Save the Van Cats

Jun 27, ’16 10:51 AM

Some background on a little coincidence.

When I was in Haiti volunteering with Clowns Without Borders I made an interview with the logistician for the French group. I was his translator and I don’t know French very well at all. At some point he said, “vingt-quatre,” and I translated it as van cat and talked a little nonsense about what we do with the van cats.

Imagine my surprise when this headline showed up in my Turkey news feed: TURKEY SAVES VAN CATS FROM EXTINCTION. Van cats are real! They come from Van, they have different colored eyes, and they are being saved from extinction!

“The Van cat has to be fully white, with one eye turquoise blue and the other amber. The roundness of its face and the length of its tail are very important.”

“The Van Cats Research Center, established by Van’s Yuzuncu Yil University in 1992, has played a key role in saving the species from extinction. The number of purebred Van cats at the center has increased from 30 in 1992 to 144 in 2014. The cats have been issued ID cards and the university has banned them from being sold or given away as presents.”

There is a really boring youtube video explaining how important Van cats are, longwindedly describing the plight of the cats disappearing from Van. People kill the ones that don’t have two colored eyes, the ones that do have the two colored eyes? Tourists kidnap them. I don’t blame them.

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Sworn Virgins

Dec 8, ’13 5:53 PM

Sworn Virgin, or ‘burnesha” elevated a woman to the status of a man and granted her all the rights and privileges of the male population. In order to manifest the transition such a woman cut her hair, donned male clothing and sometimes even changed her name. Male gestures and swaggers were practiced until they became second nature. More photos here.

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Junk Boats, River Pirates

Oct 6, ’13 12:30 PM

These photos are from an excellent photo essay my mother sent me months ago. It’s too good to have been sitting in my unpublished posts que for too long. This project touches so many of my interests these days, street performance, building forts, sailing, traveling the world, river pirates. It’s magic!

Wired featured the same photos with more information on the main artist, who calls herself Swoon. It’s worth a look.

Tod Seelie, a friend of Swoon’s, has been on all the trips so far as a crew member and brought his camera to document the creativity and chaos.

“I can only really speak for me,” Seelie says, “And really it’s a combination of things, but I’d say the main point [of the trips] is inspiration. It’s the inspiration we feel and the inspiration other people feel when they come across us.”

They built this ships out of New York City trash and in 2009 sailed them, uninvited, from Slovenia to Venice for the Venice Biennale. Really, my timing is just right. By the time you read this I’ll be sailing down from Slovenia on the A4 autostrada, blasting past Venice to Florence for another seven months of school at Helikos.

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Camping in Bannack

Oct 5, ’13 12:29 PM

Bannack turned four last Sunday, and I’ve been missing him extra hard lately. Here are some photos from a roll of film I took in Montana this summer. These photos are from two trips, a camping trip to Bannack, Mont. with Becca and Ben and a multi-family trip to Revenue Flats, near Norris Hot Springs.