I started this project two years or so before my mother passed away. It's a quixotic enterprise if ever there was one; all the important people I could share this language with in the way I am hearing it in my mind have passed away. Some friends have commented that it was an excellent undertaking for Covid-19 days. It was. Also--with all the disruptions of the past two years, it is a good project because it can be picked at with something that resembles diligence and consistency.

Ukrainian is a tough language to learn not least because of the past two centuries of the land's history.  Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), whose literary heritage is regarded as the foundation of Ukrainian literature--and, to a large extent, the legitimization of Ukrainian as an independent language--was jailed and exiled a revolutionary for daring to honor his own language as a a worthy medium of expression. I think any learner of Ukrainian quickly becomes aware of this political resonance in their choice.

In today's world, there are multiple resources for learning this language.

--Duolingo has a short learning tree (which includes ~⅓ the number of lessons as it's French or Spanish counterpart),
--Glossika has a full 5,000 spoken Ukrainian sentences--voiced by one of the harshest speakers of Ukrainian that I have ever heard. It's only free for 7 days, but is a great resource for improving one's ear.
--The UK Ukrainian Language organization is an excellent source for beginning pronunciation and for reading.
--Anna Ohoiko has a beautifully put together collection of language lessons and podcasts at Ukrainian Lessons. This is s free resource, but there are extras that can be added with a charge. This site has been active for a few years now, so there it a lot of content.
--for flashcards, Anki has some useful language decks (though Ukrainian does not rate as one of their top languages). You have to log in to access content. I find the ☀️Ukrainian Language Vocabulary: Illustrated deck particularly good--not least because it is my own creation.

These sources--they subtly contradict each other. Some offer a more Russian influenced Ukrainian, others less so. Between the 20th century diaspora and the last 30 years of Ukrainian independence--the culture and language are unsettled and in transition. A fascinating moment to participate in its study, but also frustrating, mysterious and immense/intense in its implications.

It's been months since I drew trees and goats in Florida.  Now warm enough outside that it's time to get out and do the same thing here.

Happy first day of Summer!

I've spent the past week working on the Henry L. Zietlow Memorial Trophy project.  My father and I began work on this project almost exactly two years ago, and, finally, it's reached its end stages. In memory, I sense that this work will merge into the unmoored passage of the months through the Covid-19 pandemic; I'll look back on these two years in a very particular time and way that will be marked by a heightened sensation of death and mortality and our places in that arc.

As I write this the pandemic is not over, but its character, post the release of four effective vaccinations this past spring, has very clearly changed. We have a means of protecting ourselves, whether or not we are able, as human beings, to deploy it effectively or humanely. So--the virus has evolved, but so has our capacity to evolve with it.

I read the Nicholas Carey article this morning and found it fascinating. Largely, it's about identity, and questions of self that address the ancient nurture/nature conundrum.

These thoughts are colliding in my head, and then, one of the commentators in Carey's piece chipped in with the quotation that closes this entry.

It pulled some ideas together in my mind about all the things I've written above. Not in a way I could express here--that would take hours of writing and revision for a piece that is meant to be short.

But also it made me want to read Of Human Bondage, to find the context for these words.

Ivana Kupala Day is celebrated in Ukraine July 6-7. It's more a festival than a holiday: the celebrations roots are ancient, as a celebration of the summer solstice, but it ... had a hard time making it intact through the 20th century, under the Soviet Regime.

"Reverence," "Indulgence," "Sumptuous," "Entitlement"--this is the vocabulary that comes to mind when I think "John Singer Sargent."  But then there is Sargent's friend, Henry Tonks. With whom none of these words can be associated.

Tonks was not an easy man to know. A physician before he became a painter--and during World War I, he became, for a time, physician again. Appointed an official war artist in 1918, he painted a series of uncompromising portraits of wounded soldiers which I do not recommend looking up on the internet unless you want to be upset. One of Tonks's early students, from the time Tonks was teaching in London, wrote:

We live in an amazing age when it comes to family documentation.  Philip Sampson was my grandmother's older brother.  He was one of the soldiers who participated in that famous "Christmas in the trenches."

Thanks go to my cousin Julie, for finding, and sharing, this article with me.

As I clear my desk & toss old envelopes...

Comical dog in lifejacket, ~2015

When I was young, my mother did a number of bad portraits of me. Or so I thought, at the time she was doing them.

My feral child self thought this one in particular was hideous, and especially was furious that she gave me yellow eyes.

Now that I am not young ... I better appreciate that my Mother was a patient painter.

​I was not a patient model.