Come with me to: CARDO

The top picture to this entry is an ancient map of Jerusalem,
Madaba Map found in 1897 in Jordan.

A few weeks ago I did the Come with me to: Yemin Moshe and today tour is to Cardo in the Old City of Jerusalem. Hold on to your water bottles and let’s do some more stepping on these zillions of stairs that there are in this city!

In ancient Roman city planning, a CARDO or cardus was a north-south-oriented street in cities, military camps, and coloniae. Sometimes called the Cardus Maximus, the cardo served as the center of economic life. The street was lined with shops, merchants, and vendors. The Cardo in the Old City of Jerusalem is one good example. After the Jewish rebellion of 70 was crushed by Titus’ troops, Jerusalem was refounded as Colonia Aelia Capitolina and its new city plan featured a long colonnaded cardo running from north to south, date from the time of Emperor Justinian in the 6th century. The cardo is still a street in modern Jerusalem.

Most Roman cities also had a Decumanus Maximus, an east-west street that served as a secondary main street. Due to varying geography, in some cities the decumanus is the main street and the cardo is secondary, but in general the cardus maximus served as the primary road. The Forum was normally located at the intersection of the Decumanus and the Cardo.

Aelia Capitolina (Latin in full: Colonia Aelia Capitolina) was a city built by the emperor Hadrian in the year 131, and occupied by a Roman colony, on the site of Jerusalem, which was in ruins when he visited his dominion known as Syria Palæstina.“Aelia” came from Hadrian’s nomen gentile, Aelius, while “Capitolina” meant that the new city was dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus, to whom a temple was built on the site of the Jewish temple. A Roman colonia (plural coloniae) was originally a Roman outpost established in conquered territory to secure it. Eventually, however, the term came to denote the highest status of Roman city,

The establishment of Aelia Capitolina resulted in the failed Bar Kokhba’s revolt of 132-135. Jews were forbidden to live in the city. Roman enforcement of this prohibition continued through the fourth century. The city was without walls, protected by a light garrison of the Tenth Legion, during the Late Roman Period. The detachment at Jerusalem, which apparently encamped all over the city’s western hill, was responsible for preventing Jews from returning to the city.

The urban plan of Aelia Capitolina was that of a typical Roman town wherein main thoroughfares crisscrossed the urban grid lengthwise and widthwise. The original thoroughfare, flanked by rows of columns and shops, was about 73 feet (22 meters) wide (roughly the equivalent of a present-day six lane highway). The Hadrianic Cardo Maximus of Aelia terminated somewhere in the area of the present David Street

Wonder what was for sale in this stall?! Maybe spices… What do you think?

The style of the column is the Corinthian which was developed in the Greek city of Corinth. It was much used by the Romans for its showiness. The Corinthian style is an imitation of ’the slenderness of a maiden.” (According to the Roman author Vitruvius)

Mighty row of columns, I say!

This photograph is looking back at the Menora and the ancient covered part of the Cardo which is left as it was found, more or less.

This is the side entrance into the modern part of the Cardo
which is covered over, and it is full of the most fancy shops.
My favourite place for shopping in Jerusalem, actually.

YOU MADE IT!
Great. So very lovely to have
Your company on this tour.

Tis for now Rii xx

PS Most of the iNFO: Wikipedia
© Photos: By Riihele. All rights reserved.
Top picture: Wikipedia

Irish Humour: BALANCED!

“Despite my privileged upbringing, I’m quite well-balanced. I have a chip on both shoulders.”

Russel Crowe in “A Beautiful Mind”

In Ireland the joke is made about “The well balanced Irishman : a chip on both shoulders.”

”The saying originated during the nineteenth century in the United States, where people wanting a physical fight would carry a chip of wood on their shoulder, daring others to knock it off. Printed citations of this include the Long Island Telegraph, a New York newspaper, which on May 20th, 1830, printed “When two churlish boys were determined to fight, a chip would be placed on the shoulder of one, and the other demanded to knock it off at his peril.” (Wikipedia)

The Translators Workplace site online gives a most excellent explanation on this saying:

English term or phrase:having a chip on both shoulders
English translation:being ‘balanced’ by having not just one peculiarity

”To have a chip on the shoulder is to have a sensitivity or weakness – often used to mean a bit of an inferiority complex – i.e. someone with a chip on his shoulder isn’t a completely balanced personality (but then who is?). The writer is saying humorously that he has a chip on both shoulders and therefore IS a well-balanced person. ”
(Armorel Young )

The Wikipedia online gives a surprising warning on the use of this, methinks:

”The Wikipedia reader, especially from the UK, should note a “health warning” applied to such comments. Such humour can be, allegedly, more “throw away” in the UK. In Ireland it is quite aggressive satire, even if delivered gently. For that reason, foreigners would be wiser not to make such a remark themselves. Ireland is a far more serious place than visitors may think, and that applies to its humour too.”

In fact, it was a very commonly used expression in our circle in Ireland and most often used by a person exactly like in the film ‘A Beautiful Mind.”

Tis for now. Rii xx

PS.
The picture is off the net with me makeover on the same! So take your pick on the chips…!!

CARTOON: Undelivered e-mails




Undelivered e-mail by Dave

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

 

YUP – the Cyber Monster ate my fabulous entry on my other site and I was too peeved to re-do the same*, so here is what came to my mind after it happened. I think that it is one of the teeny ones floating around the North Pole, actually

 

Tis for now. Rii xx
* Yes, I do copy the entries onto MS Works…

PS.

“Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is the world’s largest satellite earth receiving station, located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the Lizard peninsula. There are over 60 communications dishes, 25 of which are in use, providing a significant proportion of the UK’s satellite connectivity. The site also links into undersea cable lines.

The first communications dish was Antenna One, otherwise known as Arthur, and was built in 1962 to link with Telstar. It was the first open parabolic design and received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States. Many of the dishes are named after characters from Cornish legends. The largest dish, Merlin, has a 32 metre diameter. Other dishes are Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde.

Although the earth station is powered from the national grid, the site has large diesel generators to provide indefinite backup power in the event of a national grid outage. The satellite dishes at Goonhilly are directed at every continent, and almost all international news travels to and from Britain via the huge discs.

Goonhilly simultaneously handles millions of international phone calls, emails, and TV broadcasts, as it is able to transmit to every corner of the globe through space or through undersea fibre optic cables…”

Clan Gathers & Gatherings

”The lack of emotional security of our American* young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit.
No two people – no mere father and mother – as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel (1932)
Nobel Prize in Literature (1938)

It has been both fashionable and popular to have these meetings of people related to one another in Finland, and our clan, for example, has been having these gatherings for over twenty years, but for me the Clan Gathering of summer 2004 was my first ever. It was amazing to be together with about 100 plus of one’s own flesh and blood! Our clan is much, much larger than that and spread all over the globe. This number – 100 of those present – is really only chicken feed compared to ALL the relatives that belong to our clan, although for whatever reason they did not come to the gathering in Lapland, nor to the latest gathering we had last weekend in the Northern Finland. The Clan Gathering of 2004 was in our home village of Ylitornio, Lapland, and this year it was not as far north.

The photo was taken in the middle of the night and I think it was about or after midnight. It was so bright with the sun still not gone to bed. The sun does not go-to-bed there for several weeks over the summer months. It is also hard for the humans to hit the sack, as it is simply too sunny right through the night to even feel tired. It was so exiting to be back in our home territory, where we were born and where we grew up. You might be aware of this, that Lapland is called the Land of the Midnight Sun. Yes, all of Finland is claiming that title, as a matter of fact, though not quite so! SORRY, Suomi !! That is Finland in Finnish.

I have posted this photograph as my very first photograph in my very first blog, because this is where my story began all those years ago. My younger sister took it in Ylitornio, the place where I was born and where I grew up ’til I was eleven years old. Or should I say, as it says, in my passport, though in fact, I was born in a town nearby called, Tornio. The area in Lapland , where these places are situated, is right at the Swedish border. It is said to be the most peaceful border on the globe. There is great action happening across the Väylä – the Tornio River- that separates the villages of Finnish Ylitornio and the Swedish side of the village called – Övertorneå .

I have been back since the move from Lapland in Ylitornio a good few times and one of the times we stayed in a cottage of a resort there for a spring holiday. I had thought that I had forgotten how to ski with no chance to ski in other countries I had lived in – but on that break, I realized that what one learns while young, stays in the noggin well! I did enjoy the skiing at that time, for I used to dislike the skiing at school because it was terrible to nearly kill oneself with all that exercise and then after showering, having to go into the class! Phew. I would have loved to be able to just chill and do après ski…

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family:
Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
Jane Howard

The following visit there was not until this Clan Gathering our clan had there in the summer of 2004. It was the most interesting time to meet so many of the cousins and the other relatives that I had even never seen before. The emphasis of that gathering was on our branch of the clan – that is my maternal granddad. Our locally living cousins had prepared a most detailed and varied programme to take in as much as possible of the life and happenings of his life into it.

It was brilliant, ooh so marvellous, to hear my first language and old dialect – Meän kieli – again after all these years! We did not call that dialect with that name while living in there, it was only known then as “to speak with the letter H” or something like that. Only recently have I heard that new name for the language. Our cousins used it with relish in their guiding the party all around Ylitornio and Tornio, – on the Finnish side of the river, and Haparanda and Övertorneå – on the Swedish side of the River Tornio. We had a delicious dinner in Aavasaksa and a tour of the site and plenty of photographs were taken there. It is a most wonderful feeling to be part of a family, a clan and people that have common roots and common blood. Yes, it does give one a marvellous sense of security of belonging and not being an alien in an alien land nor a stranger in a strange country!

I was told by one of my slightly older cousins that I used to speak, as he put it – a colourful language – when I was small!! That means that I was effing and blinding** as the Irish say, like a twenty-stone dock worker. This cousin reminded me of an incident that happened when I was six-years old: our Granny had given us cousins, about ten to fifteen of us, just a few pence to buy sweets. All the other grandchildren of hers were overwhelmed with thankfulness, except me.***

In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past,
bridge to our future.
Alex Haley
Tis for now – Riihele xx.

* I would say: The whole Western world, and not just America!

** = cursing and swearing
*** What I did state after receiving that morsel of a pocket money from poor Granny was:

“One cannot even buy s**t with this!!” We, as in my siblings and I, were used to receiving much bigger pocket monies. So, knowing what one could get with money …. My, my what a brat!! I remember that our usually so patient and kind to me Granny went ballistic and just screamed for help to the other grown-ups.

Sound as a Bell & Other Irishisms

 

Photo: Still Life in Powerscourt Demesne, Ireland by Riihele.

“The most obvious trait, or should I say, the most prominent characteristic of an Irishman/ -woman is their absolutely delicious wit. It shines through everything and anything that is done in the country.” – I wrote that in an earlier entry called, The Emerald Isle -The Wit which I did in April. And I continued to say this:

“The Irish are quick as a flash in inventing brilliant nicknames and the like. There is a statue in a street in Dublin called ‘The Molly Malone’ of the famous ballad. Her nickname is ‘The Tart with the Cart’ – because the poor girl has a rather too low-cut outfit on her! She is the one with the ‘cockles and mussels…’

Also, there was prior to the Spike another statue on that spot called ‘Anna Livia‘ – another name for the River Liffey. Her less flattering nickname was: ‘The Floozie in the Jacuzzi’ as she was sitting there with all the water pouring over her in the torrents and streams!”

IRISHISMS -The Way that the Irish Express Tings

Irishism	Example	Meaning
Sound as a bell	She is sound as a bell!	She is a great person.
Effin	Effin n blindin	To curse/to swear
Eejit	Ya big Eejit!	You are a fool/you’re silly
Shindig	Goin for a shindig.	Go to a dance hall/disco
Off your face	She was off her face.	She was tipsy, pickled.(slightly drunk)
How ‘ ya	How’ya Mick?	How are you, Mick?
Craic	Craic and banterIt was craic.	To have fun. It was fun.
Yer wan, yer man	Yer man said …	Person about whom you are talking about to another.
Jammer, banger	His jammer, his banger	His car(not the latest model)
Jammers	The place was jammers.	The place was full.

I place and have always placed a great value for the sense of humour in persons since childhood so to me it is an added bonus to be in situations of a howling comedy with all its multiple sides of tragedy and comedy to it.The bitter-sweet of life. The humour is the spice of life and a great medicine in times of great joy and at all times.

I see:

‘The sense of humour as a parachute that makes the landing softer in all the turns and trials of the life and the living.‘

(My very own saying, by the way.)

Tis for now yet again. Riihele xx.

Marriage Business

“Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make me a match,
Find me a find, catch me a catch
Matchmaker, Matchmaker Look through your book,
And make me a perfect match…”

Fiddler on the Roof
words by: Lyrics and Songs.com

Tis the trick, indeed. I think that the most frustrating and difficult part of relationships is that with each one every time, one must begin from the very beginning. What do I mean? The persons A-Z only becomes familiar sphere as one goes along. There is no short cut to happiness; no matter what is said in the films and novels of all kinds and sorts.

The title is rather astonishing that I have put in this posting, eh? Yes, twas for me as well when I first came across this very title by Patrick Kavanagh, Irish poet (1904-1967), who is, after Yeats, considered the second most important poet in Ireland. Kavanagh wrote some amazingly sharp and witty stuff in his time. Here is the part where the title is mentioned:

“Economics is the key to the marriage business, and in no place more so than in Romantic America.”

He said this in “The Marriage Market” (p.90) Here is more of another article on the same lines:

“The romantic method is amusing enough, if one doesn’t believe too much in it. The cinema has encouraged somewhat simple folk to take it seriously and to ignore the hard reality that lies behind the marriage business.”

 

(The Kavanagh’s Weekly, 14 June 1952)

He was not an old tired cynic even though one could get that impression reading the lines quoted here at first. I have read some of the most moving poetry that has touched me very deeply by this poet. Kavanagh is only putting a thought that is factual out to the masses being led down the wrong garden path through the media, especially, leading them to ignore the hard facts about being married/in relationship of a closer encounter.

I read about this couple who had been married for eighty years – yes, 8-O) and found it rather amusing what each gave as the reason, the explanation, for this record long-lasting marriage of theirs:

She: ” One must be very quick to forgive”

He: ” I just say: Yes, Dear.”

Here is a snippet of CBS News online article on this hardy couple:

“Percy and Florence Arrowsmith, who celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary Wednesday, say the secrets of the world’s longest marriage are don’t sleep on an argument, always share a kiss and hold hands before going to bed. Percy Arrowsmith, 105, and his 100-year-old wife were married on June 1, 1925.”

Even the Queen called this record time ‘a splendid achievement’ – so tis. He has since died. In the link where there is a Marriage Quizz that opens up to another window which is really interesting to do. Also, there is an article about one of most common battles between the couples: money.

What thoughts come to Your mind reading this posting of mine today?

Tis for now. Riihele xx.

PS.
The picture is taken off my excellent collection of socks for each and every occasion
photographed and made over by me.

My HOME Is Where My HEART Is

Sometimes it does feel like this picture*
that we are looking from the outside in…

‘My Home is where My Heart is.’ Tis for me, for after living in many countries and cultures, it really has been the only way to survive to an extent. Lapland is the country and place where I always say that I am from, more so than from Finland, actually.

It is easy-peasy to move from A to B geographically ‘in body’ with our suitcases of clothes and whatnot, but it takes a long long time for our mind, attitude, emotions, thinking and heart to follow!! It applies to within one’s own land as well moving from one part of the land to another, of course.

Tis my own experience moving from country to country and culture to culture, and also moving from Lapland where I was born and where I grew up to other parts of Finland; so I have learned to give myself time, space and place to adjust in peace to the new or as is now the case, back to the ‘old’ for as you know, I am back in Finland presently – for how long do not know, yet.

It all takes its time. Period.

Happiest, as in the most fulfilled personally, is the immigrant/emigrant who has learned to take the best of both – or all as the case may be – countries and cultures one left and combine them with the new, so that this becomes such an added richness into one’s life in every way possible which is priceless, methinks.

It is perfectly normal and ‘within the norm’ to feel like the way you do at present over there as an alien in an alien land.

To be ‘processed’ into the new and to personally process the new strange land: its language, its culture, its landscape, its people, its media, its sense of humour, et cetera; Yes, it is a process and rather painful at times, I think.

BUT SO MUCH WORTH IT!

The crux of the matter will be again when and if you change back to where you came from or to another culture and country – the same process will be repeated… Not a bad thing at all, at all, for it makes us take stock of our own values, life & living and ‘the very being of our person’ that is you and that is me.

Now when I am back here in Finland – well – it has not been easy to settle back in here. The hardest thing to me is the weather. It being more on the freezer style than anything else! But I am determined to make the best of this situation, this clime, and all the things that it is now to a strength. It is not Finland per se that makes it difficult to settle in; it is life. Life, in every country and culture has things that take their time to get into the gear, to get used to and to be familiar.

That is why I am patient, I am giving myself time to adjust, to ingest all that is here and now. It is the only way, I have learned. It can take years to become somewhat ‘in’ in the things in the new culture and life. It is not usually an instant happening; though, one can feel that instance nearly immediately arriving in some place. That is the way I felt in Israel, I had absolutely no culture shock, no feeling of being an alien, not a thing. I just jumped in and ‘BINGO’ – I was at home! 

It is one’s own attitude to everything – even to oneself that matters.

Tis for now. Rii xx

PS.
You know what the greatest shock was in Ireland for me and the next one to it?!

That it was SOOO C-O-L-D in Ireland INSIDE the houses and that the coffee was soooo BAD! Real bad as in AWFUL then when I arrived there in 1980! Now it has improved.

* The photo is by me taken in Ireland summer 2006.

STILL LIFE: GOLDEN ROSES

This is another entry in my series of STILL LIFE Photos.
I took the shot in the King David Hotel ladies room
in Jerusalem last May,
and it came out quite all right, methinks!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND YE ALL. Rii xx

STILL LIFE: Rose in a Vase

STILL LIFE: Room with a View

© Photos: By Riihele. All rights reserved.

Twelfth of July

I put this bridge as a symbol to bridge the two communities in Ireland.*

Today is the day, The Twelfth of July celebrations Northern Ireland, when the memories from long, long times past are stirred up; mostly in hatred and anger. Yes, it is the day to remember the Battle of the Boyne which took place in 1690. The battle was between the Protestant Prince William of Orange and the Catholic King James II; William of Orange took the victory. Here is a link to the official site of the Battle of the Boyne. Much of the hatred that has had an effect to the present times stems from this very event.

When my daughters were still in the primary education in Ireland, we had this school run with some other parents and one time it was our turn to collect the kids from their homes bringing them all to the school. So, there we are in our thoughts – morning sleepy, you see – when this little girl pipes up and says:

“My mum is a Catholic and my dad is a Protestant.”

And then she is waiting for the response from my girls. But nothing came, because my daughters did not know what it meant to be a Catholic or a Protestant! They had never heard about it before this in their short lives and they did not know what it meant. The event passed uncommented by any of us except for an ‘I see’ from me at the time until later on, when the girls wanted to know ‘What did she mean?’

My in-laws and himself were of Anglo-Irish background deeply rooted in the Protestantism and yet very deeply rooted in their Irishness as well. They were and are first and foremost Irish in their own eyes and thinking. (I will get into this deeper another time.) The Northern Irish Protestants see themselves, normally, first and foremost, as British, and that is where there is this vast gulf between them and the Catholics who see themselves as Irish. There is also an abyss of differences between the Protestants of the North and the South because of the fact that the southern Protestants see themselves to be Irish and the northerners to be British.

These parades and commemorations of things long past on both sides add extra fuel to the volatile situation that at times boils over. The Twelfth of July is the prime example of this; every year we became suddenly aware that the date must upon us, when the South started to get filled with northerners wanting to escape the tension and the hatred stirred up.

Tis for now. Rii xx

* I took the photograph in the Japanese Gardens in the Powerscourt Demesne, Enniskerry, Ireland.

Game Over: Football

I put the ‘Nokia Connecting People’-thing – this a photograph that my elder sister took while in Vienna last autumn which I just took a chunk of –  in here because the populace of the earth: the old, the young, the haves, the have-nots, friendly nations, foe nations; all have been united under the umbrella, or should I say, under the shadow of a circle-shaped object called the football.

Read in my daily newspaper here in Finland, that there was a man in China who was so engrossed in the France – Spain game during the World Cup 2006, that even though his house burned down around him, he paid no attention to whatsoever to his wife’s neither his baby’s survival never mind to the earthly possessions they had, as all he did was to grab the television set outside and plug into the nearest socket in order to continue watching the said match!! Mind-boggling, so tis.

I do wonder what the man’s reaction was after the game was over if the reality of it all finally sank into his football-crazy head. Also, I’d like to know if it was the team that he was rooting for that did win in the end of the match he so wholeheartedly followed! For sure, it’d be double the disappointment if not only the house & goods burned down to cinders but his team went down as well. Could be too much to handle in one go.

Football is a great game, I think. So do not think that I am against the sport in any way. Nope. Well, let me tell you – I played football in the boys’ team where only the ones who could play were invited to play! I was the only girl they approved to play ’til I asked if my younger sister could join as well. The boys comment to that was:

“Well, does she know HOW TO play?”

“Of course”, I said not really knowing but trusting me blister to be as good as me trust on her!!

I watched the finals of the World Cup 2006 – I was on the French side, by the way. Now that I ponder it, it was great that Italy won as they have not won it since 1982, so I will gladly grant the victory to them. Brazil would have been my Numero Uno choice to win but but…

The one game that kept me perked up all through it at the World Cup Games last year, was the game of Holland versa Ivory Coast; my eyes did not shut in sleepiness or heaviness of boredom once! It was the most masterly and skilfully played of the games in my mind. Some of the games had the sleeping-pill effect on me – I was sound asleep before I knew. Delicious sleep, may I tell you, and didn’t dream of football.

So in the year 2010 it shall be South Africa that the World Cup in football shall be played in next time. Läcka – “right on” –  in Afrikaans slang.

Tis for now. Riihele xx.

PS.
Going back to the winners of the World Cup 2006 what can one expect of a country that is shaped like a boot but to win?!!