Great to hear from you!  I got both messages.

How fun about Suleyman's fabric samples.  Hope they aren't the last
straw that broke the camel's back.  (Oh yeah, no camels here in Turkey;
for reference, Turkey's southern coast same latitude as SF.)  It would
be great if you two could work together.  I really like Suleyman and if
you could help him get into US market it would be a coup for him.  And,
maybe, you and Jeff will get to Turkey!  By the way (which, by the way,
happens to be Suleyman's favorite transitional phrase] Suleyman very
informal; so don't be afraid to get into an extended dialogue with him,
in which you ask a lot of preliminary questions.   Anyway, it would be
good for his English.

Thinking of you "up north" very nice.  Guess the lakes are still socked
in, but beautiful and pristine.  I spent the day in one of Istanbul's
sprawling, slapped together neighborhoods, where a lot of refugees from
the Balkins have settled over the years.  Recently, it was the site of
PKK (i.e. Kurdish] riots.  Wanted to see it.  Impressive bit of
improvising; a testimony to we humans' endless ability to adapt and make
lives for ourselves.  Think about what Istanbul's been through.  In 1970
its population was about 1.5 million.  Now its approaching 15 million,
and most of the new comers are dirt poor folks moving in from the
countryside.  It's slapped together, but works pretty damn well.  Bravo!

I guess a bomb went off nearby and someone was killed.  Always a few
folks looking for the quick reconciliation of irreconcilable, competing
differences.

All the above pretty vague; a writer's dilemma is to make it live for
the reader.  But there's just so much "stuff" that makes up any given
piece of reality, and its ultimately in the eye of the beholder anyway.
This is some thing I've set out to try and do; to get my arms around a
bit of everything!  A dwarfing, humbling endeavor; like trying to single
handedly to capture all the water from a ruptured dam.

More later.  Good luck with all you do.

Love,

Mark


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