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<title><![CDATA[FOTO DYKUN - Photos from and of Ukraine - Fotopages.com]]></title>
<link>http://dykun1234.fotopages.com/</link>
<description><![CDATA[Check out my blog at www.dykun.blogspot.com to learn more about me.  ]]></description>
<pubDate>Sat, 19 May 2012 13:02:17 GMT</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Babyn Yar]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[the left-hand shift-key was recently ripped from my laptop by one curious little girl and i haven't yet fixed it; it is not my regular style to write without capitalization. . .

at the end of september, 1941 began the massacre at babyn yar, which continued throughout the nazi occupation of kyiv--you can read more about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar at wikipedia, just to scratch the surface. i finally made it to the site of this massacre last month. as usual, when it comes to seeing how tragic and traumatic events of the past are handled/commemorated/memorialized-in-monuments in ukraine, i was quite disappointed. what does it say about a nation's relationship to its past when people are allowed to make campfires, hang-out, party, etc., on the very grounds of a mass murder? there was no solemn feeling to the site--for example, there was nothing like the heaviness and spirituality of visiting a former concentration camp site. whatever of that feeling was there i brought with me, and thus it was present at the site mostly just from within. externally. . .well, there were the monuments, but when i approached the monument specifically to commemorate kyiv's jews that died there (a large menorah), i saw a bunch of young, kyivan punk rockers hanging out on a bench, drinking and laughing within a few meters of the monument. right behind the jewish monument was a christian one (a large cross) to which the kids having a nice afternoon were in equal range. i then walked down the ravine along a path that i think was the one told to me by a local friend--a history buff--who had said that if i went that way, i would walk right on top of the very earth where the massacre occured. there, on what should be regarded as hallowed ground, i discovered a campfire and shashlyk being cooked by other locals. it was a saturday, indeed, a day to relax with friends. such campsites were scattered all over the ravine. as i stood there thinking or just feeling about the massacre, a jogger ran by. because of all this, all the memorials/monuments felt to me superficial at best.

of course, there are lots of reasons for all of this. the soviet government downplayed the significance of the massacre and of the site, and people got used to it just being there without much or any specific relevance. without government support in maintaining the site as a hallowed place, and in the context of poverty/shortages and authoritarianism that breeds indifference/apathy, it is very easy to understand how such a site--truly a beautiful area perfect for how locals do indeed make use of it today--would come to be used as it is today.

but i would favor a change of orienatition/attitude toward the site.

see similar thoughts as per the holodomyr herehttp://dykun.blogspot.com/2005/11/in-remembrance-of-1933.html]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://dykun1234.fotopages.com/?entry=940229</guid>
<pubDate>Fri, 29 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Opening of Memorial to Vyacheslav Chornovil, Kyiv, Aug. 23, 2006]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Go to http://dykun.blogspot.com/2006/08/new-monument-in-kyiv-for-vyacheslav.html to read my comments about the opening ceremony.

]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://dykun1234.fotopages.com/?entry=911727</guid>
<pubDate>Sun, 03 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Julija Foto Backlog]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Notes to some of the titles of these fotos of my daughter from various points of her first year:  

Jani is a Latvian term for Summer Solstice. . .

Skandinieki is a Latvian folk choir in Latvia. . .

Julija used to sleep with her fist in the position pictured below, which is a symbolic way of telling someone off in most Eastern European cultures, but which is not quite as strong as the American middle finger. . .

"Vow-vow," though being the sound Latvian dogs make, is Julija's current word for all animals.  She currently lives in a 4th floor apartment in Riga, across the courtyard from which lives the vow-vow (in this case, a cat) pictured in the photo below.  Julija is constantly talking to and screeching in joy about this vow-vow.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://dykun1234.fotopages.com/?entry=841702</guid>
<pubDate>Sun, 25 Jun 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Immigration Rights Rally, Sun., April 9, 2006, in St. Paul, MN]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Reports say there were 40-50,000 at this rally in St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota which is the Twin City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis and St Paul are like Dallas/Ft. Worth).  

Immigrants are revitalizing America.

Samuel Huntington et al are simply wrong.  

Immigrants (legal or illegal) have revitalized many an inner city neighborhood in Minneapolis and St. Paul.  Hmong, Somalian, and Latino efforts have, so far, spared some of these areas from the yuppie-gentrification version of urban renewal.  

Immigrants, especially from Latin America, have brought with them not only traditions of community but also of community organizing.  This rally was a sign of their strength, integrity, and organizing prowess.  In St. Paul, in the neighborhood that has become known as Area del Sol, the main drag has been renamed Cesar Chavez St.  This is the kind of revitalization that folks like the eminent Harvard Prof. Huntington do not like. (I am picking on Huntington because he has written that immigrants these days bring with them the corruption and authoritarianism of their home countries to these shores and thus are ruining the social fabric of the US.)  

This was also Palm Sunday, a day signaling rebirth for many and it was nice to see a lot of people carrying palms with them at the rally.  Awaiting a new Jesus?  

What will Pharisees in Washington do vis-a-vis this growing movement for social justice?  

These are the largest civil rights demonstrations the US has seen since the 1960s.  Very inspiring.  ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://dykun1234.fotopages.com/?entry=766588</guid>
<pubDate>Thu, 13 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Ukrainian Carpathians 3: Sheshory 2005]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[One day last summer while I was visiting with Anna and her family again for a couple of days back in Jabloniv, Anna and I were bored and so decided to go to Sheshory.  There is a very touristy restaurant there called, you guessed it, "Arkan," that she wanted to show me.  The road to Sheshory breaks off the main highway between Kolomyja and Kosiv about halfway, so we hitched a ride to that spot and then walked the few kilometers the rest of the way to Sheshory, passing through some other villages along the way.  This was last September, and you can see how rainy it still was.  It rains and rains all summer in the Carpathians, or at least in this part of them.  The mountains you see here are just the front ranges of the Carpathians, while Sheshory is right at the base of the front range.  

When we got to the restaurant, Anna was a bit dismayed to see that the band playing was that of some colleagues of her father's--I guess she wanted to be anonymous there, mostly because she had been there a month earlier with her boyfriend Petro, and now she was there with me!?  Village life and gossip--it is still very unusual for men and women to be friends, particularly in Ukrainian villages.  Or rather, it is mostly rare for a male and female who are friends to hang out one-on-one rather than in a group of their peers.  Everything we were doing looked like a date to the eyes of an older generation. . .  

I recognized the lead violinist of the band as the best virtuoso player I have yet seen in the region.  He is a quite unusual fellow, hard to follow in conversation.  He recognized Anna.  At the restaurant, the musicians move from table to table, at each of which they will play a few tunes in return for which they, of course, expect money.  At the restaurant, they don't play in the authentic village style, of course, but rather in the "bourgeoified" style of most dance and music troupes that people today confuse for real folk music (they play at the restaurant in what we authenticity-enthusiasts in the Ethnic Dance Theater call the "Sovietski Bullshitski" style).  That is, the music and dance you see and hear most of the time at diaspora concerts and hear on most so-called folk music CDs is "prettified" (by ballet and too much music training) for presentation on the stage or the CD; i.e., it's quite removed from the real thing.  This area is a popular retreat place for urban Ukrainians who themselves also don't know the authentic Hutsul village style.  One of the musicians told us that a Kyiv byznesman once dropped on them a $100 bill!  At any rate, this troupe can play in the authentic style as well, as I heard them do so a year prior, in the summer of 2004, at the Kosiv Ivana Kupala festival.  Again, once I get my videoblog going, I will post both their performance at the festival and here at the restaurant.  

Anyhow, this violinist started doing some antics while playing for us, as he recognized Anna.  I should have photographed him as he sat in a chair close to Anna and placed his violin bow between his legs in an erect, phallic manner while continuing to play the violin and starting to chant, in rhythm to the music, some pretty raunchy stuff.  Anna blushed, we paid them some money, and they moved on to another table.  I finished my 300g flask of horylka (was a bit in a drinkin mood, as I often am while in Ukraine!), she her wine, and we then started to walk up the road to the highway in the dark until we were lucky enough to get picked up by the last run of a local Marshrutka heading toward Kolomyja, and hence in the direction of her village.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://dykun1234.fotopages.com/?entry=729824</guid>
<pubDate>Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Ukrainian Carpathians 2: Trip to Kosmach to Buy a Tsymbaly]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[Here are some pictures again from the summer of 2004.  In the post below, I mentioned my friend Anna, who is originally from the village of Jabloniv not far from the town of Kolomyja in the state of Ivano-Frankivsk.  Part of her family is of Hutsul descent, and her father is a musician.  I wanted to buy a real Hutsul-style tsymbaly, and he had a way to help.  After a day of recovering from the weekend long wedding I mentioned in the last post, we headed on the highway from Jabloniv up into the mountains to the large village or small town of Kosmach.  Vasyl, Anna's father, knew of a master tsymbalyst there who had a tsymbaly for sale.  Jabloniv is right at the base of the mountains, while Kosmach is in a high mountain valley just over the crest of the first of the Carpathian ridges.  It was an incredible ride up the mountain. The highway was nothing more than a tiny, potholed, single lane affair without much of a shoulder, etc.  Vasyl had a local friend that was a Marshrutka driver, and so we agreed to rent the thing for the day (the buddy was not working that day).  Altogether, we were Anna and her boyfriend Petro, Anna's friend Oksana from Kyiv, me, and my second-cousin Oksana, and Vasyl.  Petro, Anna, and I paid for the minibus as we all live in the West and make Western wages or live off of Western study grants (Petro is from Kyiv but is a Canadian citizen, and Anna is a student in Toronto).      

Our first stop up the mountain was at a natural spring that also bubbles up oil.  The Carpathians once had a fair bit of oil, but the Nazis pumped quite a bit of it out they say, and they say that there isn't enough left to bother.  As oil and water seperate, people fill up with water here.  The driver-friend insisted that the water was full of minerals that were good for our health.  Nonetheless, I declined to drink any; in general I prefer to do things as Ukrainians do while in Ukraine, but I will not drink the local water anymore, unless it is boiled in coffee or tea, or in some soup.  Been sick too many times, and I am weary of getting girardia again--I had it once many years ago, long before coming to Ukraine, as result of a backpacking trip.  JFYI, it is imposible to avoid the water 100%, and it is also not necessary; for drinking water you can just go for bottled stuff (both with and without gas are widely available) or you can bring your own filter, iodine, or boil all your own (but these latter three approaches are not very practical. . .). 

We made another stop to quickly look at the view as we approached Kosmach, and when we got to Kosmach, Vasyl dropped us off at the local bar, where he said we would have to wait for him while he went off looking for the tsymbalyst.  That turned into a two or three hour wait.  None of us felt like drinking, as we had had plenty to drink over the prior two days, so instead we drank coffee and tea, slept, and some of us went for a walk around town.  

Finally, Vasyl came back to announce that he had found the tsymbalyst, and as he made his announcement he flicked his throat (which meant that the tsymbalyst was drunk).  Shortly thereafter a car came zooming down the road and pulled in front of the bar.  Out of the car stumbled a guy who introduced himself as someone who had a tsymbaly for sale.  There were a couple of other guys in the car, and they told us we should follow them to the local cultural center (narodnyj dim).  

The other two guys in the car were a town doctor and an accordion player who had keys to the center.  The doctor was carrying a mineral water bottle that was full of samohonka, or moonshine spirits, and they had some buderbrode (open-faced sandwhiches) with them as well.  They lugged the heavy tsymably into a room in the center, and the maestro said something like, "Well, to buy it, you should hear someone play it first."  So he started playing.  Oh, but before that we had had to drink a few shots.  

Vasyl started to cajole Anna and I to dance; that is, I have already enjoyed my fifteen minutes of fame because I was the American with Ukrainian roots who danced an arkan almost flawlessly, in the real way, with real Hutsuls, and who had done lots of other Hutsul-styled couples dancing at the wedding the previous two days.  So Vasyl wanted to show me off to his musician buddies.  So Anna and I danced.  This got the accordion player to join in the playing, and we had our own little Central European tanzhaus going for a while.  

The town doctor--the most sloshed of all present--got so thrilled that he first shuved the slivjanka bottle into my hand, and then draped a Hutsul vest over me, after which the accordionist held up a pair of traditional pants against me.  It was all a surreal and incredible experience.  

After some more eating, drinking, dancing and playing, the maestro (who, btw, had just won some major tsymbaly competition in Kyiv) and I concluded our deal.  He then told me that I could return for two weeks of free lessons.  He also said that he regularly teaches a month long seminar on tsymbaly at the end of every summer.  The doctor told me that he would put me up in a room in the hospital if I were to return.  Unfortunately, I never managed to return, though the desire to do so is still very much present within me.

So we then headed back down the mountain at the end of the day.  It was an incredible afternoon to evening. (And I remember that the nighttime that followed was a downer by comparison; we watched Lost in Translation  which Petro had on his laptop--most of us thought it was stupid, as it took the entire length of the film to finally, actually get started, at which point it ended . . .)

Update: by the way, we loaded my newly-purchased, heavy-ass tsymbaly into our rented Marshrutka and brought it back down to Jabloniv, where I left it with Vasyl with the promise of returning at some point with a car from Pidhajtsi (Oksana and I could not imagine lugging that thing on a packed Marshrutka first to Kolomyja, and then on to Pidhajtsi).  It ended up taking me a few months to return and pick it up, not the least because some revolutionary upheavals in the country distracted me into other adventures.  That tsymbaly is still in Pidhajtsi, where another tsymbalyst, a Lemko master player, has also offered me lessons.  (The county of Pidhajtsi is one of the areas in which Lemkos, deported in the late 1940s from their Carpathian homelands on the Polish side of the border, ended up...)]]></description>
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<pubDate>Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Ukrainian Carpathians 1: Bajkery v Karpatakh]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[I promised one fellow that I would put up some pictures of the biker round-up I went to during my first visit to Ukraine in the Summer of 2004.  These aren't the best or most revealing pictures (I didn't take them; at the time I was roaming Ukraine with just a videocamera in hand), but they are something.  This roundup takes place on an abandoned airfield outside of the town of Kosiv and near the village of Sheshory in the Ivano-Frankivsk oblast every year in July, as I understand it.  The guys zoom their bikes up and down the airstrip, showing off and giving rides to the people who mill about.  There is, of course, shashlyk, horylka, and beer available in a tent.  Things can get a bit hazardous at the event.  I am not kidding nor exaggerating when I say that one guy nearly lost control of his bike as he zoomed back toward the crowd; he hit the breaks a bit too late, and if I had not seen him coming as soon as I did, he would have hit me and my friend Anna.    

Anyhow, the round up coincides with the Ivana Kupala celebrations that take place in both Kosiv and Sheshory that are VERY worth attending.  During the day in Kosiv are performances of Hutsul dance and music troupes, and then for two nights is a concert in a field near Sheshory of post-folk rock groups from all over (but mostly Ukraine, Poland, and Russia) that are influenced by Hutsul music and Carpathian sounds (or at least that was the gig the summer of 2004).  It was like a typical music festival anywhere else, with counterculture and folklore types mingling with average music lovers.  There was a campground full interesting people (I met some Polish hikers who were hiking the entire arc of the Carpathians that summer).  There were fires, and hey--jumping over fires on the very festival day that one is supposed to and in one of the very lands from whence that very tradition hails!  I wish I had pictures and/or videos, but the liter or more of vodka I drank with three other guys before heading to the show encouraged forgetfulness.  Well, it was good that I didn't bring my videocamera and that my friends did not bring their fotocameras: it rained off and on and off and on constantly.  That's typical in July in the Carpathians.  People say that the best time to travel there is in the late summer to early fall.  Anyway, I was there with my second-cousin Ostap and his buddies from Pidhajtsi, and we stayed at the house of a good friend of mine who is from the nearby village of Jabloniv.  Part of her ancestry is Hutsul, and she knew how to dance Hutsul style, so we did a lot of dancing together (I know Hutsul dances well, and I can dance it for real, free-style, and not as a choreography, which is very different).  Her uncle was at the festival and asked who I was, and he invited me to return in a month for his son's wedding.  He said, "Then you can really see how well we have kept our Hutsul traditions."  Someday I will get a videoblog site to post clips of me dancing a real arkan and other scenes from the wedding.     ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://dykun1234.fotopages.com/?entry=728985</guid>
<pubDate>Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Julija Liga Pone Iwaskewycz]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://dykun1234.fotopages.com/?entry=726259</guid>
<pubDate>Sun, 05 Mar 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Vodokhreshchennya v Pidhajtsakh (Epiphany Ceremony in Pidhajtsi)]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[These are photos of the Epiphany ceremony that was held in Pidhajtsi, Ternopil region, Western Ukraine last year, 2005.

This statement about this Christian holiday is from the following website http://www.cresourcei.org/cyepiph.html  

"The term epiphany means 'to show' or 'to make known' or even 'to reveal.' In Western churches, it remembers the coming of the wise men bringing gifts to visit the Christ child, who by so doing 'reveal' Jesus to the world as Lord and King. In some Central and South American countries influenced by Catholic tradition, Three Kings’ Day, or the night before, is the time for opening Christmas presents. In some eastern churches, Epiphany or the Theophany commemorates Jesus’ baptism, with the visit of the Magi linked to Christmas. In some churches the day is celebrated as Christmas, with Epiphany/Theophany occurring on January 19th."  

For Uniate Catholics in Western Ukraine, this day indeed is meant to celebrate the day that Jesus is said to have been baptized in the River Jordan.
  
Western Ukraine is to this day very traditional and religious. There are religious holidays involving a day off (or half day off) and plenty of feasting with family and friends every couple of weeks, especially from the end of the harvest season in October to the beginning of Lent.  This has been to the great chagrin of Western capitalists trying to do business in Ukraine; for example, the Kyiv Post (English-language newspaper in Ukraine which is largely an expat and international business community paper, and very often a forum for those whose goal it is to make Ukraine over in the image of the US) once wrote an op-ed begging for fewer holidays/time off in the Ukrainian work calendar.  

(I'm not endorsing that view by writing the above: To my mind, the holidays and the feasting with family and friends are part of the great charm of contemporary Ukrainian culture and serves as part of the baby that I hope does not get thrown out with the bathwater as Ukraine integrates and "restructures" further westward.  In short, Ukraine has the chance to develop a capitalist society with a much healthier balance between work and leisure.)

One more thing about the holiday: Since Jesus is said to have been baptized in the Jordan River, this holiday is also refereed to as "Jordan." It is the also considered the end of the Christmas season, and the night before the Feast of the Epiphany is called the Second Holy Evening, which is another chance to eat more of the scrumptious kutja (a delicious grainy gruel sweetened with honey, eaten as a representation of the gruel the poor of Jesus' time and place ate).  Notice in the pictures that people believe that the waters of the river, thus blessed on this day, have healing powers.  For someone not used to drinking this water is promised a belly ache.    

Notice the orange ribbons here and there in the photos; Yushchenko still had not yet been inaugurated Ukraine's first post-OR president when this ceremony took place. ]]></description>
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<pubDate>Sun, 22 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Yet More Wintery Pidhajtsi]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[In photo #5 you can see the top of the old Jewish Synagogue on the right and the new Greek Catholic Church to the left; this is a typical road in Pidhajtsi.  

In the last photo, you can see the tops of the Catholic (center) and Orthodox (right) Churches, while the little spire on the left of the photo is of the old, Polish-era Town Hall building.  In 1900, the town of Pidhajtsi itself was predominatly Polish and Jewish, while Siltse, Stare Misto, and Halych are where the Ukrainians and impoverished Jews lived.  ]]></description>
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<pubDate>Fri, 30 Dec 2005 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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