Tidbits

 Annamaria on Monday

A lot is going on in my life, and I have many topics I might take up today, but I can't seem to get more than than half way through any topic I might write about.  The best I am capable of is a few peeks into what has been on my mind.

I've being doing the happy dance about the latest news from my favorite charity, the Sidai Resource Centre.  Eight of the Sidai girls are now in secondary school, an opportunity most girls in their culture can only dream of.  Here are six who are all now at the same boarding school:

  

In another part of my mental forrest, I have been binge watching the films of Stanley Kubrick. Last night's flick was the great Paths of Glory, which came with a bonus interview with the movie's star, Kirk Douglas.  In it, the interviewer referred to Douglas's childhood poverty and asked "Would you want to make a movie about your life?"  Right off the cuff, Kirk answered:

Not just a pretty face!

If you want to tell the truth, you write a novel.

If you really want to lie, you write a biography.

Topic 3: My efforts to rescue the rights to my own work have been taking up a LOT of my time and though I am seeing some progress, I still have not arrived at that magic moment when my back list can be published, and my new work can launch. The process is frustrating and daunting, but I am still determined.  I hope I will have good news about that one of these days.

WNYC, my local and addictive public radio station celebrates April as poetry month.  They typically invite listeners to submit a personal poem on a given topic.  This year they asked for poems - one to be aired each morning - on the subject of consequences.  I decided to try one on unintended consequences, a subject I have written about here, as have some of my blogmates, most notably here and here.  I took a stab at writing such a topic in verse, but given the many drains on my time and energy, as soon as I had something even passable, I decided to stop and submit it as it was.  I then wasted fifteen or twenty minutes trying to find the instructions on how to submit.  I despaired of that, but today I screw up my courage and offer it here:

You prayed for rain 

and made a hurricane.

Be careful what you summon.

 What is coming may be grief, not relief.

By way of compensation for that little ditty, I offer a song guaranteed to lift your spirits.  I am working on this post on Friday this week because this past Sunday (yesterday by the time you read this) was Easter, and that means that I will have spent this Sunday with my family.  "Alleluia" was a word I sang on Easter as a child in the church choir.  Today I offer you a Hallelulia song of an entirely different sort: by two of the greatest geniuses of American music.  Can you listen to this and sit still?  I can't.

Cherry Blossoms and Castle Keeps - Springtime in Japan

 -- Susan, every other Sunday

Two weeks ago, some friends from the United States and I took a trip to Kyushu--Japan's southernmost major island--to visit some famous sites and enjoy some tasty regional food. As it happened, we also caught Kyushu's sakura (cherry blossoms) at the peak of their very short bloom, which turned an already-fantastic trip into something truly special.

Sakura are loved in Japan, not only as a sign of spring's return but also because their delicacy and very short lives remind us of the short, bittersweet nature of all beauty, and of life itself. 

That message takes on another level of depth when the sakura you're enjoying are blooming around the seven "hells" of Beppu (a set of seven natural volcanic springs, each with very unique characteristics) and the magnificent castles and gardens where samurai once walked. 

Sakura near Umi Jigoku (the Ocean Hell)

I've written about Beppu's famous hells before, but since my previous visit was in winter, I had no idea that beautiful blossoms were lurking behind the steam. 

Sakura at Umi Jigoku

After visiting five of the seven famous hells - all but one of which had sakura blooming in the surrounding trees, one of my friends said, "You know, hell suddenly doesn't seem all that scary anymore." (Particularly apt, seeing as this post goes up on Easter Sunday...)

The bubbling clay pools at Oniishibozu Jigoku (the hell of monks' heads, named because the bubbles emerging from the clay look a bit like the bald, round heads of Buddhist monks) reflected the trees in a way that drew a lot of blossom-watchers.

Cherry blossoms reflected in the pits of hell...

After visiting all seven hells, we paid a visit to Beppu Park, where dozens of enormous cherry blossom trees were all in bloom.

Sakura at Beppu Park

 

Up close and personal with spring

Beppu Park

Our trip also involved a stop in Kyoto where, to our surprise, the cherry blossoms were still blooming.

Cherry blossoms at Tenryu-ji, a Buddhist temple in Kyoto

More sakura at Tenryuji

Although there were a lot more tourists in Kyoto, too, the beautiful spring weather and cherry blossoms made it difficult to feel anything but thoroughly happy and alive.

Sakura by the train tracks in Kyoto's Arashiyama ward.

That said, my favorite cherry blossoms of the trip were the ones we found near Kumamoto Castle, in Kumamoto (Kyushu). 

Sakura at Kumamoto Castle

Another view of the castle with cherry blossoms

When my friends and I planned the trip, we thought the blossoms wouldn't be in bloom for another 2-3 weeks--it's difficult to plan a trip months in advance and ensure it coincides with the blossom season, because the sakura often bloom and die within a week (or sometimes less).

I feel truly fortunate that the weather (although unsettlingly warm for the end of March) gave us the chance to see so many blossoms in full bloom. The earth is awakening after the cold of winter, and the blossoms are an excellent reminder to enjoy, and make the most of, every day.

An Historical Perspective on Passover, Easter, and Paska

y

Jeff––Saturday

 

Last Wednesday night was the first Passover Seder.  Tomorrow is Easter in Western Christianity,  and next Sunday is Orthodox (Greek) Easter. I thought it might be helpful to review how these most serious of holidays, linked together as they are through history, manage to jump around as much as they do from year to year.

 

Passover or Pesach always takes place around the same time as Easter or Paska because the holiday of Passover, commemorating God’s liberation of the Jewish People from slavery in Egypt, was the occasion for the Last Supper.  In fact, before the year 325 Easter was calculated upon the lunar-based Hebrew calendar and all one had to do to determine the date for Easter was to “ask a Jew in your community” when Passover was celebrated.

All that changed in 325 when the First Ecumenical Synod calculated the exact date of Easter from the more modern cycles of the sun-based Julian calendar.  That became Christianity’s generally accepted method for calculating the date of Easter and continued to be so for more than five hundred years after the Great Schism of 1052 separated the Church of the West to Rome and the Church of the East to Constantinople (Istanbul).

Then, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced what is known as the Gregorian calendar for the express purpose of correctly calculating Easter, something the Julian calendar was not believed to have achieved.  Today, the Gregorian calendar is the world’s officially accepted civil calendar (except in Greece’s 1500 year-old monastic community of Mount Athos—see Prey on Patmos), but there still is not agreement among the Christian world over whether it correctly fixes the date of Easter. 

Indeed, as recently as 1997 the World Council of Churches proposed a method of using modern scientific knowledge for precisely calculating Easter and replacing divergent practices.  It was not adopted.

As for how Passover fits into all this, Julian calendar Easter always falls on a Sunday after the first day of the eight-day Passover holiday and generally within those eight days (but not in 2023), though at times more than a month later.  Western Easter, relying on the Gregorian calendar, also generally falls within Passover’s eight days, though three times in every nineteen-year period it falls a month before Passover.

Yes, that’s why Easter is considered a moveable feast, as opposed to Christmas that always occurs on the same date.

Having gone back 1700 years or so, to reminisce on the influence of past events upon the present, I thought I'd conclude this post with a redux presentation of photographs of what Eastertime looked like on Mykonos and its companion island of Delos some dozen years ago.  The photographs are from the files of the master collector of all things visual Mykonian, Dimitris Koutsoukas.  Enjoy.

 

 

Mykonos:

Delos:

And a Happy Easter, Kalo Paska, and Zissen Pesach to all. 

—Jeff

The Tough Side Of Research

 Just about to start a new book. Got about 20 000 words in and I knew I needed to go and visit one of the places where the bodies are dumped.  I was looking for  one of our designated areas of low light pollution, the sort of place where star gazers go.

We had one day to do it. That day was today.

On the way back, the traffic was queueing  on the opposite side of the road for over three miles, total standstill  due to the sheer volume of cars. Everybody was attracted by the rarity of a blue sky, sunshine and a public holiday.  As we were on a mission, we were up at 'Sparrow Fart' and out the door.

This is a carving  of an old man on a old tree trunk.

                                                      

                                                                   He faces the toilets

This was the view behind him!

Loch Long for those who are paying attention.

And yes, the sun was splitting the sky.

This was where we were heading.

This is the road, not a footpath.

We have a narrow car.

Our reward on the other side of the water.

Lots here to explore, the Glen to the right is the area of low light pollution.

And we discovered a place called The Honeymoon Bridge.

No idea why it's called that but I shall find out and then some bride can fling her groom off the top.

The old stone bridge is just visible here.

It was very wet and slippy underfoot.

No emergency services up here so we turned back.

Somebody had a grand day out.

On the way home!

Happy Easter to all!

Cheers

Caro