HOME SWEET HOME

“Home is where the heart is.” - Pliny the Elder (Caius Plinius Secundus)

How welcome a sight one’s home is after one has been away. No matter how enjoyable travel may be, no matter how exciting the distant destinations and no matter how good a time one has while away, the home hearth is where the heart feels most comfortable. Like the migratory bird that returns to its nest year after year, the traveller will come home and settle in, content in familiar surroundings.

But there is also another kind of return… The return of the traveller who having spent many years in foreign lands one day returns to the place of his origin. How expectant is that return! Nostalgia has made of memory a sacred shrine. Remembrance has eradicated all unpleasantness and time has conspired with distance to idealise the lost homeland. How disappointing that return is when all one sees is a poor parody of what the expectant heart wishes to find… All is changed, all has progressed, all is well nigh unrecognizable. Here is the foreign land now, this place which one called home before, is now but a travesty of that sacred place that one had so carefully preserved in one’s innermost secret chambers of the heart.

The Return

My heart searches to slake its thirst
In heady wine of the return, so ruby-red.
Vermillion poppies are sweet draughts
In emerald chalice of unripened corn.

My heart searches to revivify itself
With life-giving blood and godly breath.
Anemones like drops of blood on hillsides
And in the azure of sky a breath of god.

My heart searches for a familiar word to hear,
A smiling friendly face to warm itself.
In every boat of the Aegean I see a letter writing “welcome”
While ancient statues smile at me like next of kin.

My heart searches far and wide for honey, balsam,
A therapy for all its wounds so that it love again.
Violet-coloured, scented evenings in islands white
And fragrances are medicine enough in nights so sweet.

My heart searches for all of these and more,
But time inexorably flows, it passes, destroys all.
Time conquers all that I knew and fondly recalled,
Return is poison, soured wine and bitter gall.

POSTCARD FROM BRISBANE

“Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind.” - Seneca

Brisbane is a thriving, modern, metropolitan centre and capital of the state of Queensland. It is Australia's third-largest city and although it looks like a big-city there are no pretensions and the locals are down-to-earth and remind one of the smaller town from which it initially arose. The city centre sits within a tropical landscape through which flows the undulating Brisbane River, and it boasts a pleasant climate for most of the year. It has been pleasantly cool (25-27˚C) while I have been here and there is the occasional shower keeping the gardens lush. This is certainly a contrast from the South, with Melbourne and Adelaide roasting in the over 40˚C heatwave.

Although I am here for work, there has been opportunity to visit friends and also do a bit of sightseeing. The restaurants have been largely very good too. Last night we had dinner at the Pier Nine Restaurant right by the Brisbane River. This is an excellent seafood restaurant and somewhat of a Brisbane icon. It offers great views, fantastic service and the food is wonderful, with the freshest of fish, shellfish and steaks served simply but imaginatively. The location right on the Eagle St pier affords great views and it is just the place for celebrating a special occasion.

It was a rather full day today and much was done at work. Tomorrow is my last day here in Brisbane and then I fly home for Easter. Or the first Easter, I should say, because Greek Easter is on the 27th of April. Always an annoying state of affairs, these two Easters. Why the powers that be from all religions don’t get together to agree to have Easter at the same time is beyond me. Much better would be the situation of agreeing to have Easter on the same date every year. Say the third Sunday in April, wouldn’t that be sensible?

I haven’t had much time to read while I’ve been away. Too busy and too tired. At night I manage to have a look at the morning paper and then all I want to do is flop down into bed and sleep. I think being away from home for three days is OK, but anything above that starts to get a bit tiring. Just as well I don’t get to do it for more than three days all that often.

THE FUGITIVE

“It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.” - Aristotle

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

Saint Patrick’s Day is a predominantly Irish holiday honouring the missionary credited with converting the Irish to Christianity in the 5th century AD. He was born around 373 AD in either Scotland (near the town of Dumbarton) or in Roman Britain (the Romans left Britain in 410 AD). His real name is believed to be Maewyn Succat. He was kidnapped at the age of 16 by pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland. During his 6-year captivity, while he worked as a shepherd, he began to have religious visions, and found strength in his faith. He finally escaped, going to France, where he became a priest, taking on the name of Patrick.

When he was about 60 years old, St. Patrick travelled to Ireland to spread the Christian word. Reputedly, Patrick had a winning personality, which helped him to convert the fun-loving Irish to Christianity. He used the shamrock, which resembles a three-leafed clover, as a metaphor to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity. Saint Patrick allegedly drove all snakes out of Ireland. This may be an allegory, as the snake was one of the revered pagan symbols.

Saint Patrick’s Day is celebrated all around the world in countries with a large Irish migrant population (e.g. Australia and the USA). In these countries people of Irish sympathy wear green and party. Green is associated with Saint Patrick’s Day because it is the colour of spring, Ireland, and the shamrock.

For Movie Monday today, I have a film I saw a while ago, which features a scene with a St Patrick’s Day parade in Chicago. I really enjoyed this film, because it brought back memories of watching TV when I was a child in the 60s. I remember watching raptly the adventures of “The Fugitive” with David Janssen. The stories of poor Dr Kimble on the run, after being falsely accused of a crime he did not commit (and sentenced to die for it) were quite amazing for my young eyes. It was a great TV show and I hope to watch some episodes again if I can get hold of them.

In 1993, Andrew Davis made “The Fugitive” into a movie inspired by the series, casting Harrison Ford as the ill-fated Dr Kimble. The film works for me and I think it is one of the few movies that have followed a TV series and have done so successfully. Tommy Lee Jones in his Oscar-winning role as Marshal Sam Gerard, plays excellent foil to Harrison Ford’s performance. It is shades of Javert and Jean Valjean in “Les Misérables”, as two acutely intellectual opponents pitch their wits and dogged persistence against each other. The psychological thriller that results is good entertainment.

There is a good mix of action, mystery, suspense and thrills-and-spills, all pinned on a story with enough substance to keep the intelligent viewer interested. The relationship that builds between the hunter and his prey is interesting on a psychological level, and what starts out as a mindless chase of an escaped convict ends up as a mutual respect between two men, who gradually understand that they are on the same side of the law.

“The Fugitive” is an intelligent movie, full of rich characterisation, enough thrills to entice even the action-movie junkie, and performances that shine forth. Good movie, go out to your DVD shop and borrow it to watch if you haven’t seen it!

ART SUNDAY - DIEGO RIVERA 3

Rivera was in the United States from 1930 to 1934, where he painted murals for the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco (1931), the Detroit Institute of Arts (1932), and Rockefeller Center in New York City (1933). His “Man at the Crossroads” fresco in Rockefeller Center offended the sponsors because the figure of communist Vladimir Lenin was in the picture; the work was destroyed by the centre but was later reproduced by Rivera at the Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City. After returning to Mexico, Rivera continued to paint murals of gradually declining quality. His most ambitious and gigantic mural, an epic on the history of Mexico for the National Palace, Mexico City, was unfinished when he died. Frida Kahlo, who married Rivera twice, was also an accomplished painter. Rivera's autobiography, “My Art, My Life”, was published posthumously in 1960.

This is the South wall mural of the Detroit Institute of the Arts, painted in 1933. American Industry is depicted here, with the Caucasian race and Asian race shown above.

ART SUNDAY - DIEGO RIVERA 2

In 1923 he began painting the walls of the Ministry of Public Education building in Mexico City, working in fresco and completing the commission in 1930. These huge frescoes, depicting Mexican agriculture, industry, and culture, reflect a genuinely native subject matter and mark the emergence of Rivera's mature style. Rivera defines his solid, somewhat stylized human figures by precise outlines rather than by internal modeling. The flattened, simplified figures are set in crowded, shallow spaces and are enlivened with bright, striking colours. The Indians, peasants, conquistadores, and factory workers depicted combine monumentality of form with a mood that is lyrical and at times elegiac.

Rivera's next major work was a fresco cycle in a former chapel at what is now the National School of Agriculture at Chapingo (1926–27). His frescoes there contrast scenes of natural fertility and harmony among the pre-Columbian Indians with scenes of their enslavement and brutalisation by the Spanish conquerors. Rivera's murals in the Cortés Palace in Cuernavaca (1930) and the National Palace in Mexico City (1930–35) depict various aspects of Mexican history in a more didactic narrative style.

This is a fresco from the Alameda Hotel in Mexico City. The central section of the large mural depicting Sunday in the Park is shown here.

ART SUNDAY - DIEGO RIVERA 1

“Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: The thing you cannot explain.” - Georges Braque

For Art Sunday today, the art of Diego Rivera. A great Mexican artist and the partner of the equally great artist, Frida Kahlo. He was born on December 8, 1886, Guanajuato, Mexico and died on November 25, 1957, Mexico City. He was a Mexican painter whose bold, large-scale murals stimulated a revival of fresco painting in Latin America. A government scholarship enabled Rivera to study art at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City from age 10, and a grant from the governor of Veracruz enabled him to continue his studies in Europe in 1907.

He studied in Spain and in 1909 settled in Paris, where he became a friend of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and other leading modern painters. About 1917 he abandoned the Cubist style in his own work and moved closer to the Post-Impressionism of Paul Cézanne, adopting a style ivolving simplified forms and bold areas of flat colour.

Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921 after meeting with fellow Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros. Both sought to create a new national art on revolutionary themes that would decorate public buildings in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. On returning to Mexico, Rivera painted his first important mural, Creation, for the Bolívar Auditorium of the National Preparatory School in Mexico City.

This is the "Day of Flowers" of 1925. The calla lillies were a great favourite of his and used in many of his paintings.

HUMAN FRAILTY

“Ninety percent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves.” Sydney J. Harris

The fabric of our life is so thin and so easily torn, our existence so easily disrupted. We can be very optimistic and think ourselves invincible, invulnerable, as though we can conquer the world. We lunge forward recklessly like the fool on the tarot deck, mindless of the yawning precipice in front of us. We are like ants scurrying around and busily marching onward unaware of the foot that hovers above us ready to crush us out of existence.

Everything was going well and then early this morning I found myself in the emergency department of the hospital accompanying a friend who became acutely ill. On the way there I spoke to the ambulance driver who told me that this Friday night in Brisbane was a particularly nasty one. Drunkenness, brawls, fights, accidents, incidents. In the Emergency department the whole gamut of injuries: Cracked heads, acutely ill patients, comatose people, broken limbs, druggies groaning in withdrawal, drunks abusing the medical staff, concerned friends and relatives hovering about, police investigating accidents, nurses and doctors purposefully and efficiently to-ing and fro-ing… And so many young people all around! What are our youth doing to themselves? Drugs, alcohol, violence, destructive relationships, self-mutilation, social crippling.

An emergency department teaches us important lessons about human frailty. This a tour that the vainglorious and proud must take; a guide should show the place to the young and self-professed “invincible”; the healthy and the self-assured should see on what a razor’s edge we balance every day of lives. Time conspires with fortune, luck would play at dice with fate, and human frailty must suffer the vicissitudes of chance. Our only aids for survival are faith and prudence, the only sweeteners of our afflictions are love and hope.

I am not a fatalist, nor do I believe in some inscrutable kismet determining our existence. We are the masters of our own destiny, to a large extent. However, circumstances out of our control, unfortunate coincidences, unplanned-for exigencies and cascading torrents of consequences of thoughtless choices may lead to that mass of tortured broken humanity that confronted me this morning in hospital. Here is Sting, singing what is possibly his best song, “Fragile”:



PS: My friend is feeling better tonight. She was diagnosed with renal colic and treated.

PIE FLOATERS

“What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.” – Lucretius

I am in Brisbane for work today and it has certainly been a very tiring week with Melbourne, Adelaide and now Brisbane all in the space of four days… However, I shall be spending the weekend here and relaxing a little. It is unusual that we have had searing temperatures in the South and then here in the North the temperatures are much cooler. It’s been interesting going around Australia and getting to see people in our organization face to face. It makes the travelling worthwhile, seeing the people one has been talking to and emailing across the table rather than their virtual presence. Although modern technology s great fro communicating efficiently and rapidly all around the world, there is still a lot to be said about sitting around a table together and conversing, being able to interpret body language, to work together on a table or a diagram and then have a cup of coffee together over which one may continue to work, but also there is a chance for more informal socializing and team-building.

In any case, seeing I have been travelling around this nation of ours so much lately, I thought I would share with you a typical regional Australian recipe: The South Australian Pie Floater. It is based on the old stalwart of the English cooking tradition the meat pie. A meat pie is a beef/gravy filling encased in rich pastry, baked to a crisp golden finish. Take this delicacy and drop it unceremoniously in a bowl of steaming green, split pea soup! Top with tomato sauce (ketchup, the less sweet it is ad the more savoury the better – some people in fact prefer Worcestershire sauce to the ketchup!).

I must admit that pie floaters look disgusting on first encounter with them, but really they do taste good! At least, many South Australians (and lesser numbers of visitors) think so. The meal is traditionally eaten at kerbside from a ‘pie cart’, the most famous being Cowleys’, which still stands alongside the GPO in Victoria Square in Adelaide. The name ‘floater’ may come from early English slang expression describing a dumpling in soup.

The South Australian origins date to early colonial times when vendors with horse or hand-drawn carts sold pies baked in a wood-fired oven, and soup from a simmering pot. 
These pie carts became a meeting place where cabbies, police, nightwatchmen and other workers rubbed shoulders with theatre patrons in formal evening wear, musicians, politicians and businessmen. So the pie floater actually was an egalitarian repast and thus may have important historical and social connotations.

The first pie cart was licensed in 1871 and by 1915 there were nine, sustained until 1942. In 1938 the City Council, prompted by other food traders’ complaints, decided to abolish pie carts as current owners ceased trading. By 1958 only two remained in the city - at the GPO site and the one now outside the Adelaide Railway Station. The pie floater’s curb-side consumption by people from all walks of life for more than130 years makes it an authentic and uniquely South Australian culinary tradition.

Bon Appétit!

LOOKING HEAVENWARDS

“Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another” – Plato

Today’s birthday plant is the ivy flowerheads, Hedera helix. It is symbolic of a need of support, tenacity, wedded love, fidelity and immortality. It is a plant of Saturn and in some circles considered an evil omen as it kills whatever it embraces.

The planet Uranus was discovered on this day in 1781 by the astronomer William Herschel. The planet was originally called Georgius Sidus to honour king George III, patron of Herschel.

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and is the third largest in the solar system. It has an equatorial diameter of 51,800 kilometers and orbits the Sun once every 84.01 Earth years. It has a mean distance from the Sun of 2.87 billion kilometers. It rotates about its axis once every 17 hours 14 minutes. Uranus has at least 22 moons. The two largest moons, Titania and Oberon, were discovered by William Herschel in 1787.

The atmosphere of Uranus is composed of 83% hydrogen, 15% helium, 2% methane and small amounts of acetylene and other hydrocarbons. Methane in the upper atmosphere absorbs red light, giving Uranus its blue-green color. The atmosphere is arranged into clouds running at constant latitudes, similar to the orientation of the more vivid latitudinal bands seen on Jupiter and Saturn.

Uranus is distinguished by the fact that it is tipped on its side, so that its poles are on the equator, so to speak. Its unusual position is thought to be the result of a collision with a planet-sized body early in the solar system's history. Voyager 2 found that one of the most striking influences of this sideways position is its effect on the tail of the magnetic field, which is itself tilted 60 degrees from the planet's axis of rotation. The magnetotail was shown to be twisted by the planet's rotation into a long corkscrew shape behind the planet. The magnetic field source is unknown.

In 1977, the first nine rings of Uranus were discovered. During the Voyager encounters, these rings were photographed and measured, as were two other new rings and ringlets.

The name of the planet was settled upon to be in keeping with the other planets, which all had nemes of gods and goddesses of Greek mythology. Uranus, also known as Ouranos, was the embodiment of the sky or heavens, and known as the god of the sky. He was the first son of Gaia (the earth) and he also became her husband. According to Hesiod, their children included the Titans: six sons (Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus and Cronus) and six daughters (Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe and Tethys).

There were other offspring: the Cyclopes, (who were named Brontes, Steropes and Arges and were later known as "one eyed giants"), and also the three monsters known as the Hecatonchires, who each had one hundred hands and fifty heads. Their names were Briareus, Cottus and Gyes. Other offspring of Uranus and Gaia were the Erinyes, who were spirits of punishment and goddesses of vengeance. The Erinyes avenged wrongs which were done to family, especially murder within a family.

Uranus was aghast by the sight of his offspring, the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires. (In a differing version Uranus was frightened of their great strength and the fact that they could easily depose him). He hid them away in Tartarus (the bowels of the earth) inside Gaia, causing her intense pain. The discomfort became so great that she asked her youngest son, Cronus, to castrate his father, as this would cease his fertility and put an end to more monstrous offspring. To accomplish this deed Gaia made an adamantine sickle, which she gave to Cronus. That night Uranus came to lay with Gaia. And as the sky god drew close, Cronus struck with the sickle and cut off Uranus's genitals. From the blood that fell from the open wound were born nymphs and giants, and when Cronus threw the severed genitals into the sea a white foam appeared. From this foam Aphrodite the goddess of love and desire was born.

After Uranus (the sky) had been emasculated, the sky separated from Gaia (the earth) and Cronus became king of the gods. Later, Zeus (the son of Cronus) deposed his father and became the supreme god of the Greek Pantheon.

The word of the day, today is: Uranus!

Uranus |ˈyoŏrənəs; yoŏˈrā-| noun
1 Greek Mythology a personification of heaven or the sky, the most ancient of the Greek gods and first ruler of the universe. He was overthrown and castrated by his son Cronus.
2 Astronomy a distant planet of the solar system, seventh in order from the sun, discovered by William Herschel in 1781.

THANKS TO LIFE!

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” G. K. Chesterton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton

I am in Adelaide for two days for work. The temperatures have been scorching for the past 9 days in succession and today the mercury rose to 37˚C! This is definitely a heat wave that we have been spared from in Melbourne. Walking in the streets today was quite a task as the asphalt was radiating the accumulated heat of several days. The sun was relentlessly sending searing rays down and people had that listless look of powerless resignation that comes with an onslaught of the elemental forces of the weather, over which we have no control.

However, the up side was that my work commitments were successfully carried out and there was a tremendous feeling of achievement and of a job well-done at the end of the day. We had a delicious dinner at a wonderful Thai restaurant called “Star of Siam” – definitely worth visiting if you ever go to Adelaide! Gouger Street is certainly a bustling place and wall to wall restaurants and cafés line its lively neighbourhood.

Sitting here in my hotel room, after a full day, busy with satisfying work commitments, replete after a delicious meal, content with my lot in life, pleased with my decisions of the last few months, I can only come to the conclusion that life has been good to me and for that I am deeply grateful…

Thanks to life
( By Violeta Parra)

Thanks to life, which has given me so much
It has given me two eyes, and when I open them
I clearly distinguish black from white;
In the high sky, the starry depths,
While in the crowd, I can single out the man that I love.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much
It has given me hearing, which in all its breadth
Day and night detects crickets and canaries,
Hammers, turbines, barking of dogs, dark cloudstorms,
And the tender voice of my beloved one.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much
It has given me sound and the alphabet
And with it the words to think and speak
Mother, friend, brother, and the light that brightens
The path to the soul of my beloved one.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much
It has kept my tired feet walking
With them I walked through cities and puddles,
Beaches and deserts, mountains and plains
And the roads that lead to your house, your street to your courtyard.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much
It gave me my heart, which shakes to its depths
When I look at the fruit of the human brain
When I distinguish the good from the bad
When I look at the depths of your light-coloured eyes.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much
It has given me laughter and it has given me tears
Thus I distinguish between joy and pain,
They are all elements of my song
And of all your songs, which is the same song
And of everyone's song, which is my own song.



Violeta del Carmen Parra Sandoval (October 14, 1917 - February 5, 1967) was a notable Chilean folklorist. She set the basis for "The New Song" (La Nueva Canción chilena), a renewal of Chilean folk music. Parra was born in San Carlos, province of Ñuble, a small town in southern Chile. She was involved in the leftist movement and the Chilean Socialist Party. She established the first Peña, (now known as la Peña de los Parra). A peña is a social and political community center. The word is Spanish for "hard rock." There are now many peñas throughout Chile, Latin America, and in North America, Europe, and Australia. They serve the expat communities that fled Chile after the CIA-backed coup of 1973 that overthrew Salvador Allende's democratically elected socialist administration.

Violeta Parra is a member of the prolific Parra family. Her brother is the notable modern poet, Nicanor Parra. Her son, Ángel Parra, and her daughter, Isabel Parra, are also important figures in the development of Nueva Canción in Chile. She committed suicide at the age of fifty. Her most famous song, Gracias A la Vida, was popularized in the US by Joan Baez. It remains one of the most covered Latin American songs in history.
(courtesy of YouTube)

KISS KISS!

“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.” – Roald Dahl

I have just finished a collection of short stories by Roald Dahl (1916–1990), one of the world's most beloved children's authors. He created delightful characters such as Matilda and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but also wrote short stories for adults. The book I have just read is titled “Kiss Kiss” (first published as a collection in 1960, but most of the stories had been published earlier elsewhere). They are a delicious collection of eleven short stories, macabre and dark, but with a sense of wicked humour about them as well.

Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff, Wales, of Norwegian parents. He lost his parents at an early age and he was sent to private schools in England and Wales, at great cost to his remaining relatives who had to sell the family jewellery in order to pay for his education. However, the school system in these institutions did not impress Dahl: "I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed literally to wound other boys, and sometimes quite severely. I couldn't get over it. I never got over it..." he wrote.

His family experiences and terrible time he had in the private school system inspired Dahl to write stories in which children fight against cruel adults and authorities. "Parents and schoolteachers are the enemy," Dahl once said. In his story “James and the Giant Peach”, James’s parents are eaten, and his two aunts terrorise him. In “Matilda” the parents are depicted as terrible people who are completely selfish and irresponsible, while in “Witches” a beautiful woman turns out to be a wicked witch.

“My Uncle Oswald” (1979) was Dahl's first full-length novel, a bizarre story of a scheme for procuring and selling the sperm of the world's most powerful and brilliant men. Dahl received three Edgar Allan Poe Awards (1954, 1959, 1980). In 1982 he won his first literary prize with “The BFG”, a story about Big Friendly Giant, who kidnaps and takes a little girl to Giantland, where giants eat children. In 1983 he received World Fantasy Convention Lifetime Achievement award. Dahl died of an infection on November 23, 1990, in Oxford.

His writing is vivid, amusing, shocking, surprising, delightful, playful, unconventional, always a pleasure to read. Highly recommended!

NORTHFORK

“The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.” - Seneca

We watched a very curious film, today. It was Michael Polish’s “Northfork” (2003). A strange film in that I find it hard to classify into a mainstream genre, perhaps a little arthouse, maybe fantasy, maybe surrealist, perhaps even a tad pretentious. In any case, a slow and ingrown melancholy fable designed to show off cinematography and period sets. The acting was adequate and the music suitably atmospheric.

The story is set in the town of Northfork, Montana in the 1950s. The Government (represented by the men in black, wearing hats and driving identical cars) has decided to flood the place in order to make a hydroelectric dam, all in the name of progress. The citizens have been evacuated except for a handful who choose to stay on, despite the imminent inundation. The government has sent the men in black to persuade the last remaining Northforkers to quit the town. There is a priest and a young, sick orphan boy he is looking after, the elderly café owner, a man who has built an ark for himself and his two wives, an elderly man who will shoot anyone who tries to approach him and a house full of angels (or are they just a figment of the sick boy’s imagination?).

The film meanders to and fro, nothing much happens and every once in a while there is an amusing comment or two. Fascinating to watch, even though it’s slow and “arty” - one would think that it could be boring, but I wasn’t bored. No doubt within a few months I’ll have forgotten all about it, but nevertheless quite strangely engaging while one watches it.

A friend of ours who saw it some time ago said she fell asleep while watching it in the cinema. Another friend says it’s a masterpiece. I sit somewhere between the two. If you come across it, watch it, but don’t go out of your way to find it…

ART SUNDAY - ENGONOPOULOS

“Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left.” - Victor Hugo
Tyrrhiné Sunday (meaning “Cheese Sunday”) in the Greek Orthodox faith is the last day before the Lenten fasting period and is equivalent to the “Pancake” or “Shrove Tuesday” of the Western churches. On this day, the remaining eggs, milk, butter and cheese products had to be consumed. Nowadays, even meat tends to be consumed, but most people will fast tomorrow.

Note that in the Orthodox faith one has to fast on Sundays during Lent, whereas in the Western churches, fasting is relaxed on Sundays, even during Lent. The Apokriés festival is celebrated on this and the previous two Sundays, but this last Sunday is the Great Apokriá, an enormous carnival with parades and masquerading, eating drinking, carousing and much merry-making. It is the last fling before the great austerity of Lent.
Once the Great Apokriá dawns brightly
Even the staid old maid becomes flighty
Greek Folk Saying

Seeing it’s carnival time in Greece, here is a painting by Nikos Engonopoulos (1907-1985), a surrealist painter and poet whose work always has something festive and carnival-like about it. This is the “Return of Odysseus” (1947).

For more on Engonopoulos, visit the official website managed by his daughter Henrietta.

Happy Carnival, Καλή Αποκριά, Καλή Σαρακοστή, Have a Good Lent!

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.” – Charlotte Whitton

This is International Women’s Day, 2008. The first International Women's Day was launched on 8 March 1911 in Copenhagen by Clara Zetkin, Leader of the 'Women's Office' for the Social Democratic Party in Germany. This followed many years of women's campaigning dating back to British MP, John Stuart Mill, the first person in Parliament calling for women's right to vote. On 19 September 1893 New Zealand became the first self-governing nation in the world to give women the right to vote.

Equality is still a long way away for many women around the world, especially in developing countries. However, even in developed countries many women are still struggling - women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and women's education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.

Each year on 8 March, thousands of International Women's Day events occur all around the world from Alaska to Zambia. IWD events range from small random informal gatherings to large-scale highly organised events that have been planned for many months. As 2011 approaches, marking the centenary of celebrations for Women’s Day, we would hope to see more women in the boardroom, greater equality in legislative rights, and an increased critical mass of women's visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life.

For Music Saturday, an iconic song from 1972 “I Am Woman” by Australian singer Helen Reddy, who also wrote the lyrics, with music by Ray Burton. A nice twist is the tribute to the great actress Helen Mirren.




To all daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, workers, housewives, nurses, doctors, surgeons, policewomen, company directors, artists, writers, musicians, actresses, journalists, waitresses, firewomen, directors, women,

HAPPY WOMEN’S DAY!

RUSKS

“Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. 
And cooking done with care is an act of love.” 
Craig Claiborne

One of the memories I have from my grandmother’s house is the smell of baking whenever she used to cook her delicious cakes, pastries and biscuits. The kitchen could be dark and mysterious with the heater on while the rain fell from wintry skies outside. The oven contributed to the cosiness of the kitchen those evenings when I did my homework on the kitchen table. Or it could be the sunlit mornings of summer when the baking was done early before the room was attacked by the ardour of the sun.

The aroma was often the heady floral scent of vanilla beans, conjuring up images of some dark green and moist jungle with the beat of drums in the distance (I used to read adventure stories at the time!). Often, it was the spicy sweetness of cinnamon in long rolled up pieces of bark and full of stories of long sea voyages and pirates and swashbuckling adventurers defending the precious cargo of spices from the Indies. Other times, quite exotic spices, all mixed up – the nutmeg and the allspice, the star anise and cloves, cardamom and tamarind.

Sometimes the herbal, resinous smell of gum mastic, closer to home, gathered from the island of Chios and ground up in a mortar pestle to make the fine powder used in sweets. I was always given a piece or two of the precious tear-shaped gum to chew. And as soon as one placed the clear, hard drops in one’s mouth, they softened and one could chew them like gum. A fresh, invigorating, slightly woody, aromatic and a tad bitter taste – more suited to maturer palates, but nevertheless enjoyable.

Here is a recipe of my grandmother’s. They are the typical Greek rusks, made from a sweetened, bread-like dough, but baked twice so that they achieve that hard yet crumbly texture typical of rusks. This recipe uses the gum mastic typical of a lot of Greek sweets. It is available in Greek shops and delis. If you cannot get hold of it, flavour the rusks with a mixture of cinnamon and cloves. 1.5 teaspoonful of ground spices should be enough. This is a big recipe and if you make like it is here you’ll be in the kitchen for several hours of labour intensive baking. You can always halve the recipe.

GREEK RUSKS (Paximathakia)

Ingredients
2 cupfuls light vegetable oil
3 cupfuls caster sugar
1.5 cupfuls milk
1 glassful freshly squeezed orange juice
0.5 teaspoonful finely ground gum mastic
self raising flour (about 2 kg)

Method
Whisk the vegetable oil in a mixer until it becomes milky and then add the sugar, continuing to whisk, adding the orange juice gradually. Whisk well until the sugar is dissolved and add the milk little by little, mixing all the while. Add the ground gum mastic and the flour in small lots until the dough becomes soft and elastic and just comes off the hands. Knead well. Shape into small thin flattened loaves, about 3 cm wide and 30 cm long. Score into slices, about 1.5 cm wide. Bake in an oven until golden brown. Remove from the oven and cut into slices along the scored lines. Bake a second time, until the rusks are dry (it may be necessary to turn them over so that they dry out evenly). Once cool store in an air-tight tin, whereupon they will keep for several weeks.

The Mastic tree (Pistachia lentiscus) grows on the island of Chios in Greece. Although the trees and shrubs grow all over the island, the production of gum mastic resin is carried out only in the medieval villages in the southern region of Chios called Mastichochoria (=Gum villages). This is the only place where gum mastic is produced, thus explaining the very high price of this product, which is exported all over the world. The Mastic tree is related to the pistachio nut tree, Pistachia vera.

Gum mastic is obtained by the incising of the tree trunk and branches with a sharp tool. The gum mastic resin then exudes through these incisions. The word “mastic” is derived from the Greek verb “masso” which means “to chew” (cf: masticate).

Mastic is soluble in ether and alcohol, but insoluble in water. There is evidence that even low doses of mastic gum (1 g per day for two weeks) can cure peptic ulcers very rapidly. This is probably due to the fact that mastic is active against the bacterium Helicobacter pylori.

Gum mastic is used in dental products; it cleans the mouth as well as strengthening the gums. Gum mastic is also used in perfumery and creams. It cleans the skin and brightens the complexion. Both the scent and taste of Mastic is pleasant, and Mastic is also used to flavour sweets and cakes.

Mastic is much valued in the paint industry; it is added to varnishes and artist oil colour. An oil is obtained by alcohol extraction of the resin. Used as incense, the scent of Mastic is fresh, slightly lemony, and very purifying in its quality. Although expensive, it should be tried by all incense lovers. Mastic blends well with a lot of scents, including benzoin, chamomile, eucalyptus, juniper, lavender, lemongrass, marjoram, and sage.

CUCKOO!

“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.” – Abigail Adams

The ragged robin, Lychnis flos-cuculi, is the birthday plant for this day. The generic name is derived from the Greek word, lychnos = lamp, in reference to the bright flowers of this herb. The specific name means “cuckoo flower” in Latin and refers to flowering of the plant when the cuckoo is in full song. In the language of flowers, it symbolises wit and ardour.

Several notables were born today, many of them literary figures or artists:
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian artist (1475);
Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, writer (1619);
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet (1806);
George (Louis Palmella Busson) du Maurier, novelist (1834);
Oscar Straus, composer (1870);
Louis Francis Cristillo (Costello), actor (1906);
Frankie Howerd, comedian (1922);
Wes Montgomery, guitarist (1925);
Andrzej Wajda, director (1926);
Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel laureate (1982) writer (1928);
Lorin Maazel, conductor (1930);
Valentina Nikolayevna Tereshkova, Russian astronaut first woman in space (1937);
Kiri Te Kanawa, NZ soprano (1944);
Mary Wilson, singer (1944).

Here is a well known poem by birthday girl Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

Sonnets from the Portuguese - Sonnet XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, – I love thee with the breath
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

And the word of the day is ardour (ardor for our American cousins), which was certainly shown by many of our notable birthday boys and girls:

ardour |ˈärdər| noun
enthusiasm or passion : they felt the stirrings of revolutionary ardor.
ORIGIN late Middle English: Via Old French from Latin ardor, from ardere ‘to burn.’

THE SHIFTING HEART

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.” - Oscar Wilde

Oh, heady days when our brain empties and our heart fills up! How different the world seems when love saturates every single cell of ours. Days full of sweetest pains, most hurtful pleasure, delightful agonies. And then again, when heart empties, the cold light of reason illuminates its deserted spaces and the echoing chambers make of it a place of ghosts and elusive memories.

And as time passes and wounds heal, the scars fade and the heart hardens. Time will heal all wounds, they say. But time also toughens us and the once tender heart becomes encased in a tough carapace that may grow inwards and strangle our heart in an inevitable petrification. This poem looks at shifting perspectives with the passage of time. Reason conquers emotion, but at what price?

A Year Later

A year later…
(I count the days)
I see you:
And your heart is like a house,
In which I’ve lived
For years and years –
Now, it’s up for sale.

A year later…
(How the years pass)
I see you:
And even now, maybe,
I’d like to clasp you
Close to my crystal heart –
Even if that caused it to break.

A year later…
(Yes, I have changed)
I see you:
Rarely now; I’ve got over you.
And although my heart has turned to stone,
You no longer have
The power to break it
Even if it were made of eggshell.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, VIVALDI

“Music is the shorthand of emotion.” - Leo Tolstoy

Today is a special day for the world of music as it is the anniversary of the birth of the famous Venetian composer, Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). Antonio Vivaldi was aged fifteen and a half when he received the tonsure, and grew up to become the prete rosso (“red priest”) of Venice, so called on account of his red hair. Although he remained a deeply religious man, he stopped saying Mass soon after his ordination; later in life he cited a long-term ailment as the reason for this (probably asthma). From September 1703 to February 1709 he was violin teacher at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà in Venice (an orphanage for girls which offered musical training). In addition to teaching violin, directing, and composing instrumental works, Vivaldi also taught the viole all' inglese and was responsible for acquiring and maintaining string instruments for the orchestra.

By this time he had begun to establish himself as a composer He was an avid traveller and one of the most prolific composers of his time, having written over 350 concerti, many church compositions and numerous operas. His popularity in Venice had declined considerably by 1739, and this may have prompted him to travel to Vienna, where he arrived by June 28, 1741. He died there the following month, and was given a pauper's burial at the Hospital Burial Ground.

Vivaldi was most influential as a composer of instrumental music, particularly concertos, in which his regular use of ritornello form in the fast movements and of a three-movement plan were influential. A skillful orchestrator, he favored effects such as muting and pizzicato. A number of his orchestral works are programmatic, the best-known examples being the concertos Il Gardellino, La tempesta di mare, and Le quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons) of Opus 8.



One of his concertos that I particularly like is the concerto in A minor for two violins, opus 3 no 8. It has a brilliant first movement that is rich in ideas that contrast between themselves and contains a lyrical theme despite the rapid allegro marking. The second movement is marked larghetto e spiritoso, contrasting again the lyrical beauty of the theme and the accompanying ostinato style. The last movement is another allegro, but this time less structured with the two solo violins conversing and arguing in succession. Johann Sebastian Bach seems to have also admired this concerto as he transcribed it, amongst others of Vivaldi, for keyboard.

The rose geranium, Pelargonium capitatum, is the birthday flower for this day. When bruised, the leaves exude a rose-like scent. In the language of flowers, it stands for preference.

PHONE HOME

“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.” - Tom Stoppard

Last week we visited some friends of ours. Their 8 and 10 year-old children who are right into Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Artemis Fowl, etc were surprisingly ignorant on the subject of E.T. This was a matter of great wonder to us “oldies” and it was only on reflection that we all realised that this is a 1982 film! Ancient history to these children, who weren’t even a twinkle in their father’s eye when the film was released. Well we rectified the situation and gave them a DVD of E.T. as a gift. The following film review of Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.: The Extraterrestrial” (1982) is by Kate (8 years) with some help from John (10 years), put on here with their permission (I have edited it slightly, correcting some spelling errors):

“ET: EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
My name is Kate and I am 8 years old. I have a brother John who is 10 and a dog called Jerry (he’s 2 years old). Nick gave us a DVD called ET. He said that they had watched this when he and his friends were young and they liked it. This was a sad movie. I cried when I watched it and John nearly did but he didn’t in the end because he’s a boy. I told him it was OK because Elliott cried too, when ET was leaving and Elliott and his brother cried too. But it was funny too and adventurous.

ET is a spaceman who comes to earth from far away from his home planet. It’s very, very far away. I think ET is a kid and he wandered off his parents’ spaceship when they came to have a picnic on earth and they forgot to take him with them. John said ET wasn’t a kid, but he was a scientist who was absent-minded and he forgot to go back to the spaceship on time, that’s why they left without him.

Elliott is a little boy who has an older bother called Michael and a little sister called Gertie. They find ET in their shed and they get a real big fright. ET got a fright too. Eliott becomes friends with ET and teaches him to speak English. If I was Eliott I’d get ET to teach me spacetalk and nobody would understand what we said when we talked. I liked this part of the film because it was funny. ET got drunk when was drinking beer and Elliott got drunk too because he felt like ET felt.

ET wanted to go home and he wanted to phone home for his parents to come and get him. He couldn’t use a phone because it was too far and because mobile phones weren’t invented then. This was in the old times. ET got Eliot to give him stuff and he made a special big phone to call his parents. They had to go into the forest on top of a mountain to do that because it was closer to ET’s home. ET phoned home but both Elliott and ET got sick because they stayed out all night (it was Halloween). But Elliott got into real big trouble with his Mum and the police because he stayed out at night. The police were really creepy and scary, the way they came into Elliot’s house. And the spacemen were scary too, but these spacemen were from earth and looking for ET. Elliot’s mum went ballistic when she found all these strange people in her house looking for ET.

ET died but not for real. I think he was trying to pretend he was dead so he could escape. Elliott found out that ET wasn’t dead and they (him and his brother) took ET away in a truck. Michael was too young to drive and he was going all over the road and nearly crashed. It was funny how the police couldn’t catch them. But then they had to get on their bikes to get away. They had really good mountain bikes and ET helped them get away by making them fly. I wish I could have a friend like ET who would help me fly like that on my bike. John says it was the power of our brains. John says you can do anything you really, really want if you think about it really hard. I don’t think I can think that hard so I can fly. Anyway, ET found his parents’ spaceship and he went away back home. It was so sad for Elliott and his family. But I was happy for ET too because he went back home. This was a really ace movie. Thank you for the present Nick, we’ll watch it again.”

Well there you have it, out of the mouths of babes… E.T. has two news fans, gained 26 years after it gained its first few millions. And it will go on having fans because it is a story that appeals to everyone. It’s a modern-day Lassie story, with the right amount of humour and fun and pathos and adventure and the kind of situational incident that brings out the child in every one of us.

ART SUNDAY - PIETER BRUEGHEL

"One kind word can warm three winter months."
- Japanese Proverb

A single painting for this week’s Art Sunday, Pieter Brueghel’s “Hunters in the Snow” of 1565. Oil on canvas, 46 inches x 63.75 inches. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

And here is a poem inspired by the painting:

Hunters in the Snow: Brueghel
By Joseph Langland

Quail and rabbit hunters with tawny hounds,
Shadowless, out of late afternoon
Trudge toward the neutral evening of indeterminate form
Done with their blood-annunciated day
Public dogs and all the passionless mongrels
Through deep snow
Trail their deliberate masters
Descending from the upper village home in lovering light.
Sooty lamps
Glow in the stone-carved kitchens.

This is the fabulous hour of shape and form
When Flemish children are gray-black-olive
And green-dark-brown
Scattered and skating informal figures
On the mill ice pond.
Moving in stillness
A hunched dame struggles with her bundled sticks,
Letting her evening's comfort cudgel her
While she, like jug or wheel, like a wagon cart
Walked by lazy oxen along the old snowlanes,
Creeps and crunches down the dusky street.
High in the fire-red dooryard
Half unhitched the sign of the Inn
Hangs in wind
Tipped to the pitch of the roof.
Near it anonymous parents and peasant girl,
Living like proverbs carved in the alehouse walls,
Gather the country evening into their arms
And lean to the glowing flames.
Now in the dimming distance fades
The other village; across the valley
Imperturbable Flemish cliffs and crags
Vaguely advance, close in, loom
Lost in nearness. Now
The night-black raven perched in branching boughs
Opens its early wing and slipping out
Above the gray-green valley
Weaves a net of slumber over the snow-capped homes.

And now the church, and then the walls and roofs
Of all the little houses are become
Close kin to shadow with small lantern eyes.
And now the bird of evening
With shadows streaming down from its gliding wings
Circles the neighboring hills
Of Hertogenbosch, Brabant.
Darkness stalks the hunters,
Slowly sliding down,
Falling in beating rings and soft diagonals.
Lodged in the vague vast valley the village sleeps.


And here is Kyung-Wha Chung who plays and conducts Vivaldi's “Winter” from the Four Seasons, with a group of young musicians she herself got together and trained. Filmed in 1997.