Tag: Crimson

Cutlery on Porcelain

Published on by Mark Jahnke

Another postcard has gone live over at The Harvard Crimson! Head on over and check it out!

It’s 3:10 in the morning, and in the starlight, I can make out the outline on the tablecloth of bread, teacups, a tub of Turkish Nutella, and two bowls of “shirchai,” a warm soup made from whole milk, butter, and tea leaves. I sit in the darkness with my host grandmother, and as I eat my fill of the smorgasbord, I can hear the soft clinking of forks, knives, and spoons against bowls and plates across our neighborhood and across Dushanbe, the capital of the small mountainous republic of Tajikistan.

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An Evening in Tajikistan

Published on by Mark Jahnke

Today the Harvard Crimson published a piece I wrote about my trip.  Because of the copyright, I cannot reproduce the entire entry here, but here is an excerpt.  Continue reading it on the Crimson website!

Each day, after my classes finish at the Language Center, I like to take a walk along Rudaki Avenue.  The entire length of this long, beautiful boulevard is covered in a canopy of massive hundred-foot tall trees, stretching from the train station and airport in the south of the city to the small neighborhoods a few miles to the north where I live with my host family here in Dushanbe.

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Thirty Three Arches

Published on by Mark Jahnke

Thirty Three Arches

This is a piece of travel writing I wrote in 2013 about my experience traveling in Esfahan, Iran in the fall of 2012.  Because of the way rights work with The Crimson, I can’t publish the entire text here, but here is the opening part:

There is something both timeless and eerily beautiful about arches in Safavid architecture. The elegant ogees appear in both two and three dimensions across the city of Esfahan, forming façades and domes, lining bazaars, and crisscrossing the Zayandeh Rud in the form of four stone pedestrian bridges.

Stepping onto a pedestrian bridge is always a thrill. I still remember when I first walked across the Weeks Bridge, looking at the cars on both Soldiers Field Road and Memorial Drive and thinking to myself, “I bet you wish you could use this bridge.” Where else in Boston can you see people dancing Argentine tango beneath the full moon in the spring, jumping into the river in the summer, cheering on the rowers in the fall, and quickly running across in a bundle of down in the winter?

Continue reading over at The Harvard Crimson!