Istanbul's lindy hop 'dance tribe'

In the minds of most tourists, the words "dance" and "Istanbul" probably conjure up not-terribly-authentic images of belly dancers, or perhaps, for the more culturally astute, the whirling dervishes of the Mevlevi order. Few would likely suspect that they could find a roomful of young Turks enthusiastically doing the lindy hop, a style of swing dance that originated in the Harlem ballrooms of the 1920s and 1930s.

I discovered the Swing Istanbul studio after being approached by the editor of Dance Gazette, the magazine of the Royal Academy of Dance in the U.K., with an assignment to identify and profile an interesting "dance tribe" in the city. My piece about the Istanbul lindy-hoppers appears as part of the cover story for the magazine's February 2012 issue, along with dispatches from a male hula class in New York, a zumba class in Sydney, an experimental-art mecca in Shanghai, and a group of London zombies who just love Michael Jackson.

Read my lindy-hop piece for Dance Gazette: jpg | pdf

2011 in review

From fine dining and dance subcultures in Istanbul to camel wrestling on the Aegean and hiking through 10,000 years of history in Southeast Turkey, I covered a lot of ground with my writing this year.

Updating part of the Fodor's Turkey guidebook took me from Roman ruins to World War II battlefields, with days chock-full of chatting up hoteliers, restaurant workers, and tour guides in between.

Stories about my adventures watching camel wrestling, a traditional sport on Turkey's Aegean coast, and exploring Hasankeyf, an ancient city slated for submersion by a dam, found a home in the pages of Time Out Istanbul.

In Istanbul, I wrote about garden tours on the Princes' Islands for Time Out Istanbul, lavish Bosphorus weddings for J Magazine, local lindy-hoppers for Dance Gazette, and the Contemporary Istanbul art fair for Selections (the last two to be published soon). I also updated Istanbul restaurant listings for the Zagat guide and penned a guest review of one of my favorite dining establishments for Istanbul Eats.

On the environmental front, I continued chasing down green developments in Turkey and elsewhere for TreeHugger, worked as a local fixer for CNN's "Road to Durban: A Green City Journey" climate-change program, investigated corporate social responsibility in Turkey for Ethical Corporation, and contributed a chapter to the book "Barefoot Bloggers: Write to Save the Planet."

It wasn't all work, work, work this year, of course -- I also spent five days touring Europe with a friend's rock band, ran a 10k race on the beautiful island of Bozcaada and a 15k here in Istanbul, ate (and cooked) lots of good food, further explored Turkey's Lycian coast, and poked my head into some new corners of the ever-fascinating city I call home. Here's to more of the same in 2012.

Green blogging made easy

Blogging seemed like a slightly suspicious activity in the mid-2000s, at least to some of the higher-ups at the large environmental nonprofit where I used to work. They recoiled in horror at the thought of a few writers publishing unvetted words that the cantankerous masses could comment on with abandon. Resistance proved futile, though, and today there's nary an NGO (nor company, university, or knitting group) without at least one blog.

The challenge now is one of standing out in a sea of bloggers. For those with an environmental bent, the newly released ebook "Barefoot Bloggers: Write to Save the Planet" offers a primer on engaging, effective blogging, from basics such as how to register a domain and find news to tips on generating revenue and search-engine optimization to questions of ethics and safety.

Lead author Karin Kloosterman, the editor of the Mideast environmental news site Green Prophet, tapped me to write a chapter on blogging for NGOs. Other contributors talk about building a popular mainstream green blog, making the transition from print journalism to blogging, green tech blogging, and writing for religious audiences of various faiths.

Sound intriguing? Purchase a copy online and be on your way to better blogging.

Hiking amidst history in the Southeast

“Here, taste this,” our guide Hüseyin said, plucking a handful of green stems from the ground and offering them to us. The scent and flavor were sharp and unmistakable – garlic, growing wild in the rugged hills behind the town of Hasankeyf in Southeast Turkey.


We had set out on a hike as the sun rose, climbing past old cave dwellings and into the canyons. Delicate flowers shook off the morning dew and opened to the sky, leaving the green slopes studded with red blossoms in our wake. Birds circled overhead, spiraling down to round holes in the limestone cliffs where they’d built their mud-dark nests alongside vertiginous staircases and primitive drainpipes carved into the stone....

Read the rest of my article about exploring Hasankeyf in the October 2011 issue of Time Out Istanbul: jpg | pdf.

To learn more about this amazing and threatened place, visit the website of the Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive and the blog Hasankeyf Values. For more photos, see my Flickr site.

Seeking sustainability in Turkey

Istanbul's bustling İstiklal Caddesi is chock-a-block with free art galleries sponsored by Turkey's biggest banks. The country's wealthiest families all have charitable foundations to go along with their gigantic, multi-industry holding companies. But is there such a thing as true corporate social responsibility in Turkey?

That's the question the sustainability consultancy One Stone set out to answer for a special country briefing on Turkey in the September 2011 issue of Ethical Corporation, recruiting me to contribute my local insight as an Istanbul-based correspondent. While other articles in the package looked at the need to move beyond philanthropy, the challenges facing leading companies, and the role of NGOs, I examined how the government and current legislation affect corporate responsibility. My conclusion? Turkish authorities, while making some promising steps, are missing the big picture.

Read my contribution to Ethical Corporation's Turkey briefing: jpg | pdf

Bosphorus bliss

When the time came to cut the wedding cake, all eyes were drawn to the ceiling of the ballroom as the tiered white pastry descended from its hiding place. A dancer followed, dangling upside down to pour drinks into the guests’ outstretched flutes.

Brides and grooms marrying at one of the magnificent 18th- and 19th-century palaces and mansions lining Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait can choose to celebrate in ballrooms where Ottoman royalty once got married. But the modern festivities can even outdo those of the sultans, who dispatched turtles with candles on their backs to light outdoor parties, paraded giraffes down the street, and set off fireworks for days on end to herald a palace member’s wedded bliss...

As a journalist, I've had the opportunity to be exposed to many different worlds, those of homesteaders in Alaska, miners' families in West Virginia, and conservation biologists in eastern Turkey among them. But perhaps the most foreign experience to date was having Istanbul hoteliers regale me with stories of the lavish waterfront weddings they had hosted – champagne-serving acrobats and all.

Writing a story for J Magazine, the inflight magazine of Jazeera Airways, about Bosphorus weddings in Istanbul gave me a peek into the exotic world of helipads and honeymoon suites bigger than my apartment -- and the creativity and effortless hospitality required for the staff at the city's top luxury hotels to make the wildest matrimonial dreams come true.

Read the rest of "Bosphorus Bliss" in the August 2011 issue of J Magazine: pdf

Eating (and reviewing) in Istanbul

Jokes about the 'two kinds of cheese' in Turkey – white and yellow – are common among the Roquefort-loving expat crowd, but after experiencing what Turkish cheese can taste like when served warm with almond chunks and caramelized onions, I may never complain about beyaz peynir again...

Read the rest of my review of Istanbul restaurant Lokanta Maya on the city's best website for foodies, Istanbul Eats.