Weathering the Ice and Snow of Southwest Russia: Sochi 2014

Let's talk about the weather of southwest Russia. Because if you're into the Olympics ~ and oh, surely you are ~ the weather is significant.

In a nutshell, although it's well below freezing here in Rostov-on-Don, it is not cold in Sochi (pronounced SO-chee), in fact today's high was 46 F.  But as you may know, there's a plan in place to maximize Sochi's unique geography ~ thus its climate cocktail ~ that will please even the most discriminating skiers, skateboarders and aficionados of all things snowy. We'll have a look at that shortly. . .

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But first, please join me on the icy streets here in Rostov-on-Don. Several afternoons ago, the day's high was -7 F and felt like -31 F. Given the choice, most folks were hibernating at home, but I was itching for fresh air, wanted to check on an elderly friend and swing by the statue of Yuri Gagarin (pronounced Ga-GAR-in), the bigger-than-life Soviet cosmonaut, the first man in space. I was hoping the fresh snow and late afternoon sunlight might flatter him.

As it turned out, Comrad Gagarin was in spectacular form.

In front of Rostov Technical University is Yuri Gagarin, first man in space.
(Click image to enlarge.)

From atop his obelisk along the square named in his honor, Yuri Gagarin overlooks Voroshilovskii Street, a major north-south artery. Continuing ever-so-carefully several blocks south, I met a challenge of near-Olympic proportions.

Bare, bumpy ice. My task was to get across that mess and turn right on Maxim Gorky Street, the next intersection. This was an Olympic contest between the ice and me. I won, yes I did. (However, the outcome the next day was quite different.)

Ten meters to the left of the icy sidewalk, here's the view. I noticed an older woman in Soviet-era rubber boots trudging up this footpath along the curb. When in doubt, imitate the nearest Russian babyshka, or grandmother.

South on Voroshilovskii Street: Approaching the Gorky Street bus stop.

Thanks to these slippery walkways, I've had reason to haul out my new full-length down parka from Eddie Bauer, long enough to protect the knees, in theory at least. And protecting the lower limbs is a very good idea ~ said with a bag of frozen Brussels sprouts draped over my left shin, nursing an ice-related injury.

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To head from Rostov toward the Olympic action, go southwest 250-some miles and you'll reach Sochi. That's an overnight train trip, as I know first-hand, and the temperatures there are considerably more moderate, thanks in part to the Black Sea. Here's a handy-dandy map of southwest Russia showing Sochi and environs. Click on the wide view and Rostov-on-Don is visible to the northeast. Zoom in closer and east of Sochi you see Krasnaya Polyana (Beautiful Valley), the Olympic ski area, 40-some miles inland, in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountain Range.

With the snow in question, a Michigan-based company, SMI, Snow Makers, has installed 400 snow-making machines, according to this National Geographic video. Before Thanksgiving, Jon Wax, an SMI employee based in central Washington, took leave of his snowmaking duties and headed to Sochi where he's been on the Olympic snow-making team. Here's his story.

Lastly, thanks to RT, Russia Today, "Don't Worry if There's No Flurry. . ."

How about you, dear blog-reading friend? Have you attended or participated in Winter Olympics? Or have you spent time in Sochi? Please do share!

The White Nights of St Petersburg

Congratulations on the White Nights of summer! Tonight in St Petersburg, the sun sets at 11:25 - that's just 10 minutes from now! It's the longest day of the year ~ in the northern hemisphere, that is.

Here in Rostov-on-Don, we're 1000 miles south of St Petersburg, as I recall, and our sun is loooong set already, at 9:20, in fact. Say, dear blog reader, have you ever been so far north in the summer? How about in St Petersburg? Do share, please do!

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas

Especially for you . . . and you . . . and YOU for New Year's I'd like to invite you along on a little stroll through the snowy, icy streets of Rostov. Care to join me? Careful though, oh my are these sidewalks slippery.

First, the sign here at Children's World says Happy New Year and Merry Christmas. Doesn't that just roll off your tongue? Literally, the red says We congratulate you. And the blue says With the New Year and Christmas. And that's the order in which things happen around here.

And that's because Orthodox Christmas comes on January 7th. Whereas Catholic Christmas, as it's called here, is. . . on December 25th.

Isn't that in the Bible somewhere? ;)



Walking along Pyshkinskaya Boulevard. How I love this street. I lived on Pyshkinskaya for, what, 8 years and then I needed to move. And now my pulse quickens when I'm even on it. Pyshkinskaya is a pedestrian-only boulevard that runs right through the city center. It's so peaceful and quiet. And picturesque. And. . .somebody actually clears part of the sidewalk.


A sculpture to Pyshkin, the great Russian poet after whom this boulevard was named. It's likely that every city in Russian has something named in his honor. Just like in the US every city has a street named after the great American poet, Robert Frost.

Right?


People in Russia still line up for bread. Truly. Today these dear souls were queued up for loaves. There was a limit of five loaves and two fishes each. (haha) Well not to worry though. There's bread everywhere, readily available. I need to find out what's the deal with this bread on this corner that people queue up for it. Maybe it's ultra fresh and super cheap. Or maybe they're just reminiscing about the old days when standing in long lines was part of the deal.


Had to laugh at the graffiti. This was on a garage door at a home I visited today. That Buka is Russian for Vika - pronounced VEE-ka, and short for Valentina. Yes, Vika is definitely beat-i-ful at 16 years of age. Thanks to this cool young lady I learned not to leave my purse unattended. (Even at church. . .)


Oh meet Rex, one of our church employees. He eats better than anybody and takes quite seriously his responsibility to guard our property. Interestingly he knows who's visiting and whose not. After posing for this picture he suddenly turned tail and hurried back into his garage. That's Rex. Kind of shy about publicity and such.



This sweet babyshka, or grandmother, afternoons she sets up shop here on the street corner and sells home-cooked food. For one thing, she sells cooked beets. That's handy. And she has this wonderful bean salad with walnuts in it. She's got a whole system worked out, including the plastic film on the posts behind her which serves as a wind break. Within minutes people were crowded around to buy.


On Monday, this archway I spotted on Gazetti ("Newspaper") Street. Neat view back there into that courtyard.


And pretty soon somebody had to come marching right into the middle of the picture. They did ask though and of course I said Please do, because that adds another dimension. Which is totally different from adding dementia. Or so they say.



Monday morning 11:00-ish on Gazetti Street. Some old houses. Charming, eh? Right smack in the city center.


Below the Russian Flag we read North Caucauses (1st line) Academy (2nd line) of Government (3rd line) Service (4th line). This young lady might have been going to take an exam. She seemed to be mumbling under her breath as she walked by. . .


Then, heading on back to our church building, I happened upon a gypsy woman. She seemed nice enough, familiar somehow. I stopped to visit for a bit and asked to take a picture.

She was a bit demanding, actually, insisting on no few than three photos and wanting to use a special lens that would make her look young, slender, charming and smart. That's a gypsy for you.

I asked if she might sing a song from her home far away and, surprisingly, she launched into one. This world is not my home, I'm just a passing through. . .My treasures are laid up. . . somewhere beyond the blue. . .

Either she's seriously deluded or she's onto something. Personally, I think she's onto something.

Well, dearly beloved, gypsy friend joins me in wishing you a Happy New Year! And a Merry Christmas!

Russia's Total Eclipse: A Headache to Some

Of course you've heard about the total elipse over Russia yesterday. Millions of people witnessed it midmorning in Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia. It was mid-afternoon before a partial eclipse passed over us here the Rostov area, three time zones west of Novosibirsk.

View of the eclipse from St Basil's Cathedral, Red Square in Moscow.
(Photo courtesy of AP.)

I observed an interesting eclipse-related phenomenon. Last evening one friend, let's call him Andrey, complained of a headache.

It's because of the eclipse, he said. It's the electro-magnetic waves caused by the eclipse. And I'm not the only one. My sister has a headache too and also Karina is having problems with her heart.

Quite often I find myself skeptical here of what I consider (weird) unsubstantiated connections between cause and effect. For example, that a person will get sick from drinking anything colder than room temperature. (A blog topic in and of itself. . .) Or that sitting directly on an un-upholstered chair -- or a chair without a cloth mat of some sort (a cold chair) -- will cause infertility. (Please correct me if I've been misinformed on that.) I tend to slip into being an arrogant American and think to myself, just another old Russian superstition. And of course, as an educator, my first reaction is to provide enlightenment.

Well if an eclipse brings on headaches, then everybody in Russia would have a headache, I said.

No, not so because not everybody is sensitive to the magnetic waves.

Hmmm. I didn't have an answer for that one. I decided to get more information on the subject, who knows, maybe there's something to this. Did a quick Google search last evening and came up with nothing, really. Today I'll try to talk with at least three people about this and get their perspective.

Anyway, we're all in agreement that an eclipse did happen and that it's fascinating. Thanks to Russia Today and YouTube for a glimpse at the rare and wonderful phenomenon.

* * * * *

This morning arriving at the orphanage, I let myself in through the gated outdoor play area. Preschoolers were darting around our legs and apparently I asked one of the caretakers how it was going.

Oh it's bad, it's really bad.

Da? How so?

Well after that eclipse yesterday, we have all sorts of problems. Animals were affected by the eclipse and the children feel it too. They're sick and upset.

The children are sick? I saw children galloping around and cavorting as usual.

Well, look at that boy there. She motioned to a little guy 15 feet away, sitting on a rug and whimpering, whining about something.

See, he's all upset after the eclipse. It really affected him.

As I recall, he can be little fussy and whiny on non-eclipse days too. Maybe it wasn't the eclipse after all. Maybe he accidentally ate something cold. Maybe the thought of ice cream floated through his little three-year-old brain, caused a chemical reaction of some sort and that has caused all this.

The White Nights of Summer

Should you find yourself in St Petersburg this weekend, you can go out for an evening stroll with little fear for personal safety. That's because most everybody else will be out late too, enjoying the peak of the White Nights of St Petersburg.




You might be familiar with these days in late June, which are - at least for those in the northern hemisphere - the longest days of the year. St Petersburg is so far north - nearly as far north as is Anchorage, Alaska - that during the White Nights, the sky stays light through the night. In fact, today in St Petersburg, this morning sun rose at 4:37 and sunset will be at 11:23.

Well, dear blog reader, have you per chance been to St Petersburg during the white nights? You might not be lucky enough live in the far north, but what comes to your mind when you think of the long days of summer? For me, it will always be that quite unintentional all-nighter I spent at Moscow's Sheremetevo-1 airport several summers ago.

Of Texas Bluebonnets and of Life

Come April, the fields of Texas burst with bluebonnets. They’re positively breathtaking. It happened that I was in Dallas in early April and realized that as much as I wanted to photograph bluebonnets, it simply was not going to happen. And that saddened me so.


But then one Wednesday evening after church, after a presentation about my work here in Russia, dear sister Raydene approached me and she was hiding something behind her back.

I have a gift for you. You’ve given so much (I had to chuckle at that one) and brought us lots of souvenirs and all. And now I have a little something for you.

And she handed me a stack of pictures. Photos of bluebonnets.

My pulse raced.


Here, pick out your favorites.

Oh my, oh my, oh my! A thrill ran through my very soul.

I remembered that earlier that evening, as I was driving to that little country church, I passed bluebonnets along the highway but I couldn’t stop to photograph them. Mostly because I was dressed up for my presentation and didn’t need to go stomping through a field and getting down and dirty to shoot flowers. And then next morning there wouldn’t be time before I would be heading out of town. And so, I had told myself with a sniffle that. . . maybe, just maybe, next spring I’d have a chance to get close and capture the exquisite beauty of a bluebonnet.


But now, none of that mattered. Because this dear sister had done all the work for me – scouting for bluebonnets, pulling off the highway, and charging into a field – and I needed only to enjoy the results.

You can not imagine what this means to me. This is absolutely the most perfect gift you could have given me this evening.

And so the next morning, I headed off through Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky to Beautiful Ohio and weeks later, south to North Carolina. And then when I returned to Dallas in mid-May, sure enough, the bluebonnets were but a memory.


But oh, the pink buttercups were in bloom! Such delicate beauty. What exquisite femininity ~ not unlike that which greets me in the mirror each morning (said howling with laughter).

Anyway, I found a patch of buttercups by a Wendy’s in Mesquite, just east of Dallas, and one morning when the sun was still soft and the flowers nearly open, I crawled through wet, dewy grass to capture the scene.

But by now, even those buttercups are but a memory. It’s rather poignant but. . .that's life. Cookies crumble and wildflowers fade.


All flesh is as grass and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades. . .But the word of our God stands forever. (Isaiah 40: 6-8)

Thank goodness that there's more to life than that which is physical and fades. Thank the good Lord for that which is eternal. And therein lies our hope.

More Spring Flowers

The Eighth of March, International Women's Day, is so much fun, so big an event in the Russian culture, that I can hardly not share all my wonderful photos with you, dear blog readers. By that I mean, photos of wonderful people that (whom) you really do need to meet.

Even cooks need to be honored on the 8th of March. Especially cooks need to be honored. And at the nearby orphanage, this dear lady cooks meals for 100-some kiddos. She managed a nice smile even though she had to work the holiday. She deserves some daffodils.

Wish I knew her name. I'll have to ask because we cross paths occasionally. Either Natasha or Nadya or Lena or maybe Zhenya. I'll have to check. Or Sveta of course. Those are common names for Russian women.


Meet the narcisus lady. Which is quite different than being a narcissistic lady which we can safely assume she is not. On the other hand, she did pose for three photos without complaint and even smiled. Nice narcisus lady.


Here's the tulip lady with a sweet smile. It even sparkles.

May I photograph your beautiful tulips?

Oh go photograph somebody else, I'm no longer beautiful. She smiled and laughed.

That told me she was special, a babyshka smiling and laughing with a stranger, a foreigner at that.

Oh but you have a beautiful heart.

She laughed, I snapped and here she is.

This Frost-ing Takes the Cake

Now this frosted window is the best yet. It appeared on my balcony January 1st and I treasured it as a special С Новом Годом (New Year’s) gift especially for me. This frosting is even better than December’s frosted windows and manages to beat last winter’s best, that icy Medusa look.

Isn’t it magnificent? Looks like etching on glass, so fragile and beautiful, feather fronds of ice. As I studied it, creativity came to mind and The Creator came to mind and I was scratching my head, wondering if frost were mentioned in the Bible. Da, it is! Thanks to Nelson’s Complete Concordance, a 2-kilogram wonder, here’s what was listed,

God thundereth marvelously with His voice; great things doeth He, which we cannot comprehend. For He saith to the snow, `Be thou on the earth' . . . By the breath of God frost is given and the broad waters frozen. (From Job 37. New King James Version and 21st Century King James Version.)

How about you: What winter scenes or slices of nature have absolutely taken your breath away with their beauty? What have you found awesome?

The Shortest Day of the Longest Night

Glory, glory hallelujah! Today is the Winter Solstice and now the days will get longer. This business of sunset at 4:34 p.m. and sunrise after 8:05 is something simply to endure. And hooray - it's going to get better from here on out until the Summer Solstice on June 22 or so, when we'll have the longest day and shortest night. When does the sunrise and sunset in your area this time of year?



Above, a Russian Orthodox Church in the afternoon sunlight. (Photo Credit: Mikhail Tkachev, Moscow Photographer)

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