The High Point

David and I at the top of the trail. Aga Limani is barely
visible at the bottom of the cliff. 

One of the activities I looked forward to in Turkey was a three-hour hike above Aga Limani cove. According to our trip itinerary, we would leave our gulet, hike an "herb-scented trail" and end up at the Sunken Baths of Cleopatra. The alternative was to sail from Point A to Point B on the gulet, enjoying the turquoise Mediterranean and having quiet time for reading, writing, reflecting, conversing or just enjoying the incredible scenery.

A bit of backstory: On June 6, an orthopedic surgeon put a screw in my broken left wrist, the result of my tripping over Cooper, our Beagle, on one of our driveway walks in May.  Consequently, I was wearing a brace on my left arm.

The three-mile/three-hour hike was June 19. Our guide Gokhan cautioned us that the hike was strenuous, five on a scale of one to five, he said, over narrow goat trails in some places. Once you start the hike, he said, you have to keep going. You can't go back.

When I asked Gokhan privately what he thought about my going, he hesitated. He assured me that I was physically fit for the hike, but he was concerned that I might slip and fall on loose gravel and rock. It couldn't be that bad, I thought. After all, I had managed to walk all over the marble streets of Ephesus without falling—and marble is very slick.

The next morning the hiking group said good-by to the sailing-with-the-gulet group and headed out, all of us equipped with walking sticks thoughtfully provided by Gokhan.

We set off in good spirits, walking along the trail, enjoying one another's company and the beautiful day. We kept climbing higher and higher, Gokhan assuring us that there was no hurry, encouraging us to drink water and keeping his eye on all of us. He had an innate sense of when we needed to stop for a few minutes under a tree.

About halfway through our hike, we stopped at a shepherd's house. Outside the small rock house was a wooden platform, shaded by a roof, the floor covered with rugs and pillows. We gratefully flopped onto the comfortable floor, accepted freshly-brewed sage tea from the shepherd's wife and listened as the shepherd played his flute.  Gokhan explained that the couple lives there year-round. They harvest wild herbs, raise chickens and goats, make yogurt and cheese and take their goods to market.

The Magic Turkish Carpet

The carpet in Eileen's office:
Wool with silk highlights

Watching Turkish women make carpets is watching magic happen.  Sitting in front of a loom, the women pull lengths of thread through the warp, tie a knot, then repeat the process. Occasionally, they glance at a pattern or reach for another color of yarn or shear loose threads to reveal the pile. Magically, intricate patterns begin to appear in the wool, the silk or the combination of wool or silk that will make up the finished carpet.

The carpet in David's office: No dyes. 

The colors are the natural wool colors.

Weaving is the last step in carpet making. We  watched wool yarn being dyed, using natural dyes (brown from tobacco leaves, for example) and almost-invisible silk thread being unwound from silkworm cocoons. (Synthetic dyes are more effective on silk than natural dyes.)

This magic is the result of centuries of carpet making, passed from mother to daughter through generations of Turkish women and of the cooperative we were visiting. The co-op was founded 25 years ago and is part of the Turkish Cultural Ministry. It draws women from nine villages in the rural area. The women work five days a week, eight hours a day. Because the cooperative recognizes the intensity and physical stamina required for carpet making, the women weave one hour and rest one hour. They earn a good salary, have health care, paid medical leave and a way of contributing to their families incomes.

The women we watched are empowered artistically and economically. And that's the real magic in Turkish carpets.

Tying knots to make a carpet.

Shearing yarn to create the pile.

Dyed yarns hang above baskets of natural materials for dyeing.

Watching silk thread being
unwound from a cocoon.

The silk weaver.
Silk weavers are even more skillful than wool weavers. 

A Visit to St. Nick

Who knew that we'd be visiting St. Nick in Turkey?

If we'd paid much attention to the origins of the St. Nicholas legends, we would have known. The original St. Nicholas was a Bishop of Myra in the 4th century A.D. At that time, Myra was part of Lycia. Now it's in Turkey and the ancient city of Myra is now known as Demre.

St. Nicholas was admired for his generosity and kindness. One legend has him saving three daughters of a poor fisherman from prostitution by secretly giving a bag of gold to each daughter for her dowry. One account has St. Nicholas on the roof of the cottage, throwing a bag of gold down the chimney and into the stockings of one of the daughters, who had put them near the fire to dry.

He is the patron saint of children, sailors, fishermen, merchants, broadcasters. the falsely accused, prostitutes, repentant thieves, pharmacists, archers and pawnbrokers.  

Not a reindeer was in sight as we started our hike up Gemiler Island, also known as the Island of St. Nicholas. The island, off Turkey's Mediterranean coast, is covered by medieval ruins, including our destination, the Church of St. Nicholas, one of several churches on the island. Although the burial site of St. Nicholas is disputed, he was probably buried in this church immediately after his death, moved to the Church of St. Nicholas in Myra and then to Bari in Italy.

Along the way, we admired the organization of the buildings on the island. Many of them were connected by covered walkways and the arches still stand. Those monks knew how to stay out of the Mediterranean sun!

The dome of the Church of St. Nicholas.
At the very top, you can see the outline of a cross.

The remains of a covered walkway 
between buildings on Gemiler Island.

Definitely not the North Pole!

Barbara, Elise and I visit at the top of St. Nicholas Island.

The next day we visited St. Nicholas Church in Demre, formerly called Myra. The church was destroyed in 809, but rebuilt by Tsar Nicholas of Russia in 1862. Although the saint's bones are probably in Italy (some archaeologists are not convinced), his crypt is in this church. Like many of the other places we visited, this one is being restored. 

The Eternal Dog

Wandering around the sarcophagus room of the Antayla Archaeological Museum, I was awed by the talent of the carvers and sculptors who decorated the funeral receptacles for the Greek and Roman families. I admired warriors in action, hunters and their dogs chasing a deer or a bear. The warriors were brave and determined or heroic as they either prepared to kill an opponent or meet their death; the hunters and dogs focused on their prey, the prey desperately running away. The sculptors ability to infuse limestone with life and emotions is astounding.

Nowhere in the room is this talent more apparent than on the Sarcophagus of the Mourning Women. Eighteen women, apparently relatives or wives rather than professional mourners, are carved into the sarcophagus, all in deep mourning for the deceased. Somehow the sculptors brought the limestone to life, portraying through facial expression or body posture or the drape of her clothes, the devastation of losing a loved one. I spent a long time admiring and empathizing with the mourners.

Across the room is a small, undecorated sarcophagus. A child, I thought. Then I read the sign above it. The sarcophagus belongs to a dog. Instead of elaborate carvings, the dog's bereaved mistress wrote a poem, inscribed on the sarcophagus:



(It was) Rhodope's happiness

those who play with it called lovely Stephanos as

(This grave) keeps inside the one that death takes suddenly

This is the grave of Dog Stephanos that went away and vanished

Rhodope cried for it and buried it like a human

I, (the) Dog Stephanos, Rhodope caused my grave to be made. 

                    Inscription on a 3rd Century A.D. Sarcophagus for a Dog

                    Translated from Ancient Greek

Rhodope's voice speaks across eighteen centuries to all people who love their dogs and grieve their loss. 

In our married lives, my husband and I have owned (or been owned by) five Beagles: Hund, Argos, Mekko, Sophie and Cooper. As Rhodope did, we played with each of them and thought each one of them handsome or lovely. Hund chased a frisbee; Argos was an excellent soccer player. Mekko loved chasing a ball, but Sophie didn't play a lot. She was a very dignified dog who was Mekko's companion and later taught Cooper who was really the Alpha Beagle in our house. And she enjoyed every minute of being Big Sister to his Little Brother, including being able to get him in trouble by escaping the fence and leading him to a fun romp in the lake.

Like Rhodope, we grieved when Hund, Argos, Mekko and Sophie died. In each case, we felt as if we had lost a family member. And we buried each one of them like a human, in a grave near the house and yard where they lived.

Rhodope speaks across the millennia to everyone who has loved and lost a dog. Each time we've lost a Beagle, another one has come along to fill the empty spot in our hearts. Now we have Cooper.

I hope Rhodope found a Cooper.

Sophie and Mekko

Cooper and Sophie

Myth Busters

At Troy, there HAS to be a Trojan Horse!

The Trojan Horse would have come through the gate behind me.

I was in Troy. After decades of teaching literature associated with Troy—The Odyssey, The Iliad, The Aeneid—I was at Ground Zero of the action. I could hardly believe it. The name "Troy" was the reason I pointed at  "Legendary Turkey and the Turquoise Coast" in the Smithsonian Journeys catalog and said to David, "I'd like to go there."

So here I was. With a little (ok, a lot) of imagination, I could see the Odysseus and the Greeks building the Trojan Horse; Achilles pouting in his tent; Aeneas preparing to lead the defeated Trojans to Italy where they would found Rome; Odysseus and the Greeks leaving for what they believed would be a short trip home to Ithaca.

As excited as I was to be in Troy, I had to admit that the ruins are underwhelming. And what I learned about them was a definite reality check. Although Troy is now miles inland, it had at one time been on the coast and controlled trade throughout the region by controlling access to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and between Asia and Europe. Such a powerful city fought many wars.

Of the nine levels identified by the archaeological digs at Troy, Level 2 was the most impressive. If the Trojan War happened, it would have been at Level 6. Furthermore, archaeological research shows closer ties to the Hittites than to Greeks. The Trojan Horse—non-existent. Troy's long life (3000 B.C. - 1350 A.D.) included many wars and identifying one of them as THE Trojan War is futile, although the city was destroyed around 1180 B.C., the traditional time period of the Trojan War. The destruction might have been because of a war or because of an earthquake. And by the time Homer (or a group of poets) synthesized the many legends that made up his epics, the Troy identified with the Trojan War was already a ruin.

Well, bummer.

My favorite part of Homer's Iliad is the description of the Shield of Achilles, made by Hephaestus, the god of fire and metalworking. Hephaestus made five circles on the shield Achilles would wear to his death. The outer circle was the River Ocean; the inner one the Earth, sea, sun, moon and stars. Hephaestus decorated the other three circles with scenes of peace and prosperity and a populace engaged in daily living: a council listening to debates; a wedding celebration, dancing, plowing fields; harvesting grapes for wine; fields of sheep and cattle.  Only one-half of one circle pictures a city at war; the other half of that circle pictures a city at peace.

Hephaestus had it right. Although heroes and wars are what live on in our histories, ordinary people who  live ordinary lives build civilizations for the ages.

At each of our stops on our archaeological tour of Turkey, we saw evidence of daily life. Every ancient city had an amphitheatre used not only for performances, but also as a place for citizens to meet and debate issues. In Perge, we walked along the main street of the market, our feet in the ruts worn by cart traffic thousands of years ago, as meat and produce suppliers delivered their goods to the shops. In the Turkish countryside, we watched people tending acres of crops and herds of cattle and sheep, just as Hephaestus portrayed on Achilles' shield. In Ephesus and Bergamon, we admired the work of ancient craftsmen in the magnificent buildings.

Troy—and the epics of Homer and Virgil—are universal. They reveal truth and Truth. Whether the Trojan War is true—factual—is less important than the Truth—the universals about human nature—the epics reveal. The heroes and god behave like humans. They quarrel; they love; they mess up and suffer.   They choose sides; some win, some lose.

Aeneas loses the war, but he leads the defeated Trojans to a new land where they found Rome, one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known. Odysseus and his men leave Troy to go home to Ithaca, but because of his hubris, he loses all of his men and must fight to reclaim his palace. He becomes a much-beloved ruler of Ithaca and husband of Penelope.

We don't know the names of the Trojans who built and rebuilt their city after it was destroyed nor do we know the names of the craftsmen who built (and rebuilt after earthquakes, fires and wars) the cities whose ruins we toured. But they shared with the heroes the determination not to be defeated, to overcome whatever came their way—and to celebrate the good things in life: working, dancing, harvesting, feasting, drinking wine.

The Truth that Hephaestus engraved on Achilles' shield is that ordinary people living ordinary lives are the unsung heroes in a society. And we are ordinary people.

Julia's Wedding Dress

When my niece Julia began planning her wedding, she asked her mother, my sister Jolene, to make her dress.

Julia in muslin.

Jolene inherited our mother's extraordinary talent for sewing and needlework and none of us had the slightest doubt in her ability to create a beautiful wedding dress as our mother created wedding dresses for her daughters.

Julia in satin with her husband David.

When I was in Colorado in January, Jolene asked if I'd accompany her, Julia and Julia's husband-to-be, David, to her friend Margaret's studio to get the process started. Jolene, Margaret and Julia used two patterns Julia had selected as the basis for a custom design. The plan was to create a muslin prototype.

I was pressed into service--handed a pair of scissors, some pattern pieces, muslim and directed to cut. At one time, I was an adequate seamstress, but it's been years since I had done anything remotely connected to sewing. But, like riding a bicycle, the skills came back and I happily cut away, delivering the pieces to Margaret, who rapidly stitched them into the prototype. Julia tried it on and she was delighted. Even in muslin, she looked like the happy bride she was going to be on July 9.

I had been present at the beginning of the creation of Julia's wedding dress, so I was eager to see the result. When Julia came down the aisle on her father's arm, she was a beautiful, happy bride in satin.  Her dress was perfect.

Watching Julia and David as they said their vows took me back more than thirty years to another Colorado wedding ceremony--Julia's parents, Jolene and John. Jolene's dress was Mom's tour de force: a full-length delicately knitted creation in white baby yarn, lined in blue. Like Julia's dress, Jolene's was perfect.

Julia's dress is the latest in a long line of perfect wedding dresses, handmade or purchased, symbols of love that create families and sustain through difficulties. Soon Julia will pack away her perfect dress, or hang it in her closet, as my perfect dress has hung in my closet for the past 42 years, a reminder of the day when David and I created our family, full of hope and optimism as we began the adventure that has been our life together.

Welcome to the adventure, Julia and David!

After the Blizzard

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness. . .

. . . In a while I will put on some boots

and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch,
sending a cold shower down on us both.

                                     Billy Collins, "Snow Day"

Thunderhead Pine Trees

The Pond in Winter

(OK, so Henry David Thoreau said it first!) 

Mother Nature's sculpture on our deck

Where the Cimarron and Arkansas Rivers join

The driveway before the snowplow

David and Cooper take a walk.

David begins clearing the driveway.

Cooper, Happy Snow Beagle

Tema's Hats

These two hats symbolize the friendship between Temar K. Goodrich and me. The white crocheted one dates from the 1960s when Tema and I were college friends and roommates. She developed an interest in all things crafty and was teaching herself how to crochet. I love that hat. To this day, it's one of my favorites—warm, well-fitting, washable and durable.

Tema gave me the purple one in January, 2010, when I was visiting her in Brighton, Colorado. She had a stash of these hats she planned to give away. We were setting out for our walk on the levy behind her house and she had me choose a hat, since I didn't have a suitable one. I wore the hat on our two-mile walk that afternoon and also as we made our rounds of downtown Brighton. We had lunch and visited the library, where she was looking for books about "chemo brain." We also had our usual gabfest, talking about her battle with lymphoma, the latest diet or food or alternative medicine she was trying or her latest research and reading on lymphoma.

The hat went home with me and, like the white one, I love it. It, too, is warm, well-fitting, washable and durable. It's perfect for wearing in the woods.

Between the two hats, life happened. We both married architecture students who happened to be classmates at Kansas State. Tema and I had been roommates our sophomore year and when a group of us moved into an old house which had been turned into student apartments, she lived in the basement. I lived on the third floor with other roommates.

Because our husbands were in a five-year degree program, we stayed in Manhattan for another year after our graduations. We both went to graduate school; Tema for a Masters in Elementary Education and me for an MA in English. She and Bruce moved to Denver; David and I ended up in Tulsa. She and Bruce had a son, Jeremy.

Years, even decades, passed between our seeing each other. David and I stayed with her when we came to Denver for my sister Jolene's wedding. By that time, she and Bruce were divorced and she had met Gregg, who became her second husband for the next more than 30 years. Tema loved to drive to see friends and family. She'd call to tell us she was coming through Tulsa and we've have a reunion—an instant connection, as if we'd had lunch the day before.

She and Gregg moved to Texas for a brief time and I visited her there. The crocheted hat had turned into a full-fledged arts and crafts occupation. Tema was sewing, crocheting, knitting, quilting and turning odds and ends from garage sales into art. She had a booth at an antiques mall to sell her wares. One of my treasures is the antique handheld school bell she gave me.

We lost contact again. Then one day, a K-State alumni directory appeared in our mailbox. I looked up Tema, not expecting to find her listed. But she was. I called and again the instant connection. I began coming to Colorado fairly frequently for family events: weddings and reunions. Brighton is about ten minutes from the Denver International Airport, so she'd pick me up, we'd have a day together and she'd drive me to my sister's house.

The life that happened to Tema between the two hats included being the pedestrian in a pedestrian-car accident, which nearly killed her. She defied the doctors who said she'd never walk again. The blood transfusions gave her Hepatitis C and, about ten years ago, a routine blood test to check on the Hepatitis C revealed the lymphoma.

But Tema was not one to just let life happen. Not only did she fight the cancer with every weapon—conventional and non-conventional—that she could find, but she also continued with her sewing, knitting and crocheting. She loved sewing for babies and she found the perfect group—Warm Hearts, Warm Babies, which makes baby clothes and layettes and donates them to hospitals, shelters, homes—whoever might need them. Her basement workshop was stacked to the rafters with sewing equipment and supplies.

She used those supplies to make a third kind of hat—chemo hats. These were not ordinary chemo hats. The jester hats with bells that jingled were so much fun that she made several for other cancer patients who asked her about them. She also made beautifully decorated and intricately designed chemo hats. She was not about to let lymphoma interfere with her sense of humor or beauty.

In October, Tema picked me up at DIA. This time was different. She was so frail. She had recovered from pneumonia and told me that the oncologists had found a growth on her lungs. Instead of going to Brighton, we went to Denver West, near where my sister lives. We had lunch at Whole Foods, shopped for a baby shower for my niece—which Tema loved doing. We had our usual gabfest, but I could tell she was getting tired. My brother-in-law came to pick me up and we hugged our good-bys, promising regular phone calls.

In January, Gregg called to tell me that Tema was in the hospital. He was honest and forthright. "I'm calling you now so you won't be surprised when I have to call you later." Friday morning, January 21, the call came. Tema died at 11:40 p.m. January 20.

Her Life Remembrance January 28 in the First Presbyterian Church Fellowship Hall was filled with photos, memories, her beautiful creations and photos of creations she had donated through Warm Hearts, Warm Babies. Most importantly, it was filled with her family members: Gregg, her son Jeremy, her sister Dina, her brother, Kim; Jeremy's father, Bruce and his wife, with whom she had maintained an excellent relationship. Friends were there: her family doctor, the berry patch owner where Tema picked raspberries and blackberries and even maintained a row of raspberries for a while; other people who knew and loved Tema. We shared memories and laughter, tears and hugs.

The physical Tema has left—a reality that hit hard when I arrived at DIA and she wasn't there. But I have memories and those hats, which like Tema are warm, durable and as comfortable and well-fitting as our friendship.