In Memorium: Valentina Mikhailovna Dezelin (neé Stakhova)

b. February 23, 1899, the Crimea under the Empire of Russia
d. May 24, 2004, California under the United States

She lived four lifetimes by the standards of her time. She lived on three continents. She lost three husbands. She changed nationality three times. She survived at least four wars. She spoke at least four languages. She never left the church (Russian Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox), but the church often left her, including during the years a crooked, charming priest took her power of attorney and what money he could get from her, and nobody stopped him. The church also abandoned her when she went in a nursing home, never sending help, visitors, or comforting cards; most hurtful to me, after her death, a long-absent acquaintance from her most recent church scheduled her memorial and burial without consulting with me or waiting for me, her adopted great-granddaughter, and the person most and longest involved in her ongoing care. I returned from Russia on Thursday, and she was buried on Friday morning. I found out about the burial through constant phone calling, and made it to the church in time to place a kiss on her cheek before they closed the coffin, screwed the box into the hearse, and then lowered her into a Serbian Orthodox Cemetary hole while a nearby cement truck engine chugged an unrepentant proletarian drumroll.

Here's a memorial to you, and your namesake, Martyr Valentina.

You will always be remembered, you classy, tough, smart, amazing old lady.

Privet from Sir Novgorod the Great-- Russia

Pobloguju... I'm writing a little blog entry from Novgorod, Russia - Velikii Novgorod now. I have just reviewed with my good friend Sergei two years of his finds on the local WW2 battlefields with his friends, shovels, and GPS. Of late he's been researching the wartime aerodromes and airplane wrecks through interviews and photography around the area in the small ... I mean extinct... little villages around the battlefields. It is just amazing what he's found... including a German pilot, complete with rosary and glasses. The stories of the non-heroic behavior by Soviet soldiers, and the crazy methods they used to operate in the battlefields, as retold by old men who were 12 years old, hiding in the bushes around the aerodromes. He's been researching and digging up tanks and things since 1989, and boy does he have a collection...

Anyway, the jet lag and ongoing marathon of chai and blinni and vino and balzam and on top of that catching up with everyone has gotten me hollow-eyed and slightly dizzy with overwhelm. I haven't even made it to the local kremlin, for the full nostalgaic effect. My English is also slipping, but never mind, I had a double degree, I don't need that English degree... the Russian degree is serving me very well.

What's amazing besides what changes in 10 years since I lived here is what doesn't change. Someone puts on a little weight, but the personality stays the same. Someone else breaks his leg and turns into a person with a handicap (an "invalid" here) but he still has the same old drinking problem. Another gets uterine cancer and lives with a colostomy bag but she still works through all my grammatical errors and makes sure I understand why I need to correct that accent...

And the konjushnja, the horse stable where I rode here, has moved so that it is right next to where I'm staying... and the young people there are still jumping huge fences on huge gorgeous horses...

Don't worry, those of you who still read this and wonder where I am and if I'm coming home, I still have a return ticket and I intend to use it. I'm just very, very, very far away from San Francisco.

Poka,
SS

Good God Goslings!

The lake by my house -- the unique brackish urban estuary of Lake Merritt -- is presently gosling-rich.

There are three families of two adults with goslings in the number of 5, 9 (the eldest clan, almost showing adult feather color in their tails), and the youngest clan-- 19. 19-uplets. Today the 19 formed the shape of the shadow of an elegant old lantern-style streetlight that is at the southern edge of the lake. It was very hot. They were squished so compactly into the shape of the shadow that if the sun had gone behind a cloud (yeah, I know, California-- what cloud?!) there would have been an Installation of Streetlight-Shaped Pile of Goslings there on the beach.

I stood there staring trying to wrap my brain around this cuteness like a mushu pancake around a pile of filling when someone thought it was a good idea to run to the lake to drink a little brackish afternoon tea. The entire flock of 19 flapped its useless sets of wings and ran after the first thirsty one and then the installation was destroyed, and everyone was standing in the water a little stunned to be in the sun again. The parent geese didn't say a WORD. They were tired. They were hot. They walked aimlessly around at some several yards distance, watching me. If the kids wanted to run in a panic into the lake, that was fine with them. If I wanted to chase them in, so much the better.

Now, for some gosling research. I want to know how long they are little flightless balls of grey cuteness.

Here is where my stalking will begin: Coalition to Prevent the Destruction of Canada Geese

Ah, how the fall migration of geese will hurt this year...