“Greek festival gives attendees taste of culture - The Ledger” plus 1 more |
| Greek festival gives attendees taste of culture - The Ledger Posted: Published: Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 6:58 a.m. John Pittman calls out "opa" as he cooks saganaki during the St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church Greek Fest on Saturday in Winter Haven. WINTER HAVEN — Both the sounds of Greek music and the scent of tantalizing cooking filled the air around the St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church on Saturday. Both announced, through a visitor's senses, the annual Greek Fest weekend was here. The festival highlights the Greek culture encompassing entertainment, fellowship and savory menu items, and it is the church's major fundraiser for the year. Jeanie and Brian Lake, with son, Parker, from Winter Haven attended the Saturday event because "our neighbors invited us to attend for the food," Brian Lake saiud. "I had a gyro with lamb and it was very good." "We are going to watch the dancing," said Jeanie Lake, raising her voice over the din of the music. "We already checked out some of the booths." The festival features dancers of all ages, tours of the church, booths selling everything Greek from jewelry to handicrafts to baked goods. The baked goods are created especially for the event by five or six women on a church baking committee headed by Katerina Ioammidis. "(Baking the sweets) didn't take very long, about two weekends," Ioammidis said. " ... I am going home now to bake more of the sweet bread." The most popular goodie was the baklava — a filo pastry filled with a nuts and a honey mixture. The ever popular sweet bread is Tsourekia which is an Easter bread, Ioammidis said. Also a popular item is the kourabiebes (wedding cookies) that are white with a confectioner's sugar coating. Other vendors sell everything Greek — coin scarves, marionettes and dolls dressed in traditional Greek garb. Wooden carved statuettes also include nativity scenes. Orchids were a big seller with many people purchasing the multi-blossomed plants that bounced and swayed as they were carried to the parking lot. The church fellowship hall, filled with tables in the center for diners, was flanked to the walls with the vendors and the intricate items for sale. Complete dinners, in a variety of combinations, may be purchased in the fellowship hall. Adults' and children's plates are available. Chris and Mandy Cole and their seven children, who live close by Spirit Lake Road, saw the signs and decided to wander over to the church. "We have wanted to go for the past seven years and never came," Chris Cole said. "I googled the Greek Orthodox religion and found out many facts and decided I wanted to attend the festival." The family planned to attend one of the three planned church tours at the event. Those tours include a narrative about the Greek architecture and its icons. "We have been before," said Bob Brown, a Lakeland winter resident from Rochester, N.Y., who was with his wife, Jean. "The food is good. Make sure you have lunch." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Posted: Blues vocalist Etta James is undergoing an emergency evaluation in L.A., battling dementia and leukemia, while also being taken away from a 24-hour doctor who lives with her. A long nine years ago, I chatted with Etta, now 73 (and whose version of "At Last" is a staple of movie soundtracks), about her addictions to food and heroin and rounds of booze and bad men. Here's a look back at that telling interview, or scroll to the end to hear her "At Last": Etta James knows something about the blues Etta James takes her two musical sons, who are now 25 and 32, on tour with her to try to keep them from following her wild footsteps. When she went solo, several decades ago in her five-decade career, "that's when I got real devilish. You start to think you've grown. You say, `I'll try a little of this, and I'll try a little of that,' " the R&B legend says. A little of this and a little of that turned into addictions to food and heroin, and belts of booze and bad men in a lifestyle that was not conducive to the long life she is now enjoying. She's long past drug use, lost 140 pounds recently, doesn't drink and hasn't smoked a cigarette in 17 years. James is alternately busy and not so busy. She took a break after Christmas. That came at the end of a year of touring and releasing a great album, "Blue Gardenia," that included such standards as "Come Rain or Come Shine." This year, she's releasing a concert album, "Burnin' Down the House," and a concert DVD. She's recording a new studio album of original songs. And she's touring again. This brings her to the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay today and Saturday. In addition to all this work, for which she's been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame, she's still a mom, of course. She sure talks like a mom. Her adult sons, drummer Donto and bassist Sametto, play in her Roots backup band. "They've heard so many war stories from me, they don't really want to be bothered" by bad lifestyles, she says. What kind of war stories? "When I was heavy-heavy on drugs. And how I caught lockjaw, tetanus, stuff like that. All the things I went through in New York. How I was robbed" by friends, she says. "I would fall asleep, and everything of mine would be gone. Money. Jewelry. Books. Whatever it was. And I used to have to walk for miles and miles in New York, while being a woman. It's just a horror story. They never wanted to live in New York, anyway." She still keeps an eye on them. "That's why they travel with me. I was a single mother with them for years." And "I always wanted them to be around me, so I could watch them," James says. "There are so many people out there that want to give people something that's not right for them. You can't stop anybody from doing something if they want to do something. But I always would be very wary. And if somebody I know was one of these people, I'd get them by themselves and say, `What are you talking to them about?' " At home, it was the other way around. James' sons questioned their mom. They wanted to know why she wouldn't sing at home. "I guess they wanted me to go around the house, and cook and sing. But it's kind of, like, a job. It is a job. I'm not gonna walk around the house and sing," she says. "You would never hear me sing in the shower," either, she adds. "People love to sing in the shower. If people could sing like they sing in the shower, they could be singers." She's not mocking regular people's voices, she says. "Anybody can sing. They just have to want to sing," James says. "But they wouldn't dare to come out of the shower." James says she realized at a young age that her own voice was powerful, and that it would last. "In school, they told me I had a contralto voice. I didn't even know what contralto was. It's a female voice with a male" depth, she says. "I said, `That's cool. I've got a heavy voice that'll last.' "Overall, I've got one of those heavy voices, anyway. So, seldom am I one of those people reaching for a high note and screech. Sometimes, I'll sing `My Funny Valentine' and I have to sing high at the end. That's just to be different. "The older you get, the less your voice can go high. But I was never a high-voice singer." For her next studio album, James plans to sing all original songs in the various styles of R&B, pop, soul, Rolling Stones-influenced rock, jazz and even country. She plans to call it, "Let's Roll." "I thought about what the president said. He always likes to say that, and one of the pilots (in the war) said, `Let's roll,' " she says. As for all the formats she wants to sing, "You got all the different vibes that make it really American." In concert, James continues to perform songs from many of her eras. And she doesn't pick which songs to perform in advance. So she might end up doing the early 1960s songs "Stop the Wedding" and "All I Could Do Was Cry," plus some material by Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Bobby "Blue" Bland and B.B. King. "I like to do a variety of stuff. Usually people holler something" they want hear, she says. Does she take requests? "Oh, yeah! I'm glad when they ask me, because it tells me right then what to do," she says. "Some of the artists think they know what they want to do, and what makes them feel good. ... I try to do what the audience wants, because I like those songs, too. "Some people in the front rows, they'll go, `My Dearest Darling,' or they'll go, `At Last,' or either somebody just got married or is about to get married and wants `At Last.' Or they'll want rock, like '(Something's Got a) Hold on Me,' " she says. "In Las Vegas, three girls come at every show, stage right, front row, and they are the same girls every time. It's almost like they're my cousins or something. Every time, I wave at them, and they wave at me." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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