the one to watch: kedi

thanks pixabay. not from the documentary

Of course I'm going to find a way to watch "Kedi"!
I read that Istanbul's street cats number in the hundreds of thousands (and here I thought Rome's population was lavish).  How can you live and work in a city full of independent, proud creatures and not have them affect your day?  You can't.  Director Ceyda Torun knows this first hand and makes it clear in "Kedi," her documentary on the ferals of Istanbul.
Kedi's website is here.  (Complete with trailer.)
The RogerEbert.com review of Kedi is here.

tame your turtle

thanks wikiart.org

...tame your world?  I thought I had found only a curious and appealing artwork, and instead cracked open a door to one amazing person's adventures.
This is "The Tortoise Tamer," a 1906 oil by the Turkish Romantic painter/archaeologist Osman Hamdi Bey. It's true that turtles are trainable; here's a sweet amateur blog post on how one does this, complete with videos.  Yet this piece is meant to be an allegory on his slow and steady work pace (which got a lot of good work done), as well as harking back to the ways turtles have been brought into pleasant use over the years.  I'm not counting turtle soup, and thankfully neither did he.
Osman Hamdi Bey was the subject of a graphic novel a few years ago.  Have a preview of the book and its creators here.