Posts Tagged 'festival on fairfax'

In which the author has to pick his jaw up from the floor

Published 14 October 2009 General , Media 2 Comments
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Every year at the All Saints festival, there’s a group of “Meet the Author” tables; my godfather has written a book, and a few other people have published some things as well. This year, presumably because of a shortage of participants, having heard that I’d written some magazine articles, the organizer of the tables asked if I wanted to be involved. My initial impulse was to say no; since all I’ve published have been magazine articles, and to the best of my knowledge nobody outside of my immediate circle of friends at the parish has read any of them (or at least mentioned to me that they’ve read any of them), it seemed as though it would be rather pretentious on my part to lay claim to the title of “author”. Yes, fine, I’ve written a book, but it isn’t published yet, and I’m still waiting for John to finish his sketches before I start trying to market it…

Oh, right. I’m still waiting for John to finish his sketches.

I dropped John an e-mail, asking if there would be any possibility of any of the images being done by the day of the Festival. If so, let’s have them up at the table — it might potentially be a good way to generate interest.

Good idea, John replied. I’ll have some done by then.

So, this last Saturday, I showed up at All Saints, an hour and a half before the start of the Festival, with my portfolio of contributor’s copies of magazine articles and a fresh copy of the typescript of Pascha at the Singing School. A small crowd was gathered around my table.

Here’s why:

To describe this as far above and beyond any expectation I may have had doesn’t even really begin to cover it. Among other things, there’s a bit of an Edward Gorey vibe, which reminded me that The House With a Clock In Its Walls was a huge influence on me which I had all but forgotten. I mentioned that to John in the midst of my inarticulate slobbering over his works of beauty, who instantly nodded and said, “Yes, actually, you’re right, come to think of it. That’s definitely there.”

Anyway, the trick was definitely done of stirring up some interest. Once John has his illustrations done, there will be another pass on the text itself while I make sure that it lives up to the artwork (and I can already tell you that these two examples alone have sparked some thoughts about things I should tweak), and then we’ll go from there. I’m not certain exactly what that will mean, since I haven’t done this before; I don’t want to go the route of vanity presses or self-publishing; that seems to be a one-way path to making sure nobody ever, anywhere sees the book. On the other hand, I don’t know that there’s a “real” publisher out there that’s just falling all over itself to publish a short book with black and white illustrations, text and pictures by total unknowns, set at a choir school at the very end of Holy Week. We’ll see what happens.

(By the way — illustrations are copyright 2009 John Berry, and Pascha at the Singing School is copyright 2009 Richard Barrett. Come to think of it, the whole contents of this blog are copyright Richard Barrett except where otherwise indicated.)

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Talking turkey and talking Turkey

Published 8 October 2009 Academia , College , General , The Orthodox Faith 3 Comments
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I would like to note that All Saints’ annual Festival is this Saturday, from 11am until 5pm. Most importantly, this is a chance to eat Johnny Ioannides’ gyroi, which are the absolute best in Bloomington. That said, the planners asked if I’d participate in the “Meet the Author” activity since they’d heard that I write magazine articles sometimes. I decided it might be a good opportunity to try to drum up a bit of interest in Pascha at the Singing School, and as it works out, John will have some of the illustrations done to display along with the manuscript.

I’ve got an exam on Monday in my Ancient Greek Oratory class. Between now and 2:30pm on Monday I’ve got approximately 91 paragraphs of Antiphon’s Greek to make sure I’ve got down cold. I figure that the utility of a course like this is that it really makes you feel like you know what you’re doing when you go back to reading Greek in saints’ lives and so on.

Last night I attended a talk entitled “Turkey Today,” given by Mr. Kenan Ipek, the Consul General of the Republic of Turkey. I had been warned that it would likely be mostly diplomatic hot air, and for the most part that’s what it was, but there were some notable bits. First of all, he said that the two pillars of Turkish foreign policy are their relations with the European Union and their relations with the United States. He affirmed a couple of times Turkey’s intention to become part of the EU, saying that it will demonstrate that the EU is “not a Christian club”. (At the same time, he also repeatedly emphasized that Turkey is a secular state.) Curiously, he also said that the support of Turkey’s own population regarding their application to the EU has seen a sharp drop in the last few years.

He spent some time talking about Turkey’s neighbors — Iran, Iraq, and Russia being those about whom he chose to speak. Greece only got a passing mention; an audience member asked about Turkey’s policy with respect to the Balkans, and in that context, Mr. Ipek said that they support Macedonia’s independence “as long as it does not contradict Greece.” I’m still not sure what that means.

The Halki seminary came up (I was going to ask about it but got beaten to the punch), and he gave a very predictable answer about how they expect it will be reopened, but only if the Patriarchate agrees to operate it according to Turkish law. “We respect that it is a Christian seminary,” he said, “but as a seminary it has to function the same way Jewish and Muslim schools are expected to function in Turkey.”

A fascinating moment came up when an audience member asked about the possibility of Turkey opening their Armenian border. At this point, Mr. Ipek said that they are open to the idea but that Armenia’s “allegations regarding certain historical facts” have to be dealt with first. They have suggested a joint historical commission between Turkey and Armenia to research the truth of the matter, he said, and that Turkey will abide by whatever this hypothetical commission finds to be true. “We are willing to do that because we know the allegations are false,” he said, and added that Armenia has not responded to this suggestion. At this point, another woman from the audience identified herself as a member of a family of Armenian survivors from the events of 1915, and she asked why the Turkish government has not followed the lead of many Turkish intellectuals and simply apologized pre-emptively for the genocide (her word). At this point, the consul general began to backpedal; suddenly the events of 1915 were a “tragedy for all concerned,” the result of “wartime,” with “Armenians and Turks” being killed, and so on. But, he insisted, no matter what archive somebody might go into, “You will not find any piece of paper anywhere that says, ‘The Turkish government decrees to all of its people that they are to kill every Armenian they see.’ That doesn’t exist.” Therefore, he maintained, there was no Armenian genocide. There were a few audience members who went up to that woman afterward and thanked her for her courage.

I will have a lengthy post or two coming up regarding my initial thoughts upon reading Foucault for the first time. I hope to have that within the next couple of days. What will probably happen is that the response paper I wrote for class will be one post, and then a second post will contain all of the stuff that couldn’t really be said in class.

Dix and Ober are still what I’m reading. Probably will be for another couple of weeks yet.

Festival on Fairfax 2008

Published 17 October 2008 General , music , The Orthodox Faith Leave a Comment
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Something resembling a Greek or Middle Eastern festival is a staple of Orthodox parish life, it seems, and All Saints is no different — although we don’t call it a Greek or Middle Eastern festival, we just call it “The Festival on Fairfax” (Fairfax Road being where All Saints is located). Once a year, the community pulls together, throws open its doors to the world, and busts out the tsatsiki. Not to belabor a previously expressed point, but we legitimately have the best gyros in Bloomington, thanks to Johnny Ioannides (whose name I will continue to shout from the rooftops, since they’re just that good) — it’s just too bad it’s the only regularly scheduled day of the year they are publicly available.

Johnny Ioannides, the man who brings us the best gyros in Bloomington. Can we open this man a restaurant, please?

Johnny Ioannides, the man who brings us the best gyros in Bloomington. Can we open this man a restaurant, please?

(But it is not, emphatically not, a Greek festival. Or a Middle Eastern festival. Really. We also sell hot dogs. But no borscht.)

It’s always a good time, and in many respects, shows off the best sides of Bloomington’s little Orthodox church that could.

There are, truthfully, many things which differentiate what we do from the typical Greek festival. It’s not the mammoth fundraiser that many are; it’s not like Holy Trinity, where we charge admission in addition to food and merchandise, go all weekend and raise three quarters of the annual parish budget in the course of three days. Nope, we let you in free, we run one day only, and it pays for itself with a chunk left over but it’s hardly make-or-break for our day-to-day operations. More than one day, and we really hit a point of diminishing returns — particularly if we start having to pay staff rather than use volunteers. Getting bigger every year the way we do, we might have already hit this. Besides, Holy Trinity has the whole city of Indianapolis; we… uh, we don’t.

At any rate, the hope has been that eventually it would be more of a way of evangelizing, of being Christ to our community, rather than fundraising, but exactly how that will crystallize, precisely, remains to be seen. As with many things surrounding All Saints’ transition from being a small church community, only one or two steps removed from a mission, to being a mature parish, identity and defining characteristics are somewhat in flux for the moment. For one thing, much of Bloomington doesn’t even know (or care) we exist; in time, we hope to be more of a presence in the community. For the moment, the Festival on Fairfax is a fun way of at least holding an open house for our neighbors.

(Hey, there’s a thought. What about doing something that’s explicitly labeled and structured as an open house for the community?)

Anyway, here are some of the pictures I took throughout the day. Church tours are, of course, something we do, and there’s an information board we post relating the interior of an Orthodox church building to the interior of the Jewish temple. The big colorful image (blown up below) is, shall we say, a rather idealized digital model of a traditional Byzantine structure. I agree with my godson Lucas (who put the board together, and conducted the tours) that it would be nice if there were formal diocesan guidelines for building churches something along the lines of “come as close to this as you possibly can”; alas, much of Byzantine church architecture seems to assume the existence of an Emperor and his treasury, and the readiness of same to pay for things. Very tough for a smallish working class community to be able to come anywhere near this (as you can see from the acoustic tiles filling in for the dome).

The only Orthodox cemetery in Indiana

The only Orthodox cemetery in Indiana

On the other hand, we are making good use of the property we have (some 24 acres), and slowly but surely we are building something which we hope will still be there in a couple of centuries. For example, we’ve got the only Orthodox cemetery in the whole state (so far as we know, the next nearest is at Holy Dormition Monastery in Rives Junction, Michigan).

A hayride in the Grove

A hayride in the Grove

We’ve also got a large section of the property called the Grove which is intended to be a common area for public events once it’s finally done. It’s close to being done; flooding over the summer, as well as a few other issues, set us back a bit, but there’s a stage built, electricity wired, a pond dug, and other access points and landscaping are being worked on. Fish and a water pump will be added to the pond (both apparently in an attempt to help deal with mosquitoes), as well. Hopefully by next summer’s music festival it’ll be completely ready to go; I believe the plan is also to hold at least a good chunk of next year’s Festival down there. In the meantime, the hayrides conducted during the Festival go through there, at least.

The Big Tent

The Big Tent

The center of the action for this year’s Festival was the Big Tent — this was the eating area, it was where the music was performed (we never seem to quite pull of dancing, alas), and it was where the food was served.

The SmallTown Heroes

The SmallTown Heroes

I have to say, I enjoyed the SmallTown Heroes immensely — enough to buy their CD, which I’ve also really liked (enough to review here eventually, I think).

Fr. Athanasius Wilson, Fr. Peter Jon Gillquist’s predecessor, paid a visit to the Festival — always a joy to see him and Kh. Loretta. We don’t get to see him much anymore with his mission up in Greenwood. This community will always love him to pieces, and for very good reason. Without Fr. Athanasius, there would be no All Saints Orthodox Church right now, period. He was the right priest for the time, just as Fr. Peter is now (and hopefully will be for some time).

Fr. Athanasius Wilson and Fr. Peter Jon Gillquist

Fr. Athanasius Wilson and Fr. Peter Jon Gillquist

Besides tours of the nave, we also had the bake shop and silent auction inside the church. You want baklava? We’ve got baklava. Or, well, at least we did. You snooze, you lose. The parish bookstore was also open for business, and we had copies of Cappella Romana‘s The Divine Liturgy in English for sale and displayed prominently, natch.

Eric Leveque (left) trying to work off the freshman fifteen with Charles Coats

Eric Leveque (left) trying to work off the freshman fifteen with Charles Coats

Speaking of baklava, evidently a couple of folks ate a bit too much and found a novel way to try to work it off.

The Festival closed with Vespers. This is something for which we’re still figuring out the best approach — before last year, we just cancelled Saturday Vespers, but it occurred to us that it didn’t make any sense, if we wanted the Festival to be more about outreach and evangelism rather than fundraising, to not include a service. Reaction has been mixed — last year it worked very well, and this year… Well, the trouble is, many of the parishioners are still having to work the food booths and whatnot while Vespers is in progress, and there’s still very clearly Festival activity going on come 5pm, so there jisn’t really a compelling reason for people to go inside (particularly on a gorgeous day like last Saturday was), and there’s no large-scale movement of the parishioners to generate momentum, either. So, I’d say that this year, we had fewer people than we would have for a regular Saturday Vespers, with many of the people we’d normally see at that service being outside selling gyros, and almost none of the Festival visitors. Maybe one or two, if that.

And just like that, it’s six o’clock and it’s over until next year — 10 October 2009. Mark it on your calendar now. Best gyros in Bloomington, I tell you.

All Saints Orthodox Church: Fall Festival on Fairfax this Saturday

Published 7 October 2008 General , The Orthodox Faith Leave a Comment
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I would be sadly remiss if I did not plug All Saints‘ impending Festival on Fairfax this Saturday; it will kick off at 11am, ending at 6pm. As was started last year, Great Vespers will be incorporated into the Festival’s proceedings, starting at 5pm (and why we didn’t think of that earlier is beyond me).

It is always a good time; the community really pulls together to do this every year, and it is absolutely worth it. I will note that our gyros (gyroi?) is/are the best in town thanks to parishioner Johnny Ioannides — they’re also better than Holy Trinity’s, to say nothing of cheaper. Rumors of a drawing to win one’s very own skevophylakion are just that — rumor. Our bishop asks us to not do raffles anyway.

Please come if you can!

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