Happy Halcyon Days

Admittedly, "halcyon days" is an obscure expression. A dear friend, for whom Christmas means work throughout most of the year rather than celebrations at year-end, introduced me to the expression. I quickly adopted it because any inclusive expression of good cheer for year-end has my vote.

The word "halcyon" is obscure. It comes from the ancient Greek and refers to a species of kingfisher bird that was associated with calm weather during the winter solstice. Look it up. Calm sea is a nice association if you are an ancient Greek whose livelihood depended upon sailing the Aegean in open rowboats with a flat sail.

Winter solstice by Aravaipa Creek.

The meaning of halcyon days is an obscurity within an obscurity. The calm weather associated with kingfishers mating in the open sea during a period of calm in winter gave rise to another association: memories of good times.

If anything defines the winter holiday season, it's the memory and celebration of the good days of yore. Arguably, that's what Christmas has become. It's a lot less a celebration of the birth of any particular spiritual Master or religion, than it is a celebration of customs that we associate with the arrival of winter. Some of the "Christmas" traditions (Santa Claus, reindeer, and Christmas tree decorations) have roots in shamanic culture. (The part about Amanita mascara mushrooms as an origin of Christmas tree baubles is intriguing.)

The last weeks of the year are a great time to slow down, reflect, and celebrate; to at least get out of the groove of ordinary life. Actually, each season offers its opportunity to celebrate, but winter may be the grandest opportunity because we need the celebration most when it's getting old and dark outside. In this seasonal context, Christmas is only one night and a day, only one set of celebrations and expressions within a larger and longer context.

Hence I have no problem with "Season's Greetings", "Happy Holidays", "Happy Hanukkah", "God Jul", "Happy Diwali", or "Let's Get Loose for Saturnalia". Some are closer to my traditions than others. Sadly, literal Muslims make it a religious duty to eschew any celebration of a solstice, a bit like literal Christians who complain about Starbuck's plain red holiday cups. But even in the world of Islam, such traditions survive; e.g., Yalda festival. "Happy Halcyon Days" ought not offend Muslims or Christians, but it may be too obscure. I'm open to suggestions.

Happy Winter Solstice Celebrations! May the New Year bring us all happiness, health, friendships, and a modicum of prosperity!

Happy Hundredth

73rd Birthday.

Today is my father's hundredth birthday.

Paul kept a framed copy of this 1916
photo of him with his mother.

Paul Palotás (the family name was Paulik when he was born) was born a hundred years ago, on December 13 in 1915, in Nagyszombat, Upper Hungary (Felvidék). He passed away in 2007, about five weeks short of ninety-two.

The world has seen intense and unsettling changes in his century. He was a child of the First World War of cavalry sabres, massed attacks, water-cooled machine guns, trenches and poisonous gas. That war dismembered his parents' country. They became refugees, his parents lost their savings, then he and his brother became orphaned young teenagers.

Graduation photo, 1937.

In the next World War, a war of revenge, he was twenty-eight and a first lieutentant on the Don River front. The Soviet army counter-attacked and destroyed a Hungarian army, and then his world. He, his wife Irene, and three small children became refugees.

From Austria to Australia, Paul and his wife worked odd jobs until they salvaged a discarded, hand-powered knitting machine. That was the beginning of a successful knitwear manufacturing business in Sydney which they named Suzy Parker.

After eighteen years in Australia, they had raised five children complete with private schools, private music, ballet and acrobatics classes, and our own private Hungarian language world. They sold the business and we moved to America. We became not refugees but immigrants.

"1967 Édesapád" - "Your sweet father"

The business went bankrupt, promises to pay became worthless, and Dad became impoverished while his university-educated kids embarked upon their successful careers in the States. He got a job working graveyard shift in a Greek owned knitwear factory in the Seattle neighborhood of Ballard.

Paul never realized his get-rich-quick dreams literally, but in a much more real and meaningful sense. After his five kids were on their own and he was struggling with the career of a commercial real estate broker, he met Darany Mingmaninakin. Together they shared three decades of affection, traditions, travel, occasional business, and generosity.

He enjoyed a long semi-retirement: frugal but rich in experience. He taught himself to use a computer and wrote the initial draft of his autobiography in a self-taught foreign language, English. He wrote it very well. He taught himself to use computer and email to correspond with military academy colleagues around the world.

With Darany in Hárkány, Hungary, two weeks before his passing.

He and Darany traveled extensively: Thailand, China, Indonesia, Australia, Hungary, Romania, Egypt, Venezuela and Turkey, to name a few. Only two weeks before his death, at the age of almost 92, he happily endured the long flights from Seattle to Budapest without bother or complaint.

Everywhere he explored his Hungarian heritage and connections. His orderly during the war, the soldier who was his personal assistant, perished on the Don River along with a hundred thousand other Hungarians. Paul made it a point to financially support his orderly's widow and descendants. He established a trust for the benefit of Hungarian war orphans. It was Paul's agitation that got a plaque dedicated to the fallen of his Ludovika Military Academy class.

Alaska, 2003

He finished his autobiography in Hungarian, published in Budapest under an optimistic Hungarian title that translates, The Cock Crows, Sunrise Is Coming. He collaborated on another Hungarian publication that translates, We Are an Eastern People, arguing that Hungarians should ally with China and the Far East.

He was a self-made man, two, three times over. He remained outspoken and controversial, intellectually active like a precocious high school student, a proud Hungarian and a man of the world.

It's hard to believe his and my lives overlap and encompass a century. I often look in a mirror and see the features of my father's face looking back.

Boldog születésnapot, Édesapu.

Clay Results with Roshi Roy

My ashtray looks great on the side table outside the dining room window. Neither Shari nor I smoke, but the shiny clear glaze over the porcelain slip and the outline of an African sumac leaf blend perfectly with the outdoor setting and add a distinct touch of class.

My other sumac leaf design also came out nicely.

To make the form, my Clay Guru and I rolled out a piece of flat clay, like flour dough with a roling pin, then I impressed the leaf shapes. A plastic bowl, used for mixing slips and glazes, served as the form. We picked up the piece of flat clay, carefully placed it over the edges of the top of the bowl, then Clay Master Roy picked up both and dropped them together. The clay sank into the bowl. I trimmed the edge and the clay was allowed to dry for the week. ("Like leather," Master Roy kept repeating.)

My first piece was a stick-made vase. Clay Swami Roy showed me how to roll a cylinder of clay on the table with the fingers of my flat hand, then push a pointed stick through its middle. More rolling with the stick, place the clay on end, pull out the stick, and insert a thicker stick. Repeat with increasing thickness until the desired shape is realized.

The bottom is easy. Roll some flat clay, mark the approximate shape of the clay cylinder, rough up and moisten where they will join, then join and trim.

Incising designs on the outside proved challenging because I had no ideas. Clay studios have all sorts of funny specialized tools augmented with an assortment of kitchen gadgets and other bits and stuff commandered to shape clay. I gravitated to a tool that looked like it was made to cut small balls out of a watermelon. I used it to press a circle of rounds.

Then I ran out of ideas. I just scratched the bottom portion, inscribed parallel lines on the top portion and flayed out the rim. I was anxious to get to the glazing, wondering about how to fit brush strokes inside a pretty small pot.

Glazing, as my Clay Swami proved, can be quite simple if you have five-gallon buckets of mixed glaze lying around. We went for plum color. "You haven't done this before, so let me show you." Good advice from Adept Roy.

He grabbed a plastic scoop, actually, a former yogurt container, and ladled gobs of the smooth, dark goop inside my bisqued pot and swirled it around so the insides were evenly coated. Then Clay Rabbi Roy made me hold the pot upside down and dip its top into the bucket of dark goop. Like coating strawberries with chocolate. So much for brushwork.

The following week we saw the fired results. There is a high probability of unpredictability to firing glazed clay. My plum-glazed pot has green blotches. Clay Effendi Roy explained something about minerals in the glaze separating in the firing process. Cobalt oxide? didn't fully understand, except that Clay Sheikh Roy seemed very pleased with the result.

My first ceramic has been pressed into kitchen service. Our copper basket was getting full of whisks, spoons, tongs, spatulas and ladles. Wooden spoons look great in my ceramic pot.

For my next project, I'm thinking of a rectangular casket for holding pens, or an open lantern made with strips of clay. I will defer to the guidance of my Clay Rinpoche Roy, and I still have a leather-dry form of a platter to shape, bisque and glaze. Roshi Roy is inspiring.