Lodge 205 St. Urho’s Day celebration Saturday, March 14, 2015
Gourmet selection of appetizers, vegtables, salads, and desserts - thank you to all our members for their contributions to the gourmet selections!
Lodge members enjoying the potluck dinner selections and St Urho Day celebrations at the home of our hosts, Glenn & Sandy Havumaki
Our Lodge 205 St Urho grasshopper. In addition to it's green lights, it is motorized - the motor moves the wings up & down. The grasshopper comes out every St Urho's Day and is placed on the front lawn, or entryway, of the St Urho's Day celebration host's home. The grasshopper was donated to our lodge by the Britt family many years ago.
L-R: Liisa, Klas, Eric, Roy, Lise,Tuula, Doug, and Glenn enjoying the dinner and good conversation.
Our hosts, Glenn & Sandy, did a wonderful job decorating for the St Urho's Day celebration - purple, green, and grasshoppers everywhere!
L-R: Inke, Dottie, Peter, & Kaarina - all enjoying the dinner and good conversation
Roy leading the group in reciting the "Ode to St Urho. If you look carefully, note our lodge's unique St Urho cap, with a large green grasshopper on top! This cap is worn by the person leading us in reciting the "Ode to St Urho."
Introduction (in English) & Sung (in Finnish) by Roy Kosonen
More information below
Veteran's Evening Call ... Veteraanin iltahuuto (Finnish) Introduction (in English) & Sung (in Finnish) by Roy Kosonen The words are just as powerful as the tune itself. It is often sung by choirs at the funerals of Finnish war veterans nowadays, as was the case with Roy's father in Octoberm 2014, down in Florida - the choir sang this and Roy sang the solo verses.
"A Cossack Rode Over the Danube" Introduction (in English) & Sung (in Ukrainian) by Roy Kosonen
More information below
"A Cossack Rode Over the Danube", is a popular Ukrainian song. The reason Roy sang it was because between the two World Wars there was a small but lively population of Russians who did not wish to live in the Soviet Union and who remained in Finland after that country achieved its independence from Russia in 1917. Thousands of these Russians were successfully integrated into Finnish society and they became loyal Finnish citizens, including serving loyally in the Finnish military against the Soviet Union during World War II. We all know about the Swedish-speaking Finns and the Finnish-speaking Finns, but how many of us know about these Russians living in Finland back then? Among them were Roy's ancestors who lived in the village of Raivola (nowadays re-named Roshchino) near the old Russian border. Roy's mother was of mixed Finnish and Russian background and she grew up speaking both Finnish and Russian as a child and attended the local Russian Orthodox Church. She remembered that time as a wonderful interlude before the storm of war destroyed that peaceful little society and scattered its people to the winds. There were all these beautiful, ornate grand villas, for example, that had belonged to wealthy Russians from St. Petersburg, and that were kept by the Finnish government for their owners in case they should ever return to claim them (very few ever did). In the seaport of Viipuri (Vyborg) there was a lively cosmopolitan population of Finns, Swedes, Russians, Germans and a few Poles. In Mon Repos park during the long "white nights" of summer, many languages could be heard spoken from the tables under the trees while the music played and people enjoyed their drinks. It was like a brief time capsule of life at its best from the last days of the Russian Empire, preserved in Finnish Karelia for a while before it was all destroyed. Here in America Roy's mother often listened to old records of Russian music with her eyes closed, lost in reverie. Roy remembers that well from boyhood. So Roy decided to sing that Ukrainian song as a memento of that lost culture of interwar Karelia, because Ukrainian is very similar to Russian.
