Remembering the Farm - Reading opens every door.

Author Lynda Beck Fenwick (blog HERE, Facebook page HERE) has written several blog posts and Facebook comments about the importance of education in both homesteading times and today.  She emphasizes the role of literacy and accompanying love of books in formal education and in continuing one's education throughout one's life.

That got me thinking about reading and books in my own life and the lives of my children.  Before I started school, I drove my mother crazy with questions.  I wanted to know everything and especially WHY?  Once I started school and learned to read, her life was much simpler.  By the end of Grade 2, I was reading at an adult level, which is to say, anything around the house.

Reading was a struggle for my father.  I don't recall him reading anything other than farm papers and The Bible.  He preferred to read early in the mornings when he felt at his peak.  One of the weekly farm papers ran serial fiction, one of which was called "Death and the Gentle Bull" featuring a Black Angus bull.  Dad had to read that and got hooked on the story.  We teased him ever after about "getting up early in the morning to read a murder mystery.

Mom loved to read.  I have no idea how or even if she did anything to foster my love of reading other than make sure there was lots to read.  The farm papers, Canadian Cattlemen, Country Guide, The Western Producer, Free Press Weekly, and  Family Herald (the latter two ceased publishing long ago) interested me, especially as I got older.  But Macleans and Chatelaine magazines interested me from day one.

They were quite different then from today's versions.  Both were monthly or bi-weekly, I forget which. Macleans was more literary than news magazine and I loved the stories and articles. Chatelaine was targeted at the 1950's housewife with a great deal of human interest and educational stuff.  Especially educational stuff.  I have no idea if my parents ever had "the talk" with my younger siblings but mom knew I was getting my education from Chatelaine so she didn't worry.

My first real book was Black Beauty which I got for my 7th birthday.  I had two Robin Hoods; one by Howard Pyle and one by Henry Gilbert.  Preferred the latter as I grew older.  Kipling's The Jungle Book or All the Mowgli stories was another favourite.  I was about 11 or 12 when someone gave me Zane Grey's "Spirit of the Border" and I was HOOKED.  Read a great many of his books, graduating over the years to Ernest Haycox (the best) and Louis L'Amour.  Westerns are still my reading to relax genre.

Dad was able to buy us the World book encyclopedia in the late 1950s.  He had no money but managed to find enough for the cheapest no frills set.  The lady who sold them was someone Dad had worked for back in the 30s and I think gave them to us at cost. It was our "internet" and provided hours and hours of reading.

No idea when I joined "Book of the Month Club" but was a member for over twenty years, maybe more.  My library was starting to grow.  Used book stores and the bargain shelves helped add volumes without exorbitant cost.  Couldn't say exactly when I morphed into history but by my mid-20s for sure.  If I had it to do over, maybe I wouldn't have taken Animal Science but History instead.  though reading it is likely more fun than writing it.

Ella was also a reader.  Mostly human interest stuff, biographies, that kind of thing.  And Harlequins. And Royalty.  When our kids came along the house was full of books and we made sure that there was lots for them to read too.  Little Golden Books, Berenstein Bears and Dr Seuss.  I can likely still recite Hop on Pop or Hand Hand Finger Thumb.

Likely I am responsible for warping my kids' minds with my interpretations of their books. The Three Bears opened with "Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a house in the woods. Papa Bear pounded nails in the roof; Mama Bear watered the flowers and Baby Bear did tricks on the lawn".  I would explain to the children that I had no idea who Tricks was and that since she was never mentioned again must have been unimportant.  This horrified adult listeners but the children were oblivious.

The public library became a favourite haunt.  When we lived in Kindersley and our youngest was a wee new babe we had a blizzard that shut down the town.  So we bundled the kids and pulling two on the toboggan, we walked through the drifts to the Library - which was actually open.  When we moved, the Regina Public Library closest to us soon knew us all by name and our tastes by heart.

Our house continued to fill with books.  More and more shelving units were added.  One NEVER discards a book.  EVER.  The kids used to say that for any topics concerning WWI or WWII they had only to go to my books for their highschool reports.  They began accumulating their own libraries and by the time they began moving out it was "20 boxes of stuff and 20 boxes of books".

My oldest daughter has similar reading tastes to her mother.  After two degrees (Human Justice and Social Work) she swears she will never read anything on purpose from which she might learn something but on occasion she lies. My son reads history like his father but likes good novels even more.  If you take any newspaper's "Top 100 novels ever written" he has likely read 75 of them.  His thinking ability is far ahead of mine.  History helps me understand what happened and why.  Novelists invent the future.

My second youngest daughter is finishing off her dissertation for a PhD in Victorian Literature.  Everything between Jane Austen (pre-Victorian and L.M. Montgomery post-Victorian.  And my youngest daughter took her history degree and a Masters in Library Tech and is now a Librarian in a highschool in London England. She specializes in reading Young Adult books as those are her students' reading material. Oh, yes, and Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis.  (By the way, LynnieC, there are several new Latin translations of Harry Potter books available).

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.     Erasmus

The Ukrainian Election

Preliminary results would indicate that President Yanukovych's Party of the Regions will form the next government.

The Kyiv Post reported at 5:30 Ukraine time the following results:

These are the preliminary results as of 17.30 p.m.

Preliminary results of the leading parties that pass the 5 percent threshold on the closed party list. Figures taken from the Central Election Commission, after 69.21 percent of protocols were counted.

Party	Percentage of votes	Number of votes
Party of Regions	33.51	4 564 369
Batkivshchyna	22.97	3 129 026
Communist Party	14.51	1 976 813
UDAR	13.13	1 789 236
Svoboda	8.95	1 219 979

Preliminary results of the leading candidates in the single mandate districts. Figures taken from the Central Election Commission. Results are based on 59.22 percent of votes counted.

The First-past-the-post results can be seen here and are being updated as new counts come in.

Exit polls do not agree with the counts above that show the Regionnaires and the Communists with a lower percentage of the vote and the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) and UDAR with a higher percentage.

The Economist's Eastern Approaches blog believes that Yanukovych will get a simple majority but not a Constitution changing 2/3 majority, which means that Ukraine gets a shot at unseating him in 2015. 

The Party of the Regions and its allies are unlikely to win two thirds of the seats in parliament. It wanted this in order to change the constitution to abolish direct elections to the presidency. This would lower the risk for the unpopular Mr Yanukovych of losing the presidential race in 2015. If direct elections were abolished the president would be elected by parliament.

Where we live in Ukraine

It is hard to explain to folks who haven't been here about roads and villages and such.  These pictures are from Google Maps and if you plug Zhovti Vody, Dnipropetrovs'ka, Ukraine into Google Maps, you can get much bigger pictures than these.  But these will at least help orient you on the larger map.

Zhovti Vody city limits, with Mar'yanivka village extending downwards in the center of the lower half of the picture

Our house.  From this picture you should be able to locate us on the larger map

Mar'yanivka village, extending along the Zhovti (Yellow) river

Close up of the "business section", about 5 km "south" of our place

Locating Zhovti Vody relative to Kyiv, Dnipropetrovs'k and Krivii Rih

Family Dinner

Yesterday we took a chance and invited the boys for supper, hoping we could have one more feed of shashlik before it got too cold.  The wind howled all night.  This morning it was +20C, though misty and drizzly.   A warm enough day for shashlik if the BBQ could be kept in the shelter.

Tanya made chicken salad this morning and cutleta (fried hamburger patties), chopped up the pork and put it to marinate. I drove Tanya to vote about 2:00 pm, then picked up Roman and Lina about 3:00 to start the BBQ.  Roman is THE cook when it comes to perfect shashlik.  Masha was in dance class until after 4:00 so I drove back into town at 4:30 to pick up Andrei, Tania and Masha.  School is out next week so Masha is staying over (and I get to sleep on the divan).

We all seven of us crowded around the table, ate and drank our fill and had a good visit.  How Sunday nights should be; filled with family, food, fun and love.  I wish the rest of our family could someday join us so we could all be one family.

Head down; Mouth shut

Today was housecleaning day.  Tomorrow is election day.  We are kind of hoping Ukraine cleans house too but of course it isn't going to happen.  Yanukovych's Party of the Regions is going to win and people know it.  Not that they have anyone else to blame.  They voted him in last presidential election and enough of his party last general election to form a government, knowing (or they ought to have known) what was in store for them.

It was bad enough when they had proportional representation. Ninety odd political parties, many of them fictional, produced little clusters of deputies who sold out to the highest bidder.  Party of the Regions won the most seats and so drew the most of the small blocks.  This time, they have gone back to 50-50  proportional and first past the post. First past the post favours the Regionnaires  as there will be dozens of candidates, again many of them fictional, to split the votes of the opposition.

Polls have been banned for the past several weeks.  When 87% of the populace say they hate your guts two days before the election and you end up with 53.7% of the vote, it is a bit embarrassing, so no polls please.

The Orange Revolution in 2004 was the only time in the past several hundred years that Ukrainians "beat city hall".  And it got them the square root of Sweet Fanny Adams.  A president with no balls and a prime minister with big brass ones.  The folks who helped bring them to power wanted their payback and turned out to be just as incompetent and corrupt as the crowd they threw out.  So in a fit of pique, Ukraine voted in the bad guy next go round.

Yulia is in the slammer, sitting this one out, which may not be a bad thing.  She is better looking than Yanukovych, 1000 times more clever, and just as corrupt.  If she and her cronies were in power, how would things be different today for the Ukrainian in the street?  Other than Russian would not be the unofficial official language, maybe not much.  Just a different set of folks would have enriched themselves. My opinion.

So folks here are pretty discouraged and resigned, which is too bad.  The Economist reckons that the defeatism may not only let the Regionnaires win the election but get a Constitution changing majority. won't that be fun.  World Affairs has also written off this election to the Regionnaires but speculates about when Yanukovych himself will get the boot from his own party and supporters who may also tire of his incompetence.

In the meantime, Ukrainians will revert to form.  Head down, mouth shut and try not to be noticed while working to survive.  They, as a people, survived the Poles, the Turks, the Austrians, the Tsar, the Communists and the Germans (though a great many of them didn't survive those two inflictions) and now independence and a "market economy".  They will still be here when Yanukovych is gone.

Personal Responsibility

When the Religious Right use the term "Personal Responsibility", they mean "I'm OK; F.U."  However in Ukraine, people are, in a many respects, responsible for looking out for and after themselves.

If there is a hole in the middle of the road, such as an extra large pothole, and you hit it and break an axle, that is your problem.  Same if you are walking through the park, day or night, and step into an open manhole, after someone stole the cover, that is your problem.  Streets, sidewalks and stairs to the Metro icy and you slip and break a leg, that is your problem.  Icicles fall off the old buildings as you are walking by and kill you, that is really your problem.

People are also responsible for looking after their own documents because there is no guarantee the authorities will have copies, in fact, more likely that they won't.  So if you visit the doctor, you keep your own medical records and take them with you next time you go to the hospital or the doctor.  Tanya has medical file folders for both of us.  And several file folders related to the house. All documents to do with the gas permits; to do with utilities contracts (garbage pick up fees are based on the number of people registered to that address); to do with the Village Council.  You name it, we have copies of it and Tanya has it filed away somewhere.

Not sure what would happen if any of them were destroyed.  I'd feel happier if they were all scanned onto my computer, not that the copies would be accepted but at least it would give us a start in replacing them - at a fairly substantial cost, I expect.

On a side note, when we go married, Tanya kept her previous name because of the cost and complexity of changing all the necessary documents.  For example, she graduated from Krasnoyarsk Agricultural University thirty years ago and would have to contact them to change her name on her Diploma.  Go figure.

Updating Deeds and Titles

Try to imagine a country in which nothing is legally surveyed.  Farmland, individual small plots, housing lots, nothing.  That was the status of Ukraine post break-up of the Soviet Union.  No cadastre system.  So how does one return anything to private ownership when there is no legal description that will stand up in court?  With great difficulty and expense and over a period of time.

Farmland is an issue I won't deal with, as I don't know enough of the history; just that there have been a great many projects and a great deal of money involved in bringing it up to international standards.  I will deal with housing as we are just beginning to go through it ourselves.

First off, in the late 80s, when Tanya decided to build in the village of Mar'yanivka (I spell it Marianivka too), which is our actual address, not Zhovti Vody, she went to the village council and was assigned the lot on which our house stands.  It is 25 meters wide and 40 or possibly 60 meters deep with an extra 35 meters behind which we rent for  our kitchen garden; we never measured it and there are two drawings which do not appear to be to scale.  She has clear title to the house but no title to the land because there has been no legal description to date.

We are now in process of getting our lot surveyed and getting a deed drawn up by  the village council.  We took all our documents to them yesterday.  The village office and post office are 5 km from here on the other side of the Zhovti (Yellow) river.  I have never driven past there so have no idea how much farther the village goes.  They tend to be very long and very narrow on one or both sides of a river or stream.

There is a company that does the survey work, using satellite.  The villager we buy milk from sits on the council and he said that once there are about 10 people ready, they will contract the survey company.  That way it is cheaper.  By the time we pay for the survey and all documents it will cost us about $500 (4000 UAH) which is a month's pay for someone in the city with a good job and an unheard of sum for poor villagers.

Once we have the land properly documented, then we will bring our house documents up to date.  We did some remodeling when we first moved in; tore out a couple walls and added an upstairs bathroom.  We need to have new scale drawings done and registered at the village office. Having done remodeling in Regina, it is not much different other than there we were supposed to get the permits first.

House and outbuildings.  NOT accurate or to scale, I think but gives you an idea. Outside dimensions look impressive.  Once you deduct 18" walls it is not so big inside.  Front faces more or less SE