Winning the Lottery

For our fourth year now Jordan and I have trekked to our nation's capital to enjoy the wonders of Japan, the cherry blossoms.



First we have to walk the Tidal Basin with every cherry tree bursting with blossoms, covering their branches with delicate bunches. There's the Thomas Jefferson Memorial to visit on the way, and some live music to listen to near its steps. Depending on the weather we might have ice cream or just stare at people who are eating some as if they were crazy. Every holiday has its traditions.

Then there's the new adventures. Basilicas, monuments, memorials, and cemeteries are scattered around the city and are only a good walk or perhaps a Metro ride away. Each one has a new piece of history to unfold, some little treasure that makes all those schoolbook stories suddenly meaningful.

This year we went to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. For some reason memorials are harder to visit the more you know about the events. Though I'm too young to remember the war, I grew up with two generations who did, two generations who held their breaths to see if my uncle would return. And luckily, I know my uncle.

As we approached the wall I recognized it from the pictures I had seen before, the roses next to a black slab of names, perhaps a child's letter. Even though I knew what to expect, the wall wasn't familiar. Two thoughts occupied my mind. It was one big wall. It had rather small print.



Flowers, letters, and poems, were carefully laid at the base of the wall, desperately attempting to introduce passersby to a lost loved one. The visitors walk slowly, so many little shrines. This one was a nurse, there's a picture of her in uniform. This one was a joker, there's a little box with a whoopie cushion. Anything to remember them.

Then there are those that want to take home that engraving on the wall. They find that special name, place a piece of paper over it, and gently run their pencils over it, somehow extracting more from the granite than just a rubbing.



Over 58,000 names. And that's just our troops, not the millions of others killed. The names are in the order of their death or disappearance. To find a loved one on the giant slabs, there's a book with all the names in alphabetical order.

My uncle has said, "I won the lottery; I came home." So this picture is for you, Uncle Frankie. This is the book with the list of names of men and women left overseas. Undoubtedly you know some of these names in this massive text, and I'm sorry. But it's with relief that I look in this book, run my finger down the list of G's, and find no Gelsone there.



Jefferson Memorial picture by me
all other photos in this post by Jordan

Food for Thought: Millais

In 1850, Millais released his painting, Christ in the House of His Parents. If you look closely, you will see Jesus' hand is wounded and blood has dripped to his foot, a reminder of his coming crucifixion. He has apparently injured himself pulling a nail with pincers, tools used in the crucifixion. Mary kneels by Jesus' side to comfort him, but also takes on the pose of adoration. John the Baptist carries a bowl of water just as he will be the one to baptize Jesus. The unfinished basket to the left mimics the crown of thorns. In the distance is a flock of sheep to represent Jesus' flock, the coming church.


As someone who knows nothing about art, I can say that the untrained eye sees nothing controversial about this painting. It seems painted in that old classical style in which people look real. It's got a lovely religious story to it that is common in old paintings.

John Millais was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a small group of artists that secretly rebelled against the leading Royal Academy's ideas of painting and sculpture. The Pre-Raphaelites claimed they wanted to leave behind the mechanical way of painting that began after Raphael. The Pre-Raphaelites strove to create beautiful detail and color in their paintings rather than purposely have muddied areas.

It did not always go over well. Christ in the House of His Parents was seen as sacrilegious, portraying Jesus in a common and humanly manner. Everyone knew Christ was to wear a toga and a halo. What on earth was Millais thinking?

A review commonly quoted from "The Royal Academy Exhibition" says the painting was a "painful display" of a "red-headed Jew boy." It also states that shavings should not be found at the feet of the holy family, and Mary should not be a common seamstress.

Jesus as a Jew! Oh no! Burn the painting! Charles Dickens even had a good two cents to put in.

In the foreground of that carpenter's shop is a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-headed boy in a bed- gown; who appears to have received a poke in the hand, from the stick of another boy with whom he has been playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be holding it up for the contemplation of a kneeling woman, so horrible in her ugliness, that (supposing it were possible for any human creature to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England.

--Charles Dickens in magazine Household Words, June 1850.

Now that I've stuffed your head full of abstract concepts and criticism, try to be objective and tell me what you think of the painting.

Special Announcement

The Feline Speaks had a special guest on the Red Tail Angels post. He's answered great questions and given us a lot of information about the Tuskegee Airmen . Please drop by and check out his comments!

Hamentashen

Purim is often likened to the Jewish Halloween. You can dress up and eat sweets. For the adults there's a hefty amount of wine. It's a joyous occasion, a time to celebrate that time in history when the Jews were nearly ethnically cleansed, just like any other Jewish holiday. The story is long, so here's a simple summary. If you know the story, just skip it.

The king of Persia had a party and ordered his wife to come display her beauty to his friends. She refused so she was eventually killed. The king held a beauty pageant and a lovely woman named Esther won. Esther's uncle Mordecai overheard a plot to kill the king, and he warned the king through Esther. Mordecai was written in history as a hero. Meanwhile the king's vizier Haman became more and more powerful. He had it ordered that everyone was to bow to him when he passed in the street. Mordecai did not, since he only bowed to his God. Haman was furious and he planned to have all the Jews killed. He used lots, or purim, to select which dates the Jews were to be exterminated. Plus Haman built gallows to hang Mordecai. Mordecai told Esther she had to stop all this nonsense and so she fasted and prepared a feast for the king and Haman. Then another one. Finally she told the king that she was Jewish and that Haman was planning to have all her people killed. The king needed to think over this news and went for a walk in the garden. When he came back, he walked in on Haman pleading for his life, but it looked like he was trying to seduce Esther. The king gave an order that on the day the Jews were to be murdered, they could fight back. And Haman was hung on the same gallows he built for Mordecai.

Now Purim is celebrated by reading through the entire text of Esther with much excitement. Special cookies are made called Hamentashen.


Delicious yumminess. The oldest recipe of these cookies are made with a poppyseed filling. The mystery is, why poppy seeds? Some say it's all that Esther ate during her fast before speaking to the king. There's nothing in the book of Esther that mentions this tradition, and it reminds me more of Persephone eating pomegranate seeds in Hades. Some say it's a reminder of the promise to Abraham that his descendants would number the same as the stars in the sky or sands on the ocean.

The answer is actually simple. The cookies already were popular in Germany where Ashkenazis* lived. In German the cookies were called mohntashen or "poppy pockets." The word mohn sounds awfully like Haman, the wicked vizier, and the cookies came to be known as hamentaschen or "Haman's pockets" in the 11th century.

Poppy seeds are rarely used anymore, though you can find the ingredients online or in specialty shops. Prune butter is the more common traditional filling still used today. This tradition dates back to the 18th century. There was once a grocer from Jungbunzlau, Bohemia (now in Czech Republic) named David Brandeis. In 1731 he sold prune jam to a Gentile girl, the daughter of a bookbinder. Within a few days she and her family were sick and her father was dead. David, his wife, and his son were imprisoned for poisoning Christians, a common enough accusation towards Jews since Medieval times. The investigation proved her father died of tuberculosis, and David was finally acquitted. The local Jewish community began using prune preserves instead of poppy seeds for their Hamentaschen.

In Sephardic* tradition, the cookies are called "Haman's ears" and are pinched into a pointy ear. This term made it to Israel where the cookies are called Haman's ears in Hebrew, "Oznei Haman."

*Ashkenazim: Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe
Sephardim: Jews from Spain or Portugal. The word comes from "Spaniard."

Links
Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton
Reform Judaism Magazine

Happy St. Patty's Day!

I'm looking over a four-leaf clover
That I overlooked before.
One leaf is sunshine, the second is rain,
Third is the roses that grow in the lane.
No need explaining, the one remaining
Is somebody I adore.
I'm looking over a four-leaf clover
That I overlooked before.

--Mort Dixon, 1927.

Elaine of Astalot

With Sir Lancelot, you can only figure that Tennyson based his famous poem "Lady of Shallot" on an Arthurian legend. You were right. He did. You just can't recognize it.

In the Arthurian literature she's known as Elaine of Astolat. The story starts at a jousting contest where she meets Sir Lancelot. She asked him to wear her colors, but he said he'd have to do it in disguise to not upset Guinevere. (who said soap opera was a modern phenomenon?) He does really well, taking on King Arthur's knights and such, because he wouldn't be Sir Lancelot if he couldn't beat 50 people in a jousting contest. He finally gets injured so Elaine nurses him back to health in secret so as not uncover his disguise. Sir Lancelot then offers to pay her for her services, and she is insulted because he's to thick-headed to realize she's in love with him.

Elaine Guarding Lancelot's Shield by Louis Rhead

She gives him back his shield that she's been hiding for him (remember he can't be found out or Guinevere will be upset that he's cheating on her while she's cheating on Arthur). He realizes what he's done and leaves.

Elaine dies of heartbreak as any good rejected woman must do, and her father follows her request and puts her in a boat to send her down the Thames to Camelot. She arrives with a lily in one hand and a letter in the other. In the letter she explains the story, and Sir Lancelot, grief-stricken like he usually is in the end of these legends, pays for her funeral and whatnot. She becomes known as Elaine the White, Elaine the Fair, and Lily-maid of Astolat.

No mirror. No curse. Tennyson made up the rest of it. For some unspecified reason in the poem she can't look out the darn window. It seems similar to a mythical Roman punishment like always rolling a heavy rock uphill or filling a bowl of water with only a sieve.

A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

In this verse it seems she knows she can't look out the window and the curse is something to make her look, and therefore the curse is the usual curse to women: Sir Lancelot. He's no good really. Mothers keep your daughters from Lancelot.

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Now as for Tennyson, he left it ambiguous whether the Lady of Shallot looked out the window by accident or on purpose. What do you think?