St. Patrick of Brusa, Turkey

Around mid-March, watching Irish parades in America, my grandfather would insist St. Patrick was Greek.
We didn't quite get it, except that the Irish saint died when there was one Christian church, so maybe Papou was trying to say the March 17 Patrick was an Orthodox saint - which is true.
But the attached narrative of the original St. Patrick's life explains everything. St. Pat who was martyred in what is now Turkey, lived a short distance from our family village, but closer to the time of Christ. The first saint lived in the Asia Minor city called Brousa - alternately called Prousa or Brousse.
The Irish saint could have taken his baptismal name from the Asia Minor saint!
The narrative of his cruel martyrdom by a pagan, provided by the Orthodox Church in America daily listing of saints, refers to the hot springs and baths that are still a staple of modern life in Bursa, Turkey. But all the Christian churches have been destroyed in the center of modern Brusa, except for a small French Catholic church barely visible on the municipal map. Last year, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul was allowed to repurchase a derelict church on the coast of the Marmara Sea. It is being renovated for use.

http://oca.org/saints/lives/2013/05/19/101435-hieromartyr-patrick-the-bishop-of-prusa-with-his-companions

Beach and Sushi

Long Beach, NY -- A very sweet busboy just brought me a rose for Mother's Day at the lovely Allegria Hotel on the ocean.
Roses at church today were reserved for mothers. I protested - I'm a godmother! Then I refused to take one.
There is a fierce wind whipping the sand and saltwater, but I am watching from the confines of a glassed-in restaurant and enjoying sushi and Sauvignon Blanc.
My companion is a book about Turkish harem women who extol a woman's only role: being mother, being like a beautiful flower and being a wife -- be it number-one wife or sharing a husband as number four. Fascinatingly blunt, and written c1900.  Happy Mother's Day!

Hurricane Boardwalk

Long Beach, NY -- After The Hurricane on the Atlantic last fall, Sandy, there is no boardwalk here.
But the concrete pylons remain and cast some long shadows. Some windows in the single-family neighborhood are boarded up. Some shrubs seem to have perished in the saltwater flood. The beach is full of sharp glass shards. While I was getting a manicure, one local woman said she's just now having new floors and walls installed, but no kitchen yet.
Happily, the windy salt air still is rejuvenating.

The Purple Iris Sea

Glad it's spring.
The Irises are so healthy this year, they're busting out of the fence. The Jasmine-smelling Gardenia is back outside (now it's supposed to be in the 40s!) And my little pink pinwheels are blooming too. If only I had a place to grow tomatoes ...

Leaving Lincoln Center

Happy Easter - Καλώ Πάσχα

Χριστός Ανέστη ! Resurrection liturgy 10 p.m. - 3 a.m. (half of that finagling a seat.) Broke the fast at Psistaria with margiritsa soup and grilled lamb at 3 a.m. Then got the light all the way home without setting Dad's car on fire - 4 a.m.

The margeritsa soup recipe, which calls for organs, is gamey and soothing, and requires that someone is cooking a whole baby lamb. Trust me: best tasted once per year, and prepared by a distant relative or a restaurateur.

Before Christ, the blood of a sacrificial lamb was used to mark doors so that evil would pass over the house. When at a Greek home, look above the front entrance for the symbol of the new new protector: scorch marks shaped in the sign of the cross, from the Resurrection night candle. More on the Lamb, and roasting lamb on a spit, in today's John Kass column in the Chicago Tribune. (registration required.)

Orthodox Christian Bishops Abducted in Syria, Driver Killed

• Mid-May Update: Still no sign of the bishops. Holy Week and Easter have come and gone.
• Initial news about the kidnapping in Northern Syria.
• Update from the Orthodox Church in America on false report of bishops' release.
• Update from the Christian Science Monitor on false report says, "The French Oeuvre d'Orient Christian association claimed yesterday that Greek Orthodox Bishop Boulos Yazigi and Syriac Orthodox Bishop Yohanna Ibrahim had been freed and returned to Aleppo. But members of Bishop Yazigi's archdiocese told Agence France Presse that they had no evidence of that."

In a Smyrna Mood

"Little Dimitra, go out and eat fish, drink retsina, have a night of high spirits and good health, break things with your hips."
Funny, I roughly accomplished that last Saturday night! The words are, however, from a 100-year-old Rebetika song at minute 42 in this Library of Congress concert vieo of Greek-Turkish Asia Minor Rebetika music.
Unfortunately my mood is a little more somber a week later after seeing the documentary "Smyrna, Destruction of a Cosmopolitan City." It is in select U.S. theaters this month including Quad Cinemas this week in New York.
Accomplished filmmaker-director Maria Iliou tells the story of how the cosmopolitan Asia Minor city of Smyrna, now called Izmir, was destroyedsaby fire as the Allies watched from their ships. Many Smyrniots were murdered and more became refugees. Lost was a place where Greek Christians and Muslim Turks, Armenians, Europeans and Jews Lived together. The Turks blame the Greek Army for the fatal fires that destroyed Smyrna.
The film made excellent use of rare documentary footage.  Giles Milton was among the narrators. He is author of "Paradise Lost, Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of an Christian City in the Islamic World." His book provides witness testimony that Turkish soldiers and irregulars poured kerosene in the Christian quarters of the city before the fire. Also among the narrators: a Turkish anthropologist who describes a firsthand account of how the Greek army burned the nearby Turkish village of Manisa, just before Smyrna burned. War is not pretty.
The New York Times review was on the fence in several ways.
Iliou used a piano-infused soundtrack for the film. But typically Smyrnaika and rebetika music is full of powerful words -- listen to singer Sophia Bilides about loss of homeland, about love and the randomness of fate. (More on Bilides here.)

The Train to Long Beach

Oh cold and ugly concrete jungle! Saltwater air is only two subways and a train away. Took this shot from the train last summer, after a day on a beach that got washed away by The Hurricane.

Gino Macropodio & the Dead Lagoon

That Italian-Greek name is the needle that sews together a great read in this week's New Yorker.
While not stellar writing, there are some hysterical anecdotes that only an American son of privilege could acquire in the ratty waters of Venice.

Highlights:
• "Inmates were dangerously crazy women, not just moody ones."
• Rats, gun-runners ..."fighting certain taxi drivers for the city's cocaine trade .. "
• "Baby Fragola came in fast, blasting techno, holding the collar ..."
• "From the stomach, not the balls!"
• Macropodio "once rowed three miles across the lagoon with six friends to drink 40 bottles of wine. And then rowed back." (Fact checkers missed the math on this!)

Read "Open Water," the tale of "Kekquakea," by Sean Wilsey. Page 40 of the April 22 New Yorker.
More on the Venice pollution and water problems in this BBC article on a temporary Grand Canal boat ban.

Sunset in Astoria

Spring Jazz @ Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola

The Onassis Foundation played host to a jazz show tonight: Dimitri Vassilakis Quartet Daedalus Project.
It was an interesting Jazz at Lincoln Center show: the accomplished Greek-born singer-saxophonist managed to deliver good jazz standards accompanied by sitar, bass, drums and a tap dancer.
Before the show, perched at the very edge of the bar to watch the sun set over Central Park, I started talking to a handsome man in a black shirt named Frank. We chatted about Chicago and segregation. As the lights dimmed and the stage lit up, I realized that my expected companion was a no-show. Frank grabbed a camera and disappeared into the dark.
Later, I discovered I was speaking with none other than Frank Stewart, whose photographs are in many collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He is the senior photographer at Jazz at Lincoln Center and his biography details many adventures.
His photos are the subject of several books and this small gallery of his work online showcases his powerful, beautiful portraits.

Easter Egg Bread

A Sicilian tradition on display at Rose & Joe's Italian Bakery this Sunday morning.
A true local bakery, this place still has Lenten cookies for Greek customers waiting for Orthodox Easter in early May. Someone really needs to unite our calendars.
In the meantime, I will be reading recipes for the "bread" at right and other delicious concoctions on this interesting cooking blog, "The Italian Dish" and its recipe for Italian Easter bread.

Washington McClain Remembered

Washington McClain was a precious soul who defied stereotypes in ways that were truly inspiring, perhaps even radical. But in the most gentle way.

Washington McClain
Credit: www.amherstearlymusic.org

We were honored to consider him a family friend, always overjoyed to receive his prolific emails, and we cherished his deep laugh and big bear hug.
Washington's sudden passing this week at such a young age has left us in shock. 

"Wash" used his gifts to defy what you might expect of a black man who grew up in rural Louisiana in difficult circumstances. He played Baroque oboe in some of the finest period orchestras in North America, including Tafelmusik. (Listen to Wash playing while you read.) He lived in Canada and conducted much of his daily life in French. But he drove regularly to the Indiana University Early Music Institute where he was a music professor.

“Wash told me about his life, which was a miracle,” recalled Ensemble Arion colleague Matthieu Lussier in Musical Toronto. “Somehow he ended up playing baroque oboe. He was the sweetest guy with the roughest childhood. It says something about his force of character and determination.”

Washington traveled the world in pursuit of his music, reconnecting with us in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York - he knew people everywhere and always crashed with friends while touring. He always asked about extended family. He was devoted and made profound connections with many people.
Somewhere along this amazingly independent path, Washington became an Orthodox Christian. We met him when he was learning Greek while pursuing advanced music studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He was an inspiring presence in worship and in choir at Sts. Peter & Paul Greek Orthodox Church in Glenview, Illinois.

“On tour in Athens performing at the Odeon theater at the Acropolis, Wash spoke to the audience in fluent Greek," Tafelmusik music director Jeanne Lamon told Musical Toronto. "And the looks on their faces were priceless."

Wash's Facebook "likes" describe him well: He was "Against Modern Opera" and for J. S. Bach and Romanos the Melodist. He was for President Barack Obama and against Sarah Palin. He liked the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Orthodox Church in America. He liked Battlestar Galactica. He read stories on the Al Jazeera Network. His last post: "Bonne fete, Toni Morrison!!"

Thank you Washington for the chance to play a Bach oboe-flute duet together at a church Christmas music program.
We remember you for your inspiring presence, your gift of language, your gift of music - one recording nominated for a Grammy last year! - and the many lives you touched. A bientot, Washington. Eternal memory dear brother. Eternal memory. Eternal memory!

• Musical Toronto has a fine tribute, a video & details here.
• Indiana University's press release on his passing here.
• Here & below, the Grammy-nominated Handel performance in New York, featuring Washington on oboe quite clearly.
• The Arion Orchestra posted this video tribute to Washington.
• Washington's brothers said on Facebook that tributes may be left here.
• Washington's friend Alison, a fellow woodwind player, wrote a tribute here with sound clips of his oboe playing.

Happy Valentine's Day

Some chipper soul sprinkled sparkly hearts on a sidewalk beneath a train overpass, brightening the morning commute. Lesson here? Don't let your heart fall into the cracks .... because love is there if you look for it.

Photo by Dimitra DeFotis

NY Woman Murdered In Istanbul

The body of 33-year-old New Yorker Sarai Sierra was found near popular tourist haunts in Istanbul, Turkey Saturday.
Reports indicate her body was dumped near the last place she visited, the Galata Bridge, in the neighborhood called Sarayburnu, or Seraglio Point. This area juts out into the Bosphorus and is downhill from  the highway and train tracks that circle Sultanahmet. It's a short distance to Topkapi, Hagia Sofia church-mosque-museum and the Blue Mosque.
Nearby are many small wooden hotels and youth hostels. A tram or a walk across the Galata Bridge connects Sultanahmet with the Beyoglu/Pera/Galata side of the water. The quays on either side are dotted with small restaurants, where you eat fish under canopies as ferries and ships glide past.

A TV report on
Sarai Sierra

CBS news says here those initially "detained were at the scene when the body was found, with Sierra's driver's license, near the Four Seasons Hotel."
The London's Daily Mail quotes Sierra's husband speculating that maybe she got into trouble photographing graffiti. CBS quickly concluded the murder won't disrupt tourist travel to Istanbul. Conveniently, who was paying attention to international news on a Saturday afternoon?
But it is clear that the ramifications of the case were important to Turkish police, who questioned so many -- including two women. Also, a volunteer Turkish organization for missing persons got involved.

UPDATE 2/7: Sarai Sierra's body was turned over, curiously, to an Armenian Church in Beyoglu and her coffin carried through narrow walkways before the return to the U.S. on a free Turkish Airlines flight. Related stories here and here. There is much detail that U.S. media omitted in the English-language Turkish daily Today's Zaman, which writes that police denied the following rumors:

"Pointing to the shadier backstreets of Beyoğlu where Sierra stayed and the side trips she made to Amsterdam and Munich, suspicions that Sierra was a CIA operative, drug trafficker, and so on, have circulated in Turkish media."

Istanbul is a mesmerizing mix of headscarves, mosque calls to prayer, blue sea, ancient Greek sites and an overwhelmingly male sales force at the cash register. A larger issue here is how men view women in a Turkish cultural context. Do Turkish girls and women get encouragement and access to equal education and treatment as boys and men?  Important and shocking observations on that from the New York Times here.
A woman alone in Istanbul remains a curiosity, but it's not uncommon. I've traveled alone in Istanbul. Proprietors were very curious and friendly. Deeper into Turkey, a woman has little clout without a male companion, not to mention a translator.
On one trip, wandering out of Istanbul's Grand Bazaar at the close of business, a young man purchased a  piece of curious-looking melon for me when I asked what it was. He asked about my life, wouldn't take money for the fruit, and moved on. Another man, a jeweler, walked me to my hotel and we chatted in the lobby over tea about the economy and his life; he lived with with his mother.
After days of travel, it seemed the men were unrelenting in hitting on foreign women. One night in Sultanahmet, a guy on the street -- it is always presumed they are hawking a restaurant, hotel, carpets, ceramic trinkets  -- called out to me as I walked toward him: "Are you French, British, American?" With half a block before I got to him, I crossed in the middle of the street to the other side.
"I'm sorry," he finally called out.
I never looked back, and took the tram home, in the dark, to an apartment-hotel with no front desk. Within four blocks, Turkish police armed with machine guns manned a post; transvestite prostitutes hovered in dark corners.
Sarai Sierra, a young mother and aspiring photographer, wasn't so lucky.

Weekend Reading: Burning Trees in Athens, Bombing in Ankara

Some weekend reading about Turkey, Greece and Cyprus, but don't expect good cheer:

This news is deeply disturbing: the Economist reports of multiple attacks on old Christian women in Istanbul in recent weeks. The first reader comment on the Economist piece? A diatribe denying genocide. Relatives of one 85-year-old Armenian murder victim said that the lines of a crucifix had been knifed onto her unclothed body. All of the incidents occurred in Istanbul's Samatya neighborhood, home to 8,000 Armenians and the Armenian Patriarchate. Istanbul's governor insisted in a Tweet that one particular incident was motivated by theft, not hate, which is a prevailing view according to this Catholic News report.  I wrote about Istanbul cemetery vandalism in 2009.

Two weeks ago, a young New York mother and aspiring photographer disappeared in Istanbul while on a solo trip, and it doesn't sound like she met with a good end. She found cheap accommodations on AirBnB.com and the New York Post reported Friday that Istanbul police are detaining a man she agreed to meet on a bridge.

Here is Daily Telegraph coverage of Friday's deadly bombing at the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey.

Over in Greece, poor people desperate for heat are cutting down trees for firewood, and apparently even chopped one tied to Plato. The Atlantic wrote Thursday that the pollution one sees hovering over Athens, "is the smog of austerity. Greece is literally breathing in the fumes of its recession." Make that depression.

Cyprus needs a bailout, in case you have crisis fatigue and ignore financial news. Even if Russians who like to bank in Cyprus chip in some cash, European authorities must step in, says this English-language article in Kathimerini. Complicating matters: hydrocarbons could be exploited off the southern coast, which is the Greek coast, of Cyprus. Seems the northern, Turkish side wants in, but someone forgot to toss a seismic detector into the Mediterranean Sea circa 1974. Until now, valuable discoveries were more along the lines of the icon of Christ that Boy George handed over to Cypriot authorities.

Finally, check out my friend Jim Montalbano's movie review blog. "Once Upon A Time in Anatolia," a  Turkish fictional drama about -- what else? -- death, is one of his favorite films of 2012. The official trailer is here. Looks pretty dark. I watched "The Lark Farm" last weekend - a dramatization of 1915 atrocities in Turkey focused on a wealthy Armenian family that protected poor neighbors. All were sent into a starvation exile and most died. Watch it for actress Arsinee Khanjian's natural looks and to contemplate what would have happened if her daughter had run off with the handsome Turkish soldier - and what happened to those women who pursued such survival tactics. Film available on Netflix.

Just rented Madagascar, whose animated critters promise to lighten things up.

An Armenian Homecoming

A group of Armenian Americans, many of whom lost relatives in the genocide of 1915, traveled to Turkey in 2012, and the Armenian church in America produced this video. The fact that this travel was possible speaks to the possibility that it is safe for Christians and Jews to travel throughout Turkey.

Last Night in a Dream

In a very deep sleep last night, I felt a pain in my heart.
It was the kind you feel briefly when you get sudden, unexpected bad news.
In the Balakian memoir I am reading, (see below), the grandmother tells stories in allegory, and she recites and interprets dreams.
I haven't been recalling nighttime brain wanderings of late. But in a dream last night, I was missing my grandmother who I never knew. In the black-and-white world she inhabits, she looks very proud and unmovable, with a somber, wise smile and a 1920s wave in her dark hair. It's her sweet bread recipe we repeat every Christmas, every Easter.
Recently I said that I can see her, but I wish I could hear her.
And then, in my dream, she sent me a text.
She simply wrote: "I'm here."

See "We Are So Fortunate." 

Balakian Book: Baking Choereg & Fate

In a nod to Armenian Christmas on Sunday, the fates left on my office desk today a book apparently delivered in August - !!! - that was lost in the bowels of our mail room.
It was Peter Balakian's historical memoir that I ordered long ago: "Black Dog of Fate." It starts with a timely description of making a bread called "choereg."
I am amazed that my mom, when I said the word choereg, which I don't recognize and can't quite pronounce, conjured up some Greek: "Of course. Tsourek-i. Our recipe for holiday sweet bread."
Balakian writes of spending an afternoon with his Armenian grandmother, who was born near Turkey but lived in New Jersey. They prepared bread, which helped her tell deeply buried, moving stories:
"To make choereg, we mixed milk and melted butter into a ceramic bowl. I poured [yeast] into a glass measuring cup and watched it fizz. Eggs, sugar, salt, rising agent, and my grandmother poured in the mahleb."
Mahleb, or mahlepi, is a spice that looks like a small nut, but is the essence of a cherry pit, his grandmother explained. Then she quoted the Song of Solomon on spices and praised the merits of memorizing the Bible and prose.
"She sifted flour and we mixed it all with a large wooden spoon until it was dough. Then she scooped the dough out and put it on the flour-glazed bread board. We squeezed and pressed it with our hands. I liked how the wet dough stuck between my fingers. I liked how she took it to another bowl and turned it all over its oiled surface, then covered the bowl with a towel and put it in the unlit oven. It was warm there and free from drafts, and when we opened the oven two hours later, the dough was an airy saffron-colored mound. I loved punching the dough down so that it's porous insides collapsed. We pulled it into pieces and made ropes, braids, and rings."
You can see ours, a vasilopita, but always with mahlepi and sesame.
Perhaps it was again fate, but tonight I also received the latest Columbia Journalism Review offering this feature: "Where Truth Is a Hard Cell: Although Seen as Modern & West Leaning, Turkey leads the World in Jailing Journalists," by Stephen Franklin, a former Chicago Tribune Middle East correspondent.
"The most dangerous problem is self censorship," according to one veteran Turkish editor who's quoted. "You don't even ask questions. And that kills journalism."

A recipe for disaster, not bread, in that case.