Friday

Church Tour

Yesterday I went on a tour of seven churches in the area, led by the pastor of the church here. Luckily, he and his wife speak English, so they were able to translate for me. (Their toddler daughter also came; she can say "Thank you" and "How are you?" and can high-five.) Any dates I put here are accurate as they were told to me.

The decorations in these churches are not like those in almost any church I've been to. There are interesting painted wooden ceilings, and something called a chor,* which is a wooden balcony. Also, all the churches were colder than it was outside.

Rimavské Brezovo

At first this church didn't look very promising, because they're renovating--there was plastic sheeting over part of the Baroque pulpit, and over the entrance to a chapel to the right of the altar and pulpit. There also wasn't any altarpiece, and most of the ceiling was a simple barrel vault. Behind the sheeting and scaffolding, though, was something pretty fantastic. They are working on restoring the frescoes in the original chancel, frescoes which date from the 13th or 14th centuries. The last time I saw something comparable to these frescoes was in the Cloisters, where they don't allow flash photography and certainly don't allow you to touch the delicate paintings. I was a little bit horrified that one of the young men on the tour was taking pictures with a flash everywhere. There are three crosses painted on the wall of the chancel where the bishop blessed the church in the 12th century, and the pastor touched one of them. I was also a little horrified at that. But then I thought, I might as well touch the medieval stuff while I can, because I won't get many chances to.

Rimavska Baňa

I walked into this church and flipped out a little because it was so cool. The oldest part of it is a chapel that was built in the 10th century. The rest of the building was erected in the early 12th century, with 14th century frescoes. The whole churchyard is surrounded by a wall built to keep out the Turks and the Tartars. The altar is from 1842, and the pulpit and chor were also built in the 19th century. The organ is not real; it's a facade. One of the really cool things is the fresco showing how King Ladislav fought against the Turks to rescue a bishops daughter who had been kidnapped. At one place there are a few horses in a row, and the way they're painted they reminded me of Sleipnir. Because I am a nerd.

Hrachovo

This church was built in 1808, although there was a church on the same site before that. The altar is the oldest thing there; it's from the earlier church. The church is on ground that was described to me as "wet," so the building is suffering from that lack of a solid foundation. The steeple is the heaviest part, and it's pulling the front of the building away from the rest. There's a big crack where this is happening. There may be some water or even a geyser under the church. Near the altar is buried a servant of a queen who lived in Fiľakovo. He was such a good servant that the queen rewarded him by burying him in a place of honor. Now, though, they are afraid that if the water comes up into the church it will bring him with it.

Nižný Skálnik
If I heard correctly, this church is from the Neoclassical period. The pews are at least 50 years older than the actual building, and came from an earlier Baroque church. This church has its original brick floor uncovered, it has yellowish glass in the windows, and there was a small bat sleeping under the chor. Before the church was built, they were planning to build it in another village; but during the summer that they were to construct it, it snowed in the other village. They took that as a sign to build it in Nižný Skálnik instead.

Malé Teriakovce

The earliest part of the church is from the 13th century. The altar is from the 14th and the chor is from the 15th or 16th century. The newest part of the building and the chor was built in the 1770s. Right when you come in the door there is a rectangle cut from the wooden floor and covered with a piece of glass. Under the glass are old stones of the original floor, and some coins; but the glass was covered with condensation on the inside, so we couldn't really see through it. The pastor showed us some old wooden finials that were so full of wormholes that only the paint was holding them together.

Drienčany

At this site there was originally a Catholic church in the 12th century and then a Lutheran church in the 16th century. Unfortunately, in the 16th century the town was burned by Turks. The current church dates from 1799. A famous folklorist, Pavol Dobšinsky, is buried outside. The organ doesn't work because the pipes were stolen during World War II, but don't worry: they have a serious drum machine. To get to the church there was this little tunnel, like a covered bridge, over a set of stairs. I made it up okay, but somehow on the way down I whacked my head against one of the beams. And not even my forehead, the crown of my head. That took some special effort.

And then the bus ran out of gas!

Kyjatice

The last church we went to was from 1413. None of the frescoes have been restored at all, and they're in pretty amazing shape for being almost 600 years old. I don't have much more information on this one because at first I was told that the information sheet was also in English, so I didn't get any translation, but it turned out to be Slovak and German. I'm pretty sure it said the church was dedicated to St. Cecilia in 1688.

Bronze Age burial site outside Kyjatice
We stopped at a place where Bronze Age people burned their dead, from the 8th to 11th centuries BC. You can still find bones and artifacts in the field.

So that was my Saturday. Thanks to the pastor and chaplain, and the old ladies who shared their food with me.

*Chor sounds just like "whore," which is not really something you expect to hear your pastor keep saying in church.

Deep Thoughts

"What is the best of the American way of life?"

At the beginning of the year, I asked all of my first year students (that is, the freshmen) to write five questions they had about life in the United States. I wanted to gauge their facility with English, but I also wanted to see what they were interested in knowing. Many of their questions were things like "How many people live in the US?" and "What is the US like?" but some of them were funny or intriguing. One girl wrote, "What kind of boys are there in California?" One boy asked about trucks, another about why the US uses 110 volts while everywhere else uses 220. The funniest was, "Are refrigerators in the US bigger than in Europe?" (Yes.) But one of the questions I like the best was the one above.

I know it's worded a little awkwardly, but it sounds like an NPR question that way. And it made me wonder, what is the best of the American way of life? How can you describe to students all the great things about our country? I don't really know where to begin; In-N-Out keeps springing to mind, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. In-N-Out, county fairs, Fourth of July concerts, apples at an orchard market, tons of little things that you take for granted. So here's my question to readers: What, in your opinion, is the best of the American way of life? I doubt I'll actually get any responses, but I'd appreciate anything that comes this way. At the very least, I hope you all consider the question carefully, without cynicism or political bias.

And now here's a little Walt Whitman for ya.

1
A song of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms--a song of the soil of fields.

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork;
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.

2
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself,
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields,
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to Thee,
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,
Tuning a verse for thee.

O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb!
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.
--from "A Carol for Harvest, for 1867"