Polish fortune-telling holiday: Get a candle, a key and a right shoe

by Jamie Rhein on

Tonight is St. Andrew’s Eve where fortunes are told if you happen to be in Poland or around a large Polish community. These days, the fortunes are male or female friendly, but in the past were female fare. Also called Andrzejki, this holiday is thanks to St. Andrew (as in one of the disciples) who is the patron saint.

The night of fortune-telling designed to predict a person’s fate in love, wealth and marriage involves a bit of practice it seems–and a vivid imagination. The love and wealth prediction is the trickiest. People gather at parties where each tells the others’ fortunes based on information gathered from melted wax and shadows.

Here’s what you do:

  1. Get a candle. Melt the wax
  2. Turn off the lights
  3. Pour the melted wax through the hole of a key into a bowl of water. Naturally, get a key with a large hole.
  4. When the wax hardens into a shape, look at it, or the shadow that it makes to see what that person’s fortune is.

This is what you can tell if you are an intuitive fortune-teller type. The person’s country of origin (if the person speaks Polish and if you are in Poland, this might be a safe bet), the person’s future love match, and what the person’s profession will be.

If this sounds a little dicey and complicated, try shoe throwing. It’s another St. Andrew’s Eve tradition. Here’s how you do this one. Everybody at the party takes off his or her right shoe. Stand in a line across a room from a door. Throw the shoe towards the door. Whoever gets his or her shoe closer to the door will get married first. I would say if you don’t really want to get married first, don’t lob it. A gentle toss will suffice. You can always say, “Ooops, it slipped.”

Here’s another way to play this one. Starting at the wall across from the door, one person puts the heel of her shoe against the wall. Another person puts the heal of her shoe against the toe of the other person’s shoe. Another person repeats the step with her shoe. Whichever shoe is the one that reaches the door is the one that the owner will get married first. Clear as mud?

I looked around to see if I can find a particular St. Andrew’s Eve event for you to go to. Nope. I did find several articles talking about it. Here’s one from the Warsaw Voice where I culled my how tos. You can practice your Polish with this one. The cities in the U.S. and Canada mentioned as having large Polish communities are Detroit, San Francisco, Toronto and New York. This article describes even more fortune-telling games.

Go pigeon go!!! Pigeon racing may become an “official” sport

by Jamie Rhein on

The Amazing Race is one kind of race to test a person’s mettle. If you want to know just what a pigeon can do, race it. People in Great Britain called “pigeon fanciers” have sports clubs where they see whose pigeon is the fastest. This has been going on for a hundred years. That sounds sports-like to me, but pigeon racing, however popular, isn’t officially named a sport in Great Britain. This means that pigeon sports clubs will soon have to pay taxes because the buildings the pigeons are kept in will be taxed. If the sports clubs are official, they don’t pay so many taxes or something. The British tax system sounds as complicated as the American one.

One of the arguments for making the pigeon racers official is because their relatives worked so hard during WWII carrying messages to help the troops. That does seem like a good reason to give them a tax break.

Maybe the queen will intervene. She’s the patron of pigeons. There’s a Royal Pigeon Racing Association that is under the monarch umbrella. Who knew? If you go to the site, you’ll see a calendar of events and pigeon news.[via Associated Press]

Fortune-telling on the rise in Iran

by Jamie Rhein on

If you happen to be in Iran and want to have your fortune told, you’re in luck. The news on the streets, (in the paper-see article by Zahra Hosseinian) is that fortune tellers are on the rise. Tarot cards, reading coffee grounds, or having a love bird pick a poem written by 14th century Persian poet Hafez out of a hat are part of the process. Although fortune telling is not accepted by Islam according to the clerics there, it’s not stopping business. People of all ages and all levels of religious beliefs are heading to soothsayers.

The fortune tellers say that people who come to see them are looking for happiness and security. Security, often meaning love and wealth. That sounds a lot like the reasons anyone would head to a fortune teller. Friends of mine tell fortunes at ComFest. They set up a booth, cover a table with gauzy fabric and take out their Tarot card decks. My friends will read cards for $5 a pop.

The reasons for heading to a fortune teller also sound similar to why people might go in the U.S. Uncertainty about the future. In Iran, one reason for shaky feelings is the relationship Iran is gaining with the West. Hmmm. What is adding to some unshakiness on this side of the globe? Well, I’ll be. The relationship to Iran sort of gives a person pause.

In Iran, one fortune teller charges $21 and it takes about an hour. If you’re looking for a job that will make you loads of money. This one is probably not it. Don’t be a tour guide either.

One for the Road: Colour – Travels Through the Paintbox

by Kelly Amabile on

This book beckoned me from a front table at Artisan Books on Gertrude St. in Melbourne’s Fitzroy neighborhood. The 2006 paperback version I bought has the bold cover shown here, although I’ve seen several other versions of this book that was originally released in 2002. Regardless of what it looks like, Victoria Finlay’s Colour: Travels Through The Paintbox is a masterpiece. Just as I enjoy looking at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers again and again, so too will I delight in returning to passages from this multicolored exploration of our world.

From ochre to violet, Findlay unearths every possible facet of the rainbow. Her research takes her to Spain, for Consuegra’s Saffron Festival (yellow), to lapis lazuli mines in Sar-e-sang, Afghanistan (blue), and to Mexico, in search of the purple of the Mixtecs (violet). Finlay takes the reader along on this magical journey as she creates a spectacular canvas loaded with pigments, dyes, gems and stones. Her quest to uncover the history and origins of color reveals a rich palette that stretches to every corner of our planet. It would be wonderful to see a map painted to match the discoveries from her color expeditions.

Street graffiti in Barcelona

by Grant Martin on

Everything is so well done in Barcelona, its no surprise that even the graffiti is beautiful. Walking around the gothic quarter and El Born, many of the metal doors that close in front of the storefronts are vividly painted with bright colors, in stark contrast to the stone walls and architecture that line the streets.

As the day moves through siesta in into the evening hours, the palette evolves. Stores open and close, and with them the artwork appears and disappears from the street side. One can walk past the block three times in one day and see three different sets of stores open with different artwork on each facade. It’s an amazing transformation that can only take place in a beautiful place like Barcelona.

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