Holidays

A few weeks ago people in Russia and many in Uzbekistan celebrated Maslenitsa. Maslenitsa is similar to Mardi Gras as it proceeds Lent and includes some decadent festivities. It is the only purely Russian holiday that dates back to the pagan times and is the only pagan holiday admitted by the Russian Orthodox Church. My Russian teacher, Milana, gave a presentation on this holiday today. I’ll share what I learned.

The first Monday of Maslenitsa, during the monthly spouse’s coffee hour, we made blini (crepes). They represent the sun (round, golden and hot). They are a Maslenitsa staple and are stuffed with anything from caviar or salmon to sour cream or jam. At the coffee morning we ate them stuffed with spiced ground beef or mushrooms. During the week of Maslenitsa there is a saying to ‘eat as many times as a dog would wag its tail.' I like that! The wealthy people would begin making blini on Mondays, the less fortunate on Thursday or Friday. Each day of the Maslenitsa week is special. How many of these traditions are kept today and how many are outdated, I’m not sure.

Monday: the greeting. Snow forts are built. Families are visited. In the morning the husbands' parents sent their daughters-in-law to visit her parents and in the evening they join her. They discuss where to go for the celebration and go sledding.

Tuesday: popular games. This includes more sledding. In one game, two rows of men face each other and, at the crack of a whip run at each other and fight fisticuffs. The women were a little gentler; they raced each other while flipping blinis. Matchmaking traditionally played a huge roll during Maslenitsa.

Wednesday: sweet tooth day. The mothers of wives invited their sons-in-law and their relatives for a party. I don’t know what these people did if they had huge families. Fought a lot, I guess. Either that or house-hopped all day. There is a saying: “Sell your house, but celebrate Maslenitsa!” No mention was made of eating sweets.

Thursday: lavash day. One activity on this day is kind of like trick-or-treating. The kids roam from house to house singing and asking for treats. A ‘joker’ rides in a troika (buggy pulled by three horses) leading a parade of followers whom he treats to wine and various delicacies.

Friday: Good Mother’s (wife’s mother) evenings. Husbands treat their mother-in-law to blini and treats.

Saturday: Good Daughter’s (husband’s sister) parties. On this day, the wife invites her husband’s family for an evening party. If her husband’s sisters were not married she invited all her unmarried friends. If they were married, she invited all her married relatives and this whole train went from house to house. I don’t know how these people keep up with all this!

Sunday: Forgiveness Sunday. This is pretty self-explanatory. Gifts are given to matchmakers and relatives. The most honorary gift for a man is a towel; for a woman it is a piece of soap. A fire is made in which winter is set to burn as in a funeral pyre. People burned things they did not need so as “to get rid of anything redundant.”

Following the final day of Maslenitsa is clean Monday on which steam baths are traditionally taken. Also traditional is a sort of spring cleaning ritual.

The following weekend we had a four-day weekend because Tuesday was Women’s Day. In Uzbekistan, they do not have Mother’s Day and Father’s Day; they have Men’s Day and Women’s Day. I noticed that Men’s Day is not a national holiday for which people get a day off. We had a spa day the Friday before the four day weekend for the women. I got a manicure and pedicure for about $14! We also had a bazaar where local artists bring in their goods to sell: carpets, ceramics, jewelry, cards with hand painted silk, hand made musical instruments, suzani (hand embroidered fabrics used to hang or lay on tables or cover pillows, etc.) wood carvings and more. On that same Friday, a line of male employees of the Embassy stood at the door to hand each woman a daffodil. I also got a small bunch of daffodils from one of the guards. I'm not sure why. Intriguing.

March 21 was Navruz, the spring “New Year” holiday stemming from the ancient Zoroastrian religion. It is celebrated when the sun enters Aries which frequently coincides with the spring equinox. It announces the awakening of nature after its winter sleep. It is celebrated during daytime hours unlike our New Years festivities. The main celebration is on March 21, but for 13 days people gather and visit and plant seeds. Women make the traditional dish of sumalyak. Sumalyak is made of sprouted wheat and sugar and needs to cook while being constantly stirred for 24 hours over an open fire. It looks like molasses and tastes sweet and gritty. Doug and I bought some at a bazaar. It wasn’t bad, but I didn’t care for it.

Now I will leave you with a treat. Doug and I have been taking folk music lessons at the Embassy. I’ve been singing Uzbek folksongs as has Doug, plus he is learning to play the doira, an Uzbek folk drum. The drum is made of ox skin (and smells like it) and has rings surrounding the open side. I should tell you that Doug’s playing is more complicated than it may sound on this recording. He holds and plays the drum with both hands. There are two basic sounds he has been taught; a lower sound (boom) and a higher pitch sound (bak). Usually he plays with the middle finger of his left hand. Listen for the two quick 16th notes. On the second he is striking the drum with his right pinky by snapping it off the other fingers. This is not easy for those tiny muscles to do in rhythm. I hope you enjoy it.

Click the black triangle below (on the left) to hear me singing an Uzbek folk song called "Urik Gallaganda," accompanied by Douglas playing the doira (Uzbek drum)

On My Mind

My blog entries have been less frequent that I would like lately. There are a few reasons. First, Blogger has changed it's method of logging on. At first, Doug could get me on. Today I logged on all by myself! I notice that it wants the user to have an AOL (I think) e-mail; I have gmail. But today it worked so I'm writing!

I'm sure we are all concerned about Japan. Years ago, after the tsunami hit Inonesia, I started writing a story about a storyteller who, shortly the tsunami, travels to Indonesia to tell the story of Rip Van Winkle.

Briefly, Rip Van Winkle is about a lazy (at home) and helpful (with all others), henpecked husband who goes hunting in the Kaatskill Mountains and meets up with an unusual group of people who live there. They are dressed in very old Dutch clothing and are playing nine pins. Every ball rolled resounds like thunder. Rip has helped a man carry a keg up the hill to where they are playing and is asked to pour for them. He pours them each a drink and, when no one is looking, helps himself a few times. The next thing he knows he is waking up the next morning (he thinks!). His dog, Wolf is nowhere to be seen and instead of his nice hunting rifle, next to him is an old rusted rifle. He thinks he's the butt of a joke of the people he drank with so he goes looking for them, but sees nothing familiar to help him find them. He makes his way back to town where he sees strangers and recognizes no one. The children of the town, who used to play with him, gather around with the women and stare. Nothing is familiar. He walks to his house which is completely dilapidated, no sign of his family. He goes to the inn he frequented, but saw no familiar faces. There, in place of a tree that had shaded the inn, was a bare pole with a strange flag with stars and stripes and inside, in place of the picture of King George, was a man named George Washington. Strange. He cries out "Doesn't anyone know Rip Van Winkle?" The people point out a shabbily dressed young man leaning against a post. It is his own son who has grown by 20 years. His daughter comes to the inn and introduces herself. Dame Van Winkle had been dead some 18 years - she died of a broken blood vessel while yelling at a peddler. His daughter takes him in to live with her. He tells his story to all who will listen. Some think he's mad; others know the fairy mountains. Whenever thunder is heard many imagine the people playing nine pens and the other henpecked husbands wish that they, too, could sip from the elixir that Rip had experienced.

The teller in my story tells this story because, she imagines, that many people who survived lost everyone they know and, certainly, nothing around them is recognizable. She gets the people - young and old - talking about Rip and his situation while, in actuality, they are opening themselves up to talking about their own feelings of losing everyone and everything.

Next Friday I'm going to tell stories at the Tashkent International School and I'm considering telling Rip Van Winkle to tie it in to these current events.

Jason Kelly wrote a nice piece about the earthquake in Japan. You can do a search for him and find it. It begins, "The ground here is shaking as I write . . ."

These events have me considering my new place in this world. I lived relatively safely in the United States. What if a huge earthquake were to devestate Tashkent? What if the citizens of Uzbekistan held an uprising like in Egypt and Libia? I'd be in extreme danger and would likely think, "If only I hadn't come here."

I'm glad I'm here, though. I'm meeting wonderful people while learning a very interesting language. I'm taking voice lessons for the first time in years. I'm taking Uzbek folk singing lessons twice weekly. This is about as polar opposite my opera training as you can get. Some characteristics of Uzbek folk singing include: sustained notes are often pulsed with the voice - not a vibrato, but a deliberate pulsing of the air, at the end of many of these sustained notes there is a short, strong crescendo on the last beat and the vowel sound mutates as the note is sustained. Add this to the fact that I'm having to read Uzbek and it requires quite an effort. I've noticed that, as in American folk music, melodies change over time and everyone has their preferred version. Our teacher generally goes by the written notes, but not absolutely. One more complication. So I have recently decided to try to learn these songs by rote. I can hear my piano students laughing all the way to Tashkent. My teacher has recorded two songs that I am listening to over and over. First, I try to follow the melody with the vowel sounds - no words yet. Then I pull out the music to follow the words while trying very hard to not see the notes which may or may not match what he is singing. Douglas, by the way, is learning all this plus learing to play the doira, an Uzbek drum.

So I'm glad I'm here. I may come across some dangers, I may not. Same can be said with living in St. Paul.

I said this in an old blog entry from "If I Can . . ." We humans are capable of so much more than we realize. A lot of us live pretty cushy lives and have softened over time, but we are still resilient. We don't have as many "needs" as we think. I hear that in Japan, many are living off a ball of rice a day. Living. I was very heartened to hear of little to no looting and people waiting together in very long lines for basic needs. How often do people take advantage of situations like this to gain something for themselves? How often are we too much in a hurry to wait in line to buy a latte? We are soft, but, remember, we are strong.

Next time, some local holidays.