for those of you who like the new background

It is a photo of a section of a map that hangs on my wall.  I bought the map on a trip to Istanbul back in 2005 at the book market- it is made of four separate sheets of paper glued together.  It is handpainted and covered in hand-written notes in Turkish; the back is all handwritten text.  The guy who sold it to me tried hard to convince me it was a very very old antique, and it might be, but frankly the age wasn't as important to me as the fact that I instantly loved it.  My mom subsequently gave me the purchase price of the map as a birthday gift, and when I was looking for a new background to convey my feeling about the Foreign Circus, I knew instantly I wanted to use my lovely birthday map.

Closeup of the map

The map in my old apt in DC circa 2007