The organizers, with sold-out table Many websites that provide step-by-step guides to "starting your new tradition" are semi-commercial. With yesterday's first edition of what might well become an annual event, our intent was strictly charitable, but then charity does start at home. Saturday's Tangier American Legation Open House and Christmas Market was a roaring success, … Read more Legation Open House & Christmas Market
The Knife Sharpener of Tangier This being the eve of the Aïd, the culmination of the Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca, knives are being sharpened all over the Muslim world, in preparation for the sacrifice of millions of sheep. BBC has a nice explanation of the feast. We wish our Muslim friends عيـــد مبــــارك سعيــــــد … Read more Sheep Tales
TALIM's Fatima Benguerch with CLS students and women's literacy group As the State Department funded 2011 Arabic Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) program in Tangier draws to a close, it's time to reflect on what makes Tangier a special place to learn Arabic. Tangier is but one of several sites for CLS Arabic programs; there is … Read more CLS Tangier: Language, Culture & Heritage
"Shnoo the Hell is Going on H'naa?" – the subtitle to Aaron Sakulich's book Moroccan Arabic (Collaborative Media International) – probably captures the bewilderment of many a foreign student of darija or Moroccan colloquial Arabic. For modern day students trying to fathom how to transition from what they learn in Modern Standard or classical Arabic … Read more Deciphering Moroccan Arabic, 1911 – 2011
Here's another example of how farsighted Senator William Fulbright was. Fulbright, after whom the US Government scholarships for international exchange are named, probably didn't imagine that his program would be funding documentary films, but his intent – that funds from the disposal of surplus World War II materiel further international understanding – couldn't be better … Read more The Dressmakers Premieres in Tangier
I don't yet have the picture of the smiling women who were handed their diplomas yesterday, but here's a diploma of someone who missed graduation day (click on picture to enlarge.) My favorite "graduate" wasn't even at the end of her program. But our teacher gave her a diploma as a sort of "Ms. Congeniality" … Read more Graduation Day Is When You Can Read Your Diploma
For years, it has been hanging in the courtyard of the American Legation in Tangier. The red, white, and blue are now faded, dirty. Poor Old Glory. The courtyard is, after all, subject to the desert dust of the chergui as the Moroccans call the East wind off the Sahara. When it's the Atlantic wind, … Read more Moroccan-American Relations: Photo Interpretation, Please
They were handing out red roses to (some) women at Tangier's Ibn Battuta Airport on International Women's Day. Nice gesture. Just like some organizations – websites, news media, governments, private industry – mark the day, until they get to the next de rigueur event, like Earth Day. Points on the calendar. Check. What happens the … Read more International Women’s Day – All the Days After
Some people, when confronted with terms like "branding" and "logo" think crass commercialism. Well, there is an aspect of that in what I am trying to accomplish: I would like the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies to better "sell" its "products." Here they are: – Only US National Historic Landmark outside the United … Read more Rebranding TALIM Starts With Its Logo
Does TALIM pass the SAT* test? *SAT stands for Save America's Treasures, a US National Park Service program which, according to the NPS, "is one of the largest and most successful grant programs for the protection of our nation’s endangered and irreplaceable cultural heritage." TALIM Board members, Fellows, Friends of the Legation, interested citizens, and … Read more Save America’s Treasured Legation
