Opa! 2012
Going to the local Greek Festival reminds me that we plain
white folks just don’t have much ethnic culture to preserve. My maternal
ancestors were Jewish. But I didn’t go to Hebrew school in the afternoons to learn
another language and another religious text. We weren’t Irish, so there was none
of that Riverdance foolishness. We
didn’t spend Friday nights at church like my Greek friends learning the
folkloric dances of the Aegean.
But this past Saturday afternoon I sure enough joined
hundreds of other people under a big tent erected at Norfolk’s largest Greek
Orthodox church for their annual festival of Greek food and culture.
Our next door neighbors at our last house were an elderly Greek
couple. They spoke little English, so our communication consisted mostly of the
occasional neighborly wave. Every Christmas, though, Mr. N---- would beckon me
to the fence that separated our yards and hand me a bakery box that looked so
greasy and worn that I wondered if it had traveled all the way from Greece. I
was even a little put off the first year until I opened the box and found a
tasty mix of Greek pastries. I will admit now, years later and when diabetes
prevents me from enjoying such delicacies, that not all of those pastries made
it into the house. And when my wife got hold of what was left in the box there
was nothing left by the next day.
I’m a great fan of people who make an effort to preserve
elements of their ancestral culture. It gives children roots and a sense of
place in the world. As I said, I don’t think of us regular plain white folk as
having any ethnicity to protect. My ancestors came from northeastern England in
the Eighteenth Century. They didn’t get very far from where they landed and
were, in any event, trying to get away from
the home culture. Thank goodness. At least I didn’t have to go to school to
learn Morris dancing.
I
knew the food would be good at the Greek Festival. I even succumbed to a
beautiful Greek woman’s entreaty to buy a little triangle of baklava, which I
really shouldn’t have. A single bite off one corner flooded my body with a buzz
of such sugary sweetness that I can only imagine it must be like one’s first
heroin high. (My doctor needn’t worry, though. I split the baklava with the
eminent artist and fellow sugar avoider Wally Torta. Between the two of us we
ate barely a quarter of that piece of baklava.)
What
I really wanted to see was the dancing. Greece has such spirited and colorful
folkloric dancing. I wanted to photograph the dancing. Specifically, I wanted to
photograph the dancers using a slow shutter speed. We’ve all seen enough Greek
dancers to know what they look like. I wanted something different.
I’m
still working on getting into crowds and getting close to my photographic
subjects. On Saturday I just didn’t have the nerve to push proud parents and
grandparents out of the way while their offspring bounced and bumped across the
stage. I mean, really. They’re the folks who’ve been carting those kids back
and forth to church on Friday nights to learn the dances. So I didn’t get quite
the swirls of color I wanted. Maybe next year.
Yassou!
ReplyDeleteWe were there later in the evening along with half of Norfolk. It is a good thing the food is worth being part of such a crowd.
ReplyDeleteI think you captured it very well--such a dreamy quality to that shot. I'm a big fan of Greek food--we have a festival here at the fairgrounds each year that is a major foodfest and the Greek food is what I'd make a dive after. All that spanikopita and baklava and tzatziki make for some good eating...
ReplyDeleteYour photo reminds me of looking at the glass rods in Murano, as they would blend those rods into the glass itself...nice!