A Metal Worker

The group was moving its way slowly down a side street close to Esfahan’s famous Imam Square when we heard a tap tap tap coming from a small shop on our left. We peered inside and saw a young man working on a strip of metal, incising it with a tiny, detailed, and quite beautiful design. He said he was practicing his skills.

It turns out that he is an apprentice to a master metalworker, Ali Saee, who was not in the shop at the time. The shop's name is, not surprisingly, Saee's Art Gallery. The image to the left was scanned from his business card. 

The young man showed us an incredible silver Koran cover which the master had just finished.
We thanked him for demonstrating his skill and slowly moved on down the street to our bus. I think he was grateful to get back to his work.

Miniaturists

In Tehran, midway on our flight from Tabriz to Mashhad, we visited The Reza Abbasi Museum (a miniaturist and calligrapher from the 17th century) which had a stunning collection of miniature paintings. They weren’t teeny tiny but the workmanship and the startling designs were simply gorgeous. Look at the antelope on the right bounding out of the frame of the picture with such a desire to escape the hunters.

So I was prepared, more or less, for the beautiful work of several miniaturists in Esfahan. In the first shop, Persian Art Gallery, Reza Toghi, one of two miniaturists working in the gallery, demonstrated his skill and speed by drawing a man and his donkey on a small square of black paper in white ink with a minimum of strokes but recognizable in every way. He gave it to a member of our group and she passed it along to me. I am so grateful. You can see it below.

We were then free to look around the showcases and admire both his work and that of his students. Painted on pieces of camel bone, they were incredibly small, each exquisite in its own way. Many of them showed polo games as they were played during the Safavid Dynasty (17th century) in Imam Square just outside his shop. Horses, men, action, a mosque, a palace, and the market. And painted with the tiniest brushes you can imagine. You'll learn more about the buildings depicted here in upcoming posts on architecture.

A Maker of Traditional Persian Musical Instruments

I’ve already mentioned this wonderful shop in Yazd in connection with Persian music. Moslem Mirzazadeh makes traditional Persian instruments, the tar and the settar, both of which he played for us. In the photo at the above, he’s playing the tar.

Traditional Shoe Makers

We saw two traditional shoe makers during our time in Iran. The fellow shown above has a shop and workroom in a balcony over the Public Laundry Museum in Zanjan. You can see sample of his shoes hanging from the ceiling behind him. He was much more interested in showing us a copy of the dissertation a woman had written about him than he was in showing us his shoes.

The second fellow had a shop in the market in Esfahan, close to Jameh Mosque. A pair of his shoes, made in the traditional manner with traditional materials, would cost about $50. I like the way the toes turn up at the ends. Why would they turn up, I wonder?

Makers of Tiles

Tiles are used to cover many surfaces in Iran, most notably mosques, shrines, palaces, and tombs. They are used to protect these buildings from the elements on the outside and hence have to be water-tight and durable and to beautify these buildings on the inside. So the role of the tile makers and tile workers is very important indeed. The exterior tile work on the dome of Imam Mosque in Esfahan, to the left,  is faience mosaic. Below is a shot of the interior tile work in Imam Mosque.






We learned about two major kinds of tile work:

Faience mosaic tile work. Large sheets of individually colored tiles are fired, each according to the specific temperature that the color needs to be most beautiful. Following the design on a paper pattern, these larger tiles are cut into smaller shapes and set into gypsum to form a mosaic pattern. This form of tile making came into prominence in the Ilkhanid Dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries but continued into the 16th and 17th century as well. The photo above showing the intricate detail of faience mosaic is from the Blue Mosque in Tabriz which dates from 1465 but collapsed in an earthquake in 1773. It is in the process of being rebuilt. Notice the beautiful calligraphy woven into the third strip from the bottom.

Seven Color Tiles. These square tiles are positioned together, painted as a whole, often with very complicated designs, and then fired. They were developed and used a lot by the Safavid Dynasty in the 17th century as they were rebuilding Esfahan and continued to be in used through the Qajar Dynasty in the 19th century. These tiles are not as brilliant as the faience mosaic tiles because they are fired at a temperature which best suits the majority of the colors but not all of them. Over time, the colors fade. But they are much less expensive to produce.The example to the left comes from the Pink Mosque in Shiraz and dates from the 19th century.

In Yazd we had the chance to visit a tile store. One of the owners does tile repair work on many of the tiled structures around Iran. Repairing old tiles is one reason the tile craft has stayed alive and well in Iran. The small tiles and ceramic objects that we saw in the shop are made primarily for the tourist trade. They are wonderful, none the less.

Introduction to the Fifth Set of Snippets: Ferdowsi and Hafez

The story goes that any Iranian household is likely to have three books: the Koran, Shanameh, the epic tales of pre-Islamic Persia told in verse by Ferdowsi in the 10th century, and The Divan, a book of poetry by Hafez, written in the 14th century. OK, so I understand the Koran. It would be comparable to having the Bible in an American Christian household. But two books of poetry? Add to that the fact that many Iranians are able to quote from these books, sing parts of them, and that they visit their tombs with great enthusiasm and in prodigious numbers. It is quite remarkable and again and again we experienced  the influence of these two men and their books on the culture of Iran.

Of course there are many wonderful Persian writers and poets. But I'm going to tell you about these two because they both came to have some meaning for me and we too visited their tombs.

Ferdowsi, the Poet from Tus

Ferdowsi, born in 940 in Tus, right outside of Mashhad, already a well-regarded poet at 30, was commissioned by the Saminid princes of Khorasan to write a poetic version of an older prose text called the Book of Lords. He completed it in 1010. Unfortunately he had not been paid by the princes who hired him. And at some point during his 40 or so years of writing more than 50,000 verses, these princes were ousted by the Ghaznavid Turks who were not particularly sympathetic to his project.

Shanameh or Book of Kings tells the story of two mythic or legendary dynasties and two historical dynasties and stops just short of the momentous Arab invasion in the 7th century. The archetypal Persian hero of the book, Rostam, who embodies integrity, strength and chivalry, wages righteous battles and undergoes many trials and tests of endurance and courage. It’s a story that makes Persians proud of their pre-Islamic history and ancient glory. And apparently it is beautifully written. The statue we saw in Tehran outside Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi’s White Palace is a figure from Shanameh.

But there is more to its importance than that. In the 10th century, Arab culture was bumping up against Persian culture and language and threatening to over run it. Ferdowsi, fully understanding the threat, wrote Shanameh in a pure form of Persian, removing as many Arab-derived words as possible and as a result codified the Persian language for future generations. Or so the story goes.

The mausoleum which we visited in Tus was built in 1926 by Reza Shah Pahlavi, on the site of Ferdowsi’s tomb. Inside are giant carvings of some of the stories from Shanameh.

Our guide to the city of Mashhad, Ali, sang us one of the stories from Shanameh standing at the foot of Ferdowsi's tomb, his lovely voice reverberating throughout the large space filled with mythical creatures, ruthless enemies, and valiant heroes.

Hafez, the Poet from Shiraz

Hafez was born around 1315. Not much is known about his life, except that he spent most of it in Shiraz, and a good part of what you hear is a figment of someone's overly active imagination. I'm not going to add to the speculation.

I picked up a translation of his poems before coming to Iran in 2008. I had read that it was customary for pilgrims in Iran to carry Hafez with them and each morning, or so I interpreted it, turn to a page, read the poem carefully, and use it as some kind of guidance for the day.

The translation I used was David Ladinsky’s The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master. Ladinsky has been criticized for not working from the original Persian, for essentially making a translation of a previous translation, and in some cases fabricating Hafez-like poems. I must admit that the criticisms give me pause. But at the same time, I find Ladinsky’s poetry fresh, engaging, and relevant. I decided to believe that, the scholarly imperfections not withstanding, these were wonderful poems and that Hafez would have approved of their spirit and intent.

So nearly every morning I opened my book and read a poem. In one case, I found one that was so startlingly relevant that I copied it on a piece of paper, stuffed it into my purse, and looked at it again and again as the day went on. It began “Anger sinks the boat.”

After a long day at Persepolis and Naqsh-e Rostam, we visited the mausoleum of Hafez in Shiraz, located in a peaceful and quite beautiful garden.  See the photo above. Reza, our guide, read us a poem by Hafez in the original Farsi and Carolyn read Reza’s translation of it. So beautiful. I read one from The Gift called The Gift. If your eyesight is superb, you can read it to your left. And if you click on the image, it will get bigger.

I loved watching the people who came to the tomb, often carrying their books of Hafez. They would kneel down next to the tomb and lay their hand on it, just for a moment. Kids tried to climb on the tomb and were motioned off by watchful guards.

Outside the grounds, several men with parakeets, a stack of cards, and little pieces of paper were selling fortunes. Once you paid your money and picked a card, the parakeet would pick the piece of paper for you. And if you could read Farsi, you would have your fortune. My card showed birds escaping from the open door of their cage. But I don’t know what the slip says. I asked Reza to translate, but we never got around to it. Perhaps there is some regulation against tour guides reading fortunes. I suppose it could be awkward.

Note: So what is this Hafez/Hafiz, Esfahan/Isfahan thing going on here? In the transliteration from Farsi to English, there is no difference in pronunciation between the i and the e or the p and the f. So you can see all different sorts of spellings and it is easy to be misled. I have chosen to use Hafez and Esfahan, except in the case with the title of Ladinsky’s book which spells it Hafiz.

Reasons for Choosing a Vegetarian Diet

  Let us start with a brief background on some the reasons people have chosen a vegetarian diet in our history:
The idea of vegetarianism is not a new one, by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed man has in one way or another eaten vegetarian diets since his beginnings. Granted, the first vegetarians did so only out necessity. Meat may not have been available due to harsh winters, animal migrational patterns or even poor tribal leadership. Only foraged food would have been available under such circumstances.
As man evolved and became more able to manipulate his environment, so came the option to choose. Available facts point to the first vegetarian ideologies being practiced in Egypt around 3,200BC where some religious groups abstained from eating flesh, as they believed it produced bad karma with regards to their reincarnation.
   Around 2000BC Hindus, on the Indian sub-continent, began practising vegetarianism in the belief that a vegetarian diet is needed to reach spiritual enlightenment. Even today, Hindus make up the largest percentage of vegetarians on the Earth.
Also from the Indian sub-continent, around 600BC, came the religion of Jainism. In its teachings, Jainism insists that we honor the spiritual nature of all life. Extemely dedicated Jainists go to the extent of straining insects from drinking water and even wearing masks to avoid inhaling small, airborne creatures. They will only eat fruits that have natually fallen from trees and are not supposed to eat honey or rooted plants.
Janism is the only religion requiring their monks to be vegetarian.
   Vegetarianism was also popularised in Ancient Greece by many of the great philosophers including Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. Indeed vegetarians in Europe were originally referred to as Pythagoreans, after the Greek Philosopher Pythagoras advocated a vegetarian diet for its nutritional and ethical values. He claimed,
"As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
It was not until 1847, when the first vegetarian society was formed in Ramsgate, Kent UK, that the name Vegetarian was first conceived. Contrary to popular belief, the word Vegetarian arose from the Latin word `vegetus`, meaning `lively` which was how early vegetarians claimed their diet made them feel.
   Many reason have been voiced in favour of vegetarianism in our history including the long held philosophy that vegetarians are living longer, healthier lives than their meat eating counter-parts. Much evidence has already been accumulated to support these claims.
Now let us look at some of the reasons that justify becoming vegetarian in our modern society.
Necessity
The case of necessity speaks for itself really; anyone unable to find a supply of meat sufficient to sustain life must find an alternative until such time that meat becomes available again.
Economic
An Economic Vegetarian is someone who practices vegetarianism either out of necessity, lack of funds for instance, or because of a conscious or philosophical viewpoint that the consumption of meat is economically unsound and that vegetarianism will help improve public health and curb many starvation issues.
Environmental
Environmental Vegetarians are similar to Economic Vegetarians. According to the United Nations, the livestock sector (cows, chickens, pigs, etc) is one of the three most significant contributors to our most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. It is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases. The use of feedlots, for cattle feeding, is one of the most inefficient and environmentally harmful ways of producing meat; yet they still remain widespread throughout cattle farming.
Religion
Many religions support vegetarianism including Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Taoism. They offer similar teachings which stress the value of all life and forbids the act of destroying life simply for human gains.
Distaste
Some people genuinely do not enjoy the taste of meat, suggesting it tastes sweaty or fatty. Others choose to be vegetarian because they find meat products aesthetically unappetizing. An example being, the carcass of a herd animal lying in a field would attract real carnivores such as big cats or wolves, but the mere sight would disgust most humans.
Animal Welfare
Many vegetarians, especially western vegetarians, are motivated by animal welfare. They see animals as our friends, with whom we share the world and not as mere food. The fact that most parents actively encourage their children to love and appreciate animals is totally contradictory to the way in which humans really respect and treat animals.
Personal Health
Possibly the single most reason more and more people are turning to vegetarianism, current studies are showing that vegetarians are living longer and healthier. A study by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 1999 found that the mortality ratio in fish eaters was lowest (0.82) then followed by vegetarians (0.84) occasional meat eaters also at (0.84) compared to regular meat eaters at (1.0).
A recent study shown in the British Medical Journal concluded that,
   "Higher IQ at age 10 years was associated with an increased likelihood of being vegetarian at age 30...IQ remained a statistically significant predictor of being vegetarian as an adult..."
Conscience
Conscience is a conglomeration of all the other reasons. It is our moral conscience, which allows us to weigh up what we see, hear and know. It is our choice whether we allow it to influence out daily life. Those who are able to suppress their consciousness, deliberately or otherwise, will ultimately make a decision that will not favour the miss-fortunes of animals.
I hope, that in some way, this article will encourage people to explore vegetarianism as a real option. Whatever reasons for becoming vegetarian, one thing is not in doubt; vegetarianism is here to stay and it looks likely to become the preferred diet of choice for all humans in the not too distant future.

Tips For a Healthy Pregnancy

    When you're pregnant you need to pay close attention to what you eat so that you get the most nutrition as you can from the foods that you include in your diet. If you're a vegetarian there are things that you need to know so that you can make sure that you get the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrition that your baby needs to grow. You need to have a certain amount of protein each day, as well as the right amount of calcium. Being pregnant doesn't mean that you have to give up being a vegetarian for the duration of your pregnancy but it does mean that you need be aware of what you eat.
    Protein is a big concern when you're pregnant. You'll need to have an adequate amount each day to ensure that your baby gets the nutrients that he needs. You can increase your protein sources by eating more soy products. By drinking two to three glasses each day of calcium fortified soy mild you'll be able to meet your protein needs as well as the amount of calcium that is recommended. When you're pregnant you should be eating at least 300 more calories each day for the health of your growing baby. The extra calories that you eat should come in the form of healthy foods, such as nuts and seeds, vegetables and fruits, soy products, whole grains, and low fat dairy products.
Getting enough calcium is an issue that you'll have to address when you're pregnant and whether you're a vegetarian or not. You need the calcium equivalent of four glasses of milk each day. But that's a lot of mild to drink! If you plan your diet right you won't have to drink so much milk since there are many other good sources of calcium that are available and are just as healthy as milk. These alternate calcium sources include orange juice that has been fortified with calcium, sesame seeds (such as tahini), almonds, broccoli, and soy milk. Talk to your doctor about maintaining a healthy diet when you're pregnant. He or she will be able

Can I Cure My Diabetes By Becoming A Vegetarian?

  Some people who have moved over to a vegetarian diet are convinced that it has been responsible for curing their diabetes but can this really be the case or is there something else at work here?
Diet is a very important factor when it comes to diabetes but here we are normally talking principally about controlling the level of sugar in the bloodstream and so we are looking at changes to our dietary habits which control our intake of sugar. So can a vegetarian diet help in this respect?
  Vegetarians fall into three categories - vegans, lacto-vegetarians and lacto-ovo vegetarians. Vegans eat no animal products, including products derived from animals such as eggs and milk, and their diet is confined solely to plant-based foods. Lacto-vegetarians add milk and some milk based products to an otherwise plant-based diet, but exclude eggs. Finally, lacto-ovo-vegetarians add milk, milk based products such as cheese and yogurt and eggs to a plant-based diet.
In all of these cases, because the diet is essentially centered on fruit, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds and possibly some dairy products, it is essentially a low cholesterol, low fat, high fiber diet and tends, by its very nature, to reduce sugar intake and so assist with the control of diabetes.
However, in many people who convert to a vegetarian diet there is something else hard at work in combating diabetes.
The substantial rise in diabetes, especially in the West, is due in no small measure to the fact that we are gaining weight at an alarming rate and that obesity has now reached epidemic proportions in many countries, with the United States leading the field. Weight gain is a major risk factor for diabetes and many people are developing the disease for no other reason than the fact that they are gaining weight.
  The solution of course, in the first instance and before the problem gets out of hand, is simply to go on a diet, start taking some exercise and lose weight and what could be better for accomplishing this than a low cholesterol, low fat, low sugar, high fiber vegetarian diet.
So, returning to our original question - can you cure your diabetes by becoming a vegetarian? - the simple answer is yes but it is not the diet itself which will cure your diabetes, but the fact that it can both help you to control your sugar intake and lose weight which is doing the trick. To this end it is a change in diet which is the answer and, while this could be to a vegetarian diet, this does not have to be the case.

Cirque du Soleil audition July 16th

Well, it is official.  I am off to TO for a clown audition with Cirque du Soleil.  I am excited, scared, delighted and flabbergasted.  I consider it an honor just to be invited.  Perhaps in the near future, you will see me on a Cirque stage.

Wish me luck,
JAKE

We are....

PREGNANT!!! Wow I cannot even believe I'm saying those words. Jeremy and I feel so blessed and excited. I will feel more comfortable once I finish my first trimester. We have had two miscarriages, so as you can imagine it's always in the back of my mind. Monday I go back in for more blood work, just to make sure my levels are good. Also, we will make an appointment for my ultrasound. At that time we will hopefully see one or two heartbeats!! Thank you for all your prayers.

Baby its hot outside!

As temperatures soar in New York its time to get serious about all things icy. I made ice cream sandwiches last week for a birthday party (choc chip with chocolate Blue Marble ice cream - so tasty!) but they were - erm - all eaten before I could take any snaps. But next on my to-make hit list are...

EASY PEASY ICE STICKS

Made using narrow plastic bags and filled with fruit water mixes (or just plain sweet coconut water: yum!) these are apparently hugely popular in the Philippines (where you can buy "ice candy bags" specifically to make them...can i find the same thing here i wonder?) To get the full how-to visit my favorite tropical food blog www.scentofgreenbananas.blogspot.com

SUPER HEALTHY LOLLIES (these are avocado and cantaloupe!)

MMMm! get one of your five a day and a delicious lolly all in one hit. These are the creation of Mimi and Brian from Brook and Lyn (where you'll find the full recipe). They are planning on experimenting with honey and lavender next.