Fethullah Gulen and the Gulen Movement

...I live in Annapolis, Maryland, which is for any of you who know the military academies that we have its famous for the Naval Academy which is big part of the culture in Annapolis. We have the Naval Academy which is very restrictive, conservative but we also have a college called St. John’s which is very liberal and umm, they just read the great books so we got this really interesting academic mix in my town, but anyway, what I do is: I am a writer; I am a journalist and kind of a general writer on all kinds of topics and freelance, so whoever hires me I write the kinds of things they need me to write articles brochures and so on. And I teach technical writing at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, which is basically helping students in engineering, architecture and fields like that learn how to write clearly. It is just writing to inform. I was in Turkey once before on a cruise, so I was here only for a couple of days and this trip has been so wonderful to learn about the country and the people in a way that I really didn’t know the country. Those of us on the trip; we have been hearing everyday this phrase “group picture” and “guru picture” I was thinking about that cause several times of a day we get a group picture; we all get together and they take a photo, and so I was thinking; well a picture is a kind of concrete thing that we see when we look at but when we have all of these pictures in our heads, what are the pictures aside what I have been able to capture on my digital camera well stick in my head. And it is always for me about the people and about little scenes about the people and talking with you this evening and talking at dinner and those private conversations. One of the images that I have is actually of Jessica who is an English teacher. We met a little boy, and now it is all blur what town it was, but his name was Ilyas, and she was teaching him numbers and he followed us from a mosque into a shop and she was talking with him, and I was thinking that little boy who is nine is going to remember us. He is going to have a sense of Americans and it is those moments that you know the group picture, those moments that I think are so important to me and I cherish them and that has been a terrific aspect. So we all said a lot of “Thank you”s and a lot of “It’s wonderful” s and it is! That for me is the most important thing, and the food! Hah hah! That and the food! So I have never had such great food and I want all the recipes! So thank you so much!”