war in ukraine :: do what you can

i've been thinking a lot about my russian friends and how they must be feeling. i wonder what they're thinking? what news they have access to? what they believe? whether they have children who might be sent to putin's folly of a war. i'm friends with one on facebook, but she hasn't answered my message. she might not be able to now, if putin turned it off. so terrible what he's doing and how those who will suffer from his actions are the ordinary people in both ukraine and russia. such an amazing culture, with so much of the world's best literature and music and art.  

since i wrote this a couple of days ago, my friend in russia has answered. she's ok and though she's vague in her posts, she actually still has access. and she said we must all hope for peace. what else can we do?

i'll tell you what i did today - i bought some prints from a ukrainian artist. it's a small gesture and probably only significant to the artist who i bought them from, but it made me feel like i was doing something. and i don't want it to be in some fortunate western kind of way, but maybe it is. but still, i hope it made a difference. please support yulia if you can. her illustrations are lovely and she has a cat. you may have to print yourself at the moment, but honestly, isn't that the least you can do?

studying russian at the wrong time

on the train from moscow to kazan with my dad in 1994

the past week or so of russia's agression against ukraine has me pondering my past. i studied russian, mostly literature and quite a lot of russian history. of course i studied the language as well, but i was never a great talent. i could always read it better than i could speak it. but i did ok, and most importantly, i loved it. 

i studied russian at precisely the wrong time to actually get to do anything with it. i began studying in 1989, just as the berlin wall fell. it took a couple more years for the soviet union to dissolve, but dissolve it did. and by the time i finished my bachelor's degree in 1993 and my master's in 1994, academia didn't really know what to do with us russian majors. 

looking back, so many of my professors were former military, harry had been to the defense language institute in monterey and then princeton (possibly not in that order). the head of our department at iowa, ray, was also former military, as was kit, whose last name i don't remember, though polish was his specialty. later, at asu, the head of the russian department was also former military. they were surely all tapping people on the shoulder to join the cia or fbi or nsa. but that tap never came for me. perhaps because of the aforementioned not being a language talent, but i think it had even more to do with timing. i simply studied russian at the wrong time. fellowships dried up. slavic departments shrank and merged with other "minor" languages. i met a nice danish boy and followed him home and love sent me in another direction.

and i believe that today, we're seeing the result of that. putin and his cronies felt humiliated at the dissolution of the soviet union and now he's taking the first steps towards getting it back. and because no one kept studying russian and slavic culture, it seems like the world is rather blindsided by it all. maybe they should have tapped some of us on the shoulder after all, even if we weren't brilliant at russian, but just had a deep and abiding interest in it and the culture. 

as usual, at moments like this, i wish i could still sit across from my dad and ask him what he thinks about it all. 

reading and listening and strangers and historical perspective

i just finished the last book of ken follett's century trilogy. i know they were novels, but as historical fiction, i feel like they gave me a more personal take on the sweeping history of the 20th century and a greater understanding of things like the cuban missile crisis and the fall of the berlin wall. literature can do that, as can 20+ years to reflect on the events. it struck me that it's very hard to know the meaning of things immediately after they happen. or even a decade after. i think we are definitely still struggling to make sense of september 11, 2001. and i think our round-the-clock style of news doesn't do us any favors. the nature of today's media means that analysis must begin immediately, before we even really know what's happening and i think it's diminishing the human race. we can't possibly know the meaning of things without reflecting on them. but that certainly doesn't stop the relentless talking heads on television. makes me glad i pretty much only watch netflix and hbo nordic these days (plus my guilty pleasure of a few programs on tlc).

i've also been listening to as many of the strangers podcasts as are available on iTunes. they are filled with stories that make me long for more stories. stories of people who were strangers to one another, strangers to themselves, and then strangers no more. since the host is danish and refers to that fact quite often, i feel a strange connection with her that makes me wonder if it borders on stalkerish. she's been in my country a little bit longer than i've been in hers and she is at times as bewildered by the US as i am by denmark. she seems like someone i'd love to invite over to dinner.

this listening, coupled with reading the edge of eternity got me thinking about marina ivanovna, the very soviet-style russian teacher i had at iowa back in the early 90s. she struck fear in our hearts - using public humiliation as her main motivator. that works for me, i must admit, so despite how tough she was, i quite liked her. she lived in russian house, a big old house on a tree-lined iowa city street where a bunch of russian majors lived - kind of a sorority/fraternity house for slavic geeks. and i wonder what she made of it all? so weird that i never wondered that at the time - i thought of her as a teacher, not as a person. i think we all did with teachers at some point in our lives - being surprised at seeing them outside of school with their families or just mowing their lawn or something entirely normal. it seemed so strange that they were just ordinary people, living ordinary lives.

but here was marina ivanovna, a professor from moscow university who must have lived her entire life under the soviet system, plopped down in iowa city, just as the soviet union was dissolving. it must have been so bewildering and overwhelming in many ways - the nature of the students, the abundance of consumer goods, the informality of it all. i wonder what she made of it and whether she had aching moments of homesickness or whether she felt so fortunate to be there. what did she think? did she find it all so strange? was she happy or frustrated or overwhelmed or puzzled? she was probably all of those things at different moments, just like i am here in denmark, even after all of these years.

we can all feel like strangers at times, even when we live in our own cultures, but it is magnified when we live abroad. i guess all we can do is keep telling stories to try to make sense of it all, and remember to be patient, because it may take the vantage point of years before it does indeed begin to make sense.

throwback thursday: me & lenin

me, on red square in 1994.
taking a photo of my sister, who was obviously taking a photo of me.
she was standing in front of st. basil's
so her photo is more picturesque.
here, all we've got is some melting snow, bits of the kremlin
and lenin's tomb.
tho' i did quite enjoy that. in a creepy cool kinda way.

* * *

you know i am against the use of LOL, 

as i believe that god kills a kitten every time someone (over)uses it. 

but still, this made me laugh out loud.

good thing my parents don't have smart phones.

* * *

how cool is the packaging in this post?

a little stroll through crimean history

i'm following with interest the events unfolding in the crimea. i really liked this piece in this morning's guardian/observer, which i think, in an even-manner, outlines what's going on, tho' there's more in this piece and it clouds the picture for me a bit. there are many facets to this story i'm trying to decide exactly what i think about the situation. i think it's hard for us to really get at the truth of what's happening, despite our instant access to information about it. so to try to understand, i dug in my memory to tolstoy's sebastopol sketches, the small tome of vignettes that some say makes tolstoy the first war reporter (i also think it's his best work, but that's the stuff of a different post).

the original crimean war (1853-56) was the first extensively-reported and photographed war. you might remember some musings on the roger fenton photos right here on mpc. it also changed the nature of war in many ways, including medically, as it was there that florence nightengale did her groundbreaking work. in the original crimean war, the russians fought the declining ottoman empire and were even winning, but thanks to napoleon and the brits getting involved on the ottoman side, they lost and ended up losing their black sea fleet. (that's admittedly the very short version of the story.) russia ostensibly got involved to protect the interests of orthodox christians in the ottoman empire, seeing themselves as champions of eastern orthodoxy everywhere. it was actually some trouble with various factions in the ukraine which made russia get involved in the first place. sounds familiar, eh?

well, in the accords after the war, the crimea ended back in russian hands, tho' they were prevented from establishing naval bases along the black sea, which crippled them there for years afterwards and probably served to prop up the dying ottoman empire for a few more decades.

as late as 1954, russia transferred administration of the crimea to ukraine, much to the dismay of the many russians living there, but they were all part of the soviet union so that was that. but those russians have remained russian and there are arguments for russia protecting their interests against a ukraine in chaos (no matter who has caused that chaos).

so i suppose by now you can tell that i'm actually inclined to be not that opposed to the russian "invasion." and i find it absurd and ludicrous that the US is making noise about getting involved, even going so far as to stick some hypocritical words in the mouth of the US secretary of state john kerry, "you just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.' um, mr. secretary, i know it wasn't your administration, but wasn't there a rather recent invasion by your good selves in another little country called iraq on some trumped up charges of wmd?" how will we ever learn from history if we can't even remember it a mere decade later?

regardless of who is wrong and who is right (and there are undoubtedly many aspects of wrong and right on both sides), this isn't going to end well. but maybe a return to the cold war will do us good. we've been a little lost without it. and i don't just mean in the russian history departments of american universities.

soviet animation

a little bit of magic for your friday viewing pleasure. those soviets weren't all bad.

and you've got to see this as well (just ignore that weird anti-zionist description on youtube and enjoy the illustrations/animation):



happy weekend, one and all!

icons of soviet design

whatever else you say about the soviet union, they did come up with some design classics. these coin-operated fizzy water machines were still in use and to be found on the streets and in train stations when i studied in russia in 1994. the glasses, which you can see below, were always a bit suspect and the water had a strange smell and taste, but it was still a classic and you had to try it at least once. once you had survived it the first time, you felt pretty invincible and oddly unafraid to try it again.

these glasses were ubiquitous in homes and restaurants and on trains throughout russia. you were likely to be served hot tea in one, but they also held cold drinks and, of course, vodka. it has a good heaviness to it and i imagine they wear like iron. they were produced by the millions from 1943 onward.

and its design pedigree isn't too shabby either - sculptor vera mukhina (she did that monument to the new soviet man - the worker and the peasant girl) designed it and it's said her design was influenced by kazimir malevich (he of the black square painting fame). i wish i'd slipped a few into my bag, but alas, i don't have any of them. they're still manufactured to this day and ikea has even copied it!

when i studied in kazan in 1994, the tramvai still looked like this, tho' i never saw one so empty as the one in this photo. they were always stuffed with people. i remember once we were so stuffed in that my feet lifted off the ground and i was just held up by the bodies around me. that was a weird feeling.

this is such a clever little tool. a little coil, perfect for warming up a mug of water for a single cup of tea or coffee. i wish i had one right now. much more economical than warming up an entire kettle.

ahh, the original lomo cameras - leningrad optics and mechanics amalgamation. when i studied in kazan in 1994, there was a store my friends and i referred to as "watch world" - they had watches and cameras. i wasn't into cameras at that time and thought these were just plastic junk, but oh, how i wish i had one (or five) now.

now they're all trendy, and back in production, thanks to the lomographic society. but alas, they're no longer cheap as chips.

the bear chocolate. i don't recall it as anything special, and if i'm honest, i think it tasted kinda gross, but even when i was in russia for the first time in 1994, it was ubiquitous. and the little wrapper with its portrait of a mama bear and her three cubs is a design classic.

speaking of watch world - here are models of raketa watches. i did buy quite a few of them when i was there. they were wonderful little mechanical workhorses, the kind you wind and there was quite a selection of leather bands, and they cost nothing. i still have at least one of them and tho' i seldom wear a watch these days (i use my phone instead), after reading this little book, i may have to dig it out and use it for old times' sake.

since i was out in the backwater of kazan, i don't know whether my raketa watches were produced by actual people or on the assembly line (they began fully automated production in 1980) (who knows how old the stock was in watch world), but they are definitely classic designs.

i learned all of this and took a little walk down memory lane reading made in russia: unsung icons of soviet design. i guess i've got russia on the brain, what with the upcoming winter olympics in sochi.

on having a russian soul, but not passing it on to my child

i have a russian soul. i know it sounds bad these days, with all of the homophobia and intrigues and hired clappers at the bolshoi and odin knows what else going on in russia, but it's still there. the same burning fascination that drove me to collect several degrees and a large bookshelf full of russian literature still smoulders within. i'm reading andrea pritzer's the secret history of vladimir nabokov and it, together with sabin's recent trip to st. petersburg, have fanned the flames once again.

russia is just so infuriatingly complex and vast and incomprehensible. it is at once primitive and highly cultured, traditional and fresh and new, provincial and cosmopolitan, a pastiche of copies of styles from around the world, but utterly its own. just when you think, i've just read brothers karamazov and now i really understand the russian soul, you turn to master and margarita or pale fire and another entire facet opens up. layer upon layer upon layer of complexity and history and blood and violence and art and thought and religion. i never get my fill of it.

i'll admit i was a little sad that it didn't speak to sabin in the same way. she said she was glad she went, but that she wouldn't want us to plan a family vacation to go back. maybe at 12, wandering the streets of modern st. petersburg, sipping a starbucks, and taking snapshots with her iPhone, it's perhaps understandable that she didn't feel the soul and the pulse of history running through the veins of nevsky prospect. but i had hoped that russia would open itself to her the way it did to me.

times are, of course, different. my initial interest in russia was a reaction to an instinctive and idealistic loathing of ronald reagan (i still think he's where the slippery slope began). it also arose in following the story of dissident andrei sakharov in the early 80s and in reading that baggy monster war & peace at too tender an age. the cold war was in full swing and we practiced nuclear fallout drills in the basement of our school. that's all very remote for sabin, if she has any awareness of it at all. the foundation just isn't there.

her danish sensibilities were a bit overwhelmed by the excessive ornate decoration of everything. gold trim and entire rooms of amber or malachite do make you understand why they needed a revolution. she found she didn't like not being able to read signs or understand what people were saying (being so multi-lingual, those are strange experiences for her). i guess i will have to accept that she will find her own forms of rebellion and passions and infatuations and that they don't have to mirror mine. i'm actually pretty ok with that, but i do wish that russia had made her heart go just a little bit pitter patter. but it wasn't a wasted trip. anytime you travel the world, you grow.

in vino veritas: thoughts of st. petersburg

with sabin in st. petersburg, my thoughts turn to russian poetry. i've said it before, i'm a prose person, not a poetry person, but this one by alexander blok is one of the few i like.

The Stranger

The restaurants on hot spring evenings

Lie under a dense and savage air.

Foul drafts and hoots from dunken revelers

Contaminate the thoroughfare.

Above the dusty lanes of suburbia

Above the tedium of bungalows

A pretzel sign begilds a bakery

And children screech fortissimo.

And every evening beyond the barriers

Gentlemen of practiced wit and charm

Go strolling beside the drainage ditches --

A tilted derby and a lady at the arm.

The squeak of oarlocks comes over the lake water

A woman's shriek assaults the ear

While above, in the sky, inured to everything,

The moon looks on with a mindless leer.

And every evening my one companion

Sits here, reflected in my glass.

Like me, he has drunk of bitter mysteries.

Like me, he is broken, dulled, downcast.

The sleepy lackeys stand beside tables

Waiting for the night to pass

And tipplers with the eyes of rabbits

Cry out: "In vino veritas!"

And every evening (or am I imagining?)

Exactly at the appointed time

A girl's slim figure, silk raimented,

Glides past the window's mist and grime.

And slowly passing throught the revelers,

Unaccompanied, always alone,

Exuding mists and secret fragrances,

She sits at the table that is her own.

Something ancient, something legendary

Surrounds her presence in the room,

Her narrow hand, her silk, her bracelets,

Her hat, the rings, the ostrich plume.

Entranced by her presence, near and enigmatic,

I gaze through the dark of her lowered veil

And I behold an enchanted shoreline

And enchanted distances, far and pale.

I am made a guardian of the higher mysteries,

Someone's sun is entrusted to my control.

Tart wine has pierced the last convolution

of my labyrinthine soul.

And now the drooping plumes of ostriches

Asway in my brain droop slowly lower

And two eyes, limpid, blue, and fathomless

Are blooming on a distant shore.

Inside my soul a treasure is buried.

The key is mine and only mine.

How right you are, you drunken monster!

I know: the truth is in the wine.

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok

send in the clowns

ahh, it's a day and a half until the school group departs for st. petersburg. still no visas and still no flight details, tho' we did, late thursday evening, get a more detailed itinerary as to the actual sights the kids will see. we were told they have to be at the airport at 4:30 a.m. on tuesday, tho' no flight number or time or anything to accompany that enlightening little fact. we were given a link to the air baltic website and a reference number so we could check in online. sadly, since it's a group reservation, i cannot actually access flight numbers, flight path or flight times (e.g. an itinerary) and it's still too early to check her in, so i can't see it that way either. so i wrote back and said that i thought that the flight information was missing on the information we received. 

the clown who sent it responded, "what specifically is missing?" 

i answered, "times, flight numbers, airline, just the usual flight itinerary, like any normal trip." then i further explained that i couldn't see it on the air baltic website, due to it being a group reservation. i said i couldn't imagine there were direct flights between billund and st. petersburg, so there must be at least one flight about which we lacked any information at all.

then, while impatiently waiting for an answer (he had answered quickly the first time, despite it being sunday, so i expected an answer just as quickly), i thought i'd dig out an old flight itinerary and show him what i meant (tho' in this day and age, imagining that someone hasn't seen an airline's flight itinerary is a bit of a stretch). so i sent him an old one from my days of traveling with SAS (they once owned Air Baltic, so i figured the same systems would be in place). and since his tactic is to treat me as if i'm a small, dull child, i carefully explained it all to him:

"When you travel, the travel agency or even just the airline provides a PDF with all of the flight details on it. I have attached an example, in case you're not familiar with these. It contains all of the information needed for the flights - flight number, airline, departure time, terminal, arrival time, how much luggage is allowed. All of this information is included for each of your flights. Everything you need to know about your flights if you (or more importantly, your 12-year-old child) are going on a trip to another country. Depending on the airline, it's even available electronically, so you can use Passport on your iPhone as your ticket/check-in.

I expect to receive such an itinerary tomorrow morning at the latest. Specifically."

he initially responded that he didn't have such a detailed itinerary, but that he would look into it.

then, a little bit later, he sends this:

BT146 Billund - Riga
BT442 Riga - Sct. Petersborg (sic)
BT445 Sct. Petersborg (sic) - Riga
BT145 Riga - Sct. Petersborg (sic - believe this should read Billund)

we're getting closer, but still no flight times or the actual dates of the flights (tho' the dates i more or less know, since a previous 8-mail conversation finally revealed those).

why be so difficult, i wondered and so i remarked "no times/dates? very mysterious."

then he has the nerve to answer that they were included in the previous mail. which they were not. if they were, i wouldn't have been asking in the first place.

and i couldn't help myself, i had to ask:

I sincerely do not understand why getting this perfectly normal, logical information out of you is like pulling teeth. What possible reason would you have to keep essential details like this from us? It was the same way with the changed dates, it took 4-5 emails to get the new dates from you. I don't think I'm asking too much or for anything out of the ordinary. I am a parent who wants to know the details of her 12-year-old daughter's trip.

and funnily enough, it's been nearly and hour and he hasn't answered. and i still don't know the actual flight times of these flights. tho' now, with the flight numbers, i could look it up and probably will. we have exchanged ten mails and i still don't have the information i need and it's not like it's something special i'm asking for, just a simple, normal flight itinerary, which every travel agent or airline provides when you make a booking. i just wonder why it has to be so hard? 

i would have canceled this whole thing long ago, but somehow i want to see how it plays out. and if we cancel, sabin's friend is left alone on the trip without anyone she knows and we didn't want to do that to her. i'm still holding out hope that it won't happen because they won't have the visas by 4:30 a.m. tuesday morning, but only time will tell. 

i'll keep you posted.

update: i finally got a response from the clown, he said, and i quote (translation mine), "i have read your mail and have nothing to add. that's it from here." 

* * *

"Society is telling us, like, be true to yourself, authentic, develop your potential, be kind to others. It’s kind of what I ironically call a slightly enlightened Buddhist hedonism."

--yup, zizek has still got it.

a flock of amateurs

we have signed the child up for a trip to st. petersburg with something called the ungdomsskole (youth school?), it's a public institution that's associated with the regular schools and they run a whole bunch of different after school activities and trips for kids from 7th to 9th grade. this is the first time they've planned a trip to st. petersburg and believe me, it shows. it seems that those organizing the trip haven't got the first clue about what it takes as far as visas and advising which clothes to take and how much money to take (they advised that the 12-13 year olds have a good selection of credit cards with them). and tho' i'm normally a very laid back traveler, this time it's driving me absolutely mad (both in the sense of crazy and of angry).

they even changed the dates of the trip slightly, but haven't published that anywhere - their website still has the old dates. they claimed to have sent the children who are signed up a text with the new dates, but both my child and her friend, who is also going, have received no such text. they guy in charge continues to insist they did. such a stupid lie is unnecessary. just admit you're a bit disorganized and didn't get it sent. don't keep lying about it when we can see the proof right there in two telephones. what's really stupid about it is that we need those correct dates for the visa application.

in order to get the visa, you have to have an invitation letter from someone in russia. in this case, the hotel where they will stay. only then can you fill out the application and apply for the visa. oh, and you must deliver the visa application to the embassy in person, you can't send it in. the embassy won't really say exactly how long the visa takes - if you pay extra, you can have it in 4 days, but it's likely to take anywhere from 7 - 14 days to get it if you don't pay extra. since they are set to leave october 15, time is ticking away. do you think we've seen the invitation letter from the hotel? no we have not.

do you think we've gotten a convoluted mail with some instructions about health insurance cut & pasted into it from the russian embassy website? yes, we have. is that the most important thing? no it is not. do you think this is causing me to pull out my hair? well, you would be right about that.

they held a meeting for the parents and the kids who are going on the trip on tuesday evening. i couldn't go, as i went to the salon allison park evening. but husband and sabin went. they met the three adults who are going on the trip - one is a bossy belorussian, one is a russian from st. petersburg who doesn't share a common language with the rest of the people going on the trip and one is a danish guy who was apparently heavily bullied by the belorussian throughout the course of the meeting. they showed some kind of only moderately informative power point with some pictures of what they would see and talked extensively about which credit cards the children should bring. they may have had some advice about what clothes to pack, but husband didn't write that down. he did, however, write down the following:

they will see:
* 4 shoe stores
* 6 candy stores
* 1 newspaper kiosk

they will spend 3 days in their hotel room.

nothing about culture was mentioned.

they are responsible for buying their own lunch, tho' breakfast and dinner are included.

this does not help me keep my hair. tho' i'm pretty sure most of it is a joke (except that thing about the lunch). he also drew a strange little picture of what appears to be a llama peeing. but i'm not sure what that has to do with the trip.

at this point, i actually have my doubts as to whether the trip is even going to happen. i want it to happen. i love the idea of my 12-year-old seeing the hermitage and the winter palace and the peter & paul fortress. i want her to walk the streets of st. petersburg and soak in the onion domes and see the canal where rasputin's body was found and feel the history that is lurking in every corner. all of this even tho' i am a moscow person. that flock of amateurs had just better get their act together and make this happen. a flock of amateurs, that's one of those danish phrases that maybe does translate.

synesthetic moments and the future of the past

i'm fascinated by the notion of synesthesia. probably because i first learned about it in a russian context. i think it was in nabokov's speak, memory, that i first encountered the condition. as wiki puts it: it's a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. for many people, this means that they see numbers or letters as colors or hear sounds as colors. it's something you are just born with and which isn't that understood. you can't make yourself have it and many people don't realize they have it until they realize that others don't see or hear colors in the same way.

i have a mild case of it - often getting an impression of a color from music and definitely getting strong color flashes from various emotions. this one must be more common, or there wouldn't be phrases like, i saw red for angry moments. i see color less in anger and more in moments of deep love and happiness and contentment - and they are generally warm blue-greens (probably why i painted my blue room blue), tho' i also see deep, rich purples and sometimes yellow and orange.

anyway, synesthesia continues to fascinate and when i came across this performance of russian composer scriabin's attempt at composing a synesthetic symphony, i had to share it.

russian composer scriabin's prometheus: poem of fire
an unfinished, unrealized synaesthetic work (he meant for it to be performed in the himilayas).
performed instead in a concert hall at yale.
i love how anna gowboy, the scriabin scholar behind the project, put it:
 "tonight is the future of the past."

a version of it was also done at the university of iowa sometime in the 70s.
but lasers have come a long way since then.

* * *

fantastic images by edward burtynsky. 

check especially his shipbreaking photos from bangladesh.

thanks bill, for the link!

* * *

do you know where your antipode is?

i'll surely go to hell, but first we must drink together

i went to a play this evening. a two-man show in an intimate setting, right here in my own little town. it was an adaptation of dostoevsky's short novel (it's not exactly a novella and not fully a novel) the eternal husband. the two actors were very good and although it was actually a dostoevsky i didn't know, but it had all of the elements of dostoevsky at his finest. that special politeness and humility with which half-mad characters speak to one another. glimmers of raskolnikov, the underground man, saintly but mildly insane and surely consumptive but beautiful women. clever lines, "go to hell." "i'll surely go to hell, but first we must drink together." and the undercurrents, oh my the undercurrents.

it struck me that we have no undercurrents today - everyone's letting it all hang out, spilling everything, without subtlety, not letting anything at all bubble below the surface. i think we need more undercurrents. and by that i don't mean hidden agendas (there are surely enough of those, tho' often they aren't that well-hidden); i mean real, raging emotions, boiling just below the surface. now we just get all of that out of our systems passive aggressively on facebook. and i'm beginning to think it's not good for us.

there was a point during the first act where i welled up with tears, thinking of my favorite professor from iowa who died a couple of years ago. i felt a longing to discuss what i'd seen with him that just about bowled my over. and a sorrow that that was no longer possible since he's gone. i would so love to have talked over the performance with him. he would have known how to positively direct all of the emotions and small glimpses of my own madness it brought forth in me.

my advice - get out there and see some live theatre. there's nothing like it.

hedgehog in the fog

there are things i love about winter - candles, fragrant hyacinth, hot elderberry drinks. but what i hate is when winter doesn't really come. it's been grey, grey, grey for over a week. we've had mild temperatures, and a bit of rain, but we haven't had proper winter. we, and the trees and plants and soil, need some cold temperatures and a blanket of snow. i can handle the darkness this time of year when there's snow.  but i'll admit these unrelentingly grey days are chipping away at my will to live. or at least my will to remain awake. i'm thinking of crawling into bed and hibernating 'til spring. those hedgehogs know what they're doing.

speaking of hedgehogs, i know i've shared this before, long ago, but i give you hedgehog in the fog (Ёжик в тумане), a delightful little piece of russian animation from 1975:

i hope it lifts your spirits as it did mine.

photographs for the tsar

i've mentioned the amazing early color photography of sergei prokudin-gorskii before, but i recently got a book (photographs for the tsar, edited by robert h. allshouse, 1980) from the library about his pioneering work with color photography.

prokudin-gorskii was a chemist by profession. he studied with mendelev (of periodic table fame). he worked abroad, in germany and france, with early pioneers of the chemistry around color photography. he returned to russia in the 1890s and began teaching the first courses on photography and photographic chemistry. in 1906, he took over editorship of a magazine for amateur photographers. although he thought that photography was profession which demanded a proper scientific background, he could see that it was so exciting that it should not remain something that was just for experts.

he developed a spring-loaded camera which produced three individual negatives, each with its own color filter - blue, green and red - which were then layered to create the final color image. the shot required a three-second exposure, so in some of the large-group shots, it's possible to see the layers because it was impossible to keep a large group still. (you can check out the entire library of the photos here.)

in 1907 he was so excited by an upcoming eclipse of the sun that he encouraged his fellow photographers to prepare for it - even inventing "the things that were necessary" to photograph it if they didn't yet exist. he believed in the power of photography to educate and record things to be preserved for future generations.

in this regard, he began to contemplate an enormous photographic project - photographing all sorts of people and places of importance across the vast russian empire. to undertake such a project, he needed both the permission and the support of tsar nicholas himself. in line with his scientific background, he set out methodically to gain that permission. connections to the grand duke mikhail aleksandrovich and the dowager empress maria fedorovna (the danish princess dagmar, just to drag in a danish connection), the tsar's mother helped him get the presentation of his life.

it was the power point to beat all power points, before power point existed. prokudin-gorskii was invited to tsarskoe selo to pitch his project. he would show the photos he had already done and outline his vision for the project. the tsar sent a special train to fetch him. he spent an entire day setting up the equipment. it would be the first time that the tsar would see images projected in color - oh, what i would have given to be in that room. it must have been an incredible moment. his images were carefully chosen - flowers, landscapes, russian peasants in fetching costume, children.

the presentation was a resounding success and he received what was essentially a blank check to begin the project. a pullman coach was outfitted for his use and all permissions were granted. he began by photographing the recently-completed mariinsky canal system (connecting the volga with the baltic sea) and continued on regular photographic documentation around the empire until the outbreak of world war II and the subsequent russian revolution. out of fear for his safety, he went into exile after the tsar was deposed by the bolsheviks. luckily, he was able to leave with his some 2000 photographic slides mostly intact. there are still ten undiscovered negatives of the romanov family which he claimed to have left behind "hidden in russia." they have not, to our knowledge, been found to this day (i can tell you that makes me want to go look for them).

these remarkable photos are pioneering in technique and an invaluable glimpse at prerevolutionary russia. they are indeed the education he hoped they would be.

soviet revolutionary textiles

mechanization of the red army

electrification

women harvesting

collectivization

celebrating the navy

young pioneers

tractors

airplanes

the ussr

gears

i already wrote about this once, but i'm not done being infatuated with the political textiles that were produced in the early years of the soviet union. it may have all gone wrong, but at least they believed in something. i despair a little bit that we believe in anything at all anymore. we certainly can't believe in our politicians and institutions. so we might as well believe in fabric.

if i were a designer...

...i would make munisaks - a central asian garment worn as an outer robe - with luxurious silks or ikat on the outside and beautiful, soft russian printed cottons on the inside.

these are shots of the lush and gorgeous russian textiles by susan meller.

i picked it up at the library yesterday and devoured it in one sitting.

this would be so easy to make, i just might have to get out the sewing machine.

sometimes the linings were patched together of several fabrics.
but i think that makes them that much more charming.

such a marvelous collection of pattern meller has put together

in most cases, i like the inside better than the outside.
they lined the silks with cotton because it was considered too ostentatious to have silk next to the skin.

it's also possible to make other things, not just munisaks - here's a skirt and a top and some folded bags.
so much inspiration in this beautiful book. i'm already dreading giving it back to the library.