Category Archives: Blog

Today, when I stepped inside of the Children’s Cancer Center (St. Jude in Beirut)for my afternoon shift, I thought I had lost my mind. Hanging from the ceilings in all directions were fresh Halloween decorations–even though we had celebrated Halloween in October, and all of the hospital decorations had disappeared from the halls the following week. So who had put them back up, I wanted to know–and why?

“Why are there Halloween decorations all over the place?” I asked one of the nurses.

“Oh, it’s for Burbara,” she said, “Lebanese Halloween.”

Eid el-Burbara (or Saint Barbara’s Day), she explained, is a holiday celebrated on the 4th of December in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan. The decorations and rituals associated with Halloween (pumpkin-carving, costume parties, trick-or-treating) also feature prominently in celebrations of Eid el-Burbara in the Levant. The holiday is named for St. Barbara–who was forced to flee the persecution of the Romans after converting to Christianity.

“Yeah, people say she wore different masks to disguise her face when she ran from the Roman soldiers,” one of the volunteers added–as we started playing a game of Hangman in French with two bored but cheerful teenagers (one from Damascus and one from Beirut).

St. Barbara is considered the patron saint of miners, army engineers and mathematicians. To learn more about the traditional foods and rituals being prepared to celebrate her feast day later this week, please click here.

This evening gunfire from a personal dispute broke out in Sabra–the Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut where I go to visit Syrian refugees in need. The last time I was in Sabra, the rapid influx of Syrian refugees was causing tensions between Palestinians and Syrians–over allocations of donations–and differing political affiliations…

Every day–weather permitting–I try to swim with turtles in Beirut. Last year, I swam every day through mid-December–when cold air and torrential rains chased me inside. But now that we’re in the midst of an Indian summer, it hasn’t been such a struggle to stay in the sea. Spending so much time with turtles in Beirut, I’ve become increasingly concerned about their welfare. To read about a new threat endangering Lebanon’s sea turtles–please click here.

Today, as you can see, the coast along Beirut was calm–but elsewhere in Lebanon, mortar shells rained on Tripoli, an army member was killed, and masked gunmen shot three members of the Fatah Movement in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp. In Lebanon, keeping up with the news is like having another full-time job…

Today, while I was taking my daily Mediterranean stroll in Beirut, I ran into Santa on the Corniche giving away Santa hats and treats. With temperatures hovering in the 80’s all week, it’s easy to forget that Christmas is on its way. But with Santa sightings on the sea and Christmas decorations stocked on supermarket shelves, there are a few reminders here and there that the holiday season in Beirut is just getting started…

While on our way to find a special Sufi shrine in a remote part of Turkmenistan (not far from the Afghan border), my colleagues and I came across this sprawling medieval madressa complex in the desert–and took some time to explore each nook, cranny and perch…

Out of a great need,
We are holding hands and climbing.
Not loving is like letting go.
Listen!
The terrain around here is far too dangerous for that…

— Hafiz

In this post, my friend Elaine shares memories and photographs from her life-changing journey to meet with Bill Coperthwaite in Maine. Today, as Bill is being buried in a private ceremony near his home (after his unexpected death earlier this week), we are reflecting on the impact his lifestyle and spirit had on those who met him, and those who did not…

When I found his book at Blue Hill Books in Blue Hill, Maine, I was first taken by its aesthetic look and feel in my hands. When I read it, I felt a sense of knowing (in the deepest sense) what he was saying. It resonated with many questions I had about how we (all) live and work. I wrote to him, on the fly, on a piece of scrap paper telling him I’d like to meet him and when we would be in Maine next.

He wrote back (on an older piece of scrap paper) and gave us directions (a little hand drawn map) on where to park and how to find the trail (1 1/2 miles in). He asked what day we’d be coming (not the time, just the day). I told him. We’d agreed on a Tuesday. He had no phone and no computer so there it was.

That trip up to Maine in October was the year after my knee injury which left me unable to walk for six months and then only with a brace for a few months after that. I did a lot of knitting during that time and was working on a scarf as Bryan drove us up to Machiasport to meet with Bill. We’d picked up a bread at the local bakery in Blue Hill to bring him.

When we reached the parking lot I’d put the final stitches in the scarf. I hadn’t intended it for Bill, actually, though somehow those final stitches made it obvious it was for him.

We started the walk in. For me it was slow, because of the still healing injury………Along a dirt path, part hand-built boardwalk, through poison ivy patches, watch for the Beaver Pond on the right (clearly designated on the map). Here and there along the walk there were hand-crafted chairs for visitors to rest…….some sling chairs, some oddly shaped. I used them when necessary. It got quieter and quieter.

And then…….in the opening was this magnificent building. The main house. We walked to the front door. No one. We went inside. Bill was sitting there, fashioning something of wood (the first floor of the yurt was the wood supply, which circled the first floor, the widest floor of the building). He smiled.

“So,” he said, “what is it you want to know?”

That was it for me. I wanted to know everything! We spent the afternoon with him.

I want to say here that my first impression of Bill, seeing him sitting there, not rising to greet us as you might expect a host to do, but warm and friendly, impressed on me how very comfortable he was in his skin…….how no pretension of who we thought he was would be confirmed or dismissed, how we were in the presence of a true human being who has spent a lifetime learning, caring, sharing, and ignoring the non-essential.

He took us upstairs to the next level (you had to pull yourself through the door because of the angle). I gave him the bread and the scarf. He asked who had made them, where they’d come from and only when we told him the name of the bakery did he nod and accept it.

“Oh, sure, I know them,” he said, naming the bakers. “I go to Blue Hill now and then when I visit the Nearing homestead.” (He was on the Board of the Homestead.)

And the scarf he accepted only when I told him I’d just finished it. I put it around his neck. We have a photo of Bill wearing it. It’s on my desk as I write this.

Then we sat on the handmade couch, he showed us his desk, how he’d made the furniture, and on and on. We talked about books, philosophy, child-rearing, economics, education, tools. We went up to the top tier of the yurt where his bed was. He had made it with used sweaters that he’d fashioned into coils like he had the couch. We went out and walked around the property, saw the different yurts (outhouse yurt, food storage yurt, etc.), and where he had made an outdoor shower by the water. It was October and cold. He winked when he offered us a shower if we’d like to try it.

He showed Bryan a unique tool he had learned to make in Scandinavia and let Bryan try it. Then he showed us materials from the Inuit movable museum he had started to teach Inuit children about the tools used in their culture.

He had a poster he’d made for Scott Nearing‘s 100th birthday. It was affectionate and yet still a humorous tribute to his friend and mentor.

Every item in Bill’s house was either made by him or by someone he knew. He believed strongly in knowing where what you buy comes from. For economic, political, social reasons. He said he didn’t build yurts for people, only helped them build their own. He bartered for services, even dental care.

We spent the afternoon with Bill. And all I can say is that, for me, it was a life-changing experience.

Bill was one of those people you meet in your lifetime that affirms some things you believe, challenges others, and was clear about what was important.

He is one of the only people I’ve ever met who did not espouse theory, but lived the values he talked about and taught.

Bill Coperthwaite walked the talk. With a firm step.

I feel grateful for having had an afternoon with him. To have brought him my questions. To have listened to his answers, which in many ways, affirmed my own and gave me greater resolve.

When I forget, get caught up in the nonsense of what is so truly meaningless, I need to, as Bryan says, go to where the skies are dark and the stars are all I see and the silence is what’s most present (for me…..a place like Blue Hill). And……also like the trail along Dickinson’s Reach on the way to Bill’s.

When I step out of my door in Beirut, this is what I find: Syrian women and children begging on the streets, and cars from Syria topped with mattresses–fleeing the battle of Qalamoun. With over 17,000 Syrian refugees having entered Lebanon in just the last two and a half weeks alone, I’ve started seeing more and more mattresses hovering over the widespread traffic jams in Beirut. Maybe that’s why I felt culture shock this morning, while reading about brawls between shoppers in malls (including a taser attack) on Black Friday back home in the States…

Each of us tries to live in the best way we know how. I want to contribute to the problems of the world as little as possible. I really believe we must find simpler ways to live or society will collapse.

— William Coperthwaite

“You have to meet Bill,” my friend said, when I told her a few years back about my dream of putting a yurt on my family’s farm.

“Bill who?” I asked.

“Bill Coperthwaite,” she replied–telling me all about the man who lived in a hand-made yurt in Maine (without a phone, running water, or electricity). If she hadn’t urged me that day to study his hand-crafted yurts–along with his philosophy and generosity–I never would have had the yurt experience of a lifetime this past summer on the Silk Road.

While living in a yurt this past June in Turkmenistan (where I was doing archaeology and preserving Sufi shrines), I thought of Bill and his yurts every day–and vowed to take one of his yurt workshops next year back home. Sadly, however, I learned yesterday that I won’t have the opportunity–since Bill was killed in a single-car accident a few days ago in Maine.

The author of A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity, Bill practiced what he preached. He cooked his food on a wooden stove, retrieved his water from a brook, and used a small yurt for an outhouse. Everything in his home was hand-made. On his rural 300 acre farm in Maine, he welcomed countless visitors to his home for decades–to share his knowledge on how to build a tapered yurt–and live the “handmade life.” Outside of Maine, he conducted over 300 yurt workshops–including at Harvard, where he got his PhD.

I want to live in a society where people are intoxicated with the joy of making things.

— William Coperthwaite

When I arrived at our dig site this past summer in Turkmenistan, and found an abandoned yurt being used as a storehouse–I thought immediately of Bill, and knew what I had to do. My yurt buddy and I rolled up our sleeves and began cleaning out years of debris, dirt and dust. Our colleagues lent us some rugs to cover the floor, and we found mattresses to use as beds. Since we were in the desert, I didn’t have many materials to spruce the place up–but I managed to find some scarves and candles in the bazaar.

Because I had been aware of Bill’s way of life for several years, I knew that a yurt isn’t just about the objects and decorations inside. So I decided to host a Yurt Poetry Festival–to fill the space up with words of the wise. The guests who stepped inside of our candle-lit yurt that night carried with them original and borrowed poems in Turkmen, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, English and Danish. Verses from poets like Seamus Heaney and Omar Khayyam made better decorations than any ornaments I could have bought or made by hand.

On Saturday, Bill will be buried near his home in a private ceremony, and I’ll be thinking of him and his humble way of life. Though I never got the chance to meet him, he did leave me a gift without knowing it: the inspiration to make my own yurt dreams come true far away from home on the Silk Road–where the yurt itself was born…

Four people were killed today and 26 wounded by mortar fire near the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. Throughout the war, many people have speculated on when and if this historic complex would become a victim of the violence. Having wandered through the mosque and its shrine to John the Baptist myself during peace, it’s surreal to think about the civil war having come straight to its very door…

I’ve started bringing Anubis along with me when I go out surveying archaeological sites in Lebanon–being closer to the ground, he can notice small objects that I otherwise might miss…

Thanksgiving is sweeter than bounty itself.
One who cherishes gratitude does not cling to the gift!
Thanksgiving is the true meat of God’s bounty;
the bounty is its shell,
For thanksgiving carries you to the hearth of the Beloved.

— Rumi

I celebrated Thanksgiving today by whirling with Sufis in Beirut. The Sufis liked hearing about a holiday devoted just to giving thanks. The history of the holiday has long been of interest to me–from both sides of the fabled table. I used to spend my Thanksgivings as a child (and Indian princess) reading from a book written about the Native American (Creek) members of my family…

As I was reminded yesterday, the Arabic word for “turkey” in most places is “dik Rumi”–meaning “Roman fowl.” “Roman” in this case refers to the Eastern Roman Empire–i.e. Anatolia or Greece–which is why the poet Rumi was called Rumi too–the one from Rum–the one from Anatolia–(or, as the Sufis would say)–the one from the One…

“Deep Cover,” my new essay about adoption and identity, was published today as a Turning Points essay in the NYTimes Magazine. To read additional essays and articles from today’s year-end issue, please click here.