~*Revue_Blanche*~

According to the mark on the bottom of this small hand-made casket of wood, the casket was made on 30 November 1959, so this year this thing is 50 years old.
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My father bought this casket as one of souvenirs in Leningrad.
burg
NOVEMBER 30 – birthday of the casket

'Fall, leaves, fall' by Emily Bronte

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

We are six months old--
11s
*the claws*
My young kitty Sophie seems to have Halloween every day, meaning “Treat or trick!” In all the rest respects, she is a classical blond. No doubt, she will be wiser some day, when she is aged a year or 1,5 or 2 years, but for the time being, she is a blond whose every day is Halloween: “Treat or trick!”
11s3

NOVEMBER 21
ccongrats

NOVEMBER 27
Birthday of Antinous in 111

NOVEMBER 30
Death Day of Oscar Wilde in 1900

previous November:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2008/11/20/most-wonderful-time-of-a-year-great-expectations-5065957/

*Europe*
Did you know that in Europe there is a country of pagans? I happened to write of it in one of my previous blog post:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2008/06/26/live-and-learn-4364973/
But today, I’d like to write of other country.
For long time, the medieval Lithuania was what the present day scholars call “the last reservation of paganism”. Only in 1387, one Lithuanian Prince managed to Christianize his country finally. The Christianization took place at a river, and Lithuanian people went to the river gladly, because a white shirt (imported, as it were, and of good quality) was promised to each of them if they got through the ritual. Some most gumptious men came to the river for Christianization for the second time in order to get one more shirt (as chronicles say).
Lithuania was always reckoned a most Catholic country of East Europe (after Poland). Catholicism was the Lithuanian people’s banner in their passive resistance to the Soviet occupation, and it seemed to be in their hearts. Knowing of that, I was so surprised several years back, when I heard the news that on the days when the previous Pope was dying, all the restaurants, nightclubs and other hot spots were not closed in Lithuania (which was free of any occupation), were full of people as usual, and in the Cathedral one could see only a few old women, who said prayers for the old ill Pope. Does it mean that the people in the country (like in other Baltics) remarkably left their religious faith--partly or entirely, for a while or forever?

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(At the front door of a church in the modern built in Chekhov’s times in Siberia.)