It was a hobbit hole

LJI 11 - 9: Sacrifice

kehlen — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 22:39:25 GMT

I am leaving. My mind has not been on the contest for a few weeks now, because I have too much to do and several competing deadlines to meet (translating two articles of thirty pages each is only the beginning).

Goodbye, good luck, and maybe see you all in Second Chance!

LJI XI - 7: Feckless (~350 words)

kehlen — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 21:12:27 GMT

Many years ago, I have developed a simple strategy of facing compliments, because they have always made me uncomfortable: it does not matter whether I believe what is being said about me, it only matters if I believe that the person who compliments me is sincere and genuine. If they are, then it is an honour to be seen in such a way through their eyes.

I am still uncomfortable with praise and at some level, I would rather fade into the background (as unity is negligible compared to a million, in maths, a single person's ordinary life should be invisible among millions of similarly unremarkable lives).

However, I am increasingly forced to acknowledge that I cannot hide in plain sight this way.

- My old college department head remembers me personally despite my lack of noticeable achievements in our field;

- my colleagues have recently told me that the way I carry out my duties as the science secretary of our department makes them feel safe and secure (an extremely gratifying thing to hear, which leaves me even more aware of how often I am seemingly only half a step away from spectacularly failing something important);

- when I talk about things that interest me, people listen and would later tell me that they have learned something important (and was not I simply nattering excessively about weird little nothings that fascinate me and are not known by a lot of people at all?);

- and even in theatre, with so many people present, I get recognized by ushers when I come to see a play more than once (like I most often do), and am I not just one of the many in the audience and therefore, safely invisible?

Apparently, not. I am, apparently, noticeable and, in a small way, influential.

Influence is a scary thing to have, because influence is responsibility toward those that you affect.

And having acknowledged this, I can only repeat the phrase one of my Teachers likes to say in response to compliments, "Thank you. I will work to be worthy [of your opinion of me]."

kehlen — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 14:01:25 GMT

Давайте поиграем в небольшую экологическую игру.

1. В любом помещении, в котором вы регулярно пребываете (на работе или в любой комнате дома, например) посмотрите вокруг и посчитайте, сколько вы видите пластиковых предметов (не нужно открывать шкафы и заглядывать в ящики столов, - просто на поверхностях). Смотрите внимательнее - некоторые пластиковые предметы настолько обычны и повседневны, что с первого раза вы их можете не заметить.

2. Теперь посмотрите на все эти предметы ещё раз, и посчитайте те из них, которые, по вашим представлениям, вы выбросите или замените в течение ближайшего года.

Можете поделиться результатами со мной, если хотите, можете просто обратить на него внимание. В любом случае, я почти уверена, что они неприятно вас удивят.

Дома: на кухне около 60 таких предметов (на выброс пока не считала); в ванной - около 50 (тоже не считала); возле моего рабочего места — около 80 (выбросим может быть десяток...пластиковых пакетов, из наличных 3 – 4 дюжин).

Какого чёрта??

*****

Let's play a small ecological game.

1. Go to any room in which you stay regularly (any space at your home, or the one you work in), look around you and count the number of plastic objects you see (there is no need to open wardrobes or look into drawers, just look at what is out there on the available surfaces. Pay attention: some of these objects will be so commonplace you will not notice them at first glance.

2. Now look at all these objects again and estimate how many of them you are going to throw away or replace in the next year.

You can share your results with me, if you like, or just take notice of them. I am almost certain this will be an unpleasant surprise.

At home: about 60 objects in the kitchen (have not counted the ones I am going to trhow away yet) and about 50 of them in the bathroom (have not counted the second ones here either). Near my table at work: around 80 (were could throw away a dozen...plastic bags out of 3–4 dozen that are hanging out here currently).

What the hell?

LJI XI - 6: Solvitur ambulando (~550 words)

kehlen — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 21:50:44 GMT

Solvitur ambulando, a Latin phrase ascribed to either St Augistine or the Greek philospopher Diogenes, means "it is solved by walking", or "it is solved by walking around".

Being a personal reflection on the differences and difficulties between generations among the people around me.

World War II has left a long-lasting trace on the lives of the people all over the world, a trace that continues to be felt now, almost 75 years after it ended, and still will be for years to come.

Some people call the post-war generations boomers, lost, millenials, zed. In this story, let us call them, children of the war, children of war survivors, and those who arrived in the world later still.

Children of the war, those who were born in the late 1930s and 1940s, like my parents, had their childhood and youth largely stolen from them. They may or may not remember the perils and deprivations of those long six years and the restoration that followed, which was, in many places, almost as hard, but from a too early age, a lot of them were thrust into positions of authority and responsibility, when their parents and grandparents, who had fought in the war, either perished in it or shortly after, or could no longer support them like parents do their children in times of peace.

On the one hand, there was that early responsibility and few or none being there to cut them any slack, and on the other, the "do or die" mentality of the surviving elders. My elder colleagues still remember how the old soldiers chose people into positions of authority. "Would you let him have your back on reconnaissance duty?" they asked themselves and the others, and meant it life-and-death seriously.

The children of war survivors, born in the late 1940s and 1950s, hold a similar mindset, if maybe not quite as rigid.

And then there are the current 30- and 40-years-old, the people of my generation, children and grandchildren of the two previous age groups, people whose "time" has already come to front the same positions of authority.

Do not get me wrong, a lot of us do. Another lot of us though—

The war babies, after having done their best to ensure that we have had the safe and secure, even pampered, childhood that they were denied see us as soft, weak-willed and unreliable. And so they cling to their, once well-earned positions of authority, not trusting us with it until they cannot help it anymore, until the situation becomes as dire as delegate-or-die-from-strain.

And yet the bitter irony in this vicious circle is this: like some things cannot be learned from books, some qualities cannot be seen in people who are not practicing them. You have to speak a foreign language however you can at first to speak it well, you will continue to write badly if you do not write a lot unless you are a born genius, and unless you are a born leader, you will only learn to carry responsibilities if you are trusted to carry them, if it falls to you, and only you, to resolve certain kinds of situations.

kehlen — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 14:35:53 GMT

Сегодня впервые в жизни звонила пожарным. Из принципа, увидел горящий мусорный контейнер – позвонил, даже если ты с этим сообщением десятый (а вдруг первые девять не позвонили, потому что подумали, что кто-то уже это сделал?) Не представляю, как там операторы работают. Моя ситуация была некритичной и не особенно срочной, и то мысли бегали как тараканы в разные стороны (я вообще правильно делаю что звоню? ой, заряд на телефоне щас кончится посреди разговора! бля, посреди моего звонка дядечка с ведром воды прибежал, залил, и чё теперь делать?) А каково слушать людей у которых всё действительно плохо, и "вынимать" из них нужную информацию?

Я так поняла, что звонить надо? А про ведро воды мне сказали, что всё равно надо пожарным пролить, а то всё опять загорится.

*****

Today, I called the emergency services, for the first time in my life. On principle: you see a burning garbage container, you call about it, even if you are the tenth person to do so (what if the first nine thought the same and did not call?) I don't know how people work in such call centres. My situation was neither critical nor urgent, and yet my thought ran in ten different directions at once (should I be calling at all? OMG, my phone battery is going to be dead before the call is ended! ZOMG, a man just ran out a nearby house, mid-my-call, with a bucket of water, and poured it into the container, and it is no longer burning but smoking, what do I do?) How do they extract pertinent information from people in real distress?

So. You should call someone in such a situation? And I was told that the firefighters should still thoroughly drench that container because otherwise, it could flame again.

LJI XI-5: My enemies are all too familiar. They're the ones who used to call me friend (~1050 words)

kehlen — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 21:55:49 GMT

1.1. The police in the Soviet Union, and later, in Russia, were called militia until several years ago. A slogan about them, popularized by newspapers and movies, read "Our native (own) militia keeps us safe".

I have never had much to do with the militia. I have been to a precinct thrice of my own volition: at 18, to receive my first passport; at 21, to receive my second after the rules regulating passport issue were changed, and at 22, when said passport, along with a couple other documents, went missing from my open bag at a book store. On this third visit, I was persuaded to report the documents as lost. Luckily, some nice shop workers found them several days later and called me to come and get them.

One other time, we had to call the militia when our apartment was broken into and our first home computer was stolen, likely by some young hooligans who targeted it specifically because nothing else was taken. Nothing ever came out of this theft complaint.

2.1. When I was a child, my parents voted in every election. They would take my brother and me and go to the local school (most polling stations are located in schools in big cities). It was quite exciting to be allowed to tag along on "adult" outings, even if we had to wait in the hall while mother and father disappeared into the voting "cabins" made from plush red curtains.

There was a lot of red on election days. The tables of the election committee were covered with a red cloth and red banners proclaiming the will of the people in bold white letters hung on the walls and above door frames.

1.2. During my first year at college, I discovered the detective story writer Alexandra Marinina (her Wikipedia page and a few translated works on Amazon) who, herself, is a former law enforcment officer. In her works, she presents the militia as the same people as everbody else. Good people and not-very-good people, family men, singles, hard workers and hangers-back.

After reading her novels, my opinion of the militia was to wait and see, and that I did not have a reason to not trust them.

2.2.The first few times I voted myself, in the late 1990s, one of the options on the bulletin was "against everyone". It was abolished several years later.

Another voting requirement, that of a minimum election attendance, was suppressed some years after that. (The attendance has never been mandatory, only encouraged, and there is no fine for not performing this civil duty.)

1.3. The only encounter I have had with the law enforcement after it was renamed into police happened two years ago, when I was fined for jaywalking. Yes! It happens!

It happened mid-December in a quiet street between two official crossings at street lights. The people getting out of the nearby metro station always cross there because it is convenient (and because the official crossing closest to the station is iffy despite the street lights, seeing as the street turns around a block of houses there and the cars become visible at the last possible moment).

The road police stationed their car in a little lane nearby and started pulling jaywalkers in to be fined one-by-one, forming a line of offenders, which, when I joined it, consisted of women, pensioners, and a young couple.

One of the duties of militia was educating people and preventing crime.

The street police who stopped us did not explain what we did wrong or what we should have been doing instead unless asked directly. Nor did they mention the partial amnesty for street code violations that was in effect at the time (you only paid half the fine if you did it within 30 days of receiving it).

Most importantly, they never mentioned another rule, that first-time offenders (like me) are allowed to be left off not with a fine but a reprimand.

Flashback to my half-forgotten first-ever encounter with the militia when I was six years old. My granny and I were crossing a road in a similar should-have-street-lights-but-doesn't place. A militsioner (militia man) stopped and reprimanded us. I still remember the acute embarrassment I felt when he asked my granny if she realized what kind of exmaple she was setting for her granddaughter.

2.3. I have, with one exception, always cast my votes, and I always will.

In recent years, however, election results have been becoming more and more predictable. No matter how I vote, no matter how those whose choices I know do, the majority party gets elected with an overwhelming majority of counted votes.

Election attendance is plummeting.

1.4. & 2.4. Things came to a head this summer, both on the voting scene and with the police.

In the run-up to the elections of the local parliament in Moscow (an election nobody usually cares about), a vast majority of independent candidates were refused registration under the pretext that most of the singatures that they had collected to fulfill the quota required to be registered were fabricated.

In response, the candidates submitted a request to the authorities for a meeting to protest the refusal of registration. Their requests were repeatedly denied.

Angry with the refusals and with their singatures being designated false, the people went on to protest without permission, several times.

The authorities declared these peaceful protests held in the form of a "walk" around the city centre, mass riots, and went on to arrest several thousand people with fists and rubber sticks, charging the protest leaders with organizing riots and many of the protesters with attacking police officers.

The courts have recently sentenced someone who threw a plastic glass at the police to several years in jail, and another protester, who was beaten by the arresting policeman so violently, he (the policeman) sprained his arm, to several years of imprisonment as well.

Several people are still detained awaiting court dates.

The police and several businesses, including the Moscow underground, went a step further, and filed demands for the protest leaders to be fined millions of roubles: the police, for doing their job, and the businesses, for lost business opportunities during the protests.

These demands were upheld by the courts.

Personally, I don't have a reason to trust the police anymore.

LJI XI - 4: Impossible (~600 words)

kehlen — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 19:42:15 GMT

A short comic is floating around online these days*. In it, a stick figure is crawling up a mountain, which is drawn like a ragged line that almost, but not quite, reaches the top of the panel. "Getting there," says the figure in the first panel titled "high school". "Almost done," it mutters as it approaches the top in the next frame labelled "college". Then—"Oh, shit" is all the poor thing has to say after coming into "adult life", the final box of the comic. In it, what previously seemed the top of the mountain is revealed as but a small peak on the side of a much larger mountain of life, which is so tall, its top does not fit in the final box.

More often than not, I feel like such a stick figure crawling up the mountain of physical effort with no end or respite in sight.

My body, if it is left to its own devices, does not produce enough energy for a decent life. I can do anything and everything I need doing, and then some, but I "don't want to" do a lot of things because it is hard and tiring and because being active brings not the joy it should but excessive fatigue.

Paradoxically, the cure for this low-energy funk is spending more energy and being more active despite how hard it is sometimes to do something through the fog of tiredness.

In careful increments, doing a little bit more than what feels comfortable day in and day out for weeks and months on end, I can energize my body and persuade it to give me more strength to work with, but it always, always, gives a little bit less than what I need to expend to "keep the juices flowing".

This constant uphill battle makes me feel like the stick figure in the comic, only the mountain is covered in a thin layer of ice and if you don't cling to it and climb constantly, you slip down to more and more unacceptable low levels of energy.

The image I have drawn probably makes my situation seem worse than it really is. This is because right now, I am climbing back after a major slip.

This year, I have finally found a way to ease the struggle. Creating specific routines and consciously keeping them no matter how much energy I have on a specific day makes keeping myself on the right track easier. These routines include: going to sleep no later than 1 a.m.; getting at least 6 hours of sleep every night (and aiming to get at least 7.5); not staying up late on weekends; not getting up after noon on weekends; doing my morning exercises; meditating; getting stuff done and off my plate at work and home every day instead of just coasting.

All of this is still tiresome and irksome and often requires conscious effort (yes, I am doing this—because the following benefits outweigh not doing so), but it works wonders for long stretches of time.

I just have to accept and always remember that I am a stick figure on an iced-over mountain and that I will slip down some days, and slip a long way down when I am sick or allow myself too much leeway.

But it's all right. I know the way now. I know how awesome it feels to be energized. I will simply have to keep climbing my mountain and learn to slip down less.

---
*I have described the comic from memory. Here is what it looks like.

LJI XI - 3: Everything looks like a nail (~550 words)

kehlen — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 18:50:55 GMT

After you do something repetitive, you would often dream about it at night or see its image superimposed over whatever else you do during the day.

During school summer breaks, I would often dream of strawberries and blackberries after my mother, brother and I would spend half a day in the woods, bringing back several litres of berries each.

At exam time at college, I would be playing with my dog yet keep imagining various lines, parabolas and hyperbolas slowly swim in an imaginary mathematical space.

For the last two weeks at work, a vast majority of my time has been consumed by preparing scientific texts for publication.

Do you know what the dark side of writing for science is? It's neither the experiments, nor processing the data, nor understanding and clearly explaining the results. It's formatting.

Given the capabilities of modern technology, many publishers today require that the articles be submitted in the "ready for publication" format, forcing someone on the authors' side to learn all the tiny details of how the text should be presented. At work, that someone is me, and here are a few examples of what is considered proper:

- unit modifiers (two or three words used together as an adjective) are usually hyphenated (a five-letter word);

- yet a law that combines two and more names of scientists separates them with an en-dash and no spaces (the d'Alembert–Lagrange principle); the same goes for a range of parameters (the 60–72 F, or 15–23^oC, weather is pleasant);

- as for the em-dash, one of its uses is to replace some words in the sentence, for example, for emphasis (The dark side of writing for science? Not the experiments, not processing the data, not understanding and clearly explaining the results.—Formatting);

- no space separates the percent (%) or degree (^o) sign from the number (23^oC; 100% humidity is hard to bear);

- you only write the units after the last number of a range (15–23^oC), unless it is an angle, ^o, (the cone rotated 0^o–180^o).
...

This list is infinite, but the worst part of the job is not even hunting formatting errors, which are ignored and even dismissed by a lot of authors as unimportant, although they can only be compared with ugly pimples on the face of your article. No, the worst part is that different publishers often set different format requirements.

In Journal of Physics: Conference Series, for example, the reference to a (quite imaginary) article will look like this:
Smith A N, Gore L V and Mansfield T 1997 Nucl. Fusion 37 1000 (in layman terms, the Nuclear Fusion journal, volume 37, published in the year 1997, page 1000), while the same article cited in Plasma Physics Reports needs to be written as follows:
A. N. Smith, L. V. Gore, and T. Mansfield, Nucl. Fusion 37, 1000 (1997) (every comma, full stop, space and font change is important.)

Formatting is an anal, largely thankless but necessary job, which I, surprisingly, enjoy but having to finish the work on two issues of the above-mentioned journals at the same time left my brain feeling bruised and stuffed with cotton. I keep seeing the different reference lists and texts swim in my mind's eye, like I saw berries at school and algebraic curves at college.

LJI XI - 1: Resolution (~550 words)

kehlen — Sat, 28 Sep 2019 19:25:21 GMT

...and in the midst of her turmoil he sent a demon of his to tempt her. And came the demon, and stood it invisible by her side, and whispered it in her ear, soft as a breath of air, light as an inspiration, clear as the best of thoughts: ”It does not need to be so hard, you know. Your college department is pressing you so hard to publish another article with your dissertation research? Go ahead, publish it. All you have to do, is not include the man you fear to discuss the results with among the authors.”

The machine that I work at, a stellarator (a much smaller one than those described in this article), has been in operation for over 40 years and it has collected large amounts of data. It is possible to process the data statistically and obtain new results. My younger colleagues want to do it, my older ones resist the change.

For my dissertation, I have been working on a possible processing algorithm for part of the data, but so far, it was like this little pet project, a side project, a toy, and it's been slipping through the attention of these older colleagues, although I have been studying the data obtained by one of them.

And continued the demon cajolingly, "For what you have been labouring at, is it not a but game? It is not that important, and what you have done has been approved by others, besides. You could exclude this man's name from the authors, and publish the article, and get the pressure released from you. It would be simple, it would be easy. You need not include him, for the fruits of your labour are but mist in the air that will dissipate after you make use of it."

I could continue as I have done, write my results up, present it, then shelve the dissertation with all those (quite a few!) other ones that were presented here and whose research was then discontinued. It is an awkward and not very honest way out, and the possibility of doing so has been weighing on me for a long time.

And she listened to the demon, and she imagined vividly how easy it would be, to do the thing it was whispering in her ear, and felt relieved. And she wanted very much to do as it suggested, but her mind would not be at peace and kept nudging her. And later that day did she realize that the road the demon had shown her was not a road at all, but dishonesty. And she grew a resolve to explain her work to everyone, that it be not a toy to be shelved and forgotten, but an instrument useful and practical.

Alternately, I could do battle about what I have done, explain it to everyone and give it a chance to be used later on. I was very tempted to follow the easy road but then realized that I could not. Fighting for this is likely going to be hard and horrible, but I will not respect myself if I do not try. Also, the staggering relief of realizing what the right way is in no way compares to the relief of contemplating the easy way.

Many thanks to Cislyn, Ro, Hafnia and Toni for beta-work and suggestions.

LJI XI - 1: DRAFT

kehlen — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 13:53:08 GMT

DRAFT.

...and in the midst of her turmoil he sent a demon of his to tempt her. And came the demon, and stood it invisible by her side, and whispered it in her ear, soft as a breath of air, light as an inspiration, clear as the best of thoughts: the man who you feel you are failing, he who you don't know how to talk with, he who had gifted you with the thing you study but learns of it differently, you don't need to approach him.

For what you have been labouring at is a game, and not important, and it has already been approved by others. You could exclude this man's name from its authors, and publish what you have found as an article, and get the pressure from others released from you. It will be simple, it will be easy. You need not include him, for the fruits of your labour are but mist in the air that will dissipate after you make use of it.

And she listened to the demon, and she imagined vividly how easy it would be, to do the thing he was whispering in her ear, and felt relieved. And she wanted very much to do as it suggested, but her mind would not be at peace and kept nudging her.

And later that day did she realize that the road the demon had shown her was not a road at all, but dishonesty. That it ended ill for her and ill for the others involved in a future near and clearly visible when not clouded by the demon's whispering of the easy way.

And she grew a resolve to explain her work to everyone, that it be not a toy to be shelved and forgotten, but an instrument useful and honest.

Did I confuse you? Let me explain what really happened.

It is awkward, and not completely honest, and it has been weighing on me for a long time. I could continue as I have done, write it all up then shelve it with all those (quite a few!) dissertations that were presented here and whose research was then discontinued.

Or I could do battle about it, explain what I have been doing to everyone and give it a chance to be used later on.

I was very tempted to follow the easy road, but then realized that I could not. Fighting for it is likely going to be hard and horrible, but I will not respect myself if I do not try. Also, the staggering relief of realizing what the right way is in no way compares to the relief of contemplating the easy way.

There was no demon involved, of course, only myself, but my current love for the Good Omens fandom made it so I needed to write the above hyperbole.

Тихо крифером шурша шиша едет не спеша

kehlen — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 19:28:42 GMT

I am doing the craziest thing ever. I am reading Plato's Republic in two Russian translations, an English and a French one in parallel. Because I don't speak Greek and translations of things like that are hard.

I am not sure this thing is doing me any good though, and if I am not just reading what I want to read there as a result.

*****

Внезапно читаю параллельно два русских перевода "Государства" Платона, один английский и одни французский. Потому что в греческом я полный нуль, а там есть очень себе непонятное.

Не уверена, что сравнение переводов поможет, и не прочту ли я там в результате то, что я хочу там прочитать.

kehlen — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 14:14:23 GMT

Некоторые произведения настолько поглощаются попкультурой, что, слушая, читая или смотря их их полностью, поражаешься что и это отсюда, и то, и другое, и пятое, и двадцатое.

"Горе от ума" - яркий тому пример. "Лебединое озеро" Чайковского, оказывается, - тоже (слушали его вчера на концерте).

*****

Some works get so much swallowed up by pop culture that it astonishes you when you listen, see, or read them again in full. Griboedov's Woe from Wit is an example of such a theatre play, and Tchakovsky's Swant Lake ballet is another (we listened to the latter at a concert yesterday).

LJI XI - 1: Introduction

kehlen — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 21:01:03 GMT

This is my 7^th season of LJ Idol, and yet introduction never gets easier.

Hello, my name is Elena.

These are of my favourite things: my new fandom Good Omens, stressing over the PhD dissertation that I need to finish, but struggle with very much, my new favourite actor and nice person Michael Sheen, stressing over having to teach physics to college students next term, re-reading Good Omens (the book), translating science articles, watching Michael Sheen movies, reading physics textbooks (one hour a day when I can make myself), reading Good Omens fanfics, my dog Hera, editing the translation of scientific articles (and stressing over it because I have never done it before), participating in various fandoms, slow reading, stressing over the article I need to submit before I can present my dissertation, waiting for Michael Sheen to go back on stage, learning to work, and live, more productively, my new fandom Good Omens...

For Idol, I write about whatever comes to mind when the topic is announced, and looking for something to talk about is one of my favourite things about the competition. Until then.

LJ Idol Season 11

kehlen — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 12:52:53 GMT

I am signing up for the 11th season of the LJ Idol writing contest and strongly recommend everyone to do the same.

Our beloved host Gary sure knows how to choose the worst times to start a season. *grin*

*****

Буду участвовать в 11 сезоне писательского конкурса LJ Idol. Приходите играть с нами!

Did you know?

kehlen — Sun, 19 May 2019 20:36:54 GMT

Читаю сейчас прикольную книжку "Торонтская книга мёртвых", "The Toronoto Book of the Dead" (автор - Адам Банч) - интересные рассказы из истории Канады через истории тех, кто там умер (и не только там).

Так вот, оказывается, был такой американский бригадный генерал и путешественник, которого звали Завулон Пайк (Zebulon Pike). И погиб он - при осаде форта Йорк (первого поселения нынешнего Торонто), во время войны США с Канадой в 1812 году.

Ну а, как известно, капитан Кристофер Пайк из "Звёздного пути" когда-то служил на корабле USS York.

*****

I am reading a curious book titled "The Toronto Book of the Dead", by Adam Bunch. It offers glimpses into the history of Toronto and Canada through the stories of those who died there (and not only there).

It appears that there was once was an American brigadier general and traveler Zebulon Pike, who died during the siege of Fort York (the first Toronto settlement) during the war between the USA and Canada of 1812.

And, as every Trekkie knows, the Starfleet captain Christopher Pike had once served on the USS York.

I like to think that this is no coincidence.

LJ Idol - DW - 17 - Hell Week-s - Topic: Vigilance - Home Game

kehlen — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 15:16:12 GMT

Not being bound by my own self-imposed rules for writing LJ Idol entries anymore, the most important among which being that the entry has to be constructed logically (start somewhere, have some kind of development and some kind of conclusion), I will instead use this final and most recalcitrant of the five topics given this round to do what I have never dared do while in actively the contest.

I will write out the research process for a difficult topic such as this one and nothing else.

Vigilance in English: keeping a careful watch for danger or sudden difficulties. Mady Eye Moody's "Constant vigilance!" The vigilance required to walk in the mountains. ('Look where you place your foot with every step' as we were told by our guide that one time, even if the trail was one of the easiest.) The same vigilance that can be applied to walking on iced-over sidewalks (tiresome to keep the attention sharp but worth it). Vigilance as a—vividly alive attention. An attention to which you constantly feed a part of your consciousness (the way that boy in a fairy tale could carry a basin of water all around the walls of a fortress without spilling one drop, that being a task required of someone who would become the new grand vizier or some similar position).

Cognate word: vigil or wake. In Russian: "молитвенное бдение" (prayer vigil). Of which I know nothing but that it is done either when someone dies or on the eve of some religious holidays. What for.

Vigilance, these annoying little things that give you an illusion of being saf-er in some situations, like using a waist bag on trips and hiding it under clothing. The only idea I have for the topic, enumerating all these little things that I do in a variety of situations or just one type of situations.

Cognate word: vigilante. Someone lacking self-awareness to a revolting degree.

*****

Я мало рассказываю о конкурсе LJ Idol по-русски, потому что написание связных текстов для него выматывает и не хватает мотивации прикладывать столько же усилий к изложению того же самого на другом языке, а ещё потому что мне очень редко приходится писать по-русски не о том, что сиюминутно интересно, как обычно в блоге, а на заданную тему. В отсутствие же навыка написанное (уже сейчас) кажется неуклюжим, тяжёлым и неловким. Это именно то, о чём я писала совсем недавно — чтобы хорошо писать, нужно писать, продираясь через это неприятное ощущение.

Я поробую сделать ровно то же самое, что сделала в английской части этой записи — прописать словами процесс поиска сюжета по самой непокорной теме из пяти, предложенных в последнем раунде: бдительность ("vigilance"). (Непокорная именно потому, что сюжет записи никак не придумывается. Его надо искать.)

Обычно, конечно, поиски сюжета для записи — всего лишь первый шаг в её написании. В нашем конкурсе нет правил, кроме одного — сказанное должно каким-то боком относиться к заданной теме, но есть моё собственное правило — в записи должна быть понятная структура, вступление - развитие - заключение лучше, чем поток сознания.

Итак, бдительность. Мне не очень нравится звукосочетание "бд" в начале этого слова. Оно ассоциируется с нелитературными выражениями начинающимися с сочетания "бзд", и поэтому для самой себя я составила презрительное выражение "бдеть что-то", то есть внимательно отслеживать состояние и развитие чего бы то ни было. Презрительность же заключается в уровне внимания, не сопоставимом объективной важностью предмета или ситуации. Например, дома приходится бздеть графин с кипячёной водой, из которого пьют все, но не все и не каждый раз доливают новую из чайника, и потом лицемерно занудят меня, что не доливаю я.

Однокоренное слово: (молитвенное) бдение, про которое знаю только, что оно бывает на кануне всяких религиозных праздников, и не знаю, зачем.

Бдительность суть постоянное напряжённое внимание. Вроде того, какому нас обучали как-то в походе по горам (смотрите-де на каждом, без исключения, шагу, куда ноги ставите), хотя сложность маршрута и была минимальной. Такое внимание утомительно, но помогает, например, зимой на обледенелой дороге.

На самом деле мне это слово мало знакомо, оно не ассоциируется с моей "обычной" жизнью, а скорее с некоторыми профессиями, большей частью, наверное, связанными с "энергичной" техникой или повышенными рисками.

В "обычной" жизни "бдительность" применима разве что к договорами и инструкциями, которые надо читать, и бытовыми аппаратам, к которым не следует привыкать и переставать обращать внимание на связанные с ними риски. Сколько раз мама забывала выключить плиту даже в течение последнего года, например, страшно и вспомнить. Зато стиральную машину "одну" мы работать не оставляем, и такое, повышенное по сравнению с плитой, внимание к ней нелогично (хоть и объективно правильно), поскольку она "безопаснее".

LJ Idol - DW - 17 - Hell Week-s - Topic: Writer quote - Home Game

kehlen — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 15:45:14 GMT

Being a writer is like having homework
every night for the rest of your life.
Lawrence Kasdan.

The ultimate paradox of learning is this:
- to write better, you have to write regardless of how poorly your writings will appear to you;
- to speak a foreign langauge (and your own) freely you have to speak it even if at first you will be horrified by how rusty and rough you sound, how badly you can formulate your thoughts on the fly and fear that trying to compliment someone you might insult them instead;
- and to be a well-rounded person, one of those who awe you with the depth of their knowledge of a subject or their magical ability to draw diverse and seemingly disparate fields together, you have to learn constantly even when in certain areas your brain appears void of any knowledge but a scant few facts that do not even rattle together but float in a nothingness without the slightest pull of gravity between them.

If it interests you, work on it and some time, even if you yourself will always know how short you come of where you want to be, you will be surprised with the outcome.

*****

Парадокс обучения заключается в следующем:
- чтобы хорошо писать, нужно писать, даже если на первых порах писанина кажется невероятно коряво-пошлой и графоманской;
- чтобы свободно говорить на другом языке, да и на своём родном, на нём нужно говорить, и пусть даже слушая сам себя, ты будешь ужасаться своему акценту, неточностям выражений и своей неспособности чётко сформулировать мысль, и безумно бояться, пытаясь сделать кому-то комплимент, вместо этого его обидеть;
- для того же, чтобы много знать, как люди, которые поражют глубиной понимания в своей области, или способностью соединять воедино вещи, кажущиеся несовместимыми, надо учиться всю жизнь, даже если в некоторых областях знания сперва кажется, что в громадной пустоте твоего мозга болтаются полтора факта, да и те даже не бренчат вместе, потому что их не связывает даже самая лёгкая сила притяжения и уверенности что хоть они, несчастные, верны и по делу.

Учись тому, что интересно, и спустя время, хотя ты всегда будешь знать, насколько ограничен твой кругозор, результат тебя удивит.

LJ Idol - DW - 17 - Hell Week-s - Topic: Salad Days - Home Game

kehlen — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 09:29:57 GMT

"Salad days" is a Shakespearean idiomatic expression meaning a youthful time, accompanied by the inexperience, enthusiasm, idealism, innocence, or indiscretion that one associates with a young person. In Anthony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra says, "...My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood..."

~Wiki

When I was young and my granny was old, she used to, like she called it, scrub up the floor: mop the open part of it without swiping first, getting under the furniture or moving things around. Back then, I turned my nose up at such tidying up, because some dust remained in the corners, and because she scrubbed the floors up every three or four days, meaning that they never grew particularly dusty and grubby.

Since then, I have learned otherwise. It is better to swing your mop around a bit when you don't have time or energy to do more then let the grit accumulate. It helps with mental work, too, for whatever reason: if you keep procrastinating important tasks, cleaning house is tied closely with lifting the "cobwebs" from your mind. (Damned if I know how this last connection works, but it does.)

*****

Когда я была маленькой, а бабушка - старенькой, она регулярно, как она выражалась, "подтирала полы" - швабрила свободное пространство, не подметая предварительно, не залезая под мебель и не передвигая занимающие место на полу предметы. Я тогда задирала нос на подобную уборку, потому что по углам-то пыль при ней оставалась, и потому что бабушка регулярно "подтирала полы" и они никогда не были слишком грязными.

Но теперь я понимаю, что бабушка была права. Лучше помахать шваброй по середине комнат, если нет сил на более тщательную уборку, чем давать им медленно зарастать. К тому же уборка физическая почему-то активно связана с "уборкой" психологической. Если не делается какое-то дело, разберёшься дома, или на работе (на рабочем столе, например, или полы "подотрёшь") - смотришь, а "паутина" исчезает также и в голове.

LJ Idol - DW - 17 - Hell Week-s - Topic: Fatberg - Home Game

kehlen — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 21:45:31 GMT

Content warning: some period talk.

The first couple of years, at least, after I started using sanitary pads, which I had to discover on my own because neither granny nor my mother used them, I threw them down the toilet. I was not so much embarrassed by the idea of stuffing them in the trash (you can always push the bundle to the bottom of the trash bucket and out of sight after all) as I was grossed out by the whole messy period thing and wanted to get rid of them as soon as possible. It never even occurred to me that they could stop the toilet, and nor did I stop to think of what was going to happen to them afterward.

I have been throwing them in the trash for most of my life now, but I still fear to imagine what happens to them and everything else we throw away, even if it is not down the drain, where their rotting remains mix with fat, cleaning substances and other trash and create monstrous deposits, which can clog the sewers and have recently gotten their own brand new name, fatbergs (fat + (ice)berg).

I have no idea how to dispose of "cooked out" oil and other liquids if not down the drain though. What do you do with them?

*****

Ниже упоминаются месячные.

Первые пару лет после того, как я начала пользоваться прокладками (а открывать для себя их мне пришлось самостоятельно, потому что и бабушка, и мама обходились подручными средствами), я спускала их в туалет. Не потому даже, что стеснялась выкинуть в помойное ведро (всегда же можно засунуть этот рулончик на дно, с глаз долой), а потому что мне было противно, и от месячных, и от прокладок, от которых хотелось избавиться как можно быстрее. Мне тогда даже в голову не приходило, что туалет может засориться, а уж о том, что с ними дальше произойдет, я и вовсе не задумывалась.

Большую часть своей жизни, естественно, я их бросаю в мусор, но всё равно с ужасом думаю о том, что происходит и с ними и с остальными отходами, даже не попавшими в канализацию. В канализации-то как раз известно, что может произойти - из разлагающейся смеси спущенных туда жиров, подгузников и прочих бытовых расходов образуются жировые пробки (осторожно, зрелище отвратительное), для которых даже недавно придумали новое слово - fatberg (fat + (ice)berg), и пробки эти потом никаким долотом не побьёшь.

Но вот куда девать остатки масла со сковородки и прочий жидкий мусор, если не в канализацию, я понятия не имею. А вы что с ним делаете?

kehlen — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 00:58:07 GMT

Я благополучно проиграла очередной раунд конкурса LJ Idol две недели назад, но продолжаю писать записи вокруг и около заданных в нём тем.

По следам одной из них буду играть в медленное чтение начала одного из своих любимых произведений - это занятие мне очень нравится, а подразумеваю я под ним разбор каждого сомнительного получиха в каждой фразе книги. В предыдущей записи на английском я проделала это с первым абзацем "Этюда в багровых тонах" Конан-Дойля, исписав около трёх страниц Ворда. Повторять то же самое скучно, переводить ту запись - ещё скучнее, потому что в ней слишком много цитат. Возьму другую книгу Конан-Дойля (к счастью, от всех его произведений авторское право уже отвалилось) - "Белый отряд" ("The White Company"), прочитать который можно, например, здесь.

Когда я читаю медленно переводы книг, верчу их и так и сяк, в том числе, нахожу написания всяких словечек на языке оригинала, если могу на нём читать. Поэтому ниже ссылки с буковкой "а" в конце - на английские сайты, с буковкой "р" - на русские.

Большой колокол в Болье звонил.

О, о! Болье - не выдумка Конан-Дойля, а всамделишное цистерцианское аббатство в графстве Гэмпшир (Вики-а) основанное в самом начале XIII века, то есть века за полтора до событий, описываемых в романе. Отклонение от темы: стыд и позор русскоязычной Вики за то, что использует просторечное название аббатства, Bewley, Бьюли. Тьфу на них за это.

Вот здесь статья о колоколах в России: Необходимо, чтобы вес колоколов равномерно распределялся на несущих конструкциях звонницы во избежание перекоса. Обычно колокола развешивают, увеличивая их вес справа налево от помоста звонаря.

Выяснилось также, что оптимальной для благозвучия является шатровая колокольня с опорным столбом посередине. Самый большой колокол (или пара больших) размещают по одну сторону столба, все остальные – по другую. Отклонение от темы: Колокольня и звонница не совсем синонимы?! Колокольня - башня с ярусами колоколов, звук от которой распространяется относительно равномерно, а на звоннице все колокола расположены на одном и том же уровне, и проще добиться благозвучия, зато звук с разных сторон различен.

Работники, добывавшие торф в Блэкдауне, и рыбаки на Эксе слышали, как в знойном летнем воздухе дальний звон гудит то громче, то слабее.

Блэкдаун - местность к северу от Болье. Отклонение от темы: На реке Экс (Exe) внезапно нашёлся город Эксетер.

А впечатляющее расстояние между Болье (располженным, грубо говоря, возле Саутгемптона) и рекой Экс. По прямой на глазок километров 120 выйдет. Ничего себе звук над водой разносится.

На этом сегодняшнее заседание объявляется закрытым - при подобных разобрах очень просто провалиться в "кроличьи норы" - либо натыкаясь на кучу совсем неизвестных понятий в статьях о малоизвестных понятиях в тексте, либо при поиске смысла какого-то одного упрямо непробиваемого, которое - непонятно, непонятно, не до конца понятно иногда в течение нескольких часов и потом наконец-то - ПОНЯТНО!!

Сегодняшняя кроличья нора оказалась в том, чтобы найти картинку юга Англии (а не всей страны целиком), на который были бы одновременно Эксетер и Саутгемптон. Это, оказывается, редкость. Есть много картинок юго-западной части - на которых нет Саутгемптона, и много картинок южной части - на которых отсутствует Эксетер.

LJ Idol - DW - 17 - Hell Week-s - Topic: My Happy Place - Home Game

kehlen — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 16:33:31 GMT

Because this is Home Game, and because the topic screams for it, I am going to do something I never do for Idol: quote a someone else’s texts extensively and riddle this entry with source links.

One of my happy places is slow reading. To me, this means looking up every little sniff in a text that gives me even a little pause. You are kindly invited to follow as I re-read the first paragraph of A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle, the first well known public domain book that has sprung to my mind. (One of the many online texts of this novel can be found here.)

Without further ado, let us begin.

PART I. (Being a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., late of the Army Medical Department>.)

Now, in the Sherlock series, John is late of RAMC, Royal Army Medical Corps, to which the Army Medical Department is a precursor. RAMC motto is “In arduis fidelis”, faithful in adversity. Wiki says: The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all Army personnel and their families, in war and in peace. Together with the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, the Royal Army Dental Corps and Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps, the RAMC forms the Army Medical Services., while The Museum of Military Medicine gives a brief rundown of the history of the medical corps tracing its origins to the second half of the 17th century, after which it become an organized structure during the Napoleonic wars, and specifically, the battle of Waterloo. (Tangent: the same battle of Watreloo that saw the wounded Colonel Pontmercy in Les Misérables accidentally rescued by Thénardier.) The then Medical Staff Corps was reorganized into RAMC by Royal Warrant on 23rd June 1898 (years after Dr Watson was discharged from the service).

In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army.

Dr Watson finished University in the year 1878, twenty years before RAMC made an appearance. He was also educated in the University of London, while in Sherlock, John studied at Barts (London’s St Bartholomew’s hospital). Now Netley I am completely unfamiliar with.

Wiki says: The Royal Victoria Hospital or Netley Hospital was a large military hospital in Netley, near Southampton, Hampshire, England. A-ha. Its construction started in 1856, 22 years prior to Dr Watson’s graduation. The main building of the hospital, reporteldly grandiose for its time, was demolished in 1966, so it cannot currently be visited.

Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon.

Wiki says: The Royal Northumberland Fusiliers was an infantry regiment of the British Army. Originally raised in 1674 as the 5th Regiment of Foot, it was given the regional designation 'Northumberland' in 1782 and granted the distinction of being a Fusilier regiment in 1836, becoming 5th (Northumberland Fusiliers) Regiment of Foot. This is horrible, because I know so little about the organization of the British army. Very well. The regiment Dr Watson was attached to was an infantry regiment (foot being a contemporary term for infantry), which had been distinguished with the title of Fusiliers, and further renamed into Royal Northumberland Fusiliers after the numbering system for regiments was abolished in the 1880s. As to the number, when regiments were still numbered, it was done in the order that they were “raised”, making the Northumberland Fusiliers one of the earliest. Tangent: there is also, apparently, a Sherockian society of the name Fifth Nurthumberland Fusiliers.

The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out.

All I know right now is that there were more than one Afghan wars (because it says so in the book).

Britannica says: Anglo-Afghan Wars, also called Afghan Wars, three conflicts (1839–42; 1878–80; 1919) in which Great Britain, from its base in India, sought to extend its control over neighbouring Afghanistan and to oppose Russian influence there.

Wiki says: The Second Anglo-Afghan War was a military conflict fought between the British Raj and the Emirate of Afghanistan from 1878 to 1880, when the latter was ruled by Sher Ali Khan of the Barakzai dynasty, the son of former Emir Dost Mohammad Khan.

This was the second time British India invaded Afghanistan. The war ended after a series of military victories by the British against various Afghan forces. The Afghans agreed to let the British attain all of their geopolitical objectives from the Treaty of Gandamak. Most of the British and Indian soldiers withdrew from Afghanistan. TheAfghan tribes were permitted to maintain internal rule and local customs but they had to cede control of the area's foreign relations to the British, who, in turn, guaranteed the area's freedom from foreign military domination as a buffer between the British Raj and the Russian Empire. Afghanistan also officially ceded various border territories to the British empire.

On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes, and was already deep in the enemy's country.

The Khyber pass, which is now connects Afghanistan and Pakistan (Kabul and Islamabad), was once part of the famous Silk route.

Tangent : Hindu-stan (another name for both India and Indian peninsula), Paki-stan, Afghani-stan. Hindu Kush, the mountain range through which cuts the Khyber pass means “Hindu killer”. Extra tangent: the Durand line seen in the above map is the “official” border from Afghanistan and Pakistan (British India at the time); it was drawn after the second Anglo-Afghan war by a British policitcian by the name Durand and caused a lot of strife and anger in the Pashtun people who it divided between the two countries, and played a hand in the India partition of 1947 and the creation of Pakistan.

I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment, and at once entered upon my new duties.

Kandahar being (today) the second largest town in Afghanistan after Kabul, the capital.

Thus ends the reading for the first paragraph of the Study in Scarlet.

These excerpts, and all the extra bits and pieces gleaned from the articles cited, is more or less the amount of extra information I collect when feasting on a book I like this way. I have never yet finished a single novel thusly, but it is the process of “fleshing” it that interests me in the exercise. I also usually stop myself reading up on more than the “second level” tangent you could have noticed above, because with how little I know, reading about the things I don’t understand sufficiently in the text only unearths even more things that I often have never even heard about (like the Durand line mentioned), but I have to stop my descent into this rabbit hole somewhere, and this is as a good a place as any.

LJ Idol - DW - 16: Home Game. --- It happens

kehlen — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 16:16:29 GMT

I have been voted out of LJ Idol, and my first reaction was, "Finally, I cannot believe I've lasted this long in a mini-season anyway", but the second reaction was, of course, a little sadness.

The firsts of this season:
- survived a tie-breaker;
- survived a gatekeeper week;
- was saved by the jury;
- entered the top 19;
- read all other contestants' entries for 6 or 7 weeks in a row;
and finally was made part of the jury.

This is what working to strengthen your concentration gives you.

I am going to Home Game, and I am going to continue reading. Let us see how many firsts that will give me by the end of the season. I am not going to put as much effort into my Home Game entries as I do into regular ones; this means, back to regular blogging.

*****

If you are very sick and I suddenly daydream about speaking at your funeral, I will be very happy.

This sounds awful, does not it? But it is not. This is how my tiny sixth sense usually manifests. If something potentially bad is happening, and I spontaneously imagine it getting worse, it always means the opposite is going to happen. The premonitory daydream must come spontaneously. It does not count if I force myself to imagine somthing. And it must be about bad situation getting worse, otherwise it is just a regular daydream.

I don't notice these little hints a lot of the time, and another lot of the time I only realize what they were after the fact, but sometimes it is nice to get a little reassurance that all may yet be well.

LJ Idol - DW - 15: Periphery (~575 words)

kehlen — Sat, 09 Feb 2019 20:40:32 GMT

People from large towns tend to look down on those who live in the smaller ones and in the country and call those undereducated mannerless louts many unpleasant names.

One such name, which was popular in Russia in the XIX and early XX century, is "provincial", a noun derived from the word "province", the official small territorial unit of the Russian empire. In 1719, Peter the Great divided the Russian territory into governorates, which, in turn, consisted of smaller provinces. Over time, the word "provincial", the inhabitant of a province, took on a deprecating meaning.

One of those provincials was my mother's grandfather Samson, an honorary citizen of the Georgian town Ozurgety. Another was my father's mother Anna, a peasant girl from the Orel governance who went from her home village to Orel town to middle school in the 1920s and from Orel to Moscow to a railway college in the 1930s all on her own courage and hard work.

As time goes on, language changes. The territory of the Soviet Union was not divided into governances, but into Republics and those, into regions. Another popular way to divide the country was into centres (regional and republican) and "periphery". In theory, the more advanced centres supply innovations to the periphery, which provides the resources needed.

In practice, "periphery" became a new deprecating word to describe the stagnant backwater undereducated places, together with a new word coined to describe young people born there who were sent to the centres to study: "limita", with the stress falling on the last vowel "a" pronounced the same as the one in the word "tar".

"Limita" (plural) were people who were guaranteed a "limit" or quota of the places in colleges and universities, and who often had lower grades and inferior knowledge to those who entered the same institutions on their own merit, causing tension.

While my father Vladimir, Anna's son, was not using one of the "limited" places at the Moscow college where he studied in the 1960s, he definitely came from the semi-periphery, the regional centre Vladimir, the town after which he was named and where Anna had settled with her husband and two sons after living and working in many "provincial" towns where they were sent by the railway they both worked for.

Today, the friction continues. People say that "Moscow isn't the whole of Russia" and mean that we lead better, more comfortable and prosperous and, presumably, happier lives here, while the "periphery" suffers, starves and dies out. That the centre robs them blind and gives back nothing but more and more inhuman laws.

This stereotype is as exaggerated as the once about provincial louts. The larger cities are more diverse and tolerant of differences, richer in opportunity, provide higher salaries. The life there is also faster paced and more brutal; they are overpopulated, have higher prices and make people grow tougher skins and become less sensitive to the suffering of others. Large cities are strong people magnets, but their streets are not paved with gold, merely better-kept asphalt, and what grass grows in their parks and squares is not greener, it is covered in dust from the endless traffic in the surrounding streets.

If you want to get a glimpse of life in the Russian "periphery" today, take a look at the Instagram pictures of Ann Big Dipper, who lives in Degtyarsk in Sverdlovsk region of the Ural district, especially those taken several months ago.

LJ Idol - DW - 14: Firebreak (~830 words)

kehlen — Sat, 02 Feb 2019 18:18:03 GMT

A firebreak is a gap in vegetation or other combustible material that acts as a barrier to slow or stop the progress of a bushfire or wildfire. A firebreak may occur naturally where there is a lack of vegetation or "fuel", such as a river, lake or canyon.

~Wiki

My mum grew up in the 1950s and 1960s and she is much more outdoorsy than I am.

When my brother and I were small, she would take us camping almost every summer, and most winter weekends, we went cross-country skiing in the Moscow region.

These skiing trips were little adventures. We would get up early, take the equipment (skies, sticks, boots and backpacks) out of the wall cupboard, pack lunch (boiled eggs, sandwiches with cheese, sausage, and salted lard and, most importantly, the 3-liter thermos with tea, which only mother was allowed to carry for fear that my brother or I would drop it, breaking the inner glass flask), take the dog and go out of the door.

After that, it took almost an hour to get to "the woods": 15 minutes by metro to one of the Moscow railway stations and 30 to 45 minutes by commuter train to the stop at which we would exit and start skiing. I don't know why we would ski at the 3 or 4 locations where we did; probably, that is where my mother used to go with her friends from college.

Cross-country skiing is very popular here, and unless a major snowfall has occured recently, you will find several ski track near most train station in the woodsy areas because forrests and fields are mostly state property accessible to everyone; they are not fenced off.

These ski tracks often follow clearings under power transmission lines and other firebreaks or simply wind through the trees.

Most often, we would form a line and follow one of the tracks for several hours without a destination in mind, stopping if we came a cross a hill to ski down from and for lunch, and return home in the late afternoon after dusk.

Our poor dog Belka loved those outings, but hated not being able to corral everyone. She would constantly scurry from the first line to the last and back again. When the track was double, it was easy for her to pass everyone, but when it wasn't, she would plough and hop like a hare over the virgin snow on the side. After we returned home, she plopped on her rug and slept like a rag doll, not even having the energy to get up for a drink of water.

On one memorable occasion, mother decided to take Belka with us while she was in heat (she was never spayed because my parents feared having her operated upon "unnecessarily") as we usually skied out of sight of the nearby villages and rarely met other dogs. Yet not 30 mintes after we got off the train, there was our Belka with a stray dog that came out of nowhere, stood on the nearby hill in all their "dog wedding" glory!

On another occasion, half of us lost their sticks. It happened like this: that time, mother, brother and I were joined by three of four classmates and another parent or two as chaperones. Us kids quickly grew bored with the slow pace the adults were setting, so we went ahead faster. Only the track split up, and instead of waiting for the slower memeber of the party to show, at least, within eyesight, like we should have done, we decided to continue, leaving behind one of our sticks to show the parents which direction we'd chosen.

I don't know whose great idea this was (probably mine), and why we were certain that the adults would not only notice the stick but also understand its significance, collect it and bring it to us.—They didn't.

I do not remember how we managed to get reunited later on (minus at least 6 sticks). I guess we were simply lucky. But I still remember how my mum, the two other kids who'd left their sticks behind, my brother and I raced against the gathering dusk to recover them.—We never did. We only found the two of mine, which were older, bedraggled and slighly bent out of shape. The remaining four were lost forever, probably collected by some other skier who might have wondered why there were sticks left lying in the snow (our mistaken attempt to make them into arrows, with the sharp end pointing in the direction we'd chosen).

As luck would have it, the lost sticks belonged to my classmates who rarely joined us, making it even more difficult for my mother to explain this loss to their parents.

I have not gone skiing since graduating from college because I do not share my mother's passion for it and have always had much less energy.

LJ Idol - DW - 12: MacGuffin (~700 words)

kehlen — Wed, 16 Jan 2019 21:08:37 GMT

A MacGuffin is a term for a motivating element in a story that is used to drive the plot. It serves no further purpose. It won't pop up again later, it won't explain the ending, it won't do anything except possibly distract you while you try to figure out its significance. In some cases, it won't even be shown. It is usually a mysterious package/artifact/superweapon that everyone in the story is chasing..

~TvTropes.org

In Russia, neither the undergraduate nor graduate educations are considered "true" scientific degrees. Until the 2010s, we did not even have Bachelors or Masters programs, but single 4–5.5 year long "specialization" programs that made you a "diplomized specialist" or "specialist with a higher education".
Specialists could later obtain two scientific degrees, first becoming a Candidate of (Chemical, Biological, Technical, Physical and Mathematical, etc) Sciences after solving a task set by a scientific advisor, and then a Doctor of Sciences by finding a solution of a larger scientific problem.

These days, our higher education is divided into the Bachelors and Masters programs, the same as in the West, but these degrees are looked down upon by old-school scientists.

In 1979, my mother, who was then 37 years old, entered a PhD (Candidate) program. My favourite story about her time there is the one where in her study group, there was a girl whose surname was the same as my mother's maiden name. At the time, my mother had been married for two years, but because she'd not expected to marry or change her surname at all (she only did the latter because it was important to my future father), she often tried to answer in class both when she herself and that other girl were called upon by their professors.

I entered my PhD program in 2015, when I was 34. The most important non-PhD-related change in my life since then was becoming the scientific secretary of our department at work two years later. When my thesis advisor, who is also my colleague, heard that I'd agreed to take on that extra job, she asked if I was sure I could manage the workload, because in a position such as this, sometimes you have to put everything on hold and do something importantly irrelevant for the higher-ups as urgently as yesterday. (On one notable occasion, I had to gather 30 signatures in less than two days.)—I answered, "Yes", and never regretted it.

Entering a Candidate program in your late thirties is, well, late. Most people who wish to do it finish their first degree before turning 30. A few rare ones, lucky sods who know what they want, or unlucky old souls who remember too much, already have their second, Doctor of Sciences, degree before turning 35.

My mother entered her program because she needed a big project to fill her life after my elder brother Sergey, whom I never met, died of a childhood illness before he turned two. She finished the course but did not get the degree, because just as her research was completed in late 1980, the State decided that the field she'd been working in was no longer important, and her topic was closed. She could have obtained the degree still, by jumping beaurocratic hoops and altering and expanding her work to suit another topic, but she got pregnant with me and decided against it.

I entered my second Master's program and following it, the Candidate one because I needed the challenge of brainwork to beat the remnants of my years-long simmering depression, which was triggered by the stagnation I felt at work. I have already mostly achieved my goal of 'rebooting' my brain, which I never again intend to allow to grow as rusty and cobwebbed as it did a decade ago.

In living memory, the only person in our family with a scientific degree, that of a Doctor of Technical Sciences, was my mother's uncle, who paid for it by growing estranged from his two sisters, one who whom was my grandmother, and their mum, but this is a sad story for another day.