Fez

And then you experience something so different and that is like being in Fez, if just for a day. I rode over this morning in a grand taxi and I wondered how that was going to work because there were seven of us fairly big guys hanging around and it was a very small corolla sized car. But I learned we could all fit...the first surprise of the day.

But then I got a petit taxi to the old...I mean old since Fez just celebrated the 1200th anniversary of its founding...and well the medina, the souks, the mosques...it is all up there with Times Square, the pallazos in Venice, Tenamin Square as urban places of human activity. Just overwhelming in sight and sound and smell. Some of the last coming from the urine and feces baths used for tanning hides. Just an astonishing place...made me come back and spend the rest of the afternoon with a glass of wine...yes, it can be obtained in certain hotels in the ville neuvelle...reading the history of Fez and Morocco which was, by the way, the first country to recognize the US after the revolution and with whom it has the oldest treaty of any other country in the world. Kind of had to do with piracy at the time...but still.

But really it is about people

But really it is about people. The people you watch while having a morning or afternoon or evening coffee at one of the sidewalk cafes filled with men doing the same thing. Women can eat in restaurants but I have only seen two thus far sitting in a cafe. Or the people who help me out with my unhappy version of French. Or the baker tended the wood fire in a small village who offered me bread and warm milk. Or Simo at the riad this afternoon who made telephone reservations for me at the next two places to which I am travelling. Shukran, thanks, to you all.

Volubilis

I hired a taxi this morning to take me to the Roman ruins of Volubilis, one of the most western outposts of the empire. The city persisted here in these Atlas mountains long after the empire fell, but eventually it was abandoned, its most intact columns carried away support the immense gateways of palace complex of Moulay Ismael in the 18th century. And still we are in a kingdom, albeit a somewhat constitutional one. But visiting such sites on a rainy spring morning helps provide perspective on the rise and fall of contempory powers. And how spring comes quite of its own free will.

Rain and Cold

So this morning as the rain began again, I visited the rooftop of the medersa, the school attached to the main mosque here in the old walled city of Meknes. These tiles form part of its roof. Below the roof, the intricate carving of vines, lines, and Arabic letters form the walls of the inner courtyard around. Around the courtyard; the students simple rooms are alligned. This madrasa is one of the very few Muslim holy places that non Muslims...including Quakers...are not allowed to enter.

But the rain continued all day, so my planned visits to the villages and Roman ruins outside the city were put on hold. Instead I went over to the Ville Novelle and bought myself a light weight jacket to stay warm, had lunch at a restaurant whose love of cats I did not appreciate, and with the help of Simo, the excellent host of the riad where I am staying, fugured out how to buy a bottle of wine...have to go to a supermarket in the new town...cab ride back and forth...one cab driver was listening to prayers in Arabic, but I figured that was like listening to Focus on the Family while riding through Colorado Springs.

But if you think this is easy, I am typing on a keyboard on which I have to remember that the a, the m, the w, the z, the , and the . are on different keys. Of course, that must be easier than writting in Arabic script backwards, but actually the spaces are set to go from right to left if you are using that script on Word.

On the railroad

I was not prepared for the green, fertile countryside that sped by the second floor windows of the smooth, comfortable train I rode this morning up from Rabat to Meknes. The train beat any line I have ever been on in the US. I wonder how my country ever got so far behind in the development of transport. Maybe we got too excited about the low prices at Wallmart and we thought that was progress. Something about you know better what to do with your money than the government does. We lost decades of infrastructure investment believing that Republican tag line.



Maybe it is just that we stereotype not only other parts of the world, but ourselves as well. I am in a walled city in a cyber store filled with men and women and even families, reading emails, talking on Skype, listening to music. So where really are the walls that nations keep on putting up? They must be, in large part, in our heads.

Reading and Writing

I have so far learned six Arabic letters. There are 28 letters (only two more than English) which sounds easy except that each letter changes shape depending upon its position in the word. So the letter shape shifts if it is the first position, the last position, or somewhere in between. Like English, the letters look different if they are printed or in cursive, though it doesn't appear that people use printing for regular communication (unlike in English where you can always fall back on printing when the cursive becomes unintelligable). Like English, the phoneme the letter is linked to changes so the pronunciation is never quite clear. Unlike European languages, Arabic is written from right to left, but numbers are from left to right.

So when I'm walking down the street and see a sign, I try to identify the letters that I know...kind of like what I probably did when I was three or four. I can almost feel my brain working, trying to make neuroconnections that have not had to be reworked for a long, long time. Actually sometimes it seems I can hear my brain working on this. Exercise for the brain.

In the Medina

I flew into Rabat yesterday...am staying in a small riad...a bread and breakfast composed of six rooms around a three story courtyard in a house several hundred years old. The medina is the old walled city, narrow streets that cars can not enter, high blank walls whose only openings are ornate, massive doors which lead onto inner courtyards. On a high cliff above the sea just across from the medina is the kasbah, the old fort. Down the hill from the kasbah is the Oudaya Surfing Club, one of whose founding members is the king.

Outside the walls of the medina is the Ville Nouvelle, the new town established by the French when Morocco became a colony. Instead of tearing down the city walls, the French simply built an entirely new city with characteristic broad boulevards, now lined with stores, cafes, and banks. It is a pattern repeated throughout the country...the old city and the new city, side by side.

That is some of the basic geography...now to try to understand what is going on.

Santa Fe

We are in Santa Fe attending an anthropology conference; Charlotte is a discussant in one of the sessions I've spent the mornings exploring more of the city and its surroundings on my road bike. The downtown has grown into a giant mall. Stores obscure the traditional architecture and tourists mob the sidewalks.

But Canyon Road is lined still with a hundred varied art galleries...the figure of the yoga practitioner outside one gallery seems symbolic of the wealthy who come to Santa Fe in search of enlightenment and rejuvenation. The museums are well curated; the visitor has a wide choice of native American, folk, Spanish Colonial, fine and funky genres. And now there is a train that runs from Santa Fe to Albuquerque six times a day and, around the station, a new development area of parks, offices and even more stores called "the Railyard."

So the city remains its unique combination of history, southwest architecture and art, commerce and culture...under the bright blue sky, beneath the dry surrounding hills.

A visit

But it's not all winter sports, even when it's mostly winter sports. Ingrid (here with Pacha) and Geoff and Charlotte and I went up to Steamboat for a few days of skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, hot springs, hot tubs, and good cooking. And then we came back to Fort Collins for some bike riding, a few short walks, and just generally sitting around, enjoying spending time with one another, filling up the house with humor and life. Which is, after all, what family should in large part be about.

BARNELØPET 09

This was my second year to hang with the Barneløpet ("children's race") at Snow Mountain Ranch outside of Fraser. The local Sons of Norway lodges organize the event which features a 1k, 2k, and 5k race in the morning...after some initial lessons for those new to the sport. And in the afternoon young skiers and their families and friends can follow an "orienteering" course which takes them over the valleys ("daler")and hills ("bakker") and into the woods ("skogen") on the far side of the course. The last two years I've laid out that course and am finally getting the hang of it. The joy is in skiing out late in the day on the course and picking up the markers along the way, holding in my mind the sight of boys and girls (and adults) relishing a sunsplashed winter outdoor day.