Shock of Recognition for Beloved Places, Turkey & France

7/17/2016

Europe: Istanbul, toward Taksim Square, 2012/ Photo by George Vecsey

Our journalist/scholar family friend in Istanbul writes about the upheaval in her country. Please see:

www.phillymag.com/news/2016/07/19/turkish-coup-philadelphia/

* * *
We know Nice.
My wife was recalling how she and our daughter Corinna walked that promenade years ago.

We always talk with awe about France.
Our friend Sam who lives in the Alps says the nihilists hate it because it is beautiful.

We also know Istanbul.
We went there in the lush fall of 2012.

There were rumblings, omens, but also waves of beauty and history and comfort.

We walked the hills, took trolleys along the Bosporus, visited mosques, drank coffee.

One day we took a ferry to the Princes islands, a leisurely hour north of the city.

The main island, Büyükada, was like one of those vanishing bucolic American islands. We bought baked potatoes for takeaway and strolled the streets.

On the ride back we passed Yassiada, a smaller, more rugged island.

“That’s where they kept political prisoners,” a chatty man told us.

We looked it up. A former prime minister, Adnan Menderes, was held on Yassiada before being executed at a more distant island on Sept. 17, 1961.

That is apparently the most recent political execution, as Turkey sought its place, straddling Europe and Asia.

We visited Asia – Uskadar, with markets and cafes and an admirable book store.

We consider Turkey one of the best vacations we have ever taken -- the farms and villas and rolling countryside near Izmir and Ephesus.

The other night we watched glimpses of the troubles -- bridges and hills and buildings that looked familiar, but this was no travelogue, not with crowds in the streets, soldiers in the streets, rumors and bullets flying.

Will there be new executions in the wake of the attempted coup?

Could we once again take that modern T1 tram line from Kabataş to Bağcılar, gliding through neighborhoods, chatting as we did with a nice Jordanian couple?

More important, for the people who live there, can that great city endure, with one foot in each world?

We sit home and grieve for the great places.

Asia: Uskadar, from the ferry/ Photo: George Vecsey

barney link

7/17/2016 12:24:55 pm

I love all the posts, I really enjoyed, I would like more information about this, Thanks for sharing

bruce

7/17/2016 12:30:14 pm

George,

have never been to turkey, but I've never heard a bad thing from the many people I know who have been. as you know, i'm a Francophile. never been to a place I haven't enjoyed.

as for the usa....i'm beginning to wonder if there will be enough people left to vote in November.

a staggering amount of violence. thank heavens there are enough guns for people to protect themselves and keep the homicide, suicide and accidental death rates down.

bruce

Altenir Silva

7/17/2016 01:21:51 pm

Dear George,
It’s horrible what’s happening with many beautiful places that are being covered with blood. I pray for all. I’m very scared what can happen here at Olympics RIO 2016. God bless all of us.
Best - Altenir

Kizi link

7/18/2016 11:04:57 pm

Thanks so much!

Hansen Alexander

7/19/2016 09:50:37 am

A lovely salute to two beautiful countries, and two beautiful cities. For your Army information, Istanbul is the favorite tourist city for the great Army fullback of the late 1960s, Charlie Jarvis.

charlie vincent

7/23/2016 11:48:37 am

George, my wife and I were in Turkey last October and were concerned then about the limits being put on press freedom. But we never saw a problem during our time in Kusadasi, Epheses and Istanbul. Like your correspondent, I viewed with sadness the familiar sites on the night of the coup. America has no good side to come down on here. So glad we saw Turkey in a peaceful time

George Vecsey

7/24/2016 09:20:27 am

Charlie, great to hear from you.
Glad you saw Ephesus. It was amazing to walk in that developed town that used to be on the coast. Hillside condos for Roman officials -- with running water.
Istanbul four years ago was so cool....but knowing what was happening down near the border made us figure, it could get tricky here.
I've hit a kind of inertia about travel, even beyond the concerns. We just did so much of it....I love making a cup of coffee in my own kitchen and seeing what the day will bring.
be in touch,
GV

New Year 2017 link

7/31/2016 04:25:19 am

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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Shock of Recognition for Beloved Places, Turkey & France

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