Orchids, Folktales, and a New-to-Me Painter

Orchid Show at Matthaei Botanical Garden

A number of orchid societies from nearby areas presented displays of orchids at this show, which we visited this weekend.
Below are photos of the orchids, as well as other plants on display in the greenhouses.

Two orchids and one cactus from the cactus room in the greenhouse.
I am very amused at finding a plaid plant!

From the Bonsai and Penjing display.

A stone plant: Lithops.

The orchid show.

All greenhouse and orchid photos © 2024 mae sander.

West African Folk Tales

An illustration from the tale “The Hunter and the Tortoise”
about a hunter who finds a miraculous singing tortoise, promises to keep it secret, but finally betrays it.

I’m reading a few folk tales from a collection titled West African Folk Tales by William Henry Barker (1882–1929) and illustrated by Cecilia Sinclair. This Project Gutenberg facsimile was made from the original text, published in 1917. I like reading these simple tales, about the tricky spider Anansi and his friends and family. Some are “just so” stories that explain the behavior of animals or birds; others are moral tales where characters are punished for not keeping secrets or the like; and some are just for fun.

It’s especially notable that so many of the tales involve hunger: the characters are constantly motivated by food shortages or the need to produce or set aside food, or their luck at finding a magical source for food. For example, 

“Anansi’s wives could not even get proper food; they had to live on unripe bananas with peppers.” (p. 26)

“Egya Anansi was a very skilful farmer. He, with his wife and son, set to work one year to prepare a farm, much larger than any they had previously worked. They planted in it yams, maize, and beans—and were rewarded by a very rich crop. Their harvest was quite ten times greater than any they had ever had before. Egya Anansi was very well pleased when he saw his wealth of corn and beans. He was, however, an exceedingly selfish and greedy man, who never liked to share anything—even with his own wife and son. When he saw that the crops were quite ripe, he thought of a plan whereby he alone would profit by them” (p. 47)   

“Once upon a time there was great scarcity of food in the land. Father Anansi and his son, Kweku Tsin, being very hungry, set out one morning to hunt in the forest.” (p. 66)

“There once lived upon the earth a poor man called Ohia … . Ohia thought of a plan which many of his neighbours had tried and found successful. He went to a wealthy farmer who lived near, and offered to hew down several of his palm-trees. He would then collect their sap to make palm wine. When this should be ready for the market, his wife would carry it there and sell it.” (p. 71)

Of course as in many folktales from many places, the magical or secret sources of food are often destroyed by the characters’ greed or selfishness. I have been curious about the Anansi tales because of the stories by Neil Gaiman that use them, and I’m finding these quite delightful.

Cutting down palm trees in order to make palm wine.

What I Hope to Read Tomorrow

Mayer Kirshenblatt: A Painter of Memories 

The Village Carp Pond

A Purim Play: children watch through the window.

Sabbath Candle-Lighting: wine, candles, challah.

Mayer Kirshenblatt (1916-2009) was born in Opatow, Poland. (The town was called Apt in Yiddish). In 1934, he emigrated to Toronto, where he worked in various jobs, married, and lived for the rest of his life. For his last 20 years, encouraged by his family, he began painting scenes from his youth in order to document his life in Apt, a shtetl whose Jewish population and culture had been destroyed by the Holocaust. Kirshenblatt's work is currently the subject of a special exhibit in the Polin Museum of Jewish History in Warsaw, Poland, and has been featured at several exhibits in the US as well. For more about Mayer Kirschenblatt, see "From Memory to Canvas, Lost Way of Life in Poland" (New York Times, May 7, 2009) 

NOTE: My father was born in a shtetl in what is now Belarus, about 500 km from Opatow, The life that these paintings depict was very very similar to the life my father described, so I’m happy to be introduced to this painter. Before the Holocaust, these and many other Jewish towns were ethnically unified in culture, language, and religious practice. The national borders that exist now were different before World War I, and have changed several times since then.

For Elizabeth’s tea party — two types of wine!