Summer days

Posted on August 2, 2010 by doradueck

MHV windmill

H. and I went to Pioneer Days at the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach today. We’ve been at the Village various times over the years, and it’s always a great way to spend a day. This time, among the “attractions” on offer at Pioneer Days such as demonstrations of spinning, bread baking, blacksmithing and more, yours truly was reading from This Hidden Thing in the site’s Lichtenau Church. (It’s one of two churches at MHW; as curator Roland Sawatzky said, “Any good Mennonite village has to have at least two churches!”) It was good to visit with some folks we know, but also to meet new readers and to know that besides locally, copies of the book are heading to Toronto and to Pennsylvania!

Lichtenau church, where readings and book launches are held. It's the first church built by Mennonites of the 1920s emigration from Russia.

After the reading, it was time to indulge in a waffle with sauce — cooked outside in an old cast iron mould, one-and-a-half minutes per waffle we were told. A waffle fills an entire plate. Then we listened to “3 Mol Plaut,” a group that sings in Low German. I probably understood less than a quarter of what they sang, and got even fewer of the jokes, but H., who grew up with the language, could be heard chuckling throughout. Low German lends itself to any number of plays on words. (Actually, it often sounds amusing to me even when I don’t catch on.) We didn’t stick around for the supper-hour tribute to Elvis, however; not sure how that works in this context!

Last year at this time we were down in Paraguay for the Mennonite World Conference and an extended visit to family in the Chaco, but this summer, except for a quick trip to a nephew’s wedding in Saskatoon last weekend and my few days at a conference in B.C., we’ve been at home. H. had a pleasantly light July, work-wise (he’s a drywall contractor) and it’s been lovely, sitting on the front porch or back deck (depending on the sun), watching the tomatoes ripen, reading, and catching up on home projects. August will be busier for both of us, but what a treat these summer days have been so far. — (Thank You, thank You, thank You!)

Do I golf?

Posted on July 22, 2010 by doradueck

It’s high summer, the Gulf oil spill seems to be capped, so time for something lighter here… a bit of fun. Please note, dear friends and acquaintances, that the following is an amalgam of conversations/experiences over the years; no one should feel recently or personally incriminated! 🙂

It always begins as the most pleasant, the most innocent, of inquiries, asked with so much anticipation, as if the asker and I are about to be fast-tracked into understanding one another perfectly.

“Do you golf?”

I hesitate.

I could say, “Yes, isn’t it wonderful?” and then I’d be inside, I’d be a Someone Who’s Grasped the Good-life Secret.

But where would such subterfuge get me? Next thing I know, we’d be booking a game and the truth would have to come out.

Better to admit it.

“No. No, I don’t golf.”

Following this, disappointment or even pity may hang in the air. (I guess we won’t be tight after all.)

But sometimes the asker’s hopeful enthusiasm is simply re-directed. Attempts to ferret out my reasons and then overcome them begin in earnest. (Many golfers, I’ve noticed, tend to be zealous on the game’s behalf.) Continue reading →

No grand tour

Posted on July 9, 2010 by doradueck

A new postcard slice as header: still Baku in Azerbaijan (on the Caspian Sea) because I want to maintain a connection, roundabout as it may be, to the current oil spill in the Gulf and the shared global sorrow of that.

(The connection is our love affair with oil. By the end of the 19th century, Baku’s fame as the “Black Gold Capital” had spread throughout the world. Between 1897 and 1907 the largest pipeline — 883 km. — at that time was built from Baku to Batum; Baku had more than 3000 wells by 1900. As I mentioned here, the Nobel brothers were the oil tycoons of the region.)

But Baku in colour this time, and a view of The Boulevard and the “baths” at the sea. (It’s not colour photography as such, but was a tinted photo, creating a charming if somewhat surreal effect.)

This is one of 10 cards of Baku in my grandfather’s postcard collection. (See other postcards from his album here and here.)

The Boulevard and baths at Baku

He served as a conscientious objector during World War I, in a provision the Mennonites had won with the Czarist government for non-combatant roles. He worked on the medical trains, transporting the wounded away from the front lines of Russia’s southern front in the Caucasus region. This service gave him an opportunity to see places he might never have seen otherwise. “Never did I dream that I would travel as much as I have done by now,” he said in one letter to his fiancee, Helena.

It sounds almost poignant to hear him continue:

After this time of rest will come a time of work… and when we have then worked for some ten years and God makes it possible for us, then we will travel abroad. The travel route is as follows: out through one of the harbours on the Black Sea, through the Dardenelles into the Mediterranean Sea, not forgetting about Greece and Italy, into the Atlantic Ocean to see the New World, and then on to England, Holland, Norway, Sweden and Germany, and back home to our peaceful home on the steppes of Russia. Are you satisfied with such a route?

Train station at Baku

Poignant because the Russian Revolution intruded into such dreams and it would be decades before the steppes of Russia could be said to be peaceful again. Under those conditions, the grand “tour” never happened. Heinrich and Helena were fortunate enough to travel to the New World as refugees, where they settled on a farm in southern Manitoba.

“It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency,” Penelope Lively said. So for my grandparents, so for the people and creatures at the Gulf.

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Next week — Monday to Wednesday — I’ll be attending RIM (Renewing Identity and Mission), a consultation at Trinity Western University, consisting of some 30 presentations, taking place before the Mennonite Brethren Celebration 2010 event. I’m looking forward to it, and also to sharing bits of it later, here at Borrowing Bones.