The Good, Bad and Ugly

Being the bum that I am I spend a lot of time hanging with the locals in our little village of Kazasker within Istanbul. My best buds are Levent and Kemal…the three of us form a crew whose humor isn’t always appreciated by our wives and the other encumbrances with which we are blessed.
These compadres of mine are no angels, but when things go south…there is no one else I would rather have watching my back. There are some downsides to being linked at the hip with these two. These were the guys who first taught me to navigate the language, unfortunately for my neighbors; They had great fun at my expense...I could cuss like a dock worker in Turkish before I could order a Coke. I learned that when they put on their teaching faces to tutor me with new phrases in Turkish…I had better run them past a few dictionaries before trying them out on my neighbors.
Unbeknownst to me, using a phrase they had taught me, I had been telling the local grocer that he had a big _ _ _ for weeks before someone pulled me aside and agreed that while the grocer did indeed have a large rear-end…it wasn’t polite to tell him. Now who would do something like that to a likable guy like me?
I had thought I was simply giving a kind greeting to him each time I passed by. I don’t shop there much anymore.
Kemal

Levent

If I can break free from my incredibly busy schedule of holding up the wall we sit on, and the planning of our upcoming SRE08, I am going to get my act together and feature my posse soon in our Threads section.
For now we will leave it up to you to figure out who is going to be the Good, Bad and Ugly of this gang.My Posse

Roots of Wander

Steward Crew Finding Our Wandering Roots

I know this may sound somewhat bumptious but that is not my intent. Our Steward stock simply wasn't blended to be reliant on anyone or anything else.....you might use the words stubborn, bull-headed or cantankerous to define most of us. But the gist is maybe as simple as just wanting to be independent, to be able to do things on our own. To explore, discover, wander and live unconventionally.
Out in eastern Oregon in a prairie in the middle of nowhere is a small stainless steel burial marker with these words "Charlotte, Daughter of James and Ann Steward...Children of Early Settlers". It is the grave of a never known great-ish aunt that died at birth back in the 19th century.
Grave Marker
The story is that our family settled in the Oregon Territory before it became a State of the Union, floods, death and the need to wander drove us south to Wolfcreek, and over the next 100 years the Steward diaspora took us on quite a journey. Coquille, Grant Pass, San Diego (where I entered the family tree) and back again to Grants Pass. Today we are scattered across the western US and the world.
I am the only Steward, along with my dad and son to visit this grave marker where the roots of our family first set their teeth into making life work in, what was then, a far off place. It was an amazing moment for us to experience.
I had discovered the placard issued by the local Historical Society after several months of research and exploration, searching through diaries and the prairies and museums of eastern Oregon a few years ago.
It was the moment of a lifetime to take my dad, 3 generations removed from this plaque to visit the place where our family, settled, homesteaded and took root a century and a half ago...today it is simply a wilderness of wild prairies miles off the nearest road.
The locals remember the family name and tell us that the Steward cabin had burned to the ground years after the family moved away and that no one else has ever lived in that plot of land. Today you can stand there and look for miles in every direction and not see another home or structure...just miles of windswept prairies and broken down fences. Now in the legal ownership of others—it is a hunting reservation that for the last several years has graciously allowed us to visit the site without hindrance.
Why with living today in Asia 10k or so miles away from our home in the States am I telling this story of a remote, barren and windswept Oregon prairie where even now men dare to live? Maybe its because it makes me feel like I am not too far off my rocker by dragging our crew to the ends of the earth. It is a fact that the root of wandering runs in our blood.
Steward Homestead

All of this to say that I am back on my own two feet and yes, while I limp and favor my right foot..these Steward genes run deep. And even if I am a gimp and limping along....Life is still good as we Live, Travel and Wander on the Far Side of the World.

Short & Sweet

The cast is off (a few days early) and while it is still difficult to walk....life is looking good from where I stand.
More later.....

Mischevious Hijackers

Sorry about the 30 hour hiatus. Due to some mischief on another continent we were taken off the air for a bit. We should be back to normal....well, as near normal as our crew can get.

Blocked Blog

Due to some confusion on the WWW.... our blog is temporarily blocked via Eastern European Rulings.....hope to be up soon

Sucking Hoof Marrow

I had some pictures that I was going to post of my lamb's hoof marrow soup...but they didn't do the experience justice. Thick, tallowy, gelatinous and hard to get down, I went thru all four hooves and will wait for new x-rays this week to see if it was worth the effort. Have to tell ya, it didn't really didn't ring my bell.