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Month: September 2011

Ukrainian Stray Dogs and Cats Die in the Name of Eurofoot 2012

At the top left corner of my blog there now hangs a widget which I hope you will use. It is an online petition to the Ukrainian President to stop cruelty on animals. You can read the petition below. Being Ukrainian by a quarter, I find it horrible, although it was documented even in fiction that stray dogs were killed in Russia and elsewhere. Personally, I believe the President Yanukovich has to stop this and to apologise. 

The context in which this measure is being used – the preparation to Eurofoot 2012 – is abominal. Sport has always encouraged cooperation and peace. I would go as far as to suggest to relocate Eurofoot 2012 to another country. Stray animals are the result of social policies. Every country partakes in presenting its best side, whenever necessary. But killing off stray animals so as to suggest as if there is no such problem in the country – sorry, this is criminal. 

The city Lysychansk (eastern Ukraine) is shooting and burning animals alive as part of Football Preparations for Eurofoot 2012.

Ukrainian Authorities are now using a mobile crematorium to exterminate stray animals. The local government bought a mobile crematorium for the disposal of stray animals. The mobile team of drivers and dog catchers are armed with a gun to shoot strays. The mobile crematorium also lends it to other cities and districts of the region.

The captured animals are thrown alive into the oven to 900 degrees C. According to locals, the dogs and cats burned alive.

 The concentration of stray animals is not critical and can easily be controlled. The problem of stray animals to be solved by sterilization. We are horrified to learn the problem of stray animals in the Luhansk region in the town Lysychansk in Eastern Ukraine will be “solved” in this way and ignoring the Law on Cruelty to Animals.

http://dingo.care2.com/petitions/widget/common/care2PetitionEmbedBar.js

The Discobolus on Yekaterinburg Underground

 

An ordinary metro station…
…and the guy by the wall

Back in 2007 I told a tearful story of how I was trying to take a picture of Myron’s Discobolus at the British Museum in London. To refresh or to find out, read The Story of Discobolus. 

But no, they didn’t move. They were totally oblivious to the fact that the British Museum is one of London’s principal attractions and is visited by thousands of people each day who may fancy taking a picture of Discobolus. I put it down to the special feelings they shared. Me, I was alone, and my despair was beyond imagination.

Now wait! The citizens of Yekaterinburg don’t even have to go to the British Museum to see (and photograph) the famous guy. They simply have to go to Dynamo metro station. How cool is that?

There stands the famous Discobolus, on a high pedestal, available to snap from any imaginable angle. As there were no vases or staircases around (unlike the British Museum), I opted for a photosession presenting the athlete at his physical best. And I make no apology for actually indulging in the process.

I believe this was my revanche for the 2007 fiasco.

 

Citius, Altius, Fortius! (Faster, Higher, Stronger!)

Anne Geddes Work: Twins and Triplets

At home in Moscow we have a huge collection of Anne Geddes images. They were sold as postcards in Moscow, and my mother and I bought them, thus creating a lovely selection on Anne’s work. Renowned for her skillful and tender photographs of children, Geddes imaginatively commemorates the beautiful moments of childhood, when we are at our most sincere, open, and uninhibited. I have previously shown a few of her images on the blog, and now I follow it up with images of twins and triplets in animal outfits.

And here is the video of Anne introducing her new photographs, for which she’s teamed up with Woolmark Group. The great news is that Anne also has a blog, so make sure you check it for updates.

Love Locks – A Recent Russian Wedding Tradition

Love locks tree, Moscow
Wedding rings, Moscow

When I returned to Moscow nearly a year ago, I was surprised to eventually discover that one of the bridges that is very popular with newlyweds has acquired this lovely sculpture (left). Little did I know that the tree you can see through the ring is made of… locks. This tradition sees couples sign the lock with their names and hand it on a tree, a suitable structure, or a bridge. This September I saw locks adorning the bridge in Yekaterinburg.

Love locks in Moscow

If you are running short of ideas for your wedding, this might be the one to use.

Love locks in Yekaterinburg

Verkhnyaya Sinyachikha and the End of the Romanovs in 1918

Grand Duke and Duchess

Some 15 years ago a teacher of Literature at my school lent me a book to read. In the wake of budding interest in the tragic history of the end of the Romanovs dynasty in Russia, the book was among the best ones, not least because it stayed away from presenting its main subject in the strictly political light.

Martha and Mary Convent, Moscow

It was a biography of the Holy New Martyr Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna, a sister-in-law to Nicholas II of Russia. She married the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and eventually converted to Orthodox religion. Her husband was killed in a blast in 1905. Following this, the Grand Duchess became a nun and founded a well-known Martha and Mary Convent in Moscow that has survived to this day. However, in 1918 she and several Grand Dukes were taken to Alapaevsk, near Yekaterinburg, from where they were transported to Verkhnyaya Sinyachikha, pushed into a mineshaft, into which hand grenades were hurled.

A memorial cross at the mineshaft
The mineshaft

Hardly a Monarchist, I nevertheless wanted to see places associated with the demise of the Romanovs dynasty. So, when I found out that we’d be passing Alapaevsk and the unfortunate mineshaft on our way to and from the open-air museum of wooden architecture in Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha, I begged to make a stop at the place where the Grand Duchess had her life ended. The mine is now on the territory of a monastery, where there grow amazingly sweet apples, runs a clean spring, and stands a church to St. Elizabeth.

The icon of the Holy New Martyr
The chancel of St. Elizabeth
The monastery entrance
A service at the monastery
The monastery interior

Stephen Fry: It Takes Subtlety to See the Similarity Between Latin and Slavic Languages

Earlier this week I had to recall how, during a trip to Carmarthen in 2007, I walked into a Waterstone’s shop and took a textbook on the English language off the shelf. It was a manual for school pupils, and, to my utter surprise, there was no section on grammar that explained things like “noun”, “verb”, and “adjective”. I realised why a few years before I had had a great trouble trying to teach Russian to an English person who had no idea which words were “nouns”, and how they were different from “verbs”.

Stephen Fry argues in his new programme about world’s languages, that it takes subtlety to see the similarity between Latin and Slavic languages. Knowing a few languages myself, including Latin, Russian, and English, I can say that it does take subtlety – ONLY IF we approach the subject from a common point of view that sees Slavic (Russian, in particular) as some kind of a totally different language system. On the other hand, IF we know that Russian underwent a reform that used the German language for a model, we may guess that, in fact, there is more similarity between Russian and Latin than one would otherwise think – simply because German had been influenced by Latin, too. The same would go for other Slavic languages, especially in the countries in the Latin sphere of influence, like Poland or Czech Republic.

True, it is harder to identify such tenses, as Praesens Historicum or Plusquamperfectum in the Russian language. The same is actually true of the English language: English uses “narrative present” or “dramatic present”, but, unless you are a linguist, you are blissfully unaware of such thing. As with Praesens Historicum, e.g., this is the case of a Present tense being used in the context of describing the past. For those interested and able to read in German, here is a paper by Baldur Panzer, Die Funktion des Verbalaspekts im Praesens historicum des Russischen. At the same time, other tenses can be identified by the use of adverbs, as is the case with the Latin Imperfectum, or the English Present Perfect. And one should not forget that French language, for instance, uses the tenses that did not exist in Latin language, like Passé Immédiat.

Every language requires subtlety to comprehend the rich mozaic of meaning, images, and historic traces. I do believe that everybody is capable of learning, understanding, and using languages. The only problem is that we normally approach the process rationally, whereas the language is a system of symbols, with every word, and every sentence, painting a new picture. We need a fair amount of imagination to understand the differences between various present, past, and future tenses, just as we need even more imagination to figure out why there are so many verbs to describe the act of using the eyesight: “see”, “observe”, “look”, “watch”, “view”, “stare”, “gaze”, to name but a few. A scene from “Sophie’s choice” comes to mind, when Meryl Streep’s character says (Praesens Historicum!) that “quick”, “rapid”, “swift” and a handful of other words all meant the same thing in Polish.

And again I will argue that, until we apply imagination to understand the “iconography” of our native language, we will be failing at foreign languages.

Stand by Me – John Lennon, Johnny Hallyday, and Adriano Celentano

I love discovering versions of well-known songs in different languages. Here are three absolutely different versions, not only in that one is in English, another is in French, and the third is in Italian. The tonality varies from gentle and romantic (Celentano), through humourous and rock’n’roll (Lennon), to passionate and riveting (Hallyday). To top it all, there is an Italian cover by Sylvie Vartan. Under the cut are French and Italian versions: the French is closest to the original. The Italian song is a prayer that someone would find God.

Italian version: 

Pregherò per te
Che hai la notte nel cuor,
E se tu lo vorrai, crederai.
io lo so perché
Tu la fede non hai,
Ma se tu lo vorrai, crederai.

Non devi odiare il sole
Perché tu non puoi vederlo, ma c’è.
Ora splende su di noi, su di noi.
Dal castello del silenzio
Egli vede anche te,
E già sento che anche tu lo vedrai.

Egli sa che lo vedrai
Solo con gli occhi miei,
Ed il mondo, la sua luce riavrà.

Io t’amo, t’amo, t’amo, o-o-oh!
Questo è il primo segno che da
La tua fede nel Signor,
Nel Signor, nel Signor.

Io t’amo, t’amo, t’amo, o-o-oh!
Questo è il primo segno che da
La tua fede nel Signor, nel Signor.
La fede è il più bel dono
Che il Signore ci da
Per vedere lui e allòr
Tu vedrai, tu vedrai, tu vedrai

French version: 

Quand la nuit revient
Comme un voile sombre et tendre
Quand ton corps vient s’étendre
Je suis bien

Je ne crains plus rien
J’ai mon cœur sur tes mains
Je te crie ouais dans la nuit
Reste ici

{Refrain}
Je t’en prie, je t’en supplie
Reste ici
Oh ! Reste avec moi
Ne pars pas reste là
Reste avec moi

Quand le monde se plaint
Quand les hommes se déchirent
Rien qu’un mot, un sourire
Et je suis bien

Je pourrais pleurer
Comme un gosse à Noël
Sur le ciel, sur ma vie
Reste ici

Starballs: UEFA Champions League in Logo Copyright Dispute

The Russian Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Patents and Trademarks (Rospatent) has upheld a complaint from the UEFA in the plagiarism dispute concerning the famous symbol of the Champions League – a soccer ball composed of stars.

The current logo has been in use since 1992. Recently Rospatent has received a request for trademark registration of a Russian logo that was expected to appear on goods, like hair lotions, cosmetic products, perfume, toothcare, and various products used for cleansing, polishing, and degreasing.

The well-known UEFA logo is a rotating starball consisting of stars connected by their pinnacles. A disputed trademark of a Russian brand also represented a starball consisting of stars of a bigger size, also connected by pinnacles. The logo used navy blue, sky blue, azure, and white colours. Although the brand name UEFA did not feature in the Russian logo, the inscription below the starball reads Champion Cup.

The UEFA filed a copyright protection suit on the grounds of plagiarism and brand misuse, claiming that the goods labeled with Champion Cup logo would lead to customers assuming that they were buying goods produced or otherwise licensed by the UEFA Champions League. The UEFA also underlined the breach of intellectual property rights that belong to the designer team behind the UEFA starball.

The suit was decided in favour of the UEFA. Any further protection of the Russian copycat logo has been withdrawn.

 

Ten Years Ago on September 11, 2001…

… I was in a terrible worry: Daniel (my late ex-husband) was coming to Russia on September 13. One, I wasn’t sure if he’d be allowed to fly, and we both missed each other badly. Two – should he be flying, I’d be at the end of my wits until he’d land safely in Sheremetyevo. He did fly, and he was safe, but never since have I been able to stay unsympathetic for people who worry about their dear ones. Needless to say, I have always sympathised immensely with all those people who perished and those who’d lost their parents, spouses, children, and friends…

… I also realised that what my lecturer in Contemporary History said in February had bizarrely come true. And he said, literally, that in about half a year from February 2011 there would be a military action on the part of the United States Armed Forces in Afganistan. And sure it was…

… a few months before that, when I went to St Petersburg in November 2010, I wrote a play for a New Year party at my department. The play was anything but nice: it dealt with the aftermath of the Apocalypse. In January 2011 I began to turn it into a story, and a short prologue was a retelling of a global catastrophe caused by a barely known technician’s pressing a forbidden nuclear button. Around March I got stuck, and the events on September 11 looked like something I had foreseen, in one way or another. And it was scary…

… I have just come back after a week in Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Urals Region, known for having stationed the Russian Royal Family shortly before they were all killed. A book had just come out, stating that the murder of Emperor Nicholas II was practically commissioned by the powers that be, located in the West, that didn’t want Russia to grow in power. For decades, starting with Nicholas II’s reign, people had been fed one story: that Nicholas wasn’t an able governor, and that his murder was forced by the Bolshevist ‘raison d’état‘. Suddenly now the story may turn out to be different.

You surely know about publications that claimed that the tragedy on September 11, 2001 was commissioned by the mysterious World Government that orders the world how to live, and in this case had assisted the U.S. at creating the opportunity to enter the Middle East. It’s very similar to the story of the Russian Emperor, who needed his decline and death, and why. Whether or not this is true, whatever World Governments there are, the outcome is the same: thousands of victims, thousands of losses, yet another Remembrance Day, and a faint hope that ‘nothing like this happens again’.

The problem is, it is the victims families who remember their loved ones. The rest of the world, sadly, remembers the act of terrorism. Consider for a second that we get more of what we focus on. Remembering a deceased person will only save them in time, help us learn and follow their example in being good, professional, human. Constantly remembering about terrorism and someone’s plans to trip you over can only do one thing: to actually trip you over and to have terrorists descend in heaps on your home town.

What is it that we want to remember?

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