I have had the opportunity to travel to Turkey and Greece four times in the past four years. I have essentially traveled to the same areas each time either as a study abroad program or to plan the program. I have visited the same cities and stayed at the same hotels. Even eaten in the same restaurants numerous times. But each visit is somehow new and fresh. Partly based on traveling with a new group each time and seeing their reaction to the places I have come to know. In reflecting on the trips the cities almost seem to be what change each time with new textures, colors, smells, and lines coming forward for my attention. I think I could travel to Istanbul a thousand times and never cease to be visually entertained. These images are available as a calendar at: lulu.com

There is nothing quite like a visit to a small Greek village. The streets are narrow, the buildings are very old, worn, and sometimes tattered. It is often very easy to see how a house has been modified over the years, walls patched up, extensions added, roof lines changed and all kinds of evidence of builders (and some not so much builders but repairers). But the best part is the exposed plumbing. Sticking out of walls are often metal and plastic snakes of pipes that meander over a wall as if the pipe were alive and seeking its own path into the ground or better yet back into the building. PVC has become the plumbing material of choice but where there is not a fitting at the angle needed what do Greek plumbers do? Use a water bottle of course. Just stick it in the place where the part you need should go and bingo problem solved. Would never pass inspection in the US but who cares. If it works it works!

Traveling around Turkey and Greece has left little time for all things electronic—such as feeding this blog. I admit I have spent my time doing other things such as painting. And drawing. And hiking to small churches built in the 12th century by Greek hermits. And fixing flat tires on rental vans that required at least 8 men to change. The colors, textures, shapes, forms from any one spot in Turkey or Greece lend are inspiring. I can look in any direction and find something to work with.

Some recent examples of the work can be here.

And here are a couple small examples.

Have spent the past five days in Istanbul. It is sunny and hot and sometimes only warm. It is busy, busy, busy especially so when the cruise ships are in. The tourists are thick and heavy and completely lost at times. Of course even after three previous visits I am still lost at times. But the one thing I know is that the scaffolding that has blocked the view of the ceiling of the Hagia Sophia has now been removed and the lights have been put back. The result is both pleasing and disappointing. It was better in some ways with only natural light. The bulbs on the new fixtures are too white, too bright and look completely out of place. You can see the inside better in some ways up through the lights but it still feels fake and chessee.

My parents bought into some property when I was younger and growing up I had this wonderful place to go to. We always called it the ranch. It was a combination of farmland and timber property near Hunters, Washington. The ranch at one time was a huge working farm and when we first visited it was as if we stepped back in time. On the property was a huge barn with two silos. At the back of the barn was a tack shop filled with tools, harnesses, and all kinds of stuff you would need to have plow horses. Also on the property were all kinds of out buildings. There was a blacksmith building, a smaller barn that was a slaughter house. There were small buildings filled with all kinds of stuff that accumulates on a farm. Most of it was old and who only knew what it did. The farm house itself was straight out of the 1940′s with some tacky and shady updates over the years. Not a place you would want to spend more than a few minutes in. Scary really.

But on the property was one building that was the center piece of attention. We called it the Chalet. It had a deer hoof as a door handle on one door outside. It was styled as if it were a hunting lodge in the Alps. Huge fire place, wood stove, a refrigerator from the 1930′s, closets filled with glass plate photographs, dead mice, dust, built in bunk beds, a scary basement, and a big bay window. The neatest place you can imagine. Spent some of the most wonderful, scary, happy, spooky nights of my life in that place. Roaring fires in the fire place, howling animals outside, wind that made the tree brush up against the roof and it sounded like the tree was coming down on the place, creaks and groans that could only be ghosts. I am sure I am leaving out much but it was a place of wonder and fuel for the imagination. The vision of the bay windows open and the wind howling outside with lightning and thunder with a roaring fire is etched into my memory. That and the vision of what rat poison does to a mouse leaving a puffy clump of fur and bones that have been sitting on the floor for six months dry as a ten year old leaf.

It still stands. The property has been sold and subdivided. The barn has been removed or burned with only the silos standing. The out buildings are all gone. The house was leveled years ago (yeah!) and the soul of place gutted it seems. The feeling of adventure seems to have been destroyed seeing brand new homes and perfect little roads on the property today. But the memories remain and can never be plowed over, burned down, paved over, or removed.

The shot from the top of the mountain taken over at the Vista House with my iPhone. Yes that is pain on my face. It hurt to ride to the top but was and is worth every rotation of the pedals.