! The beauty of the Wisconsin farm landscape came pouring of every page of this book. So did his pride and passion for observation of his piece of land, something every property owner has felt. Having last lived in central Wisconsin when I was in America, I could hardly bear reading it so evocative was it for all that was gorgeous about nature in the Midwest, and Wisconsin in particular.



Aldo Leopold is considered
the father of wildlife ecology

No wonder my young friend had such difficulty with the English. Aldo Leopold's language is so learned and his thinking so lofty, I began to regard what was in my hands as "divinely-inspired" like Mozart's works or Handel's "Messiah." Could a human being create such a work of such sacredness, joy, and wisdom without help from a higher power?

If I could have every American read one chapter, it would be "February." There is no action in this chapter other than Aldo sawing apart a tree for his wood-burning stove. Doesn't exactly sound like a must-read, does it? And yet, each sentence is utterly compelling.

Aldo describes not knowing where our heat comes from as a "spiritual danger." A spiritual danger! Is that not what we experience when we consume our petrol mindlessly as we do without acknowledgement of the depletion of nature and cost to human life?

He says "if one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend a week in town astride a radiator."

I am not going to split my own oak for heat anytime soon, but let you and I just ask ourselves if we know the details of where our heat comes with the same deep consciousness and thought for its replacement as Aldo did. While sawing, he recalled exactly where the tree originated from, what it measured in length and width, what was going on in history at the time of its birth, and what the oak had to survive to get to this age. When another oak was felled by lightening on his property, he allowed it to properly age in the sunshine it could no longer use, and then split it one fine winter day secure in the knowledge that there was a renewable source of new wood growing on his farm. Do we consume our heat with that level of awareness and consciousness about where it's coming from, how it shall be renewed, and at what cost?

The forward alone is full of such copious amounts of wisdom it was, again, awe-inspiring to read. May I absorb his wisdom to my bones.

From the forward:

"But wherever the truth may lie, this much is crystal-clear: our bigger and better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy. The whole world is so greedy for more bathtubs that it has lost the stability necessary to build them, or even to turn off the tap. Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings."                                          
                                                                                    ~Aldo Leopold, 1949

You might also enjoy these Wisconsin or nature-related posts:

The Marvelousness of Madison

A Spectacular Hike to Gem Lake

Elk Bugling Season


Couchsurfing Hike to Český ráj

Hiking the Sázava River in Central Bohemia

Listening to dissidents

Manal Al-Sharif

A woman with the simple demand:

I need to drive in my daily life.

Before coming to Little Rock, I had had dissidents on the brain due to the first award of the Vaclav Havel Award for Creative Dissent. I was moved by Vaclav Havel and his friends' simple desire to live in freedom when I lived in the Czech Republic. Now, a generation later, I was fascinated by the lady who so eloquently described what the simple ability to drive in her daily life would mean to her. I find the idea that anyone would deny her that, unimaginable.

Dan Choi

Former U.S. Army Officer and

American dissident

who worked to end

'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'

the policy demanding gays lie about their identity

while serving their country

I thought about Dan Choi, the gay West Point-educated Arab linguist, who had the simple desire to serve his country in the American military. He was discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" for being gay at a time when our country could have used every single Arab linguist available.

Elizabeth Eckford's dignified and quiet demand:

"I want to go to a good school."

Live in freedom and safety, drive, serve one's country. Another simple wish from history, this time from Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957: go to a good school. Regular people asking their society to grant them dignity and equality. It's stunning what humanity puts them through when they ask for it.

Global Dissident Eve Ensler

demanding that people
all over the world
rise up and change the global paradigm
on violence against women.

Who are the dissidents pushing buttons in your country or culture? If they are pushing for change and meeting resistance, what is they want that seems so outlandish? How do you and I evaluate whether or not our own attitudes are on the right side of history? For example, I find the American political party, the Tea Party, often 'pushes my buttons.' But if you boil down their demands to one thing, "live within our means as a nation," that doesn't seem outlandish, does it?

I always want to make sure I'm on the right side of history. Their single demand deserves respect in my book, even though I don't always agree with how to get there.

6th generation Iowan and Eagle Scout

Zach Walls

demanding the State not discriminate

against his family

I leave you with the message of one last dissident asking for respect. He's from my home state of Iowa. All he wanted, was for Iowa lawmakers not to write discrimination against his parents into the State of Iowa constitution. His name is Zach Walls. Seems like a simple enough request, doesn't it?

What dissidents 'push your buttons' in your country? Do you agree with their cause or disagree? How do you decide whether or not you are a barrier to progress (one way to look at it) or a steward of traditional values (another way to look at it)? I ask to learn. This difference between these two ways of seeing things is at the heart of so much of our political hearthaches. Let's listen to each other.

I see what the people of Little Rock achieved when they thought of themselves as "us:" together they built the most beautiful high school in the United States of America the year it was built. When they chose to think of themselves as "us" and "them" what did they achieve?

"You're My Al Bell!"

Recently I reconnected with an old business competitor and dear friend from my hometown of Ames, Iowa named Rich Weiss. He made a comment about my writing from overseas, saying, "You’ve become my personal Al Bell and I find your insights quite interesting."

When I asked, "who is Al Bell?" he replied with this:

 “What do you mean "who is Al Bell?”  Didn't you grow up in Iowa?

Oh!  I get it!  This is your way of pointing out that I am much older than you.

 

Al Bell and his wife traveled around Iowa, visiting elementary schools, giving “assemblies” to the students on trips they had taken to exotic locations around the world.  They would take a new trip each year and then spend three seasons going around, showing native items they had brought home and showing us a film about their trip.  This was big stuff to Richie Weiss in Miss Frederik’s 2^nd grade class in 1962.

 

Here are links to items about Al Bell.  I found the first one about 4-years ago when my son was living in Hong Kong and I told my daughter-in-law that she was my Al Bell.  I hadn’t thought of him for 35-years and did a Google search.  The other links here are to an assortment of stories about him from bloggers or area newspapers.  He was a very colorful man who was known by virtually all small-town kids in Iowa in the 1960’s.

Did You Know Al Bell? (The comments are the best part of this one.  We all remembered the same things.  Mine is on page 1)

Al Bell Brought the World to Rural Iowa

Assembly Program comes to Goldfield, Iowa (column 2)

Lecturer Al Bell Bitten by Mad Dog in Alaska (bottom of the page)

Al Bell ~ An Iowa Legend

If you’ve read the links, you now understand why you’ve become Al Bell in my eyes.  Your words take me to all these wondrous, mysterious locations.  You let me see the sights, smell the bread, taste the coffee, meet the people and feel like I’ve been there myself.  Thank you."

Wow, what a compliment to be mentioned in such august company as this distinguished gentleman who shared his travels with rural Iowa farm kids. Just reading the comments on link one, it shows the journey communication has taken in one lifetime. While the ease with which we find out information about points unknown has changed, what hasn't changed, is our own awe and wonder at the diversity of the world and our love of seeing beyond what we know to places unknown.

Readers, did you experience an Al Bell or someone like him? Who made you wonder about parts unknown as a child? Who makes you wonder about parts unknown as an adult?


You might enjoy these other posts about Iowa:

Talking About "My People," Iowans, to the Travel Junkies

Enjoying Hometown Friends in Istanbul

Dvorak Embraced Spillville, Iowa; Spillville, Iowa Embraced Dvorak

UNESCO Names Iowa City, Iowa a 'City of Literature'



 'Empty Nest Expat' is on Facebook. You're invited to "like" my page.

Expat Envy on the 4th of July

On the 4th of July, it is hard to replicate the wonderful experience of celebrating America's independence the way it is done back home.  You can get together with fellow expats, you can try and make the right food, you can pull up some You Tube videos of "A Capitol 4th" from the nation's lawn in Washington D. C. but it's not the same.  Sometimes to really experience something, you just have to be there.

Today, I saw some smoked ribs, baked beans, and cole slaw my friend Scott made for his family, and I was filled with such longing for American food, I had 'expat envy.'

So here's a toast to my friends participating in boat parades on Ten Mile Lake in Minnesota, or marching in the 4th of July parade in Illinois, or watching the fireworks over the lake in Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois, or Lake Okoboji, Iowa.  Enjoy your 4th, enjoy your wonderful plate of food, enjoy the view from Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs of purple mountain majesty or of gathered elk in Estes Park, Colorado and pinch yourself at being able to experience such a glorious day. Sometimes we don't appreciate the extra-ordinariness of our everyday existence until we can't experience it like we usually do.

To anyone reading this who has served, is currently serving, or keeping the home fires burning for someone serving our country, thank you so much for your gift of service to the nation.  I appreciate it. I have enjoyed the years of freedom I have experienced that you have made possible.  I don't take it for granted for even one moment.

Similar posts:
My Wish for You: Freedom

My Favorite Freedom

Dvorak Embraced Spillville, Iowa; Spillville, Iowa Embraced Dvorak

When I left the Czech Republic last year, I flew back to the American Midwest. Within two weeks, I needed to go to my home state of Iowa for my Uncle's funeral. My mom, knowing how blue I was to have left Prague when I loved it so, suggested we stop in Spillville, Iowa to see the Bily Clocks/Antonin Dvorak exhibit.

Haven't heard of it? I'm not surprised. Spillville, Iowa has all of 400 people.

When famous Czech composer Antonin Dvorak was in New York City composing his New World Symphony, he longed for the company of his Bohemian countrymen. Rather than going all the way back home for a dose of "Czechness," his secretary urged him to go West instead to the tiny village of Spillville, Iowa which was chock full of Czech immigrants.

The building where he and his family lived has been turned into a museum. It showcases two themes: Dvorak's summer in Spillville, and the breathtaking woodworking creations of some bachelors farmers who became famous handcarving incredible clocks. They are called Bily Clocks and they have to be seen to be believed. It's hard to conceive that the two craftsmen who created them never traveled more than 35 miles from Spillville and only went to school through 5th grade. The tour guide winds up every mechanical clock and shows you it's movements.

It's not every town of 400 people

that have an honest-to-goodness

tourist attraction like this.

If you are the slightest bit interested in woodworking,

creativity, or spirituality you should see these clocks.

The farmers viewed them as a way to glorify God.

Museum guests are not allowed to take pictures of them.

The building can't be missed.

It's on the main thoroughfare through town.

I teared up when I walked into the gift shop

and was surrounded by a whole room of Czech stuff.

Fairy tales written by the famous Czech author

Božena Némcová

I enjoyed learning about Dvorak's stay both in New York City

where he completed his New World Symphony

and in Spillville, Iowa.  

There was lots of interesting background on
American reaction to his Symphony.

Americans, including Dvorak's patroness,

were determined to develop "American music."

When Dvorak, himself an "oppressed person,"

if you want to call him that

as a Czech in the Czechlands

during the Austrian-Hungarian Empire,

suggested to Americans they had all the material

they needed for a grand American-style music

in the music of African-Americans and Native Americans.

White Americans derided his ideas

with a bemused "Imagine he said that!" attitude.

White America said it in Decorah, Iowa
where this article is from.

But they said it in New York City too.

Dvorak was ahead of his time.

His first morning in Spillville

he went down to the Turkey River

and enjoyed the birds singing

even before he talked to anyone in town.

I can imagine being in Spillville
felt very much like being in a Czech village.

Since I worshiped at St. Clement's Church in Prague,

I was delighted to discover a St. Clement's Church in Spillville.

Other signs of Czech life:

the oldest Czech school in America.

The church  and church cemetery
at St. Wenceslaus Church.

Dvorak liked to play the organ here.

A few years after the Velvet Revolution happened, the tiny village of Spillville was newly energized to put on a festival costing $60,000 celebrating their Czech heritage.  That's a lot of ambition for a tiny town of 400.
Bravo to them.  Click on this link to read about it.  Click on my title for more information about the museum.

Hearing from Old Friends

Just on a lark, I sent my blog address to my high school alumni association in Ames, Iowa in case anybody from high school would find it interesting. The quarterly newsletter must have just come out with my blog address in it because I'm hearing from all kinds of people from my hometown. What enormous fun! I'm glad I did that. Drop me an email if you're stopping by from the Hawkeye State. I'd love to hear from you.

Battle Royal for a Chief of a Czech State of Mind

Have you ever heard of the Kingdom of Wallachia? It's a delightful bit of fun thought up by the locals in one area of the Czech Republic. The imagined kingdom of Wallachia has so captured the imagination of Czechs that it is starting to create some real wealth. So who gets it? That's the question. The NYTimes had an article this week detailing the players.

We had something similar in my home state of Iowa. A couple of brothers who owned a T-shirt shop in a tiny town next to the resort lake of Okoboji, Iowa dreamed up the University of Okoboji. The motto: In God We Trust, All Others Cash. It was an immediate hit.

Ownership was clear, however, and the brothers have had a blast thinking up more and more uses for their University. Click on the title to read about the Czech kingdom of Wallachia. Even George Bush had a passport from there!

UNESCO names Iowa City, Iowa a "City of Literature"

My blog usually celebrates Prague. Today I want to celebrate a place I used to live because it just achieved a HUGE honor. I resided in Iowa City, Iowa for two years while I did my M.A. in library and information science. I loved every single minute of living there and regard my time there as two of the most enriching years of my life. Iowa City, Iowa shares a distinction with my hometown Ames, Iowa and another favorite town of Boulder, Colorado as having the most Ph.D.s per capita of any community in the U.S.

UNESCO has named Iowa City, Iowa, with a mere 63,000 people, as the world's third "City of Literature." What other cities have already achieved this distinction? Edinburgh, Scotland and Melbourne, Australia! Pretty good company, I'd say. UNESCO is creating a Creative Cities Network honoring and connecting centers for cinema, music, crafts and folk arts, design, media arts and gastronomy, as well as literature.

Iowa City is renowned for a culture that REVERES writing. It is no surprise to me that daughter #2 is on her way to becoming a journalist because in her kindergarten and first grade classes the Iowa City School System passionately passed on the joy of writing to students.

The whole town is obsessed with writing and book culture because the University of Iowa is home to the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Sooner or later, every famous writer in the world makes their way there to see what the mystique is all about. Lucky citizens are able to hear readings from great thinkers from all over the world, often in small intimate settings.

Like many of Iowa City residents who enjoyed the endless parade of writers through town, I attended more than my fair share of readings at Prairie Lights Bookstore. Prairie Lights' name was known throughout Iowa because each reading was broadcast to all farmers and small town folks across our rural state.

Iowa City took the job of creating new readers as a sacred task. Every child from all over the world in my married student housing courtyard had a wardrobe of three or four t-shirts celebrating the fact they had proudly finished the annual summer reading club. Kids who didn't participate had to ask themselves why they didn't get their free shirt because it sure seemed like everyone else had one for each year they had been in town. When thousands of kids go through the program, finding the funding for something like that takes support from the entire community. Do the math. It's expensive!

The Iowa City Public Library also mounted the first Banned Books Display I had ever seen. The one I remember that shocked me was "Little House on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder. An Indian reservation library had found the portrayal of American Indians in the book offensive and attempted to remove it. Very simple displays like that can help show people that a book they consider important offends somebody else. When we protect everyone's right to read, we protect our own.

To continue that commitment to Intellectual Freedom, the local library started an annual Intellectual Freedom lecture and named it after a staff member who constantly prodded her institution on this issue. It's that kind of reaching beyond the day-to-day mission and teaching the community why censorship hurts their marketplace of ideas that brings this kind of recognition.

Congratulations Iowa City, Iowa and all of the important institutions and their staff members for this huge honor. Y'all deserve it! Link to the title to read the press release.

Yea! It's Election Day!

Could a democracy be more robust or exciting than America's is on this very day? This has been the most exciting, most nail-biting, most fascinating, most emotionally-exhausting election I have ever seen in my entire life. And today history is made with a new African-American president of the United States of America. I'm proud to go to a new country tomorrow, the Czech Republic, represented by such a wise and inspiring leader.

Is it just me or did this election make you cry a lot? All of the women in my family cry at a drop of a hat, and this election it seemed like it was all the time. Barack would make me cry at least twice a week as I heard him speak; watching the pride of old black people at Barack's rallies made me cry; hearing a young college woman stand up and say to John McCain in a quavering voice, "Thank you Senator, for your service to our country. I appreciate my freedom." All of it made me cry!

Probably the clip that reduced my family to tears the most is Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama when he asked us "doesn't the little 7-year-old Muslim boy have the right to dream that he too can be President of the United States?" I believe that clip will be played as often as Martin Luther King's clip asking for his children to be judged on the content of their character.

The aspect of the campaign I found most worrisome was not the racism expressed, or the judging of some parts of the country as anti-American. All of that was overwhelmed by the large number of people wanting to be unified, not divided.

I was worried by what I see as an institutionalized anti-intellectualism in the Republican party. What does it say about education levels in our country when one party constantly stokes resentment toward the educated calling them "elite?" The Republican intellectuals abandoned ship in disgust.

No one really challenged John McCain when he repeatedly derided giving $3 million to the world-class Adler Planatarium in Chicago for it's overhead projector of the night sky. Thousands and thousands of schoolchildren go to that planatarium on field trips. Don't you want to increase America's scientific literacy rating from 17th in the world to 1st, John?

No one challenged him when he derided DNA studies of grizzly bears. Don't you want grizzly bears to survive in your America, Senator McCain? I do. Let's study them.

The voters who made me most personally proud were the 2.9 million people of my home state of Iowa. The voters of this state, mostly rural and 97% white, which collectively have created two universities ranked in the top 100 globally (through taxes, I might add!) proved two things before anyone else did: 1) white people will vote for a black candidate, and 2) young people will turn out and exercise their right to vote. Iowa is where it all started for our new President. That too made me cry in hope and pride!

I told all of my friends it was going to be a landslide. We'll find out tonight!