Sitting here tonight with Bruce Hornsby playing in the background, the melody of life slipping by with each note settling within the folds of the tapestry that we all breathe in. It has been some time since this site of reflection was opened. This has been a time of rest and relaxation, of reflection and study. Part of the study has continued to be the past, though this is not a past that is stuck in the death tolls of history, but is ever present in the living moment, constantly shifting under the gaze of the reader. What was life like for the family living along the frontiers between the Ottoman sultanate and the Persia, or on the borderlands of European monarchies? To be a Muslim in Pest, Belgrade, or marching towards the gates of Vienna? To be an Orthodox Christian in the heart of Islam? These are not questions of the state, but of the lives of people. Questions that are still resonating with us today. Questions whose vibrations have been felt beneath the iron gates of Milosevic, raised by the tensions within the Israeli-Palestinian walls. What is Islamic art if separated from Persian and Byzantium influences? These are the study of life not only in the past, but in present America, that sit behind globalization and the shrinking world of instant communication. What did it mean when Ben Franklin stated, "There never was a good war or a bad peace"?
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