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Spring Break

April 15th, 2011 by Tamra
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Dear Family and Friends,

This year we decided to travel to northeastern Turkey for Mike’s spring break. It is definitely low season over there. If you want to see festivals and flowers, go in the summer. If you want to see fog, go any other time. Nonetheless, we did see flowers- the fruit trees were blooming, and the woods were full of strawberries and primroses, and occasionally, an azalea in full bloom. The mountains seem to rise right out of the sea. They are steep, but people build on impossible slopes and run winch lines to the nearest road so that their supplies can be easily delivered. This is also the center of Turkey’s tea and hazelnut businesses.

Our original plan had been to fly to Trabzon, rent a car, travel to a few places, and return to Trabzon. Everything began according to plan, but the airport in Trabzon was closed because of fog. So, the plane turned around and landed in Samsun. Once there, the only thing the airline offered was a trip back to Istanbul, or to find our own way at our own expense to Trabzon. The passengers were furious. Fortunately one guy – big and loud – convinced the airline that they had to deliver us, at their expense, to Trabzon. While these negotiations were going on, about half the passengers left to rent cars or to find the bus station. Finally, they agreed to send us via an airport shuttle bus  to Trabzon, a four or five hour bus ride.

Sumela MonasteryThe next day, Sunday, the sun came out, and we saw both the Aya Sofia and the Sumela Monastery. The joke here is that no one has ever actually seen Sumela because of the fog and clouds, so we were pretty lucky. It was a nice hike and not very crowded once we arrived.

From Trabzon, we went to Gümüşhane. There are two Gümüşhanes, the modern city along the river and the old city up in the hills that was the center of the silver mining and production during the days of the Empire. There were many ruins of monasteries and castles, some of which we tried to find, but usually we would see one sign, followed by a fork in the road, and no further indication of where to go.

From Gümüşhane we had planned to go over the mountain to Rize, but we discovered that the mountain passes were closed because of snow and avalanches, so we ended up driving around the mountain back through Trabzon and on to Rize. Rize is the tea growing center of Turkey, and the hills are covered with tea plants. We visited the Botanical Garden at Tea Institute, and then headed east to Hopa and up into the mountains. Again, we rain into weather problems, so we changed our itinerary, returned to the coast, and made our way to Ayder where we spend two nights instead of one. Ayder is a trekking and outdoor adventure place up in the mountains, but not so high. Here we had one day of fog and one day of sun. Our hosts at the hotel were friendly and helpful, but they probably wondered what we were doing there at that time of year. There were no tourists at all, and only one restaurant was open, but it served trout, so we were very happy to get relief from what had seemed like an all-meat diet.

This part of Turkey has an interesting and complicated history. Vestiges of Greek, Armenian and Georgian languages are still spoken. Ruins of churches and castles are everywhere. Besides tea and hazelnuts, it is the center of the Laz people, Black Sea music

We had no weather problems on our return to Istanbul, and we had the treat of sharing the plane with Trabzon’s winning soccer team. Here’s the photo set on Flickr. I’m still adding to it, so it will complete in a few days.

If you like Turkish film, here are a couple of titles that are related to the Trabzon and Black Sea region of Turkey.

Bal (Honey) – This is the third part of a trilogy about Yusuf.

The Edge of Heaven – The beginning and end are Black Sea; in between is an interesting story.

Now we are looking forward to better weather, a speedy final term, and our return to New Mexico.

xox

 

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Street Food Trek

April 1st, 2011 by Tamra
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Dear Family and Friends,

Juice Vendor

Juice Vendor

On Wednesday, I accompanied some friends on a street food trek led by Claudia Turgut who writes the wonderful blog, A Seasonal Cook in Turkey. Everyone who visits Turkey knows about simit, the sesame covered bagel-like bread that is sold on almost every corner, but you often see people selling sandwiches, mussels, and other things. It all looks so good, but street food in Turkey is like street food everywhere – an iffy proposition. So going with someone who knows the good, reliable vendors was a real treat.

We each put 20 TL in the kitty and we were off. Our first stop was the Vitamin Shop near Tünel. This young guy was always in motion, and he talked non-stop while he prepared our fresh mixed juice drinks – orange, carrot, pomegranate – for about $2.00 each. Now fortified with our shot of vitamins, we were ready to trek.

Kokoreç

Chopping up the kokoreç

Kokoreç Vendor

Kokoreç Vendor

We went on to the plaza at Galata Tower where there is a kokoreç vendor. Kokoreç is sheep instestines wrapped around other meat and lots of spices, cooked on a spit like döner. Servings are sliced from the spit, chopped, and served in a piece of bagette. This man has been working on the same corner for 30 years; he said that he usually goes to his home on the Black Sea during the summers, so go try his kokoreç now!

 

Pickle Vendor

Pickle Vendor

From there, we went to the Pera Palas Hotel to see the new restoration and to check out the restrooms. Then Claudia led us through a street with a good pickle store, a good herb store, and a good şarküteri, or delicatessen. By the way, deli, in Turkish, means crazy. The şarküteri had bacon and ham as well as more traditional Turkish sausages. I bought some bacon for Mike. All of the shopkeepers had samples for us to try. We were headed to the mussel vendor in this street, but he wasn’t there, so we continued on to the kelle vendor.

Kelle Vendor

Kelle Vendor

Kelle and Spices

Sheep heads and spices

Kelle is sheep’s head and the dish is similar to Mexican barbacoa. The heads are cooked, and the meat is sliced off and chopped. It is mixed with   plenty of parsley, salt, onion, tomato, red pepper flakes, and served on a simple piece of paper with bread on the side. Five of us split a half portion, which was enough because of all the sampling we had done up to this point. This man said he prepares 120 heads every day, selling 30 or 40 from this location. His family has been in the business for 3 generations.

After this, we made our way through the food markets and restaurants to a bread store behind Galatasaray Lisesi, where we sampled cookies and bought loaves of dark, chewy bread. Our last stop was the famous Ara Cafe for tea and coffee. The bill was 21 TL, and we had 23TL left, exactly enough for the bill and the proper tip!

Mike and I are off tomorrow on a Spring Break trip to the Black Sea, so I’ll catch up with you when I get back.

xox

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From Fisher’s River to Indian Creek

March 28th, 2011 by Tamra
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The Night Meeting from Fisher's River North Carolina Scenes and Characters

When I was a kid, Sundays were special. Sunday mornings, our family went to the First (and only) Presbyterian Church, and after church, we usually gathered for a big lunch at my grandmother’s house. In the afternoon, more family, including a Presbyterian preacher from a nearby town, would arrive for the big weekly poker game. We kids hung out under the dining room table so we wouldn’t miss any of the raunchy jokes, family stories or the way Great Aunt Goldie could place her bets with perfectly controlled flatulence. “I see you and I raise you  * * * * .” We wanted to be on hand to run to the store across the street in case somebody needed a fresh pack of cigarettes. Religion in my family, you can see, had a certain irreverent quality.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I found a passel of Baptist preachers in the family tree. Not any old Baptists, but Primitive Baptists. Conservative, foot-washing, psalm-singing Baptists. Well, some of them were also ‘stillers, so maybe not so conservative. One of them, Gideon Potter, wrote an account of his life that provided more names and more clues, and before I knew it, I was off on a genealogical trek to the New River area of the Appalachian mountains, an area that includes Grayson County, Virginia and Surry County, North Carolina.

My paternal grandfather, whom I never knew, was born in Illinois, but his people came from Indiana. This grandfather, Ura Earl Neal, was the son of James Neal and Tabitha Jane Potter, who married and began their family in Owen County, Indiana and then moved to Douglas County, Illinois around 1871. James Neal was raised in Indiana by John and Frances Thompson Mills. I don’t know what happened to his parents or what their connection was to the Thompson/Mills families. Tabitha Jane was the daughter of Gideon Potter, the Primitive Baptist elder, and Tabitha Jane Hodges. Gideon was the son of Stephen Potter and Martha Phipps; Tabitha was the daughter of Bartholomew Hodges and Elizabeth Cockerham.

In the 1790s, these Potter, Hodges, Phipps, and Cockerham families were living in Grayson County, Virginia. By 1810, they had moved to Surry County, North Carolina in the neighborhood of Mount Airy, the birthplace of Andy Griffith and the model for Mayberry. If you want to know why we say skillet instead of frying pan, yonder instead of over there, reckon instead of suppose, then consider that there may be a deeper reason than exposure to the television show.

Fisher’s River North Carolina: Scenes and Characters by the American humorist and Baptist preacher Hardin E. Taliaferro is an entertaining account of life in Surry County in the early 1800s. From it emerges a picture of how the people lived, their pastimes and work, their way of speaking, their food and customs, and their sense of humor. Here’s a short sample that describes Moses Cockerham, a relative of our Elizabeth.

I have said Long Jimmy Thompson was a big eater. He was the Milo of Mitchell’s River, and Mose Cackerham was the Maximius of Fisher’s River. Once, at a gathering, Long Jimmy let in on a large tray of hog’s feet that was set on a table. He made such havoc of them, and the bones fell so fast on the floor, that it provoked Lark Cannady to blurt out,

“Hellow, Uncle Jimmy, you hull out bones faster nur a cotting-gin can shell out cotting-seed, a nation sight. You kin beat a whole cotting-pickin’ uv huming beings all holler.”

But Long Jimmy paid no more attention to this witty gibe than a hungry cur would to a gnat. At a reaping at Uncle Billy Norman’s, Mose Cackerham ate up the back-bones of several hogs, and their joles. The bones kept falling on the floor with such force and noise that Dick Snow exclaimed

“Dang it, Uncle Mose, ef your bones don’t fall as hard on the floor as ears o’ corn on the floor of a empty corn-crib at a corn- shuckin’, and nearly as fast. By jingo! I wouldn’t feed you fur all yer wuck. You’d ‘duce a famine in a man’s smoke-house mighty quick.”

When Indiana and Illinois were admitted to the Union in 1816 and 1818, these extended and intermarried families began to move west. Migrations were usually by flatboats, at an average of 3000 per year, along the Ohio River to the Wabash and White Rivers in Indiana. By the early 1830s our families were settled and farming in Lawrence and Owen Counties in Indiana.

If there were plenty of Hardshell Baptists in this branch of the tree, there were also some outlaws. The Phipps family seems to have been particularly rowdy. I haven’t been able to identify Martha Phipps’ parents, but I assume that the Phipps men who moved west with her and Stephen Potter were her close relatives, brothers or nephews. Two Phipps men, twins Shack and Shade, went from being outlaws to being upstanding citizens and gained fame as the oldest living twins in the U.S. They were associated with the Long brothers who were part of notorious Banditti of the Prairie that assassinated Col. George Davenport, and they hung out with Jesse James in Missouri. One short summary and one long account of their exploits can be found here and here. Edward Bonney’s book about the gang, their crimes, and their eventual apprehension is available for online reading here. In another piece of unrelated weirdness, one of the gang members, Robert Birch, escaped from jail and resurfaced in New Mexico where he discovered gold at Pinos Altos near Silver City.

The Phipps/Phips/Fipps  family gets more interesting. In his autobiography, Gideon Potter described his mother, Martha Phipps, as being of Welsh descent. In Appalachia, people who had dark hair and eyes were sometimes said to be Welsh. This is curious, because parts of the Phipps family are connected to the Melungeons, a tri-racial group from central Appalachia. So, when Gideon said that his mother was of Welsh descent, did he mean she was of Welsh descent, did he mean she was brunette, or did he mean she was mixed-race?

As for Tabitha Hodges Potter, she was part of the sprawling Hodges/Hodge/Hedge/Hoge family. One researcher says, “These Hodges started arriving in Surry County, NC in the 1770s. There are so many in the next century that they are mindboggling since they used the same names over and over.” Indeed, they were so mindboggling that contemporary Hodges resorted to DNA testing to trace family lines. Our Tabitha belongs to Lineage 1, but there are gaps, so I can trace her no further back than her father, Bartholomew. Tabitha’s mother, Elizabeth Cockerham/Cockram/Cochran is also impossible to trace, although because of various other family connections, I can put her near, if not in, the family of Moses Cockerham whose son Mose ate up that pile of back-bones and joles at the reaping at Uncle Billy Norman’s place.

There’s a saying that Presbyterians are no more than Primitive Baptists who moved to town. If this were a book, that move would be the next chapter. For now, I’ll leave the Potters, Hodges, Phipps, and Cockerhams in peace near Indian Creek, Indiana.

 

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Mountainair

February 2nd, 2011 by Tamra
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Dear Family and Friends,

Wood StoveWow! That was some storm! Right now, the sun is out and the mountain bluebirds are searching for seeds. I guess there is about a foot of snow, but it is hard to tell because of the drifts. On the north side of the house, the snow is about 3 feet deep, but the south side is wind-swept clean. And it is snow-squeaky cold: about -5 degrees. Mike has been keeping the wood stove going, so the house is toasty. We have our books and good music, but we also walk around saying things like, “When we live here year-round, we’ll have to ______ .” Build a better wood bin. Get a snow shovel. Sign up for satellite television.

Wherever you are, I hope you are warm and dry!

xox

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Süleymaniye Mosque

January 13th, 2011 by Tamra
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Dear Friends and Family,

Süleymaniye1The photo club took its first trek of the year to the newly renovated and restored Süleymaniye Mosque. This is one of the imperial mosques that creates Istanbul’s famous skyline. It was built in just 7 years (1550 – 1557) for Süleyman the Magnificent by the famous architect of his times, Mimar Sinan. The mosque is part of a complex that included libraries, schools, kitchens, caravansarais, and hospitals. It is in a very tranquil neighborhood just behind Istanbul University and not too far from the Grand Bazaar. This mosque feels very light and airy, maybe because the main dome is about 175 feet high.

I find it really hard to take photos inside a mosque. Where do you point the camera? How do you deal with all of the domes and lights and wires?

Wish you were here!

xox

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