Supra!

In an effort to organize a Paschal supra this Friday, I thought it would be helpful to set out some (slightly modified) guidelines on what to expect:

What is a Supra?

It’s a formal Georgian dinner party, known for its structured, nearly constant toasting.

A table set for a supra

The basic set-up: Get a table that can accommodate all the guests if possible, lay out a tablecloth on it (the word “supra” originally meant “tablecloth”), and set it for dinner, preferably with two glasses (one alcoholic and one not), and with things that should be served room temperature and wine on the middle.

Roles: The Tamada, or Toastmaster, is responsible for leading the supra and introducing toasts. They can also have a second, who can also offer toasts, or hand off toasts to other people. I believe this person is called alaverde. Or the action of offering a toast when you’re not tamada. I’ve never been entirely clear on that. Then there’s the host, organizing the supra, the regular guests who are part of the host’s family or community, and the guests, who are visiting. There is also the person who handles the duties of waitress and cook; usually this is the wife (or several female relatives), of the host. Amongst English visitors it tends to be hard to find someone who wants this job, and it makes everyone else uncomfortable, so we try to plan hot and cold dishes that either don’t need much supervision, or come out at the beginning of the meal, preferably both.

Food: On this particular occasion we’re doing vegetarian foods because it’s on a Friday. It’s good to make food that can easily be put into smaller dishes and passed around. Depending on the width of the table in relation to the place settings, they might have to be stackable as well. Some popular foods include kiln bread, khajapuri (cheesy bread), tapas sorts of items (sliced cheese, olives, pickles, other pickled items, fresh herbs, eggplant with unknown paste, etc), fish, sliced sausage, fried corn cakes, chicken dishes, shish-kabobs (mts’vadi), khinkali (meat dumplings… most likely not combined with everything else, but eaten as its own meal), tomato-cucumber salad, potato salad, cabbage wraps, fried corn bread, various Pâtés I never quite fathomed the contents of, fresh fruit, and whatever other Mediterranean, Persian, and Slavic themed passable food items end up getting cooked.

Added: Courses (I’m using that term loosely; the italics are for things I’m not very into, and bold is for things that are quite lovely to have)

• On the table at the beginning:
  • Salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, cilantro, salt, vinegar, and (optional) salty cheese
  • Sliced cheese. Usually something sort of like feta.
  • Potato or pasta salad
  • a platter with raw and pickled veggies (pickles, pickled pearl onions, lemon wedge, pickled peppers, sliced radish, green onion, tarragon, some kind of pickled flower I never identified, etc; I would add potentially bell pepper and avocado in place of the veggies people aren’t likely to eat)
  • Olives
• Come out hot whenever people are losing interest in the first course and the toasts are still rolling
  • Lots of meat based dishes (on second thought, I probably shouldn’t have chosen a Friday…)
  • Corn cakes or corn cakes with cheese (usually served with mashed beans)
  • Cheesy bread (pizza is both tastier and easier than khatchapuri, and might be more worth doing)
  • Eggplant rolls
  • Something rather like Spanikopita
  • There are other eggplant possibilities, such as stew, but people have probably had more than enough of things like that in Lent
  • Borsht with sour cream (usually not at home supras, as much because it means dealing with bowls and then removing them as anything)
  • green bean stuff that I disliked and don’t consider worth making
  • Something not unlike ratatouille.
• A bit later:
  • Mushrooms with cheese and butter
  • Shish-kabobs (usually pork, probably not otherwise worth doing)
  • Vodka like stuff (also unnecessary for our purposes, which include driving home)
• And finally:
  • Chocolates
  • Fresh fruit (oranges, pears, apples, grapes, etc)
  • Cake (sometimes… I’m not committed to baking a cake.)
  • Coffee (the fierce Mediterranean boiled kind… might not be worth doing at 8pm…)

Drink: Traditionally the host makes his own wine, and serves it in pitchers. At some point vodka or a home brewed alchahol that’s a lot like vodka makes an appearance. Generally, wine is used for toasts, and non-alcaholic toasts are seen as ironic, but that’s not a tradition that translates well to this culture, so it tends to be dropped.

How does it work?

Hillside Supra

Toasting protocol: The tamada sets up a post on one of the standard themes (see below), elaborates on it some, and then toasts: gaumarjos! (gow-mar-joes: may he, she, or it be victorious!; victory! might do in a pinch, but cheers! isn’t very appropriate). Then other participants can either all send up a chorus of Gaumarjos! is return and drink, or the toast can go around the table, with each person elaborating on the theme and then drinking. Or some people can all drink with the Tamada, and some can wait to reply.

If someone present is being toasted, everyone else directs the exclamation to them (gaugimarjos!), and they wait until everyone is finished, then reply with thanks and then drink. There are some other possible variations, including a hip-hip-hurrah (gaumar – JOES! gaumar – JOES! gaumar- JOES! JOES! JOES!), one where you link arms and drink, one where you send around a single clay bowl and have to drain it in honor of the occasion, and some other uses of various glasses and hand-offs that are somewhat mysterious to me.

A short speech, song, or poem are all appropriate contributions.

It’s the custom not to drink from one’s wine glass other than in a toast.

Picnic supra — proving that a supra can work without a table.

Tamadobit: I believe this to be the  term for “the order in which the toasts should be said,” but am not sure. I’m going to use it that way anyone until someone who knows corrects me. Anyway, there are variations in toasts offered, depending on the occasions, the tamada, who’s present, and so on. For instance, at a supra with a lot of police officers, they offered toasts to all their superiors (and the one for the highest police official involved everyone standing on their chairs and hip-hip-hurrahing). Thanks MG for suggesting that it’s a lot like the order of a great litany. In general it goes something like this (the response if gaumarjos! unless otherwise noted):

• Glory to God! (Glory to God!)
• For the occasion (depends; at present it’s probably Christ is risen! if it’s a birthday or for a particular person, then it’s gaugimarjos! and a cup goes around which everyone drains)
• For those closest to the person in whose honor the supra is being held (I would say guest of honor, except that they’re usually hosting as well) Gaugimarjos!
• For the host (of that wasn’t in the occasion one)
• For the guests who aren’t part of the immediate community (the guests would usually respond with kind words to their hosts) Gaugimarjos!
• For the hierarchy over those present (the bishop, police chief, school leaders, etc, depending on what the people there have in common)
• Our homeland (and the homelands of our guests; and when Americans are tamada-ing, sometimes the countries our families came from)
• For peace
• For those who have died (may their memory be eternal)
• For children (literally “for the little ones”)
• For other family (mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters… they can each have a separate toast offered)
• For those present who haven’t yet been toasted (can be for each one separately, depending on time) Gaugimarjos!
• For the church, bishops, patriarch, etc)
• For whatever else people are grateful for
• For the Theotokos (this is usually the last one, but once they said another afterward for the Trinity. This was unusual enough that the monk who was Tamada first acknowledged that they could have been done, but since the Trinity is greater, we could have another concluding toast)

Please correct me on points wherein I am wrong.

Davit Gareji

He’s finished (except for oiling) Wohoo!

EDIT: updated with natural light

ხინკალი

I made some khinkali this past week, to try it out as a possible church food festival dish. In all it went fairly well. Because I’m apparently too careless to follow instructions, I just read the ingredients, and put them together in a way that seemed reasonable under the circumstances. My recipe looking something like this:

Dough:

Take some flour. Add some salt. Add some water, until dough seems sticky enough. Set aside.

Filling:

Buy some ground beef — whatever looks reasonable. Buy also some onions, and cilantro. Pull some spices out of the pantry. Chop the onions, put them in the meat. Mash them together. Remember that you bought cilantro. Chop that up and mash into beef. Add salt, pepper, and random spices (I remember curry being involved).

Water:

Boil a pot of water big enough for about four khinkali

Assemble:

Pinch, roll, douse, and otherwise do whatever it takes to get a lump of flour and water into round, thin dumpling cases. Add filling. Put water on edges and pleat. Place in more or less boiling water. Cook for 10 minutes.

Eat:

Pepper, pick up with hands, and eat.

And that’s that. They were surprisingly decent. It’s amazing how well things can go in cooking with only the vaguest idea what one is doing and no experience at all.

კარგია, მაგრამ, არ არის გემრიელი.

The Frosted Telescope

I haven’t written for a while. I’m not doing St Stephen’s anymore, because I don’t believe that it’s a good program. And because I sent an angst-ridden letter to the director and professors expressing rather indelicately various ways in which I have found it to be a poor program. And got a fairly acid response. So I won’t be writing about it anymore.

I do have a blessing to consider why I have a tendency to participate in educational venues that I’m unlikely to like, and then freak out some when, in fact, I do not like them. And whether there’s something I ought to be learning from this. We did actually have a Groundhog Day themed sermon the other week, and it was sort on that (not necessarily on education, but things that just keep coming around again and again. And the movie). So I gave it some thought. Having been here before, I have plenty of thoughts. Steamers full of them. Sorting thoughts is more difficult than finding them in this case. They go off in rather different directions.

One thought was: it’s like I’m expecting a course to be sort of like a telescope. There’s True Stuff out there to look at, and a course might direct and amplify our vision so that we can see it — and see particular bits of it in some detail. One might imagine some lenses; the Program Structure lens focusing into the Books and Materials lens, toward the Great Books or Tradition lens, and the Big Questions lens, and finally toward the True, Good, or Beautiful that is being aimed at.

I’m thinking of a course like a telescope, I said, but perhaps the organizer is thinking of it as a goad, or a measuring stick. If I were a comic artist, this would present some amusing scenes: trying to look into the distance through a stick, and nearly poking my eye out. Wondering why the lenses of the measuring stick are so cloudy. I imagine the facilitator standing by watching, wondering how anyone can be so dull. Teacher trainers like to quote “if all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” (I don’t know who that’s ascribed to), and perhaps if all you want is to see, a lot of things might look like telescopes which aren’t, or are very poor ones.

Still, it seems rather thoughtless to make something that *looks* like it’s going to be for seeing, but which is not quite fit for seeing with, and then to poke or measure people with it. I imagine getting poked in the eye a number of times, and then squawking or sulking, as I have been known to do, as the victim of a rather poor joke.

So thought: you’re a rather clever girl. Surely you could figure this out after a couple of tries. One would think. Presumably after getting a packet of materials that says a lot about how to get a certificate, and nothing at all about how to assimilate knowledge into wisdom, you’d know it as being more of a measuring stick than a telescope, and only inadvertently a mirror. Or, after going to enough workshops that end up being very much about controlling people, and very little about the desirability of doing so, one would recognize a stick for prodding with. One might very well continue to dislike being prodded and measured, but surprise becomes increasingly implausible. What else is going on?

Not uncommonly, organizers have a couple of intentions, which may interact oddly. They may want to convince you that if you don’t repent you will burn in hell for all eternity — and also want you to have fun. It’s not necessary that the desire to inflict fun be any less sincere than the desire to inspire repentance. Making a small group of people miserable every day for months and years is not a desirable career for any sane person. And I suspect that many people, including educational professionals, secretly suspect that if they exclusively did what they mean to do — goad people into being more responsible teachers, for instance — then they and we would be rather miserable. We might even disagree on what we ought to be repenting of. It might become unpleasant. We might reach an impasse. So, whether by design or no, we whip up a kind of manipulation stew. Something that I find extraordinarily distasteful, because I cant’ tell what’s in it. Is the spoon full of aspartame hiding medicine, poison, or placebo? It’s a bit chancy.

I should note, before confusing myself and you with example soup, that not all of this applies equally to every situation. Just now I was mostly thinking about workshop facilitators who pour on the games, activities, and literal candy so thick that there’s very little room to consider what’s under the icing. And it’s not even good icing — it’s the kind you want to scrape off when it gets thicker than an eighth of an inch. This is far less true of St Stephen’s, where the appeal is actually in the the topic and the essays — so in that which the course actually consists of — only it’s rather poorly done. That may well have been a simple case of ignorantly poking myself with something I mistook for a telescope, but which was, in fact, a measuring stick, after trying very hard to look through it.

PS: With less psychological maneuvering one might say “it’s hard to admit that something I’ve hoped would be good and interesting if I just put enough or the right kind of effort and thought and consideration into it is probably just not very good, even if the experience of encountering it is, in other ways, good for me. So first I invest a lot of energy into making it work (and had to previously invest some money into it, making me want to quit even less), and get some good cognitive dissonance going on.

Essay Questions

With my formatting woes are out of the way, I can continue on to the actual questions, which I’ve re-formatted for legibility.

1. Fundamentals Answer in essay format, five to eight typewritten pages for each question
   1. Discuss the doctrine of deification or theosis. What does this doctrine tell us about man and creation? What is the importance of synergia in this process?
   2. Based on your readings from various chapters , define the Church’s teaching concerning the sacrament of Repentance (not just form or order).
2. Church History Answer in essay format, four to five typewritten pages for each question.  Be as specific as the space, topic and reading assignment permit
   1. Discuss Judaism in the period just prior to and during the New Testament period. Include all elements and their influence on the development of New Testament teaching.
   2. Compare and contrast the theological schools of Alexandria and Antioch. Make note of their respective leaders and methodologies.
   3. Outline the development of monasticism from just prior to St. Anthony the Great (of Egypt) to St. Benedict of Nursia, highlighting major developments, stages and characters.
3. Liturgical Theology Answer only two of these three questions in essay format: typed, double-spaced, 5 to 8 pages per questions
   1. Is Baptism a “private” or  an “ecclesial” event? How is Baptism connected to the Eucharist? Does the contemporary Orthodox practice to which you have exposed make this clear?
   2. Discuss and evaluate the various interpretations given to the Great Entrance in Liturgical commentaries and show their effect on the texts and actions of the Liturgy.
   3. Explain and discuss the differences between the various New Testament accounts of the Last Supper.

Having stepped down from my editorial soapbox, these questions are fine. They’re normal and expected. They’re asking about usual things, in essays of usual length, with reasonable formatting guidelines. And that’s just fine. This isn’t St John’s, where half the art is in choosing good questions. It would have been better to spread them out, but that’s apparently just how they do things.

As I wrote about how ordinary and expected these questions are, it occurred to me that I was being a little disingenuous. They’re all ordinary Orthodox topics, and Orthodox really are occupied with worthwhile topics most of the time. Well, in theology, anyway. Repentance and theosis actually are two of the most important things that human beings can grapple with and strive for, so it makes sense we would address them. Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism, from  the traditions of Alexandria and Antioch are extremely important for theology, and monasticism is a great force within the Church. Baptism and the Eucharist are the great sacraments; the entrance and then the main content of our liturgical lives, the the Great Entrance is an important part of the Liturgy.

It’s sort of a no-frills approach to question asking, more practical than clever. If someone knows what Orthodox believe about baptism, the Liturgy, monasticism, Green theology, repentance, and theosis, then they are beginning to know what’s at the heart of Orthodox belief and worship.

I respect that, even if I’m not thrilled by it — it’s solid, even if it isn’t exciting.

Another Correspondence Fail

We were supposed to receive our exam questions for the St Stephen’s Course by Jan 15, and in this, at least, they are attempting to be timely (which is good, since they’re due March 1). While I have not received my own printed packet, some course-mates shared theirs, and it looks like they’re all the same. My first reaction upon reading the document they had forwarded was irritation. My second reaction, after letting it settle for a couple of hours, was also irritation. This was partly a matter of formatting. Yes, poor formatting, with randomly bolded and ALL CAPS paragraphs, and BOLDED ALL CAPS PARAGRAPHS, can inspire irritation. Still, I should give them the benefit of the doubt in this case. It may be a difficulty of converting printed matter into HTML, which, if it’s not done by hand (which is quite labor intensive), can produce some peculiar and unfortunate results. Nevertheless, I was struck rather forcibly by this introductory letter from the registrars (I have to imagine the BOLD CAPS to be their own doing, since it changes throughout the letter):

1.      Adhere to the required number of pages for each question.

2.      Ensure that each page is approximately 25 typewritten lines long.

3.      Unless absolutely necessary, do not make extensive quotations from text you have read.  Instead, phrase the author’s words, concisely, in your own words and write the author’s name and the number(s) of the page(s) to which you refer in brackets after your paraphrase.

4.      A paper on a scriptural topic is neither a dogmatic dissertation nor a sermon.  Therefore, discuss, interpret and comment on the scriptural texts pertaining to the assigned topic and, then, try to make your own synthesis.  Do not start with dogmatic assertions and use biblical quotes merely as “seasoning”.

5.      Label each exam with your name, address, telephone number and email address.

6.      COPY THE QUESTION YOU ARE ANSWERING AT THE TOP OF THE FIRST PAGE OF EACH EXAMINATION.

7.      KEEP COPIES OF EVERY EXAMINATION MAILED TO THE MENTORS.

8.      TO FACILITATE RECORD KEEPING AND TO MAINTAIN CURRENT RECORDS, PLEASE COMPLETE AND MAIL THE ENCLOSED POSTCARDS WHEN YOU MAIL THE EXAMINATIONS TO THE MENTORS.  THERE IS ONE POST CARD ENCLOSED FOR EACH EXAMINATION.

9.      WHEN YOU SUBMIT EXAMINATIONS TO EACH MENTOR, PLEASE ENCLOSE A STAMPED, SELF ADDRESSED ENVELOPE WITH EACH EXAMINATION.  PROVIDE ENOUGH POSTAGE TO DEFRAY THE COST OF THE RETURN OF YOUR GRADED EXAMINATIONS.  IF THIS IS NOT DONE, YOUR GRADE WILL BE RECORDED IN OUR RECORDS BUT YOUR GRADED AND ANNOTATED EXAMINATION WILL NOT BE RETURNED TO YOU. INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS ENCLOSE US DOLLARS WITH EXAM.

And this was greeted with irritation, because it looks rude. Why do the paragraphs expand and become louder as you proceed down the list? Admittedly, lists like this are a pet peeve of mine, and I tended to regularly flail about angrily in response to poorly written lists in Teaching school. Nevertheless, it annoys me because it’s legitimately annoying. Take Number 9, for instance. It might simply say something like:

9) If you wish your marked essays to be returned to you, please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope with sufficient postage for the return trip.

The feeling I get from these tips is that whoever is writing it is exasperated with some of his or her students, who routinely ignore format conventions (#1 and #2), stuff in bloated, unwieldy quotations (#3), proof-text dogmatically (#4), neglect to save their work (#6), HAVE EXTREMELY SHORT ATTENTION SPANS, AND DON’T KNOW HOW POSTAGE WORKS. #5-9 are all reasonable and helpful, but ghastly to read.

In short, I don’t get it. I mean, I get what they’re trying to say — treat this as you would a university essay — but don’t at all understand why they would choose this as their way of saying it, even if the typographic escalation is a result of unintentional formatting transitions (which could be entirely avoided by emailing everyone rather than waiting us to email one another).

If you can write college-level essays, all the above conventions are perfectly notmal reminders, and don’t need hammering on. If you can’t, then this isn’t going to make everything all better, and you’d best go confer with some friends who are able to write well and conventionally.

‎2013 Creative Pay-It-Forward

Last time I did this challenge, there were little Alaskan scenes

This is in response to a friend’s Facebook post. Here’s how it works:

1. Post here or on Facebook to receive something small and art-ish from me at some point this spring(up to 5 people)
2. Send me your address and thoughts on what you’d like, if you have any. Otherwise it will likely be a small icon-like painting.
3. Post to your own Facebook wall or blog offering something hand made (art, craft, poem) to five respondents
4. They post a similar offer, and the hand-made cheeriness spreads!

So go ahead, join in!