Has Fall Arrived?

Happy Birthday Marisa, Who Turned Ten Yesterday

7:13

8:03

Up at 7:00 to a wet, cloudy, and cool morning, reminiscent  of a fall mornings in October.  It's 52º, windy, a high today expected in the mid 60's.  As I was getting my coffee, the house still felt unfamiliar, strange, no grandchildren, no clutter, everything in its place, as I mentioned yesterday, like a model home.

Yesterday was cool if not cold and unless the sun was out, we needed a fleece, a sweatshirt.  It even felt cosy to wrap yourself in a blanket if you were sitting out on the porch, like Evie did, going through photos on Aperture for a couple of hours.  She is almost finished with the washing and all of the bedrooms now have clean sheets and pillow cases, beds made, ready for our next round of guests. While Evie worked, I went to the CI around 10:15, got my library pass and listened to the Turkish speaker Ibrahim Kalin address the audience on Turkey's role in the Middle East.  He is supposedly an advisor to Turkey's President Erdogan but he had little to say about Erdogan, his critics, his crack down on journalists, etc.  In other words, he avoided the flash points and concentrated instead on a broad outline of the changes in the Middle East, the world, over the past thirty years.  Four touchstones have changed the world according to Kalin: the end of the Cold War, 9/11, the collapse of the Financial System in 2007 and the Arab Uprisings in 2012 and 2013.  He went on to expound on how these changed the world and suggested that the Euro centric view of history or the world was gone and he welcomed what he called a poly centric view, one that embraces various cultures and religions.  Only when he was questioned at the end did he respond to some of the critics of the current Islamist leaning government in Turkey

I spoke briefly to him after the talk, introduced myself as someone who lived in Istanbul, taught at Robert College, and played basketball for Besiktas.  He was affable, said the current teams have many NBA players.  As a lark, I left my name and phone in case he wanted to get together.  Fat chance although it worked once in Turkey, back in 1975.  Kareem Abdul Jabbar was visiting Istanbul, putting on a clinic.  After it was over, I introduced myself, asked if he would like to get together.  He said yes, and we picked him and a friend up at his hotel, brought him back to our house, to meet Evie and the kids, and then we took him out to dinner to the Captain Restaurant, in our village of Arnavutkoy.  We had a great meal together and I remember asking him if he was getting tired of playing basketball.  He said no way and ended up playing for close to another twenty years.

We relaxed most of the afternoon, and I did some reading, returning to Elizabeth Strout's The Burgess Boys, which I am starting to enjoy.  Evie called me in to watch Charlie Rose because he was interviewing John Oliver, the guest host on the The Daily Show.  It was a great interview and we both watched the entire hour.  It's amazing how creative and interesting and intelligent some comics or humorists are.

Enjoying Music at the Lakeview, in Mayville 

We then met the Mc Clures, yes, they are back, at the Lakeview in Mayville and sat outside in the cool evening, listening to a guitarist and singer that they both really like.  He was quite good, especially as a guitarist and could play almost any song, from Neil Young, to the Eagles, to Credence, to Loggins and Messina.  It was too cold to stay outside and eat, so after an hour, we went in, ordered our sandwiches and fries, always good and stayed till about 9:45.  When we got home, we watched some TV, did some reading and went to bed around 11:00.