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barakha

You've stumbled upon my blog which is the companion to my website Ishah 'El. This site is intended to track my progress in starting a new multi-cultural theatre arts company and bring updates to devoted supporters and curious by standers. Check here regularly for posts on what I’m up to and how it all is faring, and you can join me by posting comments & encouragement. With that I invite you to become friends and enter into my world of art, faith, life & passion. Shalom.

P.s.- This is actually 4 blogs rolled into 1... why? I don't really know. Some sort of strange urge to make it multi-dimensional caused me to lay it out this way, yet people seem to never realize that there is an index at the right which will take you to other interconnected pages. Feel free to explore and share with others!

Sunday, May 27, 2007

cheese roll, anyone?

I've been interested in holidays & festivals of the world for sometime, and while there are so many that are unique and, well, peculiar to different regions, it really takes a great effort to keep track of each of them as they come our way. Living in the states, where it is currently Memorial Day & Pentecost, we get advertisements for mattress sales and the like by which we can engage our insatiable appetites for celebrating an annual event. While there probably should have been more organized for Pentecost we will at least have the opportunity to catch a parade or two blocking our passage on the way somewhere out of town for the weekend.

But today I'm not really writing about Pentecost or Memorial Day - they are already well on their way out of our frame of daylight at the moment. However, I did just learn that tomorrow, May 28th, is the Cooper's Hill annual cheese rolling and wake in Gloucestershire, England. I kid you not.

We here in the States don't have a cheese rolling or anything similar. At least as far as I am aware of. I'm sure we probably have something similar which would be a whole heck of a lot of fun to us locals and would invite puzzled stares accompanied by head scratching from viewers off in the nearby distance. Neither do we pelt one another with tons of tomatoes nor do we run with bulls, but perhaps we should.

The scene goes along something like this:

At noon a 7-lb wheel of ripe Gloucestershire cheese is set rolling free down a hill in Gloucestershire and people chase one another after it in hopes of becoming the first person to make it to the bottom. Anyone can participate in the four races which are held - although one race is for ladies only - and the lucky winner gets the 7 lb. wheel of cheese. Cash prizes go to the runners-up and there are uphill races as well. A "Scramble for Sweets" is also organized for smaller children. It is believed that this holiday and game are a throw back to Roman fertility festivals. I'm not sure how the wake part fits into the whole procession.

Maybe it's time we had a cheese rolling and wake festival here in New England. It would be great fun and another way to continue keeping in touch with our agrarian culture, which we are losing more and more of these days. Besides, who couldn't use a bit more cheese these days?

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