HAPPY EASTER!

It is Easter this Sunday - a week this Sunday if you are Eastern Orthodox. May the Easter Beagle scatter many Easter Eggs, on your lawn, behind bushes and if a yard is a mere twinkle in your eye, well then, behind the sofa and underneath the low table and behind the potted plant that should have been thrown out a long time ago but which somehow manages to survive one year after the next of near neglect.

Easter has morphed in my lifetime. Just like Christmas it seems to have lost its religious significance and has become all about chocolate. But how did the coloured easter egg become a chocolate bunny? It escapes me (but yes, I always eat the ears first)

When I was growing up Easter was an even bigger feast than Christmas - it is the most holiest of celebrations in the Eastern Orthodox Church. There was great preparation and anticipation. First - we observed lent ... well kind of. We kept Fridays free of meat and for some reason which we could never quite understand, no butter, at all. We "gave up things" for lent. I gave up candy one lent and never went back to eating it (now, lets not confuse candy with chocolate).

It was the week just before Easter - Holy Week - that was the week when all the lent observances were kept; never mind Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday and of course Good Friday which isn't good at ll, but its all the other things that happened on the home front that made it a particularly difficult week for us kids.

The week before Easter was the week that was devoted to spring cleaning. Every window in the house had to be washed;the floors washed, polished and buffed; rugs taken outside, hung on bamboo struts, and the winter dust beaten out of them; down bedding laid out in the yard to be freshened by the clean air and sun. Heavy winter curtains were taken down and replaced with light summer cotton ones. The silver had to be polished, the china washed, the cupboards lined with clean paper. These chores and more were ours. Fortunately we had two weeks' holidays for Easter, so the first week was all about cleaning. We grumbled a lot, we kids did, but it did us no good. Mom turned a deaf ear to every objection that we had. I have to admit, that when every nook and cranny was finally clean, and everything shone just before leaving for midnight mass on Saturday, there was a special glow to the house --- it just felt so fresh and ... well, CLEAN!

Mom on the other hand spent the whole week cooking. Pies of fish, and meat, and carrots and mushrooms and cabbage and eggs filled the air with their mouthwatering aroma. Cookies and Easter Bread Kulich which is similar to the Italian Panetonne and tortes which we were allowed to decorate but not eat! Then the last to be cooked were the roasts of lamb, pork, beef, chicken and something called Holodetz which is a cross between head cheese (not so dense) and jelly (but denser)but made from pigs feet. Now this last delicacy was special not because we liked it so much, but because it was the only thing that we got a taste of before Easter - not with the finished product, but we got to suck the juice from the pig knuckles and that, after a week of gruel was the biggest treat of all. Typically this was made on a Friday because it needed all of Saturday to gel so that it could be served on Sunday. You know, in retrospect I can't believe it, we kids actually were pretty good about not eating all the yummies that were being created around us - that would never happen today!

There was a day devoted to colouring easter eggs - these were real eggs, from chickens, not chocolate eggs, and no, we could not eat them until Easter Sunday as well!

When Easter Sunday rolled around - there was no cleaning to do, no cooking, just time to enjoy the day. I don't know quite how it worked, who went to whose house when, but it all worked out well --- on Easter Sunday it was either we at our cousins or they at ours, and then the rest of the week, visits to and from other family friends.

Of course Easter meant new outfits for everyone - to wear to midnight mass. That was kind of special too. We girls got to dress in pretty dresses which gave way to ensembles and "outfits" as we grew older. Shoes and bags to match, gloves of course, and maybe a new piece of jewelry to wear around the neck or on our wrists!

I know. That was another time, another era. But, it was a good time, a good era. Can't say that I miss the cleaning ... but honestly, what I don't understand is how did the easter egg become the easter chocolate? And with apologies to Charles Schultz that beagle had best concentrate on flying his sopwith camel!

Happy Easter Everyone!

The murky world of assassins

A recent conversation centered around assassination with generous servings of political condemnation. It is always a source of wonderment to me as to how it is so easy for the armchair pundits to paint the world a simple black or white. Our increasingly liberal mindedness is quick to fault everything about the western system of government. What prompted this conversation was a taping of an interview with Walter Mondale in which he reveals that political assassination is common amongst the western nations.

Gasp! Isn’t horrible! My friends were aghast and were quick to jump on the guilty wagon. There must a better way to govern, they said.

Political assassinations are an extension of a type of war. We won’t go into the technicalities of it here, indeed far too complex and beyond my scope.

Taking a slight tack to the left (or would that be to the right), I asked what their take on the world’s most famous and beloved assassin of all was, one James Bond, aka 007.

Blank stares met my eyes.

Immediately I was met with protests. Oh, but he’s a spy and a fictitious one at that.

Hmm. Is he?

James is that rare breed of spy. Blessed with killer looks, nerves of steel, charm and wit, athletic agility, and other qualities we mere humans can only dream of. James overcomes adversity, leaps over impossible obstacles, and against improbable odds vanquishes the bad guy, saving the day yet one more time for Mother England and the world.

James Bond, the spy, carries a license to kill. That makes him a professional assassin.

James Bond is fashioned after a true, real life spy – Sidney Reilly, who served in Her Majesty’s Service a century ago. An excellent series. Reilly Ace of Spies starring Sam Neill, ran on the tube several years back; it chronicles the dirty, underground grit of the business of being a spy. The trailer reads:

”At the turn of the 20th century, one remarkable man single-handedly tried to alter the course of history. Cold, ruthless, enigmatic, this Russian-born British agent radically transformed modern espionage techniques and set the mold for a new kind of secret agent-the super spy. Reilly: Ace Of Spies is the thrilling, suspenseful dramatization of the real-life adventures of Agent ST-1, aka Sidney Reilly, the inspiration behind Ian Fleming's James Bond. Shot in glorious period detail, one heart-pulsing mission after another captures the arc of Reilly's brilliant career.

With acclaimed actor Sam Neill (JURASSIC PARK) in the lead role, REILLY: ACE OF SPIES was a gripping crime series, with all 12 episodes included here. Neill played Sidney Riley, an ace spy who risked life and limb to allow justice to prevail. What sets this series apart from the deluge of other titles in the genre is that Riley was a real person, and the events portrayed all actually happened. With that in mind, viewers are taken on a rollercoaster ride of emotions as the deft crime solver undertakes some jawdropping feats of bravery during his missions. The original inspiration for the James Bond character, REILLY: ACE OF SPIES is a glowing testament to one of the all-time great spies”

You can get the DVD. It is worth the $49.95.

Reilly fell a tad short of accomplishing his mission. I can’t help but think how different the course of world history would have been, had he succeeded. Better than going to war.