20 Sep

Pumpkin Day in Perm

TikvaDayAre you familiar with Perm? No? I’m not surprised. I’ve only heard of it because I’ve read Tom Holt’s comic fantasy novel Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?, in which one of the characters gets a lot of ribbing for having gone to Perm. It’s on the western side of Urals, near Ekaterinburg. Maybe not exactly Siberia in my American mind, but pretty darn close. A place I don’t spend much time thinking about, and a place I didn’t expect to have a pumpkin festival.

But they do!

ТыкваDay [Tykva = pumpkin] 2013 was September 12-15, in Gorky Park. (Not the Gorky Park in Moscow, the Gorky Park in Perm.) Read More

06 Aug

На Командорах / On the Commander Islands – Sea Birds

kairiQuick and dirty translation, part 2. See also, part 1, Fur Seals.

На Командорах [Na Komandorakh] On the Commander Islands. Author: Gennady Snegirev. Artist: M. Miturich. Izdatel’stvo “Malish”. Publisher “Little One”. For older preschoolers. A print run of 350,000 in 1975. Cost, 16 kopecks.

Full Russian book scanned here.

In spring endless caravans of murres [кайра] fly to the hanging cliffs.

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31 Jul

На Командорах / On the Commander Islands – Fur Seals

20130731_112735[1]This is really quick and really dirty translation from the Russian. I have left out a few words here and there that I didn’t bother to look up. I haven’t massaged it for English grammar and style — there are Dostoevskian run-on sentences.

На Командорах [Na Komandorakh] On the Commander Islands. Author: Gennady Snegirev. Artist: M. Miturich. Izdatel’stvo “Malish”. Publisher “Little One”. For older preschoolers. A print run of 350,000 in 1975. Cost, 16 kopecks.

Full Russian book scanned here.

The Commander Islands were discovered in the first half of the 18th century by Commander Bering, an officer in the Russian fleet, at the time of his expedition along the coast of North America and therefore received their name. They are located in a sea which also was named in honor of the famous seafarer – the Bering Sea.

20130731_112800[1]

Vitus Bering

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16 Jul

New acquisitions: Children’s books about the Russian Far East

A pile of RFE children's books

A pile of RFE children’s books

Alaska has a different relationship with Russia than any other American state. It’s a geographic, historical, and even emotional connection. After all, as Sara Palin put it, we can see Russia from our backyards. As you might imagine, the political border between northwestern Alaska and northeastern Russia, is one that was largely disregarded by the indigenous peoples on both sides of the Bering Strait until the Cold War got far enough along to enforce the border and separate families. The Iron Curtain was something that dropped down in Eastern Europe. Alaska and the Russian Far East were divided by the Ice Curtain, and when it began to melt sister-city ties were established that were truer siblings than many such international relationships. Exchanges happened as well, including with my hometown.

The exchange visits were more than a swap of people: they were exchanges of material goods, mostly in the form of gifts. I remember collecting bubble gum for some sort of international care package when I was in second grade, because we understood that Soviet children were deprived of this ubiquitous American luxury. In high school, when I took my first international trip to Magadan, each American student carried one piece of luggage, and one box of printer paper for the school we would visit. I returned with VHS tapes that would not play, but visitors who stayed with us brought jewelry (lots of mineral wealth in the RFE), brightly colored scarves, watches, and children’s books if they knew their hosts had children. Read More

12 Jun

Trans Siberian Stories

Jesup North Pacific Expedition: Vladimir Jochelson, Norman G. Buxton, and Vladimir Bogoras

Jesup North Pacific Expedition: Vladimir Jochelson, Norman G. Buxton, and Vladimir Bogoras

Part of my research texts for my Isobel the Bear-Eater Project have been the writings of Waldemar Bogoras, who spent some time hanging out with the Chukchi in the Russian Far East. His work was part of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, and was published through the the American Museum of Natural History. Other authors in the same twelve volume series included Franz Boas and John Swanton. Bogoras recorded folk stories and daily practices, trying to get the whole culture down on paper. An impossible task, if you ask me, but I appreciate what he recorded.

Two of the stories Bogoras included particularly interested me. Both are listed as “Told by Qo’tirgin, a Maritime Chukchee man, in the village of Mi’sqAn, November, 1900.”* Read More

13 May

Etymological geekout: БОГАТЫРЬ [bogatyr’]

Bogatyrs (1898) by Viktor Vasnetsov

Bogatyrs (1898) by Viktor Vasnetsov

If you’ve spent any time on Russian history, you’ve probably seen this painting before. It shows a classic view of the epic heroes Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets, and Alyosha Popovich. If you’ve got the language skills, the Три богатыря [tri bogatyria] or Three Heros have recently been reincarnated as animated children’s films, available on the youtubes. Even if not, humor me and watch this brief trailer for the latest: “Три богатыря на дальних берегах” after the jump. Read More