Marja-Leena Rathje

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by Marja-Leena

Happy Easter

12:04 am in Culture, Home by Marja-Leena

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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

8 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Easter eggs

6:17 am in Culture, Home, Human, Photoworks by Marja-Leena

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My hand goes out to you, gentle readers, with wishes for a sunny, warm and happy Easter long weekend. Hauskaa Pääsiäistä, Joyeuses Pâques, Frohes Ostern, Happy Easter… if that is a tradition for you.

I like to think of it as a celebration of spring with daffodils and pussywillows and tender new green leaf buds. And of course, Easter eggs! Most of our treasured Easter egg collection has been made over the years by our daughters, especially the youngest. More photos of those Easter eggs: Easter 2006, Easter 2008

I am looking forward to seeing our granddaughters’ plant-dyed eggs, works in progress…

14 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Easter weekend

2:30 am in Culture, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Folk Legends & Myths by Marja-Leena

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spring, rye grass, pussy willows, birch twigs, tissue paper flowers
virpovitsa whisking, children with cowbells
decorated eggs, egg hunt, dancing sun
mämmi porridge, flying witches, begging children

All of the above are a curious blend of Eastern and Western traditions assimilated into the Finnish Easter (expired link, removed).

This year we will miss the annual Easter egg hunt around our house with our granddaughters. Hauskaa Pääsiäistä, Joyeuses Pâques, Frohes Ostern, Happy Easter! Enjoy the long weekend, dear readers.

Related:
Easter 2008
Easter 2007
Easter 2006
Easter 2005

12 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Easter

3:13 pm in Culture, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric by Marja-Leena

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Axis of Ævil* is an interesting blog by an American expat who married a Finn, moved to Helsinki and writes irreverently about life there. Being the Easter weekend, I wish to point out a post called The Fazer Chicken* that really interested me because I’m fond of Fazer, an old and major chocolate, candy and bakery company in Finland. She writes about Fazer’s Mignon eggs, “… are the neatest Easter chocolates ever. These are real eggshells filled with an almond-hazelnut milk chocolate.” Made since 1896, “they are filled by hand, all 2.5 million of them each year”. Visit the links she’s provided to learn more about these wonderful hand-filled Easter eggs. Yum, I’ve had them occasionally a long time ago, wonder where in Vancouver I can find them?

More about Easter in Finland* and Easter cards* one hundred years ago.

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

UPDATE January 2014: *Sigh, all links have gone kaput and have been removed. If interested in Fazer, I suggest a search – quite interesting!

1 Comment »

by Marja-Leena

Easter, Earth, Elections

10:25 am in Canada and BC, Culture, Current Events by Marja-Leena

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Today is Good Friday, Earth Day and the first of several Advance Voting Days for our Canadian national elections on May 2nd.

Husband was visiting his sister on Vancouver Island for a couple of days this week (by bike, Canada Line, bus and ferry of course). It was timely for him – being in Green Party leader Elizabeth May‘s riding, he was able to join his sister in attending a lively all-candidate’s meeting one evening. May is a most amazing, intelligent and energetic woman, many heads above the other party leaders and the incumbent there. We fervently hope this time she wins a much-needed seat in Ottawa! Unfortunately, in our own riding, with our unfair first-past-the-post electoral system, we are having to vote strategically instead of with our hearts in order to try to keep out Harper! I don’t think I’ve ever felt this anxious and worried about an election before.

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It’s a lovely sunny day so we are going for a walk then will putter around outdoors, enjoying it while it lasts, for Easter Sunday may be rainy. No Easter egg hunts in the garden this year without our granddaughters. Daughter Erika was happy to have had an advance one with them when she was visiting them in England recently, accompanied by a visiting wild bunny rabbit in the garden!

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Have a happy long Easter weekend! Hauskaa Pääsiästä!

7 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

hand with Easter eggs

8:49 am in Culture, Current Events, Hands, Home, Photoworks by Marja-Leena

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

This year I’ve decided to repost one of my favourite images of hand coloured eggs as held in my hand, from my series of scans of hands with objects. Should you be interested, you may view other Easter posts via this search.

We will be having a quiet weekend with our youngest daughter. We are looking forward to a FaceTime visit with the other daughters and our granddaughters on Sunday! How about you?

26 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Easter 2012

11:30 am in Culture, Nature, Photoworks by Marja-Leena

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A very cold wet spring this year on Canada’s west/wet coast, with everything late in the garden. Despite the gloomy weather gods, longer days have brought forth bursts of green buds and colourful flowers. I’m so grateful for the rare sunny days, and especially this morning so I could capture a few flowers from outdoors and indoors to grace a festive Easter page here. And to wish everyone a Happy Easter weekend, or whatever you celebrate or not… with peace and joy. Thanks for your friendship!

13 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Easter yellow

1:58 am in Nature, Photoworks by Marja-Leena

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On our walk the other day past the boggy area of our favourite forest park, we found an exceptional group of Swamp Lanterns aka Western Skunk Cabbage. I think the latter name is an insult to the beauty of this plant and it does not smell skunky either. The flower reminds me of the Peace Lily – sure enough, they are both part of the large Arum family. And are not the peace lily and another arum, the calla not often used at Easter?

7 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

a special Easter greeting

5:00 pm in Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Other artists, Rock Art & Archaeology by Marja-Leena

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We received this astonishing Easter greeting this morning from artist friends Loit and Virge Joekalda in Tallinn, Estonia. I’m so in love with it that I asked permission to share it here.

Loit wrote that last fall he made a trip to visit rock art sites in England with Paul Bahn under the guidance of “top rock art researcher and archaeologist Stan Beckensall”. Loit made this frottage (rubbing) of one site in Northumberland. The ‘world’ egg is an amazing touch, isn’t it!?

I’ve mentioned the Joekaldas a number of times. Most recently, three years ago I wrote this:

Tallinn has a special place in my heart. Newer readers may not know that in 2002 I had an exhibition in Finland with two other Canadian artists and friends. We travelled to and around Finland and also Tallinn on the other side of the Gulf of Finland. We fell in love with Tallinn where we met and became friends with artists Loit and Virge Joekalda (whom I’ve mentioned a few times elsewhere on this blog). The Estonians are close cousins to Finns, as part of the Finno-Ugrian group of peoples, so it was thrilling for me to see Loit’s exhibition of frottages and photos from his expeditions to sites of rock art by Finno-Ugrians in Karelia.

More related links:
Our visit to Tallinn and meeting the Joekaldas
Loit’s rock art calendar

I used one of his photos from that calendar in a work of mine: Vyg & Willendorf.
How this came together as a part of my exhibition in 2005

And read about Virge Joekalda

Thank you both, Loit and Virge, for your friendship and amazing influences on my own work!

6 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

the long weekend

9:21 pm in Being an Artist, Culture, Home by Marja-Leena

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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)!

2 Comments »

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