vividreports: A full Sunday!

Sunday morning I went to church at First Congregational Church, U.C.C. in Salem. I went alone because Ellen had to do some baking for the gathering that was going to take place later in the afternoon. The gathering was a kind of reunion of folks associated with the Arbor Cafe which was started in 1991, i think, and where Ellen worked for a while, and Bonnie Hull was a co-owner. The menu for the gathering were all dishes that were popular at the Arbor Cafe, and Ellen was making ginger shortbread cookies she made back then.

Ellen glazing ginger shortbread cookies

The service at First Congo, UCC, was a celebration of Black History Month, so all the music was from the African-American tradition, including one of my favorites, Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, Jesus the Light of the World. The new settled pastor, Rev. Yael Lachman, led the service, but the preacher was Rev. Molly Carlson, the Conference Minister for the Central Pacific Conference, which includes UCC churches in Oregon, southern Idaho and a bit of southern Washington. She was an effective preacher, addressing the issue of "white privilege" very trenchantly. She made the valid point that one aspect of privilege is the ability of a 98% white congregation to appropriate the music of the African-American tradition, as was being done this morning. A complex issue!

J.E. dropped me off at church and picked me up after, taking a walk and getting a coffee in the interim. We went to a local natural grocery and got both some Marshmallow Root capsules for me and a bite to eat for us both, in my case some salmon chowder and a breakfast burrito. J. E. took me on a little tour of one of the tonier neighborhoods of Salem which is the residence of both the President of Willamette University and the Governor of Oregon.

Ellen went on the early side to the Hulls, but J. E and I had some time to go to a documentary film at the Hallie Ford Museum before we went to the Hulls. It was a poignant film related to an exhibition at the Museum titled The Faces of Phlamoudhi. The story behind it is this: back in 1972, the then 22-year-old Ian J. Cohn went to Cyprus as a photographer for an archeological team from Columbia University. The team was housed in the little Greek village of Phlamoudhi, located on the north shore of Cyprus, and Ian Cohn found himself welcomed into people's homes and being invited to take photographs and make portraits of individuals and entire families. At the end of the dig, Cohn went home, put the photos in a box and stored them in a closet and there they sat unseen for 35 years. But meanwhile traumatic events took place on Cyprus. Just two years after Cohn was there, in 1974, the Turks invaded Cyprus and claimed the northern third of the island. The Greek Cypriot residents of the village of Phlamoudhi were evicted and scattered throughout the southern portion of the island. One resident, a shepherd named Lysandros Lysandrou who refused to leave his sheep, was shot to death in the field.

Fast forward 35 years when Ian Cohn remembered his photographs and realized they preserved a lost world. He contacted a museum in Cyprus, the photographs became known, people were tracked down, an exhibit was held and the whole story became known to filmmaker Rupert Bradley who made the documentary in 2014. Many of the older residents had died by then, but many others still longed to return to the village. But the existence of the photographs which document their loved ones and their way of life (now lost very likely forever) had become a matter of poignancy and precious memory. The film captured all this effectively and an added feature was the presence at the showing of Ian Cohn and one of the Greek Cypriots in the film, who spoke very movingly through an interpreter. It is a story that resonates with many people in today's world of refugees.

Ian Cohn speaking in the film.

The shepherd, Lysandros Lysandrou, in 1972

Men of Phlamoudhi outside a coffee house

After the film, J. E. and I went home for a brief rest and then went to the gathering. I had never met most of the people there, since the Arbor Cafe had closed by the time I met Ellen. It was an interesting group for sure, and I got to talk with a few of them before we sat down to eat. The Hulls had set up a long table that accommodated 15 people. I was at one end of the table, with Ellen on my left and Roger on my right. It was a wonderful meal with much animated conversation.