Merhaba,

Leshana tova tekatev v’techatem.  May you be inscribed for a good year!  

      How are Randal and I celebrating Rosh Hashanah?  We’re going to a marina barbecue over by the pool but I promise not to eat pork or shell fish if there is any.  I did eat an apple today and some dried fruit mash spread that I made.  So I have had something sweet.  Funny enough the picture from the Huffington Post whose info I stole (ok as they don’t pay for it either) shows a photo from Ashdod, Israel where a man is throwing bread into the Mediterranean symbolizing throwing away your sins.  Throwing bread into the Mediterranean is something I can do! 

     For those who are unfamiliar with Rosh Hashanah or those like me who don’t remember so much from Hebrew School here is the article……

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is celebrated in 2012 from sundown on Sept. 16 to nightfall on Sept. 18. The Hebrew date for Rosh Hashanah is 1 Tishrei 5773.

Though Rosh Hashanah literally means "head of the year," the holiday actually takes place on the first two days of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, which is the seventh month on the Hebrew calendar. This is because Rosh Hashanah, one of four new years in the Jewish year, is considered the new year of people, animals and legal contracts. In the Jewish oral tradition, Rosh Hashanah marks the completion of the creation of the world.

Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the Jewish High Holy Days, or Yamim Noraim (the "Days of Awe"), and is followed 10 days later by Yom Kippur, the "day of atonement." The Mishnah refers to Rosh Hashanah as the "day of judgment," and it is believed that God opens the Book of Life on this day and begins to decide who shall live and who shall die. The days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are viewed as an opportunity for Jews to repent (teshuvah, in Hebrew) and ensure a good fate.

Jews traditionally gather in synagogues on Rosh Hashanah for extended services that follow the liturgy of a special prayerbook, called a mahzor, that is used during the Days of Awe. At specific times throughout the service, a shofar, or ram’s horn, is blown. The mitzvah (commandment) to hear the shofar, a literal and spiritual wake-up call, is special to this time of year.

The new year is the only Jewish holiday that is observed for two days by all Jews (other holidays are observed for just one day within the Land of Israel) as it is also the only major holiday that falls on a new moon.

A common greeting on Rosh Hashanah is shana tovah u’metukah, Hebrew for "a good and sweet new year." Many traditional Rosh Hashanah foods — apples and honey, raisin challah, honey cake and pomegranate — are eaten, in part, for this reason. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/16/rosh-hashanah-2012-the-je_n_1887610.html

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You may recall that while we were in North Cyprus DEKS was a favorite place where I took Turkish lessons and Randal and I joined the Thursday morning hikes.  Denise was both teacher and hike leader.  Her daughter Deena and son-in-law would come visit from Marmaris, Turkey where TK is a headquartered as a member of the Turkish Navy.  Deena and TK came for dinner Friday night.  Deena has a wonderful voice.  You saw photos of her singing at a DEKS Good-bye dinner for the cruisers we all attended.  She would like to learn guitar and Thursday night she had her first lesson from Randal.  When we come back in November hopefully they will continue.

Ru

DoraMac

Deena and TK come to dinner on DoraMac Friday, September 14, 2012

Motorbike salt and pepper shakers and Deena eating all of her vegs.

Guitar lesson # 1

Merhaba,

  Yesterday was a fun day that started at 5 am and ended about 11 pm.  I (Randal skipped it) was to meet Mary and Rick for another 7 am hike, so set the alarm for 5 am.  I like to have time for tea and oatmeal, email and not rushing.  We finished the hike and our after hike ice drinks just short of noon.  While we’d been hiking my phone rang.  Deena Bibby, the daughter of our DEKS pal Denise, lives in Marmaris with her Turkish Naval husband TK.  She, Randal and I made plans to meet in town at 2PM.  At 7 PM it was the Tuesday Cruiser Happy Hour/Stay for Dinner at Pineapple so Randal and I went off to that.  We got back to Doramac about 10:30 pm.  Time to read and have some tea before turning out the lights and sleeping like a log!  Today I pretty much just read and relaxed and that was about it.

  One of the books I’m reading is called Drinking With Dead Women Writers.  The joint authors imagine meeting up with famous dead women authors and having a drink and talking about the women’s lives.  Cute book.   I came across this quote by Louise May Alcott.  It totally reminds me of our friend Heidi Trautmann and I told her so!  The trick when you are retired and living in a marina is making each day useful….Hmmmm.  I’ll have to work on that.

Ru

“Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.”

Never-ending Trail Hike

Mary, Rick and I hiked back up the Never-ending Trail Tuesday seeing if we could get to what we would recognize as “the top.” We didn’t get there.

We met at the marina entrance at 7 am and walked the half mile to where the trail starts. We wound our way up and up and up, at each bend wondering what was just around the next bend. Finally at 9 am we stopped; the trail kept going. When we return in November, the weather will be better for all-day hikes and we’ll see if we ever find the end of the trail.

It hasn’t rained in months; this water comes from a mountain stream that has been fitted with a pipe and a tin cup hangs there for thirsty hikers….who are brave enough to drink it. We weren’t and didn’t. I have heard that any stream in Turkey is drinkable and did drink from a decorative public fountain in Guneykent last year.

We saw trails going up and down and every which way. We’ll try those in the Fall.

Nice photo of me! by Mary

My friend Ellen’s sister worked on the play Wicked so I have the T-Shirt. My shorts used to be Randal’s and went around the world with him in 2000. This may be their last year as shorts as they are getting close to being rags even as I wear them.

The views were worth the hike and the exercise felt really good.

Very Lovely

Time for snacks!

Mary resting on a rock before heading back down the mountain.

(Still having some light meter issues.)

Merhaba,

One of the main reasons we came to Marmaris is because of Gwen on KW. Read about her at http://www.followtheboat.com/2008/04/04/gwen-of-kw/ She has lived In Turkey for umpteen years and around the Middle East even longer working here and there for the U.S. State Department. Gwen organizes stuff; week-long trips to far off places, shorter trips closer to Marmaris and fun afternoon trips off for lunch someplace not Marmaris. Today’s lunch trip was to Orhaniye, a fairly short mini-bus ride over the mountains and along the coast eastward. Randal and I had passed Orhaniye several times last year traveling on our motorbike but had never stopped for lunch. We did stop for a flea market and that was fun.

There were about a dozen of us on the minibus, but our lunch group was larger as we met up with Bill and Judy on BeBe and Brian, Jackie from Songster, artist Christina Kirk (now Christina O’Keeffe) and her husband Terry. http://symidream.com/wp/services/gallery/christina-kirk-marca/ is a bit about her artwork. She and her husband run sailing charters in the Mediterranean. www.msykontiki.com is their site. All were docked on the short pier provided by the restaurant. Many restaurants offer that type of service, you park there and then eat there and the parking is free. (At least at some restaurants. I didn’t ask if that was true of this one so don’t quote me if you go there and want free boat parking.)

My camera’s light meter is now refusing to take any kind of decent photo if there is a big difference between light and shadow. So some of these photos were pretty poor and doctoring them up with Microsoft Photo Manager didn’t help all that much. Definitely a new camera this trip home.

Lovely setting.

Off the boat, walk the dock, and into the small restaurant.

http://www.orhaniye.net/accommodation/pansiyons/ersoy-pansiyon/

Getting settled in.

Gwen, Judy and Bill…this was one of the light meter issue photos.

Mary and Rick, our hiking buddies…more light meter issues. (Couldn’t possibly be the photographer!)

Brian, Jackie, Trish, David, Randal, (me) Mary, Rick, Gwen, Judy and Bill who you can just see a bit of next to Judy.

Settling up the bill.

Happy Anniversary Judy and Bill

Bill and Judy were celebrating anniversary number 43.

As for the food, we had salad and French fries while we waited for our orders. (More of us were Americans so I can call them fries rather than chips as the Brits do.) And dessert was halva, grapes from their vines, fresh figs from their trees, and watermelon. For his meal Randal had grilled sea bass, but sometimes I’m too lazy to deal with all the bones. So I ordered the grilled calamari trying to be healthy instead of having it fried.

So how many of you have had grilled calamari that actually looks like what it was when it was out swimming around in the Med?

I’ve eaten calamari before and had great fried “small cut up pieces” in Israel and at DEKS in Cyprus. Calamari tentacles small and fried seem less tentacle-like. When I ordered it today, Gwen asked if I knew what I was doing…guess not! It tasted good. But I was expecting calamari for wimps, cut into small unidentifiable pieces. I guess I should have ordered the fried calamari. Actually I think my days of eating non-kosher fish may be coming to an end.

Ru

Merhaba,

  We spent almost a year in China and I don’t remember experiencing the frustration of blocked website the way I have since we’ve returned to Turkey this year.  China blocks facebook, but I don’t really do facebook so didn’t really notice.  And on occasion .gov site were blocked but nothing I couldn’t get around and access another way.  Even our website, www.mydoramac.com was blocked for a time.  Again I could find the info, text was one place and photos another. And I could use the magazine database from my Roanoke County Public Library and my Library Card.  How great is that!   But here in Turkey all sorts of things come up blocked.  Today on Google News there was a link to a Rolling Stone article about Mitt Romeny and Bain.  When I tried to acces it, I got another of those Access Denied pages.  As we were leaving Turkey last year, academics and journalists, and lots of just "general public" were protesting Turkey’s planned censoring of the Internet by forcing every provider to pick a filter whether they wanted to or not.  Turkey calls itself a democracy but you can’t tell that by Internet Access.  This article focuses on Rolling Stone being blocked in China and it is one comment that points to the same problem in Turkey.  I tried to pull up a site that spoke about the problem in Turkey and, you guessed it, Access Denied.  In case anyone from the Turkish government is reading this, I don’t feel protected, I feel insulted that you don’t think I’m intelligent enough to make my own decisions or evaluate information that I read.  Shame on you!  As for blaming Rolling Stone for the block, how would that cause comments about Rolling Stone access in Turkey to also be blocked? 

Anyway, that’s my rant for today. 

Ru

Access Denied! That’s the message greeting China-based readers of Rollingstone.com, the online version of the iconic music and cultural magazine Rolling Stone. But this isn’t the work of the rampaging Net Nanny but rather a deliberate block on Chinese IP addresses that seems to stem from the publishers. That ain’t very rock ‘n’ roll.

As it’s a geolocation-based restriction, let’s say it has been geotarded, which is my favourite etymologically-edgy epithet. This is usually done by music or video content providers who want to stop certain regions from accessing licensed content, but it’s rarely done by news or topical sites. We reached out to Rolling Stone for comment late yesterday, but have yet to get a response.

The geotarding seems to cover the whole of mainland China but not Hong Kong, as I was able to confirm by using a HK-based IP proxy. Going to any page on the website brings up an error message, such as:

Access Denied. You don’t have permission to access “http://www.rollingstone.com/music/” on this server.

And then there’s a long reference number, as shown in the top image. The Twitter user @beijingdaze, who first alerted me to this, says that access was normal to the site very recently and the geotarded blank page has only showed up in the past two days.

The magazine version of Rolling Stone was launched in China in 2006 (left) only to be shut down due to licensing issues a few weeks later. In now sells under the ‘InMusic’ name.

In this unusual scenario, there are a few possible reasons for Rolling Stone making this very un-liberal exclusion: perhaps the site was the victim of a hack attack that emanated from China, and therefore wanted to lock itself down; it was done to protect the copyright of new music or video on the site; or, it’s some technical error that no internal tech staffers have spotted.

The magazine version of Rolling Stone was launched in China in early 2006 only to be strangled by interminable red tape just a few weeks later. The publisher Wenner Media persisted, and it was resurrected with a different name and a fresh publishing license a short while later. It’s currently sold branded as ‘InMusic’ magazine (as pictured above).

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Tags: China, culture, georestricted, geotarded, Music, Rolling Stone, Web

About Steven Millward

Steven follows the shininess and brilliance of gadgets, social media and other cultural phenomena across Asia. Specialist areas of research include e-commerce, Android, smartphone adoption, and apps in general. He’s currently based near Shanghai. If you have any tips or feedback, contact him via email, or on his Weibo or Twitter.

Merhaba,

  Just catching up on some of the zillions of photos I’ve taken.  I had lots of cat photos as there seem relatively few stray dogs here.

Ru

Cats of Marmaris

I’ve taken lots of photos of stray cats here Marmaris. So I thought it would be fun to do an email of the cats because many of them are such “hams.” Today I searched the Internet seeing if anyone had written about the cats here as they are cared for quite well compared to what we saw in Cyprus. Lots of food and water is put out around town and many of the cats have clipped ears to show they have been neutered. When I typed in cats of Marmaris’, up popped the Facebook site of the Marmaris Cat Shelter. When we return from Roanoke in November I’ll contact them and see about doing some volunteering. I did donate to the Awl Grip ladies who feed the cats that come by their marine supply shop. Other people put out food also. And big bowls of water. Nice!

http://www.marmarisinfo.com/kittycat/ Marmaris Cat Shelter

“HOW DO WE HELP THE STREET CATS WITHOUT CREATING A NEW PROBLEM?

Feed them by all means, but not in the restaurants, not in the hotels. find the nearest dustbin and feed them there. they are already feeding from the bins, so nothing changes there.

If a cat appears on your balcony, don’t immediately take it into your room and start to care for it!!!!! I know its hard but you have to think of the consequences, don’t teach it to be cared for when you are not going to be there in a couple of weeks,……

take the food and coax them to the dustbins and feed them there. When you leave at the end of your holidays they will still find food in those bins, and they wont be too used to human contact.

Please remember that feral or semi feral cats survive better with support rather than totally domesticating them, and that’s exactly what we do when we take them into our rooms and our arms, the closer you get to the street cats the more you take away their chances of survival and their independence.”

Obviously we did the absolutely most wrong thing in Israel befriending the kitty near our boat. But it did give him a “healthy start.” Eve says he doesn’t come round her boat much anymore; but had learned to feed himself from the fishermen and to share the bowls of food that were often put out at the entrance gate. I am glad that here there is a shelter so if we find a cat in distress; at least we can call someone.

From a shop near the marina.

Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats……The cats near the Awl Grip marine supply store early one morning.

Cats everywhere you look.

Morris?

He’s thinking, “Yes…I’ll put up with you and your camera.”

What a cutie!

What interesting coloring so I took a "portrait."

Many of the cats look as if they’ve been colored in by someone who had no clue what cats should look like, so they have bits of color blobbed onto their faces.

Jungle cats….

Cats’ eyes.

Clipped ears indicate this cat has been neutered

One-eyed Jack would be a great name for this cat.

I met him near the restaurants within the marina. He came over for some rubs and then made as if to follow me to town. Luckily a woman walking a dog came along so cat decided he’d stay in the marina which was a relief to me.

This interesting looking cat was waiting in the bazaar where food is put out by many of the shops.

Making himself comfortable along Bar Street.

Not yet open for business but good for resting.

I woke him up when I got closer to take a photo.

Street food for cats.

Little piles of food are put out so the cats won’t fight as each has his own spot.

A stray piece of chicken dôner kebap from our friends, maybe an accident, maybe sharing with the cats.

Bowls of water are put out also.

Merhaba,

   It’s hard to believe it’s Labor Day Weekend.  Really early this year.  Here the early mornings between 5 am and 7:30 am are getting cooler.  Yes we are up that early, well at least by 5:45 anyway.  Today we were up early to meet new friends Rick and Mary for a hike.  Lots of fun as you’ll read.  They are new friends.  So are Zarah and Lee who you will be in future emails and also Gwen.  We met Gwen last year and she’s a big part of the reason we are at Netsel this year.  She organizes things to do.  We’re going on a Gwen day trip this Thursday.  We are saying good-bye (at least for now) to Bill and Judy and Betty and David.  Here are some farewell photos for them.

Ru

Old Friends, New Friends

Bill and Judy on SV BeBe

Bill and Judy with us for dinner at Pineapple Restaurant at Netsel Marina

Bill and Judy had extra dock line. We needed new dock line. They treated us to dock line and we treated them to dinner.  Bill and Judy had come to Marmaris Yacht Marine with family visitors but are now about to leave to go off cruising until their winter berth is available October 1. They have chosen to spend the winter in Fethiye rather than Marmaris. December they spend at home in Texas, but I expect, as Fethiye is really not so far from here that we will see them in the new year here in Turkey.

My wonderful poached salmon with capers and some kind of light white creamy dressing.

Randal had his usual bon filet pepper steak. (He’s now determined to concoct his own pepper sauce, whole cream and all.) Bill had 4 cheese pasta with spinach that he and Judy reviewed as “wonderful.” Judy had grouper with vegetables, very healthy and good, but she liked the 4 cheese pasta better. It was a lovely meal; good friends and good food.

Betty and David Motor-Sailor Sundance

We’d met way back in Malaysia several times and had recently caught up with Betty and David in Israel. After leaving Israel they had been cruising the coasts of Turkey and Greece and had come to Marmaris for boat parts and to collect some mail. A short term marina stay, especially during the summer costs a ridiculous amount of money so they were anchored out. When they came to town they would tie up along side us and then we’d all go off shopping for boat parts or fun stuff and then have lunch at Aciktim. These photos were the day before they left to cruise back along the coast east toward Finike where they will leave their boat while they spend the winter in Melbourne, FL. Their last day in Marmaris they had loaded up at the Thursday Market and then the Liquor Store which had a really good price for white wine.

After some farewell hugs, Betty climbs off DoraMac into their dinghy.

It‘s a tad tricky, but you learn to do these things.

They’d taken a taxi back to the marina and so their stuff was on the dock waiting to be loaded into their dinghy. Cruisers are partial to wine as you can see from the photo.

Loading it all in.

They have the best dinghy with a steering wheel and roomy to hold enough fruit, veggies, olives, bread and  wine for a few weeks anyway.

Betty was my shopping buddy. One day I talked her into going off to Turunc, two towns over along the coast. We could take a water taxi for 10TL or the dolmus for 6 TL. I wanted to take the dolmus as I remembered the ride on our motorbike was quite nice over the mountain. So we bypassed the taxi and went to the dolmus stop. We waited and waited, and it was hot, and finally one came along and it was full! Next one would be in 30 minutes but it too might be full. So we walked back to the water taxi stand and all of the Turunc boats were gone. We were sent down to ask other water taxis but they wouldn’t go until they had at least 4 passengers and who knew how long that would take. By then it was almost 11 am so we decided to give up and just explore more of Marmaris and save Turunc for some other time. That was Tuesday. Monday we’d all gone on a frustrating adventure to retrieve their mail. As Betty and David had no real address in Marmaris, they’d asked if they could use our address here at the marina. (Getting mail around the world can be tricky!) Of course we agreed. Problem is when the mail finally showed up some of it was their prescription medicines so the package was held up in customs. The Turkish Post Office brought a notice to our boat just as Randal and I were getting back from grocery shopping last Saturday. We took the notice but had no clue where to retrieve the package so I ran and caught the Postal truck and the driver said "Port, Customs."  As there was a cruise ship in that day, the bridge to the “Port” was open so we could walk over easily. We were sent from one office to the next and finally got to customs which was closed on the weekend. It would reopen Monday morning. So Monday Betty and Jack came to the boat and, again, a cruise ship was in port so Randal and David walked over the bridge to customs only to be told the following. Turkish customs requires that the name on the prescriptions and the mail recipient be the same person. Customs said that the Post Office had the package but wouldn’t release the meds to either Randal or David. But the rest of the package was mail and that they could go collect that at the post office. So we all traipsed over to the Post Office planning to collect the mail and then eat at Aciktim just nearby. Turns out we needed the "customs post office"  but the lady handling the packages couldn’t tell us how to get there or show us on the map. Luckily Doğan, one of our Aciktim friends, knew where it was. And I’d actually walked near there on one of my ‘around Marmaris’ walks so had a vague idea. So off we went. And it was hot! Finally we get there about 1 pm and it’s closed with no hours posted. But other folks arrived too so the guy inside had to tell us all when to come back at 1:30 when it would reopen.  Too hot and too long for us to wait. So not to waste the trip and walked back in the direction of Carrefour, a French grocery chain and then the Import Shop. We’d no luck at either of those places but did discover the liquor store across the street had pretty cheap white wine. By then it was almost 1:30 so we walked back to the Post Office and collected the mail we could collect and, AND PAY THE IMPORT HANDLING FEE!!!!! The meds were left behind. Hopefully they can be used for something, but probably they will just be trashed. Thankfully they weren’t irreplaceable, (local drugs would work) so it was only a waste of money, time and quite frustrating. THE GOOD NEWS WAS….WE FOUND A SOURCE FOR REASONABLY PRICED WINE and Sundance went off with two cases as you can see loaded on their dinghy.

New friends, Californians Mary and Rick on sailing vessel Orca.

Rick and Mary like to hike so today we went off looking for a trail up the mountains that they’d sort of heard about. And then sort of read about on the Internet. We met at their boat at 7 am to get the cool of the morning. We had a lot of fun but didn’t find the right path and sort of ended up in the dump. Actually it wasn’t “sort of;” we definitely ended up at the dump.

It started out well enough with us walking out from the marina and then turning onto a road that would lead us to a dirt path that would lead us up the mountain and some nice vistas. And it started out that way. We had to walk past the dump but then soon found a dirt path starting up into the woods. We had to cross some streams, but even that was ok. Everything was fine until it just ended at what looked like some kind of overflow dam.

Mary looking off to see if there were any options across the waterway. Nope.

Rick and Randal waiting to discuss Plan B.

Plan B didn’t pan out nor C or D….and we followed a very narrow dirt path that just sort of ended just behind the dump so we took it down the hill and walked through the dump. These men were just about to dump an old red couch and other junk as we came along in their way. This can’t be the only dump as there was no food or stuff, just big junk and a fenced in area of old, discarded motorbikes! You can see the hill behind we were hoping to climb.

Back in town having coffee.

As we were drinking our coffee a local man came along and offered to take our photo. I gave him my camera and hoped for the best as he was having a hard time balancing himself never mind the camera. But he spoke fluent English and said he spoke 5 languages which makes him ahead of me by 4. And it’s a rather nice photo. We recovered enough from our outing this morning to plan another for tomorrow on a path I’d found earlier but didn’t want to go alone. It’s pretty far from the dump so we won’t end up there again, hopefully.

Randal’s apple pie

Randal makes great pie filling but so far the crusts are not so perfected. And somehow he ended up with enough dough for 2 pies. From this photo you can see we drink tea, wine, and use our slow cooker, thank you Carol Carino! After these pies we need lots of hikes in the woods.