Book Log 2019 #13: How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr

We never really think or talk about the US as a physical empire. We know that we have overseas territories, but not really about how we gained them, or what we've done there (with maybe the exception of Alaska and Hawaii, which we think about mainly in the context of World War II and statehood). This book examines how the US came to collect the various possessions that extended American presence from the Caribbean almost into Asia.

It's not always easy reading, as the history of how a country acquires territory (and then what it does with that territory) comes with a body count. Mostly of the locals. But regardless of how you feel about the imperial nature of our expansion, this book at least brings the topic into conversation. It helps that the book is well-written and engaging. 

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 40: Easter Island

While the island may be named for the holiday, the locals on Easter Island do not share the sort of passion for it that their fellow Chilean citizens do. I suppose this shouldn't be a surprise, given the small population (just under 5800) and that the island is ethnically much more Oceanic than Hispanic (it's basically a 60/40 split between Rapa Nui and Chilean background, though even the Chilean fraction includes people of mixed Chilean-Rapa Nui ancestry).

There's not much out there about how residents of Easter Island (who are largely Catholic) celebrate Easter, but I did find this one account that makes it seem pretty low key. There's a mass, maybe some extra singing and blessing of foods, and then a communal meal afterwards (which appears to be common on holidays).

I suppose what makes Easter on Easter Island interesting are the ways in which Rapa Nui culture and mythology are worked into the church and the service. This page gives a good rundown on how the building's decoration reflects the local folklore, from the images that appear on the front of the church to the use of a Rapa Nui deity as the base of the baptismal font. Beyond decoration, the hymns appear to be sung in the Rapa Nui language, and (at least on Easter) local dress is also incorporated into the priest's ceremonial clothing.

While much of what makes Easter on Easter Island unique isn't specific to the holiday, it does reflect more generally those other countries we've seen that have taken local practice and found a place for it in Easter celebrations. Which really does make it a fitting place to wrap up this year's Lentorama.

I actually enjoyed this year's edition more than most (heck, this is the first year in a long time where it will actually be done before Easter!), and will hopefully find another good idea for next year.

 Book Log 2019 #12: The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

I don't know if I can add to what's already been said about this book, Wolfe's investigation into the test pilots who would bring the US into the Space Age and largely serve as the country's first astronauts. We get an idea not only of what drove these men to do what they did, how they internalized the danger, and how they functioned within the Mercury astronaut team.

Not that it's only about space flight. There's a significant chunk of the book about being a test pilot and the chase to break the sound barrier, and Chuck Yeager figures prominently even though he never became an astronaut. 

I really did enjoy this book, and found it especially compelling at a time when going into space seems kind of pedestrian. When you can send random billionaires and nonagenarian  actors into space, it's good to be reminded of the incredible peril that a handful of men endured in order to get there.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 39: France

Eggs are central to Easter, whether they're boiled and dyed, plastic and filled with jelly beans, or chocolate wrapped in foil.  It's likely that you'll buy more eggs around Easter than you would normally, which could lead you to have some left over. What to do with them?

If you live in Bessières, a town in southwest France, you make a giant omelette on Easter Monday. 

The story goes that Napoleon was passing through, and after enjoying a local omelette he asked for one to be made for his troops. And as you don't say no to the emperor, a giant omelette was made using all the eggs the locals could find.

Jump forward a couple hundred years, and the town brought the giant omelette back as part of a larger festival (though the official history suggests that the omelette tradition was kept alive by local kids, who would ask for eggs and then distribute the omelettes to the poor). The brotherhood that oversees the event does see it as a kind of charitable and cultural thing, and not only continue the practice of giving diners their eggs for free, but have established links with similar festivals around the world (if you're in the States like me you can stop by Abbeville, Louisiana, though theirs appears to be held in November).

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 38: Iceland

A law from the 1920s in Iceland bans a large swath of public festivities on Good Friday, as it's a day for solemn reflection and worship (as you can imagine, the law was enacted during a time when the Icelandic government and the local Lutheran church had a pretty cozy relationship). While the law is not enforced with any real vigor, it is still on the books, and does cause a lot of closures across the island.

To protest the law, a local atheist's group organizes an annual bingo game on Good Friday (so it's more of an anti-Easter tradition, but a tradition nevertheless). No one's been arrested yet, and the games seem to be having some impact, as there's talk of changing the law.  At which point the thrill of breaking the law by playing bingo will be gone, but hopefully the games will persist.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 37: Luxembourg

While most of the Easter celebrations are similar to those of their larger French and Dutch neighbors, there are two traditions specific to Luxembourg worth mentioning.

The first is specific to the town of Vianden. On Good Friday, they celebrate a festival called Jaudes, which refers to a bouquet made by boys out of flowers, twigs, ribbons, or whatever is on hand (the name specifically refers to the dog rose, but it doesn't seem to be a required element of the bouquet anymore). At noon, boys will take the bouquets and burn them, as a symbol of their displeasure with Judas.

On Easter Monday you have the Éimaischen, or feast of Emmaus. This historically coincided with the annual celebrations of the potter's guild, and eventually this developed into a festival. It's most notable now for the Péckvillercher, a terra cotta bird that you can blow into, making a sort of cuckoo sound.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 36: Italy

There is no shortage of Easter celebrations in Italy, spurred on by its regional nature and being the home of the modern Catholic church.  But my favorite may be the most explosive: the Scoppio del Carro, or Explosion of the Cart.

The story starts about a thousand years ago, during the Crusades. The son of a prominent Florentine family is in Jerusalem, and is the first to scale the walls of Jerusalem and raise the crusaders' banner. To honor his bravery, the young man is given three flints out of the Holy Sepulchre. The young man brings his relics back to Florence, where they are invested in a local church. The Easter tradition soon starts that a torch is lit by these flints, and the torch is used to light candles around the city.

At some point, the torch is replaced by a large candle on a cart, and later still that candle is replaced by fireworks, which are still the focus of the tradition today.

The modern procession starts at the church that houses the flints. They're used to light the "holy fire" (now typically some coals), which is put on the cart along with the fireworks. The cart, pulled by two white oxen garlanded with flowers, goes through the city and stops in the square outside the cathedral. A wire is strung between the cart and the altar in the cathedral, where a dove (representing the Holy Spirit) loaded with its own rockets awaits. At a specific point in the mass, one of the celebrants lights the dove (using a flame started by the holy fire), and if all goes to plan it shoots along its wire and into the fireworks, setting them off in a loud and colorful display.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 35: Senegal

Going into Good Friday, Christians in Senegal will prepare a dish called ngalakh which they'll eat to break the fast and over the holiday weekend. It's made with millet, nut paste (often peanuts), the fruit of the baobab tree, sugar, vanilla, and orange blossom. 

When they're not eating this dish, Senegalese are packing up containers of it to give to neighbors and friends, which is interesting as it's likely the vast majority of them aren't Christian (over 90 percent of the population follow Islam). It's not unusual in Senegal to distribute food at the end of any religious holiday, regardless of the religious background of the people you're feeding. Which is a nice reminder that we can all get along, and food probably helps.

 Book Log 2019 #11: Death's End by Cixin Liu

I'm not sure how to describe this, the last book in The Three Body Problem trilogy. Trisolaris and Earth have an unsteady peace, set when Earth threatened to broadcast the location of Trisolaris to the universe, putting them in jeopardy of being invaded by some other alien civilization. This works - for a while. And when it doesn't work, it really doesn't work. 

I think I had more moments of "what the hell is going on here" with this book than the other two, which speaks more to my ability to grasp concepts than any defect with the writing or translation (I also should have taken more time in reading, but it was hard to slow down, even when I was a bit lost). It's a fitting end to the trilogy, not a particularly uplifting one but true to the events and narrative of the whole.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 34: South Korea

South Korea has a small but significant (just under 28 percent) Christian population, so Easter is more visible than in many Asian countries but isn't a national holiday. Many of the typical Western trappings have made it over, though there's apparently an issue with decorating eggs, as most Korean eggs are brown. There is at least one effective, if not particularly eco-friendly, solution to this dilemma (though there are the occasional, more serious, problems with Easter eggs).

One thing that appears to be traditional is the large Easter service/rally at Yonsei University (a result of its heritage of Christian leadership and founding by various Protestant missionaries). I wasn't able to find too much information about the actual service, but odds are if you look at one of the "Easter around the world" slideshows you'll see either a picture of a large chorus or of large crowds outside attending the service.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 33: Sweden

Sweden's Easter celebrations are pretty similar to other Nordic countries. They have kids dressed as witches going door to door as in Finland, and those witches often bring letters to request candy, similar to what goes on in Denmark.  That being said, there are a couple of things that can make Easter particularly Swedish.

The first is going out to the country to open up the family cabin. Where Sweden is increasingly secular, there's more interest in using the long weekend to open up the summer cabin and give it a good cleaning. It also appears that what celebrations there are for Easter will happen there, as family and friends stop by for a meal and something to drink.

And the menu does include some traditionally Swedish dishes. One that stood out to me was Jansson's Temptation, which is a sort of casserole of onion, potato, and pickled anchovy. Not sure how tempting something with pickled anchovy can be, but it's a popular holiday dish (it also crops up at Christmas), so I'll take the Swedes' word for it. The other thing that caught my eye was a carbonated beverage called paskmust (which is the Easter version of julmust, the same drink but made for Christmas). It's similar to root beer in taste, but a review of the IKEA version suggests a much broader taste palate.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 32: Poland

Easter celebrations are pretty well focused on religion, which isn't surprising given that Poland is almost completely Catholic - and pretty devoutly Catholic at that. When you get to Easter Monday, though, things take a turn.

Easter Monday is known locally as Śmigus-Dyngus, or "Wet Monday." On this day, boys try to soak girls with water, using anything from buckets to squirt guns, and will also try to spank them with willow branches. Tuesday sees the roles reversed.

The origins of all this soaking and spanking is unclear. It appears that they may have been separate activities that eventually merged into one. There's also some thought that there's a pagan fertility ritual at the heart of things, with throwing water on women taking over from watering a Corn Mother doll as an offering to make crops grow. There's also some thought that it represents the baptisms of early Poles when Christianity arrived.

This tradition also takes place in a number of neighboring countries, so the idea that there's some common Slavic origin seems likely.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 31: Indonesia

Indonesia is the world's most populous Islamic country, but its colonial and trading history gave certain parts of the country a sizable Christian minority. One such location is Larantuka in the region of East Flores, whose Christian (largely Catholic) population is heavily influenced by the Portuguese sailors, traders, and missionaries who came through.

Legend has it that a statue of a woman was found washed up on shore in the early 1500s, and when the Portuguese arrived they recognized the statue as that of Mary, which fit nicely into plans to convert the local population.

Today, the statue (along with one of Jesus) is part of a notable Good Friday procession. Both statues are kept in sealed caskets, and on Holy Thursday the casket of Mary is opened, the statue washed, and then dressed in mourning clothes. On Good Friday, the statue of Jesus is taken out, and both are processed, including a segment where the statues are placed on boats and sailed around the bay. The two statues eventually join up at the local cathedral in time for mass.

This article gives a good look at some of the celebrations and activity in Larantuka's Semana Santa, though I'm not sure if the captions are all that accurate (for example, they have Holy Week running from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday).

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 30: Finland

In a tradition that I tend to associate more with fall, children in Finland dress up as witches and go door to door (either on Palm Sunday or Holy Saturday) and recite a poem asking to trade a willow branch for a treat. This apparently grew out of two separate traditions, one the use of willow branches in place of palm fronds to celebrate Palm Sunday (which is quite common in central and eastern Europe), the other the belief that witches would be about on Holy Saturday (which seems more specific to parts of Finland and Sweden). This is known in Finnish as virpominen.

Finland also has a couple of traditional puddings eaten around Easter. There's mämmi , a dark pudding made of malt and rye flour. As it can be kept for several days, it was often made ahead and eaten on Good Friday when cooking was considered off-limits. It can be eaten sweet or savory, and is apparently a bit of an acquired taste. The other is pasha (or pashka), which came over from Russia. It's a cheese or custard-based dessert, and usually served in a conical or pyramid shape.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 29: Trinidad and Tobago

While it's probably better known for its Carnival, Trinidad and Tobago does share a couple of Easter traditions with other countries. On Good Friday you have the beating of the bobolee, an effigy of Judas, which is reminiscent of the many countries that burn an effigy of Judas.  And as with much of the Caribbean, kite flying is a popular Good Friday pastime in Trinidad.

One tradition that's specific to Tobago is the Buccoo Goat Race, held every year on "Easter Tuesday." The races started as a response to horse races held on Easter Monday, which were really only open to the rich, but is now the centerpiece of a festival that attracts thousands (and now also includes crab racing).

 Book Log 2019 #10: Vengeance by Benjamin Black

Irish pathologist Quirke gets involved in another death, though this one is clearly a suicide. What's odd about it is that the deed was intentionally committed with a witness, the son of the dead man's business partner. The mystery, a question of why rather than who. A second death further confuses the issue, leaving Quirke (and police detective Hackett) to wade through the personal and professional entanglements of two families.

I was going to say I'm still on the fence about this series, but as I keep reading the books I can't be that much on the fence. The central mystery is fine, I'm still not sure why Quirke is as attractive to women as he apparently is, and I would like to spend a little more time with his family (specifically his brother, who was a significant character in earlier books but has since faded to the background). All things considered once you get five books into a series you're more or less committed.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 28: Ecuador

Ecuador has a Semana Santa similar to other countries in the Latin world, full of colorful processions (such as the procession of the Jesus del Gran Poder in Quito, as the name apparently translates to "Jesus of the Great Power," which makes him sound like one of the Avengers).

Outside of the religious traditions, the one that seems most uniquely Ecuadoran is the preparation of fanesca, a grain-based soup that can include things like salt cod, squash, fried bread, cheese, peanuts, and green banana. While the origin of the soup isn't known, many theories have it coming from Europe (either Spain or Italy), with the ingredients changing to reflect what's local.

Fanesca is a big enough deal that in Quito there's an annual competition between restaurants as to who makes the best version (though the article indicates there are other judging criteria, such as the use of sustainable ingredients), though there's widespread agreement that the best dish is made at home, typically by someone's grandmother.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 27: Greece

Many of the Easter traditions in Greece are going to be familiar to people either from that part of the world or who are familiar with Orthodox Christianity, from the preparation of red eggs (I have Greek Orthodox friends, and the quest to find the best red dye for the eggs is never-ending) to the church decorations and masses to the Easter Sunday feast featuring some sort of roasted meat (more often than not lamb).

If you want something specific to Greece, go to Corfu. On Holy Saturday, residents of that island celebrate by throwing clay jars full of water out their windows to smash on the street below. It's become a bit of an attraction, with spectators trying to get wet or hit by a (hopefully non-jagged) potsherd.

Why this is done is a bit of a mystery, though there are several theories that link it to former Venetian rulers, ancient Greek springtime practices, or Biblical references to smashing pottery.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 26: The Netherlands

The town of Ootmarsum has an unusual set of traditions centered around an Easter committee of eight men known as Poaskearls. These men are required to be born in the town, Catholic, and single. They also have to plan to remain single for four years, as once selected the person serves as a Poaskearl for four years.

They dress in a trenchcoat and hat getup that makes them look a lot like Inspector Gadget (the costume is modeled after that of a statue of eight men in the square near the church). 

The Poaskearls are responsible for collecting and arranging the wood for an Easter night bonfire and for an Easter Sunday procession that involves singing and another tradition called Vlöggeln, where, after singing the two songs that are sung during the Easter procession, eight children are raised up three times as a symbol of the resurrection.  There's a fair amount of drinking involved, and everything that happens on Sunday happens again on Easter Monday. 

This article gives a pretty in depth review of Easter in Ootmarsum and what the Poaskearls do (it's in Dutch, but the Google translation is pretty readable). What I would really love to know is how all of this got started. There is at least one reference to Vlöggeln going back to 1840, and a list of Poaskearls to 1900, but that's it. I'm also curious how the two new Poaskearls are chosen.

(And there's also this site for all of your Poaskearl needs.)

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 25: Romania

Easter in Romania is pretty similar to other countries in Eastern Europe, from the religious ceremonies to the fanciful decorated eggs. They also share traditions such as taking willow branches to church on Palm Sunday for a blessing and dousing unmarried women with water on Easter Monday.

One traditional belief with a basis in Romanian folklore involves Joimariţa, who seems to have evolved from some sort of local deity to a character in folklore. Her main interest (other than protecting the fire lit on Holy Thursday in memory of one's ancestors) was to make sure that Romanian women had been productive over the winter, with a special focus on weaving and making new clothes. Any woman who slacked off in that department runs the risk of being burned, beaten, killed, or cursed so they won't be able to do any work in the coming year (as noted here, as are several other Romanian Easter traditions).

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 24: Denmark

While Norway celebrates Easter with murder mysteries, Danes go for something less scary and more arts and crafty. Danes will write a letter called a gækkebrev, which is kind of like a cutout snowflake, but with a poem or riddle on it. It gets sent out a few days before Easter, with the sender's name represented on the letter by dots (one dot for each letter in the person's name). If the recipient can guess who sent the letter the sender owes them a chocolate Easter egg, if they can't they owe the sender an egg.

This apparently has its roots in letters sent by young people as a way of flirting (the letters would often include a flower called the snowdrop), but it's now more widely done among friends and families. This article suggests it came over from Germany as early as 1600.

 Book Log 2019 #9: Lehrter Station by David Downing

With World War II over, journalist/spy John Russell appears to finally be out, as he's escaped Germany with his girlfriend and son and looks ready to start over in London. At least until Russell's Soviet handler shows up to tell him he needs to accept an upcoming offer from American intelligence to return to Germany. Considering what Russell did for the Soviets in order to buy his way out of Berlin, he's not in a position to decline.

This wasn't the best book in the series, but I was interested to see how things would transition into the Cold War. It also does a good job of setting up the series finale.

Lentorama 2019: Resurrect My Globe!

Day 23: Fiji

Worshipers on the island of Viti Levu spend Holy Week on something called a Cross Walk, where they carry a replica of the cross from the capital of Suva to Nadi, a distance of about 200 kilometers (about 125 miles). It looks like the cross gets handed off from village to village, but I assume there are some especially devoted types who make the entire journey.

I've also found reference to a tradition where several islands share a cross, and it gets floated or swum between islands, but no real information on whether or not this is still done.