Comments on: early morning perspectives from within and without http://blogs.haverford.edu/music/2010/03/08/early-morning-perspectives-from-within-and-without/ Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:36:11 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Rebecca Ruhlen http://blogs.haverford.edu/music/2010/03/08/early-morning-perspectives-from-within-and-without/comment-page-1/#comment-22 Rebecca Ruhlen Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:36:11 +0000 http://blogs.haverford.edu/blogs/music/2010/03/08/early-morning-perspectives-from-within-and-without/#comment-22 As an undergrad music major and now an anthropologist, I relate strongly to the impulse that drives a tour like this as well as to the cautionary note of this letter. The world is complex, and we can indeed do harm to those in it through half-informed blunderings.

However, staying home instead is no way to learn about the world’s complexities! So we go, experience what we find, learn fast (though never fast enough), get some things wrong, and commit to ongoing self-awareness and critical thinking. If nothing else, this sort of travel and direct experience of Turkey will help to counter the two-dimensional insularity of most mainstream U.S. discourse on that part of the world and its peoples.

–Rebecca Ruhlen (Patrick Lozada’s stepmother)
Davidson, North Carolina

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