Tag Archives: holiday

Lunch-Break Rendezvous to Celebrate the Feast of the Flowers

1 May

 

 

Let’s all ditch work today and celebrate the Feast of the Flowers!  …Okay, okay, I’ll behave.  I’ll take a nice long walk through the park during my lunch break for Protomayia (May 1).  Now that the weather’s warming up, I use my lunch break to get a little sun on my face, stretch my legs, and admire the beauty of the every day.  I used to feel guilty about leaving my desk for lunch.  I thought I should just power through and get work done.  But I’ve found that actually taking my lunch break energizes me.  I come back feeling so refreshed and ready to tackle projects with a clear mind.  Maybe today for the Feast of the Flowers I’ll buy some fresh flowers for my desk while I’m out!

Greeks celebrate May 1 (also known as May Day, Labor Day, and Protomayia) with the enchanting Feast of the Flowers.  Revelers flee to the countryside on this national labor holiday to herald spring.  By May 1, most of the Greek islands are warm with gentle breezes and the mainland can even get hot.  It’s a marvelous day of picnicking and flying kites and enjoying nature.  People spend the day collecting flowers and turning them into wreathes.  There are even several flower festivals throughout Greece.  Isn’t the Feast of the Flowers the loveliest of holidays?

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Clip: Light of the World

13 Apr

I expanded a post that started out here on this blog, and it’s up on Burnside now!  It’s about the first Greek Easter I spent in New York….

 

I think there’s probably a law against carrying an open flame in the subway.  I’m not sure.  But it’s a pretty safe bet.  This turns Easter in New York City into a midnight marathon.

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Clip: Separation Sunday

7 Apr

“Father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?”

Sin and salvation.

Death and resurrection.

Hoodrats and comeback kids.

Parties and confession booths.

The Hold Steady’s Separation Sunday: indie rock’s Easter music.

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Clip: Paintings of the Crucifixion

6 Apr

 

In light of Good Friday, I’m reposting “Paintings of the Crucifixion,” originally published on Burnside last year.

 

A couple years ago there was an exhibit called Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.  The exhibit paired old masters with modern painters, according to theme: knights, ghosts, ladies, bodegones, landscapes of fire, and so forth.  It was an impressive collection of artwork that spoke to how Truth transcends time.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed the museum in such a way that museum-goers wind their way up through exhibits as opposed to being sectioned off, floor by floor, and consequently there are heightened feelings of momentum and progress as one climbs closer to the top of the museum.  At the pinnacle of the museum during the Spanish Painting exhibit there was a section devoted entirely to paintings of the Crucifixion.
It is probably the most intense and haunting collection of artwork I have ever witnessed.  I have seen many paintings of the Crucifixion over the years, but standing in an entire room of them is overwhelming.  I felt uncomfortable.  I felt sick.  I left trying to push it out of my mind.
You can read the rest and see visuals here.

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Happy Greek Independence Day!

25 Mar

 

I’m trapped inside, working on my book today so it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to make it to the Greek parade today.  It looks rather grey out, but at least it will be cool for all the people marching in the parade.  My favorite are all the children dressed up in traditional Greek costume.  Too cute!  You can see my photos from last year here.

What’s the Greek parade for, you ask?  To celebrate Greek Independence Day, of course!  March 25 is Greek Independence Day.  Here’s a little history in case you’re new to my blog and missed it last year:

Greece was a strong empire, impacting language and culture around the world for much of ancient history.  Even after Greece fell to Roman rule, Greek thought and influence remained strong.  However, in 1453 the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Empire.

On March 25, 1821, Metropolitan Germanos of Patras raised a revolutionary flag under a tree outside of Agia Lavra, a monastery in the Peloponnese.  This wasn’t the first clash between the Greeks and the Ottoman Empire in those 400 years.  The Turks had burned monastery, which was built in AD 961, to the ground in 1585.  The Greeks rebuilt it in 1600 but then the Ottoman Empire armies of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt destroyed the church in 1715.  The Greeks rebuilt it again, and in 1821 Germanos gave an oath to the Greek fighters and raised the flag.  Pasha’s army destroyed Agia Lavra again in 1826.

The War for Independence lasted nine years.  Finally, on 1829, a small part of Greece was liberated.  Slowly, other parts of Greece were liberated.  On July 21, 1832, the Treaty of Constantinople, which put the Greek borders in writing, was signed, and on August 30, 1832, it was ratified.  Still, it wasn’t until after World War II that other Greek lands were returned to Greece.

You can read my full article on Agia Lavra, the church where the revolution began, in my Church Hopping column on Burnside Writers Collective.

Victory Hellas!

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Happy 90th Birthday, Jack Kerouac

12 Mar

 

Today would’ve been Jack Kerouac’s ninetieth birthday.

On March 12, 1922, French-Canadian immigrants Gabrielle and Leo Kerouac had their third, and last, child.  He was born at home, on the second floor of the brown house sitting at 9 Lupine Road in Lowell, Massachusetts.   This was in the West Centralville neighborhood, affectionately called Little Canada, of Lowell.  They baptized the baby boy in the Catholic Church.  His baptism certificate reads: Jean Louis Kirouac.  Although that was the standard Quebec spelling of the surname, the family spelled the name Kerouac.  They would call him Ti Jean, meaning Little John.  In fact, he would publish his first book, The Town & the City as John Kerouac.

 

 

I visited Jack Kerouac’s birth home when I attended Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! last October.  Apart from the plaque on the front of the house, nothing sets it apart as a any sort of landmark.  Today a new family lives in Kerouac’s birth home.  When the bus dropped my tour group off, the people came outside and gawked at us pilgrims just as we gawked at their regular-looking house.  I love touring authors’ homes and wish Kerouac’s had been preserved for visitors, but it seems fitting that it wasn’t.  After all, the Kerouacs moved often, and the house at 9 Lupine Road is just one of many that Kerouac lived in in Lowell.  Although he lived much of his life with his mother, Kerouac spent much of his time on the road and crashing at friends’ pads.  “Home” for Kerouac didn’t seem to be a house.

 

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Post-Valentine’s Day Book Club: Sexy Travel, Wedding Magazines, and Mysterious Photographs

1 Mar

It was the day after Valentine’s Day.  The night before, the subway became a roving flower shop as roses crammed between eager bodies heading toward their better half.  By morning, last night’s couples sat side-by-side, staring blankly out the subway car windows.  The streets were a lot less crowded that evening.  No one was carrying flowers.  It was a good night to attend a book club.

A group of coworkers from the publishing house where I work—ranging from managing ed to design and children’s books—went to MediaBistro’s Book Club Party at Bar 13 on February 15.  You know, because we don’t get enough books at the office.

And what a reading it was!  Francis Tapon read a scandalous tale of his traveling days in The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us.  Susan Schneider then treated us to what it’s like to work as a writer for a wedding magazine when she read from her novel The Wedding Writer.  Hint: It’s glamour gone ruthless.  Kio Stark read from her debut novel Follow Me Down about a woman who finds a twenty-year-old envelope containing a photograph.

MediaBistro doled out free copies of the books, and the bar had a great two-for-one special on a wide variety of drinks.

What I really want to point out, though, is the authors’ websites.  Tapon, Schneider, and Stark each wrote very different books, and their websites reflect that.  Their websites are great examples of what an author website should look like—visually compelling, blurbs from media outlets that make you want to pick up the book, the option to buy the book, social media links, excerpts from the book, and a blog.  If you’re in the process of building your author platform, you may want to take a few cues from these authors.

PS: Here are the pics from MediaBistro’s Meet the Teachers Cocktail Party at Stone Creek in New York.

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Happy Tsiknopempti!

16 Feb

Happy Tsiknopempti!  You’ve heard of Fat Tuesday, the French holiday associated with Mardi Gras.  Well, today is Fat Thursday, ten days before the beginning of Great Lent.

Tsiknopempti means Barbecue Thursday, Charred Meat Thursday, or Burnt Thursday.  It’s the evening Greek Orthodox believers consume massive amounts of meat because they start fasting from meat even a week before Great Lent, the forty days leading up to Pascha (Easter), begins.

I’ve been fasting from meat for six years.  I guess that means BBQ tofu and grilled veggies for me.

It’s my sister’s favorite holiday.  She’s such a carnivore!  I’d never even heard of the holiday til my family moved to Greece.  Then my sister told me all about a day where the sweet smell of charred meat wafts through the dusty roads of ancient villages.

What’s your favorite food to barbecue?

Here are a few recipe ideas:::

Skewered Grilled Fruit with Minted Yogurt Honey Sauce

Grilled Fruit Skewers with Spicy Maple Cumin Glaze

Coffee-Rubbed Cheeseburgers with Texas Barbecue Sauce

Lamb Chops with Lemon

 

You might also like these articles:::

Hello, Carnival; Good-bye Meat

Tasty Tuesday: Dinner at Souvlaki GR

Clip: Paintings of the Crucifixion

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Profile of the Greek Cupid

14 Feb

 

Out of the opposites-attract romance of the goddess of love and the god of war sprang forth Eros.  It comes as no surprise that his genes of love and war make him the god of passion!

Early depictions of Eros show him as a stunningly handsome man, but today he’s portrayed as a winged boy.  He is the Greek Cupid.  He has a bow and arrows, which he seems to shoot at random.

Eros is so handsome that he must shield his beauty from his own wife.  Go Greece tells the story:

Problems ensue when Eros (called Cupid in this story) falls in love with Psyche. His radiance is such that for her own safety, he insists that she must never look upon his face, and he only visits her at night. At first, she’s cool with this, but her sisters and family insist that her husband must be a grotesque and dangerous monster. Finally, to shut them up, one night she lights a lamp and sees his glorious beauty, which doesn’t blast her but does make her tremble so hard she shakes the lamp. A few drops of hot oil dribble on her beloved, burning him, and he flies away from her in physical pain compounded by the pain of knowing she doubted him.

The doomed romance of Eros and Psyche reminds me in some ways of the Japanese legend of the Crane Wife, which inspired the eponymous heartbreaking song by the Decemberists.

Provincial wisdom often says love makes you blind.  Too often that rings true.  However, these stories speak toward another type of love that is beautiful and sacrificial, and that sometimes we need to have more trust and more faith in the person we love.

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Hearts in the Window

6 Feb

One year for Valentine’s Day when I was growing up, my mother taped red doily hearts to the bay windows of our kitchen.  It set my girlish heart aflutter.  There could be nothing more romantic than red doilies in the shape of hearts!

My mother always had a way of making the holidays special at our house.  She would be the first person to denounce Americana or anything too craftsy as hokey, and yet she had precious decorations that only came out for the various holidays.

Living in a tiny New York City walkup with limited storage space, I’ve had to relinquish more and more holiday decorations with each move I’ve made.  It just never seems to make sense to pack up little trinkets that at most only get a few weeks of display time.

My “practical” decision making doesn’t bode well for my whimsical side, though.  The holidays seem to come and go without much fanfare, and New Year’s bleeds into Valentine’s Day, both vanishing into forgotten dreams.  I get wrapped up in my writing, in attending readings and visiting museums, and of course in shopping, and I forget to pause and really celebrate life.  I’m forever thankful for small moments, but I think sometimes we need to actually celebrate—even if it’s as simple as Scotch-taping a few doilies to the window.

xoxo

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