This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Rochita Loenen-Ruiz discusses engagement and wedding feasts in the Ifugao province of the Philippines.
Engagement and Wedding feasts in Ifugao by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
In Ifugao, courtship begins with a show of informal interest between a man and a woman. If a man is interested in pursuing a formal relationship with the woman, his first step is to approach the elders of the woman’s family. Not just her parents but also her elders.
While there may be some unspoken agreement (as tends to be the case in this modern age) the woman’s family will still ask the woman for her reply to the man after the man has presented his case and asked for the permission to court her formally.
If the woman says “no” before the elders, this means the man has been turned down. If she says “yes” to the man’s declaration, then it means that they will have to arrange for a formal engagement ceremony. This ceremony is negotiated by the mediator and usually takes place some months after the woman has given her “yes” to the man’s declaration.
To the Ifugao, this formal courtship is the man’s statement of his seriousness and his intent to marry.
If the woman says yes then the following things take place:
1. The man has to bring a mediator who will speak on his behalf. In my brother’s case, we had a family friend who was a former Mumbaki (native priest). This man agreed to negotiate and act as go-between for elders of the woman’s clan and my brother.
2. The mediator is very important because it is he who negotiates the date for the engagement ceremony which must take place before the entire clan. This engagement ceremony is called the moma.
3. The mediator also negotiates the number of pigs the prospective groom must bring to the moma. In my brother’s case, he was asked to bring two pigs of a good size.
4. During the engagement ceremony itself, only the groom, the mediator and members of the woman’s clan are present. Sometimes a member of the groom’s family will be allowed to attend, but basically the ceremony is held for the woman’s clan.
These are symbolic elements used during the engagement ceremony:
Rice
Betelnut
Salt
Dried Meat
In some cases, the engagement ceremony is as far as it goes. Marriage is a very costly endeavour and unlike marriages in cities like Manila that are westernized, there is no such thing as rsvp when you get married in Ifugao.
In Ifugao, the wedding feast is a community endeavour with the entire community pitching in and everyone working together to prepare the food and to provide for the wedding feast.
Tradition dictates that marriage should take place a year after the engagement ceremony. Terms are set before the engagement. In the case of my youngest brother, his wife-to-be expressed her desire to continue on with her intention to obtain her degree in medicine. In this, her family as well as my brother agreed to support her.
Terms were also set with regards to what the family desires the man to provide for the marriage ceremony. The normal demand is for the groom to provide ten to twelve good-sized pigs for the wedding feast.
Some couples chose to elope or to get married in the Western way to evade the high costs. Some get married in the city as getting married in the mountains costs a lot. One of our friends who got married spent half a million pesos for her wedding. This included the cost of a wedding performed in the Christianized way as well as the cost of a marriage feast conducted in the Ifugao way.
There is a reason why ten to twelve pigs are asked for. A marriage is meant to be celebrated with the entire village and it is meant to symbolize a sharing of joy as well as a sharing of abundance. It is not simply an endeavour of the groom. The bride’s family and her community contribute towards the feast as well. Some will bring rice for the marriage feast, others will bring salt and herbs needed for cooking, and others will bring vegetables as well as other delicious treats.
During the wedding feast itself, there is no telling the exact number of guests who will come as the feast is open for guests who are considered family, friends, and members of community as well as the extended community.
Rochita was the first Filipina writer to be accepted into the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop. She attended the workshop in 2009 as the recipient of the Octavia Butler Scholarship. At present, Rochita resides in the Netherlands, but this could change in the future. Her short fiction has been published in The Philippines as well as outside of The Philippines. She has a livejournal at http://rcloenen-ruiz.livejournal.com
Showing posts with label insider. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insider. Show all posts
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Culture Share: USA (NY) - A Walk to the Subway in Brooklyn, NY, USA
This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Nicole Lisa discusses her home of Brooklyn, New York.
A Walk to the Subway in Brooklyn, NY, USA
by Nicole Lisa
The New York City of television and movies is cleaned up or dirtied down or filmed somewhere else entirely, and doesn't much look or feel like the city I know and live in. Walking to the subway—something I do almost every day—reminds me of all the things I love about living here.
Brooklyn, one of the boroughs of New York City, is known for its culturally diverse neighborhoods, like Chinatown in Sunset Park, or Italian Bensonhurst. But in some areas, diversity happens on a micro scale—by block, building or even inside each building.
Before I leave my apartment building, I say good bye to my husband in Spanish (actually “ciao,” borrowed from Italian by some South Americans), hear the video game sounds of Russian television programming at full blast and pass brass or plastic mezuzahs on doorframes (small rectangular cases with a Jewish prayer inside).
During the week, on my 15-minute walk to the subway I dodge groups of teenagers chattering loudly in English, get distracted by a mom urging her son to walk faster in Mexican Spanish (“Orále, hijo”) and glance at a group of men sitting on their heels against the stucco wall of a deli, speaking quietly in Tibetan.
On the weekend, on this same walk, when the sidewalks are full of women, I might be one of the few with her head not covered. Hasidic Jews, dressed in black with their elbows and knees covered by long sleeves and long skirts, cover their hair, either with perfectly styled wigs or snoods that gather their hair at the nape of their necks. They tow large families of kids identically clad in home-made clothes. South Asian women, some Muslim, some not, wear bright butterfly-colored salwar kameez (a tunic and loose trousers) that cover most everything, or saris, that may leave arms bare, but cover knees and chests. Their heads are draped casually with a dupatta (a long scarf), more carefully with a pinned hajib, or even more carefully with a black niqab (a head covering with a veil). Fewer children accompany them, maybe only one or two, dressed in a mix of Western and Asian clothing. On summer days, I often wonder what the women think of me, with my uncovered head and knees and tank top.
Off the main commercial street, the buildings change from small free-standing homes mixed with large brick apartment buildings to mansions built at the turn of the Nineteenth Century. They’re really in a motley of styles, from an English cottage covered in roses, to actual Victorian mansions with wide porches and colorful gingerbread moldings...
to a Swiss chalet–Japanese temple hybrid in green and orange.
Flocks of chickens strut in a few driveways and eye passersby suspiciously. Chickens are popular again in Brooklyn, and people raise them in their backyards or in community gardens. Twenty years ago, mostly recent immigrants, or transplants from rural areas, kept chickens. Now many people who’ve never seen a farm keep them (and bees, since the city just reversed the ordinance making beehives illegal).
In other parts of Brooklyn, the row houses seen on TV are the norm: two- or three-story buildings with facades of brown or white stone, connected all down the block by shared walls, with high stoops leading to the entrance on the parlor floor—the main living area of the house if it's a one-family, or one of several apartments if it’s been divided up. Nineteenth Century cast iron fences with pineapple or urn-like finials enclose the front yards and under-stairs entrances to the ground floors—nowadays the coveted garden apartment with access to the backyard. The iron has to be repainted every five years or so to prevent thick orange rust. And there are specialists who replace the stone facades if they’ve become too damaged by pollution or lack of upkeep.
On Sundays, there’s a greenmarket in front of the library on my way to the subway. Farmers from New York State and nearby New Jersey and Pennsylvania set up tents and sell their bread, dairy, produce, sometimes fish, beef or chicken, and local honey directly to customers. On a fall day, you’d see baguettes and pumpkin pies, pears and apples, winter squash, carrots and potatoes, fresh yogurt and milk (sometimes the illegal unpasteurized kind), and hot apple cider and cider doughnuts. The doughnuts come with or without granulated sugar sprinkled on top. Past the greenmarket is the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) pick-up spot. If you join a CSA, you buy a share, or subscription, of produce for the growing season, and each week you pick up a box of whatever the farmer is growing and lug it home on foot.
Finally, I reach the subway. The whole system is old, dug or raised, and cobbled together over more than 100 years and it looks it: metal wheels squeal against metal tracks, the I-beams are exposed and often unpainted, nascent stalactites and stalagmites grow where mineral-heavy water drips through ceilings and walls year after year, and the big brown rats are bold enough to scamper across the platform while you stand there late at night. It’s dirty in a way that surprises Americans from other parts of the country and visitors from all over the world, but it takes us where we need to go (mostly), and makes New York City unique in the US, a place where a car is a liability, not a necessity.
My stop is outside, looking more like a suburban train station than a tourist's idea of the New York City subway. Sub means below or under, and my stop is below street level in a cut out, but it’s not under anything. Once, we had an out-of-town visitor decide he was lost when he got there. He returned to our apartment rather than risk getting on a strange train going who knows where. To make it more confusing, New Yorkers use “subway” and “train” kind of interchangeably. Subway is the system, but train is what you get on. Which isn’t that much of a problem, but we don’t always distinguish in speech between the subway (a purely intra-city system) and the trains on one of the five rail systems that will take you out of the city.
The suburban train feel is accentuated by the station house. In Manhattan, many subway entrances are simply stairs descending to toll stiles. But many, especially in the other boroughs, have actual station houses. This one, built in 1907 for the street-level, then-privately owned Brighton line (named for the beach/neighborhood of the same name at the last stop) hangs suspended above the tracks.
The other subway option in the neighborhood is this one’s opposite in every way; it’s an elevated train that runs three stories above the street on a wooden platform that feels like it’s been there since the original station opened in 1919 (although I don’t know if that’s true) and yet feels temporary too. The whole structure sways when trains pull in or grind away, and the whole world moves—a mini, localized earthquake. If you look down on the tracks, you can see bits of street, vertiginously. And if you drop your cell phone, fuhgeddaboutit (forget about it), as we really do say in Brooklyn. Maybe just not as often as in the movies.
Nicole Lisa is a Brooklynite by adoption. She writes YA and fantasy and is currently struggling with how to conduct research for her work in progress. She loves to geek out on language discussions, eat and travel. She has lived in Mexico, Nicaragua and several different states in the US and speaks Spanish and first generation Spanglish at home with her Chilean-born husband. She can be found at her blog Reading, Writing and the ‘Rhythmatic of Life and on twitter.
A Walk to the Subway in Brooklyn, NY, USA
by Nicole Lisa
The New York City of television and movies is cleaned up or dirtied down or filmed somewhere else entirely, and doesn't much look or feel like the city I know and live in. Walking to the subway—something I do almost every day—reminds me of all the things I love about living here.
Brooklyn, one of the boroughs of New York City, is known for its culturally diverse neighborhoods, like Chinatown in Sunset Park, or Italian Bensonhurst. But in some areas, diversity happens on a micro scale—by block, building or even inside each building.
Before I leave my apartment building, I say good bye to my husband in Spanish (actually “ciao,” borrowed from Italian by some South Americans), hear the video game sounds of Russian television programming at full blast and pass brass or plastic mezuzahs on doorframes (small rectangular cases with a Jewish prayer inside).
During the week, on my 15-minute walk to the subway I dodge groups of teenagers chattering loudly in English, get distracted by a mom urging her son to walk faster in Mexican Spanish (“Orále, hijo”) and glance at a group of men sitting on their heels against the stucco wall of a deli, speaking quietly in Tibetan.
On the weekend, on this same walk, when the sidewalks are full of women, I might be one of the few with her head not covered. Hasidic Jews, dressed in black with their elbows and knees covered by long sleeves and long skirts, cover their hair, either with perfectly styled wigs or snoods that gather their hair at the nape of their necks. They tow large families of kids identically clad in home-made clothes. South Asian women, some Muslim, some not, wear bright butterfly-colored salwar kameez (a tunic and loose trousers) that cover most everything, or saris, that may leave arms bare, but cover knees and chests. Their heads are draped casually with a dupatta (a long scarf), more carefully with a pinned hajib, or even more carefully with a black niqab (a head covering with a veil). Fewer children accompany them, maybe only one or two, dressed in a mix of Western and Asian clothing. On summer days, I often wonder what the women think of me, with my uncovered head and knees and tank top.
Off the main commercial street, the buildings change from small free-standing homes mixed with large brick apartment buildings to mansions built at the turn of the Nineteenth Century. They’re really in a motley of styles, from an English cottage covered in roses, to actual Victorian mansions with wide porches and colorful gingerbread moldings...
to a Swiss chalet–Japanese temple hybrid in green and orange.
Flocks of chickens strut in a few driveways and eye passersby suspiciously. Chickens are popular again in Brooklyn, and people raise them in their backyards or in community gardens. Twenty years ago, mostly recent immigrants, or transplants from rural areas, kept chickens. Now many people who’ve never seen a farm keep them (and bees, since the city just reversed the ordinance making beehives illegal).
In other parts of Brooklyn, the row houses seen on TV are the norm: two- or three-story buildings with facades of brown or white stone, connected all down the block by shared walls, with high stoops leading to the entrance on the parlor floor—the main living area of the house if it's a one-family, or one of several apartments if it’s been divided up. Nineteenth Century cast iron fences with pineapple or urn-like finials enclose the front yards and under-stairs entrances to the ground floors—nowadays the coveted garden apartment with access to the backyard. The iron has to be repainted every five years or so to prevent thick orange rust. And there are specialists who replace the stone facades if they’ve become too damaged by pollution or lack of upkeep.
On Sundays, there’s a greenmarket in front of the library on my way to the subway. Farmers from New York State and nearby New Jersey and Pennsylvania set up tents and sell their bread, dairy, produce, sometimes fish, beef or chicken, and local honey directly to customers. On a fall day, you’d see baguettes and pumpkin pies, pears and apples, winter squash, carrots and potatoes, fresh yogurt and milk (sometimes the illegal unpasteurized kind), and hot apple cider and cider doughnuts. The doughnuts come with or without granulated sugar sprinkled on top. Past the greenmarket is the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) pick-up spot. If you join a CSA, you buy a share, or subscription, of produce for the growing season, and each week you pick up a box of whatever the farmer is growing and lug it home on foot.
Finally, I reach the subway. The whole system is old, dug or raised, and cobbled together over more than 100 years and it looks it: metal wheels squeal against metal tracks, the I-beams are exposed and often unpainted, nascent stalactites and stalagmites grow where mineral-heavy water drips through ceilings and walls year after year, and the big brown rats are bold enough to scamper across the platform while you stand there late at night. It’s dirty in a way that surprises Americans from other parts of the country and visitors from all over the world, but it takes us where we need to go (mostly), and makes New York City unique in the US, a place where a car is a liability, not a necessity.
My stop is outside, looking more like a suburban train station than a tourist's idea of the New York City subway. Sub means below or under, and my stop is below street level in a cut out, but it’s not under anything. Once, we had an out-of-town visitor decide he was lost when he got there. He returned to our apartment rather than risk getting on a strange train going who knows where. To make it more confusing, New Yorkers use “subway” and “train” kind of interchangeably. Subway is the system, but train is what you get on. Which isn’t that much of a problem, but we don’t always distinguish in speech between the subway (a purely intra-city system) and the trains on one of the five rail systems that will take you out of the city.
The suburban train feel is accentuated by the station house. In Manhattan, many subway entrances are simply stairs descending to toll stiles. But many, especially in the other boroughs, have actual station houses. This one, built in 1907 for the street-level, then-privately owned Brighton line (named for the beach/neighborhood of the same name at the last stop) hangs suspended above the tracks.
The other subway option in the neighborhood is this one’s opposite in every way; it’s an elevated train that runs three stories above the street on a wooden platform that feels like it’s been there since the original station opened in 1919 (although I don’t know if that’s true) and yet feels temporary too. The whole structure sways when trains pull in or grind away, and the whole world moves—a mini, localized earthquake. If you look down on the tracks, you can see bits of street, vertiginously. And if you drop your cell phone, fuhgeddaboutit (forget about it), as we really do say in Brooklyn. Maybe just not as often as in the movies.
Nicole Lisa is a Brooklynite by adoption. She writes YA and fantasy and is currently struggling with how to conduct research for her work in progress. She loves to geek out on language discussions, eat and travel. She has lived in Mexico, Nicaragua and several different states in the US and speaks Spanish and first generation Spanglish at home with her Chilean-born husband. She can be found at her blog Reading, Writing and the ‘Rhythmatic of Life and on twitter.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Culture Share: England - The Routemaster
This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: London Monsters discusses "The Routemaster," also known as the London double-decker bus.
The trusted red Routemaster with its rounded corners and open rear platform was for many city dwellers their preferred way of getting around London. As a youngster, I could travel from Leafy Barnes to Liverpool St Station for 60p and would spend an hour or so people watching as the streets passed by. Every inch of the ‘red elephant’ was carefully hand crafted with purpose, from the solid oak upper floor to the yellow bell cord summoning the driver your intention that you were about to vacate the bus at the next stop. The chord was truly democratic device, leaving passengers a way of communicating to the unseen driver in the cab at the front. The windows had chromed knobs that rotated and wound down the window slots for added ventilation, unlike the sealed Metro monsters of today.
Designed by Londoners for Londoners who travelled by bus, its oncoming growl summoned millions from their newspapers and novels as it approached. The wide front grinning grill and the bulky engine purring like a cat as people hopped on and off. Passengers were so close together that they were obliged to talk as though they were friends, usually about shared experience on topics that they shared: the state of the roads, the traffic and that ever-popular British subject, The Great British Weather.
The conductor, usually a cheerful Jamaican, would whistle a tune as we creaked and bounced our way along London’s famous landmarks: ‘Olympia, ‘Barkers’, ‘The Albert’, ‘Knighty Barracks’, ‘The Ritz’ and the ‘Dilly’, all names that rolled off the lips of the cheerful conductor as he rolled out tickets on the steel roller ticket dispenser, strapped around his hips and shoulders like one of those modern baby carriers.
The Routemaster was a really intimate space bringing people closer together than would be allowed today. The favoured seats were upstairs at the front, giving panoramic views of London’s streets as it weaved through traffic in a pre bus-lane era. Many boys (and a few girls) played ‘Bus Driver’ games on early trips around town. Other favourite spots were the back seat above the curved stairs at the rear, just the right size for an intimate couple with wandering hands and a taste for a hint of privacy. The rear window provided surreal framed images of legs and arms passing diagonally as passengers squeezed past each other in the confined intimacy of the rear steps.
Passengers were squeezed together on tartan benches who swayed in unison as the bus turned this way and that, stitching together the villages of London from Archway to Peckham Rye. Some of the Routemaster bus routes weaved their way right across the capital and took several hours. It was, for some cross-London travellers, a home from home.
This piece appeared in London Monsters (copyright 2011) and appears thanks to Simon Rogers, who lives in London. Any comments good or bad are welcome at: London.monsters@gmail.com
The trusted red Routemaster with its rounded corners and open rear platform was for many city dwellers their preferred way of getting around London. As a youngster, I could travel from Leafy Barnes to Liverpool St Station for 60p and would spend an hour or so people watching as the streets passed by. Every inch of the ‘red elephant’ was carefully hand crafted with purpose, from the solid oak upper floor to the yellow bell cord summoning the driver your intention that you were about to vacate the bus at the next stop. The chord was truly democratic device, leaving passengers a way of communicating to the unseen driver in the cab at the front. The windows had chromed knobs that rotated and wound down the window slots for added ventilation, unlike the sealed Metro monsters of today.
Designed by Londoners for Londoners who travelled by bus, its oncoming growl summoned millions from their newspapers and novels as it approached. The wide front grinning grill and the bulky engine purring like a cat as people hopped on and off. Passengers were so close together that they were obliged to talk as though they were friends, usually about shared experience on topics that they shared: the state of the roads, the traffic and that ever-popular British subject, The Great British Weather.
The conductor, usually a cheerful Jamaican, would whistle a tune as we creaked and bounced our way along London’s famous landmarks: ‘Olympia, ‘Barkers’, ‘The Albert’, ‘Knighty Barracks’, ‘The Ritz’ and the ‘Dilly’, all names that rolled off the lips of the cheerful conductor as he rolled out tickets on the steel roller ticket dispenser, strapped around his hips and shoulders like one of those modern baby carriers.
The Routemaster was a really intimate space bringing people closer together than would be allowed today. The favoured seats were upstairs at the front, giving panoramic views of London’s streets as it weaved through traffic in a pre bus-lane era. Many boys (and a few girls) played ‘Bus Driver’ games on early trips around town. Other favourite spots were the back seat above the curved stairs at the rear, just the right size for an intimate couple with wandering hands and a taste for a hint of privacy. The rear window provided surreal framed images of legs and arms passing diagonally as passengers squeezed past each other in the confined intimacy of the rear steps.
Passengers were squeezed together on tartan benches who swayed in unison as the bus turned this way and that, stitching together the villages of London from Archway to Peckham Rye. Some of the Routemaster bus routes weaved their way right across the capital and took several hours. It was, for some cross-London travellers, a home from home.
This piece appeared in London Monsters (copyright 2011) and appears thanks to Simon Rogers, who lives in London. Any comments good or bad are welcome at: London.monsters@gmail.com
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Culture Share: Serbia - Slava, the Celebration of the Family Saint
This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Alma Alexander discusses Slava, the celebration of the family saint.
Where I come from, under the wing of the Orthodox Christian church, birthdays (the actual date of one’s birth) have long been secondary in importance to one’s so-called “Imendan”, name-day, which is celebrated on the day that belongs to the saint after whom one is named – it is in some ways akin to the naming rules of some religious more Western countries where it’s the Catholic faith that holds sway and whatever the actual name given to a baby might be there has to be an honest-to-goodness saint’s name embedded in there somewhere. (That’s why so many Irish girls are Mary Something, and so many French babies struggle with unwieldy middle names.) In Serbia, where I was born, the “Imendan” was the important personal celebration – but more than that, there is another custom which hinges on a saint’s identity and which is I believe unique to the Serbian Orthodox faith. This is something that we know as “Slava”.
The word literally means “Celebration” – or maybe “Thanksgiving”. It is not an individual but rather a family celebration, and it is kept on the feast day of the patron saint of the entire family. The identity of this saint depends on the day on which the family celebrating the Slava first became Christians. If you consider the idea of this more closely you will realize that the Slava of a family is something that unites the entire family under the banner of this commemoration of their first acceptance of their faith, and the same saint has been celebrated by individual families for centuries, for generations. Even during the most suppressive of the Communist years, when the church was not popular and the people were hardly church-going on a regular basis, the Slava was kept – because in a lot of ways it is embedded in a secular as well as a religious bedrock. A Slava day defines you, as a Serb, in much the same way that keeping Seder would identify you as a Jew. There are celebrations and traditions which are passed down from generation to generation together with the icon of the family saint which is a treasured heirloom from the old to the young over the passage of decades and centuries.
In the traditional religious sense, on the day of the family Slava the family home is literally considered consecrated, if just for the day – it becomes a church, and the family within its congregation. It is a day for the family to gather from near and far, traditionally at the home of the oldest living member of the family – the holder of the family icon – and the gathered people, from great-grandparents to babes in arms, gather together to celebrate the existence of that family, to pray for the shining futures of the young ones, and to remember the ones who have passed from the family circle. This is perhaps one of the most poignant and moving aspects of this tradition – the dead, the beloved ancestors, are not forgotten. The Slava has been called a “spiritual family reunion” by some, and while some may recoil from that I think it is beautiful – in this church, in this culture, death has no dominion, and the grave does not sunder loved ones. Those of us who have gone ahead are as present at these family celebrations as the noisiest of toddlers being kept a solicitous eye on by young parents. We are all one, we are family, we exist in a timeless place where there is always a memory. My own grandparents, two decades and more dead now, are as present to me on Slava days as if they were still sitting across the table from me at the family feast. I have loved them; they loved me; they live within me, always, under the blessing of the Slava.
The religious aspects of the celebration are – perhaps inevitably, given the identity of the celebrants – wrapped up and embedded in that feast. The family gathering generally culminates in a shared smorgasbord which the women of the family labour for days to produce – but there are two things on the menu that have deep religious and spiritual significance. One of them is the so-called “Slavski Kolac” (it’s pronounced “slavsky kolach”, and literally means Slava cake) which is a sort of bread baked specially for the occasion. It bears on its crust the sign of the cross. But before you even get to the table you are greeted with a bowl of a special dish known as “Koljivo” (pronounced “kolyivo”) which is a dish made from wheat, nuts, sugar, and cloves. It is offered to visitors at the door in a bowl, and a spoonful is taken almost as a ritual greeting with “Sretna Slava!” (Happy Slava!) offered in return. The wheat has deep ecclesiastical meanings of its own – symbolizing such things as the Resurrection of Christ – but this is… a remembrance dish, made and offered and consumed in remembrance of all those who are only here with the family in spirit. Every morsel of koljivo I take on November 11, my own Slava day, serves to take my mind back to those vanished and beloved grandparents whom I carry in my heart.
Another of the Slava traditions is the candle – one that is supposed to have been purchased at the Church, or at least blessed by a priest, and which, once lit, is not permitted to be snuffed out. It must be allowed to burn down naturally until it gutters out of its own accord. To do otherwise invites death into the family. (In practice, this has often meant that somebody has to sit up with the candle until the wee small hours, until the moment it dies – leaving unattended open flames in a household, particularly one with (for instance) pets, is not a good idea and it needs to be supervised; I have resorted, on occasion, to having the guttering candle tucked away in a metal foil nest in the bathtub in a bathroom firmly closed to unauthorized entry, if it persisted in still burning at two or three in the morning – but nothing on earth would induce me to be practical and just snuff it out and go to bed. It must be allowed to burn down in God’s time, not my own.
Slava is passed on through the generations – but it gets complicated by intermarriage and the lineages of the families which celebrate different saints. It is usually the husband’s patron saint that the family takes on when a newly-wed couple choose their Slava – but the family icon is kept and treasured by the eldest member of the family and that only gets passed down to the next heir after he inherits the mantle of Eldest. In my own family it was an interesting wrinkle that my grandmother and grandfather proved to have the same Slava day. This is very unusual, especially if the saint is a relatively minor one, and in this case the saint in question was St Avram, or Avramije – which translates into Abraham in the more westernized versions – and when I was younger I was extremely puzzled for a long time as to what the Jewish biblical patriarch Abraham had done to deserve being turned into a Christian saint. But this was a different Avram, whose feast day fell on November 11, and my grandparents both held allegiance to him as their families’ patron saint –and thus he became ours. This particular family, mine, has almost disintegrated in some respects – my grandparents had no sons, only two daughters, and each daughter produced a daughter in her turn, and one of those (my cousin) married a Jewish man, and so out of faith, and has only daughters herself in any event and the other (myself) married a relatively atheist American and has no children at all. The two cousins, myself and my aunt’s daughter, both still keep Slava anyway, and our husbands have been trained to accept this and even to partake in it, being “adopted” into the family and the faith. But after us, the branch grinds into dust because there is no son to inherit, no more generations to carry it further.
This “adoption” is partly possible because of the dual religious/secular nature of the celebration – because a big part of the family Slava is, well, family. And food. Traditionally anyone who calls at the door wishing the family a happy Slava must be fed; the women make appetisers and entrees, roast beasts of every stripe, and soups, and salads, and sweets of every description from tea cookies to rich cakes, and it’s all brought out and set out around the icon of the family saint, for the nourishment of the living and the souls of the dead. There is so much light, and love, and laughter, and remembrance. It is truly a celebration, a celebration of life and of living, and it is a protection and a shelter against the onslaught of a world that does not care. FAMILY cares, and you will always have family – and the family will always have their Slava.
I will be celebrating once again, with the koljivo and the candle and the icon, come November 11. In honor of that St Avram on whose feast day, once, a long time ago, the distant ancestors whose blood now flows in my veins laid down their pagan beliefs and embraced Christianity. In memory of their blood and their bones, and the laughter and the loving arms of the grandparents who once loved me.
Happy Slava.
Alma Alexander is a writer of both YA and not-so-YA literature, published in 14 languages worldwide. Born in a country which no longer exists, she's made a career of living all over the world - and currently resides in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two cats.
Where I come from, under the wing of the Orthodox Christian church, birthdays (the actual date of one’s birth) have long been secondary in importance to one’s so-called “Imendan”, name-day, which is celebrated on the day that belongs to the saint after whom one is named – it is in some ways akin to the naming rules of some religious more Western countries where it’s the Catholic faith that holds sway and whatever the actual name given to a baby might be there has to be an honest-to-goodness saint’s name embedded in there somewhere. (That’s why so many Irish girls are Mary Something, and so many French babies struggle with unwieldy middle names.) In Serbia, where I was born, the “Imendan” was the important personal celebration – but more than that, there is another custom which hinges on a saint’s identity and which is I believe unique to the Serbian Orthodox faith. This is something that we know as “Slava”.
The word literally means “Celebration” – or maybe “Thanksgiving”. It is not an individual but rather a family celebration, and it is kept on the feast day of the patron saint of the entire family. The identity of this saint depends on the day on which the family celebrating the Slava first became Christians. If you consider the idea of this more closely you will realize that the Slava of a family is something that unites the entire family under the banner of this commemoration of their first acceptance of their faith, and the same saint has been celebrated by individual families for centuries, for generations. Even during the most suppressive of the Communist years, when the church was not popular and the people were hardly church-going on a regular basis, the Slava was kept – because in a lot of ways it is embedded in a secular as well as a religious bedrock. A Slava day defines you, as a Serb, in much the same way that keeping Seder would identify you as a Jew. There are celebrations and traditions which are passed down from generation to generation together with the icon of the family saint which is a treasured heirloom from the old to the young over the passage of decades and centuries.
In the traditional religious sense, on the day of the family Slava the family home is literally considered consecrated, if just for the day – it becomes a church, and the family within its congregation. It is a day for the family to gather from near and far, traditionally at the home of the oldest living member of the family – the holder of the family icon – and the gathered people, from great-grandparents to babes in arms, gather together to celebrate the existence of that family, to pray for the shining futures of the young ones, and to remember the ones who have passed from the family circle. This is perhaps one of the most poignant and moving aspects of this tradition – the dead, the beloved ancestors, are not forgotten. The Slava has been called a “spiritual family reunion” by some, and while some may recoil from that I think it is beautiful – in this church, in this culture, death has no dominion, and the grave does not sunder loved ones. Those of us who have gone ahead are as present at these family celebrations as the noisiest of toddlers being kept a solicitous eye on by young parents. We are all one, we are family, we exist in a timeless place where there is always a memory. My own grandparents, two decades and more dead now, are as present to me on Slava days as if they were still sitting across the table from me at the family feast. I have loved them; they loved me; they live within me, always, under the blessing of the Slava.
The religious aspects of the celebration are – perhaps inevitably, given the identity of the celebrants – wrapped up and embedded in that feast. The family gathering generally culminates in a shared smorgasbord which the women of the family labour for days to produce – but there are two things on the menu that have deep religious and spiritual significance. One of them is the so-called “Slavski Kolac” (it’s pronounced “slavsky kolach”, and literally means Slava cake) which is a sort of bread baked specially for the occasion. It bears on its crust the sign of the cross. But before you even get to the table you are greeted with a bowl of a special dish known as “Koljivo” (pronounced “kolyivo”) which is a dish made from wheat, nuts, sugar, and cloves. It is offered to visitors at the door in a bowl, and a spoonful is taken almost as a ritual greeting with “Sretna Slava!” (Happy Slava!) offered in return. The wheat has deep ecclesiastical meanings of its own – symbolizing such things as the Resurrection of Christ – but this is… a remembrance dish, made and offered and consumed in remembrance of all those who are only here with the family in spirit. Every morsel of koljivo I take on November 11, my own Slava day, serves to take my mind back to those vanished and beloved grandparents whom I carry in my heart.
Another of the Slava traditions is the candle – one that is supposed to have been purchased at the Church, or at least blessed by a priest, and which, once lit, is not permitted to be snuffed out. It must be allowed to burn down naturally until it gutters out of its own accord. To do otherwise invites death into the family. (In practice, this has often meant that somebody has to sit up with the candle until the wee small hours, until the moment it dies – leaving unattended open flames in a household, particularly one with (for instance) pets, is not a good idea and it needs to be supervised; I have resorted, on occasion, to having the guttering candle tucked away in a metal foil nest in the bathtub in a bathroom firmly closed to unauthorized entry, if it persisted in still burning at two or three in the morning – but nothing on earth would induce me to be practical and just snuff it out and go to bed. It must be allowed to burn down in God’s time, not my own.
Slava is passed on through the generations – but it gets complicated by intermarriage and the lineages of the families which celebrate different saints. It is usually the husband’s patron saint that the family takes on when a newly-wed couple choose their Slava – but the family icon is kept and treasured by the eldest member of the family and that only gets passed down to the next heir after he inherits the mantle of Eldest. In my own family it was an interesting wrinkle that my grandmother and grandfather proved to have the same Slava day. This is very unusual, especially if the saint is a relatively minor one, and in this case the saint in question was St Avram, or Avramije – which translates into Abraham in the more westernized versions – and when I was younger I was extremely puzzled for a long time as to what the Jewish biblical patriarch Abraham had done to deserve being turned into a Christian saint. But this was a different Avram, whose feast day fell on November 11, and my grandparents both held allegiance to him as their families’ patron saint –and thus he became ours. This particular family, mine, has almost disintegrated in some respects – my grandparents had no sons, only two daughters, and each daughter produced a daughter in her turn, and one of those (my cousin) married a Jewish man, and so out of faith, and has only daughters herself in any event and the other (myself) married a relatively atheist American and has no children at all. The two cousins, myself and my aunt’s daughter, both still keep Slava anyway, and our husbands have been trained to accept this and even to partake in it, being “adopted” into the family and the faith. But after us, the branch grinds into dust because there is no son to inherit, no more generations to carry it further.
This “adoption” is partly possible because of the dual religious/secular nature of the celebration – because a big part of the family Slava is, well, family. And food. Traditionally anyone who calls at the door wishing the family a happy Slava must be fed; the women make appetisers and entrees, roast beasts of every stripe, and soups, and salads, and sweets of every description from tea cookies to rich cakes, and it’s all brought out and set out around the icon of the family saint, for the nourishment of the living and the souls of the dead. There is so much light, and love, and laughter, and remembrance. It is truly a celebration, a celebration of life and of living, and it is a protection and a shelter against the onslaught of a world that does not care. FAMILY cares, and you will always have family – and the family will always have their Slava.
I will be celebrating once again, with the koljivo and the candle and the icon, come November 11. In honor of that St Avram on whose feast day, once, a long time ago, the distant ancestors whose blood now flows in my veins laid down their pagan beliefs and embraced Christianity. In memory of their blood and their bones, and the laughter and the loving arms of the grandparents who once loved me.
Happy Slava.
Alma Alexander is a writer of both YA and not-so-YA literature, published in 14 languages worldwide. Born in a country which no longer exists, she's made a career of living all over the world - and currently resides in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two cats.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Culture Share: Latvia - Living at the Crossroads
This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Jelena M. discusses the mixed peoples of Riga, Latvia.
LIVING AT THE CROSSROADS by Jelena M.
I was born in Riga, Latvia in a Russian-speaking family; however we are of a mixed European origin. This made me something of a cultural chimera. I’ve been introduced to several traditions, yet I do not hold any religious beliefs nor fully belong with any particular cultural tradition of my blood relatives (or anything else, in fact). Sometimes this makes me an outcast - I live in constant conflict with my “inner cultural self”, who is “blank” and the “outside world”, trying to force things I cannot relate to on me.
Nevertheless, I hold a professional interest in cultures. I’m a writer and (hopefully) have the ability to dissect and process them in order to make my own for the sake of world building. I might say I’m like the ruins of long time past, which have seen many peoples and epochs. And when all is long gone, they are the only witnesses remained, standing in silence, observing.
I wonder if it is a coincidence that I’m living here. Geographically this small piece of land had been a crossroads for a very long time going as far as prior to the recorded history.
Looking at the concrete block apartment houses in my neighborhood it is hard to imagine this place that was still covered with ice some fifteen to ten thousand years ago, with a Post-Glacial period only starting roughly around 6800 BC. That’s why the land in the whole country is relatively flat, with some hills and sandstone cliffs.
#1 Zvartes rock, the view from the Witches’ rock
Since the very end of the late Paleolithic many different peoples walked this territory until the proto-Balts settled here around 2000 BC. It is possible that the three groups - proto-Scandinavians, proto-Balts and Finno-Ugric tribes had contact with one another. And probably since the Stone Age the route which involved the Dnieper and the Daugava played an important role in establishing a communications network between East and West through the Baltic. Unfortunately it is hard to say how these tribes lived, whom they traded with and whom they warred with. There is little info about the customs and cultures of the area prior to the end of the Viking age. Perhaps the best sources of knowledge, besides the archaeological finds and a few historical records done by other nations, are the languages and geographical names. They can tell stories spanning back several hundreds, if not thousands of years.
#2 Turaida (“Thor’s garden” in Livonian language) in the Gauja National Park
Of course, Vikings were also interested in controlling the river mouths and usable ports, but local tribes made life difficult for them and conquests were not easy or sustained. They did however leave their influence which is very much part of today’s Latvian culture, as Viking presence in the region forced change and sometimes unification of tribes.
Now, the Vikings journeyed around the world mostly as their geography allowed them. Sweden was the primary source of the Viking activity from present day St. Petersburg to the Arab world and Byzantium (present day Istanbul). And again, this was done by the extensive river systems of the Baltic region and Russia, so the Swedish Vikings would travel back and forth.
The local tribes of Latvians, Lithuanians, Livonians and Estonians managed to maintain their independence until the eventual conquest by the German Teutonic Knights, the continuous Swedish presence and Christianization in the 13th century. The Livonian Confederation soon emerged, creating more distinct boundaries and cultural divisions.
Several diverse tribes of people lived in this region. The Estonians were in the north, and in the middle and southern sections were the Livs, Lettgallians, Selonians, Semigallians and the Couronians. These tribes existed as separate entities and all lacked a real hierarchical structure, which made them more susceptible to conquest. Of these peoples, the Estonians and the Livs spoke Finno-Ugric languages while the tribes in the south spoke Indo-European languages. The diversity of language increased the difficulty for these peoples to form alliances. These southern languages would combine over the centuries (with the exception of Livonian) to make up what is now the Latvian language.
The Livonian Confederation was a loosely organized alliance between the Roman Catholic Church, crusading German knights, German merchants, vassals, cities and existing indigenous peoples in this area. The strategic location of the Baltic region has made it a prime target for other nations’ expansionist ambitions. With shores on the Baltic sea and important rivers such as the Daugava in Latvia, commerce was one of the prime attributes this region had to offer.
#3 Koknese castle (Kokenhuzen), ca. 1209
The Hanseatic League (Hansa), formed around the middle of the 12th century by German and Scandinavian seafaring merchants, followed the Livonian conquest into the eastern Baltic. For this reason, the first and most important of the eastern Baltic trading cities, Riga, was established in 1201 at the mouth of the Daugava.
The territories that comprised the Livonian Confederation had always held an attraction to foreign powers. The sea ports and the commerce they brought, and the stable agrarian economy with a strong work force were factors that appealed to Livonia’s neighbors. By the sixteenth century the surrounding countries were solidifying their power structure and looking for ways to expand their territories. And since instabilities weakened the Confederation from within, it became a prime target. And after the collapse of the Livonian Confederation the region was divided up among the neighbors.
Latvia is fairly small and throughout the centuries has been repeatedly attacked and invaded by many nations: Swedes, Danes, Lithuanians, Poles, Germans and Russians. Throughout all the centuries, however, no such thing as a Latvian state existed so the borders and definitions of who exactly fell within that group are largely subjective. The state borders as they are now formed only in the beginning of the 20th century. Yet more wars devastated the land and its people.
But people who live at the crossroads don’t assimilate into cultures; they incorporate cultures layer by layer. This is very well seen in the Latvian mythology and folklore. The top has some Christian influences; the core is that of a very ancient pagan descent. For example, the public holiday Jāņi. The Roman Catholic Church celebrates 24th of July as the birthday of St. John the Baptist. But there is little to no connection between Jāņi and this Christian figure. Jāņi is an ancient festival originally celebrated in honour a Latvian pagan deity Jānis, referred to as a "Son of God" in some ancient Latvian folksongs. It is held in the night from 23 June to 24 June to celebrate the summer solstice and takes its roots in the ancient earth fertility cult, the sun cult and the phallic cult.
This layering also creates tension. In the modern society it is showing itself through the struggles of ethnic majority and minorities. Cultures do not clash as openly as in some other cases (e.g. like during the crusades), yet where they live, people start to long for cultural uniformity in one form or another. Some ethnic Latvians openly dislike Russians; some ethnic Russians openly dislike Latvians; both were born here, in Latvia; both are citizens of this country (we also have non-citizens, the so called “aliens”: they were born here and lived all their lives, yet no compromise has been found). Some people don't understand one simple thing -- we are not like the previous generation, and the generations before that -- we don't belong where they belonged. And we are not responsible for the historical events that happened before we were born; we are something new. The product of this country.
Another thing that's happening here, kids use 'foreign' cursing or junk words without understanding what they truly mean. It is funny and sad at the same time to witness how languages deform. And that is what the Latvians were so afraid of. The language will change. The culture will change. Again.
However, it has been said by many, including historians and cultural anthropologists, that by observing the past, we can ‘find’ ourselves in the present; and therefore foretell the future. By this process we hope to learn from mistakes and lead richer lives.
People usually ask me why I’m not living some place else, some place where my ancestors were. I think the answer is pretty obvious.
Jelena M. lives in Riga, Latvia.
LIVING AT THE CROSSROADS by Jelena M.
I was born in Riga, Latvia in a Russian-speaking family; however we are of a mixed European origin. This made me something of a cultural chimera. I’ve been introduced to several traditions, yet I do not hold any religious beliefs nor fully belong with any particular cultural tradition of my blood relatives (or anything else, in fact). Sometimes this makes me an outcast - I live in constant conflict with my “inner cultural self”, who is “blank” and the “outside world”, trying to force things I cannot relate to on me.
Nevertheless, I hold a professional interest in cultures. I’m a writer and (hopefully) have the ability to dissect and process them in order to make my own for the sake of world building. I might say I’m like the ruins of long time past, which have seen many peoples and epochs. And when all is long gone, they are the only witnesses remained, standing in silence, observing.
I wonder if it is a coincidence that I’m living here. Geographically this small piece of land had been a crossroads for a very long time going as far as prior to the recorded history.
Looking at the concrete block apartment houses in my neighborhood it is hard to imagine this place that was still covered with ice some fifteen to ten thousand years ago, with a Post-Glacial period only starting roughly around 6800 BC. That’s why the land in the whole country is relatively flat, with some hills and sandstone cliffs.
#1 Zvartes rock, the view from the Witches’ rockSince the very end of the late Paleolithic many different peoples walked this territory until the proto-Balts settled here around 2000 BC. It is possible that the three groups - proto-Scandinavians, proto-Balts and Finno-Ugric tribes had contact with one another. And probably since the Stone Age the route which involved the Dnieper and the Daugava played an important role in establishing a communications network between East and West through the Baltic. Unfortunately it is hard to say how these tribes lived, whom they traded with and whom they warred with. There is little info about the customs and cultures of the area prior to the end of the Viking age. Perhaps the best sources of knowledge, besides the archaeological finds and a few historical records done by other nations, are the languages and geographical names. They can tell stories spanning back several hundreds, if not thousands of years.
#2 Turaida (“Thor’s garden” in Livonian language) in the Gauja National ParkOf course, Vikings were also interested in controlling the river mouths and usable ports, but local tribes made life difficult for them and conquests were not easy or sustained. They did however leave their influence which is very much part of today’s Latvian culture, as Viking presence in the region forced change and sometimes unification of tribes.
Now, the Vikings journeyed around the world mostly as their geography allowed them. Sweden was the primary source of the Viking activity from present day St. Petersburg to the Arab world and Byzantium (present day Istanbul). And again, this was done by the extensive river systems of the Baltic region and Russia, so the Swedish Vikings would travel back and forth.
The local tribes of Latvians, Lithuanians, Livonians and Estonians managed to maintain their independence until the eventual conquest by the German Teutonic Knights, the continuous Swedish presence and Christianization in the 13th century. The Livonian Confederation soon emerged, creating more distinct boundaries and cultural divisions.
Several diverse tribes of people lived in this region. The Estonians were in the north, and in the middle and southern sections were the Livs, Lettgallians, Selonians, Semigallians and the Couronians. These tribes existed as separate entities and all lacked a real hierarchical structure, which made them more susceptible to conquest. Of these peoples, the Estonians and the Livs spoke Finno-Ugric languages while the tribes in the south spoke Indo-European languages. The diversity of language increased the difficulty for these peoples to form alliances. These southern languages would combine over the centuries (with the exception of Livonian) to make up what is now the Latvian language.
The Livonian Confederation was a loosely organized alliance between the Roman Catholic Church, crusading German knights, German merchants, vassals, cities and existing indigenous peoples in this area. The strategic location of the Baltic region has made it a prime target for other nations’ expansionist ambitions. With shores on the Baltic sea and important rivers such as the Daugava in Latvia, commerce was one of the prime attributes this region had to offer.
#3 Koknese castle (Kokenhuzen), ca. 1209The Hanseatic League (Hansa), formed around the middle of the 12th century by German and Scandinavian seafaring merchants, followed the Livonian conquest into the eastern Baltic. For this reason, the first and most important of the eastern Baltic trading cities, Riga, was established in 1201 at the mouth of the Daugava.
The territories that comprised the Livonian Confederation had always held an attraction to foreign powers. The sea ports and the commerce they brought, and the stable agrarian economy with a strong work force were factors that appealed to Livonia’s neighbors. By the sixteenth century the surrounding countries were solidifying their power structure and looking for ways to expand their territories. And since instabilities weakened the Confederation from within, it became a prime target. And after the collapse of the Livonian Confederation the region was divided up among the neighbors.
Latvia is fairly small and throughout the centuries has been repeatedly attacked and invaded by many nations: Swedes, Danes, Lithuanians, Poles, Germans and Russians. Throughout all the centuries, however, no such thing as a Latvian state existed so the borders and definitions of who exactly fell within that group are largely subjective. The state borders as they are now formed only in the beginning of the 20th century. Yet more wars devastated the land and its people.
But people who live at the crossroads don’t assimilate into cultures; they incorporate cultures layer by layer. This is very well seen in the Latvian mythology and folklore. The top has some Christian influences; the core is that of a very ancient pagan descent. For example, the public holiday Jāņi. The Roman Catholic Church celebrates 24th of July as the birthday of St. John the Baptist. But there is little to no connection between Jāņi and this Christian figure. Jāņi is an ancient festival originally celebrated in honour a Latvian pagan deity Jānis, referred to as a "Son of God" in some ancient Latvian folksongs. It is held in the night from 23 June to 24 June to celebrate the summer solstice and takes its roots in the ancient earth fertility cult, the sun cult and the phallic cult.
This layering also creates tension. In the modern society it is showing itself through the struggles of ethnic majority and minorities. Cultures do not clash as openly as in some other cases (e.g. like during the crusades), yet where they live, people start to long for cultural uniformity in one form or another. Some ethnic Latvians openly dislike Russians; some ethnic Russians openly dislike Latvians; both were born here, in Latvia; both are citizens of this country (we also have non-citizens, the so called “aliens”: they were born here and lived all their lives, yet no compromise has been found). Some people don't understand one simple thing -- we are not like the previous generation, and the generations before that -- we don't belong where they belonged. And we are not responsible for the historical events that happened before we were born; we are something new. The product of this country.
Another thing that's happening here, kids use 'foreign' cursing or junk words without understanding what they truly mean. It is funny and sad at the same time to witness how languages deform. And that is what the Latvians were so afraid of. The language will change. The culture will change. Again.
However, it has been said by many, including historians and cultural anthropologists, that by observing the past, we can ‘find’ ourselves in the present; and therefore foretell the future. By this process we hope to learn from mistakes and lead richer lives.
People usually ask me why I’m not living some place else, some place where my ancestors were. I think the answer is pretty obvious.
Jelena M. lives in Riga, Latvia.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Culture Share: USA (California) - Eastern Friends on Western Shores
This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Lillian Csernica discusses discovering international friendships in Santa Cruz, California.
Eastern Friends on Western Shores
by Lillian Csernica
I live in the Santa Cruz mountains. There are times, especially in summer, when it feels like the whole world comes to Santa Cruz. Perhaps it does. Out on the wharf I've heard Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, and even Turkish. I have a particular interest in the cultures of Asia, which has led me to make some wonderful friends right in my own area. Out of respect for their privacy, I won't be referring to them by name.
The Lady from Bangkok
A new Thai restaurant just opened up in my area. I think Coconut Milk Noodle Soup is absolutely divine, so I couldn't wait to indulge my passion for lemongrass and galangal root. The lady who waited on me was very kind, explaining the words on the menu I couldn't figure out and making recommendations about which dishes went well together. I ordered Angel Wings as an appetizer and the duck curry with white rice. As I so often do, I got into conversation with the lady and asked her what part of Thailand she was from. She said Bangkok, as if that was the most obvious answer in the world. I happen to know the name the Thai themselves use for Bangkok, but when I tried to say “Krung Thep,” the lady laughed good-naturedly and pronounced it properly for me. When I mentioned I had friends who'd lived in Chiang Mai, that seemed to prove my credentials as more than a tourist. The lady and I chatted about the various wonderful sights I hope to see if I'm ever fortunate enough to get to Thailand.
Now thanks to the excellent novels of John Burdett (Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo, and the rest of the series), I have learned a lot about Thai culture, most specifically the art of the wai. A wai is performed with the hands together palm to palm and held in front of the face while bowing. Exactly how high or low you hold your hands in this position reflects both your social status and the status of the person you're addressing. In this aspect it's much like bowing in Japanese. You really need to know the fine nuances of who's who to get it just right. Even so, I was so grateful for the Thai lady's conversation that I made her a very respectful wai. Up until then she had what might be called her “business face” on, the cheerful way a waitress speaks to a customer. When she saw me wai, her eyes opened wide, her jaw dropped, and her face generally lit up. “How do you know to do that?” she asked in a breathless tone. I explained that I read a lot about Thailand. Well, from that moment on it was clear she considered me just too cool. She returned the wai and said something in Thai that I'm afraid I didn't understand, and didn't grab the opportunity to have her translate for me. That's all right. There will be another time when I enjoy the excellent Thai food there and the company of that very nice Thai lady.
The Korean Couple
In the same shopping center as my favorite Chinese restaurant, there is a florist shop called the Flower Outlet that's run by a very nice Korean couple. In addition to the usual cut flowers, they have a marvelous variety of orchids and those impressive bamboo plants that have been braided into lovely shapes. It's amazing how wide a variety of flower-related merchandise they can fit into their relatively small shop. Those fountains with the little water wheels or the bamboo dippers that fill up then spill, a selection of lavender-related products including sachets stuffed with fresh lavender, and of course all kinds of vases and pots for displaying flowers and plants. The closer you look, the more details you see. The vases have a distinctly Asian flavor. The pots often have frogs or pandas as a motif. I really enjoy going into the Flower Outlet because even though it's rather crowded in there, I get a sense of peace and order. I'm sure this has a lot to do with the Korean lady in charge of the shop who always has a friendly smile and helpful suggestions. When I had to choose an arrangement for the funeral of a close friend, the Korean lady was very kind in showing me all the options in the ordering catalog and helping me get a sense for what my departed friend would have really enjoyed.
I don't see the gentleman in charge quite as often, but he's every bit as kind as his wife. One day I went into the shop looking for some bamboo rods I planned to use in making a birthday gift for a Chinese friend of mine. I mentioned that purpose and explained my plans to make a scroll using the bamboo rods on each end. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the shop that fit my design ideas. As I was getting into my car out in the parking lot, the Korean gentleman came hurrying after me. Somewhere in the back of the shop he'd found two lengths of bamboo that were a bit thinner than what I had in mind, but their color was perfect. When I pulled out my wallet, he waved that away. I was a good customer, and he was happy to help. I was really touched by that kindness, that extra effort. The scroll came out very well and my Chinese friend was happy, so I owe the Korean gentleman another round of thanks.
In a curious coincidence, the only Korean phrase I know relates directly to the Flower Outlet. In Korea, there are some men who are very attentive to their appearance, getting manicures and facials and generally making the most of their often quite handsome features. Another Korean lady I know explained this phenomenon to me. Such men are referred to by a particular term which I will render phonetically as “koht mee nahm..” It translates as “flower men.” The nearest equivalent I could find in English would be “metrosexual.” The term “flower men” does not reflect on the sexual orientation of the Korean men to whom it's applied. In the same way an artful florist knows how to show off flowers to their best advantage, these “flower men” make the most of their own beauty.
The Japanese Lady
Everywhere you look up here in my little corner of the world you find people with unsuspected talents. This proved true the day I had lunch at the new sushi place in town. I am a staunch Japanophile, so I was looking forward to the opportunity to exercise my limited Japanese. Our waitress was a tall, gracious lady. As I salted the conversation with the occasional Japanese phrase, she asked if I'd ever been to Japan. When I told her I'd once spent a week in Yokohama, she was delighted. Yokohama is her home town. While I ate my delicious lunch and she kept up with her other customers, we kept up our hit-and-run conversation about my interest in Japan. I mentioned my latest novel which is set in Satsuma during the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate. A samurai and an English woman meet under dire circumstances which lead to them falling in love. The Japanese lady liked the sound of that. Now that she knew I work with English for a living, we talked about trading language help. She'd help me expand my Japanese and I could help her with her English pronunciation. This sounded like a great idea to me. Then came the really delightful discovery. When the Japanese lady was still in Yokohama, she worked as a jazz singer! Clubs, weddings, social events, they were all excellent venues for her lovely soprano voice. She'd already had some engagements in Santa Cruz. We exchanged e-mail information, and I promptly went to her web site so I could order her CD. I can't wait for her next performance so I can go and hear her sing live.
The Gentleman From Hong Kong
My favorite Chinese restaurant happens to feature cuisine that combines the flavors of both Hong Kong Chinese and Vietnamese cooking. My favorite waiter there is a tall slender gentleman with jet black hair and a rather stern look that in the presence of children will give way to a shy, sweet smile. Out of respect for his privacy I will not mention his name, but I will say that he and I have been friends for almost ten years now. He has taught me a great deal about feng shui. He's been to my house a few times, and while he's there he'll look the place over and make one or two comments about what I might do with mirrors or plants or perhaps a small water fountain. Keeps the chi moving and that makes the luck flow through the house! In my office I keep the gifts that he has given me over the years. They include a pair of lavender money frogs, a fine dragon lantern like the kind that's carried in Chinese New Year parades, and a Lion Dog made of fine ceramic, one of the best examples of this particular creature I've ever seen. When my friend gave it to me, he made me promise to take good care of it for him. I've kept that promise. The Lion Dog sits on a square of silk on the top of a bookshelf that faces my office door. Why does it occupy that precise location? Anyone who walks into my office will be line of sight to the Lion Dog, who traditionally devours wicked people.
What do I do in return for all this generosity in both information and material objects? Of course I stop in at the restaurant often and bring my friends and family with me. What's more, I remember his birthday every year. I bring him something special at Chinese New Year. I also mend his bracelets. We share a fondness for semiprecious stones. My friend likes to wear bracelets of stone beads which are rather large in diameter (in millimeters). The beads are strung on elastic, which in time can become frayed. Once my friend learned I make jewelry for a hobby, he asked me if I could mend the bracelet he wore at that time. I did so, using a new type of elastic he hadn't seen. Now he trusts me to make all his repairs. Just recently I was doing some mending for him and he showed his thanks by taking off the bracelet he was wearing at that time and giving it to me. He assured me it will bring me luck. This bracelet is made of hawk's-eye, a special variation of tiger's-eye. It was my friend's favorite bracelet. I was so touched I couldn't speak. He has since had another bracelet made to match it, so now we share not just our love of this particular stone but the stone itself. I treasure the bracelet so much I wear it all the time.
Wherever we go in the world, people are people. What really builds bridges is having some idea about what's important to those other people from those other parts of the world. It can be as much as having been in the same city, such as my time in Yokohama, or as little as the simple gesture of respect embodied in the wai. When we take an active interest in what's really important to the everyday people of other cultures, that's when we find the common ground in which we can plant the seeds of lasting friendship.
Lillian Csernica lives in Santa Cruz, CA.
Eastern Friends on Western Shores
by Lillian Csernica
I live in the Santa Cruz mountains. There are times, especially in summer, when it feels like the whole world comes to Santa Cruz. Perhaps it does. Out on the wharf I've heard Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, and even Turkish. I have a particular interest in the cultures of Asia, which has led me to make some wonderful friends right in my own area. Out of respect for their privacy, I won't be referring to them by name.
The Lady from Bangkok
A new Thai restaurant just opened up in my area. I think Coconut Milk Noodle Soup is absolutely divine, so I couldn't wait to indulge my passion for lemongrass and galangal root. The lady who waited on me was very kind, explaining the words on the menu I couldn't figure out and making recommendations about which dishes went well together. I ordered Angel Wings as an appetizer and the duck curry with white rice. As I so often do, I got into conversation with the lady and asked her what part of Thailand she was from. She said Bangkok, as if that was the most obvious answer in the world. I happen to know the name the Thai themselves use for Bangkok, but when I tried to say “Krung Thep,” the lady laughed good-naturedly and pronounced it properly for me. When I mentioned I had friends who'd lived in Chiang Mai, that seemed to prove my credentials as more than a tourist. The lady and I chatted about the various wonderful sights I hope to see if I'm ever fortunate enough to get to Thailand.
Now thanks to the excellent novels of John Burdett (Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo, and the rest of the series), I have learned a lot about Thai culture, most specifically the art of the wai. A wai is performed with the hands together palm to palm and held in front of the face while bowing. Exactly how high or low you hold your hands in this position reflects both your social status and the status of the person you're addressing. In this aspect it's much like bowing in Japanese. You really need to know the fine nuances of who's who to get it just right. Even so, I was so grateful for the Thai lady's conversation that I made her a very respectful wai. Up until then she had what might be called her “business face” on, the cheerful way a waitress speaks to a customer. When she saw me wai, her eyes opened wide, her jaw dropped, and her face generally lit up. “How do you know to do that?” she asked in a breathless tone. I explained that I read a lot about Thailand. Well, from that moment on it was clear she considered me just too cool. She returned the wai and said something in Thai that I'm afraid I didn't understand, and didn't grab the opportunity to have her translate for me. That's all right. There will be another time when I enjoy the excellent Thai food there and the company of that very nice Thai lady.
The Korean Couple
In the same shopping center as my favorite Chinese restaurant, there is a florist shop called the Flower Outlet that's run by a very nice Korean couple. In addition to the usual cut flowers, they have a marvelous variety of orchids and those impressive bamboo plants that have been braided into lovely shapes. It's amazing how wide a variety of flower-related merchandise they can fit into their relatively small shop. Those fountains with the little water wheels or the bamboo dippers that fill up then spill, a selection of lavender-related products including sachets stuffed with fresh lavender, and of course all kinds of vases and pots for displaying flowers and plants. The closer you look, the more details you see. The vases have a distinctly Asian flavor. The pots often have frogs or pandas as a motif. I really enjoy going into the Flower Outlet because even though it's rather crowded in there, I get a sense of peace and order. I'm sure this has a lot to do with the Korean lady in charge of the shop who always has a friendly smile and helpful suggestions. When I had to choose an arrangement for the funeral of a close friend, the Korean lady was very kind in showing me all the options in the ordering catalog and helping me get a sense for what my departed friend would have really enjoyed.
I don't see the gentleman in charge quite as often, but he's every bit as kind as his wife. One day I went into the shop looking for some bamboo rods I planned to use in making a birthday gift for a Chinese friend of mine. I mentioned that purpose and explained my plans to make a scroll using the bamboo rods on each end. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the shop that fit my design ideas. As I was getting into my car out in the parking lot, the Korean gentleman came hurrying after me. Somewhere in the back of the shop he'd found two lengths of bamboo that were a bit thinner than what I had in mind, but their color was perfect. When I pulled out my wallet, he waved that away. I was a good customer, and he was happy to help. I was really touched by that kindness, that extra effort. The scroll came out very well and my Chinese friend was happy, so I owe the Korean gentleman another round of thanks.
In a curious coincidence, the only Korean phrase I know relates directly to the Flower Outlet. In Korea, there are some men who are very attentive to their appearance, getting manicures and facials and generally making the most of their often quite handsome features. Another Korean lady I know explained this phenomenon to me. Such men are referred to by a particular term which I will render phonetically as “koht mee nahm..” It translates as “flower men.” The nearest equivalent I could find in English would be “metrosexual.” The term “flower men” does not reflect on the sexual orientation of the Korean men to whom it's applied. In the same way an artful florist knows how to show off flowers to their best advantage, these “flower men” make the most of their own beauty.
The Japanese Lady
Everywhere you look up here in my little corner of the world you find people with unsuspected talents. This proved true the day I had lunch at the new sushi place in town. I am a staunch Japanophile, so I was looking forward to the opportunity to exercise my limited Japanese. Our waitress was a tall, gracious lady. As I salted the conversation with the occasional Japanese phrase, she asked if I'd ever been to Japan. When I told her I'd once spent a week in Yokohama, she was delighted. Yokohama is her home town. While I ate my delicious lunch and she kept up with her other customers, we kept up our hit-and-run conversation about my interest in Japan. I mentioned my latest novel which is set in Satsuma during the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate. A samurai and an English woman meet under dire circumstances which lead to them falling in love. The Japanese lady liked the sound of that. Now that she knew I work with English for a living, we talked about trading language help. She'd help me expand my Japanese and I could help her with her English pronunciation. This sounded like a great idea to me. Then came the really delightful discovery. When the Japanese lady was still in Yokohama, she worked as a jazz singer! Clubs, weddings, social events, they were all excellent venues for her lovely soprano voice. She'd already had some engagements in Santa Cruz. We exchanged e-mail information, and I promptly went to her web site so I could order her CD. I can't wait for her next performance so I can go and hear her sing live.
The Gentleman From Hong Kong
My favorite Chinese restaurant happens to feature cuisine that combines the flavors of both Hong Kong Chinese and Vietnamese cooking. My favorite waiter there is a tall slender gentleman with jet black hair and a rather stern look that in the presence of children will give way to a shy, sweet smile. Out of respect for his privacy I will not mention his name, but I will say that he and I have been friends for almost ten years now. He has taught me a great deal about feng shui. He's been to my house a few times, and while he's there he'll look the place over and make one or two comments about what I might do with mirrors or plants or perhaps a small water fountain. Keeps the chi moving and that makes the luck flow through the house! In my office I keep the gifts that he has given me over the years. They include a pair of lavender money frogs, a fine dragon lantern like the kind that's carried in Chinese New Year parades, and a Lion Dog made of fine ceramic, one of the best examples of this particular creature I've ever seen. When my friend gave it to me, he made me promise to take good care of it for him. I've kept that promise. The Lion Dog sits on a square of silk on the top of a bookshelf that faces my office door. Why does it occupy that precise location? Anyone who walks into my office will be line of sight to the Lion Dog, who traditionally devours wicked people.
What do I do in return for all this generosity in both information and material objects? Of course I stop in at the restaurant often and bring my friends and family with me. What's more, I remember his birthday every year. I bring him something special at Chinese New Year. I also mend his bracelets. We share a fondness for semiprecious stones. My friend likes to wear bracelets of stone beads which are rather large in diameter (in millimeters). The beads are strung on elastic, which in time can become frayed. Once my friend learned I make jewelry for a hobby, he asked me if I could mend the bracelet he wore at that time. I did so, using a new type of elastic he hadn't seen. Now he trusts me to make all his repairs. Just recently I was doing some mending for him and he showed his thanks by taking off the bracelet he was wearing at that time and giving it to me. He assured me it will bring me luck. This bracelet is made of hawk's-eye, a special variation of tiger's-eye. It was my friend's favorite bracelet. I was so touched I couldn't speak. He has since had another bracelet made to match it, so now we share not just our love of this particular stone but the stone itself. I treasure the bracelet so much I wear it all the time.
Wherever we go in the world, people are people. What really builds bridges is having some idea about what's important to those other people from those other parts of the world. It can be as much as having been in the same city, such as my time in Yokohama, or as little as the simple gesture of respect embodied in the wai. When we take an active interest in what's really important to the everyday people of other cultures, that's when we find the common ground in which we can plant the seeds of lasting friendship.
Lillian Csernica lives in Santa Cruz, CA.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Culture Share: USA - Growing Up Baha'i in the American Midwest
This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Jaleh Dragich discusses growing up Baha'i in the American Midwest.
Growing Up Baha'i in the American Midwest
by Jaleh Dragich
It’s hard to think of my religion as a cultural identity. Baha’is come from various cultures all over the world. However, because of growing up as a Baha’i, I have been exposed to these cultures more than I would have otherwise. The parts of Indiana and Ohio where we’ve lived and up in Michigan where our extended family live have been almost uniformly Caucasian. Our family is much the same in heritage: English, Manx, Welsh, Irish, German, and from one grandfather: Polish and Lithuanian. We blend right in.
You’d expect that with that background, I’d have a name reflecting it, a typical sort of name that wouldn’t stand out any more than our appearance. But then I’ve never been typical. My parents met another Baha’i who knew a Persian Baha’i in El Salvador named Jaleh, which means “dewdrop.” They loved the name, so when I was born, I got it. However, it often confuses people, and most Americans can’t say it correctly on the first try. (Žâle)
I’ve heard nearly every variation, some funnier than others. (I rather liked Jolly; there’s something cheerful about it. *wink*) Occasionally they’ll say it correctly before I pronounce it for them, but that’s been rare. And if they see my name before meeting me in person, they are often surprised to see my fair skin, especially if they actually know the name. I had one visitor to the park I worked at last summer do a double-take when she read my name-badge. Being Persian herself, she recognized the name and was surprised that a non-Persian would have it. As it turned out, she was also a Baha’i, something that would never have come up without my name to trigger the conversation.
Since my parents had been told it means “dewdrop,” my mom used to tell me when I was little that I should “glisten in the dawn of a new day.” This is a particularly apt metaphor considering that Baha’is believe that Baha’u’llah’s coming was a new day for mankind. I think this is one reason I’ve taken a shine, if you’ll pardon the pun, to my name despite the difficulties it’s posed. It’s a meaning worth striving for. Be radiantly beautiful and reflect the light to others. I’m frequently not as brilliant as I’d like to be, but I try.
My family was nearly always the only Baha’i family in town. We had to hold our own devotionals and celebrations. Since the Baha’i Faith has no clergy, this is perfectly acceptable, but sometimes it can be lonely. In an effort to create a community, each time we moved to a new town because of my dad’s job, we looked around and connected with other Baha’is for joint gatherings. That generally meant driving about an hour or more for Feast each month. Though refreshments are often included, Feast isn’t focused on the food, but rather on devotions, community discussions, and socializing. Feast is supposed to be held on the first day of the Baha’i month (19 months of 19 days, the leftover days being Ayyam’i-Ha), but in our case, because of school and the drive, we held it on the closest Friday or Saturday evening.
Beginning from an early age, my younger siblings and I learned key concepts of our Faith such as unity in diversity and the oneness of mankind. Since racial conflicts were a non-issue in our hometowns, I simply accepted it without question or much understanding. It was an abstract. But as we got older, our parents started taking us to Baha’i conventions, conferences, and camps where we actually saw people of different colors and cultures. That’s when understanding began. However, because the foundation was laid so early, it was perfectly natural for kids to play together with no concern over our outsides, only whether we had interests and hobbies in common. Some of my best friends growing up were darker skinned, and we didn’t care. I’m not sure I even thought that much about it when I was younger. Color was simply a way of describing what someone looked like, not who they were. We were more concerned with how annoying our siblings could be.
After we moved back to Athens, Ohio when I was 10, our parents reconnected with a Persian Baha’i family they’d known and discovered a few other isolated believers across Southeast Ohio and the near side of West Virginia. We met for Feast each month and to celebrate Holy Days and holidays together. I was introduced to Persian culture and foods such as saffron rice, tadig, and stuffed meatballs. (Mmm, tadig. Can’t make it, but I’ll take some when it’s offered.) For children’s and youth classes, we drove to Columbus to join the community there which included several other Persian Baha’i families. They loved it that I had a name from their culture. I loved hearing them say it.
In addition to those regular gatherings, we had the annual District Convention where everyone in the region got together for discussing issues and socializing with people from other communities. There were also gatherings specifically for Baha’i youth and junior youth. A couple in Cincinnati used to host weekend youth retreats in their home a few times a year where we’d study the Writings together and talk about how to incorporate them into our lives. We shared what issues mattered to us in particular and how we could deal with them to be good examples for others.
One year instead of the usual retreat, our youth group went down to Atlanta, Georgia for the Martin Luther King Jr celebration. One or two local families hosted us for the weekend. I’d never seen so many dark-skinned folks in one place before other than in pictures or movies. I was actually in the minority for a change. And I mean extreme minority. But despite the racial strife I’d heard was so common in the South, especially in the big cities, we never saw any of it. Every event we attended was filled with an atmosphere of welcome. I had a blast.
But the experience that still boggles my mind that I’d been fortunate enough to attend with my dad happened November 1992 during Thanksgiving week: The Second Baha’i World Congress. My mom couldn’t go because she was in the midst of college classes, and my brother and sister were too young. That left my dad and me. Though he could have gone alone considering the expense, my folks decided I should go, too. This was decided over a year ahead of time with the logistics needed to plan for so many people. Some 27,000 Baha’is from over 180 countries gathered in New York City for a week of fellowship to commemorate the centenary of Baha’u’llah’s death. For a small town girl who’d never been a city bigger than Chicago, NYC was impressive enough. But to see so many people come together in one place with such joy, despite color, nationality, language, or economic background, was mind-blowingly epic. No other experience has filled me with such awe of the power of what globally unified community could look like than that single glorious week. Everything was so vivid that the three days of school I was missing to be there seemed unreal.
All in all, if it wasn’t for my Faith, I would have seen very little diversity until college. I wouldn’t even have seen the tiny communities with a lingering Native American heritage within a half hour of us. For a service project, some Baha’is from Columbus joined us to till gardens one spring and got to know them well enough to be welcome at their community events despite our difference in economic status. We must have tilled gardens for about four years in a row before we had too few volunteers to keep it up.
In trying to write this, I keep remembering more experiences where my Faith has brought me closer to other cultures and ways of living. The books I devoured while growing up helped with part of my perspective, but the Baha’i Faith gave me a practical understanding of the value in welcoming diversity and equality for all. It’s a culture of acceptance. It’s given me a greater appreciation for myself and the people around me, no matter how different or similar we are.
Jaleh Dragich is an avid reader and aspiring author of fantasy and science fiction. She shares her passion for the subject on her blog, Ex Libris Draconis. Though she still considers herself an Ohioan, she currently resides in Western New York.
For those interested in learning about Baha'i, Jaleh has provided the following as a reliable link: http://www.bahai.org/faq/facts/bahai_faith
Growing Up Baha'i in the American Midwest
by Jaleh Dragich
It’s hard to think of my religion as a cultural identity. Baha’is come from various cultures all over the world. However, because of growing up as a Baha’i, I have been exposed to these cultures more than I would have otherwise. The parts of Indiana and Ohio where we’ve lived and up in Michigan where our extended family live have been almost uniformly Caucasian. Our family is much the same in heritage: English, Manx, Welsh, Irish, German, and from one grandfather: Polish and Lithuanian. We blend right in.
You’d expect that with that background, I’d have a name reflecting it, a typical sort of name that wouldn’t stand out any more than our appearance. But then I’ve never been typical. My parents met another Baha’i who knew a Persian Baha’i in El Salvador named Jaleh, which means “dewdrop.” They loved the name, so when I was born, I got it. However, it often confuses people, and most Americans can’t say it correctly on the first try. (Žâle)
I’ve heard nearly every variation, some funnier than others. (I rather liked Jolly; there’s something cheerful about it. *wink*) Occasionally they’ll say it correctly before I pronounce it for them, but that’s been rare. And if they see my name before meeting me in person, they are often surprised to see my fair skin, especially if they actually know the name. I had one visitor to the park I worked at last summer do a double-take when she read my name-badge. Being Persian herself, she recognized the name and was surprised that a non-Persian would have it. As it turned out, she was also a Baha’i, something that would never have come up without my name to trigger the conversation.
Since my parents had been told it means “dewdrop,” my mom used to tell me when I was little that I should “glisten in the dawn of a new day.” This is a particularly apt metaphor considering that Baha’is believe that Baha’u’llah’s coming was a new day for mankind. I think this is one reason I’ve taken a shine, if you’ll pardon the pun, to my name despite the difficulties it’s posed. It’s a meaning worth striving for. Be radiantly beautiful and reflect the light to others. I’m frequently not as brilliant as I’d like to be, but I try.
My family was nearly always the only Baha’i family in town. We had to hold our own devotionals and celebrations. Since the Baha’i Faith has no clergy, this is perfectly acceptable, but sometimes it can be lonely. In an effort to create a community, each time we moved to a new town because of my dad’s job, we looked around and connected with other Baha’is for joint gatherings. That generally meant driving about an hour or more for Feast each month. Though refreshments are often included, Feast isn’t focused on the food, but rather on devotions, community discussions, and socializing. Feast is supposed to be held on the first day of the Baha’i month (19 months of 19 days, the leftover days being Ayyam’i-Ha), but in our case, because of school and the drive, we held it on the closest Friday or Saturday evening.
Beginning from an early age, my younger siblings and I learned key concepts of our Faith such as unity in diversity and the oneness of mankind. Since racial conflicts were a non-issue in our hometowns, I simply accepted it without question or much understanding. It was an abstract. But as we got older, our parents started taking us to Baha’i conventions, conferences, and camps where we actually saw people of different colors and cultures. That’s when understanding began. However, because the foundation was laid so early, it was perfectly natural for kids to play together with no concern over our outsides, only whether we had interests and hobbies in common. Some of my best friends growing up were darker skinned, and we didn’t care. I’m not sure I even thought that much about it when I was younger. Color was simply a way of describing what someone looked like, not who they were. We were more concerned with how annoying our siblings could be.
After we moved back to Athens, Ohio when I was 10, our parents reconnected with a Persian Baha’i family they’d known and discovered a few other isolated believers across Southeast Ohio and the near side of West Virginia. We met for Feast each month and to celebrate Holy Days and holidays together. I was introduced to Persian culture and foods such as saffron rice, tadig, and stuffed meatballs. (Mmm, tadig. Can’t make it, but I’ll take some when it’s offered.) For children’s and youth classes, we drove to Columbus to join the community there which included several other Persian Baha’i families. They loved it that I had a name from their culture. I loved hearing them say it.
In addition to those regular gatherings, we had the annual District Convention where everyone in the region got together for discussing issues and socializing with people from other communities. There were also gatherings specifically for Baha’i youth and junior youth. A couple in Cincinnati used to host weekend youth retreats in their home a few times a year where we’d study the Writings together and talk about how to incorporate them into our lives. We shared what issues mattered to us in particular and how we could deal with them to be good examples for others.
One year instead of the usual retreat, our youth group went down to Atlanta, Georgia for the Martin Luther King Jr celebration. One or two local families hosted us for the weekend. I’d never seen so many dark-skinned folks in one place before other than in pictures or movies. I was actually in the minority for a change. And I mean extreme minority. But despite the racial strife I’d heard was so common in the South, especially in the big cities, we never saw any of it. Every event we attended was filled with an atmosphere of welcome. I had a blast.
But the experience that still boggles my mind that I’d been fortunate enough to attend with my dad happened November 1992 during Thanksgiving week: The Second Baha’i World Congress. My mom couldn’t go because she was in the midst of college classes, and my brother and sister were too young. That left my dad and me. Though he could have gone alone considering the expense, my folks decided I should go, too. This was decided over a year ahead of time with the logistics needed to plan for so many people. Some 27,000 Baha’is from over 180 countries gathered in New York City for a week of fellowship to commemorate the centenary of Baha’u’llah’s death. For a small town girl who’d never been a city bigger than Chicago, NYC was impressive enough. But to see so many people come together in one place with such joy, despite color, nationality, language, or economic background, was mind-blowingly epic. No other experience has filled me with such awe of the power of what globally unified community could look like than that single glorious week. Everything was so vivid that the three days of school I was missing to be there seemed unreal.
All in all, if it wasn’t for my Faith, I would have seen very little diversity until college. I wouldn’t even have seen the tiny communities with a lingering Native American heritage within a half hour of us. For a service project, some Baha’is from Columbus joined us to till gardens one spring and got to know them well enough to be welcome at their community events despite our difference in economic status. We must have tilled gardens for about four years in a row before we had too few volunteers to keep it up.
In trying to write this, I keep remembering more experiences where my Faith has brought me closer to other cultures and ways of living. The books I devoured while growing up helped with part of my perspective, but the Baha’i Faith gave me a practical understanding of the value in welcoming diversity and equality for all. It’s a culture of acceptance. It’s given me a greater appreciation for myself and the people around me, no matter how different or similar we are.
Jaleh Dragich is an avid reader and aspiring author of fantasy and science fiction. She shares her passion for the subject on her blog, Ex Libris Draconis. Though she still considers herself an Ohioan, she currently resides in Western New York.
For those interested in learning about Baha'i, Jaleh has provided the following as a reliable link: http://www.bahai.org/faq/facts/bahai_faith
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Culture Share: USA (Florida) - Orlando: What's it Like Living in a Mickey Mouse Town?
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This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Ann Meier discusses life in Orlando, Florida.
Orlando: What’s it Like Living in a Mickey Mouse Town?
by Ann Meier
Good question. Orlando is the City Beautiful and that’s not a bad slogan. Orlando’s clean, shiny and new, with lots of trees and lakes – read former sinkholes. Periodically, the Convention and Visitors Bureau gives us a new slogan. A recent one appealed to me – Orlando Makes Me Smile. I smiled every time I saw the banner hanging from the convention center. We also Believe in Magic, both the basketball team and the Magic Kingdom.
There are many misconceptions about Orlando that confuse international travelers. The Miami airport is not a hop, skip, or jump away. Orlando does not have a beach. The east coast beaches are 45-minutes away. And when we say west coast, we mean the Tampa area—not California. Those beaches are two hours from Orlando. And the town closest to Walt Disney World, Kissimmee, is not pronounced Kiss a me. It’s Kuh sim me. One misconception we told ourselves for years, was that we were too far inland to worry about hurricanes. Wrong. Charley, Frances, and Jeanne visited in 2004. Those were visitors we hope we don’t see again.
Most people who visit Orlando never come anywhere near Orlando. They fly into OIA and head directly by cab, rental car, or shuttle to the parks which are many congested miles southwest of town. A few may notice that the airport code is MCO and try to figure out the designation. It’s not some combination of Mickey and Orlando. The designation is for McCoy the name of the military airfield that was there before the airport.
We love our tourists, but driving amongst them is dicey. They are lost often. Think nothing of cutting across three lanes of hurtling traffic to make a last minute turn, and then there are the Brits. They fly in by the hundreds—bless their Virgin Atlantic hearts—to the second area airport called Orlando-Sanford International. This airport is not in Orlando. This airport is more than forty miles from the tourist attractions. This means the Brits rent cars. Some scary things happen as they get used to driving on our side of the road in traffic going 70 mph down the interstate.
Tourists complain about paying tolls twice on the section of the Beachline (SR 528) that only runs a few miles from the airport to Interstate 4. We locals hate the tolls also and no one really believes the Expressway Authority needs all that money. But rest assured, the tolls are not just bunched in the tourist corridor. Most of us have E-Passes to blast through all these toll plazas. Orlando is obstinate. The rest of the state uses Sun Pass. E-Pass automatically charges $40 dollars to our credit cards each time our account balance gets low. Around here that can be a couple times a month especially if we use the Greeneway around the eastern edge of town to avoid the congestion and tourists on Interstate 4.
Greeneway is not misspelled. Despite all the greenery it runs through, it was named for a person. There was a contest for naming the road. One suggestion was the fruit loop, but the road didn’t make a circle and the orange groves are pretty much gone. The development post-Disney and some hard freezes ruined them. Used to be, the fragrance of orange blossoms filled the warm spring air at night. Now, the smell from muck fires is more common. Swamps burn and often. Central Florida is sometimes referred to as the Lightning Capitol of the country (maybe the world). The weather people run a lightning counter with their updates. These numbers can be upward of 6,000 strikes in an hour. Hunker down is a common admonition on these broadcasts. Seasoned firefighters from other states are surprised that bright green foliage can burst into flames easily in a forest fire. Back to orange blossoms. There’s a major roadway called Orange Blossom Trail. It’s not lovely. Don’t be misled.
Getting around in Orlando is expensive and frustrating for locals and tourists. For starters, Interstate 4 is an east-west highway, but in Orlando it actually runs north-south. Asking directions can be tricky because a local may tell a visitor to go south on the interstate, but when the visitor gets to the interstate the signs say east or west. Everyone in Orlando drives—except recent arrivals from the islands (Puerto Rico and Haiti) and the aforementioned Brits. Unfortunately the busy streets are not safe for walkers. Taxis are concentrated at the airport and they ONLY want to take people to the parks or International Drive. They can be surly if you want to head into town since they’ll have a hard time finding a fare for a return trip. Locals probably have never hailed a cab. In town, there is a free bus called the Lymo that runs between parking garages and through the heart of the business district. Lynx is the name for the regular bus system. The buses are painted bright colors like neon pink, lime green, or electric blue.
People do not shop in town. They shop at the malls. The tourists love the outlet centers at the north end of International Drive and the large Florida Mall off the Beachline. There is nightlife in downtown Orlando with new restaurants and bars. Tourists are more likely to find night entertainment at Universal’s City Walk or Disney’s Pleasure Island. (By the way, the name comes from Pinocchio. Look it up.) At this point, there are no movie theaters downtown. The city streets are not on a grid pattern since there are lakes everywhere. Streets meander, change both directions and names frequently. It is a very confusing.
Houses are built from concrete block and mostly painted pastel shades. They sit on slabs. There are no basements and no coat closets. It is very common for bathrooms to have doors that lead directly outside to a patio area whether the house has a pool or not. Very few houses have hardwood floors. Carpet, ceramic tile, or laminates are the floor coverings of choice. A lot of houses do have fireplaces. Surprise. They might be filled with flowers or candles, but we do have them. And we love our paddle fans. No one lives in a house on a hill. Orlando is five feet above sea level and flat as Flat Stanley. To maintain a house and lawn, you need a good bug service. I personally have three. One for inside that comes every other month, one for the lawn that comes on the same schedule, and a termite service that comes quarterly to monitor for activity.
Running barefoot through the grass is a bad idea for a couple of reasons. First, St. Augustine grass is predominant in our lawns – up north, you’d call it crab grass and yank it out. It’s a wiry, hardy grass that grows on runners. There’s nothing soft about it. The other reason is fire ants. Those little guys sting like fury. It takes weeks for the welts to go away. And never, ever wade into any body of water. Even casual water hazards on the golf courses are home to gators. The most common trees are live oaks and they lose their leaves in the spring. They don’t go bare, it’s more a shedding process. They also fill the air with yellow pollen that coats everything. It makes my eyes water thinking about it.
Our theme parks employ more people than live in a good sized town. Many of Walt Disney World employees are unionized. In other words, Mickey Mouse is a Teamster. When Disney came to Florida they invited the unions in as a matter of course, used to the studio environment in California. Universal Studios bought into Florida as a right to work state and fought unionization of its workforce. All theme park employees work extremely hard. They work odd schedules. They socialize in after hours bars and restaurants. Most give discounts to hospitality workers. Because of the 24/7 nature of the business, it’s not uncommon for someone to host a holiday dinner that runs all day with people dropping in before or after their shifts. Our workforce is diverse. Language differences can create barriers. I once worked in a resort where conflicts were common. I recall a knife fight at what we called the housekeeping barn. Don’t ask. The knife fight was over a bible. It’s that kind of place.
Employees at Walt Disney World are called cast members and they wear costumes—not uniforms. The costumes that characters wear are hot. They make 20 minute appearances in the park and they always have handlers nearby. They never roam about unescorted When cast members are at their work location, they are on stage. One cool detail is the two-fingered point used to direct guests (not customers) Watch for it next time you visit.
Yes, There is a tunnel system running underneath the Magic Kingdom (none of the other parks). It contains break rooms, stock rooms, the employee cafeteria, wardrobe and cash control. No. Walt isn’t frozen and stashed in Cinderella’s Castle. There are offices in the second story of the shops that line Main Street. Cast members are trained to respond to each question from guests as if it is not the one trillionth time it’s been asked. The most frequent question is “Where are the bathrooms?” The most inane is “What time is the 3:00 o’clock parade?” The answer to the bathroom question is frequently accompanied by the two-fingered point. You can imagine on your own how cast members react to the parade question.
EPCOT stands for Experimental Prototypical City of Tomorrow, but cast members like to say it stands for Experimental Polyester Costume of Tomorrow. EPCOT is probably the favorite Disney park for locals without children. Its restaurants, major festivals, and entertainment are a huge draw. The six week Food and Wine Festival is in itself worth buying an annual pass for. Throw in the Flower Festival and the pass can pay for itself.
Many, many, many of us have worked in the parks at one time. You can spot us anywhere. We can’t pass a piece of trash and leave it unmolested. When you visit, please take small children by the hand, be sure to gather all your personal belongings, and watch your step. If you follow all these instructions, I’ll shoot you my best theme park smile. I’ve got a closet full of them.
Ann Meier lives in Orlando and is working on a comic mystery series with a theme park setting. She was a member of Universal Orlando Resort’s opening management team and a trainer at Walt Disney World.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Culture Share: Brazil - Write About Your City (A Challenge)
This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Fábio Fernandes discusses the city of São Paulo, Brazil
Write About Your City (A Challenge)
by
Fábio Fernandes
One of my most recent stories (still unpublished as I write this piece – June 3rd, 2011) is called The Remaker. It’s based on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote. Basically (easy, I won’t give any spoilers) it deals with a future writer who revels in rewriting works by famous authors of the past, and how this can be done (and why someone even would do this) in the mid-21st Century.
But, even though this is the major plot point in my story, it is by no means the most important thing of it - or, at least, it’s not that how I envisioned it to be. For this story takes place in São Paulo, Brazil.
Most of you who read these words have never been to São Paulo, or to any Brazilian city. I don’t know if you are aware of my country and how big it is, and of its diversity. To this day, I still find out people that sincerely believe all of us Brazilians live right in the middle of the jungle, and we are not familiar with electricity, for instance.
How, I thought when I was writing The Remaker, can I show people that São Paulo is a city almost as big as Tokyo and almost as full of cultural and ethnic diversity as New York City? Not an easy task without resorting to clichés. So I focused on the story. And so it resulted that the first version portrayed almost every scene happening in closed quarters: a university library, a mall, the apartment of the protagonist, a café in downtown, a quaint, old-fashioned printing press, a bookstore, and a few other places. Interesting markers, and, I thought then, good markers in that they would show the non-Brazilian audience that São Paulo is a city like any other civilized city in the Western world. Yay for us!
But I didn’t think it was enough. For, in doing so, how São Paulo would be any different from Now York, London, or Paris? (among other things, lots of cafés in those cities, if you ask me.)
Besides, São Paulo offers a particular challenge for the writer. If you already watched the beautiful animation RIO (if not, go see it, I strongly recommend it) , you will see the beaches, the Carnival, and the huge, beautiful statue of Christ the Redeemer. It is indeed a beautiful statue, and every time I go to Rio to visit my parents, I like to walk in the beach with my mom in the sunset to shoot the breeze, talk about family, personal projects, and life, drink coconut water and look at the statue from a distance – at night it is wonderfully illuminated. (You should visit it someday.)
But São Paulo is another thing entirely. It is a megalopolis, an industrial city. Not a tourist place – though it has some of the most interesting Modern Art museums of the Americas, as the MASP (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo), and its only visible monuments (aside from some very beautiful statues) are its huge buildings. The city is home to the main international event in Latin American athletics, the Saint Silvester Road Race, to the Brazilian Grand Prix of Formula 1, and several cultural events like the São Paulo International Film Festival (now in its 35th edition), the Virada Cultural (a once-a-year grand extravaganza featuring theater, classic and pop music, movies, book readings and signings – all for free during 24 hours straight), and the Gay Pride Parade, considered in 2006 the biggest pride parade of the world by the Guinness Book of World Records with an estimated 2.5 million participants. And did I mention that Brazil has the biggest Japanese community in the world outside Japan, most of which is based in São Paulo? And this is – really – just the tip of the iceberg.
The Remaker is in a slush pile of a magazine. I’m not sure if I managed to improve the perception of the foreign reader regarding the uniqueness of my adopted city. One thing is for sure: I still didn’t do everything I wanted to do with São Paulo. (Neither I was expecting to do it in one story.) But eventually I think I’ll be able to write a mosaic of stories in São Paulo, a set of near future stories where I can take the reader by the hand and show her the labyrinths of the largest city in the western and southern hemisphere, and the world's seventh largest city by population. It’s no small feat.
Fábio Fernandes is a writer living in São Paulo, Brazil. A university professor and translator, he is responsible for the Brazilian translations of several prominent SF novels including Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and A Clockwork Orange. His short stories have been published in Brazil, Portugal, Romania, England, and USA, and in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded. There's another story coming up in The Apex Book of World SF, Vol. II, ed. by Lavie Tidhar, later this year. He writes a column for SF Signal on e-books and e-readers.
Write About Your City (A Challenge)
by
Fábio Fernandes
One of my most recent stories (still unpublished as I write this piece – June 3rd, 2011) is called The Remaker. It’s based on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote. Basically (easy, I won’t give any spoilers) it deals with a future writer who revels in rewriting works by famous authors of the past, and how this can be done (and why someone even would do this) in the mid-21st Century.
But, even though this is the major plot point in my story, it is by no means the most important thing of it - or, at least, it’s not that how I envisioned it to be. For this story takes place in São Paulo, Brazil.
Most of you who read these words have never been to São Paulo, or to any Brazilian city. I don’t know if you are aware of my country and how big it is, and of its diversity. To this day, I still find out people that sincerely believe all of us Brazilians live right in the middle of the jungle, and we are not familiar with electricity, for instance.
How, I thought when I was writing The Remaker, can I show people that São Paulo is a city almost as big as Tokyo and almost as full of cultural and ethnic diversity as New York City? Not an easy task without resorting to clichés. So I focused on the story. And so it resulted that the first version portrayed almost every scene happening in closed quarters: a university library, a mall, the apartment of the protagonist, a café in downtown, a quaint, old-fashioned printing press, a bookstore, and a few other places. Interesting markers, and, I thought then, good markers in that they would show the non-Brazilian audience that São Paulo is a city like any other civilized city in the Western world. Yay for us!
But I didn’t think it was enough. For, in doing so, how São Paulo would be any different from Now York, London, or Paris? (among other things, lots of cafés in those cities, if you ask me.)
Besides, São Paulo offers a particular challenge for the writer. If you already watched the beautiful animation RIO (if not, go see it, I strongly recommend it) , you will see the beaches, the Carnival, and the huge, beautiful statue of Christ the Redeemer. It is indeed a beautiful statue, and every time I go to Rio to visit my parents, I like to walk in the beach with my mom in the sunset to shoot the breeze, talk about family, personal projects, and life, drink coconut water and look at the statue from a distance – at night it is wonderfully illuminated. (You should visit it someday.)
But São Paulo is another thing entirely. It is a megalopolis, an industrial city. Not a tourist place – though it has some of the most interesting Modern Art museums of the Americas, as the MASP (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo), and its only visible monuments (aside from some very beautiful statues) are its huge buildings. The city is home to the main international event in Latin American athletics, the Saint Silvester Road Race, to the Brazilian Grand Prix of Formula 1, and several cultural events like the São Paulo International Film Festival (now in its 35th edition), the Virada Cultural (a once-a-year grand extravaganza featuring theater, classic and pop music, movies, book readings and signings – all for free during 24 hours straight), and the Gay Pride Parade, considered in 2006 the biggest pride parade of the world by the Guinness Book of World Records with an estimated 2.5 million participants. And did I mention that Brazil has the biggest Japanese community in the world outside Japan, most of which is based in São Paulo? And this is – really – just the tip of the iceberg.
The Remaker is in a slush pile of a magazine. I’m not sure if I managed to improve the perception of the foreign reader regarding the uniqueness of my adopted city. One thing is for sure: I still didn’t do everything I wanted to do with São Paulo. (Neither I was expecting to do it in one story.) But eventually I think I’ll be able to write a mosaic of stories in São Paulo, a set of near future stories where I can take the reader by the hand and show her the labyrinths of the largest city in the western and southern hemisphere, and the world's seventh largest city by population. It’s no small feat.
Fábio Fernandes is a writer living in São Paulo, Brazil. A university professor and translator, he is responsible for the Brazilian translations of several prominent SF novels including Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and A Clockwork Orange. His short stories have been published in Brazil, Portugal, Romania, England, and USA, and in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded. There's another story coming up in The Apex Book of World SF, Vol. II, ed. by Lavie Tidhar, later this year. He writes a column for SF Signal on e-books and e-readers.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Culture Share: Bulgaria - May 6th Saint George, Martyr and Dragon Slayer
This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Harry Markov discusses Saint George's Day, May 6th, in Bulgaria.
May 6th is an important day for Bulgaria as we celebrate Saint George, who in Bulgaria is referred to as the Dragon Slayer or the Victorious (though literally from Bulgarian that one should be Victory Bringer). Saint George is the patron of farmers and shepherds. By default, all the people having names that remotely resemble George have a Name’s Day and celebrate: these include Georgy (Bulgarian version of said name ), Gergana, Gergina, Gloria, Gancho, Ginka, Ganka, Gabriella, Genady, Gosho, Genovena and many more.
Saint George’s Day is a big deal in Bulgaria for several reasons. For starters, Saint George is a saint of significance in the Christian pantheon. Because of his brilliant military career, Saint George’s Day also coincides with Day of Bravery and the Bulgarian Army. The tradition is alive and well - on the morning of May 6 all the news stations provide live feed from the army’s parade in the capitol as soldiers march to Alexandr Nevski’s Church. The ritual I noted this year was the blessing of the battle flags, though specific attention was paid to the Navy and their battle ships. I suppose that this specificity has to do with the legend that a healing water gushed after a church in the saint’s name was raised on the site where he killed the dragon.
May 6th is an important day for Bulgaria as we celebrate Saint George, who in Bulgaria is referred to as the Dragon Slayer or the Victorious (though literally from Bulgarian that one should be Victory Bringer). Saint George is the patron of farmers and shepherds. By default, all the people having names that remotely resemble George have a Name’s Day and celebrate: these include Georgy (Bulgarian version of said name ), Gergana, Gergina, Gloria, Gancho, Ginka, Ganka, Gabriella, Genady, Gosho, Genovena and many more.
Saint George’s Day is a big deal in Bulgaria for several reasons. For starters, Saint George is a saint of significance in the Christian pantheon. Because of his brilliant military career, Saint George’s Day also coincides with Day of Bravery and the Bulgarian Army. The tradition is alive and well - on the morning of May 6 all the news stations provide live feed from the army’s parade in the capitol as soldiers march to Alexandr Nevski’s Church. The ritual I noted this year was the blessing of the battle flags, though specific attention was paid to the Navy and their battle ships. I suppose that this specificity has to do with the legend that a healing water gushed after a church in the saint’s name was raised on the site where he killed the dragon.
It’s because of that particular feat why Saint George is one of the most recognizable saints in the Eastern-Orthodox mythology. In itself the legend doesn’t shock at all as it’s pretty straight to the point. In a true Greek fashion, we have a city located near a lake, which in turn was the home for this dragon. The dragon was a fierce poison breathing monster, whose breath could kill a person even from a solid distance. As a means to keep the beast away from the city, which had become the dragon’s go-to location for meals, the city ruler decided that each day a child would be left at the lake’s shore, inventing the first take-out delivery service for dragons anywhere (in Christian mythology).Improper jokes aside, it was the city ruler’s young daughter to be eaten by the dragon, when Saint George appeared on a white horse and slew the dragon in the name of God as it emerged from the waters. This act – no one could previously kill the beast – was meant as a miracle so that God could convert the whole city into his followers. I suspect this particular myth served as the foundations for the knight on a white horse, who slays dragons and saves princesses.
Saint George is honored as a martyr. You remember the bit about his military career? Well, in fact, George served as a Roman soldier under the Emperor Diocletian. George proved himself to be a brave and honorable soldier, but that didn’t mean much when Diocletian decided to clean his army from Christians. Initially, George was picked to head the team that would be in charge of finding and killing Christians, when he himself revealed his love for God.Diocletian tried to convert his best soldier to Roman beliefs, but when no offering convinced George to abandon Christ, tortures and decapitation followed. It was during these torture sessions that George performed countless miracles. He survived inhuman lashings, spending three days in a quicklime pit, poison and even swords grating his whole body. During his trial an angel appeared in order to heal George and in the end, at the command of the Emperor, he even resurrected a dead man.
Note: For the sake of being accurate, one must know that the “g” in all the names is not the “dʒ” sound like in the English George, but the normal “g” as in ‘guy’
Harry Markov lives in Varna, Bulgaria. This post originally appeared at his blog and is reprinted here with his permission.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Culture Share: Canada - Time as a measurement of distance
This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Heidi Vlach discusses time as a measurement of distance in Canada.
Time as a measurement of distance in Canada by Heidi Vlach
For a lot of Canadians, an hour is a measurement of distance. Technically impossible, but it's true.
I hadn't thought it was strange until I had to explain it a few times to visiting Europeans. Canada is the second largest country in the world, with a population of only 35 million people peppered across all this space. Major cities are hundreds of kilometres away from each other. Practically speaking, exact distance to a destination doesn't matter -- it only matters how long the travel will take. So while the road signs say that Sudbury is 386 kilometres away from Toronto, most people here will tell you that Toronto is "four hours" away. That's approximately how long it'll take to drive 386 kilometres, after all. Why nitpick?
But it runs deeper than that. Metric measurement is the official Canadian standard (hence all the road signs giving kilometre measurements). That standard was only introduced in 1971 and it wasn't unanimously supported. Many older adults are more comfortable with imperial units -- the units they grew up learning. Ask an anglophone Canadian their height and they'll probably give you a feet-and-inches measure. Changing the national standard of measure doesn't happen overnight. Even now, many product labels still list two forms of measurements (e.g. millilitres and ounces), in the same way labels are written in both national languages, English and French. Just because metric is the technical standard doesn't mean everyone needs to be forced to use it in daily life.
Because of this, I grew up with my teachers using metric (mostly) and my family using imperial (mostly). A lot of American media spills over the border, so American TV shows added to my tendency to use imperial. I prefer nice logical centimetres if I'm measuring out a sewing project, but if I look at a person to guess their height, I understand it much better in the "five foot however-many-inches" terminology I hear on a daily basis. I wasn't taught a standard system so much as I was taught a particular state of cultural shift.
Many people of my generation show their cultural shift in the same centimeters-and-feet pattern as me, and I've never known an older adult to find it strange. Like a lot of things in the Canadian mosaic culture, measurement units are mostly a matter of personal preference. And if a Canadian doesn't remember exactly how far 100 kilometres is, they probably at least know the kilometers-to-miles ratio they need to estimate the answer. Everyone manages to get along and not sweat the details too much.
So I'm fairly sure hours are used to measure distance because that allows all Canadians an easy compromise. Everyone knows how long an hour is. And unless you drive at an unusual speed, everyone takes approximately four hours to travel from Sudbury to Toronto. With that out of the way, we can all get back to discussing the weather.
Heidi C. Vlach lives in northern Ontario, Canada.
Time as a measurement of distance in Canada by Heidi Vlach
For a lot of Canadians, an hour is a measurement of distance. Technically impossible, but it's true.
I hadn't thought it was strange until I had to explain it a few times to visiting Europeans. Canada is the second largest country in the world, with a population of only 35 million people peppered across all this space. Major cities are hundreds of kilometres away from each other. Practically speaking, exact distance to a destination doesn't matter -- it only matters how long the travel will take. So while the road signs say that Sudbury is 386 kilometres away from Toronto, most people here will tell you that Toronto is "four hours" away. That's approximately how long it'll take to drive 386 kilometres, after all. Why nitpick?
But it runs deeper than that. Metric measurement is the official Canadian standard (hence all the road signs giving kilometre measurements). That standard was only introduced in 1971 and it wasn't unanimously supported. Many older adults are more comfortable with imperial units -- the units they grew up learning. Ask an anglophone Canadian their height and they'll probably give you a feet-and-inches measure. Changing the national standard of measure doesn't happen overnight. Even now, many product labels still list two forms of measurements (e.g. millilitres and ounces), in the same way labels are written in both national languages, English and French. Just because metric is the technical standard doesn't mean everyone needs to be forced to use it in daily life.
Because of this, I grew up with my teachers using metric (mostly) and my family using imperial (mostly). A lot of American media spills over the border, so American TV shows added to my tendency to use imperial. I prefer nice logical centimetres if I'm measuring out a sewing project, but if I look at a person to guess their height, I understand it much better in the "five foot however-many-inches" terminology I hear on a daily basis. I wasn't taught a standard system so much as I was taught a particular state of cultural shift.
Many people of my generation show their cultural shift in the same centimeters-and-feet pattern as me, and I've never known an older adult to find it strange. Like a lot of things in the Canadian mosaic culture, measurement units are mostly a matter of personal preference. And if a Canadian doesn't remember exactly how far 100 kilometres is, they probably at least know the kilometers-to-miles ratio they need to estimate the answer. Everyone manages to get along and not sweat the details too much.
So I'm fairly sure hours are used to measure distance because that allows all Canadians an easy compromise. Everyone knows how long an hour is. And unless you drive at an unusual speed, everyone takes approximately four hours to travel from Sudbury to Toronto. With that out of the way, we can all get back to discussing the weather.
Heidi C. Vlach lives in northern Ontario, Canada.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Culture Share: Scandinavia - Travelers in Scandinavia, and no, I don't mean backpackers
This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Therese Lindberg discusses Travelers in Scandinavia
Travelers in Scandinavia, and no, I don't mean backpackers by Therese Lindberg
Being a Traveler in Scandinavia involves a lot of things.
I could tell you about all the families who get bullied for who they are, about kids beaten in school and people chased from their land. Yes it happens even today.
But those are the rare occasions; usually we just blend in.
My family, my parents and my three siblings, have always had a house to live in. In fact from I was born till present day (twenty six) my family as a whole only moved three times, and only between two locations.
During the winter months of any given year, we live as any other family. We have a house, we have jobs, we go to church and we go to school. But when the snow starts melting and the birds return, that's when we “wake up.” The movie Chocolat with Johnny Depp portraits this well - when Vianne Rocher stands on the pier and feels the north wind calling her name.
The spring does the same for my kind. It's as if the essence of who we are goes into a state of hibernation during the winter months, and awakens to the song of the returned birds. The essence makes itself known, we become restless and the need for traveling will in the end win.
My Family has always owned a caravan, and my parents still do. This is not something limited to my family. Every spring the cellphones would start ringing and we would always laugh as we'd hear Father say “Feeling restless yet?” To the other person. We'd get more agitated as we stayed at home, and this was the same for almost every family.
They would take us out of school in the beginning of May and so we would travel. Usually accompanied by other families, and that's when you would, if a bystander, see four to five and even six caravans accompanied by a few cars traveling down the endless welcoming road.
We would travel to places where there were work to be found. I would say ninety percent of all male Travelers have carpenter or a painter as their occupation. I don't know why that is - they are simply good at it. And they would go knocking on doors and tell people they could fix their roof, paint their house, build a barn maybe. All in all a very old-fashioned hands on way of doing it.
The women however, would stay at the camp-site. The children would be free to play and if one became hungry there was always food to be found in one of the caravans. The women would see all the children as theirs, and make sure nothing happened to any of them.
If there were no jobs to be found in a town, or a city, we would move on. Usually we only stayed for a job, maybe two which took mostly one to three weeks. We would then pack up the caravan and head on to the next place, and we'd always feel excited, because who knew what waited in the next town?
Quite often would we cross the border into Sweden, and we had no problems driving through the night and perhaps let Father get a few hours sleep as we stopped at the side of the road. We all enjoyed it, as finally we were free.
Our language is called Rotipa and it is unfortunately a dying language. There aren't many people left who speak it, although most families use some of the words in their daily life. A dictionary was designed not long ago, and so we try to re-instate the language. It's a slow process but we're getting there.
We're an old race, with an outdated culture, and surviving in a modern society is difficult. And so we have adapted in order to survive, but during the summer months we are pretty much the same as we've always been. We've traded out the horse and carriage for a car and caravan, and the paintbrush has been replaced by modern equipment. But the women still stay on the campsite guarding the children and the men still go knocking on doors offering their services. At night we still light up a campfire and we all listen as the men tell stories about their day, and their ancestors.
Therese Lindberg lives in Fredrikstad, Norway, except when she is on the road.
Travelers in Scandinavia, and no, I don't mean backpackers by Therese Lindberg
Being a Traveler in Scandinavia involves a lot of things.
I could tell you about all the families who get bullied for who they are, about kids beaten in school and people chased from their land. Yes it happens even today.
But those are the rare occasions; usually we just blend in.
My family, my parents and my three siblings, have always had a house to live in. In fact from I was born till present day (twenty six) my family as a whole only moved three times, and only between two locations.
During the winter months of any given year, we live as any other family. We have a house, we have jobs, we go to church and we go to school. But when the snow starts melting and the birds return, that's when we “wake up.” The movie Chocolat with Johnny Depp portraits this well - when Vianne Rocher stands on the pier and feels the north wind calling her name.
The spring does the same for my kind. It's as if the essence of who we are goes into a state of hibernation during the winter months, and awakens to the song of the returned birds. The essence makes itself known, we become restless and the need for traveling will in the end win.
My Family has always owned a caravan, and my parents still do. This is not something limited to my family. Every spring the cellphones would start ringing and we would always laugh as we'd hear Father say “Feeling restless yet?” To the other person. We'd get more agitated as we stayed at home, and this was the same for almost every family.
They would take us out of school in the beginning of May and so we would travel. Usually accompanied by other families, and that's when you would, if a bystander, see four to five and even six caravans accompanied by a few cars traveling down the endless welcoming road.
We would travel to places where there were work to be found. I would say ninety percent of all male Travelers have carpenter or a painter as their occupation. I don't know why that is - they are simply good at it. And they would go knocking on doors and tell people they could fix their roof, paint their house, build a barn maybe. All in all a very old-fashioned hands on way of doing it.
The women however, would stay at the camp-site. The children would be free to play and if one became hungry there was always food to be found in one of the caravans. The women would see all the children as theirs, and make sure nothing happened to any of them.
If there were no jobs to be found in a town, or a city, we would move on. Usually we only stayed for a job, maybe two which took mostly one to three weeks. We would then pack up the caravan and head on to the next place, and we'd always feel excited, because who knew what waited in the next town?
Quite often would we cross the border into Sweden, and we had no problems driving through the night and perhaps let Father get a few hours sleep as we stopped at the side of the road. We all enjoyed it, as finally we were free.
Our language is called Rotipa and it is unfortunately a dying language. There aren't many people left who speak it, although most families use some of the words in their daily life. A dictionary was designed not long ago, and so we try to re-instate the language. It's a slow process but we're getting there.
We're an old race, with an outdated culture, and surviving in a modern society is difficult. And so we have adapted in order to survive, but during the summer months we are pretty much the same as we've always been. We've traded out the horse and carriage for a car and caravan, and the paintbrush has been replaced by modern equipment. But the women still stay on the campsite guarding the children and the men still go knocking on doors offering their services. At night we still light up a campfire and we all listen as the men tell stories about their day, and their ancestors.
Therese Lindberg lives in Fredrikstad, Norway, except when she is on the road.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Culture Share: Netherlands - Bicycles in the Netherlands by Corinne Duyvis
This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, in which writers discuss their personal experience with world cultures: Corinne Duyvis discusses bicycles in the Netherlands.
Bicycles in the Netherlands by Corinne Duyvis
If you've ever been to the Netherlands, you'll probably have noticed that we like our bicycles.
We like them a lot.
The Dutch landscape, being approximately as flat as the computer screen you're looking at right now, lends itself perfectly to cycling. Given that most of our cities were built long before the invention of cars, we also tend to have narrow streets, with very little space to ride a car, let alone park it. For that reason, our cities encourage bikes or public transport as a means of getting around.
Add that to the fact that biking is pretty well engrained into our national consciousness...
Well. It means a lot of bikes.
It also means the following things (note that this is written from the perspective of someone who's lived in Amsterdam all her life, and it might be different in other/smaller cities):
* Practically everybody learns to bike from a very young age; kids get their first bike the moment they're able to walk.
* We bike everywhere. To school, to work, to the supermarket, to concerts, to the train station. Everywhere.
* We don't wear any special clothing on our bicycles. Bicycle shorts and helmets are reserved for hardcore sports cyclists and small children.
* We bike whenever. Midnight. In the snow. In the wind. In the rain. (That's what ponchos are for, after all. I've even seen a few special-made bike umbrellas.)
* Amsterdam has more bikes than inhabitants.
* Getting your tyre caught in a tram rail is always a risk.
* Sometimes people walk their dogs by bike.
* The police will patrol using bikes.
* We text while cycling. (I'm sure some even play Angry Birds.)
* We have separate bike paths, plus bike traffic lights to go with them.
* Depending on the time and place, it's perfectly normal to have a good ten or more cyclists waiting at a single traffic light.
* There are bicycle racks to park your bikes all over the city. Practically every non-residential street has several. (Even some residential streets have them.)
* Many buildings will also have basements to park your bike in -- both my old high school and former place of employment had these. Separate bike garages also exist.
* None of this will stop a true Amsterdammer from chaining their bike to whatever stationary item crosses their path. Bridge railings, street lights, trees, and "do not park your bike here" signs are especially popular.
* Bike theft is a huge problem. If you're smart, you'll carry at least one extra lock with you and you'll loop it through both the frame, the wheel, and Stationary Item X, because loads of thieves will just leave the wheel behind and take the rest of the bike -- or will take only the wheel to supplement other wheel-less stolen bikes. It's bizarre how many people fail to do this and end up surprised when their bikes are missing an hour later.
* Abandoned bikes are a problem, too. The city will tag bikes that have been standing around for too long; if they're still there a couple of weeks later, they cut the locks and take them with them.
* In a similar way, thieves will steal bikes en masse: They rent a truck and just toss any bike not chained to something on there.
* We have special bike compartments in trains -- and you'll need to purchase a special bike ticket to be able to travel with them.
* We'll have grandmothers in evening wear biking to a classical piano concert; fathers biking home from the grocery store, dog in a basket up front, a kid in the seat on the back, and a heavy grocery bag dangling from the handlebars; businesspeople in full suits biking to and from work, suitcase strapped on the back; and teens balancing a crate of beer on their laps or the handlebars.
Corinne Duyvis lives in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.
Bicycles in the Netherlands by Corinne Duyvis
If you've ever been to the Netherlands, you'll probably have noticed that we like our bicycles.
We like them a lot.
The Dutch landscape, being approximately as flat as the computer screen you're looking at right now, lends itself perfectly to cycling. Given that most of our cities were built long before the invention of cars, we also tend to have narrow streets, with very little space to ride a car, let alone park it. For that reason, our cities encourage bikes or public transport as a means of getting around.
Add that to the fact that biking is pretty well engrained into our national consciousness...
Well. It means a lot of bikes.
It also means the following things (note that this is written from the perspective of someone who's lived in Amsterdam all her life, and it might be different in other/smaller cities):
* Practically everybody learns to bike from a very young age; kids get their first bike the moment they're able to walk.
* We bike everywhere. To school, to work, to the supermarket, to concerts, to the train station. Everywhere.
* We don't wear any special clothing on our bicycles. Bicycle shorts and helmets are reserved for hardcore sports cyclists and small children.
* We bike whenever. Midnight. In the snow. In the wind. In the rain. (That's what ponchos are for, after all. I've even seen a few special-made bike umbrellas.)
* Amsterdam has more bikes than inhabitants.
* Getting your tyre caught in a tram rail is always a risk.
* Sometimes people walk their dogs by bike.
* The police will patrol using bikes.
* We text while cycling. (I'm sure some even play Angry Birds.)
* We have separate bike paths, plus bike traffic lights to go with them.
* Depending on the time and place, it's perfectly normal to have a good ten or more cyclists waiting at a single traffic light.
* There are bicycle racks to park your bikes all over the city. Practically every non-residential street has several. (Even some residential streets have them.)
* Many buildings will also have basements to park your bike in -- both my old high school and former place of employment had these. Separate bike garages also exist.
* None of this will stop a true Amsterdammer from chaining their bike to whatever stationary item crosses their path. Bridge railings, street lights, trees, and "do not park your bike here" signs are especially popular.
* Bike theft is a huge problem. If you're smart, you'll carry at least one extra lock with you and you'll loop it through both the frame, the wheel, and Stationary Item X, because loads of thieves will just leave the wheel behind and take the rest of the bike -- or will take only the wheel to supplement other wheel-less stolen bikes. It's bizarre how many people fail to do this and end up surprised when their bikes are missing an hour later.
* Abandoned bikes are a problem, too. The city will tag bikes that have been standing around for too long; if they're still there a couple of weeks later, they cut the locks and take them with them.
* In a similar way, thieves will steal bikes en masse: They rent a truck and just toss any bike not chained to something on there.
* We have special bike compartments in trains -- and you'll need to purchase a special bike ticket to be able to travel with them.
* We'll have grandmothers in evening wear biking to a classical piano concert; fathers biking home from the grocery store, dog in a basket up front, a kid in the seat on the back, and a heavy grocery bag dangling from the handlebars; businesspeople in full suits biking to and from work, suitcase strapped on the back; and teens balancing a crate of beer on their laps or the handlebars.
Corinne Duyvis lives in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.
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