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by Marja-Leena

Happy 139th birthday, Canada!

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On this Canada Day, we have pomp and ceremony in Ottawa, parades, musicals events and fireworks in many communities and many vacationers at cottages and campgrounds. We’re at home awaiting family guests, some from the US too. The weather is too hot, body and brain feel mushy, so I leave you with a few links to peruse about Canada.
About Canada’s national anthem
How Canada got its name
Garry Gaudet’s irreverent look at our marriage of convenience with US , who is also celebrating a birthday on July 4th.
“some sobering reading for both Canadian and American alike on this holiday weekend” by Thunder Bay, Ontario blogger Peter.
LATER: Erika writes about a special CBC-TV documentary: The Canadian Guitar. I forgot about that, so thanks for the reminder, Erika.
Guess what language this Canadian anthem is – thanks to mirabilis.

July 1, 2006 in Canada and BC, Culture, History by Marja-Leena 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

midsummer dreams

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Photo: stonehenge.co.uk

If I were in Finland right now, I’d be celebrating Juhannus at someone’s summer cottage by a bonfire next to the water.
Many Finns start their summer holidays this week.
I remember one year celebrating ‘midsommer’ first in Denmark, then in Sweden and at last in Finland!
If I were in Lapland* or the Yukon I’d stay up all night watching the sun never set.
If I were in England, I’d be at Stonehenge for the pagan ritual of watching the sun rise through the alignment of the standing stones.
If I could I would make the summer solstice a holiday in Canada too (another northern nation), so we can all mark the passage of the seasons and the ancient rituals of our ancestors, thus capturing a little of the magic of the past.
But I can and do wish everyone a happy summer solstice! Hauskaa Juhannusta!

(* expired link, thus removed)

June 21, 2006 in Culture, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric by Marja-Leena | Tags: ,
7 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Dad’s day

Happy Father’s Day to all dads out there! Happy Father’s Day to the father of our children!

I can’t think of anything better than reposting this wonderful poem written by our eldest daughter and designed by our youngest for their father two years ago on Father’s Day.

Click on image to view larger.
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Poem © Anita Rathje
Design © Erika Rathje

June 18, 2006 in Culture, Other artists by Marja-Leena 4 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Arts news in Canada

Fairly new on my daily net reading list is the excellent Arts News Canada*, “a digest of national arts news collected from Canadian sources and updated every weekday”. An exciting item today is about Montreal’s designation as City of Design by UNESCO. In addition to the arts news, on the right side is a long list of very useful arts and culture links.

Furthering the arts theme and providing for an attractive page is the presentation of an image of a work of art by a featured Canadian artist. This changes daily, rotating through the submitted works. There’s a generous offer, free to any visual artist living and working in Canada, to have samples of work posted here. Just submit images according to the submission guidelines*. Recently, I submitted an image for a start, and I’ve just learned that it will appear tomorrow. Now I must send in a few more images.

Founder and editor Marianne Lepa deserves a huge thank you from the Canadian arts community for this great service!

Edited 3Jan2014: noticed that I had forgotten to note that Arts New Canada retired some years ago. Links removed.

May 23, 2006 in Being an Artist, Culture, Other artists by Marja-Leena Comments Off on Arts news in Canada

by Marja-Leena

Victoria Day

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We’ve just had a long weekend here in Canada. Victoria Day is a Canadian Statutory Holiday celebrated on the Monday on or before May 24 in honour of both Queen Victoria’s birthday and the current reigning Canadian Sovereign’s birthday. While Victoria Day is often thought of as a purely Canadian event, it is also celebrated in some parts of Scotland where it is also a public holiday.

And what did we do? Lots of puttering about the home front, mainly gardening until the rains came to give us and the parched plants some relief from last week’s heat, then a much-needed start at clearing out husband’s cluttered and sawdusty workshop so that it can at last be finished properly with drywall and storage cupboards. Not a holiday per se… Looking at the archives, I was reminded that we were working pretty hard two years ago. Do you see a pattern here?

May 22, 2006 in Canada and BC, Culture, Home by Marja-Leena 5 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Mother’s Day birthday

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A very happy and beautiful Mother’s Day to all moms and their families!
Mukavaa ja kaunista äitienpäivää kaikille äideille ja perheille!

The weather is glorious here this weekend. Our three daughters, two granddaughters and partners are gathering here Sunday afternoon for backyard play, a BBQ and a cake to celebrate a very unusual Mother’s Day. Youngest daughter Erika was a special Mother’s Day gift 21 years ago (actually on May 12th, which was Mother’s Day then). So, Happy Birthday to our baby!

Have a peek at Mother’s Day 2005 which includes a powerful Mother’s Day Proclamation, plus more about Mother’s Day at Wikipedia.

May 13, 2006 in Culture, Home by Marja-Leena 6 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Happy Walpurgisnacht

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“Ah, it’s May Eve”, I wrote last year, “Almost anywhere else on the planet this would not be so very significant, but in Finland it means “Vappu”, a kind of Finnish “Mardi Gras meets the Rite of Spring”, with some historical political overtones and a strong youth and student flavouring. With the time difference, the party has been underway for awhile and will carry on into May Day tomorrow”.

I’m not sure if other European countries make this an official holiday, but In Finland it’s a long weekend, with the spring carnival-like celebrations starting the eve of Vappu, May Day, or Walpurgisnacht and continuing into May Day tomorrow.

Because I came to Canada as a young child, I don’t remember the Vappu celebrations in Finland but did hear the stories. Here in Canada, May Day is not a significant holiday, but our very small Finnish community had our own family-centred celebrations based around the traditional food and drink, especially sima and tippaleipää. The recipes at this link look similar to the ones my mother used.

My mother made sima (pronounced see-mah) for Vappu and even much of the summer, for it’s like a sparkling lemonade suitable for the whole family. It’s low in alcohol, with only a smidge of yeast for fermenting. Raisins are added to the fermenting sugar and lemon mixture, when they rise to the surface the sima is ready. As a child I was always fascinated watching the raisins begin to float to the surface, and enjoyed these swollen fruits along with the delicious drink.

Tippaleipä (literally translated as drip bread) is similar to doughnuts but crispier because the batter is dripped into hot oil in circles to create a nest. Yum! I think it’s been decades since I’ve had sima and tippaleipää but I still remember the tastes – the taste of childhood memories.

Hauskaa Vappua, Happy May Day, Happy Walpurgisnacht! Bonne Fête du Muguet! (the reason for the photo of our just-opening lily- of-the-valley)

PS. I’ve been hoping someone would blog about May Day as International Worker’s Day – Dave at Via Negativa has written an excellent one, while baking bread!

April 30, 2006 in Culture, Current Events, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric by Marja-Leena 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

the long weekend

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It’s Easter Sunday evening here and I now have time to pause and think. Some spring cleaning chores done, this morning we enjoyed the visit of our middle daughter’s family. Babe is five months old today and she keenly watched her big sister gleefully hunt for Easter eggs hidden in potted plants, pillows and bookshelves. (It was raining outside!) We all shared in the goodies, plastic eggs we’d filled with dried fruits and nuts with some sugar-free dark (milk-free) chocolate squares. (Do you think I could find Easter chocolates without milk?! Hey chocolatiers – there’s a whole market of health and allergy conscious parents out there!)

Did anyone notice that this blog and my email were down from Saturday evening until this afternoon? My apologies! Our cable company said they couldn’t get anyone out here until Thursday because of the long weekend. Not happy with this, husband spent the afternoon trying to get our internet service back. He found that the modem, which the cable company figured was broke, was okay. He checked for breaks in the wires in the crawl space under the house. The outside cables from the telephone line to the house also looked okay – these had been replaced a couple of years ago when we switched companies because they were badly chewed up by squirrels!

Well, the problem was in the splitter attached to the outside of the house. Husband switched the internet and television cables – bingo! We have internet again though it’s slow, but no TV, which is not a big loss for us infrequent viewers. We can wait until Thursday.

Tomorrow is the big day at our house. We are hosting a pot luck lunch for the printmakers in the studio and several in the community. It is our opportunity to come together for some social cheer and to wish Tae-Huk Kim, our artist-in-residence many thanks for his friendship and generosity in sharing his knowledge of Japanese woodblock printmaking. Kim, thank you, bon voyage and good luck as you return to Korea!

Dear readers, I hope you are all having a great Easter and Spring weekend (without technical hazzles)!

April 16, 2006 in Being an Artist, Culture, Home by Marja-Leena 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Happy Easter

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I’ve just put our treasured collection of Easter eggs on display. Most of these lovely eggs have been made over the years by our youngest daughter. I decided to photograph them and post them here because I was so inspired by Finnish blogger blogisisko’s photos of her very unique international collection of Easter eggs, some exquisite wood and marble ones and contemporary ones. Also a link to Fabergé brings back memories of seeing these in a lovely exhibition many years ago in a New Orleans museum, I think it was.

As with many of our religious holidays, Easter has elements of old pagan practises. There seems to be some uncertainty to the sources of some traditions like the giving of eggs at spring festivals. This “was not restricted to Germanic peoples and could be found among the Persians, Romans, Jews and the Armenians. They were a widespread symbol of rebirth and resurrection and thus might have been adopted from any number of sources.”

Read more interesting information about Easter at Wikipedia, also in Finnish.

Easter in Finland* mentions a traditional Easter dish called mämmi – I remember my mother making it – it tasted delicious even if it did not look pretty.

Spring is here with the tulips, magnolias, camellias and other spring flowers in full glory. The weather has caved into cold and rainy, so we are hoping for sunshine so we can hide the Easter eggs in the garden for our grand-daughter to hunt. Now, dear readers, I wish you all a sunny, warm and wonderful Easter long weekend.

Hauskaa Pääsiäistä, Joyeuses Pâques, Frohes Ostern, Happy Easter!

Update: Some not-to-be-missed Easter posts at mirabilis: Ukrainian Easter traditions and the rabbit of Easter. Or is it bells?

Update: April 23rd, 2006: A little late for this year, but I want to save this for the archives: Ukrainian easter eggs-pysanky

*expired link has been removed

April 14, 2006 in Culture, Home by Marja-Leena 8 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

April First

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“It’s snowing”, he whispered into my ear. My eyes opened instantly, then I remembered…

The maple syrup’s full of ants. A mouse is creeping on the shelf. Is that a spider on your back? I ate the whole pie by myself. The kitchen sink just overflowed. A flash flood washed away the school. I threw your blanket in the trash. I never lie. APRIL FOOL!

– Myra Cohn Livingston
– Happy April Fool’s Day
– Hauskaa Aprillinpäivää

Have you heard about these major April Fools’ hoaxes?

April 1, 2006 in Culture by Marja-Leena 2 Comments »

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