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Friday, October 17, 2:14 am

It's been a busy week. Actually, I've been really busy ever since I arrived from Kazan. Most of my time, unfortunately, has been taken up with job applications. I say 'unfortunately' because this is without question one of the least appealing aspects of my life. Most of the time, I get to spend my time doing whatever I want--researching, writing, preparing for a talk, or relaxing. But applying for jobs takes up a lot of time and gives back very little. Sure, there are times when constantly having to summarize my research interests does help me to gain some insights about how to approach my work, but these are rare.

I mean, this summer, I worked like crazy in Ufa and Kazan. There were many days when I would just grab my computer and start writing even before I had gotten out of bed. I was like a man possessed, putting in fourteen-hour days trying to make the article I was writing come out just right. Other days I was researching in the archives. This was great--one way or another, I felt like I was learning something, developing myself.

Applying from overseas is particularly time-consuming. I have a stack of sheets with Columbia University letterhead which the Harriman Institute sent me a couple of weeks ago. Fortunately, there is a printer at ARIT--a major advantage over the little copy shop I had to go to in Kazan. After I print out the letters, copies of my CV, and copies of writing samples that I'm sending off (some schools want other documents, like statements of teaching philosophy), I send off a big package--containing maybe seven or eight applications--to my Dad in Michigan. He then sends them off individually to the schools. So far I've spent about $500 on DHL, photocopies, and costs associated with having my dossier sent out by Brown. I'll spend close to another $200 next week with a particularly big DHL package. But that's the price I pay for applying from abroad.

Nevertheless, it's great to be in Istanbul. Living at ARIT is nice, though I tell myself every day it would be cooler to have an apartment. Then, every morning, I step outside to buy poğaças and I see the view just outside my door--suddenly it seems crazy to leave. Istanbul is so beautiful, and Arnavutköy has always been one of my favorite parts of the city. I remember coming to a fish restaurant here in 1993--I don't think I ever would have believed that one day people would pay me to reside here.

Sure, getting an apartment of my own would be cool, but it's a little hard to leave when this is the view you see upon walking out the door first thing in the morning.

I've been going out every once in a while. Last weekend I met up with some friends in Taksim, and ended up drinking a lot of rakı and smoking a nargile. I'm not a big fan of the nargile--only old men smoked them when I lived here in the nineties--but I guess I need to accommodate the new trends. At any rate, it was great to sit outside. These days even in the middle of the night the temperatures are in the mid-sixties.

Yesterday I went to the Salvador Dali exhibit at the Sakıp Sabancı museum, This afternoon I went to a lecture at the Dutch Center in Taksim. At the lecture I met the well-known historian of the Ottoman Unionist period Sina Akşın, which was for me a real pleasure.

I think that what I like most about Turkey is that people here are almost always willing to chat. Turkish people would probably say that Turks are too anxious to chat, but it's something about this country that I've always liked. No matter where I go here I always meet people who are interested in talking for a few minutes and sharing a bit of their lives. Turkey isn't the only country like this--in Azerbaijan, people chat even more than they do here--but no city in the world can match Istanbul for sheer beauty and friendliness. And, ister istemez, having spent so many years of my live in this place, the city has become a part of me.

Thursday, October 9, 1:14 am

Sıhhatler Olsun!

I guess it's a good sign that your hair is getting too long when barbers are stopping you on the street and offering to give you a trim. This happened to me the other day when I was returning home after buying some börek and poğaças from the local pastry shop here in Arnavutköy. Indeed, my hair was getting long--I hadn't had it cut since going to Ed's on Wayland Avenue in Providence last June. Ed's is a great place--he's probably the best barber I've ever had. Last year, when I was living in New York, I continued to get my hair cut at Ed's, heading back to Rhode Island every few months or so. But I'm not really in a position to do that now, and I figured that getting accosted like this was probably a sign--maybe he was a good barber.

To tell you the truth, I've never been wild about getting my hair cut in Turkey. During the course of seven years living here in the nineties, I don't think I ever once was happy with a haircut. Not everyone was up to the task. People got nervous, I think, and were maybe a bit too tentative, reluctant to put their imprint on my head. And then, looking around, I see that most guys here don't have very good haircuts--usually cut quite short, with lots of gel smeared on top.

In Russia, on the other hand, I almost always like the way people cut my hair. The barbers are always women, usually wearing identical smocks working two or three to a shop. Like so much else in the former Soviet Union, haircutting has been quite standardized there, and every haircut I get there resembles the others. The women are all serious, professional.

Prior to coming here from Russia two weeks ago I'd planned on getting my hair cut, but just didn't get around to it. There was just too much else going on. But yesterday, after sending off another pack of applications to my Dad, I felt like cleaning myself up a bit. I bought a few shirts and a pair of shoes, and by the time I got back to Arnavutköy I felt it would be good to visit the near-toothless man who had offered to cut my hair the day before.

But first I wanted to check out the competition. There are three barbers nearby, and I thought it was the least I could do to pass by their shops and see what they looked like. They were pretty much similar to the other shop, and in any case were closed. Obviously, it was fate--I headed down the hill and found the guy who'd come up to me the day before and said 'shall we cut it?'

Ömer agreed, and followed me into the shop. The shop is owned by Adil, an imposing bald man with a white beard and jet black eyebrows who likes to hold forth with political discussions. Ömer immediately went to work with a pair of scissors--a reassuring sign, as my bad barbers here had always been partisans of electric razors. Adil, meanwhile, forced Ömer to stop a couple of times so that I could better pay attention to him while he lectured me.

We were talking about the death penalty. A few years ago, Turkey got rid of the death penalty as part of their effort to get into the European Union. It didn't work, of course, and now a lot of people want to bring it back. In fact, even before the death penalty was done away with here, no one had been executed in the country since 1984. All in all, I'd always found it to be a pretty good system. Many people were sentenced to death, but it took a parliamentary vote to actually have someone executed. By sentencing someone to death and then not executing them, I always thought the state was sending a powerful message: what you have done is worthy of death, but we won't execute you because we are merciful.

Adil disagreed. Like a lot of people I know here, he thought it was silly to have a death penalty but no executions. He told me he thought George Bush was a murderer (because of Iraq), but that he liked the way Bush had executed so many people when he was governor of Texas.

Meanwhile, Ömer was doing a really good job with my hair. In fact, I don't think I've never been happier with a haircut in Turkey. He also did a lot of the small things that I'd always liked about barbershops here, things I'd forgotten about. He snipped away my nose hairs, trimmed my eyebrows, and then lit a mini-torch which had been dipped in alcohol, waving it back and forth across my ears to burn away the hairs inside. The only thing he didn't do was crack my neck, and that was just as well--I never cared much for the neck-cracking.

When people get their hair cut in Turkey, the folks around them say sıhhatler olsun, which kind of means 'wear it in health.' They say the same thing after you get out of the shower. Anyway, it was one small moment among about a thousand I've had since coming back here two weeks ago which have brought back to me how much I love living in this city, the place where I have spent more of my adult life than anywhere else.

And it was nice getting a decent haircut, too.

 

Thursday, September 25, 2:43 pm

Back in Istanbul

I'm back in Istanbul now, having flown in from Kazan this morning--it's been a long day. I had a great time in Kazan and I miss it already, but it's really nice to be back here. For now I'm working mostly on job applications and my conference talks for November, but soon I hope to make my way back to the Ottoman archives. It also looks like I'll be giving a talk here at ARIT on Monday, November 3--more details to follow.

Sunday, September 7, 2008, 8:03 pm

The past week has been spent mostly with job applications--a giant task. I feel pretty lucky that I'm not obliged to be doing anything else during this time. Mostly I'm applying for three kinds of position--Russian History, History of the Middle East, and Islamic World History. There are loads of interesting positions open this year--I hope I can succeed in being offered at least one of them.

One reason why the job application process is taking up so much of my time these days is that I'm sending out almost all of the applications in one batch. The first deadline is September 30, so the plan is to DHL the applications to my Dad in Michigan sometime around the 18th of this month--he'll send them out to the various universities from there. However, not all of the applications are due by then, so I might hold onto some of them until mid-October, then send a second batch to my Dad. It all depends upon how DHL will charge me. If sending all of the applications at once costs the same as sending only half of them, I'll do my best to get them all out within the next ten days.

I took a break from work today to go on a picnic with Lolla, from whom I rented my first apartment when I arrived here last month, and some of her friends. We went to a beautiful birch forest just a couple of miles from the apartment where I'm living. I've posted some photos, along with other photos from this trip. Hope you enjoy them.

Today is Tracy's birthday: Happy birthday, Tracy G!

Tomorrow, September 8, is my Mom's birthday: Happy birthday, Mom!!

Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 1:11 pm

I haven't written much here recently--perhaps because I finally finished the article I've been working on all summer. I think that, especially when I was putting in 10-hour days at home and never going out, my mind couldn't slow down and I needed to write something here to relax. Since last Tuesday, however, when I finally sent the article off, my work, place of residence, and schedule have all changed, so the website has fallen a bit between the cracks.

Ever since last Tuesday I've been working mostly on job applications. There seem to be more jobs open this year than last, including a number of places that will undoubtedly get tons of applicants. I'm applying for positions in Russian history, the Middle East, and the Islamic world. So far I've found about seven or eight positions in Russian history, and more than fifteen relating to the Middle East and Islamic world, in addition to a number of postdocs that I'll also be applying for. Every letter is slightly different from the others, so it's a long and complicated process. I plan on DHLing a large batch of applications off to my Dad within a few weeks, and then he'll mail them off to the individual schools. DHLing each university individually would cost a fortune.

However, I'm still not really sure where I'm going to be in a few weeks. One-way plane tickets to Azerbaijan are expensive, and that still isn't where I want to be. I'm starting to think it might just make more sense to fly back to Istanbul, and either start working there or else travel from there to Georgia.

Speaking of Georgia, these days there's little about any other topic on Russian television. This is especially the case on the all-news network Vesti, where Georgia, the United States, and South Ossetia are discussed for literally hours on end. Emphasis, as usual, is placed upon the "war crimes" and "genocide" committed by "Georgian aggression" against South Ossetia. None of this is new, but the extent to which these stories are still being pushed by the government-owned channels is striking. It makes me wonder what they might be trying to prepare people for.

On a more personal note, I've moved out of my apartment on Esperanto Street, since the new tennants moved in on September 1. Rather than rent a new place, I decided to move into an apartment owned by my friend Remil. It's on the outskirts of town, surrounded by newly constructed buildings and a glimmering shopping mall called Mega. In many ways, it's very convenient, despite the hour-long commute to the center of town. Remil is usually not home, so I'm able to get a lot done in peace and quiet. There's a (somewhat expensive) internet bar at Mega as well as an enormous supermarket. The only problem is the trip to Mega and back. It has been raining bitterly for several days and has gotten quite cold--dipping into the high forties with fifty mph winds. By the time I get back home, I'm soaking wet and my shoes are caked with mud.

I haven't been online much recently, and the only news I've really been able to see was about John McCain's VP pick and Michigan's loss to Utah on Saturday. About the latter, I have nothing to say for now, but about McCain's choice (I can't remember her name) I will say this: bizarre.

It's a long way to the center of town from here

According to what I've read, McCain really wanted Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge but was afraid the wing (actually the core) of his party that is obsessed with ending abortion rights would rebel at the convention. But how does this pick help him? For starters, it would seem to totally short-circuit his argument that Obama is not experienced enough to lead. Indeed, in making this pick McCain is either conceding that the number of years one has spent in government service doesn't matter after all, or else announcing that his only interest in selecting a running mate derives from her ability to help him win an election--what happens next be damned.

Perhaps McCain was thinking back to 1988, when another experienced Republican, George H.W. Bush, chose a relative unknown for a running mate. We all know how well that turned out, but at least Dan Quayle had some experience in national and foreign affairs. More importantly, George H.W. Bush was not only younger than McCain is today but was also in much better mental and physical shape.

Republicans are asking people this Fall to vote for a candidate who has often appeared confused and forgetful when discussing matters pertaining to foreign policy, his supposed area of specialization, and who would be eighty years old at the end of a second term. And, if he can't serve out his term, we get someone who owes her place on the ticket to her consistent opposition to abortion and a "balanced" approach to evolution, gravity, and other hot-button issues from previous centuries. Amazing.

The world is a dangerous place, and this year has become increasingly so. Is this really the best the best ticket the Republicans could come up with?

Thursday, August 21, 5:11 pm

Super-Tired

Whew! I'm pretty tired. After moving into my new (old) place on Esperanto on Monday, I've pretty much done nothing other than sit in this apartment and work on my article. Oh yeah--on Monday, I bought a new simcard for my phone--but that's been about all the fun I've had.

For the past three days I've just been sitting at this little table, looking out at the birch trees, working about twelve hours a day in front of the computer. The article is finished, at least theoretically--I'll look at it with fresh eyes in a day or so, then hopefully send it off.

The good news is that I've found a decent internet place--of course, it's at the post office (the one on Pushkin St., not the main one on Kremlevskii). The last time I went online at the Kazan post office a couple of years ago, they only had two computers (like in Ufa today). Now they've got twenty computers and a very good connection. It's also much cheaper than any of the other places in town, so clearly it's the place to be.

Anyway, I'm heading down to Bauman Street now. It's too beautiful out to spend anymore time inside.

Sunday, August 17, 12:22 pm

Sweet Home Esperanto

It looks like I'll be on the move again--heading to a different apartment in Kazan. When she picked me up at the bus station on Thursday, Lolla explained to me that she had in fact sold the apartment, though she didn't know when exactly the new owner would want me out (she'd warned me this might happen). Yesterday I learned that I'd have to leave on Monday, although Lolla knew a woman who would be willing to rent a room to me in her apartment. This was fine as a back-up plan, but since I prefer to live alone I called a number of old contacts and found a place to live on Esperanto Street. Indeed, I've lived in this apartment before, when I rented it from a woman named Marina in the summer of 2006. Now I'll be able to stay there for two weeks, since Marina has sold this apartment and the new owner will take possession on September 1.

Indeed, everyone appears to be selling their apartment these days. For years the housing market was booming in Kazan, and everyone expected the bubble to burst at any moment. The bubble hasn't burst, but the boom has stabilized somewhat, which I think is why a lot of people are selling--including the place on Esperanto, four of the five apartments I've rented in this city have been sold in the last two years.

My own plans after September 1 are up in the air. I had originally planned on flying from Moscow to Tbilisi in early September, something which is no longer possible. Now I'm looking into changing my ticket back to Istanbul (I currently have a return ticket for October 14, but could perhaps head back there in September). If things settle down in Georgia in the next week or so, perhaps I will still go there, flying from Moscow to either Baku or Yerevan, then traveling to Tbilisi by train or bus. It's all a little complicated right now.

Friday, August 15, 11:04 pm

A Busy Week

I'm in Kazan, now. It's been an incredibly busy week, as my final days in Ufa involved a lot of work and numerous courtesy calls. Now I'm looking forward to settling down again and getting some more work done in Kazan.

As I mentioned earlier, I spent the first part of the week working in the archive of Rizaeddin Fahreddin, someone who was much involved in Muslim activist circles in the late imperial period and later became the second mufti of the Soviet Union. Fahreddin's archive is useful not only for the material relating to Fahreddin himself, but also for its wealth of documents pertaining to the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly. Indeed, Fahreddin spent much of his time as mufti going through documents in the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly's archive. In some instances, he recopied materials into his notebooks, but many of the documents here are originals.

The materials on the Orenburg Assembly are not as vast as those of the Central State Historical Archives in Ufa, but I would think that anyone working on the Orenburg Assembly would definitely want to look at them. I should also say that Ramil Makhmutovich has provided a real service to research into Islam in Russia by cataloguing this large fond of materials.

Letter from Caucasian Mufti Gayipov to Orenburg Mufti Soltanov, 1898

Monday and Tuesday were thus spent working intensely at the archive of the Academy of Sciences, where I took over one thousand photographs of documents. On Wednesday, however, we took an excursion. Ramil Mahmutovich (Bulgakov) had suggested that we visit the grave of Rizaeddin Fahreddin, so on Wednesday the two of us went there, accompanied by the historian Marsil Farkhshatov, as well as Gülnar Iuldibaeva, a folklorist at the Academy of Sciences in Ufa, and Liliia Baibulatova, a kandidat nauk from Kazan who recently published a book on Fahretdinov's Asar. Then we all went to a restaurant looking over the Ufa river and had lunch.

Me, Lilia, Gülnar, Marsil	Marsil, Ramil Makhmutovich, me	View of Ufa river from restaurant

After lunch, we headed back to the Academy of Sciences so that I could deliver my otchet, or report on my activities, to the Director of the Academy, Professor Firdaus Khisamitdinova, a former Minister of Education for the Republic of Bashkortostan. It also turned out that Firdaus hanım is an old friend of Flera Safiullina, one of my Tatar teachers from way back in Kazan. Some photographs were taken, after which I was presented with a book. All in all, a nice afternoon.

On Thursday, I took the bus from Ufa to Kazan. It's a lot cheaper than flying ($35 versus $170), and shorter than the train (ten hours, they said, versus twenty-two). In all, the trip ended up taking sixteen hours, two of which were spent sitting by the side of the road ten miles outside of Kazan due to construction. It was a pretty lousy trip, but not much worse than expected.

Meeting the Director at the Academy of Sciences

In Kazan I was picked up at the bus station by Lolla, the woman from whom I'm renting an apartment here. Lolla is orginally from Abkhazia, and like everyone else I've ever met from the Caucasus is extremely hospitable. Indeed, this morning she was taking her children to the "Blue Lakes" outside Kazan and called to ask if I wanted to go. They're quite interesting--today was my first time there. Due to mineral deposits they are a deep blue-green color, and for some reason are extremely cold--no warmer than the mid-forties, in my estimation. When I jumped in the first time, I felt my heart contract and thought I was going to die for sure. It was so cold I could barely feel my toes after just a few seconds. The most anyone could do was swim from one side of the pond to the other--a distance of about forty feet. It was definitely refreshing, though, and fun.

Come freeze in the Blue Lakes!

In the afternoon on Friday I worked for a couple of hours at home until heading down to Bauman Street to meet Igor, my old landlord from my Fulbright year. Igor has since sold the apartment I used to live in and is planning to emigrate to South Africa, but for the time being is renting a place on Tatarstan Street. Both he and his girlfriend, Sveta, love going to Ikea, which is located in the enormous Mega shopping center on the edge of town. I drove out there with them, and we sat in Ikea for a few hours, drinking tea in the Ikea cafe and chatting about people we know. Then we were joined by a couple of Igor's friends, who were also hanging out at Mega.

A friend of mine, Ramil, owns an apartment out near Mega, so after leaving the shopping center Igor dropped me off there, where I had dinner with Ramil, his cousin, and his sister. After speaking with Igor and his friends in Russian all afternoon, it was fun to switch into Tatar, something which reminded me of one of the reasons why I like this city so much.

At eleven I got up to leave. In Kazan the public transportation shuts down pretty early, so I had to go home by "taxi"--meaning I flagged down someone in a car and came to an agreement with him on a price.

I remember taking a "taxi" like this for the first time, when I lived in Kazan in 2003-2004. I was really anxious about it, and only did so after having spent a couple of months here. Ultimately, climbing into the car of a complete stranger in the middle of the night--or at dawn--became second nature, making small talk in Russian or Tatar as we sped down the road listening to techno on the radio.

Anyway, the guy who picked me up was a recent graduate of the Law Institute here, and we started to chat. He asked me my name, told me his was Timur, and by the time we got to my apartment near Sovetskaia Ploshchad' he asked me if he could take my picture. "No one's gonna believe this" he said to himself after snapping a couple of photos.

Whatever, I guess all of this sounds a bit self-aggrandizing--and it's not as if people here automatically go nuts upon meeting a foreigner. But all the same, there aren't nearly as many foreigners here as there are in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and people here are less stand-offish about making conversation than they can be in the capitals. Indeed, one of the great things about living in provincial Russia is that it is much easier to make contact with people.

The other great thing about living in Kazan is getting the chance to hear two languages constantly throughout the day. Indeed, while bilingual signs (Russian and Bashkir) are more present in Ufa than in Kazan, it seems to me that I hear a lot more Tatar on the street here than I hear Bashkir or Tatar in Ufa. In Kazan, I feel like I can live in both worlds, a feeling I think I've only really had elsewhere when I was a student in Montreal. Two languages, two religions, two great civilizations.

Granted, there are a lot of things about living abroad--and particularly about living in Russia--that I can find exasperating, things that I tend not to write about here. Especially at times like this, however, I feel really, really lucky to have been able to have the kind of experiences I've had over here.

Monday, August 11, 6:27 pm

Well, it's been a long day but a good one. I was supposed to call the History Institute firs thing this morning to see if they had decided to let me research there or not. Two weeks ago when I applied for permission they told me I'd find out within a week, but when I called them last week they had hemmed and hawed and told me to call back a week later. I therefore had assumed that it wasn't going to work out, and so went out to a bar last night with Albert and a few of his friends.

Indeed, I'd only been out a couple of times in Ufa since arriving here a month ago, and I'll be leaving later this week. I figured it was time to do something other than sit inside all day in front of my computer. So, in the daytime I walked around town taking photographs, and in the evening called up Albert and proposed getting a few beers at Ogni Ufi, a complex consisting of a number of bars and an outdoor terrace not too far from my apartment.

It was good to go out, and I wasn't expecting to have to go anywhere today anyway. However, when I called the Academy of Sciences this morning they told me that I should come over right away, they were expecting me. This was good news, of course, but all the same I wasn't in the best of moods as I dashed out of the house, head pounding, to spend a day working in the History Institute's archive.

Once I got there, though, I felt fine. Ramil Bulgakov, a local scholar of Rizaeddin Fahreddin, met me and took me up to his office, where we chatted for a while and drank tea. Actually, we chatted for hours. This being Russia, there were of course many delays. I needed to fill out more forms, they needed more photocopies of my passport, I needed signatures from people who weren't in their offices--the full drill.

Despite feeling a little bleary this morning, working in the Academy of Sciences archive was a pleasant surprise

Indeed, while getting into archives in Russia almost always involves some bureaucratic activity, this was really over the top. The reason, I think, is that this place doesn't really get many foreign researchers, so things were being done by the book. Whatever, it was no big deal and everyone was very nice to me. Finally, at two o'clock in the afternoon (after getting treated to lunch in the archive cafeteria!), the reading room re-opened and I was able to get to work.

The fond that I'm working on in this archive is the personal file of Rizaeddin Fahreddin, the second mufti of the Soviet Union and an important activist figure in the late imperial period. Most of the materials are not terribly useful--collections of published newspaper and journal articles of Fahreddin which can be much more easily accessed elsewhere. There are some letters, but nothing of interest so far. I have, however, found a history of Muslim spiritual administration by Fahreddin that appears to have been written in the 1920s. This appears to be an updated version of the history he published during the imperial period, and includes references to events taking place in the final years of the empire and early years of the Soviet Union. It's a handwritten document in Arabic-script Tatar, and as far as I know has not been published.

Despite all of the back and forth involved in getting permission to work there, conditions inside the reading room are pretty relaxed. Indeed, most of the time today I was left to work completely unsupervised. More importantly, they're allowing also me to photograph documents with my digital camera, which is enormously helpful.

Anyway, I hope to finish up within another day or two. I've only been given permission to work there for this week, but given the relatively small amount of material I'm interested in (and the fact that I can photograph it!) I expect things to pass pretty quickly.

Now all I have to do is read all of this!

Thursday, August 7, 10:43 pm

Well, the big news here is that I finally figured out how to properly post photographs via my new upload manager. Previously, I'd uploaded directly from Dreamweaver, but since I'm uploading through an external hard drive rather than directly from my computer I'm using one provided by my server. Anyway, the photos I've taken so far in Russia are up--except for a couple that still weren't scripted right. They should be fixed by Friday afternoon.

Another bit of good news is that my hot water has been turned back on, so hopefully I'll avoid any unpleasantness on that front during my last week in Ufa.

Yes, that's right--this is my last week in Ufa. I'm finishing up my work here and next week will head to Kazan. I'm still not sure where I'll be staying there. I've got a couple of options, and today spoke to a woman with an apartment to rent. She said that if she doesn't sell it within the next week, I can rent it. I'm supposed to call her from Ufa the day I leave.

Anyway, I'm not too worried about it. I should be able to crash with friends if necessary, but my preference would be to get a place of my own.

Not much else is going on right now. I'm working a lot--both on an article and on the two book projects (scroll down). For the books, I've mostly been looking through the material on my computer. There's a lot of stuff that I didn't get a chance to use for my dissertation--a lot of things, in fact, that I just photographed and never got a chance to even read properly. So now, when I'm not working on the article, I troll through my files of scholarly photos, looking through what I've got, taking notes on how I could use some of it. Right now, for example, I'm reading a long report by the head of the Caucasian Muslim spiritual assembly--from 1861. So far it hasn't been terribly useful, but so little is known about this institution during these years that I'm quite excited about it anyway.

I've also been looking into flights to Georgia. I think I'll probably head down there from Moscow at the beginning of September. I may just buy a one-way ticket, and then fly directly to Istanbul from Tbilisi. I'm not sure yet--I've got a Moscow-Istanbul ticket that I can use (it's cheaper to buy a round trip Istanbul-Moscow ticket than one-way, so that's what I did when I came to Russia last month), but if flying to Turkey one-way from Georgia is affordable then that might make more sense than doing Tbilisi-Moscow and Moscow-Istanbul in a span of two days. It might also be fun to make the trip from Tbilisi to Istanbul overland, especially since I've never really seen much of the Black Sea coast of Turkey.

By the way--I'm still looking for a place to stay in Tbilisi. If anyone reading this knows anything, please drop me a line!

ps. The Tigers still haven't won a game since the Pudge Rodriguez trade.

Thursday, August 7, 4:01 pm

Ufa weather report

When I first arrived in Ufa nearly three weeks ago it was hot and incredibly stuffy and humid. I had even contemplated buying a large oscillating fan, despite my basic cheapness and the fact that I was going to be here for just a short while. After about a week, however, it rained for a couple of days and became much more comfortable. But now, for the past week or so, it has become quite cold.

Indeed, the weather here is not unlike that of Kazan, where it likewise fluctuates between stuffy-unbearable and freezing cold in the summer. In both of these cities, I eventually end up wearing every article of clothing I bring with me in my suitcase. This summer, I started out wearing t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops, now I'm wearing corduroy trousers, sweatshirts, and raingear. I even have two pairs of sneakers that have both gotten lots of wear--a "nice" pair, and a less attractive pair that I wear on rainy days, when the sidewalks turn into muddy streams.

Inside, I do what I can to stay warm. The apartments I live in are usually quite small--just a kitchen, bath, and combo living room/bedroom--so boiling water in the kitchen in large pots usually helps to heat the entire apartment. Two years ago I did this so often in Kazan, that after a couple of weeks a sandy residue had developed at the bottom of my water-boiling pot. Not quite sure what it was, but it did make me glad I'd been drinking bottled water.

My one concern now is that the hot water may have been cut off. In most cities of the former USSR, the municipal administration cuts off the hot water for a month every summer in order to perform repairs on the pipes. Last night, no water was flowing from the hot water tap at all. This morning there was water flowing from the tap, but it was lukewarm. Now it is ice-cold. So, I guess that's not a very good sign.

Looks like I might be doing a lot more water-boiling for the rest of my time in Ufa. I'll try to keep the sandy residue out of my eyes when I shampoo.

 

Friday, August 1, 11:14 pm

I had been planning on going to the wifi disco this afternoon (a club not too far from my apartment where they have free wifi--they're open in the afternoon). When I woke up this morning I was already thinking about the article I've been working on, and soon sat down to work on that instead. At around two-thirty I got a call from Xavier, who had promised to help me find some documents I've been looking for. It ended up being a wild goose chase, but it was good to get out of the apartment all the same. This was especially the case since there was an eclipse this afternoon--I'd forgotten about it. It wasn't really noticeable, although we did detect a vague dimness to the light, which was pretty cool. Some people were out on the street looking at it through an old floppy disk, and they let us borrow it.

Later on we went to the Tukai mosque, where I saw the tomb of Mufti Muhammadyar Soltanov of the Orenburg Assembly, someone who features prominently in my work. Cool. Mufti Soltanov hasn't always fared very well in the historiography, but I've always found him an interesting character. Indeed, it was largely to find out more about him that I came to Ufa this summer.

My daily excursion finished, I then headed back home and have been working again on the article ever since. If I can get through this article by mid-afternon tomorrow, I'll try to head to the wifi disco then and maybe I'll be able to post all of this.

I'll miss you, Pudge!

Thursday, July 31, 11:51 pm

Well, today was my birthday--and a great day it was. For the last ten days or so, I've been working a lot not only in the archives, but also on an article that's been a part of my life for too long. Today, like most days, I spent the morning working on the article before heading off to the archive. I came home again at around four in the afternoon, sat down and started working again on the article. I didn't get up again until after eleven.

And now, the article is pretty much finished! I'm going to send it off to some friends of mine, see what they think about it, then look at it again myself in a week or so. Hopefully I'll be able to submit it before too long.

Another special thing about today was that it was my last day in the archive, which closed this afternoon. The archive here is a good place to work. Other than the fact that readers are limited to ordering five documents a day, it's all right. They let people use digital cameras, which is nice.

On Monday, I'm supposed to start work at the History Institute, where they have a personal archive of Rizaeddin Fahreddin, the second mufti of the Soviet Union and an individual who figures rather prominently in my current work. The archive is closed now, but opens on Monday. The folks at the History Institute say they'll let me in on Monday, so hopefully things will work out.

All in all, I'm really happy with the way things have been going in Ufa. I haven't felt this productive since I was living in Turkey, back before graduate school. In particular it's been really great not having internet at home. Instead of wasting my time online, I've been working 8-10 hours a day, working about 5-6 hours per day on the article and a few hours each day in the archive and at home reading the archival material. The rest of the time, I'm mostly just going into town and back, or at home watching TV or messing around with this site.

Anyway, I guess I could be having a more exciting time, but I'd basically been on vacation for a month before coming out here and I was ready to get back to work. Moreover, I finally looked at a map and realized that there are beaches in Georgia that are still under government control--maybe if I can get a lot done between now and the beginning of September, I'll be able to take a small vacation again then.

I've been watching "Novaia Volna" on television--it's a (mostly) post-Soviet song contest held in Latvia every year. Call me a cynic, but whenever I watch it (this is my third year in a row) it seems fixed. There are always a few contestants who are in a completely different league from the others. This year there's a contestant named Ani something who sings her own songs, has back up singers, dancers, choreography--the works. Then, the next contestants up are a duo from Macedonia who offer up a lame cover of that Eric Clapton song from the 1990s (the one about his dead son--"If I saw you in heaven" or something like that). How can these two acts even be in the same competition? It's like taking an act from Las Vegas and making them compete against someone performing in the Karaoke bar down the street. And what about that group from Minsk who did the lame version of "Back in the USSR?" with the furry Russian shapkas? This is really one of the best groups they could find among the thousands of entries they supposedly received? They elicited about as much excitement as Avtograf did when they performed (via satellite) at Live-Aid.

(By the way, when I first came to Russia in 1993 and 1998 I asked everybody I met about Avtograf because they were the only Soviet band I'd ever heard of up until then--but nobody knew who they were. Who were they? Were they an invention of the Kremlin especially for Live-Aid? Were they made up by MTV? We may never know).

My theory is that the Novaia Volna folks choose the winners in advance, then set them up to compete against a bunch of losers in order to ensure that the winner really is one of the best acts in the competition.

(One other aside: Turkish musicians are definitely a lot better at pretending to play their instruments to canned music than Russians are. Half the time when the camera zooms in on a guitar or piano solo, the musician seems totally taken by surprise and scrambles to make a go of faking it. It reminds me of when I saw Ibrahim Tatlıses in concert in St. Petersburg in 2004. His warm-up act was a wretched one-hit wonder calling herself "Azeri  kızı" who lip-synched throughout her performance. She came out a second time while Ibrahim was taking a break, and in the middle of her performance he came back on stage, turned off her CD player, and tried to get her to sing a duet with him. She fled the stage, and Ibrahim took over. Say what you will about the man, but Ibo's a real professional, and he sang the whole way through).

Anyway, tonight the professionals are on, so I get to watch my man Phillipp Kirkorov instead. At least he's not covering a Beatles tune that's older than I am.

 

Saturday, July 26, 4:15 pm

One nice thing about living in an apartment with no internet connection is that it allows me to get a lot more work done. Other than watching the news and "Novaia Volna," a kind of Eurovision song contest for post-Soviet space, I've been pretty much living an internet and television-free life here. Consequently, I've been getting a lot done. Today I woke up around 10:30 and have spent pretty much the entire afternoon working on an article I've been writing. The absence of distractions has been, I have to say, very nice in this respect.

For now, however, I'm off. It was raining earlier today, but now the sun is out and I feel like doing a little tourism--as well as visiting the post office in order to indulge my internet habit, at least for a little while!

Today is my Dad's birthday---happy birthday, Dad!

 

Friday, July 25, 11:34 pm

Well, I've finished my first week of work in Ufa and it has been really great. The folks in the archive have been friendly, and I've been able to get through a good amount of material here without being overwhelmed. All in all, there wasn't all that much that I needed to look through here, since I'd worked here for a few weeks back in 2005. However, there had been a number of questions which had come up since then and which I wanted to investigate here, and I think the two weeks that I'll end up working in the archive this month will be enough time to find whatever the archive has to help me answer them.

Today started off with some good news. Through a friend of a friend I was able to locate the personal fond of Rizaeddin Fahreddin, who features prominently in my work. I'd heard, through a number of channels back in Kazan, that his papers were located here somewhere, but I'd been given conflicting reports as to where. It turns out they're in the History Institute, which opens up on August 4. That works out well, since the archive closes at the end of July. From what I understand, most of the material here was produced during the post-revolutionary era, when Fahreddin was the (second) müfti of the Soviet Union. Thus, the material probably won't be too much help for my current project (which is on the late imperial period), but could prove helpful later on. Indeed, I've been collective material on the Soviet muftiate for some time, and might do something more serious on this topic at a later date--although I guess whether or not that happens will probably depend upon someone thinking I'm good enough to be given a job somewhere.

Since the archive is closed on Fridays I went to the "National" Library instead. Like the National Library of Tatarstan in Kazan, it's basically a municipal library which was transformed into a national institution once Bashkorostan became a republic in the immediate post-Soviet era. Also like the National Library in Kazan, the National Library in Ufa doesn't really have all that much of interest to me. I looked through their manuscript guidebook--they've actually got a number of manuscripts that would be of interest to scholars working on Islamic jurisprudence, but not too much that relates to the work I'm doing now. As far as their (Arabic script) book holdings are concerned, I still don't know what they've got, since the catalogues are closed right now (they're doing repairs in the catalogue room). However, Ildar--the director of the rare book and manuscript reading room--brought me a sampling of books that they had, and promised that the rare book catalogues would be open by Monday. That's fine with me. Among the books Ildar brought me, one of them--an 1897 history of the Orenburg Assembly by Muhammadselim Ishmuhammadoğlu--seems useful, and I made a copy of it.

The rest of the time I just chatted with Ildar, who was the first person here that I was able to engage in Bashkir conversation. I don't really know Bashkir, of course, but it's close enough to Tatar that I can speak Tatar and fake the grammatical endings while pretty much understanding what is being said to me. As I may have mentioned in an earlier post, I've been watching Bashkir television this week and haven't had too much trouble comprehending things, and Ildar was easy to talk to. He's a Turkologist who did his BA and master's degree in Ankara, so he speaks Turkish and knows Tatar as well. He was also good about correcting my Tatarisms and speaking to me mainly in Bashkir, which was nice. We talked for a while and then, after the library closed, he took me to a couple of bookstores in search of Russian-Bashkir dictionaries and other works on local history. I bought a couple of books--one on Bashkir grammar and a dictionary--and looked at a bunch of others. The bookstore scene here isn't nearly as good as the one in Kazan (where the government of Tatarstan subsidizes a thriving book publishing industry, and late imperial history is an especially popular subject), but they still had a number of interesting works. Ildar says that there are some even bigger bookstores elsewhere in the city, so I'll refrain from buying until I've had the chance to check them out as well.

One week into things I feel like I've settled in pretty well. I like my routine, for one thing. I've been getting up early, working for a few hours at home, and then heading off to the archive (or to the library, as I did today) for the afternoon. After work I've been going to one of a couple of different cafes in town for a late lunch/early dinner. My current fave is a place called Mado, which sells ice cream but I think has no relationship to the famous ice cream chain in Turkey. This Mado, moreover, has lahmacun and kebab and other foods, and while the food isn't quite what one would expect in Turkey, it is very clean and quite good. There's also an American-style diner in town which has a great patio and serves B- hamburgers and pizza. The diner has draft beer (Mado is alcohol-free), which can be nice after a day reading archival documents.

The weather has been very hot, in the low 90s every afternoon, low 80s at night. I've been walking a lot and having only one big meal a day, eating a lot of watermelon (the ones I've bought have all been from Kazakhstan). I've lost a few pounds, which has been good, and generally feel pretty positive about the way things have been going here so far.

 

Wednesday, July 23, 10:39 pm

Just a quick update now while I'm on online. Things are going well. I've been working in the archive the past few days--they're treating me nicely. As was the case when I worked here in 2005, they allow unlimited (and free) use of digital cameras, which makes the work go faster. I've been looking at some of the opisi of the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly that I didn't get a chance to look at last time, as well as some other materials relating to the provincial governor's office and other branches of regional administration.

 

Sunday, July 20, 2008, 9:08 pm

Greetings from Ufa, capital of Bashkortostan!

As I have no telephone line at home, I won't be able to regularly update this website. So, I'm just going to make the posts as always and will update when I can. Thus, there will probably be times when no posts appear for days or even weeks, followed by the sudden appearance of several postings all at once. I don't think there's any other way, at least until I'm back in Turkey. We'll see.

The trip to Ufa went well, but it's been a long day all the same. My flight was at 7:30 in the morning, so I called a taxi company last night in Moscow and ordered a taxi to arrive at my hostel at 5:30. Everything was going well--I got a few hours of sleep in, and then my alarm went off at 5:00. I got up, showered, moved my stuff into the hallway, and had been waiting for the taxi for a few minutes when I noticed the clock on the phone read 4:20. My alarm clock was still on Istanbul time! I had gotten up an hour early! While it was nice to be able to go back to bed for an hour, I knew I wouldn't get back to sleep.

No sooner had I gone back to bed when the phone rang. I ran back into the living room to pick it up, thinking it was the taxi (when you order a taxi in advance in Russia, the driver calls when he gets to your house, and he usually gets there at least 15 minutes early).

Instead, it was some British kid who was staying at the hostel. He'd been out all night and had forgotten the code to get back inside the building. I went downstairs and let him in and he seemed grateful and relieved that he hadn't received a fiercer reaction. I could hardly be that upset with him anyway, given the fact that I was already up thanks to my own boneheadedness.

Just as soon as I lay down again, the phone rang a second time. This time it was the taxi, and I watched the sun rise as we drove off to the airport.

The flight was fine. Mostly I was worried about the two bottles of rakı that I'd bought in Turkish duty-free on my way to Moscow. Fearful that I wouldn't be allowed to board my plane with liquids (there was no reason--that doesn't seem to be a problem at least with domestic flights here), I had packed them inside my suitcase, while carrying with me anything that could have gotten destroyed by a liquor spill. Nothing happened, fortunately, as all of us arrived in Ufa in one piece.

I took an airport bus into town from the airport for 25 rubles (a bit more than a dollar), then went into Gostinnyi Dvor, a glistening air-conditioned shopping center, where I bought a SIM card for my telephone (Russia's cellphone providers are all regional, so I didn't buy one in Moscow). At the phone place I met a couple of Turkish construction workers, with whom I started chatting. They invited me to join them for some tea once my phone business was taken care of, as they were enjoying a day off in the air-conditioned splendor of Gostinnyi Dvor.

We started talking and one of the guys showed me the pictures he had stowed on his phone, including a number of photos of various family members posing with a large handgun. They asked me if I liked drinking, They asked me if I liked drinking, so I told them about the rakı I'd been schlepping around. At this point, the other fellow got serious and told me that he doesn't drink at all. He didn't have that kind of habit, he said, except for the occasional beer whenever he calls a prostitute.

Armed with my telephone and fortified by the tea, I called Albert, a friend of my friend Xavier, who had told me he had an apartment I could stay in. Indeed, the apartment is free--something I still have trouble wrapping my head around. Albert met me in front of the Hotel Bashkortostan and we took a taxi to the apartment together.

The apartment is quite good, but since it hadn't been occupied for a while it needed a serious cleaning. I spent most of the afternoon scrubbing it from top to bottom, and once I can get a fan in here I think it will be pretty comfortable.

Anyway, it's been a pretty long week. It's hard to believe that just seven days ago I was drinking beer at my sister's house, watching my nephew's Willie Wonka performance on DVD. Two days before that, I'd been swimming in Lake Michigan and drinking gin and tonics on the beach while I watched a (nearly) 10 pm sunset. And now---I'm here, wondering if I'm going to get eaten alive tonight because the kiosk downstairs was out of the anti-mosquito tablets that I need to put in my burner.

For the time being, however, there are more important things to worry about--like dinner. I've got two bottles of rakı, after all. One will go to Albert when I move out of this place, and the other is going to get opened right now. Şerifinize!

 

Saturday, July 19, 2008, 11:34 pm

Hostel Territory

Ever since my old standby hotel in Moscow, the Rossiia, was demolished (here's a clip of the implosion--it's too short but gives you an idea of the immense size of this place) I've been without a regular place to stay in this town. The Rossiia was a dump, but it was enormous. I could always get a room there, and for $40 I could stay right across the street from Red Square.

Hotels in Moscow are really expensive, so for a while I tried staying at the Izmailovo Gamma-Delta Hotel, but I just got sick of it. Not only is the Gamma-Delta as much of a dump as the Rossiia was, but it's also rather pricey in its own right and is just too far away to be much fun.

I therefore decided this time to try staying in a youth hostel. I hadn't stayed in a hostel since my trip through Asia in 1999. Not that I was really looking forward to doing so again, but since I was looking at spending three nights in Moscow it seemed like the prudent option, especially as--thanks to our wildly successful president--the US dollar now buys thirty percent less abroad than it did just a few years ago.

So, I went online and looked to see what was available. I'd stayed in a hostel once in Moscow--some place near Prospekt Mira where I'd stayed back in 1998. That place was closed, but to my surprise I found several listings for places, all of them offering a bed in a six-person room for about $30 a night. I made a reservation for two nights at a place called the Sweet Moscow Hostel on Arbat street, but had to book my third night at a different place, since the Sweet was full on Saturday.

To put it mildly, the Sweet was not so sweet, but I guess it was a good enough deal, considering most of the alternatives. The good part about it was the location--right on Arbat Street, close to the action. But man, it was really packed. My six-person room actually contained nine people, and the room was really small and cluttered with people's belongings. On the plus side, they did give us storage lockers where we could put valuables. On the negative side, I think I slept about thirty minutes my first two nights here.

The place where I'm staying now is more expensive--$40--but is considerably better. Because of the price and location (a bit farther out, near 1905 Revolution Street station), it's less crowded. There are seven beds in a large room, but only three of them are occupied. They've got wireless internet which is good, and which is the reason why I've been able to update the site today. All in all, I'd probably even stay here again.

Both of these places are unofficial hostels. They are basically just apartments with loads of beds in them. There are no markings outside, nor are there any other indication that they are hostels. Neither of the places I've stayed in appear to register passports, either.

All in all, however, the 1905 place is pretty good. Only two of the rooms have beds in them, and the living room is comfortable and a good place to hang out. The building is new, and the kitchen and bathrooms are well-appointed and very clean. The guy who runs it, Karim, was also very friendly, and I actually enjoyed spending time here, so go figure.

Anyway, Ufa awaits me with a 7:30 flight tomorrow morning, so I must be getting some sleep. For those of you who haven't been there, Ufa is about 900 miles east of Moscow, north of Kazakhstan. I was there for a few weeks in 2005 and liked it pretty much--I'm hoping that at least I won't be sleeping nine to a room there!

Saturday, July 19, 2008, 12:47 pm

I've been having trouble updating my site from Russia. I've found a new way to do it with the connection I'm currently using, but there's no telling if this will work when I'm in Ufa or Kazan. So, if there aren't any posts here for a long time after today, you know the reason why.

For the first time in my life I was a witness to the famous 'money-dropping' scam last night. Back when I was doing the Fulbright here during graduate school, we had an in-country orientation in which folks from the US Embassy came by and talked about all sorts of scams that get pulled on foreigners here (interestingly enough, all of the examples they gave us involved US Embassy employees as victims). In the money-dropping scam, one person drops a huge wad of money on the street right in front of you. You are expected to pick it up, either to give it back or take it for yourself. A second person then stops you, calls over the first person, and they demand the money back. Only when you give them the money back they say that some of the money is missing, threaten to go to the police, etc.

Anyway, last night I was walking up Tverskaia and a guy dropped a huge some of money in front of me. I didn't pick it up, but after walking a few more seconds I glanced back and saw the second guy pick it up and give it back to his partner.

To be honest it was a bit disconcerting, being 'marked' in this way, especially as I had been feeling really comfortable here. Most of my experiences in Russia have been in provincial cities like Kazan where I went out all the time, met all kinds of people, climbed into all sorts of cars driven by people I didn't know, and nobody ever tried messing with me. Maybe things in Moscow are a bit different, or maybe I just really looked like a tourist in a touristy part of town. In any case, I guess the Fulbright orientation paid off for me.

Friday, July 18, 2008, 8:22 pm

Well, I've made it to Moscow! It's a little hard to imagine that just a few days ago I was still in Ann Arbor. It's been a tiring trip, but really exciting. On Thursday afternoon I flew from Istanbul to Moscow--the first time I'd flown into Moscow since 1998. A lot has changed. Indeed, the last several times I've flown to Russia I've arrived in St. Petersburg and (more frequently) Kazan, and my waiting time in customs and passport control has always ranged between one and three hours. This time, in contrast to my last arrival at Sheremetyevo airport in 1998 (when I waited three hours and didn't get out of the airport until five am), I breezed through passport control in just a couple of minutes. Then, I boarded Sheremetyevo's brand new airport train, which goes from the airport to the Savyolovskaia train & metro station in about twenty minutes. Here is a shot of the inside of the train, and here is a photo of some of the scenery that I passed through en route into town.

Even though I was complimenting myself on my brilliance in taking the train into town instead of a taxi, it was, in fact, a difficult trip from Savyolovskaia onwards. In fact, I should have known better but, as usual, ended up making the same old mistakes anyway. Getting off the train I immediately regretted my cavalier decision to leave my train ticket in the trash bin on the train. Of course, I was asked to produce it upon exiting the station (I felt like an idiot, especially as I always bring a little zippered bag to hold all of the slips of paper that I'm inevitably asked to produce to authorities in Russia--I guess the intoxication of the easy trainride from the airport had clouded my judgment). Anyway, the folks at the train station were nice, and allowed me to leave without incident.

Taking the metro was a lot harder than boarding the train at the airport. Again, I should have remembered the stairs, the packed metro stations, the general hassle, but again--I can be an idiot at times. In any case, I made it to the hostel where I'm staying, and the fact that it only cost about $13 from the airport to my hotel eased the pain and made all of the blood, sweat, and tears seem worthwhile. It was, after all, mid-afternoon, and it felt really, really great to be back in Moscow again.

After arriving at the hostel, I had some tea, showered, and then headed out into the city. My hostel is on Arbat street, just a few minutes away from the old Hotel Belgrade (I think it has a different name name), where I stayed during my first visit to Russia fifteen years ago. It is, of course, very crowded and not the most comfortable environment, but the price is right and the location is terrific. There's also a view of the Kremlin from the hostel's kitchen, which is nice.

I walked up Arbat, then over to the Kremlin and Red Square, then up Tverskaia, then down some streets and up some others. After having dinner and a couple of beers on Tverskaia, I saw to my amazement that it was almost midnight. Nevertheless, there were people everywhere. The weather was great, the skies were clear, and everybody seemed so happy. I walked around until one am, then headed back to the hostel to get some sleep (fat chance).

Midnight in Moscow

Today was spent running around dealing with registration issues, one of the less enjoyable aspects of spending time in Russia. I won't go into details, but it took a few hours. I also had a really gross breakfast at the Starlight Diner--I'd remembered that place as being halfway decent, but I think these judgments depend a lot on where you're coming from and where you've recently been.

The highlight for today was going to the Lev Tolstoy house-museum. I'd already been there a couple of times, but it had been ten years. The first time I'd visited Tolstoy's winter house (his summer residence was in Yasnaia Polania, which I really hope to visit sometime during this trip), the entrance had been just a few pennies. Now it cost more than four dollars. Of course, part of the cost increase has to do with the falling dollar--today there are 23 rubles to the dollar, while it was 30 to the dollar just a few years ago.

Indeed, the falling dollar is a bummer that I won't be able to shake during this trip. Spending billions of dollars a month occupying Iraq has a way of degrading your currency.

Here is a shot of Tolstoy's house from the outside, and here is a shot of Tolstoy's study. I also enjoyed seeing Tolstoy's bicycle and was intrigued by his "Chinese billiards" table, an early form of pinball. As an avid cyclist and pinball player, it felt nice to feel connected to one of my favorite authors in two more ways.

 

Tuesday, July 15, 7:35 pm

Well, it's been a pretty wild ride since my last posting. On July 1 I left Providence in a rental car and drove to Michigan with all of my remaining possessions. After a couple of days in Ann Arbor I went up to Castle Park, where my parents have a cottage on Lake Michigan. I spent the 4th of July up there, then returned to Ann Arbor on Friday the 12th. On Monday morning I flew from Detroit to Istanbul, which is where I am right now.

If you're interested in seeing some photos from Castle Park, click here, here, here, and here.

I had a good flight over to Istanbul. The flight was about twelve hours from Detroit, a couple of hours less than the time it took me to drive from Providence to Ann Arbor two weeks ago! I'm staying in Arnavutköy now--I've posted a couple of photos here and here. There are also a few older shots of Arnavutköy in the Turkey album elsewhere on this site, so I'm not going to add too many more right now.

On Thursday afternoon I'm flying to Moscow, where I'll stay until Sunday morning. On Sunday I'm taking another flight to Ufa, capital of Bashkortostan. I'll be researching there for at least two weeks--the archive in Ufa closes on August 1, but I might stick around longer if there are other places where I can work there.

Okay, that's all for now. Time to head into Beyoğlu for some kebab and a bit of rakı!

 

June 17, 12:20 pm

As upset as I was a few days ago to be leaving New York, I can't say how great it is to be back in Providence! I rented a nice one-bedroom apartment on Transit Street between Brook and Hope. It's furnished and very quiet. Anyone who has spoken with my on the phone or skyped with me when I was living in New York knows that it often sounded as if I were living next to a motor speedway.

Now I'm just a bit bummed that I'll only be spending two weeks in Providence. It's great to use my bicycle for transportation again--in New York I rode a lot through Central Park, but mostly was too chicken to ride it in the streets. Over the next couple of weeks I plan to ride a lot, go to the beach a bunch of times, finish up an article I'm working on, and basically just relax and hang out with friends until I go to Michigan at the beginning of July.

Everybody knows that Providence is cool, but getting to see the stacks from your kitchen is like having a view of the Eiffel Tower.

One day (hopefully before I leave for Turkey next month) I'll get around to posting albums of New York and Rhode Island on the photos page of this site, but for now I'll just put up a photo of the stacks from my kitchen window.

 

June 13, 6:42 pm

Last day in Morningside Heights

I'm leaving New York tomorrow, unfortunately. Don't get me wrong--I'm looking forward to spending the next two weeks in Rhode Island. But at the same time, I already feel nostalgic for the year that is coming to an end tomorrow.

When I received the Harriman fellowship last year, I originally told them that I could only do it for one semester. I'd already received the NEH-ARIT fellowship for seven months in Turkey, and decided to spend one semester in New York and then the second semester in Istanbul.

Fortunately, smarter people than I got wind of my plans and advised me to defer my Turkey research until this summer and spend the entire year at Columbia. The folks at ARIT were kind enough to agree, and so I arrived in Morningside Heights last September with a full ten months in New York ahead of me.

I can't say that it feels like I have really been living in New York since then--it feels more like I've lived in Morningside Heights, which is where Columbia is located. I didn't really go downtown that much, or have a very wild nightlife. Mostly I worked, or went to the gym, or biked, or walked around my neighborhood, or traveled, but I never felt like I was living a very "New York" lifestyle. On those occasions when I did go downtown, I always felt like that was the "real" New York, while Morningside Heights (sometimes called "Boringside Heights") was just Columbia.

So, other than the places I could walk to (Morningside Heights, Upper West Side, and Harlem), I didn't hang out much in New York. But nevertheless, I grew attached to my neighborhood, to the doormen and janitors in my building, to everyone I met at Columbia. I especially loved riding my bike through Central Park, and it was also pretty cool that the Columbia gym had a sauna.

Mostly, I really liked my job. The Harriman Institute basically let its postdocs (there were four of us this year--three in the Russia-Islam project) do what we wanted. We all had a set of nominal tasks, but mostly we were allowed to further our own research in whatever way we wanted. For me, this was a much appreciated gift. I was given a cubicle to work in, which I appreciated, but I mostly worked at home because my housemate (a postdoc in biology) stayed at the lab all day and until three o'clock every morning.

So, I was able to get a lot done this year. I gave a number of talks--two at Columbia, a couple in Japan, one in New Orleans, another in Istanbul, as well as a couple of others I can't remember right now, and also did a lot of other fun things. Mostly, I talked about various parts of my work to different people at different times. This helped me a lot when trying to figure out what to do with my dissertation. Hopefully during the upcoming year I'll be able to get a lot of these plans down on paper, and make some inroads into doing what I want to do with it.

When I was in graduate school, I always thought that life would never get easier. While grad school usually doesn't pay much, it does give you plenty of time. This year at Columbia, however, has been even better. Never mind the generous salary, the amount of time I was given to work entirely upon my own research was fabulous. The work that I was asked to do was also stimulating, and involved making the acquaintance of lots of amazing people. All in all, it's been a super year.

So now, my travels begin. Two weeks in Rhody, followed by a trip to Castle Park, followed by Istanbul, then Russia, then Georgia, then Russia again, then Turkey, then the US, then Turkey again, then the US again, then Turkey again, then Russia--all by next Summer, and that's not including vacations.

So, it's saddening to leave New York, and I must admit at my age I'm getting tired of living on the road. But you have to do what you have to do, and I'm sure the next year will be enjoyable and educational.

For now, though, even though the weather has been not just sticky, but adhesive, and my apartment couldn't be louder if I lived in the middle of a racetrack, I'm really going to miss this place.

 

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