Blogging in 3.5 Minutes or Less....The Six Largest Cities in Alabama (Our 1,500th entry)

Today, we are starting a series which includes entries on our sister blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time" http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com in which we go over the six largest cities in all 50 states.

Greetings to our blog readers in Belgium, Hungary and Italy.

Here we begin with Alabama. As a college gymnastics fan, I've been impressed with the University of Alabama's women's gymnastics team, which is a perennial power.Ashley Priess, a fifth year senior who just graduated, was named the school's female scholar-athlete of the year. Priess, who has two surgically repaired ankles, helped guide the two-time national champion Crimson Tide to a third place finish this year.

The state flower of Alabama is the Cameila, pictured top.

Here are the state's six largest cities; we gather Birmingham has a very nice zoo. Their web site reports that two red pandas were recently born at the zoo. Yesterday, the National Zoo in Washington, DC, was in panic mode as Rusty, one of their red pandas, had escaped, but he was found unharmed yesterday afternoon :

1) Birmingham 212, 237

2) Montgomery (the capital) 205, 764

3) Mobile 195, 111

4) Huntsville 180,105

5) Tuscaloosa 90, 468

6) Hoover 81, 619


SIDEBAR: We are delighted to hear that one of our favorite movie theatres in the world, the Lale Sinema in Buyukada, Turkey, (Buyukada is an island that is part of the Istanbul metro area) is showing "The Impossible" with Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor. Lale Sinema is one of the very few remaining outdoor cinemas in Turkey.


http://www.birminghamzoo.com


http://www.buyukada.org

http://www.alabamatravel.org

http://www.rolltide.com

Tweets Regarding the Revolutionary Stand Against the Right-Wing Government in Turkey

Though the island of Buyukada, pictured here, is the quietest part of the Istanbul metro area, one may well expect that the protests in Taksim Square regarding Gezi Park have affected the island community as well. The island is said to have one of the best views of Istanbul one can see.

Here are some tweets regarding the May 31st events in Istanbul. Let me make one thing clear here: I am a Turkish-American and in no way can I be objective here. I am absolutely support the protestors, and I hope this movement brings an abrupt end to the corrupt right wing leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan:

1) Hurriyet Daily News @HDNER: "Crowds cross #Istanbul's Bosporus Bridge to the European side in the early morning hours, marching in #Taksim.


2) Bianca Jagger @Bianca Jagger #Istanbul awake since yesterday morning. Police has been using tear gas & water against people for 24 hours.

3) Claire Berlinski: Okay, exciting as all of this is, I've got to get some sleep. Tune in tomorrow for the next episode of "Turkey Loses Its Marbles."

4) Alya Albayrak: Protests took and are still taking place in over a dozen Turkish cities. Thousands still on the streets. Extraordinary. #Gezi #Istanbul

5) BBC News (UK): "Turkey branches for fresh protests."

6) Asli Sonceley: Los Angeles for Istanbul right now.

7) Bruce Willis (yes, that Bruce Willis): "Let everyone know...Press in Turkey is not working....Is people dying on the streets. Turkey is suffering.

Catholicism By the Numbers

Many people in America and Europe may not realize it, but there are a fair number of Catholics in Turkey, my late father's country, in addition to a sizable Jewish community, particularly in the largest city of Istanbul.

Though I'm not a Catholic myself, I thought that with the crowning of a new papal head in Pope Francis I of Argentina and the fact that tomorrow is Easter Sunday, I thought I would post an entry to look at how many Catholics live in countries where they are in the minority.

The image above is of a Catholic church in Buyukada, an island in the inland Marmara Sea that is considered to be part of Istanbul; this is also where one sees many horse carriages as seen below.

In addition to Catholic churches in Istanbul, there are congregations in Izmir and Mersin.

And, as one might expect, Wikipedia states that there are very few Catholics in Afghanistan; here is a look at some of the numbers we found:

1. Afghanistan 200

2. Armenia 110,000

3. Cyprus 10,000

4. Jordan 170,000

5. Kuwait 140,000

6. Serbia 411,000

7. Turkey 35,000

http://www.catholic.org

http://www.adalarturizm.org

Ten Years Later- Remembering the Australian Tourist (Part One of Two)

"She died alone and all her family got was a letter" was the headline of a story that ran in the Aug. 7, 2007, edition of "The Brisbane Times," which had published a "Sydney Morning News" story from that day about Amanda Rigg.

I had never met Rigg, who was a 22-year-old Australian tourist traveling in Istanbul. But, we walked down the same street in the busy Taksim district of Istanbul near a Chinese restaurant on Sept. 10, 2001, some 10-15 minutes apart.

I was in my since-deceased aunt's apartment that we heard the blast around 5:00 p.m. At the time, we were packing to go Buyukada, an island off the coast of Istanbul. The blast would turn out to be from a suicide bomber, though we weren't entirely positive of that at the time. In fact, I had read in a Turkish newspaper the next day, a mere 20 minutes before I found out about the Twin Towers, that the suicide bomber was a woman. While researching this piece, I found out that the bomber was actually a man named Ugur Bumbul.

Bumbul died in the blast as did two Turkish police officers whom I had seen alive just a quarter-hour before their untimely, unexpected deaths.

Rigg turned out to be the third victim of the blast, but she did not die on the moment of impact. She had lost one of her arms, and she went to a hospital. I would not know of Rigg's death which happened a few days after Sept. 10th until a shopkeeper in ther resort town of Kusadasi, some seven hours south of Istanbul, informed me of the tragic news.

Long before arriving in Turkey, we had planned to go to Kusadasi. And even in the nice tranquil Aegean beaches of Kusadasi, it was hard not to think about what happened and then what happened next.

PERSONAL NOTE: This is the end of Part One. For the sake of the privacy of my family members and brevity, some personal details, such as the fact that we were at a bank before going to my aunt's apartment, were not included.

Tomorrow, I hope to post information about the struggles that Rigg's family faced in Australia in the aftermath of the Sept. 10th Istanbul bomb blast through Internet research.

Initially, this was planned to be a three-part series, but I've decided to shorten it to two simpler entries.

Quote of the Week- Leon Trotsky

Today, we quote the Russian, Marxist philosopher/revolutionary figure Leon Trotsky
(1879-1940) who lived a life that would be worth of a 985-page biography that we have no time to read.

Instead, we can tell you a few things we already or learned from Wikipedia about this major figure of the October Revolution and Russian Civil War:

-Lead opposition to Joseph Stalin

-Ideas formed the basis for Trotskyism

-Exiled to Turkey in 1929, he spent four years of his life on Buyukada, the largest of the four Prince's Islands off the coast of Istanbul. This period of his life was the subject of a documentary film called "Exile in Buyukada" (2000, Turkey), which might still be available in America from Facets in Chicago.

-In 1935, Trotsky moved to Mexico where he befriended the famous artist couple of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Trotsky went on to have an affair with Frida, but amazingly enough Diego was not the one who tried to kill him.

-Trotsky was however succefully killed by a Spanish man named Ramon Mercader, who was working as a Soviet agent, at his home in the village of Coyocan, Mexico, in
1940.

-On film, Trotsky was played by Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush in the film "Frida."

Here is our quote from Trotsky, which pretty much indicates why supposedly smart people, like John McCain (note: I am not a Republican, but McCain is a lot smarter than many in his party) chose Sarah Palin as a running mate:

"If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes."

MONDAY LEFTOVERS-In our last entry, we talked about the Duke-UNC game for the ACC tourney championship. As everyone in Durham and Chapel Hill knows, Duke won the game 78-58, but that might be news for those of you in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia.

In my hometown of Roanoke, Va., many people are unhappy today because the Virginia Tech Hokies were snubbed by the NCAA selction committee. "The Roanoke Times" quotes Hokies' coach Seth Greenberg as saying that 'there might be someone with a strong personality who views the Hokies as a fungus.'

We noted in another previous entry that Sofia Coppola's new film "Somewhere" is playing at the Galaxy Cinema in Cary, NC; the film is also playing up the road at the Carolina Theatre in Durham, NC. "Marie Antoinette," the film she directed before "Somewhere," will be shown on IFC on March 30 at 5:00 p.m.

Lastly and obviously, when we posted an entry which mentioned the devastating tsunami in Japan there were only 60 confirmed casualties. Tragically, that number now appears headed to top the 10,000 mark in the city of Miaygi alone. Anyone who wished to help can go www.redcross.org

Media outlets, such as MSNBC, are warning people to be fully aware of scams trying to take advantage of the tragedy.

Quote of the Day- Frida Kahlo

I must profess when my girlfriend Louisa (pse) left me for an unemployed car mechanic in Duluth, Minn., that she meet on the Internet, she did cite the fact that I spent way too much time blogging as a factor!

So, it should be no surprise to those who know me well that I am devoting 32 quotes from 32 people, both alive and dead, from the 32 countries in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, which starts (yikes?!) tomorrow with a game between the host country and Mexico that will air at 9:30 a.m. in Boston and Miami (and the rest of the American east coast as well as places like Toronto, Canada).

Today, we feature a quote from the late Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) who was the subject of the film "Frida" (2002) which starred Mexican actress Salma Hayek in the title role.

Frida is popular not in Mexico but throughout Central America as there is a popular restaurant named Frida's in Antigua, Guatemala, that we couldn't get into because there was a long, long line waiting outside (?!) when we there in 2005. We've since read from travel writers that many Americans who go to Guatemala have trouble getting a seat in this restaurant, which is known for its cocktails and quesadillas.

As for the painter Frida, she was known for her Realism, Symbolism and Surrealism. She was also a bisexual and a communist, which made her life, as tragic as it was, even more interesting!

She was married to fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera. And, she had affairs with the African-American singer Josephine Baker as well as the Russian socialist leader Leon Trotsky, who was murdered in 1940 while in exile in Mexico. Trotsky also lived for a while in Turkey. My late Turkish aunt happened to spend her summer residence on the island of Buyukada off the coast of Istanbul where Trotsky lived in the late '20s and early '30s before heading off to Mexico.

Frida also suffered from massive injuries that she suffered from a bus accident which happened when she was 18. Those injuries haunted her for the rest of her life. She died under mysterious circumstances, and there is much speculation that she committed suicide.

An exhibit of Frida's paintings is currently taking place at a museum in Berlin, Germany--- a city where one can also see Knut the Polar Bear (at the Berlin Zoo, of course!).

Here is today's quote from Frida:

"Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?"