a Geographer's Place

***NOTE: This blog has no pictures. It is text only. But interesting, I think.*** Back in the early 1990s on my first visit to the Middle East, we spent 10 days or so in Egypt. It was our first stop on an 8-week study abroad. I had learned the importance of being at least “travelwise” in the language of the place you’re visiting a couple years previous , and so I asked our Egyptian guides to teach me a few Arabic words. Yes ( aiwa ), no ( la ), thank you ( shukran ), a response when someone asked me how I was ( kwai-yayz ), an endearing term ( habibi ), and a term I still can’t find the direct translation to ( zarif ). Though there wasn’t much call to use the language, the day before we left Egypt, I managed to order my lunch in Arabic ( hobes wa eroz ). I felt empowered, but forgot most of it soon after leaving. Side note on writing Arabic words with Latin letters: Arabic script is flowery and beautiful. It also has several sounds that we don’t have in English. And, unlik...

In grad school, I was introduced to something called the “vernacular landscape”. The great J.B. Jackson kind of coined the term in regards to landscape back in the mid-late 20th Century, and his book  1984  suggested the term meant a variety of things related to landscape. For example, a vernacular landscape might be irrational and/or disordered, or have a lack of a political structure/organization/space, or be a place that retains common customs, or focus on the common folk, or be ephemeral and mobile. For example, something like this: Yes, that’s Hello Kitty in a hijab ! I haven’t seen this in other Arab countries I’ve visited, only in Jordan. And I’ve searched. Hard. Because I adore Hello Kitty. Well, non-pink Hello Kitty. In later times, scholars sometimes took “vernacular landscape” to mean the “ordinary” or “every day” landscape that was set apart from the norm – the hustle and bustle of big cities of the time – such as suburbs, trailer parks, or res...