Category: Posts
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The First Journalist
Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Travels with Herodotus came to me as a birthday present in the beautiful Adirondacks in August. Not till the last couple of weeks, while traveling in Turkey and Jordan, did I get the chance to read it. The timing, as it turned out, was just about perfect. I wouldn’t call it a great…
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Summarizing Jordan
At breakfast overlooking Jordan’s gorgeous Wadi Dhana nature preserve, my companion Mary and I got to talking with an Australian family in the middle of a several months’ tour across the world. The father, an environmental scientist, asked if we had any books in English to swap. He just finished what he had been reading,…
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The New Young Turks
Among the young, jet-setting Turks I’ve met who are interested in Islam, there is a common narrative. I heard it from a successful international book distributor, from a clerk at my hotel, and from a shy university student. You grow up in a family that considered itself Muslim but didn’t really pay much mind to…
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Face to Face
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Ancient Scribbles
A very satisfying day at Istanbul’s Archaeological Museum. As is typical, I got so thoroghly engrossed by the relatively small collection of ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions that I hardly had energy for the vast halls of pottery and burial monuments from antique Anatolia. Even so, the splendor of the Alexander Sarcophagous from Sidon (as well as…
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Half Asleep in Istanbul
I’ve just arrived in Istanbul, Turkey to begin a little more than two weeks in the Middle East. The mission: an article on science and Islam (plus the unexpected). I’m in a hostel overlooking the Bosphorus with Michael Jackson music videos playing, one after another. It was a spectacularly beautiful day to arrive at a…
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When Soldiers Become Warriors
For some time, I’ve been hearing talk of “warriors” or “warfighters,” rather than “soldiers,” in my casual observation of the U.S. military. You hear this at all levels, from infantrymen referring to themselves, to the “warfighter standardized equipment” discussed at the highest echelons of the military-industrial mafia. At a recent talk in New York, the…
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Have Your Markets and Your Health Care Too
Last night, a dear friend of mine told me that he may have lost his health coverage through Medicaid. No warning. He got a call from the pharmacy saying the insurance didn’t go through. If this is true, he may be in real trouble. He has cystic fibrosis, and he needs about $70,000/year in medicine…