Dear Reader,
Here we are in what is probably the very last of the snow this year. Snow in Istanbul is quite incredible. I know the silent sound of it well. Of course it functions to make our traffic problems even worse they already are, it turns those bus rides into journeys that are practically initiatically difficult, but God, is it beautiful! At least it is right after a heavy snow falls, when everything is covered with this gleaming, pristine white. The heavy stillness of snow covered places here has always touched me deeply for some reason.
Spring is coming though, and we can start doing the things humans typically do every spring: the cleaning and sorting out and getting ready that always presages the coming of the summer months.
In the January column I mentioned that I had gotten involved with helping organize a conference that is being planned at Fatih University in Istanbul this May. It is the “International Congress on Higher Education: Perspectives on University Education in the 21st Century,” and you can go and visit the website to learn what will be in store: www.edu2004.fatih.edu.tr The preliminary program is ready and the conference will include sessions on transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to university education and speakers like our own Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Çelik, Minister of Education and Prof. Basarab Nicolescu from CNRS in Paris. There is no registration fee and I urge anyone who is concerned about the quality of education to attend.
Monday, March 8, is International Women’s Day. It is widely celebrated in North America and Europe, but scant attention is paid to it here in Turkey. (Note: Sade Kahve in Rumeli Hisarı will have some very special decorations to celebrate that day. For one thing, the names of different women in history will be found in large red letters, one at each table.) Attention should be paid to this day, however. Few people know that in one of his speeches, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk said the following:
"There is a straighter and more secure path for us to follow than the one we have been. This is to have Turkish women as partners in everything, to share our lives with them, and to value them as friends, helpers and colleagues in our scientific, spiritual, social and economic life."
No one seems to have taken this seriously, but it is clear he knew what was going on. Seventy something years later, the same thing is still going on. Not good, not good. The only thing I would change about what he said is that I would strike the word Turkish because what he says here isn’t only true for Turkey. It has universal meaning. .
In 1979 artist Judy Chicago exhibited a massive installation she called The Dinner Party at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The Dinner Party is an immense and important work. It consists of an enormous triangular shaped dinner table—48 feet on each side—with a porcelain floor in the middle. Place settings for 39 guests range along the table, each one dedicated to a memorable woman in history. Each place setting consists of a painted porcelain plate, each with a different stylized image of a butterfly in three dimensions rising up from the center, meant to symbolize Woman’s vagina. There are also embroidered table runners with images evocative of each of the 39 women. It has been said that The Dinner Party wrote women into history,” and this certainly appears to be the case. Since that first exhibition, The Dinner Party has been exhibited 15 times on three continents. Over a million people have seen it; among them have been hundreds of thousands of students, from kindergarten through graduate school. The work has now found a permanent home at the Brooklyn Museum. For more information you can visit http://www.judychicago.com
Judy Chicago holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Art. She has been awarded no less than four honorary doctorates and she is the author of many books, including Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist (1975) and The Dinner Party: A Symbol of our Heritage (1979) and five others.
Judy Chicago can be contacted at:
Through the Flower.
PO Box 1327 Belen, NM 87002
505-864-4080
Fax 505-864-4088
E-mail: throughtheflower@compuserve.com
Website: http://www.judychicago.com
Many of the names on the list that I made, below, are represented in The Dinner Party, but not all. For example, you won’t find any of the Turkish women’s names. They should have been there and they would have been, if Judy Chicago had known our history. (And it is we who live here who are responsible for making sure our hidden treasures are no longer hidden.) None of the mythological names are represented either, but I am not known for making distinctions between Myth and Reality since I see them as different faces of the same thing and so I included some here:
Afife Jale, Al-Khansa, Anaïs Nin, Artemis, Artemis Gentileschi, Boadicea, Camille Claudel, Catherine of Siena, Cleopatra, Cristine De Pisan, Demeter, Diotima, Eleanor of Aquitane, Emma Goldman, Eva Peron, Florence Nightingale, Frida Kahlo, George Sand, Georgia O’keefe, Hadjewich of Bingen, Halide Edib, Helen Keller, Hildegard Von Bingen, Hurrem, Hypatia, Inanna, Indira Ghandi, Joan of Arc, Katherine Mansfield, Kösem, Leyla, Lou-Andreas Salomé, Margaret Meade, Margaret Sanger, Marguerite of Porete, Marie Curie, Mary, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Mother Teresa, Nurbanu, Princess Diana, Sappho, Simone Weil, Sor Juana De La Cruz, Theresa of Avila, Turhan, Zübeyde
In closing and in honor of International Women’s Day, I would like to remind all of you of a fabulous song that hit the top of the charts in 1972 (which is before a lot of you were born, but never mind. There was Life before you were born, even if it is hard for you to imagine that! )
I am Woman—words and music by Helen Reddy and Ray Burton:
I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back an' pretend
'cause I've heard it all before
And I've been down there on the floor
No one's ever gonna keep me down again
CHORUS
Oh yes I am wise
But it's wisdom born of pain
Yes, I've paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman
You can bend but never break me
'cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I come back even stronger
Not a novice any longer
'cause you've deepened the conviction in my soul
CHORUS
I am woman watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my lovin' arms across the land
But I'm still an embryo
With a long ,long way to go
Until I make my brother understand
Oh yes I am wise
But it's wisdom born of pain
Yes, I've paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to I can face anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman
Oh, I am woman
I am invincible
I am strong
FADE
I am woman
I am invincible
I am strong
I am woman
Yes, yes, yes. I am woman. I am strong. And so are you.
* * *
Our friends at Les Arts Turcs are already getting ready for the warm weather season. Remember that there is a standing invitation for anyone interested in Turkish culture and learning about their tours and what’s currently on offer in Istanbul to drop by for a chat and a cup of tea.
Address : Incili Cavus Sokak No. 37 3rd floor
Alemdar Mahallesi
(behind the Underground Cistern entrance)
Sultanahmet
34400 Istanbul
Tel: (212) 511 21 98; (212) 511 22 96
Fax: (212) 511 21 98; 511 22 96
Check out their new E BUSINESS website, too. This has got to be THE most comprehensive business website in Turkey. Here you will find a Business Directory, Yellow Pages, and more. You can even get free advice if you are planning to open a business. http://www.e-turkey.org/
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