I started this project two years or so before my mother passed away. It's a quixotic enterprise for sure; 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. With all the disruptions of the past two years, it's been a good project because it can be picked at with something that resembles diligence and consistency.

Ukrainian is a tough language, not least because of the past two centuries of the land's history, torn between Austro-Hungarians and Poles and Russians and Soviets, mean that its current form (and how best to teach it!) is still a matter of some debate. 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 as a revolutionary for daring to honor his own language as a worthy medium of expression. Most late-life learners of Ukrainian quickly become aware of this political resonance in their learning choice.

All that said, it's a beautiful language, Slavic but sometimes described as "the sixth Romance language," with beautiful rolled Rs and many, many vowel sounds. The nightingale is a prized national symbol. What kind of a lunatic nation takes a tiny brown-feathered songbird as their national emblem?

In today's world, there are multiple resources online for learning Ukrainian. These are ones I've personally found useful:

--Duolingo has a short learning tree (which includes ~⅓ the number of lessons as its French or Spanish counterpart). A fine place to get started.
--Glossika has a full 5,000 spoken Ukrainian sentences--voiced by one of the harshest speakers of Ukrainian I have ever heard. It's only free for 7 days, but is a great resource for improving one's ear. Caveat: it does not exactly further one's sense of the famously poetic character of the language.
--The UK Ukrainian Language organization is an excellent source for beginning pronunciation and for reading. The first three lessons are particularly helpful--before it launches into daunting immersive mode!
--Anna Ohoiko has a beautifully put together collection of language lessons and podcasts at Ukrainian Lessons. This is a free resource, with extras that can be added for 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). Access to content requires a log-in. I find the ☀️Ukrainian Language Vocabulary: Illustrated deck particularly good--because it is my own creation and reflects my personal idiosyncrasies.

These sources—they subtly contradict each other, and it is, I find, that peculiar disorderly subtlety that offers my biggest challenge to learning Ukrainian. What is this language I am learning? A Russian influenced variant? A modern artificially nationalist one? Certainly it's not the "pure" ancient tongue of my forebears.

And yet, I find myself enraptured.  Between the 20th century diaspora and the last 30 years of Ukrainian independence--the culture and language are unsettled and in transition. It is a fascinating moment to participate in Ukrainian study.

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.

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.

Practicing drawing foxes, because pen and ink is not very forgiving... (sketch for an illustration of a few years back)

I send out Christmas cards, yearly. When I have time, I do an illustration. When I don't have time, they become... New Year's cards, or even Valentine's Day cards. I have lots of reasons for sending them, many of which have changed as the years go by. At this point in my life, having reliably updated mailing for my friends and the people I care about are definitely a big part of it. An "Addressee Unknown/Returned to Sender" rubber-stamped envelope is a pretty good way to be sure you've lost track of someone you once had much love for!

This year, with our late (U.S.) Thanksgiving, I am doomed. Lots of New Year's cards, for sure.