Spring Recovery Moon
Glad BJ’s a true New Yorker. She saw the train as a good way to return to the airport. Saved me a couple of hours in transit. It was a good visit and I have the spritz cookies to prove it. I’ll be sending a box full of yarn to Idaho. No room in the Beacon Hotel for it, I guess.
Kate got her teeth cleaned yesterday. In addition to all her other miseries Sjogren’s, which makes her mouth very dry, does so by diminishing the natural defense against cavities, saliva. That means good news for the dentist’s income, bad news for her. As I might have said long ago, if it’s not one damned, it’s another.
Had my make sure I’ve got the technique down session at On the Move Fitness. The deadlift move was hard for my body to figure out. I had a tendency to slump my shoulders. Drive your glutes back, chest up, Dave said. Oh, I see. That advanced quadraped had me going, too. Had my hand sweeping forward when my leg came up rather than when it went back. Fixed that. Now I’m good to go for another 6-8 weeks.
Cardio wise I’m way behind my usual fitness level. Totally detrained. It will take a while to get that back, probably longer than getting my muscles into shape. No other way than through it. This paleolithic body wants to be hunting and gathering, but I’m sitting and coughing. Sigh.
Netflix provides me with some of my travel needs. How, you might ask? By funding shows that not only take place in foreign climes, but ones created and acted by folks from those same climes. (what is a clime, anyhow? ah. “a region considered with reference to its climate.” There you go.) They’re not all great, most aren’t, but they show a particular culture in situ and from within its cultural norms. Sure, they use some cliches from American and British TV, imperialism is not just about gun boats and occupying armies, but the cultural mores seep through anyhow.
Example. The Protector. This story is set in Istanbul. Its origin is a fantasy novel by Turkish author, N. Ipek Gokdel, The Strange Story of Charcoal and a Young Man. The novel itself has not been translated into English and the language of the series is Turkish, but, you know, subtitles. The settings include the Grand Bazaar, Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and many parts of Istanbul with which I’m not familiar like Prince’s Island and residential neighborhoods.
The Protector is a figure from Istanbul’s Ottoman past, a magical figure who gains the power to stop the seven Immortals who threaten Istanbul and, by implication, the whole world. The plot draws from the era of Mehmed the Conqueror. At 21 he defeated the Byzantine’s and began the Sunni Muslim era of Turkey. A key figure in a few episodes is the architect of Suleiman the Magnificent, Mimar Sinan. The show visits mosques he designed and his tomb.
Various Turkish foods, table customs, history, family traditions, as well as story telling tropes are in every scene. It’s not a bad story line and the actors are good, not great, but good. Plus I get to see Istanbul and learn about Turkey. In this period of my life I’m more stay-at-home, so I appreciate these opportunities. Roma was another example. Genghis Khan, which I’ve not watched yet, is another. Kingdom, set in Korea, too. The long series on foods of Southern China. None of the other streaming services have this variety.
