Songs with heavy rotation on my iPod and the best songs I saw performed live this year

And the next are songs that I performed on stage (and in front of friends in their rooms or balconies)

First print your name.

Then the red stamp.

Then the signature on top of the stamp.

''Limitless Wealth''

// 2 years is nothing; a student says to me.

How wholeheartedly I agree!

Apparently the spirits are conspiring to make me smile,

the moment i most earnestly start to crumble

::::

Crepuscular rays paint the far end of the sky,

competing for splendor and glory with

their children in the East, (the mountains I've tried to climb)

large golden clouds bursting with long-withheld rain.

Barakalah!

Slowly they wink out and so the ebullient clouds conquer the sky,

continuing to loom, evermore daunting,

filled now with the blood of a consumptive night.

If you never swim the same river,

we're doomed to never return here

no matter the many times you might come back.

The less the rain, the harder the earth,

the faster the flood carries us away.

That's alright;I'm ready to go.

Barakalah!

The gendarmes take caskrout,

the usual tea and the usual smoke.

They make such a handsome picture!

No photography's allowed - but I am given a peek.

Transfigured and dying (for such is what travel most truly means)

Im a magnet that pulls all the haggard, shining spirits

out to the streets for one last--no, one more --

verbal fête, one final Moroccan tête-a-tête//

My Mudir for the SOS village told me a joke that I wanted to share.

One difference between Arabic/Tashleheet and English is that in English our salutations are questions :

how are you? how's your family? are you alright?

For them, its more like declarative with no really questions or answers.

Eh! Addi! Tarsa! La bas! Bixihir! Kif dayr! thenna! mitanit! hamdullah! hamdullah laybarfik!

Therefore you can pick and choose and just shout out the ones you feel like saying at that moment, and noone waiting to hear a certain response. That's fun because it means you dont have to pause, but just say 8 or 9 of them and they're talking simultaneously with you, saying their eight or nine, and its only awkward if you look at them and listen like you're expecting some kind of response. So ideally, you get two people doing this at the same time, full force, not listening to each other because listening is not the point!

Person one: Eh! Addi! Tarsa! La bas! Bixihir! Kif Tarsa! La bas! Bixihir!dayr! thenna! mitanit! hamdullah! hamdullah laybarfik!

Person two: Eh! Said! Tarsa! thenna! mitanit! hamdullah! hamdullah laybarfik! La bas! Bixihir! Kif dayr! thenna! mitanit! hamdullah! hamdullah laybarfik! Simultaneously.

But the joke comes in when a person learns English the dialogue method, without anyone explaining what the words literally mean. So, two kids talking, one says : 'how are you' is like 'bixihir', kif kif. 'Mitanit' is like 'ca va?'

So the joke is, a Moroccan student is trying to speak English, and it's something like this:

A: Hello?

M: Hello how are you

A: Im fine. And you?

M: Im fine. And you!

A: Im fine.

M: And you!

: p

This came from Time's site : its a person that live-blogged 3 different events at the same time, and the result reads like a strange postmodern novel about ADD, national values and ennui- possibly by David Foster Wallace?-- sadly, not to be.

In my mind, I can imagine CNN having put the 3 live feeds side by side on a tv screen. Maybe its a taste of things to come?

75 minutes. Now it is time to rehash the old debates about Mitt Romney’s efforts to reform health care in Massachusetts. Nothing new is said. But as Romney defends himself, the Miss Universe pageant really kicks into high gear. Miss France, Miss Kosovo, Miss Columbia and Miss China all move on to the next round. And to add insult to injury, the Patriots score another touchdown. It’s now 21 to 14. Good game.

76 minutes. Perry, once again, attacks Romney’s health care efforts. Miss Angola and Miss Australia move on to the next round.

77 minutes. Perry again defends himself. Miss Netherlands is moving on.

78 minutes. Blitzer asks Paul who should pay to take care of a 30-year-old man who goes into a coma without health insurance. “What he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself,” Paul says. That would be tough to do in a coma. Miss Ukraine. Miss Panama. Miss Costa Rica. Miss Philippines — they are moving on.

80 minutes. Bachmann really wants in on this conversation. She pulls a Huntsman and tries a dual attack on Romney and Perry for being wishy-washy on repealing ObamaCare. “If you believe that states can have it and that it’s constitutional, you’re not committed,” she says. “If you’ve implemented this in your state, you’re not committed. I’m committed.”

82 minutes. Cut to commercial. Miss Universe has a montage of all the ladies shopping and dancing in various locals around Brazil. The Dolphins just kicked a field goal, making it 21 to 17. 3:36 left in the third quarter. Really good game.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/09/13/what-you-missed-while-not-watching-last-nights-tea-party-debate/#ixzz1ATocoIlb

ANYWAY, congratulations (apparently) go to : Mitt Romney, the Patriots and ANGOLA and Senhorinha Lopes

--dance party on our last night together as a staj, the 44 of us left from the original 66, and the best moment of that was dancing the twist to Little Richard

--afterwards, Eric H appeared and thanked me several times for having recommended INFINITE JEST to him - he appeared as if he hadn't slept since he'd finished reading it, and talked about his newfound need to 'read it 8 times' so its lessons soak in ever deeper. Especially for a book that can be so NOT wonderful to some people, to share it with someone that likes it as much as me is GREAT ;)

--the man at the Velada on his day off recognized me in the Dar B3ida (Arabic for Casablanca) area at a bus stop in L'Oasis. Good eyes, especially since I was in my jilaba and turban! About that, Sam said: You look like the real thing, a convert.

--Similarly, it was nice to sit during my physical with Dr Taofik and feel powerful, accomplished, that of a person who has lived in a part of Morocco that many urban Moroccans would be unable to handle. Cara's Casa friends likewise said: Ya'll are crazy to do that! And you don't get a car? How do you get around?? Isn't it hot? There's no (X), there's no (Y). :§ And to now be among those that have 'done it', and so be able to intimidate the softies in the cities without even needing to say words feels good.

--having the thought: never again, except for rare exceptions* will I ever allow myself to work for a place that requires 'samples'of all my bodily fluids before I am allowed to enter it and again before I leave it. It felt good to take my last one to the laboratoire d'analyses and now I'll likely not have to go back (except in the instance that I'm diagnosed with schistosomiasis, which has a strong likelihood of happening).

--Reunited with my guitar Betsy, and came up with a great new chord full of raw energy and an ambiguous mood : C/F#.

--watching tears come to Adriana's eyes after our goodbye and our many promises ''I'd rather meet you in Colombia than in South Carolina, I think!'' with Peggy C saying ''Heck, I wanna come!'' In my book, tears of sadness can mean that you either did something really wrong or that you did something right.

--Books: Getting sucked into Isabel Allende's ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA, especially sinc it is a reminder of the primary influences on my life, the primacy of Latin America in my heart and that, as good as North Africa is, it's a poingant and important, but ultimately a passing stage in my life. The same goes during other moments of the week -- Ali Records giving me a copy of FREEDOM, the new Franzen marvel (30 pages in and Im in love with the book already)

--Going to the beach with Jeff and Will, qnd two Moroccan lifeguards maybe saved my life when I got pulled past a long row of 6 foot waves by a ripcurl. I wish I could have taken them out for tea!

We followed that up with a jam session on the bus, sharing Will's yukele, writing a song in Darija on the spot, and entertaining Moroccan people all at the same time.

--Fast Pizza four times, once alone, once time each with Sarah, Caytlin, alone and with Catherine B.

--Goodbye hour with Amina -- each person was told to give her one of the roses from the table and tell a story of why Amina made such a valuable impact on our service. On my turn, I reached to give her the whole pile, since I wish I could. But I sat them down, picked a nice one and then whispered my tribute into her ear rather than sharing it out loud.

--Going to the Chinese embassy with Sam and Pete. Id not even thought of getting a visa for there, so I was glad to have run into them and to have similar plans as they.

--Adding David Lillie into our final group photo, then having four others come up to me saying they'd missed the photo shoot and needed me to photoshop them into it, too.

--At the Last Supper, I was voted: ''Most likely to end up serving jail time after stalking Shakira and/or Sade.'' Fair enough, then on the one where we all voted, me and Ewald got voted most likely to end up homeless. ''That's OK, if that happens we'll come back to L-Mgrib and Islam will take care of us!'' For my acceptance speech, I remarked : If this is the future awaiting me back there, jail time then homelessness, I think I'd rather just stay put here!'' If I could do it again, I wouldn't have said anything but would have started singing : ''there's a fi-iy-re burnin deep in my soul''. That'd have been classy.

--buying a ticket to Mali, then ordering a bird guide, ''Birds of West Africa'' -- hope it gets to N'Kob by then. It's not a ticket home, but... I figure Ive earned it, a chance to regroup and go to the Other Africa that's on the side of my backyard. I might even get to Timbuktu.... :) though I heard it's heyday was 150 years ago.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011 Royal Air Maroc 523 Economy | Boeing 737-700 Passenger (73G) | 3hr 35min | 1434 miles

Depart: 9:25pm Casablanca, Morocco Casablanca Mohamed V (CMN)

Arrive: 1:00am Bamako, Mali Bamako (BKO)

--waking up naturally everyday for the last month at 7. Its been a very good positive difference in my life!

*NASA, is the only one I can think of, and only if I get a COOL name for my position, like ''Galaxy Defender Superior Maximus'' or somesuch.

Voyage to home.... suggestions welcome. Its going to be something like this-- and magically, its the same money as it'd be flying from Casa to Memphis direct... so, explain that to me!

Sep 10

2 year anniversary in Morocco--- party!

Oct 10 - le debut du fin

'' 11- Going towards Lausanne, maybe see some PCVs along the way

'' 21-Go to Paris, Sara and Beth will come in the morning!

22,23,24 morning in Paris.

'' 24- Go to Lausanne again for the night

'' 25- 5 Terre for two nights

27- Rome

28, 29 - full days in Rome

Oct 30 - Fly to Morocco

'' 30, 31- Marrakesh and Ourzazate

Nov 1,2 - Nkob with the family

'' 3,4 - Desert and then back to Kesh

'' 5- B&S fly home

Nov 6- Layoune, Dhakla and the Sahara

Nov 14- Meet Dad in Marrakesh

Nov 20 - Dad leaves for home

Nov 21- Go with Sam to Portugal and Spain for one week

Nov 28- Fly to Shanghai from Paris, visit my teacher in Wuhan

10 (?)- Korea, visit KUECA volunteer Joo-hee in Seoul

15 (?)- Japan, visit my old friend Mai in Nagoya

19th (?)- California, SF and LA

Jackson!

http://www.tennesseetreasures.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=204

OCt 28 - Murakami epic new book comes out, I've pre-ordered it just five minutes ago so it'll be waiting for me when I get back home. The money is on him winning the Nobel this year, easy--you heard it here first!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC0yR8LrqQ0&feature=player_detailpage

Makes my heart all aflutter --I was there. This is actually a pretty good capsule summary of all the things I've done in Morocco in my time here : tea, schbekiya, watching a Barca match, hanging out and talking to the retailers, endless exuberance and reptitions of Waka Waka, seemingly never getting tired of it, both me and them. But I don't see any henna-action !

It's really cool to see the name Yanet -- the Caribbean way in Spanish to write 'Janet', just like I saw a woman earlier who spelled her name Jhoana, the way in Bolivia that they do to write Joanna, since otherwise it'd be Hoana if you pronounce the word as we write it normally.

And the big Moroccan pop act :

But the act most dear to their hearts was Cat Stevens -- and in that jilaba, he knows how to score brownie points from his audience.

''This is maybe one you learned in school''. Yep, they teach it and everyone gets a dose of it here.

--painting the Indian flag's wheel on Mari's nose

--LOTS OF MUSIC: singing Unchained Melody and my best songs at the Advanced 2 class, before practicing Lean on Me together with them all. And working up a version of NO ONE by Alicia Keys with a 13-year-old that's got a 35-year old voice, and enough sass to share, expecting good things from this so long as I'm able to get her to stop rushing the lines.

--Sang an original song to Sara's and Katey's Beginner's 1 class... ''the months of the year'': )

--able to show my impressed state at the fashion show's girls' clothes by the Moroccan hand gesture, flicking all your fingers out at them.

--Ilhem, Ilhem: her birthday here, on the first full day and going with her to the beach for the first time in her life to swim. Happy to see her willing to wear just a tshirt in the water, and so be able to enjoy the experience a lot more.

--Reading JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH during my down time.

--Watching the singer-girl discover a baby's shoe in the pile of trash during our found art activity for Environment club... pouring a pile of trash on each student's desk and giving them glue and paper. Then the baby girl's shoe turned up in the pile and the biggest, most natural laugh I've seen in a long time, the laugh of a 13-year old that's not yet turned self-conscious or guardedly inward.

--Sitting next to Jack while he played the Ahedous in the Celtic style, backing up a record by the Chieftans, Live at Mag Molly's... '''fulfilled whatever need THAT was, alright!'' he says going out the door, sitting the drum down.

--Discovering the White chocolate MAGNUM bar.

--Sharing summer camp with the Zagora camp

--Few counselors wanted to go on the Azzemour field trip, but it turned out to be one of the great highlights so far, with the great art murals scattered across the ancient medina, the Portuguese stronghold followed by a few minutes overlooking the river (next to a synagogue, first one I've seen here) and finally an hour of Moroccan call-and-response chanting on the bus ride back, everyone including me at full FULL volume the whole way, something that made me so pumped up that I had trouble sleeping the rest of the night. Yes, it's true, as another PCV said, these songs kick our Americans' kids' songs' asses. Twinkle twinkle is nothing compared to ''Atoura... something-something ATOURA.... ATOURA... ATOURA.....''

--Also on that trip, Christine let me wear her blue-turquoise scarf, just bought, and I got people stunned at how perfectly it resembled the color of my eyes. ''Ok, this is going to be the dust cover for your first album'' Doug said, snapping photos.

--it's COLD at night here

--feels good to be waking up early, 730, reading some and then a full day, going nonstop until 11 pm or later.

--

Feeling Optimistic about life and everything. Lots of exciting changes to look forward to!

I found this picture, and feel it captures that spendidly.

It's supposedly Billie Holiday, 1946 in NY. I'm not certain of that, but it doesn't change what I think of the photo.

Today, I left my house, went to the cyber and discovered that the electricity had gone out. News to me! If you don't have electronic things, and you don't use the light because the window is open and you're in bed reading a book, you might go until the nighttime before you realize something's not normal.

Well, can't get online like I planned, so I try to find something else to do instead. Ten minutes later, I'm seated with the baker, he's having caskrut, the afternoon snack, so instead of being a customer, I'm an invited guest, manuevering into the oven room to sit, share tea and shoot the shit with this other Addi, a man with a generous smile, big dark mustache and leathery black skin. Besides us are the giant pile of wood that he needs to make his bread, several empty cigarette wrappers and large bottles of oil. In his dish is a mixture of olive oil and strawberry confiture, ''toot'' in shulhah. ''Toot yatfuut' I say, strawberry is yummy. Yatfuut bzzzaaf, he replies, very tasty!

Two others join us, one of the European Moroccans, a ten year old boy in beach shorts named Mustafa, and an older man that seems mostly blind, potentially senile. They likewise are invited to imbibe and we spend 35 minutes. Halfway through this time, I notice the light has come on again and I can hear once again the refrigerator humming in the corner. I wait some time because I know it'll take that long for the cyber owner to get back and charge everything up again.

In these moments, I brought up how, in summertime, everything's different. The town becomes two or three times larger, with all the families coming back loaded with money from Europe. They arrive in their cars, they fill the cybers and you hear them talking to each other in French. It's Nkob, but it's no longer my Nkob. And I'm no longer a native, they expect me to be a tourist, when really they are the tourists, the interlopers.

You walk outside, and don't recognize a face. But it's not the only change. Even before they came, Nkob stopped being the Nkob that I fell in love with. This makes it easier as I prepare to leave, since in a certain sense, Nkob's already left me. The old lovely things I can't find so readily anymore. Now, it'll take a new person to come and discover its new charms.

Walking back to the cyber, I notice a sign that I'd never seen before, there on main street: ''Bienvenue dans un noveau monde.'' Yes, thank you. Where do I go to find the old one?

Some changes:

--my beloved running trail is gone. It's been the home of construction,( a lengthening of the aqueduct), and now you just see piles of concrete. The path still exists, but is now located higher on the hill and is too steep for my enjoyment. Before, it was the one place that I'd retreat to, a dirt path through the palm trees before exiting onto the major road. When I was marathon-ready, running 30km several times a month, this was the one that saw me on the way out and welcomed me back on the way in.

--the Kasbah isn't the same. The owner (not my dad, he doesn't own the place), said: no more tourists here. Before, I used to go home and be happily surprised to see a Dutch family of 4, or a lone Spanish man, a group of Pollacks or else a German college student. Some of the best times has been with these people, and it helped keep things from getting stale. Now that's no longer the case, and so that's another important aspect, a definitive one of my experience here, that won't be regained before I return home.

--The Gendarmes have nearly all been replaced. I was lucky and got along very well with the old ones and these new ones don't seem as readily given to playfullness as before. My favorite remains in place, though, which I'm glad for.

--Peace Corps itself is radically different // I'm glad to be going home now. The end of an era, when PC did more work in the bled (countryside) and without such a concerted focus on the numbers of people reached.

--Good friends are no longer located in Nkob. Lahcen, the cafe mainstay, a worker at different times in three different cafes while I was here, who I spent several months teaching Spanish to, has now left for a job at a cafe in Ourzazate.

--Other students have graduated the past month and will not be in Nkob when I get back after Ramadan.

--and smaller things, like the fact that I'm now on a tourist visa now and not my official work permit. There's such little time left, there was no need to refill it; how there's no dates this year, since the weather wasn't right for good date-growing conditions in the same way it was last year; how I'll soon turn my bike in to PC, doing it on the way to camp in order to not worry about it later; how I've thrown away all the excess and find all the stuff I want to take home will fit in two boxes, instead of the two suitcases and one carry-on that I brought here with me.

Likewise, there are big changes that haven't necessarily affected the Nkob I once knew. What I mean is, the neverending construction of new houses and hotels has been a great big change in the town, and its been able to retain its basic Nkobien flavor. Five more years of that, though, and it might no longer be able to do so.

The Nkob I knew was a great one. It's no longer around, so I was glad to have come when I did.

the 2011-12 Met OPERA live in HD season at your local movie theatre!

http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/broadcast/hd_events_template.aspx?id=15114

Some good looking shows, especially the last 2 of the Wagner ring cycle. I should get my tickets as soon as they come on, these things sell out fast!

Wagner’s Siegfried– New ProductionNovember 5, 2011

In part three of the Ring, Wagner’s cosmic vision focuses on his hero’s early conquests, while Robert Lepage’s revolutionary stage machine transforms itself from bewitched forest to mountaintop love nest. Gary Lehman sings the title role and Deborah Voigt’s Brünnhilde is his prize. Bryn Terfel is the Wanderer. James Levine conducts.The Enchanted Island– New ProductionJanuary 21, 2012

In one extraordinary new work, lovers of Baroque opera have it all: the world’s best singers, glorious music of the Baroque masters, and a story drawn from Shakespeare. In The Enchanted Island, the lovers from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are shipwrecked on his other-worldly island of The Tempest. Inspired by the musical pastiches and masques of the 18th century, the work showcases arias and ensembles by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and others, and a new libretto by Jeremy Sams. Eminent conductor William Christie leads an all-star cast with David Daniels (Prospero) and Joyce DiDonato (Sycorax) as the formidable foes, Plácido Domingo as Neptune, Danielle de Niese as Ariel, and Luca Pisaroni as Caliban. Lisette Oropesa and Anthony Roth Costanzo play Miranda and Ferdinand. The dazzling production is directed and designed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (Satyagraha and the Met’s 125 anniversary gala).

Wagner’s GötterdämmerungFebruary 11, 2012

With its cataclysmic climax, the Met’s new Ring cycle, directed by Robert Lepage, comes to its resolution. Deborah Voigt stars as Brünnhilde and Gary Lehman is Siegfried—the star-crossed lovers doomed by fate. James Levine conducts.

Things ok here! There was a strike one day when it was extra hot and we didn't have any water for two days. The first day, they were OK, but when they woke up and it still wasn't back, then they hit the streets. This time at my house we were not prepared at all for it, and I ran out. It's strange how you have to start reprioritizing everything, asking questions that you'd never thought of before: what's more important, having a little to brush your teeth, or to be able to flush the john? To be aware that you need to divide it up so you'll have enough for both.... To boil spaghetti and then keep the milky looking juice afterwards, just because you might need it.

I felt like a stooge, I had money so I was able to buy a Fanta. If you got money, you're OK. And even conserving, you're going through it faster than you wish. The big 5 liter jugs are unweildy, and I kicked myself when it tipped the wrong way and the water gushed out onto the floor, losing about 1/3 of it before I could upright it.

Sadly, though I figure they were able to make-do somehow, a family happened to have the final night of their wedding the day the water stopped. It's almost like the opposite of the fear Americans have: whatever else, you don't want it to rain on your wedding day. This then, was a strange inversion of that. To open the tap and you just hear a gurgle and then nothing. But then, you think: this was the time when they were making couscous (very water intensive, because you steam the couscous for 3 hours or more, which means continuously adding water whenever it gets low). But then, to think, they had to make it for 150 people or more? Even if they changed to serving tajine platters, that also relies on steaming in a big way.

But that moment is past. In a way, it almost was a practice time for Ramadan, or you might say an eyeopener about what Ramadan this year will be like, in AUGUST. When, even if its there, you can't access or use it until the night falls. But at least they'll be mentally prepared for it, whereas this took them by surprise and so maybe they felt its lack more strongly.

PnL!

Baghdad - Photo Gallery - Pictures, More From National Geographic Magazine

This is a very nice photo gallery, seeing the rebirth of this blighted, ancient city. Worth checking out!

And while I'm at it: let's say you want to understand more about the MidEast/North Africa. What to do?

TV / Movies

The big channel here is 2M, and I'm sure they have programs with French subtitles... if you're Francophone -compatible.

Books

that I've read and would recommend to others:

THE CAIRO TRILOGY by Naguib Mahfouz

NINE PARTS OF DESIRE by Geraldine Brooks. This one is considered biased, I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing all the time, but there's good portraiture.

READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN by Azar Nafisi. This is eyeopening in the sense of, you get to see it from

These are good, I've heard:

NO GOD BUT GOD by Reza Azlan

MY UNCLE NAPOLEON

Music

Possession and Hemispheres by Lily Afshar

My Iranian-Turkish-American friend wrote saying this brought him back to his childhood in Tehran.

Saharawi music

TINARIWEN - the thing guaranteed to find a welcome home on your iPod

I'll be sure to come back and update this over the next 2 weeks, make it more comprehensive.

MIKE D: saw goats climbing trees near Marrakesh today. I don't understand.

AD-ROCK : argon oil!

MCA: ? what kind of goats or trees were these?

MIKE D: they were white billy goats in what may have been olive trees, but I'm still unclear as to how they climbed. or if some Moroccans just put them there since it was by the road.

AD-ROCK: they're argon trees - read up on it - that's how the nuts are harvested and made into oil

MIKE D: what?! no wonder argon oil is so expensive.

AD-ROCK: yeah exactly, the goats regurgitate it and then they process it from there - super weird!

MIKE D: wow, I love this country.

---

I gave these people monikers to (needlessly?) protect their identity. The last line is one strongly evocative of Calvin and Hobbes to me.

And while we're at it:

Yes, the posters in high school said, the promised land has it all, all the splendor of life missing from ittle-bitty Jackson, Tennessee:

-Wine as a way of life, cheese as a dessert, fine art and people wanting to look at it, shopping and the vespas to help lug back the loot; populating this land and filling it with the passion, love and romance you're missing are European dudes and dudettes somehow able to be both sensitive without being stale, cool without being clique-y; beautiful beaches and balconies and the associated Starcrossed Lovers and the Consumptive Geniuses chronicling them (or their own) ecstastic excesses. People that hold Baudelaire up just as high as they do the Clash.

But not only that, these posters say, you also get :

-world-renowned literature, cuisine, fashion, public transportation... the list goes on. Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg -types on each corner.

AND, miraculously enough it's true. I've seen it with my own eyes. Kissed them lips! Of course, I'd say, Jackson Tennessee has many of those things, too, so long as you know where to look. If I've been to an Iranian feast there, I figure there's a great deal more hidden among the enormous walls of the gated communities and elsewhere than is apparent to the eye. But the point of what I'm writing today is, the question to ask yourself is: How do you get meaningful and worthwhile access to that Utopia?

And that matter of access becomes important when you're 13 and you're choosing which of the two you want to study, Spanish or French. You're a high school student and you want to experience the aforementioned things, too. SO to help you decide you visit the classroom. The Spanish homeroom has posters too but the portraits of Che, Frida and Frida's Man are missing that Euro-chic ... too strong of a whiff of revolution and socialism. You're looking for indulgence.

So you head to the French classroom. And it's all right there. You decide, this is the one for me. And, all across the US, most girls seem to sign up for French, dreaming of Bordeaux and baguettes. Most guys go for an easy grade, and a few are aware that Latin America has its own treasures worth pursuing, so they sign up for Spanish.

Having been there and done that, take a look at your French teacher. He/she's gotten access to the Continent, she's an insider. But don't be fooled: wave bye to her/him, go back down the hall and sit down at the front of the classroom there. The Spanish class is where you want to go. Then, study it hard so that when you go to college, you'll have a great base to learn the one you really want: Italiano.

Why not French? Cut to the chase, right? Shortest path between two points is a straight line. Well, that's a complicated question, but everything I said before, all those great provincial things somehow miraculously happens to be part of the Italian panorama, too, not just the French one. And, luckily, the people there are much more willing to share access to that lifestyle.

Lots of American high school girls have worked hard to master the language, to adopt France as their sovereign guide for living their life the European way, and most of them never get the satisfaction promised to them. Language-wise, people seem to flounder somewhere between Intermediate to Advanced and never are able to superate* that. Or, say you do, but you discover the dirty secret, that often it's not the sexy beautiful romantic gorgeous language that you'd heard it was. MY issue has been more, I've learned from nonnative people who have studied both that a person can be good in French or in English but not both. Excelling at one comes at the cost of the other. That is closely related to the same problem that has haunted me, of how it's not removed quite far enough from English for it to be able to stick.

Similarly, the social aspects of trying to get access:

You're walking towards Paris with your arms wide open, only to find when you get close that it is hugging itself, hands buried in the crooks of its and facing the other direction! And you're so blinded and hurt by this, you don't see that the rest of France is still virgin territory** and it's watching you go through this process, its arms open wide and making beckoning motions-- ''we don't get tourists 'round dese parts, z'etes bienvenues ici''-- but malgré you, you're already back on the plane with your ego bruised.

Italy, on the other hand, is around the corner and is standing there alongside Statale 25, eager to hand you the keys and the helmet to your own Vespa, AND is impatient for you to get there so you can both head South together. And so you go together, the sunset off to your right framing the port of Riomaggiore.

Sure, Italy doesn't have Proust, but those artifacts--from a France that no longer is-- have been universally consumed and have been made their own. Maybe in the '30's it was useful to know French if you were interested in being among the avant guarde, but that was quite a long time ago and both seem to have not contributed to high culture since Warhol took it back over to our side of the pond, NYC and Latin America, in the '70's.

A real-life example of this : a friend of mine at the Sorbonne still gets shut-out and dissed for not speaking French, and in a way her relationship to her love has become a passive-agressive one, with an unhealthy dose of ''trying to prove my worth to them.'' Again, not everyone is surrounded by the Parisian Ecole 'Normal' Superior elites, nor is everyone in France a P.E.N.S.E.*** but... Still.

By stark contrast, Italian people are surprised when anyone other than them has studied their language, and often react joyfully, even to the point of helping you. Not everyone, of course, but often enough to keep your motivation going, to help you along towards the Eat Pray Love -Utopia you're seeking. And the words stick, and yeah maybe it looks a little unwieldy/ugly/confusing on paper until you get the accent down, something that ain't so tough to do. Not at all like a good French accent.

Likewise, both are concerned with looks, a lot more than us Americans, but in Italy it's not the be-all-end-all. That makes a difference.

Let's back up : does this seem that I'm telling you to forget the fantasy of learning French and being accepted into French culture? Or, worse, to settle for less before you even begin? No. IT's more: love the one that loves you back, and it's: think of the value you're getting with the amount of effort you're putting in, and that France doesn't have a monopoly on European whimsy and charm.

The French version just seemingly demands lifetime devotion before you're accepted, and the ones that are willing to do that end up making a career out of it, up to the PhD level. Whereas, Italy can pay big dividends with just a passing interest and it is willing to accept a more realistic amount of dedication required of you before you're 'in'.

This came from considering how, of the people I've known, a lot more of those who focus on Italy and Italian have found their dreams come true, rather than the many who focus on French and have their heart broken when they are unable to self-actualize into Amelie, or the man into Jacques Brel****.

*a real English word

**In the same way here that we say, there's the United States and there's Texas, they should say the same.. there's France and there's Paris

*** did you catch the penis joke? say it out loud and you'll get it.

****Not a Parisian nor a Frenchman, I should point out

-- while reading is about the last thing i feel like doing this summer (ive read 40 books so far this year), I was glad to be on the roof at sunset reading. the best spot in all of Morocco to be during sunset, with a book of Chekov short stories and the endlessly mutating colors in the sky all around, with the palm trees in a vast expanse below me, following the river flowing down from the mountains in the distance

-- walked by my family's hanut, the guy came out, took me to a room and pointed towards a sack of flour. OK, so I grab the corners on my end and next thing you know we take it across the street to the women's cookie co-op. Thirty seconds of work, and the lady in full Berber dress is handing me a half dozen cookies to enjoy the rest of the night

--Nkob is endlessly fascinating and gorgeous

--had a nice night yesterday, pizza AND couscous. But, sadly no couscous pizza.

--an easy ride to Agdez this week to get money from the bank, it can take anywhere from 2.5 hours like today, or 5+. Even better was seeing two people I knew : one a Spanish speaker and the other a younger man wanting to know Spanish. So, more chance to share my Iberian passion with them!

--being happy for Youtube, and the endless amount of nice songs there, e.g.:

--OK, the sun is setting, time to go on the roof with my copy of ''Kite Runner'' or ''The Harlem Renaissance Reader'' and enjoy life, with the aid of a Maoufid chocolate milk box and a Coconut flavored yogurt. Even two of each, potentially, I'll have to check the fridge.

I recognize this has a Krapp´s Last Tape -type feel to it, when I insert my comments from now on what I wrote then. Ill try to keep that to a minimum, for that reason.

---

September 2009

Nice day today. Tomorrow we are going to the market. Went swimming in the ocean, and I feel like I really fit in with some of these people. I participated in Ramadan by not eating lunch,hanging out with the muslim language professors instead (arabic is fun! but it's really unusual). Then, a group of people came looking for me because they expected me to be there.

[Update two years later -- I only passed up lunch once in order to be with the Language coordinators, but wish I had done it more: doing that and I felt much more welcome by them the rest of the time we were together, something crucial since they were the first introduction to Morocco and its people]

People are surfing, and I will take some of my money tomorrow and try to buy an Oud. I want to get one and show it off for a few days to other musicians that might be interested in learning it. So that is exciting to me to be playing something new. There is a gorgeous terrace outside of my window, and we have done yoga on it each night, overlooking the ocean. I'm getting better at reading the arabic script, and the staff is so supportive.

Tuesday we split into two groups and go to live with our training host families for about 9 weeks. It will be good to get into a routine and to see how fast we progress, but it will be sad to say goodbye to about 20 of our 63 person group.

I'll try and update my blog and write some more in-depth things for people that don't know about this process. I was able to talk toWilson online earlier, and he was making quiche. He used 4 eggs to make one deep dish quiche, and so i was able to send him your recipe. supposedly he got i

The food has been fine so far. We have a vegetarian table and tonite the staff made us french fries in place of the rice and meat that the others had.

Goodn ite~ i love you

Seated in a room with some medical volunteers, listening to them talk about their upcoming projects, the last Med projects as such for Peace Corps Morocco until another revolution in programming brings the program back. They seem really with it// there's talk of blood pressure presentations, SIDA workshops (AIDS), diabetes, dental hygiene, hand hygiene, food hygiene. And so forth. We always were jealous of each other, us programs. In one room, silent intense discussions about the more intractible developmental issues. In ours, hysterics, antics and the discussion of how to best utilize Hangman as a student retention and English warm up activity. Learning all of the words to a half dozen camp songs. The jealousy consisted of entertainment vs. legitimacy. They had the levity we never did, and we had the exuberancy. Though I feel they maybe expressed their jealousy the more, we kept our doubts to ourselves as to our function -- at worst, we pass two years as babysitters and ping-pong peddlars. At best, YD can be transcendant. Likely, we persevered because we had a ready audience and clearly delineated goals. But since when was PC ever about that? Especially with YD, you could literally do the same thing in the same place, outside of Peace Corps and make a great deal more money from it. In other words, there's a potential downfall to losing our unique position, we become banal.

There's a huge swarth of changes and a lot of upset people. How do I feel about it? Is it a good idea? What does that question mean and how can people know what a good idea is? The internal gas combustion engine seemed like a good idea over the battery powered kind. But even if it has its upsides, I recognize this is a tragedy, necessary or otherwise, and so I want to say GOOD JOB and that it's Enviro, Health and SBD that most genuinely reflected the purpose of Peace Corps: going out to the places where literally no other aid groups go. And unlike the aid groups--and unlike the now-ascendant Youth program here in PCM--they learn the strange, difficult languages that few speak. And they don't go to the cities in their land rovers but live in the same housing as their constituents.

PC HQ is focused more on numbers, so we'll be in the cities where you can have 100 students a week. Arabic with small bits of Berber to those going to those sites. In comparison, PC Bolivia put me in a town with 300 people. So its a matter of quantity vs quality. But I can relate very strongly to how it feels to know that your work is going to reach a dead-end when you finish: they canceled three training groups during my eight months there, and saw many PCVs go home disappointed that their replacements were sent elsewhere. With each one canceled, we could more clearly feel that our work would be disrupted significantly and the threat of the entire program never recovering. So, a similar spiel.

---

Having a good conversation at the moment : ''I found with my Colombian girlfriend that I'd end up always speaking Spanish to her, and she'd speak back in English to me." W.T.F.? It seems backwards, until you realize... if she speaks native Spanish at me, I'll get lost after the first syllables. Likewise with her if I get down-and-funky with some English awesomeness.

But this girl next to me, learned the same thing through PC life : she found she'd speak Tamazight to her community, and when they could they'd talk back in English. More complex to understand is how these French speakers from all parts of the world, and they'd speak French to her, for her to speak English to the others. Rather than speaking French directly to the others. Haha, not sure but that's what they preferred!

----

So, I've couch-surfed. Something I had not heard of, however, is Monastary Stays. So that might be a thing to keep in mind next time I'm in monastary-type territory // Ireland, fall 2011...? //

Salam walaykum kulshi

Doing fine. Realized just now I've seen nearly all of the corners of this country Morocco in the past couple of weeks--// Agadir to Tangier to Zagora and elsewhere. Pretty astonishing breadth and range, from a Casa night club to the most rural places, and now here within sight of Spain.

A friend from spring camp, Aaron Z, said one of the pitfalls of our model for Peace Corps is that people are headquartered in their site and the nearly endless hours there start to become their conception of the entirety of Morocco--you might say, misinterpreting quantity of time with expertise about what is Moroccan. If you're in your Berber hut washing your clothes day in and day out, you start thinking that is the complete picture, and you're maybe feeling down a lot of the time and so don't have a generous opinion about this place. But if, two days later, you're out dancing at 2 AM surrounded by mainly Moroccans, you have to adjust your perspective about the country. Most of us don't get that, or if we do then it's in our regional city that has the same whiff as the town you came from. I see I've had the fortune of being in enough places all over this country in order to fragment the sovereignty of Nkob as my basis of comparison. That Morocco is still able to surprise is a happy thing for me, even a necessary one. In doing so, it demonstrates its vitality, the same symptom you might have in a healthy marriage.

Here the surprises are the families and women out till midnight, laughing with friends. If not for the veils, you'd see the same with old teens or college students. And much more. OK, more to come. Hoping to get back into the swing of things with my blog. to do that, I'm hoping to review, reflect and come out with some posts of higher literary value than the dubious ones where it's just music videos that I'd been into while here.

This is nice, from CNN.com:

Ten must-read blogs from the Middle East

(CNN) -- Political unrest across the Middle East has increased appetite in the wider world for comment from within the region, and some are turning to bloggers for insider views on the events unfolding on their television screens.

Social media -- including blogging, Twitter and Facebook -- has played an often-crucial role in organizing the protests sweeping the region. But it's not all politics, and blogs about the ups and downs of daily life can offer a fascinating glimpse of real life in the Middle East.

Here, we have drawn up an entirely unscientific list of 10 of the most interesting blogs from the region.

The bloggers come from a variety of backgrounds and countries. Our only criteria were that they are based in the region, write mostly in English and have something worth saying.

Politics in Egypt and the wider Arab world

Arabist is popular for its insightful comment on Egyptian politics. Often thought provoking, it's a good place to monitor developments in post-revolution Egypt.

The principal blogger on this site is Issandr El Amrani, a freelance journalist and commentator for several international publications. El Amrani was born in Morocco, and has lived in Cairo, Egypt, since 2000.

The Saudi woman who got tired of reading "expert" opinion on her country

Riyadh-based mother of three and post-graduate student Eman Al Nafjan, 32, set up her blog Saudiwoman as a response to reading non-Arabs and non-Saudis giving expert opinions on life and culture in the kingdom.

She said: "I felt that I would rather represent myself instead of having others speak for me. There was no long-term plan but eventually I became addicted to it. To me it's an outlet and a way to voice my concerns about everything, including Islamophobia, human rights violations and women's movement in Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian/Israeli conflict."

Saudiwoman was a finalist for Best Asian Blog in the 2011 Bloggies.

Bahrain's "Blogfather"

Mahmood Nasser Al-Yousif, the author of Mahmood's Den, is a long-time blogger who has been described as the region's "Blogfather."

Al-Yousif was recently arrested and briefly detained by the Bahraini authorities. He describes his blog as "an Arab man's attempt at bridging the cultural gap. Trying to make a difference. Failing a lot. Succeeding once in a while."

Young Yemeni woman reporting on protests

Afrah Nasser is a 25-year-old journalist at the Yemen Observer. Nasser has been blogging for just over a year, featuring politics, news and views. Her recent posts have been about the protests in Yemen and include updates from Sanaa's Change Square, a focal point for protest in the capital.

She said: "I love to blog about political topics especially since the revo started. It's my gateway to express my views freely. However, that caused me trouble sometimes."

Nasser said she recently received a threatening message on her Facebook account. Her response? She just translated it from Arabic to English and posted it on her blog.

"Rantings" from Egypt

The Rantings of a Sandmonkey was an anonymous blog until its author Mahmoud Salem went public, saying he had been attacked close to Cairo's Tahrir Square during pro-democracy demonstrations in February this year.

Salem said his car was destroyed and he was beaten up by pro-government thugs in the days before the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.

Sandmonkey has just won the best English language blog -- a people's choice award -- in The Bobs, Deutsche Welle's Blog Awards.

German broadcaster Deutsche Welle said in its citation: "The activist blogger's witty and courageous writing has called for freedom and democracy in Egypt long before this year's uprising."

Flower of Jordan

Naseem Tarawnah, a 24-year-old Masters student, writes the blog BlackIris, named after the national flower of Jordan.

Tarawnah, who lives in Amman, wrote on his blog: "From cultural journeys to poetic ramblings, this blog was created, amongst many things, to address Jordanian issues ranging from the political to the social and to chronicle the extraordinary voyage of metamorphosis that this nation has embarked upon."

Tarawnah is also co-founder of 7iber, an online citizen media platform in Arabic.

Black Iris has won two Brass Crescent Awards for Best Middle Eastern Blog.

Poetry and politics from Gaza

LivefromGaza: 360 square km of chaos is the work of Lina Al Sharif, a 22-year-old English Literature student at the Islamic University in Gaza.

Lina, who started LivefromGaza in 2007, said: "The purpose of my blog is to reflect on the life in Gaza, in general, and on my life particularly.

"My blog's biggest achievement has been in giving a chance to the people of Gaza to narrate the situation as experienced by them.

"I believe my blog helps me to share and to educate people, not just on the hardships, but also the good times."

Definitely not silly, but she is Bahraini and worth reading

Amira Al Hussaini is regional editor for North Africa and the Middle East on Global Voices, an international community of bloggers. She has her own blog, called SillyBahrainiGirl, but is more active on Twitter.

She says in her blog: "A Bahraini girl is never silly but there are some factions out there who insist that we are not given our place in the society."

Want a break from politics? Try 248am for a slice of Kuwaiti life

Mark Makhoul, 32, a creative director at an advertising agency, began his current blog, 248am, in 2005. Mark's wife Nataly Tawil, a designer, makes occasional contributions to the blog. The pair are both Lebanese and live in Kuwait.

While it may not offer the political insight of some of the other blogs on the list, it does present a slice of life in Kuwait, covering art, technology and more, with lots of reader contributions.

And it's not entirely without controversy ... Makhoul is apparently being sued by a Japanese restaurant chain over a negative review.

For something completely different ...

Cartoonist Maya Zankoul, 24, has gained international attention for her blog, Maya's Amalgam, consisting mainly of her illustrations.

Zankoul, who grew up in Saudi Arabia and now works in Lebanon, said: "The workplace in Lebanon was not allowing me to fully express my opinion about the things I was noticing about living in Lebanon and the Lebanese society, so I decided to start my own cartoon series, telling stories from my daily life, from my point of view -- all in illustrations."

Maya's Amalgam has been online since 2009 and her blog illustrations have been made into two books.

Did we miss out your favorite blogs? Which blogs from the region do you think are "must reads?" Share your favorites by commenting below.

Links referenced within this article

Arabist

http://www.arabist.net/

Saudiwoman

http://saudiwoman.wordpress.com/

2011 Bloggies

http://2011.bloggi.es/

Mahmood's Den

http://mahmood.tv/

Afrah Nasser

http://afrahnasser.blogspot.com/

The Rantings of a Sandmonkey

http://www.sandmonkey.org/

attacked

http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/04/police-attack-cairo-tweeter-destroy-car/

BlackIris

http://www.black-iris.com/

7iber

http://www.7iber.com/

Brass Crescent Awards

http://www.brasscrescent.org/

LivefromGaza: 360 square km of chaos

http://livefromgaza.wordpress.com/

SillyBahrainiGirl

http://sillybahrainigirl.blogspot.com/

Twitter

http://twitter.com/justamira

248am

http://www.248am.com/

Maya's Amalgam

http://mayazankoul.com/

Find this article at:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/04/14/bloggers.middle.east/index.html?hpt=Sbin

30 day song challenge part 2

song that reminds you of a person

song that reminds you of a place

song that reminds you of an event

meeting my best friend Cristy Paez

a song you know all the words to

''i can dig the earth until past my death, just to cover you with gold and light'' - song you know all the words to. not true-- i know the syllables that are maybe like the words he says, is about all--but i take the rules more as suggestions. 30 Day Song Challenge

Miscellaneous and evocative videos

Day 5 and 6 of the 30 Day Song challenge

songs that remind you of a place, and of a person

This was on TV, haven't read all of it yet.

Here at the top is the original articles from the Corriere della Sera, then down below the English description (and relevance).

Mamma denuncia 26enne: troppo procace per stare in topless davanti ai figli «Turbata la serenità dei miei ragazzi di 12 e 14 anni»

L'episodio è avvenuto in spiaggia tra Anzio e Lavinio

LITORALE ROMANO Mamma denuncia 26enne: troppo procace per stare in topless davanti ai figli «Turbata la serenità dei miei ragazzi di 12 e 14 anni»

L'episodio è avvenuto in spiaggia tra Anzio e Lavinio

ROMA - Bella e piena di curve. Per qualcuno, troppe per prendere il sole in topless. Luisa D.B., una formosa ragazza romana di 26 anni, è stata denunciata per atti osceni in luogo pubblico. La giovane, che porta una quarta di reggiseno e lavora come commessa in un negozio d'abbigliamento in via del Corso, lunedì mattina stava prendendo il sole in topless su un tratto di spiaggia libera tra Lavinio e Anzio, sul litorale romano. L'AGGRESSIONE - La ragazza, mentre stava spalmandosi la crema solare protettiva anche sul seno, ha subito l'aggressione verbale di una mamma che si trovava anche lei in spiaggia con i suoi due figli maschi di 12 e 14 anni. A raccontare l'episodio, in una nota, è l'avvocato Gianluca Arrighi, incaricato dall'avvenente commessa di assumere la sua difesa. Luisa D.B., secondo le accuse della signora, avrebbe «turbato» la serenità dei suoi figli, sorpresi dalla madre mentre osservavano con estrema attenzione l'attività della signorina intenta a spalmarsi la crema solare sul seno. «SI RICOMPONGA!» - La signora ha invitato la ragazza a «ricomporsi» e, visto il rifiuto della giovane a rimettersi il pezzo di sopra del bikini, ha preso i suoi due figli e si è recata in commissariato dove ha denunciato Luisa D.B. per il reato di atti osceni. La ragazza è stata quindi identificata dalle forze dell'ordine e invitata ad eleggere il domicilio, ricevendo in sostanza un avviso di garanzia, relativamente al conseguente procedimento penale incardinato dinanzi alla procura di Velletri. «A fronte di una formale denuncia, l'iscrizione della mia assistita nel registro degli indagati risulta un atto dovuto. Tuttavia prendere il sole in topless sulla spiaggia non può certo essere considerata una condotta illecita né tantomeno può integrare il delitto di atti osceni spalmarsi sul seno la crema solare protettiva. Molto rumore per nulla - ha concluso il penalista - tutto si risolverà in una bolla di sapone».Denunciò donna in topless condannata per calunnia È stata condannata ad un anno di reclusione per calunnia la donna che lo scorso anno denunciò Luisa D.B., giovane commessa romana, perché prendeva il sole in topless in spiaggia. La sentenza è stata emessa dal gup di Roma previo patteggiamento e con sospensione condizionale della condanna. L' imputata aveva denunciato per atti osceni la commessa, ritenendo che quest' ultima, spalmandosi la crema solare sul seno, avesse turbato i suoi figli adolescenti. Il procedimento penale nei confronti di Luisa D.B. fu archiviato e a finire sotto processo, per calunnia, è stata la denunciante. Nell' udienza tenutasi davanti al gup, la commessa, assistita dall' avvocato Gianluca Arrighi, non si è costituita parte civile, poiché è già stata risarcita in sede stragiudiziale con 25 mila euro.

---

In case this is Greek to you, the basic gist is : in Italy a topless woman was sued in court after she applied suntan lotion to her body on the beach, for acting indecently in front of the other lady's children.

Italy being Italy, a great place at times, the finely tanned lady then won the original verdict, decided to countersue for 'defamation of character' and won 25,000 euros. The person telling me this had an amazed look of triumph and irony on their face. In my mind was a lot of turbulence and incredulity, with a tinge of irony, considering where I live-- the story did not end as I expected.

I picked this up from Rachel Weiner, my old province-mate. So first her two and then my two, and the explications as well.

Day 1 is "your favorite song"

Rachel: This is my favorite song right now. Calm at first, and happy in the middle - it's everything I want right now.

Ben: This is HER favorite of hers, and it's one of the more serious and musically dynamic tunes she's written. I redid a version where it builds into a Free Bird-type shred-fest but didn't get to perform it yet (with EVH-style tapping).

Day # 2 - least favorite song

Ben: not much into the Zanga Zanga Qhaddafi remixes going around -- creepy dude. But talk about a great way using humor to dis-arm him, literally.

Rachel: Born this way by Lady Gaga

Day 3 is "a song that makes you happy"

Rachel: I'm posting this an hour early because I know I won't have great access to Facebook tomorrow. I love this song in Portuguese. Check out a snippet of the lyrics: "We are free to celebrate, we are free to release. Like children playing, children laughing, children being children..." How can that NOT make you happy?

My pick (there was a tie, and an honorable mention) : Heard this first in Riomaggiore with i miei amici novi: Sara, Kelsi and Douglas the Brazilian paulista I met there

Then, this is tied with the other one, or maybe a little bit ahead. First glance and i thought it was dubbed over with the real music because the sugar hill gang part sounded too much like the original...?

a good one-two punch is this and then the Evolution of Dance

Not sure what the next day is supposed to be, but i'm having fun already.

---

And... why not? More makes-for-a-happy-Ben -ish songs. '' It's time now to learn Portuguese... it's time now to learn what I know, and what I don't know...''

Real Madrid and Barcelona are Spain's richest and most successful football teamsTheir rivalry began in 1902, when Barcelona won a Spanish Cup semi-final 3-1The pair have since shared 51 Spanish La Liga titles, Madrid winning 31 to Barca's 20In 2011 Barcelona and Real Madrid were drawn to play four times in 18 days

(CNN) -- There are few rivalries in sport that capture the imagination like the coming together of Real Madrid and Barcelona -- a soccer match that has such enormity that is has its own nickname: "El Clasico." On the field, it is a billion-dollar grudge match between the two best teams in the football-mad country of Spain. Off the field, it is a tale of two cities -- a clash of Castilian nationalism and Catalan pride; and a rivalry of cultures forged in the Spanish civil war and the reign of General Franco. In a freak of fixture commitments, the superpowers of Spain will have met four times in the space of 18 days by May 4, giving the historic rivalry an epic new chapter. Is Real Madrid's Jose Mourinho the master of mind games? ''In Spain, the population of Catalonia don't consider themselves Spanish''

--Adi-Oula Sebastian, barcablaugranes.

Billion-dollar ball game The modern-day El Clasico brings together the world's two highest earning sports clubs -- boasting combined revenues of over $1 billion, according to Deloitte.

The great rivals also lead the sports world in wages. According to Sporting Intelligence, Barca paid an average salary of $7.9 million to players last season, with Madrid dishing out $7.4 million. The New York Yankees baseball team are third on the list, paying an average $6.8 million. "Both teams (Madrid and Barca) have steadily grown their revenue streams in recent years, contributing to their on-pitch performance through investment in better facilities, players and the development of youth team players," said Dan Jones, sports business partner at Deloitte. But while the two teams clearly share a license to print money, they have contrasting approaches to the business of spending it. Madrid are famed for their extravagance -- with the $130 million paid to Manchester United for Cristiano Ronaldo in 2009, typical of their cavalier policy in the transfer market. They profess the '"Galaticos" mentality -- a team of superstars -- demonstrated by a 2010-11 squad that cost at eye-watering $689 million to assemble. Barca are not without their big-name signings, but rely far more heavily on homegrown talent -- with the likes of Lionel Messi, and Spanish World Cup winners Xavi and Andres Iniesta, products of the club's youth academy. Barca's current squad cost just $254 million to assemble. History of rivalry Barcelona and Real Madrid played for the first time in 1902, but the rivalry soon transcended the confines of a soccer match. Barca came to represent the fight for Catalan independence from Spain, and a rejection of the nationalist sovereignism that ruled the country from Madrid -- especially under the rule of Franco, who came to power at the culmination of the bloody Spanish Civil War in 1939. Madrid fans view these games as a playful argument about the way to see and understand the country as a whole

--Gabe Lezra, managingmadrid.com "In Spain, the population of Catalonia don't consider themselves Spanish," said Adi-Oula Sebastian, editor of Barca fan site barcablaugranes.com. "When the General Franco dictatorship forbade the use of regional dialects, the Camp Nou (Barcelona's home stadium) became one of the few places Catalans were allowed to speak their language, without having to fear repercussions." Madrid were the all-powerful institution. They had political and royal backing -- the "Real" in their name, meaning "Royal", was a gift from King Alfonso XIII in 1920 -- and from the 1950s, boasted a collection of the world's best and most glamorous players. "For Madrid fans, the game isn't just about getting one over on our eternal rivals; it's about winning a small argument about the country itself," said Gabe Lezra, editor of fan site, managingmadrid.com "In many ways, Madrid fans view these games as a playful argument about the way to see and understand the country as a whole." The relationship was exacerbated by the transfer of Alfredo Di Stefano to Madrid in 1953. The Argentine was wanted by both clubs, and both thought they'd signed him. But it was Madrid who got the legendary striker, and Di Stefano duly prompted a decade of dominance at the Bernabeu. Barca have always suspected foul play. Their official website claims a "royal decree" persuaded Di Stefano to join Madrid, and there has long been the suggestion that the establishment pushed the deal through. "To this day supporters of Barcelona feel robbed, while Madrid fans argue the legitimacy of the deal," said Sebastian. "Imagine if Michael Jordan gave his word to sign for the Chicago Bulls, then joined the New York Knicks instead!" There's no one to touch Messi at the moment. People compare him to the great Diego Maradona, and it's a fair comparison

--Tim Hanlan, author El Clasico personalities The El Clasico as we find it today is defined by two world-class players, and two world-beating coaches. It is Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo against Barca's Messi on the field, and Jose Mourinho against Pep Guardiola on the sidelines.Ronaldo is the powerfully built Portuguese winger, with speed to burn and an armory of tricks at his disposal. Messi is the pint-size Argentine genius, who took Ronaldo's crown as World Player of the Year in 2009 -- and retained the award in 2010. "There's no one to touch Messi at the moment. People compare him to the great Diego Maradona, and it's a fair comparison," said Tim Hanlan, author of A Catalan Dream. "Ronaldo is not quite on the same level, but his strength and pace can make him just as effective as Messi on his day." Both players are in the midst of prolific seasons in front of goal, with each vying for Europe's top goal scorer. Their coaches have equally impressive resumes. Guardiola took over at Barcelona 2008, and led his team to Champions League glory in his first season in charge. Mourinho oversaw Porto's shock European triumph in 2004, and repeated the feat with Inter Milan in 2010. "I've always loved Mourinho. Since his time at Porto I wanted him to join Madrid," said Lezra. "He's a brilliant tactician, an incredible motivator and a born winner. And his personality fits Real Madrid perfectly." Mourinho is a brilliant tactician, an incredible motivator and a born winner. And his personality fits Real Madrid perfectly

--Gabe Lezra. managingmadrid.com Footballing duopoly

Until relatively recently the Real-Barca rivalry was a one-sided affair. Madrid built dynasties in the 1950s and 1960s, and continued to dominate domestically and in Europe, throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Barca enjoyed sporadic success, but it wasn't until the early 1990s that they finally launched a dynasty of their own -- winning four titles in a row under Dutch coach Johan Cruyff, before lifting their first European Cup in 1992. The balance of power shifted back and forth over the next 15 years, but as we find the rivalry today, Barca are in the ascendancy. Guardiola's team have won the last two Spanish titles, and claimed their third Champions League in 2009. Meanwhile, Madrid are without a European success since 2002. "Barcelona are definitely on top right now. They've put together a great team, and have been playing the same style, with more or less the same players, for the last four years or so," said Lezra. "Madrid, on the other hand, have fired managers, brought in new players and made various tactical adjustments -- not a good strategy if you're looking for long-term success." Whether Barca can stay on stop will undoubtedly be influenced by the outcome of this year's Champions League semifinal -- the latest chapter in a rivalry as fierce and colorful as any in sport. "The rivarly between Barcelona and Real Madrid is special because both teams are made up of superstars," said Sebastian. "You'll be hard pressed to find as many world-class players sharing the pitch at the same time. In football, the El Clasico rivalry is as good as it gets."

Unveiled: First Turkish Woman Poses for German <i>Playboy</i>

This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in the leading German daily Die Welt. Germany's ongoing struggle with integration, usually carried out with grim zeal and intellectual debates, experienced a surprisingly sensual turn last week. The appearance of Turkish-German actress Sila Sahin's attractive, naked body in the May issue of Playboy magazine shows how young women with immigrant backgrounds can rid themselves of religious and cultural constraints, without needing to cite statistics or elaborate arguments provided by integration experts. (See a brief history of the Playboy Club.) It's usually no longer a big deal when a celebrity or starlet takes off her clothes for the men's magazine. The unrelenting overexposure to sexually explicit images in the media, advertisements and the Internet has made public nudity so socially acceptable that we barely take notice. But the 25-year-old Sahin, who plays "Ayala" in the RTL German soap opera "Good Times, Bad Times" (Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten/ GZSZ) managed to link her public exposure to the debate over a central socio-political issue: that young Muslim—in this case, Turkish — women are not allowed to make the same kind of decisions over their own lives and bodies that the daughters of the sexually revealing majority have been able to make for some time. "For me, these pictures are an act of liberation from the cultural constraints of my childhood," says Sahin. "I have tried to please everybody for too long. With these images I want to show young Turkish women that it is OK to live the way they are; that it is not cheap to show skin; that you should pursue your goals instead of bowing down to others." Playboy could use the PR It may very well be that the first appearance of a Turkish woman on the cover of the German Playboy is most of all a welcome opportunity for the glossy magazine, which could use the immigration debate to boost its somewhat out-of-date image. And the still relatively unknown Sahin was admittedly presented with a PR opportunity to stick out of the daily host of nudes by fashioning herself as a brave trailblazer for emancipation. Still, her interview in the magazine opens a window into the patronizing situations young Muslim girls and women have to deal with on a daily basis. Growing up "with a father who is an actor and a very conservative mother, I am not speaking for everyone, but in my case, things were black or white. Sex before marriage was bad, you have to pray every Friday and so on." For a long time she "thought I have to do what the man says." (See Hugh Hefner's storied life.) Purists of female emancipation and cultural critics may sniff at the fact that Sila Sahin sees an act of liberation in posing naked for men who are not primarily interested in intellectual discourse. But the tastefully shot nude photos of the young Turkish woman remind us that the reviled commercialization of the female body that today seems just like an unavoidable part of every day life, played an important role in the history of female emancipation in the Western world. With Sahin's nude pictures framed as a contribution to the debate over emancipation of young Muslim women, the German Playboy builds on the historical tradition of the American original. Its first edition, published in 1953 with a Marilyn Monroe centerfold, was undeniably the journalistic spearhead of a then still dormant sexual openness in a strictly puritan America.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2066491,00.html#ixzz1KTGdu4zz

Like no other magazine, Playboy stood for a liberal socio-political spirit, whose breakthrough in 1960s America it largely helped facilitate. The subsequent rise of feminist criticism of patriarchic structures of society largely discredited the political standing of the magazine and its founder, Hugh Heffner, who recently celebrated his 85th birthday. Symbolic counter point to "the girl with the head scarf." (See TIME's review of the Hugh Hefner documentary.) If nothing else, Sila Sahin's campaign to use nudity as a means to self-determination teaches us that this criticism may well have been shortsighted. Because the legitimate debate over if or when the display of naked female bodies starts to hurt female dignity or, on the contrary, promotes it, presumes the ability of the woman to decide for herself whether she wants her naked body to be depicted or not. That's how the right to pose naked gains an undeniable importance and explosiveness — also for the struggle within in the Muslim community over its relationship to the secular, open society. That Sila Sahin faces threats not only from within her own family for her explicit pictures, but also from radical Turkish nationalistic groups, illustrates this. We have to realize and acknowledge that the trivial pop and lifestyle culture is a powerful force in debates over emancipation, because they deliver the emblematic images that can pull a society in one direction or the other. By creating an attractive example of the self-determined, young Turkish woman who wants to live just as freely and unburdened as her German peers without immigrant roots, Sahin's pictures have the potential to set a symbolic counter point to the recent trend of the "girl with the head scarf." The beautiful pictures are breathing new life into the values of the constitution and our liberal legal system that are too often just hailed in the abstract. Now we would certainly like to know what German feminists have to say. In the past, they led campaigns against nude covers on magazines. Today they fight against the mandate for women to cover themselves in the Muslim community. The fact that young Muslim women are using nudity as a beacon against their entrapment in their traditional culture could undermine some conventional wisdom in the feminist community. Also from Worldcrunch: Libya: The Birth Of Press Freedom In Benghazi — Le Monde Meet Vladimir Pozner, Russia's Larry King — Le Figaro See the 2011 TIME 100 Poll See the 140 Best Twitter Feeds

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2066491,00.html#ixzz1KT7r0zs4

This is from letter 133 of Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo. It's just part -- if you see a copy of this book, it's worth picking up! To me, this fragment of a letter is exactly the way most Peace Corps volunteers feel 90 percent of the time.

July 1880

I am writing somewhat at random, writing whatever flows from my pen. I should be very happy if you could see in me something more than a kind of fainéant [ne'er-do-well]. For there is a great difference between one ne'er-do-well and another ne'er-do-well. There is someone who is an idler out of laziness and lack of character, owing to the baseness of his nature. If you like, you may take me for one of those. Then there is the other kind of idler, the idler despite himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action who does nothing because his hands are tied, because he is, so to speak, imprisoned somewhere, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because disastrous circumstances have brought him forcibly to this end. Such a one does not always know what he can do, but he nevertheless instinctively feels, I am good for something! My existence is not without reason! I know that I could be a quite a different person! How can I be of use, how can I be of service? There is something inside me, but what can it be? He is quite another ne'er-do-well. If you like you may take me for one of those. A caged bird in spring knows perfectly well that there is some way in which he should be able to serve. He is well aware that there is something to be done, but he is unable to do it. What is it? He cannot quite remember, but then he gets a vague inkling and he says to himself, “The others are building their nests and hatching their young and bringing them up,” and then he bangs his head against the bars of the cage. But the cage does not give way and the bird is maddened by pain. “What a ne'er-do-well,” says another bird passing by - what an idler. Yet the prisoner lives and does not die. There are no outward signs of what is going on inside him; he is doing well, he is quite cheerful in the sunshine. But then the season of the great migration arrives, an attack of melancholy. He has everything he needs, say the children who tend him in his cage - but he looks out, at the heavy thundery sky, and in his heart of hearts he rebels against his fate. I am caged, I am caged and you say I need nothing, you idiots! I have everything I need, indeed! Oh! please give me the freedom to be a bird like other birds! A kind of ne'er-do-well of a person resembles that kind of ne'er-do-well of a bird. And people are often unable to do anything, imprisoned as they are in I don't know what kind of terrible, terrible, oh such terrible cage. I do know that there is a release, the belated release. A justly or unjustly ruined reputation, poverty, disastrous circumstances, misfortune, they all turn you into a prisoner. You cannot always tell what keeps you confined, what immures you, what seems to bury you, and yet you can feel those elusive bars, railings, walls. Is all this illusion, imagination? I don't think so. And then one asks: My God! will it be for long, will it be for ever, will it be for eternity? Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives. Moreover, the prison is sometimes called prejudice, misunderstanding, fatal ignorance of one thing or another, suspicion, false modesty. But to change the subject - if I have come down in the world, you have in a different way come up in it. And if I have forfeited sympathy, you have gained it. I am glad of that, I say that it in all sincerity, and it will always give me pleasure. If you lacked seriousness or consideration, I would be fearful that it might not last, but since I think that you are very serious and very considerate, I tend to believe it will! But if you could see me as something other than an idler (ne'er-do-well) of the bad sort, I should be very happy.------

And a different and likewise good discovery

Comfort Corn ChowderTwo smaller potatoes

One onion

Other veggies as desired/available (celery, carrots, etc.)

A handful of macaroni pasta

Half a tin can of corn

Half of the larger -size jugs of milk in the blue package

Spices: I used Mrs Dash and Creole seasoning from home, but either Italian, curry powder or Ras El-Hanut would be good.

Dice the vegetables. Cook the onion in either butter or oil until it's translucent. Add a little flower, then add everything else all at once: veggies, milk and pasta. Bring it up to a boil and when the potatoes are done, then it is finished (15 minutes or so the first time I did it). Letting it cool some helps bring out the flavor-- but not too much! If you have very fine pasta, add it later than the other things.

This came from Jamie Oliver's site (Mr.'' Food Revolution'').http://www.jamieoliver.com/us/recipes/vegetarian-recipes/corn-chowder

It's super easy, low in fat and high on feeling better-ness. Bon chance!

Spring camp was a blast! One of my best experiences here, and sad that it'll only happen one more time.

SET LIST after playing 2 hours of music each day with my camp kids.

Wake up

The Cave

Cheek to Cheek - Fred Astaire

Free Fallin' Tom Petty

Love me tender

You are not alone

If I only had a brain

and just for fun:

Iwer George

PC has given me this weird feeling of having woken up from a dream. It's a false feeling-- but strong nonetheless.

HOME (?)

So, I think ive realized something: somehow, being here has stopped being magical and exotic and new, and instead the US has started being that. There's something about this traditional lifestyle and the modesty of it that in my mind, makes this feel natural, normal . And the idea of a country with the interstate system, and everyone has a car, big green lawns, the restaurants sell you 3x more food than you can eat, everyone's got 3 or 4 digital devices that all work together-- that somehow seems unbelievable, like a scifi movie world that they say i belong to. and i know that in my bones, but there's this cognitive dissonance.... THIS feels more emotionally like the world i'd expect if i didnt know the other existed .

Not sure if that's clear-- i used to explaina PC as ''the chance to understand how your grandparent's used to live."'

1930/40's USA- when our grandparents were our age.

While now we relate to them, knowing what it's like not to have indoor heating, or AC; not to take but one shower a week; not to have a television; no car; people in the streets rushing outside when they hear an airplane, everyone knows everybody else enough to know when they've been gone away on a trip; you got a phone but maybe no money to operate it, you see the face of the animal you eat the day before, etc. But above all, work. In a town where everyone is either a shopkeeper, a butcher or a construction worker, it seems insane that a person would be able to feasably and comfortably support their families with some of the common jobs that we have back home: party advisor, lobbyist, intellectual.

So maybe in my soul, ive adopted the same disbelief that you see in their eyes when you show them Skype video-chat with somebody on the other side of the world, and its clear and full-screen and can talk direct to them with no delay. It is partly, even much lesser things shock and amaze me and remind me more of disneyland than the real world : the silverware at Hartmut's hotel on the other side of Nkob, seems like the forks and spoons of a king, not just the ones you'd expect everyone to have.

Maybe that's more of the heart of the matter -- I can imagine these things existing to this very high degree of quality, but the surprise is that nearly anyone can afford them. Or better said, amazed that they once could afford all the things they already have. Same feeling as when I was with Cristina C in Lausanne, talking about how can anyone has the money for those sumtuous buildings to be their life.

But the unreallity will be felt all over, I'm sure, and in many different ways.

Birthday luck! this came super-fast, 2.5 or 3 weeks, and though i knew it wouldnt be here yet, i went 20 minutes ago, stood in line, they didnt react--they like to keep it suspenseful if i have anything or not, dead-panning their reaction to seeing me--then the postman walked into the back room, not a word said to me, and came back with this baby, a good 15-20 pounds of goodness!

PLUS two good oldie's from Puerto Rico and elsewhere

This week in the mail, I got a birthday present, a copy of Bolano's swirling, multi-faceted novel 2666. Roberto Bolano, the Chileno that died a year before this novel was brought to market--the most bold writer, known for his leadership of the literary movement in the 70's that sought to distance themselves from the vanguard of Latin American literature, standing up on the counter, shaking his fist with one hand and his literary-philosophical manifesto with the other, afraid that the enormous breadth of literature coming from the non-English part of the Americas would be reduced to a footnote of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, thousands of voices carried away with the tide of Cien anios de soledad.

Having yet to read anything by him, other than 10 pages of the Savage Detectives, I got sucked into this work and have polished off a third of it thus far. But with my head cloudy the whole day today, I retired to my favorite part of the palmerie, trying to think about my role here and how I can do things better. Earlier in the week, one of the Moroccan men was drunk and asked me for 200 dirhams, saying that since I got paid to sit here and do nothing, then he deserved the money as much as I did. I knew better than to reduce my presence here to that, of a tourist on an extended vacation. But his words had bite and I've had a hard time getting over them. If anything, they are valuable in that they've already spurred me on to work harder, to reevaluate the town's perception of me. ''Nothing worse than representing a country'', is the first words in Julio Cortazar's epic Rayuela. And, I'm aware that my presence here can be more damaging than good, depending on how many people agree with that man's assertion.

A second thing reinforced what the man said, since I'd had one of my top students ask when do I start girl's classes again, and when we agreed to meet the next day, the girl never came. This was several months ago, and since I never saw her, I didn't know why they decided not to resume the classes with me. Yesterday, however, I found out: my sister Ilhem had told the girl that I wasn't interested in teaching anymore.

The truth is, of course I want to teach! That's why I came here. The difficult part, though, is that I don't want to teach unless it's meaningful and set up in the right way. I don't want to just go through the motions, and I'd complained in the past to Ilhem about how difficult it can be to get the right conditions. What I wanted was to find people that I'd work with everyday, and have the same kind of exchange that I'd gotten so reliably with my host family at our house. Before, I'd have some promising students but others would get involved, the class would grow too large, etc. etc. My major concern has been, these people are doing just fine without me, where will my contributions outweigh the possible damage I might do, in terms of dependency and taking away their autonomy? It's tough, and rarely do I find something acceptable other than my guitar lessons.

Walking in the palmerie, I reflected that, I've been here so long, no matter how valiantly I'd work, I've likely fixed the town's perception of me. Close to 18 months or so here, it's long enough to have gone through the initial reaction, the second and third reevaluations of my character, and then enough repetition for the concrete to set. And I've struggled to get things going again in a good way after Ramadan, certainly. But as the sun set and I was seated on my favorite rock, at the extreme end of the palmerie, by the dried river bed that winds its way up into the mountains, surrounded on one side by a grassy knoll leading back to the town, and behind me the lone palm tree within my square, its silhouette cutting into the perfect blue and purple haze that was the afterglow from the already expired sunset--these questions took a larger turn, prompted by these two people but also by my reading.

In 2666, a book nearly impossible to define succinctly,the first part is concerned with 4 cultural critics from Spain, who find themselves in Sonora, a border town in Northern Mexico. The writing is very neutral, letting the characters paint themselves as they will via their own actions, without much commentary. Having said that, it's safe to assume that the book resonates for different people in different ways, rather than being guided to a foregone conclusion of the author's conclusion.

The 4 critics are all professors at the best European institutions, and when they arrive at this middle-of-nowhere town, big enough to have a University but one that they assume to be of no importance. They go to this desert town, and constantly roll their eyes at the presumption of the professors and staff at the university, assuming from the get-go that these people would have nothing to contribute.

And, as you might guess, this presumption instead does little more than show their own ignorance. How can this person be an expert on this German writer, if he hasn't ever been to the conferences that we host? One crucial scene concerns the critics coming to the man's house, and as he prepares the food, they look at how a book has been clothes-pinned to the clothes line outside, where it's been for months, subject to the weather. They don't even bring it up, but all of the people are confused by it and don't understand it. Only later do we see the man, back when he first put it up, explaining that this was one of the quirkier, idea of Marel Duchamp, the 1920's French intellectual-provacateur. In place of assuming the person might be an equal, instead they jump to assume the least in them and then reevaluate that as time goes by. This, rather than starting from a position of mutual benefit, that the street might be two-way rather than the center/periphery relationship that the critics adopt automatically as they fly away from Europe.

Living in a small, desert town that itself is on the periphery of Morocco, these passages have their own resonance. I laugh and I see my own evolution and growth as a person, meeting extremely talented individuals on a regular basis, and happy to see that they are in a country where those talents will be utilized more than in most places. The sad thing is to think, not many people coming through Nkob stay long enough to get that flavor. Now, that said, it leads me to the opposite pole: am I that misunderstood creature? And certainly I am. And, the big goal of PC is to overcome that, trying not so much to sell the US, as if you're trying to make people fall in love with the place, but more to make it understood-- a crucial difference.

Now, Goal 2, some view as the most easy: your presence alone suffices. Just being there, and they say, ''ah, ok, all gringos ain't alike'' or ''the mirikanin are not so stupid as we thought!'' This is the hope, that being a calm, patient, rational individual over a steady period of time would undo a lot of the damage of our one-way cultural capital machine-- Hollywood, San Bernadino Valley, K Street (where they make 95 precent of all the gory action movies and porn films in the world, and US policy, respectively). Often, Goal 2 is as easy as saying, No, it's not Jean Claude Van Damme that is the mayor, it's Scwarzennegger and he's the Governor of California. Unless they're talking about Clint Eastwood, and he WAS mayor, or else Reagan. And I think the Moroccan people around me are generally media-savy enough to understand that our lifestyle is not accurately depicted in the films.

Rarely do I meet someone that already isn't enamored of the potential and the reality of the American Dream. Whether it's a man in Lille, France--a Chti speaker-- reenacting the Towers falling, running his finger down his cheek, demonstrating tears, or a taxi driver that has family back in the States, the US usually seems able to sell itself without my active participation.

One strange aspect of living here is the fact that, there are often rules for the people from here, and different rules for the people that aren't. Often this is expressed in, ''it's OK, we know you're not Muslim.'' To me, that's a particularly strange but laudable way of thinking, one that is often missing in the US itself -- where you hear the cry of,''assimilate or die.''

One lengthy argument I had not too long ago involved

--larby argument

--only harm masturbation causes is when your religion makes you feel guilty about it

--the important thing to remember is, there's a difference between how we are and the way we'd like to be. the culture arrives but you don't see the people's own delibarations, their own criticisms of it. being the way we are doesn't mean, it's the way we feel is best. Like anyone on the news, you hear the bad things but you don't often hear about the people trying to make things better.

--automatically coming from two different starting points, one place more liberal and another more conservative. how do you defend that we are fine with gay marriage, expecting people to have premarital sex (but giving them information about how to protect themselves, telling them to wait till the time is right, when they are responsible enough to handle the experience of it, emotionally, and the effects of it, socially).

I put this on my blog already, but it was at the end of a long speech. So here it is again, in case you missed it.

I have two of my best friends here in Morocco that are seeking funding for their worthy projects.

''Today, in the midst of beautiful olive groves and rocky slopes we worked on the basics of wilderness first-aid with our CLIMB team. We have raised over 2/3 of our funds for our project, but we still have a ways to go. See how you can help this group of Moroccan youth climb the tallest mountain in North Africa:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=378-146

Thanks to everyone who has already donated! Every little bit helps!''

Anna H. near Taroudant

&

DO YOU ENJOY PLAYING SPORTS? Can you imagine a childhood without sports? DONATE TO MY PROJECT!!! You will be able to help over 250 children in a small town in Morocco. Every lil bit helps!

A Court for Kids | Donate to Volunteer Projects | Peace Corps Mari Y. down in Tata (one of my favorite areas here in Morocco, and often the last to get assistance from Rabat)

March -- try to start up a Journalism club and a Theatre club

April - Spring camp -- in place of Al Hoceima, now I'm coordinating.... Sefrou spring camp! My first love, here in Morocco, I'll get the chance to spend a week there, hiking, feasting on pomegranates, the fruit salad guy across from the jazz cafe.

May 5-fly to Milan again .... / 6 Sade concert ... / 7-11 Cinque Terre ... / 11th, TURANDOT at La Scala / 12 Fly home to Agadir (it's half the cost of flying to Marrakesh I found)

May 28 -- Shakira at the OLM Festival in Rabat

June -- Paris trip. Maybe Lille for the Fete de la musique, and then on over to the Van Gogh museum?

Inshallah as a 3 minute jazz impression, inspired by the Brazilian movie Orfeu Negro

Original tracks from the film, from the unbeatable Montreux Jazz fest, one of my top Brazilian songs ever

And the same guy again:

''I like to think of those 200 million children around the world who don't have any access to primary or secondary school, as 200 million minds that can reach their full potential and become the scientists and the inventors of tomorrow, the teachers, the artists, the environmentalists of tomorrow, the doctors who can cure our illnesses, the wonder makers of tomorrow. I’d like to imagine the world in a few years from now as a big think tank of revolutionary and vital ideas generated by the children that today live in remote and vulnerable places in the world.

Que viva Colombia! (Que viva!)

I believe in humanity, and it's enormous potential, and I believe we are only at the threshold of what we can all achieve. The best is yet to come.''

The full text of Shaki's Harvard speech.

On Saturday, Shakira was named Harvard's Artist of the Year, at a ceremony at the university. On accepting the award, Shakira gave the following speech:

President Faust, Dean Smith, Dean Fitzsimmons, Professor Pfister

Dr. Counter, my dear friend Howard Buffet and, above all, the students of Harvard university.

Thank you so much for the honor you have paid me today.

I’m thrilled to be here, thank you so for such a warm welcome, I've had a lovely day here in Harvard and I feel extremely humbled

I graduated school when I was 15, and except for taking a history course at UCLA in the summer of 2008, I promise you I haven’t been in a classroom. So… as I entered the premises today I had to call my mother and tell her: hey mom guess what ! I got into Harvard! Of course she knew it was only for a day!

Now, normally when I get on stage, and for the audience’s sake and sanity I'm allowed to sing and dance ONLY.

It’s why you’ll have to forgive me for making the most of this occasion abusing the podium and sharing some of my thoughts.

Not every day I'm presented with the opportunity to talk to a group of people that soon will plant relevant ideas in the heads and hearts of generations to come.

So don’t blame me if I'd like to share with you some of the thoughts that crossed my mind on the plane ride coming here or things I've learned from people I've known through my trips while advocating for universal education in the developing world.

Now I don’t have to tell this audience about the power of education.

This is the place where the brightest and the best have come to study, to learn and to teach for well over 300 years.

Your predecessors, the graduates of this university – and a few of her drop-outs – have gone onto shape this country and our world for the better.

So you have – just like I do today in receiving this award – big shoes to fill.

But that’s a challenge you will relish. For you are not at Harvard by accident or luck. It’s your intelligence and hard work that got you here.

And there is nowhere better to help you shape your human potential than this great place of learning.

Not everyone can study at this university, of course.

But everyone, wherever they live, whatever their background, deserves the chance to make the most of his and her potential.

Now, as you will know I am certainly no Mother Teresa. And there are many worthy people who dedicate their lives to changing those of children around the world.

It is they who should be on this stage before you talking about education. But not all of them have this chance, today I do.

What I am is a little woman with a big mouth.

A woman who has been blessed with a big platform to lend her voice for those who don’t have one.

As a child of the developing world, it is my duty to use this voice in every way I can to promote the message about the power of education to change lives.

The scandal is that many millions are condemned forever to a life of poverty and segregation even before they become adults.

I saw this all around me when I was growing up in Colombia, and in Latin America, which is the most unequal region in the world. I learnt that in Latin America, as is the case right across the developing world, that if you are born poor, you will die poor.

I remember vividly growing up in my hometown of Barranquilla, I saw children near my house who were smart and vivacious with enormous talents, children who probably sang and danced much better than me, however they were living in the streets with nothing. No hope, no future.

As a child seeing all this made me sad but, more importantly, it made me angry. Later life gave me the chance to channel all that inconformity when I realized that there were solutions to these issues (and thank God because so much anger cannot live in such small body). So I soon understood that the more we talk about those things that bother us and seem impossible to be fixed the more we can fix them. No child has to die poor and unfulfilled just because he or she were born poor. I know for a fact that with a bit of effort and a ton of conviction; fate can be changed

We know that implementing universal education is hard, especially to create the political will and reform the cultures. But it can be done.

Let¹s be bold. We have the ideas, the intelligence, the human resources, governments have the money and young people have the influence. The ball is in our court.

If we all want the eradication of poverty, promoting education for all, will be the fastest vehicle to take us there.

200 million children currently live without access to primary and secondary education this can only be a synonym of hunger, resentment, violence, discrimination, war.

Education is the way to guarantee this doesn’t happen, and to ensure global security and economic development. It’s the best strategy for peace. After all isn't that what rich and poor countries both want? Investing in education for all is good business. So why wait?

I like to think of those 200 million children around the world who don't have any access to primary or secondary school, as 200 million minds that can reach their full potential and become the scientists and the inventors of tomorrow, the teachers, the artists, the environmentalists of tomorrow, the doctors who can cure our illnesses, the wonder makers of tomorrow. I’d like to imagine the world in a few years from now as a big think tank of revolutionary and vital ideas generated by the children that today live in remote and vulnerable places in the world.

I believe in humanity, and it's enormous potential, and I believe we are only at the threshold of what we can all achieve. The best is yet to come.

It is precisely in times of economic crisis like these, when we should focus on harnessing educated minds. Because it’s been historically proven that educated minds will become the foundation of wealthy societies.

But we all know that it cannot be left in the hands of governments alone, we don't have time for bureaucracy while infinite human potential goes to waste every day, and millions of children are losing the opportunity to develop their talents remaining excluded and ostracized from society.

That’s why citizen activism is so vital.

Now you might be wondering how I became so interested in the value of education. Well, I’m only a student on these issues but I am fascinated with the way investing small efforts in education can guarantee big results over a short period of time. For over 14 years we¹ve been working in Colombia hand in hand with Maria Emma Mejia through Barefoot, the foundation I established in my country when I was 18 years old, and since then we’ve been building schools in areas of extreme poverty and conflict, working with internally displaced families. We have built six state of the art schools offering support to 30,000 families and quality education as well as nutritional meals everyday to our 6,000 students, creating a comprehensive model of education in which the school becomes the center and heart of the community.

The most rewarding thing about working on this project is to see how with only two dollars a day per child. Children who could have been recruited by the militia or paramilitary groups are now on their way to college. We are happy to share that some of our students have achieved the highest national scores in State testing this year. And that is very encouraging. A few years ago we would have thought this impossible. But today we know that all these changes occur in a matter of just a few years if the investment in education is comprehensive.

We hear all the time how education transforms lives. Well, I'm telling you, I have seen it happen. Not once or twice but time and time again.

Sure, we also work in partnership with governments but if there is something I have learned these years, is that once the private sector get it's hands on a school project then the government cannot refuse to participate.

So as citizens we can only push and push our leaders to get involved with issues that are not always at the top of their political agendas.

Also I find that if wee work to inspire the younger generations they will become more and more impatient, more and more active

Speaking of youth activism, at my last performance in Madison Square Garden I remeber there were some kids that I met after the show. They handed me the usual letters which I assumed were fan letters. Instead, inside were donations to sponsor children in my country.

And like them I have met countless students that have told me how they have spent their vacations volunteering in Haiti or Colombia or el Salvador.

It is through volunteering in countries across the world how young people are making a difference.

Every day more of us understand that the world is a small neighborhood and that if there is a kid with an empty stomach in Bangladesh or Latino kid, the son or a daughter of an immigrant who can’t go to school in the United States, that kid should be a concern and a responsibility to all of us.

Also through this journey I’ve had the chance to meet with experts that have taught me amazing facts that have completely broadened my vision on the impact of education. For instance how just one year of primary education means a 10 to 20 per cent increase in wages in an adult life. And every dollar invested in early childhood development programs will give back to the state another 17 dollars..

We can’t afford to miss out on this investment. Universal education is the fuel to the engine of change, and we need to start it now.

So I promise to use my big mouth to make as loud a noise as I can and believe me i can be loud when I need to be.

But in the end, you are the people that are going to have the power to make universal education a reality and shape our world in whatever shape you want. When you leave here, you will be the policy makers, the business leaders and the educators and become extremely influential to determine the order of the world

We are already seeing your generation give a lead in pressing for democracy in the Middle East.

We need to see the same courage and commitment in ensuring every child can benefit from the transformational power of education.

You are the architects of change who can – no will - make your mark on the world just like your predecessors did.

I've been told: that the students of Harvard don't look for jobs, they create them.

So I wonder can you help the rest of us create a more just society?

I say, “yes” through your future practices.

By promoting education for all, and by giving every child the chance to make the most of their potential, you will take a huge step, as the Harvard Foundation urges, “to enhance the quality of our common life”.

Thank you so much for listening to me and my vehemence. Thank you for this honor.

And remember the ball is on your court!

See? This is why I love her... and it's not (completely) because of her body! Anyone that knows me knows I've got a thing for brunettes, not blondes so much.

Now, GET MOVIN' :

You can sponsor a child with her BF Foundation:

(''Make the BFF your BFF'' is the motto I just created for it in my head)

And/Or/ALSO :

I have two of my best friends here in Morocco that are seeking funding for their worthy projects.

''Today, in the midst of beautiful olive groves and rocky slopes we worked on the basics of wilderness first-aid with our CLIMB team. We have raised over 2/3 of our funds for our project, but we still have a ways to go. See how you can help this group of Moroccan youth climb the tallest mountain in North Africa:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=378-146

Thanks to everyone who has already donated! Every little bit helps!''

Anna H. near Taroudant

&

DO YOU ENJOY PLAYING SPORTS? Can you imagine a childhood without sports? DONATE TO MY PROJECT!!! You will be able to help over 250 children in a small town in Morocco. Every lil bit helps!

A Court for Kids | Donate to Volunteer Projects | Peace Corps Mari Y. down in Tata (one of my favorite areas here in Morocco, and often the last to get assistance from Rabat)

In case you enjoy the Persian/Afghan/Urdu goodness of last time--then keep looking below and discover one of the classics!

WAKE! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight

The Stars before him from the Field of Night,

Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes

The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.

Start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubaiyat_of_Omar_Khayyam

Then go here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/246

To get the Fitzgerald version of the work!

And if you don't have time to appreciate the book, at least take a minute looking at this statue and appreciate the man's beard. 't's a good 'un. Dude could easily be the statue of a Greek god in the Parthenon.

This is a particularly beautiful edition in PDF, but just a sample from a nice book (expensive) edition.

http://www.irandokht.com/images/Khayyam_English.pdf

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness—

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

And just for fun (from nataliedee.com):

Spring time is here!

My spring reading is two or three big books: THE RECOGNITIONS, A SUITABLE BOY and... Gone with the Wind (total, 4,000 pages, thereabouts). And all three are not necessarily positive so much as reaffirming, taking the good with the bad and trying to make a place for yourself in this world. Even when sad things happen in them, and they give you, Proust-like, the chance to live a whole life through these characters, the joys and the heartbreaks.

''want to get on with getting on with things.. i can't do any of that here, can I?''

Well, I could have guessed this ahead of time, but reading that last book makes me homesick -- too many people in the first 10 pages are sitting on the porch by the dogwoods, nursing a glass of iced tea. But nostalgia never killed anyone, and as my birthday gets closer, it's nice to revisit my home, if only through the 1930's prose. And, its so big and I'm reading it so leisurely that I might finish it just as I board the plane to go back!

Leisurely... though, already heard of tornado-ish damage in the old home town. I thought of that yesterday when I saw 3 or 4 dust devils pass through the football match I went to. Of course, it didn't help that I also started a book about Katrina, Dave Egger's Zeitoun. And, sure enough, my sister told me this morning that a storm took down part of the roof of the shed at my aunt's/sister's house (And yeah, those are two different people, I needn't mention).

But I'm not too homesick.

As Adriana wrote,

Blew out a candle in a Berber village cafe

made big wishes that will come true one day.

In these changing times I'm blessed to be here

with YOU all

the ones I hold NEAR and DEAR.Since she came to my town and spent two days, I've had an interesting change in me. I wrote this in a letter to my friend Sam, as I thought about it while writing to him from this same cafe in the picture. It's a bit like, in your mind you have these half-submerged assumptions, not all of them nice, that you carry around with you about yourself and the people around you. You feel the gaze, and you add your own negative frame of mind, superimposing your doubts. And as a PCV in a tough-work site, those are plenty indeed.

Showing a guest your life here, though, so different than where they are, you're forced to reevaluate the things here as you introduce them and describe them. This makes you unearth those noxious half-submerged assumptions and decide again if that gaze, is it really malicious or is it more benign? I did this, and found, 'taint so, things here are possibly quite fine, and since then I've been in the public a great deal more-- sat out watching a football game, sat at the cafe, walked up to people, shook their hands, asked about their family and when they're going to come stop by for tea, seemingly all free now of those earlier burdens, that self-doubt and the quick & eroneous conclusion that they're judging me harshly. I can even spend 4 hours in the cyber and not feel too guilty about it!

Sure, one time way back when they judged me, but they did that a long time ago and now without this fake conflict, one emmanating more from inside myself than from them, I've felt my emotional connection to my town double and triple in the past few days. Sometimes, you have to learn to let your guard down-- and I hadn't hardly realized it was up! I suppose, it's like waking up, seeing noone's out to get you, and... letting go and relaxing, letting the moment envelop you such that you can't help but be excited, eager to rush out the door. This next song, by the same lady, is EXACTLY that feeling. I've not felt eager leaving my house in quite a long time. Though, I was happy and anxious and nervous when I showed up to take Z down to my town, for several reasons, and my heart melted when seeing N'Kob come into view and having the people there know my name.

Another video by the same lady-- I feel like they are two good bookends for this half-nostalgic, half-happyy-to-be-where-I-am (is there an adjective for that?). As the great writer said:

"What day is it?"

It's today," squeaked Piglet.

My favorite day," said Pooh."

— A.A. Milne

Well, there's a great deal to say. Expect a ''everything's backwards'' blog post sometime soon. It came about last night, feeling inspired and I held up my glass of tea, piping hot, saying ''Woah Saida, would you believe that in the US, we make our tea, just like you do, but after it's boiling we put it in the fridge for the whole day before we drink it? See, we do everything backwards. ''

All those things like that. You should have seen her eyes get big when I pointed to the fridge Doesn't mean it's the wrong way, but it's our way and this is your day, and you might think it's crazy, but that's fine.

''...no one was calling for outright revolution. Revolution, after all, would mean overturning the country's supreme ruler. And no one, at least publicly, wants to depose King Mohammed VI.... But it's not only the specter of Hassan II that makes Mohammed VI look good to many Moroccans. In the 12 years since he assumed power, the King has instituted a number of reforms, including adapting the Family Law to improve women's rights, appointing a commission to investigate the state's crimes during the years of lead, and allowing limited forms of political protest — as long as no one criticizes the monarch or his family.''

From the article, PROTESTS IN MOROCCO: Just Don't Call it Revolution

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2052901,00.html#ixzz1Ema2CN1V

My personal experience is, on Facebook several of my Moroccan friends have changed their profile picture to that of the King wearing his military uniform. To me that says, people trying to keep things as they are, afraid that the wave from the neighboring countries would disrupt their own peace and stability.

A great link for you today, courtesy of Wes:

Being: The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi

Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi

The Musicality of Rumi from On Being on Vimeo.

A video of Rumi's poems set to Persian music

In case you don't know Rumi, first listen to this podcast and then go buy one of the books (the Essential is a good start). This is a side of Islam that deserves to be spread as widely as possible. Here is one of my favorites, and then below is the transcript of the audio above, though I recommend strongly to listen to the audio, since

Like This

translation from Rumi's Divan by Fatemeh Keshavarz

Listen to the Poem » in

Persian » in

Persian » in

English If anyone asks you about the huris, show your face, say: like this!

If anyone asks you about the moon, climb up on the roof, say: like this!

If anyone seeks a fairy, let them see your countenance,

If anyone talks about the aroma of musk, untie your hair [and] say: like this!

If anyone asks: "How do the clouds uncover the moon?" untie the front of

Your robe, knot by knot, say: like this!

If anyone asks: "How did Jesus raise the dead?" kiss me on the lips, say:

like this!

If anyone asks: What are those killed by love like?" direct him to me, say:

like this!

If anyone kindly asks you how tall I am, show him your arched eyebrows,

say: like this!

Transcript of Audio Program

Billboard:

Krista Tippett, host: I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi." The 13th-century mystic Rumi left behind lyric poetry that has long shaped Muslims around the world and has now become popular in the West. This hour, we'll delve into Rumi's world and its echoes in our own. He created a new language of love within the Islamic spiritual tradition of Sufism. Rumi also inspired the whirling dervishes. He sought a way to stay centered while moving. Ms. Fatemeh Keshavarz: If you don’t plow the earth, it’s going to get so hard nothing grows in it. You just plow the earth of yourself. You just get moving. And even don’t ask exactly what’s going to happen. You allow yourself to move around, and then you will see the benefit. Ms. Tippett: This is Speaking of Faith. Stay with us.

[Announcements]

Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett. This hour, we enter the exuberant world of Rumi, the 13th-century Persian mystic and poet. Rumi’s poems are best sellers in the West, and he’s been celebrated globally by the United Nations this past year. Rumi has long influenced Islamic thought and spirituality, though his Muslim identity is often lost in translation. With an Iranian-American poet and scholar, we'll explore why that matters in our time. And we'll hear the lyrical words Rumi put to the common human search for meaning. He understood searching and restlessness as a kind of arrival. He saw every form of human love as a mirror of the divine. Mr. Soleyman Vaseghi: (Lines of Rumi poetry recited in Persian)

Ms. Keshavarz: (translating) Wherever you are, whatever you do, be in love. Ms. Tippett: From American Public Media, this is Speaking of Faith, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. Today, "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi."

In his lifetime, the poet known in the West as Rumi was called Muhammad Jalal al-Din al-Balkhi al-Rumi. He was born in 1207 near the city of Balkh in what is now Afghanistan. When he was a child, his family fled Mongol invaders and settled in Konya in present-day Turkey. Rumi wrote in Persian, the literary and spiritual lingua franca of a civilization that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to India. To most of the people who read him today from Tajikistan to Iran, he is known as Mevlana or Mawlana, our master.

Rumi left behind a vast body of lyric poetry, metaphysical writings, lectures, and letters, which have influenced Persian, Urdu, and Turkish literature across the centuries. Rumi also inspired the whirling dervishes, ascetics who base their practices on Rumi, including the dancing meditation that was part of his spiritual life. And in the late 20th century, Rumi's thought and poetry swept the United States in English translation. Lines from Rumi became widely quoted in diverse settings, lines such as "out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there." Those who enjoyed such words often knew little about the man behind them or his Islamic mystical tradition of Sufism.

My guest today, Fatemeh Keshavarz, calls Rumi a world-class thinker, relevant to our painfully compartmentalized world. Ms. Keshavarz: One of the reasons why he addresses the issues that are of concern to us so much today is because he belongs to a tradition, the Sufi tradition or the mystical tradition within Islam, which has always been concerned with the way human beings view themselves and each other and are able to relate to each other. Ms. Tippett: Fatemeh Keshavarz will be our guide as we explore some of the large themes of Rumi's spirituality that may be only partially understood even as they echo in modern culture. She is chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also a poet and often sets Rumi's words to music. She grew up speaking the Persian in which Rumi wrote, in the Iranian city of Shiraz. Ms. Keshavarz: I grew up in a family in which people played chess, read poetry, or argued about poetry. That was basically — only after I left Iran I realized that that’s probably not what everyone else does all the time.

Ms. Tippett: So in this landscape where poetry of all kinds, including poetry woven into religious sensibility, I mean, what did Rumi mean in that landscape? How was he part of the spiritual sensibility of that world you grew up in?

Ms. Keshavarz: Well, he was a voice that echoed something that was, on one level, very familiar because a lot of other people had talked about it, but on another level, it was completely new because of the way he played with it, the way he made it his own game. And I mean "game" because playing is very serious for him. Laughing and playing are the most serious things in his poetry. So for me, he came into the picture as someone who said, 'OK, you've read the text. You know the words. You've looked at the history. Now transcend all that. Put it aside and live it. Encounter it.' If you ask me to think of a few words that, for me, describe his poetry, one of them is it's an encounter. You come face to face with something.

I never forget, I was once reading a ghazal that described a beautiful bird. You know, he said…

Ms. Tippett: The ghazals are odes, what we would translate as something a little bit different than a poem, right?

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. Ghazal is about eight to 10, 12 lines normally, although his could be much shorter or much longer, and the main theme is love and these are like flashes of ideas as that come.

Ms. Tippett: OK.

Ms. Keshavarz: So I was reading one of those and he was describing these beautiful birds. You know, some can sing, some are colorful, and so forth. And I was, you know, enjoying this, walking the aviary, and he suddenly said, 'Well, what kind of a bird are you?' All of a sudden I realize I can't stay on the margins. You have to join in. And I think, in a way, the whirling is exactly a reflection of that. So he kind of comes into the tradition with all the intellectual legacy, but he says that's not enough, you have to do something else with it. Face it, play with it, dance it, bring it into your everyday life.

Ms. Tippett: You know, something that strikes me, there are a lot of themes in his writing, in his poetry, that you might call ascetic. You know, he's very aware of the limits of the physical and of the importance of the spiritual in that equation. And yet there's something incredibly sensual at the same time when you mention the whirling, the weeping of the whirling dervishes. There's dance and music.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. I would say that it’s all on the same continuum of human experience. We are not divided into body and soul in a way, although he does talk about body and soul and there’s no question about the fact that the soul is exalted. Ultimately the goal is to purify the soul and so on and so forth. But we don’t have to think about the rest of ourselves as base or as not--in fact, it’s a tool. It’s a part of us that’s very important. He does say--in one verse, he says, ‘Love, whether of this kind or that kind’--and obviously it’s either, you know, the kind of divine, spiritual, or the human-to-human love — ‘ultimately leads you to the same king.’ So in a way one is a practice for the other.

Ms. Tippett: Including physical love.

Ms. Keshavarz: Absolutely. The limits of it are recognized. But I wouldn’t see it as — the body is not an obstacle on the way of the soul. It’s a tool to be used for that journey. Ms. Tippett: Rumi scholar and poet Fatemeh Keshavarz. After Rumi's death, some of his followers founded the Mevlevi Order, commonly known as the community of the whirling dervishes. Dervish is a Persian word, which described wandering Muslim ascetics of the medieval Persian Empire. Dervishes were and are Sufis, part of the Islamic mystical tradition that emerged as a spiritual renewal movement after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

Rumi imprinted that movement with a vividly sensual and poetic practice of spirituality that has been provocative and controversial across the ages. He crafted some of his most religious ideas in the form of erotically toned love poetry, which seems at once addressed to Allah or God and to an earthly beloved. Rumi inspired the practice of the whirling dervishes by spinning around a column as he recited his poems. Ms. Tippett: Something you wrote about whirling that was so gripping to me said, for Rumi, the whirling is one way to stay centered while moving.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. And, you know, I do some speculation in my work: Does this have something to do with the fact that he traveled so young when he went all the way westward from the province of Khorasan to where is the city of Konya today, present-day Turkey, and the journey lasted about two years. He must have encountered so many different people and cultures and incidents, so it may have something to do with that. But he's certainly very appreciative of the ability to change your vantage point. At some point in his discourses he said, 'If you don't plow the earth, it's going to get so hard nothing grows in it. You just plow the earth of yourself. You just get moving. And even don't ask exactly what's going to happen. You allow yourself to move around, and then you will see the benefit.'

Ms. Tippett: Is there also something in the whirling that strikes you as very compatible with Islamic theology in general, or with Sufi theology, that might not be apparent to an outsider?

Ms. Keshavarz: Well, I think you could say that everything in the universe is whirling, is quickened with the force of love. That fits with the Sufi theology. We are like planets. We have to appreciate that, and in order to appreciate that, you have to join the dance. But there are also — there are interpretations. We can now look at whirling and say things like — for example, one hand is pointed towards the sky and the other one to the earth, so that's usually interpreted as bringing the heaven and the earth together, like staying connected with the two. Or the dervishes wear a black robe and a white robe underneath, and then they disrobe the black robe and they dance in the white. That's interpreted as the shedding of the ego.

But then the master standing in the center doesn't have to do it because he supposedly has tamed his ego. But all of these things have been interpretations later, done of the activity of whirling. Beyond that, you know, to me, it comes across as something much broader and more universal than Islam or any other religion. It's a kind of getting in tune with the moving earth.

Ms. Tippett: You've spoken a lot about love and love as the core of this spirituality. I think that also in the Persian culture in which you grew up, and Rumi as well, there is a connection between love poetry and imagery of the beloved and lovers, with religious ideas, which again you kind of have to introduce a Westerner into.

Ms. Keshavarz: The imagery is very often almost identical with profane, you know, mundane love poetry. By this, I don't mean to give any negative connotation to it, but love that is purely sensual and emotional, human love. To me, I think it's a statement by poets like Rumi and others like him, that there isn't really a boundary between the two. It's the same thing. It's the same human experience.

And there is another medieval Sufi, actually a bit later than Rumi, who says that you can't look at the sun directly, but you can look at its reflection in the water. Our humanly experience of love is that reflection in the water of our senses, and it's God's way of teaching us and guiding us from this to the actual looking at the sun when you have gained the ability. I was just thinking of a particular ghazal as I was saying that and, you know…

Ms. Tippett: Yes, I wanted to ask you if you had anything you would read or recite, yes.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yeah, I think that that actually could help see how one would lead to the other and actually the ambiguity between the two. It's a source of great poetic force.

Ms. Tippett: And you mean one — and the other would be human love and divine love.

Ms. Keshavarz: Human love and divine love, exactly.

Mr. Soleyman Vaseghi: (Lines of Rumi poetry recited in Persian)

Ms. Keshavarz: (translating) If anyone asks you about the houris, show your face, say: like this. If anyone asks you about the moon, climb up on the roof, say: "Like this." If anyone seeks a fairy, let them see your countenance. If anyone talks about the aroma of musk, untie your hair and say: "Like this." If anyone asks: "How do the clouds uncover the moon?" untie the front of your robe, knot by knot, say: "Like this." If anyone asks: "How did Jesus raise the dead?' kiss me on the lips, say: "Like this." If anyone asks: "What are those killed by love like?" direct him to me, say: "Like this." If anyone kindly asks you how tall I am, show him your arched eyebrows, say: "Like this." Ms. Keshavarz: So the whole ghazal is a description of the physical beauty of the lover, but at the same time, it's a fairly long poem. At the end, it leads us to blind with envy the one who says, "How can a human being reach God?" Give each of us a candle of purity, say: "Like this." In the end, human beings can get to that candle of purity and reach God, and all human beings can do that.

Ms. Tippett: It is also an act of pointing at what is now — right? — what is physical and human, as you say, as the only way we have of imagining.

Ms. Keshavarz: Exactly. Exactly. There's a famous Sufi tale that this young disciple approached the master to enter the order day after day. And finally the master said, 'Have you ever fallen in love with a woman?' He said, 'No, not yet. I'm only 18.' He said, 'Well, go try that first.' Ms. Tippett: Rumi scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz. We’ve selected more of Rumi’s poems for you to hear and read on our Web site, speakingoffaith.org, along with images and explanations of the whirling dervishes. I’m Krista Tippett, and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. Today, we’re dipping into the ideas and spiritual background of Rumi, a 13th-century Muslim mystic whose poetry is celebrated by an array of modern readers.

In the "Song of the Reed," Rumi reflects on the human spirit through the metaphor of the ancient reed flute or ney that is popular in Middle Eastern music. This poem opened the Masnavi, Rumi's compendium of rhyming couplets that explored issues of Sufi theology and the spiritual journey. Ms. Keshavarz: (reciting) Listen to the story told by the reed of being separated. Since I was cut from the reed bed, I have made this crying sound. Anyone apart from someone he loves understands what I say. Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back. At any gathering, I'm there, lingering and laughing and grieving, a friend to each, but few will hear the secrets hidden within the notes. No ears for that. Body flowing out of spirit, spirit out from body, no concealing that mixing. But it's not given us to see, so the reed flute is fire, not wind. Leave that empty.

Ms. Tippett: There's a theme that is part of that, that runs all the way through, about separation and longing as part of — well, not just the spiritual life, but being human, and also a kind of sense that the separation and the longing themselves are a kind of arrival.

Ms. Keshavarz: On one level, you have to get on the road. You have to get started, you know, just like the earth that, you know, have to plow the earth, you have to get moving. On another level, time and again he reminds us that the destination is the journey itself. So there isn't a point where you say, 'OK, I'm here, I've reached, I'm done, I'm perfect. I don't need to do anything anymore.' In the incompleteness of that, the need to move forward is inherent in that incompleteness, in the process of going forward that you make yourself better and better and you, in a way, never reach. So the separation is the powerful force that keeps you going. If you ever felt that I have arrived I've reached, this is it, then you wouldn't go any further.

Ms. Tippett: You know, and I think it is counterintuitive in our culture — not that we necessarily think this through very often, but we think of desires and longings as something that we need to find something to meet, right?

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes, yes. And we want to meet it really fast.

Ms. Tippett: Yes.

Ms. Keshavarz: Exactly.

Ms. Tippett: Because somehow the feeling of longing and separation from whatever it is, especially if we don't know what it is we want, that that is unsatisfying and there's something wrong with that. And yet what Rumi is saying is that, you know, the longing itself is redemptive and is progress, kind of.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. And the longing itself — and also not to understand exactly what that longing is, in itself, is very productive. I think one idea or major concept that the Sufi tradition and Rumi in particular have to contribute to our current culture is value in perplexity, the fact that not knowing is a source of learning, something that propels us forward into finding out. Longing, perplexity, these are all very valuable things. We want to unravel things and get answers and be done, but as far as he's concerned, it's a continual process. We can't be done. And that's good.

Ms. Tippett: I also have a feeling that Rumi is saying we also, though, at the same time need to be intentional about what we choose to be perplexed by. Does that make sense? I mean there's this poem: "Stay bewildered in God and only that. Those of you who are scattered, simplify your worrying lives. There is one righteousness. Water the fruit trees and don't water the thorns. Be generous to what nurtures the spirit and God's luminous reason-light. Don't honor what causes dysentery and knotted-up tumors. Don't feed both sides of yourself equally. The spirit and the body carry different loads and require different attentions."

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. Yes. I think the energy can't go in all directions completely in control and you have to choose because you have one life. You have to spend it wisely. So absolutely, he would say choose, be selective, recognize your own value. At another point he says, 'You are an astrolabe to God, you know, don't use yourself for things that are not worthwhile.'

But I want to linger a little bit on that idea of being scattered because that's a key concept in Sufi thought. And actually it's something that the Buddhists also talk about a lot. And that is our mind just jumps from one thing to the other and, you know, the Sufis call it the onrush of ideas into our minds. And in some ways, if we allow it, it takes us over, you know. You know, what am I going to do about that credit card? You know, how am I going to — what do I do about this student paper, you know, whatever else is that you're concerned with, my family, my kids, my future. So it all invades your life and so in a way you're pulled in all directions. You're scattered. So one of the purposes of his poetry and one of the concepts the Sufis talk about is to collect that scatteredness. Ms. Tippett: Rumi scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz. Here is one of Rumi's ghazals, which she translated and recites with the Lian Ensemble, a group that often sets Rumi's words to Persian music. Mr. Houman Pourmehdi: (Lines of Rumi poetry recited in Persian)

Ms. Keshavarz: (translating) When pain arrives side by side with your love, I promise not to flee. When you ask me for my life, I promise not to fight. I'm holding a cup in my hand but, God, if you do not come till the end of time, I promise not to pour out the wine nor to drink a sip. Your bright face is my day. Your dark curls bring the night. If you do not let me near you, I promise not to go to sleep nor rise. Your magnificence has made me a wonder. Your charm has taught me the way of love. I am the progeny of Abraham. I'll find my way through fire.

Ms. Tippett: What do you hear in that? What do you reflect on in that?

Ms. Keshavarz: It's about steadfastness, about staying centered and keeping your eye on the goal. But at the same time, very much being in love and allowing the ecstasy of love take over. You see, he is very aware of the fact that, as human beings, we are limited. We have our limits. We just are not able to do everything that we desire to do. Our rationality is there, is very helpful. It does its job in questioning things and showing the way, but that has its limits, too. What opens the way beyond that is love. What enables us to feel the pain and still go forth in the face of all of that, is experiencing that love. And if you look at our lives, you know, people who produce great works of art, who are creative, who do something that goes beyond day-to-day activity, have that kind of steadfastness, that kind of devotion that lets them go through. What I see in that poem is that I promise to have that, but that comes from you. It's your magnificence, your love that gives me that energy, that power to stay, and I promise to hold onto it.

Ms. Tippett: And "you" is — the beloved is God, is Allah.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes, and that's where the ambiguity comes in, of course, because you should be able to relate to it as a human being in love with another human being. That would be your entry into the poem.

Ms. Tippett: It's also probably important to note that Rumi had a great turning point with a friendship, with Shams, a Sufi master. I think it is actually helpful that the love relationship out of which Rumi drew so many of his analogies, you know, is not a romantic love relationship. And what you're saying to me is that love is the core, but to think about the many forms that love takes in our lives. I mean, there's also the passionate love that we have for our children.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes, and so they are a blessing and they all have their own place. And in the end, we don't replace them with the divine. It's like warming up, in a way, like getting you ready for a major exercise, a physical activity. You warm up gradually. You get yourself to a state where you can do it, test your abilities, see your problems and issues, ask your questions, quarrel with yourself, and get ready for it. And I think all these forms of experience of attachment with other human beings are various ways of experiencing that. Ms. Tippett: Rumi scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz. This is Speaking of Faith. After a short break, how Rumi might speak to the spirit of Islam, past and present.

In many ways, our radio program is just the beginning. Our Web site, speakingoffaith.org, reveals the world of Rumi from many directions. You can see a video performance of our guest, Fatemeh Keshavarz, and the Lian Ensemble, with Rumi's poetry set to the ney, santur, and other classic Persian instruments, or download my entire unedited conversation with Fatemeh Keshavarz through our Web site, our podcast and our weekly e-mail newsletter. All this and more at speakingoffaith.org. I'm Krista Tippett. Stay with us. Speaking of Faith comes to you from American Public Media.

[Announcements]

Ms. Tippett: Welcome back to Speaking of Faith, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi," the 13th-century Persian poet and mystic.

In recent years, English translations of Rumi's poetry by the American poet Coleman Barks have sold more than half a million copies in the U.S. UNESCO has declared 2007 International Rumi Year to honor the 800th anniversary of his birth. Rumi has been the subject of creative work by contemporary artists from composer Philip Glass to pop icon Madonna.

But such popular renditions of Rumi often give little hint of his Islamic identity. He was the son of a Muslim teacher, born in the center of Persian Islamic civilization. He spent time as the head of a madrassa, religious schools which were centers of great learning, at the same time that Western Europe had fallen into the dark ages. Rumi's themes of separation and longing come straight from the heart of Islamic theology. There is no idea of original sin, but rather of a human tendency to forget and thus become separated from Allah or God. Islam imagines faith as zikr or remembrance of a knowledge that is embedded in human beings. My guest, Fatemeh Keshavarz, finds resonance in Rumi for the deepest challenges before the world and Islam today. Ms. Tippett: I'd like to talk about Rumi's Islamic grounding and identity. That gets lost in 21st-century translations.

Ms. Keshavarz: Absolutely.

Ms. Tippett: Coleman Barks' translations are the ones that many people have read, that became popular, I assume. I was reading his introduction to The Essential Rumi. You know, he suggested that with a mystical writer like this, you know, he suggested that placing this person in historical and cultural context is simply not a central task. And he wrote, "My more grandiose project is to free his text into its essence."

Ms. Keshavarz: I think one thing that Coleman Barks has done, he has written Rumi's ideas in the American poetic idiom. He's made it accessible to the broad readership, and that should definitely be valued. And, you know, don't hear me saying anything else on that. But I don't think you can free people from the context in which they live, and I don't think even if you try to do that, that that serves a useful purpose. I don't see Rumi as detached from the Islamic context at all. In fact, I see his work as actually and completely immersed in the Islamic tradition. I tell you, it would be hard to read a single ghazal, not even the Masnavi, which is expressly a work with theological and mystical intentions, but even a ghazal, it would be hard to read a ghazal and not find quite a few illusions to Qur'anic verses, to sayings of the prophet, to practices in the Muslim world, so I don't think we need to separate him from his Islamic context. The way first I visualize this myself is that he goes through the religion, he lives it, absorbs it, and uses it in his way. So in the process, he self-births a lot of things. He changes a lot, reinterprets a lot of things, but he does not step outside of it. He lives in it. Let me give you an example.

Ms. Tippett: Good.

Ms. Keshavarz: You know that in his discourses — I try not to use the word "sermons" because "sermon" brings such a specific connotation that's probably not there. But the discourses are when Rumi is sitting in a local mosque, in the local gathering, talking to people. It's very interactive, it's very informal, and he kind of steps down the pulpit in a way and reaches out to the people and it's very poetic even though it's in prose and he didn't write it down. His students and, you know, people around him took it down. On one of these occasions, he quotes a Qur'anic verse, if I might quote the Arabic, is (recites Qur'anic verse in Arabic). We — this is the royal "we," God — we stand down the zikr and we will be its protector. Now, the word zikr in Arabic means "remembers" and traditionally the commentators have defined the word zikr as the Qur'an itself, and they have good reason to do so because elsewhere in the Qur'an, the Qur'an refers to itself as zikr and remembrance, in part because humanity is described as forgetful, so the Qur'an is a way of remembering.

Now, he says the commentators have said that this verse refers to the Qur'an itself, that God says we have given you the Qur'an and we are — that I am the protector of it. And he said (foreign language spoken). That's fine. (Foreign language spoken), but there is this interpretation, too, that God says (foreign language spoken). "We have put in you a desire and a quest, and I, God, am the protector of that desire." That's a very different interpretation. First of all, it opens it immediately to all humanity.

Ms. Tippett: I think that there is something in Rumi's writing which is so large, so generous. I don't like the word "universal" because I think in some ways it waters things down.

Ms. Keshavarz: I agree with you. "Generous" is a very good…

Ms. Tippett: Yeah. But it's easy to read this and also I think people from many different religious traditions can read this poetry or his discourses, or people who are not people of faith can read it and feel themselves addressed and feel their spiritual lives addressed.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. And I think sometimes people feel that if they take away or overlook the Islamic flavor of it, maybe that makes him more accessible, more theirs. I think generosity and openness is a very good way of putting it. If you're not rooted in the specific and in the small, in the local, you can never see the broader vision. You have to love a tradition and to be completely immersed in it before you can subvert it and transcend it. You have to…

Ms. Tippett: Before you can subvert it from the inside.

Ms. Keshavarz: Exactly. And you have to love it for you to think that I want to open it up, I want to make it better, and then go forward with it. And, you know, you can't break laws in an acceptable way unless you know them really well and practice them with tradition. That's the only time. And that's what I think he does. He's so well rooted in the Islamic tradition, so completely aware of the nuances, that he says, you know, 'Hey guys, we can open it up here. Look. Look at this. This is what you always thought, but now look one step beyond.' And he can do that precisely because he's rooted in the tradition.

Ms. Tippett: And I think it's true also that around the same time that Rumi was entering popular imaginations by way of poetry, there were images of Islam suddenly in the news in this post-9/11 world which were so very different from that. I mean — and, you know, you've written that Rumi is a true child of an adventurous and cosmopolitan Islam. And, you know, those are not two words that you would associate with headline Islam that we've had these past years.

Ms. Keshavarz: I'm actually, you know, really glad you bring this up because I think one thing that's desperately needed at this point, to show the adventureness, the surprise, the play, the aspects of his work that now are not normally associated with that part of the world. You kind of think that, you know, people just — it's all religion, and it's religion followed in a fairly institutionalized and stylized and, you know, planned form. Not at all. I mean, he's playing with it all the time. So I think another contribution he could do for us right now, exactly in this post-9/11 environment, is to bring out that side of the Muslim culture, that contribution to the world. Ms. Tippett: Rumi scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz. I'm Krista Tippett, and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. Today, “The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi.”

Ironically, just as Rumi has been rediscovered in the U.S. and Western Europe, the Sufi brotherhood formed by his followers has been banned in periods of recent history in Turkey, where Rumi did most of his writing and where he's buried. The whirling of the whirling dervishes, which Rumi first innovated as a form of dancing meditation, has been reduced, some say, to mere entertainment. I asked Fatemeh Keshavarz about Rumi's legacy in Iran, where she grew up, the center of the Persian world of literature and culture to which Rumi also belonged. Ms. Tippett: Rumi still as much alive in Iran now as when you were growing up? How does that look?

Ms. Keshavarz: Well, I tell you I can't keep up with the books that are published in Iran about him. Yes, absolutely. You know, there's this debate whether he was a Persian or a Turk or an Afghan. You know, it is completely really irrelevant again, but for Iranians he is just such a household name. You will have — in your house you will have the Qur'an, you will have the volume of poetry of Hafez, another great figure from the little bit later period, and the Masnavi of Rumi. And then depending, of course, like any other culture, you have people who more immersed in his work and more familiar. They know him at different levels obviously. But, yeah, I wouldn't say that the interest in him has changed or lessened at all.

Ms. Tippett: I mean, I hear in my conversations that Islam in Iran is — there's great intellectual discourse and study and, you know, that's just not a story that we hear. So I mean, I'm just curious, you know. This subversive, playful, cosmopolitan quality of — are those also part of the discourse in Iran?

Ms. Keshavarz: Absolutely. You know, I send out lists to my friends called "Windows on Iran," precisely for that. Just once a week I send out information about Iran that they don't get to see in the media. Like in the month of June, for example, there's a book fare in Iran. You know how many people visited this past book fare in June in one week? Two million people visited the book fare. You know, I send this out and then I get these messages: Wow, this is happening in Iran? Or I send pictures.

I just realized afterwards that our visual vocabulary has been affected. If we think of Iran, we only have certain visions of unfortunate moments in recent history that get repeated. And our language — Rumi is so aware of that. Language can take over our lives and make us not see things. He actually has a fabulous verse, he says (Persian spoken). "Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world." I mean this is the most sophisticated, philosophical approach to language. Now we talk of language as being constitutive of experience, but that's exactly what he said. You know, 'get yourself a new language and then you will be able to see a new world.' And that's definitely what we need to do in relation to that part of the world, certainly with Iran, to see the dynamics. A tremendous amount is going on that we don't get to hear about. Ms. Keshavarz: (Lines of Rumi poetry recited in Persian)

(translating) To speak the same language is to share the same blood, to be related. To live with strangers is a life of captivity. Many are Hindus and Turks who share the same language. Many are Turks who may be alien to one another. The language of companionship is a unique one. To reach someone through the heart is other than reaching them through words. Besides words, illusions, and arguments, the heart knows a hundred thousand ways to speak. Ms. Tippett: You know, I can't help but look at Rumi's life and be struck by how the poles of culture and place in terms of, you know, where he moved and where he lived and settled, are all such important poles in our world today. There's Afghanistan, there's Turkey, which is somehow becoming symbolic of the struggle to define what is Western, right, what is not. There's Persia, there's Iran. Do you ever think about that, about Rumi's legacy and where he came from and how that echoes in the world today?

Ms. Keshavarz: I consider myself tremendously lucky to be able to grow up with that language. But to tell you the truth, I think that all parts of the world have their own Rumi. I believe that we just need only to explore those traditions and look for them. So in a sense, I think he is just one other giant, you know, one other figure who is very important right now. I agree with you, it's very important to read him, to look at the vision that he has for humanity because it's so healing, it's so needed to correct some of our short-sightedness and, you know, some of the problems we have with not being able to see the larger picture. So in that sense, I agree with you. But I don't know if I want to think of that part of the world as having any kind of monopoly on this.

Ms. Tippett: OK.

Ms. Keshavarz: I think, if anything, his vision is that all humanity is pregnant with God. You know, we all in various parts of worlds and traditions. We have people like him. We just have to find them.

Ms. Tippett: You ask a question in something you've written: "How is one to nurture this God buried like a ruin in the treasure of one's being, and let it permeate all of life?" How does your encounter with Rumi — your ongoing encounter with Rumi, how does it help you live with that question, answer that question in your life?

Ms. Keshavarz: You know, the most important tool he has, which is hope, is what we need to nurture in ourselves. And hope, the energy to move, the energy to go, to never think that this is not worth it or I am done, I am tired, that's what he's given me. I can read them for hours, I can teach them for hours. I can come back to it and be surprised again. The gift is a kind of whirling that keeps your life to be a constant move on the road, and then according to your abilities, what you can see, what you can hear, what you can cherish, you get your own rewards. You put it together. Again, you give birth to your own God. Life kind of comes to life with his works.

Ms. Tippett: With Rumi's words.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. And, you know, depending on where I am and who I am at that point and I'm doing, I get something out of it. It actually has a fascinating verse. He says (Persian spoken), says, "I am fire. If you have doubts about that, bring your hands forth." That's the dramatic flare I was talking about, you know. 'Bring your hands forth, touch me, and I'll tell you what I'm about.' Ms. Tippett: Fatemeh Keshavarz is professor of Persian and Comparative Literature and chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. She's the author, most recently, of Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran.

Visit us online at speakingoffaith.org. If you've encountered Rumi's writings, tell us how they've spoken to you. What in his spirituality surprises or draws you in? Look for “Share Your Story” on our Web site. While you're there, learn much more about Rumi's world and his writings, watch video of musical performances of Rumi's poetry, and listen to readings from his poetry in Persian and in English. Also, download my entire unedited conversation with Fatemeh Keshavarz.

And Speaking of Faith is now available on iTunes U, an enriching resource for teachers and lifelong learners. This free collection is organized by subject and features additional tools for learning. Let us know if you use Speaking of Faith in your courses. Your input will help shape our offering. Look for the iTunes U link at speakingoffaith.org.

Special thanks this week to Houman Pourmehdi, Soleyman Vaseghi, the Lian Ensemble, Omid Safi, and Stanford University's Continuing Studies Department.

The senior producer of Speaking of Faith is Mitch Hanley, with producers Colleen Scheck, Shiraz Janjua, and Rob McGinley Myers, with assistance from Anna Marsh. Our online editor is Trent Gilliss. Our consulting editor is Bill Buzenberg. Kate Moos is the managing producer of Speaking of Faith. And I'm Krista Tippett.

A year ago

And now: ME and the home fries! Still here a year later, all the Sefrou Sultans and new guy Doug.

Skills and knowledge transfer

Next year? Won't be here. But that's ok! No telling, though, eh?

Sometimes good luck falls at your feet and you trip over it on the way to the next thing on the horizon

Things come when you least expect them -- like the right amount of money and the right amount of time, and my birthday only a month away, and the right info before it's too late.... So I didnt plan on this, but I'll see Shaki again in May AND June. Inshallah! There's still tickets, its a bit arcane -- they're sending mine to my house in Tennessee-- but get one for you and meet me there, June 14 in Paris! OR May 28 in Rabat.

Interesting fact: The new guitarist looks a lot like Wayne Static...

but the real magic happens with Tim Mitchell, the guy back there

in the back. One of the best guitar players/ musical directors in the biz.

''but i learned something interesting about losing things. when i got robbed on the train and my computer was gone and other nice good things, i learned this : if you can't remember what you had before, you've not really lost it. or better said, you've lost it but minus the pain. it's more like, less 'losing' what i cant remember having had, and more those things fell into the oblivion, unbeknownst to me.''

photos will come later, i been at the cafe too long

This one made me cry when I first heard it. And I heard a Placido Domingo aria that did, too.