Virtual Brush Box

Photography of the outside world. Are you old enough to remember when Glamour Shots was big? An undated website lists a store in Texas and one in New Jersey. Glamour Shots: Locations. “Glamour Shots® was considered the first in the industry showing customers their proofs on a monitor right after their session and allowing them to order their pictures instantaneously.” GS: About Us.

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Beef Shawarma Roll Up
Takeout
Mr. Shawarma
Birmingham AL
March 2025

“Mr. Shawarma brings you the authentic taste of Egyptian and Middle Eastern cuisine.” Mr. Shawarma.

Researching food history is either fun or frustrating, depending on my mood at the moment. Items and ideas wander about, adapt to local ingredients, and don’t get written up in formal records.

Theories abound. Shawarma is from Turkey. Shawarma originated in the Ottoman Empire. Shawarma is a food of the Levant. Or, perhaps, all of the theories are true.

In a Rick Steves video, they are talking about different food items, but it demonstrates similar international intermixing.
“Rick: Mmm-hmm! So fried eggplant and tahini, you find this in many countries in the Mediterranean.
Tarek: Absolutely, and each country would claim it’s ‘ours.'”
Rick Steves: Egypt’s Nile, Alexandria, and Luxor > Script

One source traces the roots of the shawarma to Basra, 158 km (approx. 100 miles) from Istanbul. “This döner kebab, or “rolled kebab,” was adopted in neighbouring countries: in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan it came to be known in Arabic as shawārmā, a loanword from the Turkish çevirme, or “turn,” and in Greece as gyro, with the same meaning.” Britannica: shawarma

“There are numerous regional and local variations; one kind of shawarma that is especially popular in Istanbul, Turkey, is made of mutton with grilled tomatoes.” ibid

Technical Details

Phone camera because dinner time. Fiddled with portrait mode, flash, and accidental zoom. None of which I normally use. I think this one is portrait & zoom. The flash looked great on the aluminum foil but made the food look weird.

I took this photo a while ago. The camera inadvertently switched to portrait, as it had done in the past, much to my annoyance. However, this time it worked out. Success here was what got me to try it for posts that appeared earlier. [Dandelion, Can]

Current online class, UC Graham: From Istanbul to Cairo: The City in the Historical Novels of the Middle East.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. “When a neighbourhood mechanic was tagged, Griffin turned the mark into a jaunty blue horse.” CBC: Graffiti tags get art makeover. Hat tip to P.

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Looking at a dressage barn. Lessons would be a good refresher while we try to get on the right side of the horse distribution system.

I know of the person, but not much beyond a name. Not sure of the paradigm. The number of horses is big for a personal herd but small for a training barn.

Even if the person is a trainer, I don’t hold out much hope of them having a horse for me to ride. School horses for dressage are not common in the US, or at least anywhere I’ve ever lived.

First attempt. No one around. Will try again.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. amNY: Op-ed | Congestion pricing works, and NYC is not going back, Lieber, June 1, 2025.

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Both horses lunged over the weekend.

They sure move pretty.

Darn it.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. Mad Barn: Equine Turnout Practices Research Study. I know nothing other than what is said on the page. Collaboration with the University of Guelph. Took survey. Seems harmless.

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Xray & consult last week. Bone mostly healed (95%). Cleared to wear real shoes & do whatever I want. They don’t need to see me again.

There’s more details of the rehab process and I may get into the weeds at some point, but for now, Yay foot!

[Foot archives]

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. Mud Island Park, Memphis TN, has a scale model of the Mississippi River, photo.

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Mud.

Wet mud.

Sticky mud.

Puddle mud.

Up to the fetlocks mud.

Wear your tall rubber boots mud.

Scrape off your shoes mud.

Sinking in the mud.

Sliding in the mud.

Still mud?

Mud.

Onwards, muddily!
Katherine

Colors of the outside world. Big Think: It Works for the Turks: A Colour for Each Direction, Jacobs 2016.

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Legend

Red. From book title, My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk.

Gold because book illustrators.

Spiral because murder mystery.

Insets from chapter titles.
I Am Called Black, C2,7,11,20,22,27, etc.
I Am A Dog, C3.
I Am A Tree, C10.
I Am Called Olive, C14, 43, 57.
I Am A Woman, C54. Yes, I have caved to the pink/blue hegemony. I needed a color.

Process Notes

E for Effort.

My Name is Red is one of the required books for my current online class, UC Graham: From Istanbul to Cairo: The City in the Historical Novels of the Middle East. The plot revolves around book illustrators.

Original plan was to bail. I can’t draw, much less draw clever, tiny slices of life. I would do a lettering project or geometric art, both within my wheelhouse. Then I decided I should at least try. I would take a stab at illustrating, regardless of how it turned out. Et voilà.

Went with computer art rather than hand-drawn because a) my digital design is marginally better than my manual talent & b) getting from paper to digital is problematic at the moment. My office is a scanner graveyard.

Chapter titles chosen for easy of design rather than narrative relevance. I went with the ones I could illustrate.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the interior world. Apologies if this post is scattered and/or under-explained. I had plans. I also had work this week. Stresses me out far more than is reasonable. It’s Friday evening and I’m basically tossing my notes at you. Enjoy.

Things I Would Do In Istanbul IRL

As with Cairo, hit the big sites. [Cairo Travel, Lots of Links, Non-Fiction]

Then, I’d want to at least walk thorough the places where folks actually lived and worked. The Statue of Liberty is not NYC.

An Orhan Pamuk Walking Tour. Make my own if I can’t find one. Starting at Masumiyet Müzesi (Museum of Innocence). Inside Out In Istanbul: Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, Morrow 2016.

Mosques are open to tourists, but closed during prayer hours, “During the 5 prayer hours in the day, the mosque is closed for about 90 minutes to non-worshippers and visitors.” Blue Mosque Tickets & Tours: What are Blue Mosque opening hours? That’s 7&1/2 hours of the day, with multiple openings & closings. I imagine that complicates crowd management.

Bus over the bridge & ferry ride back.

Horses as previous.

US Department of State: Turkey Travel Advisory, Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution. On 30 May 2025.

Istanbul Virtual & Vicarious

Found a lot more on Istanbul than on Cairo, aside from pyramids.

Video. Rick Steves > Watch, Read, Listen > Watch, TV Shows > Turkey > Istanbul (2008). Website has other videos and blog posts. My thoughts on Steves in Cairo post.

Website. TravelMarx: Postcards from Istanbul.

Book. Home Sweet Anywhere, Martin (Sourcebooks 2014), read as ebook, Relevant sections are the end of Transatlantic Crossing (C5) & the Istanbul section of Turkey (C6). Rest of book on my digital TBR pile. Author’s website, Home Free Adventures, last date is 2022.

Book. AUC: Press: An Istanbul Anthology, edited by Kaya Genç ( AUC 2015). Did not buy. Would be on my list for learning more about the city, or at least what has been said about Istanbul.

Video. Mediapolis: TV Cities, Istanbul: The Labor of Reconstructing History in Turkish TV Series, How is historic Istanbul recreated for the screen? Drawing on interviews with local media professionals, Ipek Celik Rappas considers the challenges of filming heritage television series in a rapidly changing city. Rappas 2022.

Language. “In Turkey, where I grew up and went to college, there was an alphabet revolution in 1928. Before then, everything was written in the Arabic script. After that year, everything was written in the Latin script. Schools stopped teaching the Arabic script, and print shops stopped printing it. So, when I enrolled in the history department for my master’s degree, I had to learn the Arabic script from scratch just to read anything in Turkish published before 1928.” WashU: Alphabet revolutions, Valeri 2023. Rest of article is about China. Not particularly relevant to travel, but an interesting point.

Book. Istanbul, Memories and the City, by Orhan Paul, translated by Maureen Freely (Vintage 2004 translation). Did not finish. Less about Istanbul & more about how the author feels about Istanbul. A legit genre, just not one that holds my attention.

Virtual. Road Scholar: Adventures Online: Discover Istanbul Through the Ages. Virtual tour. Expensive. I’d be interested in trying one of these some day. Page has link to a recommended reading list. A while back, I took a virtual walking tour with KeithYorkCity through Cooper Hewitt, which I enjoyed very much. I could see how a live virtual tour could work, if done well. Downside, that’s a lot of sitting. Also, I would want compute power that was faster than waving semaphore flags at the mothership.

Book. The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax, by Dorothy Gilman ( Fawcett 1970). Note date. Part of the action takes place in Istanbul. I found it entertaining to reread. Would it engage someone for whom the cold war is an event in a history book? Dunno.

Again, advisory level 0, another advantage of virtual over IRL.

Current online class, UC Graham: From Istanbul to Cairo: The City in the Historical Novels of the Middle East. My Name is Red by Orman Pamuk is one of the required books for my class.

Onwards!
Katherine