16 June
I had no idea what good DJs my friends would make. Thanks for all the food and color song suggestions. Some of my favorites were the camp songs which, alas, have not made it on to Limewire. Charlie Deaton, would you take care of that, please? At any rate, I now have plenty for my English courses. I will let you know how the students like them.
One tiny glass of red wine last night in the garden, along with a mini Slovak language lesson--you buy produce at the ovoce a zelenina in CZ (pronounced OH VO TSAY ah zell uh nee nuh) but the Slovaks contract it to Zelevoce--produced a new English word--fruigetables (FROO juh tuh bullz), which is what you buy at the Garden Spot. I put a great many of them into a huge composed salad with the Supalkovi's first experience of French vinaigrette for dinner Thursday night. Betty accompanied it with thick slices of rye bread french toast coated with grated eidam cheese.
Last summer's readers may recall Betty and Jerry, an American couple with cousins in this area. Libor translates and interprets for them while they are here ancestor searching. One of their cousins or other family connections named Jiri (YEER zhee) Horak has a wonderful photographic exhibition at the art gallery in Hodonin. They are black and white shots taken in Croatia and Bulgaria. All are perfectly composed though very natural shots--many of children and of people with dogs--and all showing things like exotic looking cobbled streets. All his subjects have a rather third world sense of fashion but that makes them way cooler--the whole idea of complete other lives that never have a care about what matches or what sags.
Though, speaking of matching, I have a new pair of $2 Birk style orange sandals to match my fetching WalMart t-shirt and skirt purchased especially for ease of wearing, packing and laundry for this trip. This is sort of the accident of finding them at the Vietnamsky this morning and sort of in celebration of my new wealth since the US dollar now stands at 29 Kc compared to the 21 Kc while I was in Prague.
The Czechs need to enter an Olympic haircutting team. Milan went to the hairdresser with no appointment and rejoined Veronika and me with a short haircut before we could buy those $2 shoes. He has slept it off this afternoon while I watched Shall We Dance?--the American version with Richard Gere, which made me weep a tear but was not as beautiful as the Japanese verson we watched in a popcorn theology at church about 10 years ago. For my movie buff friends like Theo and Dan--don't think I am making it a habit but life is quiet in Ratiskovice and I need to save up my two remaining books in English.
Have been reading one of Sophie Kinsella's SHOPAHOLIC books and feel the infamous Becky Bloomwood has rubbed off on me. In addition to yesterday's purchases I bought 6 colored pencils and an eraser (three pictures today, Libba!) plus two stocking stuffers for Theo in Brno today. This is apparently the most popular possible day for weddings, not only for our dear Helen, but for half the brides in the Czech Republic. We saw parking lots, roadways, and horns-a-blaring parades full of "wedding cars." The guests' are decorated with white ribbons and the bride's has a bride doll affixed to the hood of the car. One bride had the unconventional taste of adorning her hood with a huge yellow arrangement rather like the coffin blanket for a funeral. Hm.
WE went to see the Andy Warhol appreciation (he was Slovak) which I enjoyed in spite of the buildup of his philosophy of using "art as a tool for getting rich and famous." There was a bit about consumerism, glorifying gloss and drugs, and making unequal things equal. I could not quite decide if it was a matter of empty space between the ears or the achievement of true non-attachment. An entire room was devoted to 8 or ten of the Campbell's Soup cans including Pepper Pot, a soup I never see on the shelves any more but was always curious about as a child.
In the course of pottering around the gallery, I learned that instead of "dead ends" Czechs have "blind shoulders." Love love loved the orange and aqua and indigo portrait of Queen Ntombi Tuala, the same colors as his somewhat less friendly portrait of Hans Christian Anderson, but was amused that Lillian Carter was identified as "the wife of ex-President Jimmy Carter."
Next we saw a museum exhibit tracing what it described as the "vagaries of history" from the Middle Ages through the present with stuff stuff stuff from all over Europe in order to try to determine just what constitutes the Slovak style. The exhibition brochure features the face of Botticelli's Birth of Venus with a Slovak flag painted across her face, but that lovely work was not present in the museum. I truly am NOT going to catalog the whole exhibition but those of you who are not interested in art or interesting connections can skip the next list.
Especially for Jennifer and SUzanne: a renaissance tapestry with a corner panel showing Mary kneeling before the Tiburtine Sybil
A Medieval zinc baptismal font made in Hradec Kralove where I am going next week to visit a former student.
"Bizarre objects made from coconuts and seashells" including coconut shell chalices which are supposed to reflect the love of exploration which characterized the Renaissance.
A 1750 parrot shaped faience bottle made in Holic (HOLE eats) which is a tiny depressed hole in the road just across the border into Slovakia from Hodonin--not a place one associates with museum quality pottery.
A gigantic reliquary cross alleged to have bones from 6 different apostles plus two splinters of the True Cross
A Gustav Klimpt "jardiniere" which looks like a piece of George Ohr pottery
A room dedicated to the "Female Principle" and female protectors of the SLovak people.
DAy ended with a Saturday night barbecue in the garden, a bottle of red wine for me from Veronika's father's cellar, and lazy speculation about what charming day trip could be planned for tomorrow. I correctly identified oplatku syrovu (cheese crackers) for points both in taste bud ed and in Czech grammar.
Lowell
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