Potapaug Audubon presents “The 2016 Great Gull Island Expedition” on Thursday, March 3, at 7 p.m. at the Old Lyme Town Hall, 52 Lyme St. with guest speaker Matthew Male.
Learn about the most successful tern colony restoration programs throughout the world. Readers can join our crew of researchers and volunteers to help with the world’s largest tern colony. Work on the island starts in April.
For more information, call 860-710-5811.
Nicole Prévost Logan
Agatha Christie stayed there. So did T.E. Lawrence, King Faysal from Iraq and General de Gaulle: at the famous Hotel Baron in downtown Aleppo, Syria. At that time, Aleppo was an exotic and cosmopolitan city where Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish and Armenian cultures coexisted.
A photo of the Citadel at Aleppo taken by Nicole Logan in 1957.
But all this was before the Syrian civil war.
Aleppo, like many other historical Syrian cities, is being crushed by daily bombings. The devastation is concentrated on this region with the intent of cutting off the road to the north toward Turkey. Today the Bab el Faraj – one of the main squares – is in ruins; the 11th century minaret of the Omayyad mosque lies on the ground among fallen stones; in July 2015, a bomb placed in a tunnel destroyed part of the citadel. The second largest metropolis of Syria is now a pile of rubble.
Another photo of the medieval Citadel — now partly in ruins after repeated bombings — from the author’s 1957 trip.
In a few magical pages, Mathias Enard, winner of the 2016 French Prix Goncourt for his novel entitled “Boussole” (compass), brings back to life the colorful Aleppo of a bygone era. His hero, Franz Ritter, is a Viennese musicologist fascinated by the Orient. He belongs to the group of “Orientalists” – archaeologists, linguists, historians, architects, diplomats, spies – writes Enard, “found side by side at Hotel Baron dabbling in the pleasure of Arab grammar and rhetoric.”
Enard’s rambling style, oozing with culture, takes the reader from Austria – the outpost of the West on the edge of the Ottoman empire – to the Middle East. Besieged by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1529, Vienna was threatened for the last time by the Ottoman Empire in 1683 in its final effort to flood the Danube valley.
Refusing to draw bitterness from the century-long tug-of-war with the Turks, Franz the hero of “Boussole” believes in cross-pollination between the Western and the Oriental worlds. As a musicologist he is able to detect in the works of Mozart, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schoenberg or Debussy, the influence of Arabic music’s harmony with its microtones and absence of tonal structure.
“The Moroccans” by Henri Matisse.
There has long been a tradition of literary and artistic attraction by the West toward the Orient. But it is Napoleon Bonaparte’s military campaign to Egypt (1798-1801), which opened the floodgates and made the 19th century West smitten with the Orient.
John Singer Sargent’s “Smoke of Ambergris.”
The “Orientalists” could be found around some of cultural centers like the French, German, English or American Institutes in Syria, Lebanon, Beirut or Baghdad. They were a privileged group, somewhat disconnected from the real world.
With some sarcasm but much honesty, the author acknowledges that the “Orientalists” took advantage of the comfort provided by the law and order of the police state of Hafez el Assad, father of Bachar. The “Orientalists” lived their dream, Enard writes, “under the amused look of the Syrians.”
At the present time Aleppo is at the epicenter of an imbroglio of violence and destruction and caught in the middle, tragically, are the refugees.
Why do we not take a brief pause and return to a more peaceful time when wars and religious intolerance were not destroying societies?
Nicole Prévost Logan
About the author: Nicole Prévost Logan divides her time between Essex and Paris, spending summers in the former and winters in the latter. She writes a regular column for us from her Paris home where her topics will include politics, economy, social unrest — mostly in France — but also in other European countries. She also covers a variety of art exhibits and the performing arts in Europe. Logan is the author of ‘Forever on the Road: A Franco-American Family’s Thirty Years in the Foreign Service,’ an autobiography of her life as the wife of an overseas diplomat, who lived in 10 foreign countries on three continents. Her experiences during her foreign service life included being in Lebanon when civil war erupted, excavating a medieval city in Moscow and spending a week under house arrest in Guinea.
Essex Wellness Center
Essex Wellness Center presents a “Live Well 2016!” lecture series throughout the winter and spring of 2016. The series features free 90-minute (60-minute lecture plus 30-minute Q & A) educational lectures presented by various Essex Wellness Center holistic professionals. All lectures will be held at the Essex Wellness Center Group Space upstairs at 8 Novelty Lane in Essex Village — parking is in the lot and on Main Street. Pre-registration* is required because space is limited.
The final “Live Well 2016″ lecture in February is scheduled as follows:
Title and Topic: “Stop the Suffering! Pain Management with Acupuncture”
Pain. So many of us suffer with it. So many of us have tried everything it seems to Make. It. Stop. This lecture will educate us about acupuncture, why, after thousands of years, it continues to be such a powerful treatment for so many conditions, and how it can help us – naturally! Alicia DeMartin successfully treats many individuals who come to her seeking relief from:
Orthopedic pain including:
Sports injuries
Musculoskeletal pain
Osteoarthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis
Post orthopedic surgery recovery and pain management
Joint replacements
Joint pain including:
Low back pain
Shoulder pain
Knee pain
Foot pain
Ankle pain
Neck pain
Wrist pain
TMJ pain
Pain conditions including:
Migraine headaches
Headaches
Abdominal pain
Pelvic and menstrual pain
REGISTER EARLY TO RESERVE YOUR SEAT — this lecture is already filling up!
Presented by: Alicia DeMartin, MSOM, LAc
Date and Time: Saturday, February 27, 2016 1:30pm-3:00pm
Alicia DeMartin received her BS from The University of Vermont and a MS in Oriental Medicine from Southwest Acupuncture College in Boulder, Colorado. She discovered a passion for emergency medicine and orthopedics working as a Wilderness EMT and ski patroller at Stowe VT after college. Moving out West to pursue her passion for skiing, horses and an active mountain lifestyle, she successfully utilized the services of an acupuncturist to treat her own orthopedic injuries. Intrigued and healed, she decided to go against the grain of her medical family and enroll in graduate school for Oriental medicine.
DeMartin owned a private practice in Vail, Colorado for six years and has nine years of experience specializing in pain management and orthopedics. Alicia loves working with orthopedic conditions, arthritis, injuries, pain of all varieties and post-surgical rehab, especially joint replacements. DeMartin is currently working towards a Doctorate in Chinese medicine orthopedics and traumatology.
*Pre-registration is required to reserve your seat in these limited-space lectures. To register online, visit this link, click on ‘Workshops,’ find the lecture for which you wish to register and click ‘Sign Up.’ To register by email or phone, contact info@essexwellnessctr.com or 860-767-7770.
The Boy Scouts and their leaders gather for a chilly photo in the wilds of northern Minnesota.
While many of us were nestled up at home this past weekend, all warm and cosy by the fire — not even thinking about venturing outdoors due to the bitter temperatures here — consider for a minute this recent high adventure trip taken by the Lyme-Old Lyme Troop 26 Boys Scouts to Northern Minnesota.
Two life Scouts, John Miller and Ted Wayland, along with Scoutmaster Miller and Assistant Scoutmaster Wayland and an Eagle Scout from Texas, ventured out to the boundary waters of Northern Minnesota to participate through the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) Northern Okpik program in a dog-sledding winter adventure.
The Troop selected the lengthier three night/ four day adventure. When planning the adventure last July, they did not anticipate arriving on one of the coldest weekends of the year in Minnesota with temperatures averaging between -18 and -25 degrees Fahrenheit and only three hours of daytime temperatures above zero.
Mastering the art of dog-sledding.
The boys learned to run their own dog sled team, traveling up to 25 miles a day, while setting up their “snow” kitchen on the ice and learning the value of keeping busy to keep warm. They never complained but truly embraced the depth of the challenge. Testing body and mind to a challenge like this allows one not only to face daily adversity but also to do it successfully.
One of the first tasks for the Scouts was to set up their “snow kitchen.”
Troop 26 embraces the BSA philosophy behind the importance of these high adventure trips, allowing young boys to become adults who appreciate their community and give back to their community.
If readers know of any young boys seeking such adventure, the boys of Troop 26 meet weekly Wednesday nights from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Lyme Fire Company and welcome new members age 11 or entering 6th grade.
Vista student Julia Kane, Chief Executive Officer Helen Bosch and member Rachael Hoskin (L-R) proudly show off the new organizational logo. Photo: Vanessa Pereira
Vista Vocational & Life Skills Center, an organization dedicated to assisting individuals with disabilities achieve personal success for more than 25 years, will soon take on a new name, Vista Life Innovations.
The name change is part of a long planned rebranding initiative to better align Vista’s name with its expanded service and program offerings.
“Over the past 25 years, Vista has become more than a vocational and life skills center,” said Vista’s Chief Executive Officer Helen Bosch. “We now offer a wide array of services—such as arts programming, benefits and advocacy counseling, and recreation—and we wanted a name that represented who we are as a whole.”
Vista leadership and members of its Board of Directors worked together to come up with a name that reflected the organization’s values, while describing what Vista is without focusing on specific aspects of the program.
Although its name will change, Vista’s mission and focus remain the same. For that reason, it was important that “Vista” remain in the name.
“Our scope of services has changed but we are fundamentally the same—an organization that provides services and programming for individuals with disabilities so they may achieve success,” said Bosch.
The new organizational name will go into effect the week of Feb. 15, along with the launch of a new website.
With campuses in Westbrook, Madison and Guilford, Vista is a community-based education program accredited by the National Commission for the Accreditation of Special Education Services. Last year, the organization provided services to more than 300 individuals and their families.
Editor’s Note: Vista Vocational & Life Skills Center is a 501©3 nonprofit organization. Vista’s mission is to provide services and resources to assist individuals with disabilities achieve personal success. For more information about Vista, please visit www.vistavocational.org.