When I first visited Istanbul, I found myself fascinated.

I mean “fascinated” in the word’s original sense — to cast a spell, through the use of a fixed stare.  All over the city, there were many eyes fixed on me. Blue eyes.

They were hanging from the walls of restaurants, displayed in quantities in the warren of the Grand Bazaar, dangling from the rearview mirror of cars and taxis, from key chains, from the necks of fashionable women. A glance down at a table would reveal a thicket of blue eye beads, braceleting the wrist of a dining companion, just peeking out from under her sleeve.

These blue eyes are called nazar boncugu, often shortened to nazar – amulets to protect against the evil eye. They’re made of cobalt blue glass, with what looks like a sunny-side-up egg in the center, although the “yolk” is often pale blue.  There’s a black dot in the center, which represents the pupil.

This amulet is meant to protect the bearer from the destructive coveting of the envious, which itself starts with a hard, unblinking stare.  There are apparently other ways to ward off the evil eye if you know for a fact someone has fixed you with it – incantations and so on –  but these nazar amulets protect  against unknown or hidden jealousy – a bit of blanket evil eye insurance, if you will.

There are evil eye beliefs all over the world, but they’re particularly common in the Mediterranean, which in turns offers many means of symbolic protection. Turkey and Greece both have the eye amulets; Italy has horseshoes, horns, a small troll called a gobbo; Jewish folk tradition combats the evil eye with red ribbons, blue ribbons, and blue beads.

Whatever the particular form of protection, the danger stems from one person’s jealousy of another’s success, wealth, or beauty,  which somehow leads to its damage or destruction. The stare is what summons the trouble, the eye being a source of mystical power going back as least as far as ancient Egypt.

There’s a practical reason for seating this power in the eye. “Eye-to-eye engagement is universally a first step to a train of action,” write Vivian Garrison and Conrad Arensberg in their article in The Evil Eye, published after a symposium on evil eye beliefs held at the American Anthropological Association in 1972.:

“On eye-contact, predator and prey, or rival and rival, or lover and loved, are alerted, tensed for what might come next and a move that follows: predators or rivals to the attack, lovers to tactile approach…the gaze initiates further action among both animals and humans…”

Since all of us stare from time-to-time, the evil eye was a handy explanation for all sorts of inexplicable calamities, from mental illness to famine.  To this day,  an amazing number of our habits and customs stem from protecting ourselves from this stare. For instance, there’s using a diminutives as a term of affection – a less disgusting variation on spitting on something or someone that’s received a compliment, rendering it less desirable to the envious. And there’s the military salute — it seems it was meant at first to shield a superior from an inferior’s dangerous and direct eye gaze, writes Joost Meerloo in Intuition and the Evil Eye: The Natural History of a Superstition.

The evil eye is also why many societies, including ours, sustain a taboo against staring.

And that is why, although I swear I had no envy in my heart, I felt somewhat uneasy in Istanbul — with all those blue eyes fixed steadily upon me.

The people of Christchurch, New Zealand got a heck of a lot more than they bargained on this weekend. Instead of enjoying the first few quiet days of Spring in Christchurch,  enjoying the city’s café culture, gothic buildings, and the public gardens full of color and new life, they were unexpectedly awakened on Saturday morning by a bouncing  7.1 earthquake.

The ornate clock on the Victoria Street Tower is frozen at 4.36, the time that the earthquake first hit, savagely shaking Christchurch and waking up its residents, throwing them around.

But Cantabrians are hardy souls, not prone to hysteria or panic, and earthquake shakes are not uncommon. So while many took cover under tables and beds or doorways, many more just stayed in bed, listening to the sounds of falling objects and waiting for it to end. And end it did, for all of four or five minutes.

But  then it came again.

And this time, no one remained in bed.

This time,  everyone knew that this wasn’t ‘just another shake’.

But there is an upside to this disaster. Its timing (in the early hours of Saturday morning) meant that we are only counting broken building and not broken bodies. Had it been during the day or evening, when the city was alive with people, it could easily have been the other way around.

And as with any disaster, the community spirit which, sadly, is often missing in everyday life, came immediately to the forefront. After the earthquake’s initial violent shakes subsided, people started gathering in the streets, checking on neighbours to make sure they were okay and helping each other out.

And when daylight broke, it was an almost perfect Spring day, perhaps Mother Nature’s way of apologizing for the mess it was creating.

Two days and eighty aftershocks (and still counting) later, the true extent of the damage is only just starting to sink in. The central city looks a little like a war zone, complete with military helicopters flying overhead and police and soldiers standing guard at street corners.

It’s a most unsettling sight.

Tourism New Zealand, by the way, offers updated information for anyone planning on traveling to Christchurch in the coming weeks.

Bluegrass. When the music people brought with them from England, Ireland, and Scotland met the music people carried along from many parts of Africa in the highlands of the Appalachian mountains, the music began. Bill Monroe took it forward and gave it the name which anchored it in musical history. From its beginnings, it’s been music which embraces structure and improvisation, tradition and innovation. As bluegrass month unfolds in the United States during September, take a listen to a band, a singer, and a composer whose work holds the ideas of tradition and change in balance.

The Grascals are a six person ensemble who play their bluegrass with just a tinge of blues, sometimes, in the solo and harmony vocals of singers Terry Eldrege, Terry Smith, and Jamie Johnson. Mandolin ace Danny Roberts, hot fiddle player Jeremy Abshire, and innovative banjo player Kristin Scott Benson anchor the instrumental side of things. Among them, they’ve past band and supporting credits with bluegrass and country greats including the Osborne Brothers, Gail Davies, Dale Ann Bradley, and Roland White. It’s when the six join forces, though, that the fire and spirit of contemporary bluegrass come to the fore. On their most recent album, The Famous Lefty Flynn’s, they apply that spirit and fire to create a bluegrass version of Last Train to Clarksville, once a pop hit for The Monkees, tell the vivid story of Satan and Grandma, and invite Hank Williams Junior along to sing on I’m Blue and I’m Lonesome, which Hank Senior wrote with Bill Monroe, and offer a fine instrumental on Blue Rock Slide.

Claire Lynch is a singer and songwriter based in bluegrass but not limited by it. She’s won bluegrass awards and been nominated for Grammys, and seen her songs recorded by top country artists. When she looked at her song selection on her latest album, Whatcha Gonna Do, she found a common thread: choice and consequence. The title track is a sort of bluegrass version meeting the devil at the crossroads, while Highway, which Lynch wrote with Irene Kelley, winds through landscapes and heartbreaks on a road to freedom. Lynch introduces characters who make choices, too, from the aged woman who chooses a life in The Woods of Sipsey to the woman choosing to celebrate the joys of the day in Great Day in the Mornin.’ An unexpected choice, and one which certainly resonates with the theme, is her duet with songwriter Jesse Winchester on his song That’s What Makes You Strong. Lynch has a strong and flexible soprano you will remember, and a storyteller’s knack for how to use it in service to the song.

Alison Brown plays the banjo. For her, it is the intersection of jazz, traditional bluegrass, and Celtic music that inspires her composing and playing. Her album The Company You Keep holds all those elements. sometimes in combination, sometimes with one taking the spotlight. Over Nine Waves, a tune Brown wrote with guitarist John Doyle, goes toward the Irish side of things, and there’s Mairtin O’Connor’s The Road West reimagined as a banjo tune, as well. Crazy ivan heads toward jazz, mostly, while Under the (Five) Wire lets bluegrass take a bit of spotlight. Jazz and bluegrass are both styles where players improvise around structure, and that’s often true in Celtic music as well, all aspects Brown knows well and puts to good use, as she plays with her quartet, which includes John R. Burr on piano, Joe Craven on mandolin and fiddle, and Garry West on bass.

The International Bluegrass Music Association Awards, which are the bluegrass equivalent of the Grammys, will be given out on 30 September at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee.

For a change of pace this week, here’s a roundup of a few fantastic travel stories from some of the Web’s go-to sources for travel goodness. Good show, everyone, good show.

- Imbibe – PT editor Tim Leffel profiles four American wine tours on two wheels.
- The Traveler’s Notebook – Notes from aboard the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
- Legal Nomads – Jodi Ettenberg has a remarkable morning at a Yangon market.
- Africa Travel – What it’s like tracking mountain gorillas in Rwanda.
- Italofileblog – Melanie Renzulli takes a scenic spin down Italy’s Amalfi Coast.
- Traveling Savage – What if everything in the world was familiar?
- NileGuidance – 10 American roadside attractions worth pulling over for.
- BootsnAll – Spencer Spellman chases beach seasons around the world.
- National Geographic – Ten must-dos for visitors to Abu Dhabi.
- World Hum – Nancy Kleine grieves for a Paris that no longer belongs to her.
- Nerd’s Eye View – Pam Mendel explores Alaska through the lens of John Muir.
- Discover Ireland – Dave G. Kelly snaps his favorite benches in Dublin.
- Gadling – Vietnamese street food tastes better by motorbike.
- Lonely Planet – Rowan McKinnon takes a one-day beer tour of Denver, CO.
- New York Times – Signature whiskey blends in cozy Tokyo bars? Yes please.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Mr. Boz

This is the view at night from the Lobby Lounge at the Intercontinental Hotel in Hong Kong.

You can sit there and watch the nightly laser light show against the buildings on the Hong Kong side, across the water.

Yes, it is divine (and their gin and tonic is none too shabby, either.)

It is my hands-down pick for “Scenic at Night” and my contribution to Highlights, a new feature on the location-based checkin service Gowalla.

Like Facebook Places and Foursquare, Gowalla lets you check in to venues such as restaurants, shops or museums, find places like House of Pies using your smartphone’s GPS, and leave comments, photos and tips.

From their Gowalla blog post announcing Highlights….

“Highlights are like little rewards you can give to places that are important to your life. Some are quite straightforward and practical like Best Cup (of Coffee). Some are a bit more esoteric or inspirational like My Happy Place and Scenic-At-Night. Regardless, they’re all fun. We’ve launched the feature with 18 unique Highlights and more will be added—hopefully inspired by your suggestions!”

Now that I’ve had a chance to see Shanghai, I have to admit that it’s pretty amazing at night, too, but compact Hong Kong harbor still wins my sentiments.

What’s your favorite scene at night?

(If you like this post, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS feed or by email – the email signup box is at the top of the right sidebar near the Search box. Thanks!)