CUSTOM AND TRADITIONS (INTERNATIONAL)

Struffoli, canolli
canapa, hashish and grapes!
herbs and spices are ground, food all around and loud mouths making sounds
from women as hairy as apes!

Thanks Austin_Rura for your short, interesting entry.

Scotland


Most think clans and kilts
haggis, whiskey, Nessie
and Robert Burns
castles and Clydesdale
maybe Angus beef
but the real flower of Scotland is
In the things not heard or seen

a sense of belonging and being lost
simultaneously
of an ancestral line filled with ingenuity
and a soul that remembers something
instinctively when a lone piper plays
to the hills

we've invented the things people use
everyday without knowing
like the first antibiotics
antiseptics and the telephone

(Here's where my pride won't let me stop, it's amazing the amount of stuff
invented by us Scots)

I mean, we are the founders of
gallows humour
and the whole gorgeous country
could fit inside North Carolina

the bicycle, chloroform, colour photography,  fingerprinting criminals,
the first cloned sheep,(Dolly)
Peter Pan, gospel singing, golf

even rap battling (once called Flyting, before hip-hop)
hypnotism, hypodermic needles,
kaleidoscopes,  the Kelvin scale,
Long John Silver and The King James bible, adhesive stamps, radar, propellers, the microwave,
raincoats, car tires, refrigeration,
faxes
and Halloween

without James Watt, the engineer
from Glasgow,the industrial revolution wouldn't have
been possible

even the U.S. Navy, Uncle Sam
and the bank of England
Okay, I admit
we overdid a few things

and there are thousands of others
that I won't bother listing
(like the flushing toilet since I mentioned those things)

I suppose in some kind of summary
It's only right to convey
that we're a nation of geniuses
who sometimes lose our way

but we're strong and brave
(In spite of Mel Gibson)
and Caledonia exists regardless
of division

or England

I share your enthusiasm regarding most of the inventions listed, but ascribing the discovery of the first antibiotic to Alexander Fleming is at least questionable because Gerhard Domagks sulfonamide "Prontosil" was applied since mid 1930s and he received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1939 for this discovery, whereas penicillin was applied not before the early 1940s and Fleming shared his Nobel Prize in 1945 with Howard Florey (Australian) and Ernst Boris Chain (German by birth, later naturalized British citizen).
On the other hand, I missed the great Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell on your list. :-)

Sorry, sodium
I guess you're talking to me and I missed the memo about the debate section on this entry...
I left a ton of people off that list and a few of the inventions listed are claimed by others globally. There was no social media and patents take time and money while ideas are freely flying.
My points were made according to creative license and formatted to fit this piece
Which, coincidentally has no ownership claim by me as its not even published elsewhere.

If I enter a piece on my childhood, I usually leave out Daddy too...heads up

Thanks Miki for your interesting and enlightening entry...sodium, I would appreciate if you submit an entry!

A South Pacific Islet

i live in a tribe on an island in the south pacific
it is not reknown or well known or even visited
but i come from there
we have magic and we live by they land
provided by the sea
the sun is kind and the people are free and happy
we don't smoke plants
we harvest them for medicine
but one thing tourists
find perplexing
we greet each other with our middle finger
if it's a wise elder we greet them with
both middle fingers
when we welcome tourist to our home
we greet them with the middle finger
when they leave, the middle finger once again
they receive
babies give the middle fingers to their parents
students middle finger their teachers
it's just the way life is for us
if you take our middle finger away
you take our world
we live by the middle finger
and when Death comes for us
we greet Her
with that same
middle finger

Thank you Bo for your middle finger traditional entry...i's nice to know such tradition exists. Five more days to submit your entries guys; come on, share with us your unique customs and tradition that define who you are, at least in one way or another.

Congratulations to all the winners:

Mikimoondancer - Competition winner
BoFantastic - 1st runner-up
Praveengola - 2nd runner-up

For hitting the mark of the comp. theme, a special award for Grace!

http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2014/300/e/2/poet_grace_by_engrvv-d84c7jq.jpg

Wow! Thank you EngrVV. Honoured and humbled with the award.
congratulations to the winner, Miki and the runners up. Awesome entries all.

Grace said:Wow! Thank you EngrVV. Honoured and humbled with the award.
congratulations to the winner, Miki and the runners up. Awesome entries all.

You're welcome Grace...you deserve it!

What an educational competition.  I enjoyed reading every entry.  

Eng. VV
I'm late but enjoy the piece, I just wrote about one, though their are saveral weird ones...

KingsBurial

The remains of a king is transported on the shoulders of morticians from the Kings Palace to the peak of the mountains.
The corpse is left uncouvered on a catafalque.
Only young and married men convey the corpse
Women and kids are not allowed to see or follow. when they see it mistakenly, the chiefs will set them aside in a room for a week.
Thereafter, a white cock will be slaughtered and given to them to eat; so they could be cleansed of the abominable act.
The burial is done in such a way that the tomb of the previous dead king is dug and the corpse of present dead king is then, laid to rest on the bones of his predecessor.
The tomb is couvered and the entire escort and morticians matches back to the village.
No one is allowed to climb the mountains for a week....
Practiced by the kuche' (rukuba) people of central Nigeria.

Thank you! I had fun on this comp
Good entries everyone, I enjoyed these reads too :)

sektioN8ty said:Eng. VV
I'm late but enjoy the piece, I just wrote about one, though their are saveral weird ones...

KingsBurial

The remains of a king is transported on the shoulders of morticians from the Kings Palace to the peak of the mountains.
The corpse is left uncouvered on a catafalque.
Only young and married men convey the corpse
Women and kids are not allowed to see or follow. when they see it mistakenly, the chiefs will set them aside in a room for a week.
Thereafter, a white cock will be slaughtered and given to them to eat; so they could be cleansed of the abominable act.
The burial is done in such a way that the tomb of the previous dead king is dug and the corpse of present dead king is beign laid to rest on the bones of his predecessor.
The tomb is couvered and the entire escort and morticians matches back to the village.
No one is allowed to climb the mountains for a week....
Practiced by the kuche' (rukuba) people of central Nigeria.

No problem, sektioN8ty...thanks for your contribution. I'm inviting you to send your entry to my other comp "Love of Country."