For those who share my concern for environment and sustainable development; here is a quote that I copy-pasted from the slide of the environmental governance class I am taking. The class is one of the best classes I took, so rich in content, and for a change, no academic psycho-bubble. Everything I learned I can relate to real world:

Throughput is roughly equivalent to GDP, the annual flow of new production. It is the cost of maintaining the stocks of final goods and services by continually importing high quality matter and energy resources from the environment and exporting waste matter and low quality heat energy back to the environment. Currently we try to maximize the growth of the GDP, but the reasoning just given suggests that we should relabel it gross national cost or GNC. We should minimize it, subject to maintaining stocks of essential items.... To maximize GDP throughput for its own sake is absurd.

The Steady–State Economy in Outline, Herman L. Daly

What a beautiful day! We went to the National Gallery of Arts for the exhibit of Irving Penn. I fell in love with a black and white photo of his wife, a French model and sculptor, Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn.
We also saw the originals of small French paintings by Monet, Manet, Renoir. My favorites, however, were those by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot "Gypsy Girl with Mandolin". I also discovered that he has a painting titled A Road in the Countryside Near Lake Leman So this explains why everybody keeps asking me if I am French. Maybe I AM French after all.

I am reading a book, and I am fascinated by it. It is "What is the Matter with Kansas?" by Thomas Frank. A few facts are worth mentioning:
1. The book is the most thorough and brutal critique of declining American values and savage capitalism I have read for a long while. I have been resisting reading it for god knows what stupid reason, and I am so glad I picked it from the B&N shelf! I truly regret not having any litteratis and geeks around me, pointing wisely to the well-written books as soon as they appear on the bookstore shelves. Instead, I have friends who are desperate housewives and/or political/literary ignoramuses (very much like myself, as you may have noticed)
2. The writer is from Kansas. This, too is very significant. No, not because I want to defend my rural 'shady' links to red state Kansas, but because the book showed me very convincingly (I lived there, I have a first hand experience of what he is talking about) that Americans are capable of rigorous, academic self-criticism, and they are very good at it. This is a very challenging argument to come from someone like me, who had lost hope in this 'culture'. It can even be extended to another side argument: that critical theory exists in America. This, for me, in itself and for itself, is a major discovery but about this, later. I liked the book much better than Baudrillard's l'Amerique, for the simple reason that the American writer is not simply "observing" and passively "hating" the place - instead, he is observing with a melancholy that I can emphatize with, with compassion for a place that once was so liberal: and he has a goal: to make this place a better place. I don't see how Baudrillard's book can make this place-any place-better. This may be the difference between a constructive critique and destructive critique - while I truly emphatize with French critical theorists, their muddling through and extreme anti-Americanism is sometimes hard to digest, and much can be said about the American liberals who are trying to do something in conditions much more difficult than their French colleagues. Waiter, a hot kudos to Thomas Frank. Make it double...

In the comments of my previous entry, Emrah and I started a discussion related to what I wrote in that post. Here is a good quote from a Republican President in 1954:

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security,
unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs,
you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There
is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these
things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an
occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number
is negligible and they are stupid."
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower(Republican), 11/8/54

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world."
-Audre Lorde

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
-Plato

Kotmish, my beloved and only boyfriend, husband, friend and "crying wall", and I spent the weekend searching for nice sweet neighborhoods where we can move in after the contract of our apartment expires in a month - DC is an astronomically unbelievably expensive place - an average house costs $700 000, and well a million $!! This time, we are not buying a house-only renting one (and maybe we should move out of DC to more affordable and beautiful places!). We decided to rent a townhome because we like the feeling of privacy, and in my opinion even the best condo in the liveliest urban neighborhood can't compensate for the comfort of having a home with lots of windows, higher ceilings, Not to mention that we will have our own garage-well, over these deliberations we were of course startled to discover that condos are so expensive in the neighborhoods we wanted to move in (McLean), that we decided to go for townhomes which are slighly more expensive but offer ten time more convenience. We are planning to move to the area in DC that is considered residential, while Kotmish will probably continue to work in his old workplace. at one of the busiest corporate corners in the world- Tysons Corner. Excited, to move, I am !! (just Watched Star Wars and loved it)
Another major development is that I started taking my Environmental Public Governance class at George Mason - only after the first class did I realize that a class taken out of urgent necessity and with the assumption that it will not contribute anything significant to my world knowledge (picked the class randomly to register) can in fact be "quite interesting". Given the "environmental" policy of the US (or its lack), and the university being one of the nationally renowned ones "very close" to the national capital, one can have very interesting discussions indeed. The class consists of professionals seeking to improve their policy making skills-and me-the decorative plant who happens to be there by chance:). The first lesson I learned is that as a policy maker, facts are not relevant because they can be manipulated- environmental scientist are equally unreliable as the oil companies - so what is relevant is how you can shape the policy. This ordinary sentence gives us policy maker THE power, in fact, the only power... I am learning how to be Devil's Advocate.
EX:
Question:
"Is there global warming?"
Environmental Scientist: Yes, of course, what kind of a stupid question is this! Look at the data etc etc!
Oil companies: No, they can't prove it, they work to extend their contracts, obtain research money, and nobody has proven that global warming is happening. So let's not waste time.
Policy Maker: Well, hm, this is not the point, you see. Whether global warming is happening or not is irrelevant (beyond it is not even provable). What is the point is to move beyond this gridlock created by the disputable claims of environmental scientists and the equally disputable claims of the oil companies. So, lets move on to taking realistic actions like adapting, supporting developing nations with funds to educate them agains natural disasters. Etc....

This is on the "I talk for those who I am working for" qualities of the policymaker. The reason I was shocked initially was my belief that I will be taking an environmental class, but no, this is environmental policy and governance! But I also learned how dams destroyed whole Maya comunities, the twilight people of Irar, etc. This is on the "Environmental" aspect. I also learned lots of terms like environmental racism, glocalisation.
So far, I am loving it....

This post is dedicated to the lost children of the developed countries. I just returned from two second world countries (Bulgaria and the Greek islands), and one third world country (Turkey) - now, this is not the language of the romantic traveller, rather it is that of the aspiring political scientist. But having read all those texts about which godforsaken country stands where on the development scale, I started to look at my experience more "scientifically". Bulgaria: the place has not been repaired for 50 years. Ugly, hideous apartment complexes date back to the beginning of the communist era-nobody repaired or painted them since-why??? is the inevitable question. No public transportation, car rentals, or commutable roads! Highways and local roads feature giant holes that amaze even the most experienced driver. Unbelievable, with all those EU funds, the country is still like a ghost ship-in fact, worse than that. Did I mention that the villages have no street lights, the streets are totally dark at nights-like the middle ages, if not worse! Also, I should mention the unhappy, unsmiling, arrogant "urbanized" waiters who make your already not-too-exciting-fast-food experience a living hell. No knives, bread, or other basic amenities that you need and expect as a hungry and paying customer. At the end, you sneak out of the place, feeling lucky that the gross waiter did not slam you on the face. One wonders where all this unfriendliness comes from-is it cultural, or does it depend on the specific country the loud costumer comes from? Maybe it is because we started to order our food by joking and making loud remarks about this and that: we were too happy for the place I guess! My overall impression: below zero. But there is hope. The name of the hope is EU Funds.
Turkey: Now, where to begin with- the AKP's determination to destroy the secularist Ataturk legacy; the rapidly declining economy, the nonexistent infrastructure, the slums, the dust on the highways, the strange indeed idiotic way people look at you, or the overall pessimisim and "birgun sana donecegim bir elimde gul bir elimde silah" philosophy (read the graffiti at the Izmir bus terminal!). Not sure which is worse: post-communist and proudly underdeveloped Bulgaria; or post-capitalist and blisfully ignorant Turkey. Look at me, born in two places that rank below all kinds of world standards.
The Greek Islands: The thinking girl comes to a philosophical halt: here my rational analytical inclination melts away, and I return to my romantic self- the Greek islands have the cultural formula, the spatial authenticity to make me go back there every year-what I liked most is the simple harmony of kindness, hospitality (non-existent in Bulgaria), Greek mythology, and Ottoman ambiance. Three days spent at Rhodes, Lindos, and Faliraki, plus one day spent at Symi. ....And the warm hug of the loving Mediterrenean.

The last stop of the lone traveller is always where she wants to be. I am back, and this time for good. The last four weeks were the fastest in my life. We traveled to Turkey, Istanbul with Kotmish. Then we made a road trip to Bulgaria, several villages, towns and cities in just one week! We returned to Turkey, already exhausted, and having stayed only one day, headed to Southern Turkey, first Izmir, then Marmaris, and then the Greek islands. The first time, I fell in love with a place-Rhodes. Forget America, Turkey, Bulgaria. Go to Rhodes. I felt like staying there forever, but my visit was short. I have a nice tan, the first in years, and I have to admit it looks good on me-maybe I should keep tanning until I am completely bronze and get skin cancer in the process….I also managed to squeeze a few friends into my hectic schedule, as well as professor B. Aksoy. He went out of his way to see me, I was late due to a prior appointment with a friend, and he panicked because he doesn’t have a cell phone. He bought me ice-cream at the lobby of the Marmara, and we chatted like good old friends, he is such a sweet academic, the first that I know of his kind. He did his best to help me with ideas, suggestions, and he even called a few publishing houses to establish contact. He also gave me a long list of dictionaries, and we spent the evening browsing all the bookstores in Taksim to find he exact same edition, writer, editor etc that he recommended. Will write more soon, very soon indeed. My impressions of Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece are mixed, and I need to relax a bit in order to decide which is the worst of all.