Black Sea Blogger

“I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.” ― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

[we-couldnt-quite-forget]

How to compliment me:

Say something nice about Taylor Swift

[taylorswift]

I️ personally really related to this post.

[theonion]

MORGAN HILL, CA—Having blown through nearly half the titles on the 20-book list in less than two weeks, chronically lonely fourth-grader Logan Parata is currently crushing the Santa Clara County Library’s summer reading program, sources confirmed Wednesday.

The bespectacled 9-year-old, who staff members say is a regular fixture at the library despite its greatly reduced seasonal traffic, is reportedly dropped off at the entrance of the building each morning at 9:50—10 minutes before the facility opens—and spends almost the entire remainder of the day alone at his favorite table quietly tearing his way through each of the recommended books for his age level.

“I swear, that kid’s in here seven, maybe eight hours every day, just knocking out books left and right,” said librarian Marna Atkins, who added that despite the warm summer weather and the fact that there is a community pool just two blocks away, the reclusive elementary schooler can almost always be found in the library with a Roald Dahl or Rats Of NIMH book in his hands, and several more stacked in a pile next to him. “And he always checks out the maximum number of books when he heads home at night, so you’ve gotta think he’s doing the exact same thing back at his house, too. There’s really no other way he could have taken down the entire Judy Blume Fudge series like that in under a week.”

Keep reading

[blackseablogging]

This hits way too close to home

[theonion]

Obama Leaves Post-It On Counter With Quick Note Explaining How To Use Extralegal Surveillance Apparatus

WASHINGTON—Jotting down the instructions so the incoming commander-in-chief would be able to quickly and easily access the personal information of the American populace without any hassle, outgoing President Barack Obama left a Post-it note on the White House kitchen counter Friday explaining how to use the government’s extralegal surveillance apparatus, sources confirmed. “Domestic surveillance can be a little tricky—check to make sure NSA is connected to ISP servers first,” read the bulleted message in part, which went on to direct President Donald Trump to “keep trying” several times if a request for communications records from private internet and telecom companies didn’t work on the first attempt. “Select whether data will be collected by individual or in bulk. Download it. IMPORTANT: MAY NEED TO EXPAND STORAGE TO HANDLE ALL DATA. That’s it! Enjoy! P.S. If leak happens, you’ll have to wait a while, then reboot the whole thing.” Obama reportedly also left a stack of classified files regarding American citizens suspected of terrorism overseas on top of the Resolute desk with a note inviting his successor to “help yourself!” to any targeted killings.

[barcra01]

[thesacred-and-theprofane]

The Bard of Eastern Ukraine, Where Things Are Falling Apart - The New Yorker

Serhiy Zhadan’s “Voroshilovgrad” is an unsentimental novel about human relationships in which, despite conditions of brutality, there is not a single act of betrayal.

In this temporally anomalous wasteland everything existential emerges through the physical: a bit of soccer, a lot of sex, still more violence. The material objects Zhadan describes with an almost grotesque precision—wooden icons of Christian Orthodox martyrs, a Manchester United pendant, a pair of Bosch electric scissors—serve as missing words amid laconic dialogue. It is not only words that are missing. People call the Donbas the “Bermuda Triangle,” Yevhenii Monastyrskyi, a twenty-three-year-old graduate student in history from Luhansk and fan of Zhadan, told me: objects, years, people—like Herman’s brother—disappear all the time there. Many of those who remain have survived beatings of various kinds. “We all wanted to become pilots,” Herman says, of his friends from childhood. “The majority of us became losers.” And not only losers, Zhadan wants us to understand, but damaged losers, their torsos, limbs, and faces inscribed with scars. “I looked more closely at the rest of my old friends, their bodies battered by hard lives and the fists of their rivals,” Herman says.

Today the former Voroshilovgrad falls within the territory of the self-declared Lugansk People’s Republic—an entity which, Zhadan wrote in May, 2014, “exists exclusively in the fantasies of the self-proclaimed ‘people’s mayors’ and ‘people’s governors.’ “ The latter form a cast of characters that could easily be drawn from his novel: Zhadan provides telling depictions of men in tracksuits with stretched-out tattoos, glass eyes, and missing fingers. (The missing fingers are not part of the magical realism: Vyacheslav Ponomarev, the forty-something separatist who in April, 2014, declared himself the “people’s mayor” of Slovyansk, has two fingers missing from his left hand.)

[blackseablogging]

Got to meet him and hear him do a reading. He complimented my Ukrainian :) 

BRAG BRAG BRAG BRAG 

[nyuniversity]

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, NYU President Andy Hamilton, Chaplain Khalid Latif, and other community and multi-faith leaders gathered in Washington Square Park today to condemn acts of hate in NYC, show support for NYU students, and reinforce the University’s values of tolerance, civility, and respect.

[theonion]

Anthropologists Discover Isolated Tribe Of Joyful Americans Living In Remote Village Untouched By 2016 Election

WALDPORT, OR—A team of anthropologists announced Friday it had discovered an isolated tribe of blissful Americans who have never been exposed to the current presidential campaign or its candidates, noting that the newly identified population lives contentedly in a remote village completely untouched by the 2016 race.

According to researchers from Lewis & Clark College, the peaceful, secluded community along the outskirts of Oregon’s Drift Creek Wilderness remains uncontacted by political canvassers, pollsters, and the election media, allowing its generally cheerful and affable inhabitants to go about their daily lives without ever encountering a political poll, election news story, campaign ad, soundbite, or stump speech.

“Upon first entering the village, we immediately noticed how relaxed and upbeat the inhabitants appeared, but it wasn’t until speaking with them directly that we understood how insulated they were from the country’s political climate,” said professor Elizabeth Letts, adding that the tribe’s levels of stress, depression, and anxiety were far lower than those recorded over the past 18 months among the broader American populace. “They actually seem to lead gratifying, well-balanced lives. The adults enjoy eight hours of sleep each night, and in place of discussing politics or the latest revelations about the candidates, they were seen regularly smiling or laughing—not cynically, or as a defense mechanism, even, but out of genuine joy.”

“In my 30 years studying human cultures, I’ve never come across a people so happy,” she continued.

According to Letts, when tribe members were asked their thoughts on major-party candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, they looked puzzled for a moment and then shrugged their shoulders before grinning warmly and continuing on with their day. Similarly, villagers reportedly appeared confused but at ease when asked about the national mood, saying that as far as they could tell, people were feeling pretty good about everything.

The anthropologists confirmed this sense of tranquility permeated all aspects of life in the tribe, observing that when extended families gathered for mealtimes, the tenor of their conversation remained pleasant and amicable, with no subjects deemed off-limits. Moreover, scientists noted that the village lacked any signage, clothing, or other paraphernalia bearing divisive words or imagery, and residents appeared to trust one another and appreciate time spent interacting.

“When I brought out my iPad to show them footage of the recent presidential debates, they immediately became agitated, and several of the children started to cry,” said graduate student Lester Reinhold, who explained that the perplexed villagers kept asking him why the people on the screen interrupted each other so often when they didn’t even have anything of value to say. “I explained that one of the two people onstage would be their next leader, and they all gasped and recoiled in horror, with many saying they didn’t see how that could possibly be true.”

More.

[blackseablogging]

We don't have the right to take their history away,

Vasyl Rasevych, a Lviv-based senior researcher at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences on Ukrainian de-communization laws. 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/09/lviv-ukraine-tourist-gem-unearths-tragic-160928145205181.html

[sovietpostcards]

“Being Accepted to Komsomol” by S. Grigoryev, 1954

[blackseablogging]

Me defending my prospectus next week (hopefully without Stalin present)

[obamawhitehouse]

“Alex is just six years old. He lives in Scarsdale, New York. Last month, like people around the world, he was moved by the heartbreaking images of Omran Daqneesh, a five-year-old boy in Aleppo, Syria, sitting in an ambulance, in shock as he tried to wipe the blood from his hands.

So Alex sat down and wrote me a letter. This week at a United Nations summit on refugees, I shared Alex’s moving words with the world.

Alex told me that he wanted Omran to come live with him and his family. He wanted to share his bike, and teach him how to ride. He said his little sister would collect butterflies for him. ‘We can all play together,’ he wrote. ‘We will give him a family and he will be our brother.’

Those are the words of a six-year-old boy—a young child who has not learned to be cynical or suspicious or fearful of other people because of where they come from, how they look, or how they pray.

We should all be more like Alex. Imagine what the world would look like if we were. Imagine the suffering we could ease and the lives we could save.

Listen to Alex, read his letter, and I think you’ll understand why I shared it with the world.” —President Obama. Find out how you can help at wh.gov/refugees.

[blackseablogging]

Not crying. Not crying. Not crying. 

[sovietjewry]

The Night of the Murdered Poets

I weep for you with all the letters of the alphabet that made your hopeful songs. — from Chaim Grade’s “Elegy for the Soviet Yiddish Writers” 

64 years ago on August 12, 1952, Stalin ordered the execution of 13 Soviet Jews, many of them Yiddish writers, poets, critics, and thinkers, on false charges of treason and espionage. The event is referred to as the Night of the Murdered Poets and regarded by some as the successful destruction of post-war Yiddish literature and culture in the Soviet Union.

The defendants:

Peretz Markish (1895–1952), Yiddish poet, co-founder the School of Writers, a Yiddish literary school in Soviet Russia

David Hofstein (1889–1952), Yiddish poet

Itzik Fefer (1900–1952), Yiddish poet, informer for the Ministry of Internal Affairs

Leib Kvitko (1890–1952), Yiddish poet and children’s writer

David Bergelson (1884–1952), distinguished novelist

Solomon Lozovsky (1878–1952), Director of Soviet Information Bureau, Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs, vigorously denounced accusations against himself and others

Boris Shimeliovich (1892–1952), Medical Director of the Botkin Clinical Hospital, Moscow

Benjamin Zuskin (1899–1952), assistant to and successor of Solomon Mikhoels as director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater

Joseph Yuzefovich (1890–1952), researcher at the Institute of History, Soviet Academy of Sciences, trade union leader

Leon Talmy (1893–1952), translator, journalist, former member of the Communist Party USA

Ilya Vatenberg (1887–1952), translator and editor of Eynikeyt, newspaper of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee; Labor Zionist leader in Austria and U.S. before returning to the USSR in 1933

Chaika Vatenburg-Ostrovskaya (1901–1952), wife of Ilya Vatenburg, translator at JAC.

Emilia Teumin (1905–1952), deputy editor of the Diplomatic Dictionary; editor, International Division, Soviet Information Bureau

Solomon Bregman (1895–1953), Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs. Fell into a coma after denouncing the trial and died in prison five months after the executions.

Lina Stern (or Shtern) (1875–1968), the first female academician in the USSR and is best known for her pioneering work on blood–brain barrier. She was the only survivor out of the fifteen defendants.

Some who were either directly or indirectly connected to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee at the time were also arrested in the years surrounding the trial. Although Solomon Mikhoels was not arrested, his death was ordered by Stalin in 1948. Der Nister, another Yiddish writer, was arrested in 1949, and died in a labor camp in 1950. Literary critic Yitzhak Nusinov died in prison and journalists Shmuel Persov and Miriam Zheleznova were shot – all in 1950.

[sovietjewry]

More posts commemorating the atrocities with history, photographs, poetry, audio recordings, and more in the #night of the murdered poets tag.

[blackseablogging]

Men have not changed in 200 years

Prince Andrei: “Take a year and decide if you want to marry me. No offense will be taken if you say no. Seriously, no worries. Take your time you’re young. Natasha: (One year later): "So actually I’m going to say no. There’s this guy, Kuragin…” Andrei: "You whore! Never speak to me again!"

[blackseablogging]

We haven't been the USSR in a long time

A woman at the archives when I accidentally said the Soviet name of the archive and not the Russian one. 

[schomburgcenter-blog]

In light of recent tragedies affecting Black America, Maira Liriano, our Associate Chief Librarian, shares a Schomburg reading list of books from authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates and James Baldwin that speak on the black experience.

Reading the full post here on our website. 

[instagram]

First Look: Leslie Jones’ Gorgeous Gown for the Ghostbusters’ Premiere

To see more of Leslie Jones’ photos, check out @lesdogggg on Instagram.

Leslie Jones (@lesdogggg) was not going to be played at the biggest movie premiere of her career. So when the actress couldn’t find a fashion designer to make her dress for the Ghostbusters (@ghostbusters) red carpet, she said something about it. Thankfully, former Project Runway winner Christian Siriano (@csiriano) answered the call. The result is this gorgeous gown.

[blackseablogging]

Best summary of “Imagined Communities” I’ve ever seen 

[obamawhitehouse]

“Elie Wiesel was one of the great moral voices of our time, and in many ways, the conscience of the world. Tonight, Michelle and I join people across the United States, Israel and around the globe in mourning the loss and celebrating the life of a truly remarkable human being. Like millions of admirers, I first came to know Elie through his account of the horror he endured during the Holocaust simply because he was Jewish. But I was also honored and deeply humbled to call him a dear friend. I’m especially grateful for all the moments we shared and our talks together, which ranged from the meaning of friendship to our shared commitment to the State of Israel.

Elie was not just the world’s most prominent Holocaust survivor, he was a living memorial. After we walked together among the barbed wire and guard towers of Buchenwald where he was held as a teenager and where his father perished, Elie spoke words I’ve never forgotten—"Memory has become a sacred duty of all people of goodwill.“ Upholding that sacred duty was the purpose of Elie’s life. Along with his beloved wife Marion and the foundation that bears his name, he raised his voice, not just against anti-Semitism, but against hatred, bigotry and intolerance in all its forms. He implored each of us, as nations and as human beings, to do the same, to see ourselves in each other and to make real that pledge of ‘never again.’

At the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum that he helped create, you can see his words—’for the dead and the living, we must bear witness.’ But Elie did more than just bear witness, he acted. As a writer, a speaker, an activist, and a thinker, he was one of those people who changed the world more as a citizen of the world than those who hold office or traditional positions of power. His life, and the power of his example, urges us to be better. In the face of evil, we must summon our capacity for good. In the face of hate, we must love. In the face of cruelty, we must live with empathy and compassion. We must never be bystanders to injustice or indifferent to suffering. Just imagine the peace and justice that would be possible in our world if we all lived a little more like Elie Wiesel.

At the end of our visit to Buchenwald, Elie said that after all that he and the other survivors had endured, ‘we had the right to give up on humanity.’ But he said, ‘we rejected that possibility…we said, no, we must continue believing in a future.’ Tonight, we give thanks that Elie never gave up on humanity and on the progress that is possible when we treat one another with dignity and respect. Our thoughts are with Marion, their son Shlomo Elisha, his stepdaughter Jennifer and his grandchildren whom we thank for sharing Elie with the world. May God bless the memory of Elie Wiesel, and may his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life.” —President Obama on the passing of Elie Wiesel