Skip to main content

Türkiye in one Photo: Hopes & Fears



The first week of school we went over procedures with the kids. One procedure that caught my attention was the Earthquake Drill. We have to be ready for earthquakes here. The ground often shakes.

Here's what we do: a siren sounds for 30 seconds. When it sounds, we duck under our desks and protect our heads. When the siren stops, I lead the class out the front door to the edge of campus and follow a wall to a parking lot, where we wait for ... aftershocks, clearance for return, I haven't figured this out yet.


I have experienced one earthquake already, the week before school started. It wasn't much. The building shook for about 15 seconds, and my swivel chair kept moving around under me. But I wasn't knocked around or anything.

I saw the tweet below this week. For me, it combines fascination and fear. I'm fascinated by the history and art that has shook this landscape for thousands of years. People moving in and out, empires rising and falling, and art that is ancient, then ur-ancient, then whatever is more ancient than that.

But the ground shakes, and every few hundred years, all the buildings get knocked down, only to be rebuilt by the next empire, if they come back at all. The Temple of Diana in nearby Ephesus was one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. A few hewed-off columns are all that is left to see today. 

Ephesus and Miletus were once among the businest port cities of the Roman Empire. Today each city is a mile or so from the coast, its harbors silted in by the rivers carrying the shaken remains of mountains.

The waves in the mosaic below are awesome. But so is the fact that mosaic remains intact. It's too soon to say that Art > Geology. I'm pretty sure that Geology is undefeated in world history. But it shows the enduring culture that makes Türkiye so endlessly fascinating.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dürüm: the Turkish burrito

When Americans and western Europeans think of Turkish food, the first word that comes to mind is Döner, that fast-food delicacy of shaved pieces of roasted lamb or chicken, stuffed into a pita with salad and hot sauce. As they say in Deutschland, " Döner ist schöner ," and the truth is that there are few snacks more beautiful or more delicious. But since I've been in Turkey, I have yet to eat Döner as I know it from England and Germany. İnstead, I have found dürüm, which looks like a chicken burrito 🌯 and tastes delicious. Like the burrito, the dürüm is wrapped in a tortilla. İ have seen tortillas for sale in the bread aisle, too. The meat for the dürüm is cut from the same, rotating spit of roasting meat that goes into a Döner.  Unlike the burrito, the meat is really yummy. As you can see from the photo, it was served with red sauce that wasn't "peppery hot" as one would find in a Mexican restaurant, but was savory hot. There were small peppers...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lost City of Teos

Since arriving in Turkey, I've known I wanted to hike. It's been hard to do: temperatures have been in the mid-30s most days since I arrived at the beginning of August (it is now mid-September). But I really want to see this country and experience it, and hiking is the best way to do both. My third week in country I found the article " The Most Beautiful Hiking Routes in Izmir ," and I've taken it as a personal challenge. Over the Victory Day (August 30) weekend, I chose the trip to the Ionian city of Teos. To get to this ancient city, I hopped on a bus at a stop around the corner from my house. It was a three hour bus ride with two transfers. It was totally worth it. I was in such a hurry to see an ancient city -- I prefer the term, "lost city," because I am an Indiana Jones fan, but the fact is that the site is open to all-comers -- that I got off the bus one stop too soon.  I quickly found a path into the site via the "back way." As I follow...
Post a Comment
Read more