That last post from Crete

It's exactly a month ago that we left for Crete...and we've been back home in Winnipeg since September 3rd, so this will be the last vicarious vacation post. (Sadly, I have lost all of the magical Greek vacation feeling to errands and house repairs, etc. Better find time for a Greek coffee or something, I guess!)

The last time we were in Crete, in 2006, I wrote this post. It said a lot of reflective things. Surprisingly, I found myself getting ready to post something very similiar, so I'll be quoting some from that post this time!

In Chania, and in Crete generally, there are layers of history, religion, and culture. They appear like this door--an entryway into a past and a history that is hard to understand for a person from the New World. This doorway (probably to a Venetian townhouse, or maybe Ottoman era?) is chained, but you can see right inside the building. The building is basically abandoned and in ruins. It's empty, just waiting to be restored...and since it's a townhouse, there are thriving businesses and houses right near by. It's part of the magic of Crete. Honestly, I can't figure why the new holiday homes are being built far out of town when there are places like this left to be restored right in town!

One of our stops in Chania was to go see Etz Hayyim. (check out that website, it's fascinating!) We happened upon this synagogue the last time we were in Crete, and here's what I said about it then:

"Crete had a very old Jewish community, thousands of years old, but when the Nazis occupied Crete, they rounded up the 300 Jews on the island and put them aboard a ship to Auschwitz Concentration Camp, along with hundreds of Cretan members of the resistance. The ship was torpedoed by the English and everyone perished. (at least they were saved the inhumane death by deprivation at the camps. Baruch Dayan Ha-Emet*)

**Baruch Dayan Ha-Emet is Hebrew. It means, "Blessed is (G-d) the righteous Judge." It's said in traditional Judaism whenever one hears of a death--because only G-d decides when it is someone's time to die.

The synagogue was immediately looted and taken over by squatters. Over the years, there were stray animals, a chicken coop and dumps on the site of this congregation. In the mid to late '90's, an international and local inter-faith effort was made to restore the synagogue, because without this restoration, the Nazis would have succeeded--erasing thousands of years of Jewish ritual and culture."

This time, we returned to visit the building again. I'd found it an extremely moving place. Somehow, one could sense the centuries of people who'd been there, worshipping, celebrating with family and friends, and mourning, too.

I took a few more photos of things that I found interesting or moving. This is the courtyard, which I mentioned last time:

"Generally, Jews bury their dead in cemeteries away from places of worship, but during a time of political unrest, several very esteemed rabbis were buried in one of the courtyards within the walls of the congregation. The date of the earliest seems to be 1710, and we were able to visit this grave, too."

"There are now daily prayers again with mixed seating, and it's a peaceful sanctuary, sheltered in a verdant courtyard. There's an old alcove in the wall for ritual handwashing."

"There is a library filled with books on religion, in many languages, in an area that used to be one of the women's sections." (Historically, Jewish women and men sat apart during religious services. Today, this is only true for more traditional, Orthodox services.) This gallery, with the lattice screening, is an architecture that is borrowed from Islamic tradition...a separate area for women to sit and see what is happening without being a part of it. (not all Jewish women's sections look like this--it varies from country to country and culture to culture)

"There is a restored mikveh, a ritual bath, that was so inviting that I wanted to use it....Apparently it is still used by brides and there is room there for a traditional Middle Eastern Henna party for the bride, which used to be usual in Crete." (This is the photo of the ritual bath. The stick at the entry is to keep tourists from walking into the water! To the right, there is a long bench seat built into the bath for the female members of a bride's family to sit.)

"There are very few Jews in Crete now. The area around the synagogue was, at times, a ghetto where Jews were forced to live, but while the old buildings still remain, there are no traces of that civilization left."

I feel a bit bittersweet about ending the vacation with this posting, but it was one of the last things we did in Crete on our way home! Commemorating tradition is sometimes a thing of mixed emotions. Here's what I said in my 2006 post:

"I was really touched, enriched, and affected by this trip. In many ways, it helped reinforce much of the history I studied in college and in graduate school. I saw interfaith and intercultural dialogue in a tangible way that is hard to gather from graduate seminars and old microfilm. Yes, I'd studied much of these historical occupations and cultural exchanges, but in Crete, you can see it in the people, in the landscape and buildings, and in the daily custom. This is a Greek Orthodox environment where one can eat a meal in an old Turkish Hamam, look at Christian art influenced by Islam, and see Jewish traditions, distinct and yet influenced by the Muslim and Christian environment around them."

The most important thing I gleaned from a second trip is the layering and richness of that deep cultural and religious exchange. I saw it in the textiles at the Sitia Folklore Museum, and even further in the food traditions. I've read more about Mediterranean and Middle Eastern foods since then, and I saw even more in the mingling on menus this time. (Menus written in Greek, English, French, German, and Italian!)

I hope you've enjoyed hearing about my trip to Crete! I'm off to make a Middle Eastern roasted eggplant salad as part of our supper...I bring a little more of Crete home with me each time we go.

the curtain

Warning: Gratuitous pictures of completely mindless knitting ahead! Want complicated stitchwork? Come back another time...
Old houses have lots of quirks. Ours lacks a first floor powder room. (washroom/half bath, etc. choose your own vocabularly here..) As a result, the second story bath that we use daily needs to be clean and well maintained.

This bath has a fabulous old mosaic tile floor. At the very least, I need to clean the heck out of it. At best, it's time for some restoration. Some of the corner tiles are loose or missing. I'm not a mosaics crafter but I may become a mosaics repair specialist sometime soon.

The room also has two windows which overlook a busy street. They clearly needed a curtain so we could, ahem, do private bathroom things. For the first few days, I hung a Kenyan batik cloth on the windows. (I use it as a picnic blanket and it was in the car for the trip. Lucky.) However, when I did that the room became so dark as to be claustrophobic. Time to consider plan B.

Plan B: I had a lot of sock yarn with me, and a set of circulars. Using Green Mountain Spinnery's fabulous Spinnery Sock Art yarn--which happened to match that mosaic tile, I cast on 40 sts. (Actually, I can't remember what I cast on, but that sounds close.) I knit in garter stitch, checking my progress at the window as I went.

Our theory with old houses is that if they have hooks that look usable, it makes sense to use them. No point in removing old curtain hooks and risking paint flakes, holes in the plaster, etc. to put in new ones. In this case, there were hardware hooks I've never seen before that look like they perhaps held a very skinny curtain rod once at both the top and bottom of the window..perhaps for taut muslin or gauze curtains.

After I finished the first curtain (garter stitch on size #13 needles is speedy like a race) it seemed only logical that I rush on towards the second. After all, without furniture, there wasn't a lot else to do other than walk the dogs...

So, what do these accomplish? 1) They let in light. 2) They obscure things slightly, so that people on the street might not see completely nekkidness if they look up. (nekkidness=nudity if you're northerners. :)

These curtains do not insulate the window, and they probably are not the most modest option I could have chosen. They don't show off any kind of complex knitting talent, which is ok with me. I debated lace, but concluded that lace on big needles equals bigger holes, and, well, I didn't want the neighborhood to see that much!

I figure, come winter, I'll rethink my options if there's a draft or we need something more substantial. In the meanwhile...

The curtains seemed like an interesting metaphor. Lots of things in Winnipeg seem to be about "letting in the light." First, in a concrete way, because it doesn't get dark here until very late at night in the summer time...think 9:30 or 10. There are nights that I've fallen asleep before it gets dark. It gets light early too, which makes for wonderful dog walks between 6-7 AM. By 7:15 AM, forget it, our new neighborhood becomes like dog Grand Central Station. Not an enjoyably quiet meander anymore...

In a more figurative way, I've been so impressed by the efforts Winnipeggers make to appreciate and make the most of the diversity of their human and natural environment. Everyone seems to make an effort to go to the summer festivals and to spend time outside in cafes, exercising, and in parks...even when this summer is unseasonably cool. There's a citywide effort to support fundraising for a new national museum called the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. There's fundraising afoot to open an educational butterfly conservatory at Assinibone Park. Not only that, but they were thrilled to meet with the professor right away about enlisting his butterfly expertise for the effort. (in town 2 weeks and suddenly he's needed!)

The metaphor of the window as a way to see out into the world and the curtain (does it enhance or cover up the view?) has really struck me as a way people here see their city. When we explain why we're here...the professor to do research, and me, the writer...many people seem curious and excited about what we'll lend to the cultural/intellectual landscape--either that, or they fake it very well!

Most of the necessities of life are now unpacked. My office is still in boxes and there are definitely a lot of projects ahead. The backyard fence is being built today. I hear there's a "pick your own" raspberry place that's got me excited about a visit. Things around us are at once stimulating, intriguing and --in the home department--hopefully going to settle down soon.

I haven't been knitting since finishing the (totally mindless) curtains. While I don't need to sit down to knit, I do need both hands free, and that's hard to do while unpacking!