Ukrainian American

Sunday, August 25, 2013

05:18        

By Michael

            Yesterday was Ukrainian independence day. I wish I could report that Yulia and I did something special, but, in truth, we did not. We did work though. I continued on what may very well be western Ukraine’s heaviest door (more on that in a later post) while Yulia worked on a path she is making out of bricks. She lays down two bricks at a time, making a sort of stepping stone. Eventually we plan to have a lot of our property made up of garden paths. We want the garden to not only be a place of work, but to serve as a living space as well, outfitted with outdoor rooms and corridors. Yulia’s stepping stones are the beginning of what will be an outdoor corridor. We plan to use plants—like flowers and herbs—to help define those corridors. Here is an example of what we would like one of our paths to look like:

A lavender path

We have a few outdoor rooms already. The well under the arbor is one. The patio under grapevines is another. And we already have a sleeping area—the hammock under the linden trees.

            But I think I should use the 22^nd anniversary of Ukrainian independence to talk a little about us and our blog being Ukrainian (and, conversely, being American). Namely, I want to discuss the language of our blog and our hope for both a Ukrainian and American audience (among other countries, of course).

It’s about time I say something about the language of our blog. We are obviously writing in English right now. That’s for a couple of reasons. Our computer, for one, is only outfitted with keys using letters from the English alphabet. We could, if we wanted to I guess, write our blog in Ukrainian using Latin letters. There is an established system for translating letters. Ale ya ne dumayu shcho to by lekhko bulo chytaty (But I don’t think that that would be easy to read). Google Translate does have an option that would phonetically translate Latin letters to Cyrillic ones. I guess if we really wanted to we could try translating blog entries like that. It’s an idea we’ll keep open for the future. It would take us much longer to do. Writing in Ukrainian using Latin letters is awkward, though I’m sure with time we would become more proficient. If we were to get access to a Ukrainian keyboard, both Yulia and I would have to learn where every letter on it is. Watching either one of us type in Ukrainian is painful. We are agonizingly slow at it. Again, maybe with time that will become a possibility.

I am also much more comfortable writing in English. I am used to expressing complicated ideas using the English language (over, say, painting or interpretive dance). I have taught college composition and have had to write many essays in the English language (I was an English major, after all). Over the years I think I’ve become OK at writing. Yulia is also really good at writing in English. She writes on the same level as me, with the same (if not greater) speed.

That being said, we plan to get something up on our blog in the Ukrainian language very soon. We are still not sure what form it will take. We could translate each entry, but because of the aforementioned problems due to typing, we’d need some time to teach ourselves the Ukrainian keyboard. I realize we could just plug our blog entries into Google Translate, but we have found that the translation of whole sentences using a machine is not very accurate. Translation involves interpretation and that requires the human touch. We could also split the blog into two sections—Ukrainian and English. The Ukrainian section would be much smaller because of the difficulty we have typing in Ukrainian, but at least it would be there.

We want a Ukrainian section (even if it’s short) because we want a Ukrainian audience. Even if they cannot read every blog entry of ours, our Ukrainian readers could at least find out something about us. We understand that our future neighbors will probably be Ukrainians, and we want to get the word out to them that we are here and searching for neighbors now that we are done with the search for our house. The short Ukrainian section could be for these potential neighbors. It would introduce me and Yulia, explain what we are doing here, and give our email contact.

Simultaneously, we want an English section because we want to share our joy in living at our new home with friends and family, and most of them happen to speak English. Like many other travelling bloggers, we want to share our thoughts and show where we are and what we are doing. Instead of sending out dozens of mass emails, the blog form allows us to do so in a convenient way. Ukraine is very different from America (and the other countries where our readers may be from), and we want to tell people what it is like and how it is different. Reading our blog could take on the form of armchair travelling, something me and Yulia like to do at times. I’ve always loved looking at maps and wondering about all the different places there are to see in the world. One of my favorite writers is Robert Kaplan, a journalist who has traveled the world writing about different cultures. He evokes a vivid image about the “edge of Europe” at the beginning of his newest book, The Revenge of Geography. In it his considers the Caspian Sea as the cultural border between Europe and Asia. On the western bank of the Caspian, he states, one sees the last remnants of Roman inspired architecture end. After crossing the sea and arriving in Turkmenistan, one is abruptly in cultural Asia. This description about the end of a continent is so much better than simply saying that Europe ends at the Ural Mountains, an almost arbitrary boundary. We want to evoke equally vivid images about Ukraine and get past the tired news media focus on business and politics. Ukraine is more than its politicians and the occasional athletes that attract media attention. Let us show you.

Bees and Anxiety

Friday, August 23, 2013

02:26

By Michael

            Yulia and I finally did some beekeeping work in our apiary on Wednesday. We fed our bees and took a frame full of honey for ourselves. We fed the bees with a sugar syrup in special “top loading” feeders. Here is a picture. It should explain it better:

All one has to do is open up the top of the beehive, take off the glass lid to the feeder box and pour in the syrup. There is a little raft in there so the bees can drink the syrup without drowning. There is a slit in the plastic cover that allows the bees entry into the feeder. This is what it looks like without the glass cover:

            The feeding went smoothly. We fed all eight beehives. Taking the frame of honey was also OK. I got stung on my fingers once or twice, but no big deal. I told Yulia that I thought I could take care of the last couple hives myself, and I ran into trouble with the very last one. After feeding them, I decided to take a peek in that hive to see if there were any frames full of honey. We weren’t in any terrible need for honey, since we got 3 liters of it from one of the other hives. But I found a few new frames that fit the last hive. I figured I could take a frame full of honey and give them a new one so that they could continue to store honey somewhere. I guess I’ve just been feeling self conscious that I have been neglecting the bees. I really haven’t done anything with the hives for about a month now. I didn’t want the little guys to run out of room on account of laziness on my part.

Anyway, I pulled out a frame on the end. They were a little pissed, but no stinging. I then went for another frame and pulled it out to examine it. At that point I forget how it happened. Maybe a bee stung me or maybe the frame just slipped, but I dropped it onto the ground. It was covered with bees, and they were not happy that I just dropped a part of their hive. They exploded in anger and bit up my ankles, my fingers, and my wrists. I was just wearing long pants and a jacket so my ankles and wrists are pretty vulnerable. I don’t have good gloves either. They’re basically just gardening gloves, and they are short, so they leave my wrists exposed. They can sting right through the material too, though the stingers don’t seem to get as deep because of them. I’m lucky to have a proper beekeeping face mask though. No stings there. I had to make a quick escape, but I could not hide for long. I had to go back to put the frames back into the hive and close it up. I felt so bad for the little ladies. I had messed up their beautiful home! I felt like such a fool. I went back and braved the angry cloud of bees that formed as the entire colony was now on alert. Literally apologizing as I went about my business, I put the new frame into the hive along with the one I dropped. I think I got stung a few more times doing so, but I figured, I created this mess, I should clean it up and deal with the consequences (a whole bunch of stings).

I took the frame with honey in it and put it aside. I did that with the first frame of honey we removed earlier that morning, and the remaining bees on the frame eventually dispersed making it possible for us to take the honey inside. In this instance, the bees never dispersed. Actually, more flew over and they eventually made a cloud around the purloined frame of honey. Whatever, I figured. I’ll just get it when it gets dark out and they all go home for the night. But when I checked back on the frame a couple of hours later, I found that they had removed all the honey from the frame! Like I said, we weren’t really harvesting the honey because we were in need of it. Rather, I had convinced myself that I was doing it for their benefit. In the end, it seems that they got their honey back and got a free meal of sugar syrup. Good for them. I just hope no other colonies took part in stealing that honey away from them. Bees are impressive little creatures. I didn’t think they would even be able to take all that honey and transport it—bee by bee—back to the hive. One can only respect such hard work and efficiency.

However, my sense of wonder didn’t last for long. Though the stings didn’t bother me right away, some of them really swelled up today. The stings on my wrists and fingers are the worst. They’re all puffed up. It makes it hard to lift anything heavy, which stinks because I’m working on making and installing a door for our kitchen right now. I’m counting my blessings that I’m not really allergic though. I’m hoping that with time and a few more stings, I’ll slowly become immune to the bee venom. Last year I met an 86 year old beekeeper who would only wear a mask in his apiary. He handled the frames with his bare hands. He claimed that the stings didn’t affect him (He wore the mask to protect his eyes.). Maybe I’ll get to that point someday.

            I don’t know if it’s from the beestings or what, but I’m having a hard time sleeping tonight. If you’ve noticed, I’m writing this post in the wee hours of the morning. And this isn’t the first time I’m writing a blog entry very early in the morning. Over the past few weeks I’ve been waking up very early—like 3 in the morning—and can’t fall back asleep. A lot of times it is accompanied by bad dreams. Not really regular narrative dreams, but more images. One night I was fixated on a couple of windows in our house that have old, rotten frames in them. I guess they bother me more than I think. We are planning on replacing all our windows, but we need the internet to order them. We don’t have a car right now, so there’s no point in buying them at the store. We need them to be delivered. Whenever we go to the city to take care of business, we have so much to do that we haven’t been able to get to the ordering of windows in the few days that we spend there. It’s summer right now anyway, so windows aren’t a burning priority amidst all the other work we have to do. Right now there is no floor in the veranda, just a bunch of boards loosely laid down. One of the door frames is completely missing, also. There is not even a threshold there, just a piece of plywood spanning the gap. In what will be the bedroom, there is space in the corner without proper floorboards where we need to put a pichka. I think these gaping holes in the floor are bothering me the most. Many nights I think about all the dust being kicked up from the subfloor. It disgusts me. They’re also a perfect entrance for mice and bugs, but luckily we have cats who patrol our house and property very thoroughly. So far we have not seen any mice in our house (save for the ones our cats drag in).

            OK. Enough of that negativity. We will take care of these renovations soon enough. Yulia and I work our butts off every single day, so we know that we are doing everything we can to fix this place up as soon as we can. If anything, we are working too hard. I need to teach this anxiety of mine who’s boss.

On an unrelated note, I was thinking about my previous post about what we want our village to be. What I described us as doing follows the first couple of steps of gentrification. We found inexpensive real estate, and we plan to beautify this space with all sorts of art and get like minded people to join us. I wonder what would happen if our village became gentrified like a trendy neighborhood in the city. In an urban area, these steps are usually followed by coffee shops, feminist bookstores, and art galleries. Then come the yuppies and new apartment buildings accompanied by skyrocketing real estate values. Could that happen here? Well, there is an old school. That could be artists’ studios and an art gallery. There’s an abandoned store too. That could be the coffee shop—organic, fair trade coffee, of course. Unfortunately, there is no room for a feminist bookstore just yet. …Unless we convert an old house into the bookstore. The bedroom would be for manifestos. The root cellar would host a record collection and small café (a trendy neighborhood can never have enough fair trade coffee). The kitchen would be the zine and graphic novel section. This could be the store’s motto: Liberate women from the kitchen, and liberate the kitchen from being a kitchen! OK. Now I’m just being silly! We don’t really want to gentrify this village. I just wonder what it would be like if that inevitably happened…I think I’ve been watching too much Portlandia.

On beards

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

05:57

By Michael

            I was fetching water at our local spring yesterday when a man lying on the grass startled me. If I see people there they are usually either filling up water or swimming (and that only happens on the hottest of days). It was a minor holiday (spas—when apples get blessed, I think; we never celebrated it at our Ukrainian churches in America), so I guess that made it a fine day to lounge around by the spring. Ukrainians take religious holidays and Sundays very seriously. They will never work on those days. Anyway, this man struck up a conversation with me. He was pretty friendly and obviously wanted to chat a bit more than I did. His name is also Mykhaylo (I go by Mykhaylo to Ukrainians, Michael to English speakers), and he told me that his mom built that spring. I’m guessing that means she either helped finance it or helped in building it. Laying down all that concrete and installing sidewalks, railing, and the chapel is more than a one person job I think. He told me that he lives by the pond on the edge of town and said it belongs to him.

The pond on the edge of town (the sign says, “Fishing prohibited”)

He has a nice little place in terms of location. His house is disconnected from our village by a few hundred meters or so. It’s private enough without being too remote. He also told me how a group of people downstream from the spring wanted to hook up their houses with plumbing. They would have had running spring water in their houses—and the pressure is high enough that one would not require the use of a pump. They even laid down piping starting at the spring until a man put a stop to the project.

The white pipe exiting the spring towards people’s houses

He would not let them lay down pipe through his property. Pan Oleh would have been one of the users of the spring water. He even began to dig out a small pond on his property. He planned on filling it with water from the spring. Oh well. People keep telling Yulia and I to have hope because that man might have a change of heart.

The pond by our house

            Mykhaylo eventually asked what many Ukrainians who have just met me ask—“Are you a priest?” From experience I knew that he was referring to my beard and told him, “No, I’m not a priest. I just like beards.” Beards are not as popular in Ukraine as they are in, say, the US right now. I guess the few men that do have beards are priests to most Ukrainians. Then he asked the second most frequently asked question about my beard—does my wife like it? I assured him that, yes, she likes it.

As a fan of facial hair, it’s sad to me that Ukrainians have lost their tradition of long whiskers. The stereotypical Cossack sported a very long mustache. Our national bard, Taras Shevchenko, also had a bushy mustache, probably in deference the Cossacks he romanticized in his poetry. Why did Ukrainians lose this tradition?

Beards really aren’t as uncomfortable as people may think they would be. True, for the first week or two after shaving facial hair seems especially sharp and coarse. The neck itching that many men experience during this period is especially annoying. But after that the itching stops and the whiskers become softer and pliable. And after that brief period of discomfort, doesn’t the beard look better than no beard? I think so. So does Yulia.

            I first grew out my facial hair about a year and a half ago. Yulia and I had been in Ukraine for about half a year already. During that time I noticed that there was something different about Ukrainian men. They seemed more sullen, cranky, and disrespectful than what I was used to. I began to despise their attitudes. They expect women to cook and clean, but never lift a finger to help with children or housework. I noticed these differences in attitude were accompanied by physical features as well—swollen bellies and grey skin from drinking too much and a body odor from not washing and smoking cigarettes. And there was something else. …Then it hit me. These nasty men—none of them had beards. All the bus drivers who smoked their cigarettes and talked on their cell phones while yelling at innocent passengers asking for directions. All the gold toothed construction workers on perpetual smoke breaks. The drunken jerk who ripped down a sign that a couple of teenagers had just put up advertising trash pick up day at the park. None of them had beards. I began to associate shaved faces with losers.

            To be fair, I had been curious to grow a beard since before Yulia and I left for Ukraine. But I think the nasty man stereotype pushed me over the threshold.  Since I had met her, Yulia had been encouraging me to grow a beard. She says she thinks all men look better with facial hair. I was skeptical about what I would look like, though I agreed that men look better with beards. I thought my whiskers weren’t dark or dense enough, but I was proved wrong. I liked the look a bit more than being bare faced. It’s also much less maintenance. So I say to all men who are not nasty men—let your whiskers grow! Let beards be the sign of respectable men who are healthy, happy, care for women, and help out with chores around the house. Let the inconsiderate, lazy, drunken smokers look like what they are—spoiled, smelly, overgrown boys.

Before I conclude this post and offend 90 percent of the small audience Yulia and I have, let me say that the above rant is somewhat tongue and cheek. A bearded man does not make a respectable man. And a shaved face does not imply brutishness. Nor are all men from Ukraine pigs. My grandfathers and father-in-law are very respectable and respectful. But the association I made between bare faces and brutes is real, despite it being inaccurate. It should serve as a lesson for all grown men. Together, we all need to ask: What kinds of signals are we sending others about ourselves and what kind of role models are we being for boys and adolescents? Like it or not, we create the male archetype for the upcoming generations. Let’s make it a good one.

Yulia and me at the park in L’viv. Me with a full beard. (I’m still working on being a better man though.)

Making due without internet at our new home

Monday, August 19, 2013

09:02

By Michael

            So Yulia and I don’t have internet at our new house yet. We want it (very badly), but the internet company that installs it is waiting on an order of antennas to arrive. Where we live the only option for quick internet is called “radio internet.” Radio internet works wherever there is a radio signal. An antenna catches the signal and receives and transmits information via that antenna. I may have very well made some factual errors in my explanation, but as far as I understand it, that’s how it works. Yulia’s sister had radio internet installed at their grandparents’ house for a short time, and it works very well—much quicker than our 3G modem that we use in the city (there’s no 3G coverage here). Anyway, we’ve been calling about internet since we arrived here, and they have not had antennas this whole time. Supposedly a shipment arrived at the end of last week. Who knows? Maybe we’ll actually have internet in the near future.

            Until we do have internet at our house, we will be relying on our 3G modem. We go to Yulia’s parents’ house in the city (L’viv) and use it whenever we are there. We were in L’viv over the weekend, in fact, and published our blog while we were there. So now whenever we go to the city we’ll be updating our blog. We will continue to write it while at our house and will record when we write each entry so that it takes the form of live journal, more or less.

            We also download movies, music, and reading material and bring it back with us to our house. We’ve watched some videos of Reggie Watts performing his music and downloaded the movie Before Sunrise. Yulia has introduced me to some great music by Regina Spektor. We also read the magazine The Ukrainian Week and copy and paste articles from the newspaper the Kyiv Post. Both have lots of great content written by excellent journalists. I consider them to be truly independent media that fairly cover the news. Along with Eкспрес, I think they are the best sources of news in Ukraine. It also helps that The Ukrainian Week and Kyiv Post are written in English. The Ukrainian Week is translated into English and the Kyiv Post is originally written in English.

This weekend Yulia and I also discovered several blogs by Peace Corps volunteers who work in Ukraine. We saved some of their blogs to our computer and have been reading them since coming back home. They are interesting to us because they are written by Americans, so their blogs are trans Atlantic by nature.  To a certain extent we share their perspective. Many things we have seen in Ukraine were a shock to Yulia and me—and it is comforting knowing they were a shock to others. We have read how Ukrainian birthday parties, with their emphasis on shots of vodka and heavy foods, are a harrowing experience for an outsider. Many bloggers will post survival tips (like riding on the train, for example) that are most helpful. Yulia and I have developed our own strategies, and it turns out that they correspond exactly with other people’s lessons. It’s nice knowing that there are kindred spirits out there.