I pull into the parking lot of the building at the community college where I teach English to adult community members and notice a black SUV with official, yellow plates parked tail-in, in one of the parking spots. There’s a man sitting in there, head down, maybe looking at his phone. I immediately have a…
Tag: politics
Muslims as Heroes in the Epic Turkish Series Ertuğrul
I recently got caught up in the Turkish television series Diriliş: Ertuğrul, translated as Resurrection: Ertuğrul. So caught up, that this usual non-watcher just finished season one, which has 76(!) ~40-minute episodes (broken down from its original, 26 episodes for shorter-attention-span Americans). I didn’t know anything about the series when I started it; I was…
The Embarrassment of Travel in the Trump Era
During our recent travels abroad, I noticed myself embarrassed to be an American. There are reasons I have felt this way earlier in my life, when I spent time abroad in the early 2000’s, but this past year, with the US under the Trump administration, the feeling was way more pronounced. When walking in the…