Our Trip to Cyprus
Posted on | May 16, 2012 | 3 Comments
From May 22 to June 1 Sylvia and I will be on a trip to Cyprus, the third-largest Mediterranean island, situated in the corner between Turkey and Syria. Like most other such islands, it is filled with ancient ruins from the Neolithic age to the present. In ancient times it was famed for its copper mines, linking the island’s name forever with the metal. My maternal grandfather, Charles F. Jackson, went to Cyrpus as a mining engineer in the years 1923-25, working with the Cyprus Mines Corporation, formed in 1914 by Godfrey Gunther and mining engineer Seely Mudd, two American mining engineers, to reopen the Roman copper mines at Skouriotissa. The name Skouriotissa means, in Greek, “our lady of the slag (heaps).” His family, including my mother, accompanied him for this time and lived at an old monastery or mission compound nearby. The first picture has my mother, age 9, standing in front of an old Greek church in the monastery courtyard. The second picture is of my grandfather, Charles Jackson, standing in the entrance to the building they called home.
We are taking along a set of pictures like these two taken by my grandparents while they were living there to see if we can find any contemporary views, especially of the monastery. The mine, once a shaft mine, is now an open-pit mine. Like its predecessor, it too creates sizable environmental problems in the nearby farming areas.
The mine complex is located just on the Greek side of the “green line,” the boundary set up by the UN to bring an armistice to the warfare that erupted in the early 1970s when Turkish forces invaded the island to protect the Turkish-speaking population from possible eviction or destruction by the Greek-speaking population, which had led in the independence movement from Great 
Britain. While Cyprus is an independent republic, it still exists with an “occupied territory” comprising about a third of the island. One of the things I want to do is visit the “House of Cooperation,” in Nicosia, an NGO that is seeking to help heal the divisions that have become a near-permanent state of affairs in the country.
In addition, we will be poking around some of the old Greek, Roman, and Crusader ruins, including the legendary birthplace of Aphrodite, the patron goddess of Cyprus. And then, of course, there are the beaches, the food, and the people in their great variety. I’ll try to blog a little from there, but you may not hear from me until early June.
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William J. Everett
In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to a poetically written novel to probe the issues of ecological and human reconciliation.
When I am not writing, I create furniture for worship settings. For more about my work, go to www.WisdomsTable.net, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River. READ MORE...
TURNINGS: Poems of Transformation
Like works in
wood upon a lathe, these poems are word-turnings that reveal the inner grain of our human experience. They are bowls to catch our turnings of memory, conversion, falling in love, and passing through our seasons and the wrenching turns that mark our lives. Above all these turnings are a shout of praise, a murmur of wonder, a turning away from life as usual, a merciful re-turning to the songs, images and stories that move our lives.
You can get TURNINGS at:
For More on TURNINGS:
Red Clay Blood River
Red Clay, Blood River is a story told by Earth about two brothers from Germany and an enslaved South African woman whose lives bind together America’s “Trail of Tears” and South Africa’s simultaneous “Great Trek” of 1838. You can get Red Clay, Blood River at:
Booklocker--also in ebook version (PDF)In South Africa at: www.Loot.co.za and www.Kalahari.net
May 16th, 2012 @ 7:16 pm
Have a wonderful trip and blog when you have the opportunity. I will look forward to your thoughts about the cultures and history of the area.
May 17th, 2012 @ 12:14 am
Sounds fantastic!
May 21st, 2012 @ 5:55 pm
Dear Bill and Syl, great trip!
I remember vividly having been in Cyprus in 1995 when I was with the Berlin Mission in order to meet with the Presbyterian Church in Sudan leaders and their mission partners. The delegation consisted of two parts, Northern half from Khartoum, Southern half from Malakal and Juba, most of them Nuer. Cyprus was the best place to meet because both groups could get visas to the place.
Recently, I read in our church newspaper that the Cyprus government is planning to send a Bahai woman back to Iran, a clear violation of religious freedom. And then two days ago there was a report on Turkish aircraft having chased away an Israeli military plane from the coast of North Cyprus, the Turkish part. Background is the attempt of Cyprus and Israel to mine gas fields in the Mediterranean around Cyprus.
Cyprus is just a hot spot – in many ways. May it be hot only in temperature and in excitement. Have an excellent time!
Yours from the German North to the Cyprus South,
Gerd and Gerit