Category Archives: Blog

Their conservatoire is the rhythm of the sea, the wind among the leaves and the thousand sounds of nature which they understand without approaching an arbitrary treatise. Their traditions reside in old songs built up throughout the centuries. Yet Javanese music is based on a type of counterpoint by comparison with which that of Palistrina is child’s play. And if we listen without European prejudice to the charm of their percussion we must confess that our percussion is like primitive noises at a country fair.

— Claude Debussy

As part of the Metropolitan Museum’s Lunar New Year celebration, my Javanese gamelan guru (teacher) Pak Harjito and my friend Anne Stebinger will be conducting two demonstrations/lectures at the MET this Saturday at 2 pm and 3:30 pm.

In addition to learning about Javanese gamelan, you might also be interested in attending other Lunar New Year events like Traditional Tibetan Dance and Chinese Paper Folding. There’s an old Javanese saying (which also serves as the national motto of Indonesia): “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika”–which, translated, means: “Unity in diversity.” If you come to the gamelan demo, you’ll understand how that saying applies to traditional Javanese music as well…

In my research on contemporary Islamic jurisprudence in Iran, the ayatollah that I have found the most fascinating is Ayatollah Saanei–whose recent meeting with President Rouhani is currently causing a bit of a stir in Iran.

Ayatollah Saanei has faced his share of criticism from conservative religious leaders before. For instance, after the 2009 elections, Saanei claimed that President Ahmadinejad had not been legitimately elected. Later, due to his belief that women and men are equal (and that women should be allowed to become religious leaders and even ayatollahs), he was divested of his elite position as a “source of emulation” by the Qom Theological Lecturers Association in 2010.

On his website, Ayatollah Saanei issues religious opinions on a range of topics (like plastic surgery & transsexuality)–and pays tribute to prominent world figures like Nelson Mandela. Believing that suicide bombings and nuclear weapons are crimes against humanity and Islam, Ayatollah Saanei preaches that “Islam means the peaceful coexistence of people according to logic and dialogue.”

In what is being hailed as the largest grant ever given to the American University of Beirut, a Syrian-American businessman earlier today donated $32 million dollars to AUB’s Medical Center…

A new book, “Electronic Iran: The Cultural Politics of an Online Evolution,” investigates how state structures and institutions in Iran use new media platforms to bolster state power and undermine dissent. At the same time, the book explores how multiple narratives of “Iranian” identity are constructed and disseminated online by ideologically and geographically dispersed individuals and groups both within and outside of Iran.

When I was leading a safari in Kenya and Tanzania, we were very lucky to catch a glimpse of this baby rhino hiding with its mother in the foliage. With poaching decimating rhino and elephant populations throughout Africa, sometimes it takes a village to protect them…

I visited this cemetery in the desert in Sudan not far from where I was living, while excavating a Nubian temple in the Sahara this winter…many of the stones placed on the bellies of these cracked burial mounds had been recently placed there by visiting family members and friends…

Almost every week here in Beirut, I meet someone new who has family living in Texas. Not many people in America realize that Texas has the fifth largest Muslim population in the country. Now that the Dallas Museum of Art has become the new home of the Keir Collection–one of the most important private collections of Islamic art in the world–the profile of Islam in Texas is likely to grow in prominence in the coming years. The impressive collection–which contains around 2,000 pieces–was created by Edmund de Unger, a Hungarian real-estate tycoon, who died in 2011.

Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine

Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th Street
New York, NY 10011

March 15, 2014 – September 8, 2014

Bodies in Balance explores the guiding principles of the Tibetan science of healing represented in medical paintings, manuscripts, and medical instruments. The exhibition invites visitors to relate what they discover to their own lives through interactive experiences within the galleries and throughout the Museum including the Café Serai and the shop. Using a brief questionnaire, visitors can determine their dominate constitution according to the Tibetan medical system and follow a color-coded pathway that highlights exhibition components most relevant to them. A multi-media installation shows how Tibetan medicine is used today.

Today, on World Cancer Day, there are a number of ways to help spread awareness about cancer at events in person and also online–especially on Facebook and Twitter (#WorldCancerDay)…

Let me tell you something about meditation. At the absolute center, is the vortex we are spun from like clay,
there is a shaping hand which is neither Godlike nor peaceful as you imagine.

― Forrest Gander, Torn Awake

With so many car bombs exploding here in Lebanon, everyone’s finding their own ways to cope. Some are drinking or doing drugs, others are exercising or just hiding away. In the wake of this evening’s bombing near Beirut, I’m choosing to turn to poetry–to the words and works of Forrest Gander.

Since I’ve always admired Forrest for being (in person) a man of few words (he was my chair while I was studying and teaching creative writing at Brown), I won’t write much to introduce his poetry–which speaks for itself. I’ve long found his bold blending of mediums and geographies an inspiration. For example, his book Core Samples for the World–a 2012 finalist for the Pultizer Prize–weaves together poetry, photography, and haibun (a Japanese form of essay-poem) to explore “foreign” relations of all kinds–from China to Chile. If you live in New England, you can hear him read his poems in person at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival in May.

My fondest memories of Forrest are from the poetry readings we used to have at his home, which rests in the middle of a cemetery–a fitting setting for a geologist and Egyptologist to play with words and meditate on meaning…

I have lost the consolation of faith
though not the ambition to worship.

― Forrest Gander