HUNGARIAN and HUNGARIAN-AMERICAN STEREOTYPE : PALINKA IS OUR REMEDY, a CURE FOR EVERYTHING

I enjoy investigating and commenting on Hungarian and Hungarian-American stereotypes so much I kind of hate spoiling this one with a definitive article (below) about drinking Palinka. But here's the thing, this is a stereotype of the Hungarians very much more than the Hungarian-Americans because there just isn't much Palinka to buy here. I don't think I've ever had a taste of the good stuff that legend has it will cure just about anything - even the hangover you got from drinking it too innocently, as it pickles your liver very very slowly, until suddenly you're so drunk everyone and everything in life is sweet. I'm not much of a drinker and far too self controlled to have more than a sip so how could I be a judge of it? 

Just try it. Go into a good hotel, the kind of place that boasts a well stocked bar, and ask for Palinka and you'll find out that it is rare indeed in America.

This article suggest it be used as the basis for a cocktail.  You know, one jigger's worth.

https://dailynewshungary.com/myth-or-reality-the-health-benefits-of-drinking-palinka/https://dailynewshungary.com/myth-or-reality-the-health-benefits-of-drinking-palinka/

Excerpt: Before you set out to make 70 degrees plus pálinka, you must know that it brings more pain than pleasure to your taste buds and throat. You will no longer be able to taste the fruit, and it will be so strong that your organs will be thrown off balance, so you should rather not try distilling or drinking such pálinka.

C 2026 Magyar- American BlogSpot

CROWS MAY BE SMARTER THAN A SEVEN YEAR OLD HUMAN

Excerpt from YouTube station reYOUniverse...

How crows revealed Archimedes' principle. Why crows have been painstakingly taking revenge on a resident of India for many years. What do crows prefer - cash or bank cards? And how come that with a brain the size of a hazelnut crows are smarter than many monkeys? 

***

I like to post pictures of crows and crow information from time to time, not only because I've been fascinated watching these birds, but because they are associated with the Magyars on certain family crests...

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Varjú (pronounced: vahr-yoo) is Hungarian for the English word crow.

MINDENSZENTEK : DEEP INTO THE HUNGARIAN TRADITIONS : ALL SAINTS and ALL SOULS

All Souls Day in Hungary is a time of religious and/or spiritual attention to the humans who have lived their lives and gone before us.

According to It's Hungarian, a publication online:
In the 8th century Pope Gregory III has started the holiday of the All Saints’ Day, which is celebrated on the first day of November. The pope has stood out for that – beside the martyrs – the saints, who are canonized after the recognition of the Christianity, must be celebrated too. So, this way the All Saints’ Day is become the feast of the hollowed souls, who are because of the large number of their kind, not mentioned in the calendars uniquely.

All Saints Day in November 1st.

But this day became a way to celebrate our ancestors - saintly or not. This is done by visiting graves, cleaning them, leaving flowers, lighting candles; it became All Souls Day,.

ITS HUNGARIAN : CELEBRATIONS OF THE DEAD IN HUNGARY - ALL SAINTS and ALL SOULS

Excerpt: According to the folkways, the night between the All Saints’ Day, and the All soul’s day the deceased have mass in the church, and when the bell tolls, they are going to the house of their beloved ones. In the peasant’s house, an extra plate has been placed to the tables, bread, salt and water has been served into them. In Székely Land a loaf has been cooked, which is called God’s pie or the bread of the dead.

In Hungary, food and charity has given to and cared about the homeless and poor ones, to advance the reach of the bliss of the dead souls. Mainly bread and honey coated scone is given at the gates of the cemeteries.

THE KEY

 Pixabay Non Commercial Use

CASTLE FUZER BUILT DURING THE OTTOMAN WARS : WONDERFUL PLACES IN HUNGARY #23

HUNGARIAN OTTOMAN WARS : FUZER CASTLE

Castle Fuzer was a defense castle at Fuze and was paced on a volcanic mountain before the death of King Andras II in 1235 by members of the Aba Clan.  This link to provides us a history of the noble families that owned the castle, which is located above Tokaj wine country and south of Kassa (not in Slovakia.)  Among the highlights of this history is that the sacred crown of Hungary was hidden in the castle for a year in 1526,  In 1567 it went into the hands of the Bathory family, which you may know because of Elizabeth Bathory, known as the countess who was said to have murdered many servant girls.  (A story that has been disputed.)  She got the castle in 1603.

Click on the label Wonderful-Hungary to bring up all posts on this theme.

HUNGARIA

 

MY SENIOR DOG and ME GO TO ROSIE'S DOG BEACH IN LONG BEACH CALIFORNIA

There have been some beautiful days here, spring days, with glorious clouds and views over the ocean. I feel I've missed out on another season of whale watching, which can sometimes be done from shore, but that I would like to do from a boat and not just a one hour tourist go-see either but one lead by a scientist from the Cabrillo Aquarium.  I also have not yet been to Catalina Island or any of the Channel Islands.  I've been so inspired by a wonderful documentary called West of West to go there for a few days at least, but have not had the opportunity. 

However, I was able to take my beloved senior dog to the only official dog beach in Southern California, which is called Rosie's Beach, in Long Beach California, not far from the Port of Los Angeles.  I had wanted to take her there three years ago, before Covid closures, and finally we got to go!  In that time, she has significantly aged, though she is not senile, she is old.  It was our first time there and her first time on sand, wet sand, and so close to the briny water.

We had to walk a bit to get to the location, along a nice path though, and with a breeze.  The sun was not too hot so the sand was cool. I'm aware that a dog's paws can be badly damaged by heat, such as on the sidewalk on a summer day. I took along her wheeled carrier to protect her from any damage and any overheat. She loves to sit in the carrier, with her little head up over the unzipped opening up top, and experience moving along because her days of actually walking or running this far are over. Trips like this help keep a dog's mind stimulated as it experiences different smells especially.  Any time I get that carrier out, she heads for the door, signaling that she wants to go.

What a scene it was at Rosie's Dog Beach!

First, the view.  Out on the ocean are oil derrick islands with palm trees which are permanent, and certainly an interesting way to sort of disguise the machinery. Not permanent, but there a long time, were a couple massive cruise ships that must have stopped voyaging a while back.  There were wind surfers in action.  And far down the way, a view of the port where the container ships come in and unload the box cars.  

I wasn't prepared to actually go into the water myself, nor did I think my little 12-pounder would dash into the waves, but we walked where the sand was watery for a bit and she sniffed some sea-weed.  Then I found a spot for us to sit.  I held her in my arms as younger and bigger dogs who were fearless in the surf (they must be Long Beach natives) caught frisbees and sticks, ran in packs, and seemed to be all smiling and happy.  A light brown mini-poodle, male, came around to admire my dog, with a shy grin on his face - I swear.  My dog used to have all variety of male dogs after her, including two incidents where I swear a dog fell in love with her at first sight, so I teased her that, though she is old, she is still beautiful.  I held my dog in my arms and who knows how much she could actually see, since she has one cataract that is fairly opaque and another one that is starting, but I do think she knew she was watching other dogs, a lot of dogs, bigger dogs, because she could at least detect movement and smell them.  I felt her little heart pounding in her chest with excitement. And I saw her smile too, something she used to do all the time, but less often these days. So I was so glad I had made this effort.

When I set her down in the sand, she did a peculiar thing.  She circled me and her carrier over and over again, within a few feet of us.  It seemed to me that she was getting a feel for the sensation of sand underfoot.  We had gone to a beach before where you can take dogs on the grass near the sand but not the sand or in the water, and I know that she likes to scare birds so they'll fly away, but I think this was her first experience of sand.  

Then she paused to see if the sand was diggable like dirt at a dog park, and how so.  She made a small hole in the sand and sniffed it.

Finally, she did find a place on the sand to lay, with her attention towards the ocean.

Finally I put her back into her carrier and we went back up the path, stopping under a shady tree where there was green grass.

I enjoyed watching the owners of the other dogs at the beach there too.  It was clear some of them were regulars.  How lucky they are to be able to go there and walk with their dogs frequently.

When I asked around before going, I heard that sometimes there are dog fights and dog bites and incidents, but we did just fine.  We were there for maybe a half hour.

I do hope we can go back again before the summer heat makes it not practical for us.

C 2022  Magyar-American BlogSpot

A THRIFT STORE FIND : A HUNGARIAN BEER MUG WITH THE IMAGE OF A CATHEDRAL ON IT?

I was in a thrift store and a man got into the line to pay who was just delighted because he found TWO items that were Hungarian.  One was a book.  The other was one of those ceramic beer mugs - a big one - that had the image of a Catholic cathedral in Hungary on it.  This was missing a top.  We laughed about this.  The idea that a tourist would visit a Catholic church and buy a beer mug there.

I tend to think of Hungary as a WINE COUNTRY but certainly there are beer drinkers there, just as there are in the United States. Is it the German influence?  

MALIBU - THE SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS - A HEAT WAVE HITS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - IT'S 88 DEGREES TODAY!

Sadly, the last few days have been unseasonably hot - very much so.  While parts of the United States of America have more freezing weather, in the last couple months we've had only two significant rainfalls, which brought a "normal" amount of rain, but have no effect on the drought here in California. 

There's a construction site down the street, dug down low for a parking garage, and it's clear that we are living on a deep bend of sand, which once must have been under the ocean.  After the last rain you could see wetness saturated the sand about three feet.  It only stopped construction a couple days and then it dried up and they went ahead and poured cement.  However cement and tarmac roadways, driveways, and construction prevent rain from soaking in.  Instead it makes its way into the Santa Monica Bay, which is very polluted.

Hiking in the Santa Monica Mountain chain, which barely qualifies as a Mountain chain by the way because much of is simply not high enough, you can see more evidence of dramatic earth changes in the past, millions of years ago they say.  Along one trail there are on the top of the mountain the equivalent of undersea scoop outs that are still full of sand.  When it rains sometimes beach quartz and petrified shells that have been in place for ages and were once part of the COASTAL BEACHES are exposed.   Something - a massive earth quake, comet hit, or perhaps volcanoes out at sea or maybe even "polar shift" are responsible for throwing beaches thousands of feet and making these mountains.

There are only two mountain chains in the world that go east to west rather than north to south.  These Santa Monica Mountains and the other chain are the Carpathians of Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.

My concern is not just about water for drinking, cooking, washing, and personal bathing, which is in short supply for the farmers in less citified areas of this massive state of California, resulting in ever higher prices for fruits and vegetables but that the food chain is also effected.

Case in point, the thermostat went up to 88 and insects started coming into the house looking for water.  This means I have to start exterminating, something that I never had to do before the heat wave.  As the earth dries up and the bugs start dying, well so it follows that birds will starve, and so it goes.

Because of the construction site, which is on what had been a long vacant lot, every morning we smell skunk.  In the middle of the night a possum and a cat seem to be getting into a fight for turf in the back yard.  There was a raccoon in our garbage cans.  I figure they have been displaced from the long vacant lot. 

The raccoon was in our cans in the morning light and was bigger than my dog!  My dog was barking, I looked out and saw no human beings, so I opened the door and there was the raccoon.

So do I hope for more rain?

Yes!


NATIONAL PARK SERVICE - SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS

VILMA BANKY

END OF THE YEAR IN SIGHT! CERTAINLY THE STORES THINK SO!

This is the point in the year where it seems - almost over.

Halloween and Christmas seasonal items are now on display in many of the stores.

Halloween has become outrageousness and a festival of horror, savagery, and violence, instead of a celebration of the ancestors or a time of prayer for the deceased. 

Christmas has become all about shopping.

Well, I remember what it was to work retail during the Christmas season and I can say that it made the holiday a NON-EVENT FOR ME.  After you've heard the same Christmas songs for weeks,  dealt with a surge of customers who are not always nice, it's not easy to center back to the purpose of the holiday, which is religious.

Although I get it that giving gifts to friends and family is in imitation of the Three Kings who visited Jesus Christ in his infancy,  and that being generous and loving is good, I think even the tradition of Santa Claus, based on St. Nicholas, has become too much a celebration of materialism.

I confess to having been effected by the Hustle Bustle of shopping in years past, but mostly I try to keep holidays to a small, private, celebration these days.  I give few gifts and usually small or home-made ones.  I prefer to celebrate the birthday of a close friend as the time to give a better gift and to  give attention to them as an individual then.  I love music but I don't enjoy loud parties.  I prefer to host a smaller dinner party where people can enjoy conversation and hear each other, perhaps with some low background music on.  Good food, a little wine, and appreciation for what we have, to take a pause, that is a holiday to me.

HUNGARIAN AMERICAN CLUB OF NAPLES FLORIDA

HUNGARIAN AMERICAN CLUB OF NAPLES FLORIDA  link here!

"From the Carpathian Basic to the Gulf of Mexico" is their slogan!

"Our membership is made up of not only local residents from Collier and Lee counties, but also visitors from all over the country."

NOTE : FEBRUARY 2020 : Of all the clubs I've posted, this one gets the most hits!

SLAVIA - A BIG PART OF THE WORLD UNITED? WHERE WOULD HUNGARY FIT? and THE WINTER OLYMPICS IN RUSSIA

This winter I didn't watch the OLYMPICS,  which was staged by Russia, at all.  I did listen to radio news and looked it up on the Internet quite a bit, but I didn't see a single televised performance. 

I thought some of the press wasn't fair at all.  So what if one of the flowers didn't open to become a ring?  Wasn't there a similar failure when Canada hosted?  Jokes about hotel rooms missing doorknobs and featuring two toilet seats in the bathrooms, so people who were used to outhouses could upgrade their mutual potty experience were everywhere.  THAT CERTAINLY WASN'T EVERY HOTEL, just evidence of a rush to finish some of the accommodations.

So much focus on what went WRONG when so much went RIGHT.

I thought it was terrific that Putin sat and watched some of the performances and made the scene there.  I thought it was terrific that royalty like Princess Anne of Great Britain and Prince Albert II and his wife Princess Charlene (another person the press should be kinder to) made the scene.  IT WAS TRULY INTERNATIONAL. It was a great opportunity for people from around the world to see another country, as all Olympics are.  This is one of the reasons various cities apply to be chosen as a HOSTING site!

We in the United States still haven't really shaken off memories or impressions from the COLD WAR ERA, but as the days went by, I became more interested and worried about what was happening in the Ukraine.  (I do have a few readers from somewhere in Ukraine and other parts of the Slavic world.)

This morning as I listened to very early morning talk radio I heard that there is speculation that the UKRAINE will split into an east and a west, one part going with Russia, the other part with Europe.

IT SEEMS THERE IS ALWAYS TURMOIL IN THIS PART OF THE WORLD.

Well, I also recently learned about a move to UNITE all Slavic speaking Countries.  I don't know where this would leave Hungary,  I think OUT, though it has historically had many Slavic people as well as German people within changing borders.

Not every person in these countries wants to be part of the EUROPEAN UNION.

MAYBE IT'S A GOOD IDEA?

First, the end of the various Slavic people fighting each other, economic cooperation, and a preservation of culture. 

I watched a number of YouTube videos and the idea is also to stop Russia.  Here is a link that is one of many I saw:  SLAVIALAND.ORG


C 2014 All Rights Reserved  MAGYAR AMERICAN Blog

JAMIE LEE CURTIS - ACTRESS - CHILDREN'S BOOK AUTHOR - HUNGARIAN AMERICAN

JAMIE LEE CURTIS - BOOK AUTHOR - CHILDREN'S BOOKS

JAMIE LEE CURTIS ON LINE

IMBD - FILM DATABASE - JAMIE LEE CURTIS PAGE


The daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, who I've blogged about in relation to his Emanuel Foundation work, is also through her marriage to Christopher Guest, a Lady of the British Empire  - Lady Haden-Guest.  She has a son and daughter and has written 8 children's books.  Known for her amazing feminine physic, and some interesting and excellent film roles with three films coming up, my favorite thus far being the wife of the Arnold Schwartenegger's character in True Lies, where she acts as the wife who needs an adventure and does a very sexy but silly and clumsy strip tease, she seems to have accomplished a happy and stable marriage and family life, and with her Hollywood background, that's saying a lot!

BARDEJOV - A MEDIEVAL TOWN

UNESCO LINK TO BARDEJOV MEDIEVAL TOWN  full site

Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve : SOME EXCERPTS

Bardejov is a small but exceptionally complete and well-preserved example of a fortified medieval town, which typifies the urbanisation in this region. Among other remarkable features, it also contains a small Jewish quarter around a fine 18th-century synagogue."


The Town Hall was built in 1505-9, the first building in Slovakia with Renaissance stone moulding. The public buildings include the late Gothic Humanistic Grammar School, built on the site of a medieval school, modified in Renaissance style and again in classical style. The municipal wine house of the early 15th century was a storehouse for wines from the vicinity of the town and from the Tokai region. The burghers' houses on their deep narrow plots have undergone many modifications as the result of repeated fires. This type of building was introduced by German traders from Silesia in the early 13th century. The Renaissance saw the addition of ornate facades to the two-storey merchants' houses, converting them into luxurious houses. The most significant Jewish element in Bardejov is the Great Synagogue, built in 1725-47. The complex also contains ritual baths, a kosher slaughterhouse and a meeting building, now a school.

From the first quarter of the 18th century, Slovaks and Hassidic Jews came into Bardejov in large numbers. The burghers' houses were rebuilt or modified in keeping with current architectural fashion, a Jewish quarter with a synagogue, slaughterhouse, and ritual baths developed in the north-western suburbs, and new churches and bridges were built.

Click on the label Wonderful-Hungary to bring up all posts on this theme.