Christmas Cards and Letters

Our Christmas Letter for 2016 went out this morning.  Some by email, some by Facebook-messenger.  None by mail; I depend on others to make sure that those without computers (like my brother) get a copy. Four pages, of which 2 are photos, with a brief paragraph highlighting something about each person in the family.

People don't do that so much anymore, with Facebook to keep up to date with people and events.  I can count on two hands the number of letters But I like to keep up the tradition.  Partly because some people find it interesting (surviving members of my dad's cousins) and partly because cumulatively these letters contain a mini history of my family. I have letters going back to 1983.  One of my shirt-tail relatives has Christmas letters going back to 1969.

In the '50s, when I was a child, everyone sent Christmas cards, even to their neighbours half a mile down the road.  Letters were 5¢ and Christmas cards, if the envelope wasn't sealed, were 3¢. The cards were mounted on wall racks or strung across the room and 100 or more were not unusual in our farm home. I sold Christmas cards door to door as a youngster to raise money for Christmas presents.

The price of postage went up and the number of cards dropped off.  When Ella and I were married in 1974, we only sent cards to people when a letter was included.  Ella was a prolific correspondent and often spent Sunday afternoons cranking out handwritten letters to friends and relatives.  Christmas letters were merely continuations of on-going correspondence and were individually composed. About 10 years in, that got to be too much so we began with mass mailing a standard letter.  From that time on, I have copies.

Eight years ago, I blogged about Christmas letters also.
http://dablogfodder.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-letters.html

Letters run from the sublime to the ridiculous but I can honestly say we never got one like this:
http://dablogfodder.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-letter-nobody-sends.html

We did write one of our own like that, loosely based on letters we received over the years. The guilty parties are since deceased but are fondly remembered.

2016 - My Year in Books

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2016/4571039

According to Goodreads, I read 101 books in 2016.  Of these about 21 qualify as 'real' books.  The remainder are westerns, mainly Louis L'Amour, of which I have all his works in digital format.  I have hundreds of books on my e-reader but my brain was worn out so I gave it most of the year off.

Currently, I am reading The Black Count, a biography of Alexander Dumas' father, who was the original Count of Monte Cristo.  Rather fascinating account of racism and politics in late 18th century, early 19th century France.

Also reading Set Adrift Upon the World, the Sutherland clearances.  Commonly referred to as the Highland Clearances, this history covers one particular region and land owner. With the best of intentions, the landowners set out to 'resettle' the crofters with terrible unintended consequences.

My goal this year is 50 'real' books.  We shall see.

Christmas Dinner at our House

What a marathon December turned into.  Tanya was already down with the flu (temps of 40+) on Dec 10 when I went rolling in the mud of a plowed garden trying to keep separate my dog Volk and the neighbour's dog, Ronald, who were intent on killing each other. Volk deserved a good beating but not necessarily being killed.  I had one collar in one hand and one in the other for it seemed like 20 minutes until the neighbour came and got his dog. The next day I was in bed, too.  Flu and Bronchitis for both of us.

Tanya's niece, Sveta, an absolute angel, packed her toothbrush, her cat Murashka, and dog Limonka, and moved in with us for two weeks. We could not have managed without her.

Tanya and I were both on injectable antibiotic, morning and night.  I was supposed to roll one way in the morning and the other at night to even out the injection sites but could never remember which.  Sveta said both ways looked the same anyhow. I was the first human Sveta had injected but she had lots of practice on dogs.  She nursed Limonka for a couple months through a disease that kills most dogs.  She should have been a vet instead of a corn breeder.

My youngest daughter, Lynmara, was arriving from London on Dec 22nd.  I was supposed to meet her in Kyiv at the airport.  Not going to happen, so we called a taxi driver friend of ours in Kyiv and he met my daughter and her friend, Mark, and got them safely to the train station.  Sveta went to meet them in P'yatikhatki and they were at our place by 11:00 pm.  We filled them full of borshch and stew and sent them to their beds.

Next day, Tanya was well enough to supervise daughter-in-law Lina and Sveta to get things moving for Christmas. I was well enough to lose three straight games of cribbage.  By Christmas Eve, Tanya and I were both 90% mended and spent the day cooking and baking.

My Ukrainian family's gift to me, which I greatly appreciate, is to celebrate Christmas December 25th (we also celebrate Jan 7th too) so I will not miss my family in Canada too much.  So we have a big Christmas dinner and exchange gifts.  Andrei was running a fever so he dropped off Tania and the two girls and Tania's mother and went home to bed (he was well in a couple days). So with Lynmara, Mark, Sveta, Lina, Tanya and I we had 10 people around the table.  With enough food for twenty.

The dinner table

Just in case you doubt me, here is the menu:

• Green tossed salad
• Kholodets (jellied meat, made from half a 6 kg farm raised chicken)
• Salad Olivier (Russian Potato Salad)
• Broccoli spears and dip 
• Roast turkey (half a 10 kg farm raised bird) and cranberry sauce.
• Poached salmon steaks
• Kutleta (Ukrainian meatballs), mashed potatoes and gravy
• Cold sliced roast beef
• Cold sliced roast pork loin
• Black and green olives
• Pickled mushrooms
• Dill pickles
• Blue cheese and crackers
• Grapes, mandarin oranges
• Cookies and muffins

After dinner we exchanged gifts.  Lynmara had something for everyone, including packages of OLD cheddar cheese which we cannot get in Ukraine (though we can get many wonderful kinds of European cheese). Then we did pictures.

Mark, Sveta, Lynmara, Lina

Lynmara, Dasha, Masha

Dasha loves to come to our place because she has room to run and she loves to run.  So we went up to the office and she asked for 'good music' which means Rossini's William Tell Overture Finale.  We had moved her trampoline into the attic so she just ran circuits around the room.  Where do kids get so much energy?

Mark had to fly home next day as he had people coming so Lynmara, being familiar with the system, went with him to show him the ropes on the night train and make sure he got to the airport. Then she came back on the express that evening.

Lynmara flew home on the 31st and Tanya and I settled back into the routine of just the two of us, three cats and two dogs.  We had a quiet New Year's Eve supper in front of the TV and went to bed about 1:00 am.

2017 Please Don't Suck.

The new year is coming.

This, of course, means that everyone and their dog has a New Years post with something to say. I am no different. I have been quiet the last few months, but today I had a need to write.

This last year, that of 2016, has been a rough one. I have to admit that it has nearly defeated me on more than one occasion and I am not sad to see it go. . . 

Continued in the link below:
Please. Don't. Suck.

My oldest daughter wrote the above. She doesn't blog often.  It seemed like the perfect beginning for a new year so I am linking to it.  I am not sure I can measure up to the Standards she sets herself for the new year but it is certainly a good benchmark.

An article in Scientific American forwarded to me by a friend provided food for thought but again, I know I cannot live up to their methodology with those I disagree with. Especially when I despise them.  Republican Jesus Christians make me angry beyond words

How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail

Maybe you can, Dear Reader.  In that, I wish you all the best and for the new year too.

Corruption in Ukraine

Sorry this isn't much of a post.  We both have the flu at our house and publishing anything takes a great deal of effort.  The text is from the news feed, followed by the article.

Exiled lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko on Dec. 6 released the first of a series of audio recordings he claims prove President Petro Poroshenko and his inner circle are corrupt.

The recording was released by the strana.ua online newspaper. In the recording, Onyshchenko and lawmaker Oles Dovhiy, whom the fugitive member of parliament described as representing Poroshenko, discuss the possibility of Onyshchenko, a suspect in an embezzlement case, reaching a plea bargain with Ukrainian authorities. Onyshchenko told strana.ua that the plea bargain would be reached in exchange for him writing off Poroshenko’s alleged $50 million debt to him.

Onyshchenko has said he had been an intermediary in Poroshenko’s alleged efforts to bribe lawmakers and to organize a smear campaign against ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk before Yatsenyuk quit in April. He has also accused Poroshenko of extorting money from businesses and politicians, raiding companies and trying to monopolize the media by negotiating to buy television channels.

https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/onyshchenko-releases-first-recording-poroshenkos-alleged-graft.html

A lot of what Onyshchenko is saying is not new and has been said by many more credible sources, including ex-prosecutor generals Davit Sakvarelidze and Vitaly Kasko, lawmakers Sergii Leshchenko and Viktor Chumak and others.

His detailed portrayal of the brazen way in which members of parliament are bribed and state companies are fleeced is astonishing. What makes it more credible is that these practices were well-known before, and that Onyshchenko effectively admitted to taking part in these corruption schemes.

In fact, it is not the critics and accusers who are destabilizing Ukraine and lending Russian dictator Vladimir Putin a hand. It is Ukraine’s amazingly thievish and out-of-touch bureaucracy, which is slowly killing the nation by stealing whatever crumbs are left of the country’s wealth and thus giving fodder to criticism.

If true, Onyshchenko’s accusations could be the beginning of Poroshenko’s downfall, similar to those of his predecessors Leonid Kuchma in the wake of the scandal over the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze and Viktor Yanukovych following his decision to drop an association deal with the European Union.

https://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/editorial/onyshchenkogate.html

Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a fugitive lawmaker from the People’s Will faction, has accused President Petro Poroshenko and his inner circle of massive corruption and released what he says is evidence to back his claims.

Though the vast scale of Ukrainian corruption was common knowledge, Onyshchenko’s sweeping allegations add minute detail to the overall picture and specify the exact amounts allegedly paid by the president to bribe lawmakers, as well as those allegedly extorted from state companies by Poroshenko and his right-hand man, lawmaker Ihor Kononenko.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine has opened a criminal case to investigate Onyshchenko’s claims, while some lawmakers have called for the creation of a special commission. Poroshenko’s critics argue that the scandal could potentially lead to his impeachment and have compared it to the scandal around tapes allegedly implicating then-President Leonid Kuchma in the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000

https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/onyshchenko-makes-sweeping-claims-poroshenko-graft.html

Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Bureau obtains evidence as to ownership of the Parliamentarian Segey Faermark in Ukrainian subsidiary of Belgian giant Jan De Nul

http://eutoday.net/news/nabu

How advocacy groups work

My nephew sent me a link to this article a week ago.  Took me a week to read it and I don't pretend to understand much of it.  The following section did explain a great deal to me that I had always suspected but could never put into words as well as this.

Keystone XL was less central than abortion, but still “a top-tier election issue for the 2014 elections for the United States Senate, House of Representatives, governors in states and territories, and many state and local positions as well.”8 In case you missed the fuss, Keystone XL was a proposed oil pipeline. The environmental lobby, and the American left in general, devoted extraordinary efforts to preventing its construction. As far as I can tell, the possible environmental consequences were minor; there are many more important environmental policy questions which the movement has fought much less hard. Although notionally environmentalists’ concern was possible spills, everyone understood that Keystone was symbolically about global warming, and therefore really about global warming—even though everyone also understands that in practice it would have had almost no effect. Other policies affect carbon emissions far more, and might have been altered with far less effort. So why did the left choose to draw a line in the sand at Keystone XL?

In “The toxoplasma of rage,” Alexander suggests an explanation.9Advocacy groups deliberately choose bad examples because those generate the most controversy. The one they promote is obviously wrong, so the Tweedledum side objects loudly. However, the general principle is considered correct by everyone on the Tweedledee side, so they feel they have to defend it. Their specific arguments are perforce lousy—even if the principle is right—so Tweedledum senses blood in the water and closes in for the kill. But the underlying, broader issue seems critical, so Tweedledee will defend the unconvincing symbolic example to the death. The brutality of the ensuing battle generates huge publicity for the cause. (And also, to be cynical, donations to the advocacy organization, and advertising revenue for the media that cover it and fan the flames.)

If you want to signal how strongly you believe in taking victims seriously, you talk up the least credible case you can find. A rape that obviously happened? Shove it in people’s face and they’ll admit it’s an outrage, but they’re not going to talk about it much. There are a zillion outrages every day. A rape allegation will only spread if it’s dubious enough to split people in half along lines corresponding to identity politics. People start screaming at each other about how they’re misogynist or misandrist or whatever, and your Facebook feed gets hundreds of comments in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS about how my ingroup is being persecuted by your ingroup.10

A commenter on a post related to the Dakota Pipeline asked how he could become a professional protester, having done it voluntarily for years.  My response was this: You need to put yourself in a position where you can profit by your activism. Neil Young, Leonardo di Caprio, Jane Fonda, Elizabeth May and Niki Ashton come to mind. Or start your own NGO, find something highly divisive to be against that you are unlikely to have any real impact on, enlist the help of people like the above named and the money will start flowing in. You can even partner with other anti-everything NGOs to get name recognition. 

Of course, as a 'true believer' it went right over his head, so I am sure he will always be a useful tool of whatever NGO or other organization has figured out not only how the system works but how to work the system.

Incoherent Ramblings

Today I have nothing intelligent to say and will write several paragraphs to prove it.

My news feed is filled with stories of America's descent into the abyss, Russia's intrusion into the elections of European countries as France and now Italy seem poised to move to the right if not the far right, and Ukraine's refusal to deal with corruption at the highest levels. Fortunately there are also stories of kittens and puppies and lions and tigers and bears (oh my). And memes of atrocious puns.

My daughter and a friend are coming from London for Christmas so Tanya is cleaning the house from top to bottom.  Halloween being over, it was OK to remove the, uh, decorative cobwebs from the ceiling and corners.  Tanya and I both are not fond of spiders (see also Winston Smith and rats).  She was dusting away and I yelled "Паук! Паук!" (spider, spider).  She jumped and then told me "Идите в баню". (Get to the Sauna which is polite for Go to Hell).

Her niece Sveta and daughter-in-law Lina have been press ganged into helping.  I felt guilty about the amount of help those two girls have given us over the past couple of years but last fall we gave them a 14 day all inclusive package in Turkey.  A great many firsts for the girls.  Sometimes it is more fun watching the wonderment of others enjoying themselves than going ourselves. At the same time, Tanya's son Andrei and family were in Turkey for the first time and we got daily, sometimes hourly updates from both.

Ukraine has no flu vaccine this year so it is a real worry if kids get sick.  Dasha had just recovered when Masha got sick with a high fever.  She went to Baba Natasha's as sort of quarantine. She is getting better.  Yesterday about 9:00 am Tanya left for town to take Masha some pumpkin muffins and never came home.  She phoned me about 4:00 pm to let me know she would be home in 5 minutes. The car was filled with packages.  Lina had phoned and asked if she wanted to go shopping in Krivii Rih.  What a dumb question that was.  I had no idea where Tanya had been and she asked "Weren't you worried about me?" "No.  When you are on the loose it is other people I worry about".

Tanya plants her garden until she gets tired and then plants the rest to pumpkins to fill in space.  Every year we have wheelbarrows of pumpkins most of which get chucked out by spring. Not this year. Tanya got a recipe for pumpkin muffins and has been churning them out by the dozens.  There is always a bowl full on the table.  I ate the last one for breakfast and there are more in the oven as I write. Our black cat, Vovo, even likes them and stole a couple from the dish one night.

My thermostat is going in my old age.  At night when I go to bed, I am thoroughly chilled and it takes me forever to warm up.  Then I warm up and suddenly am too hot so I roll the blanket to the centre of the bed and sleep the rest of the night with just the sheet.  The other night I was frantically throwing off the blanket and Tanya mumbles, out of a sound sleep, "Menopause?"

Runkeeper makes walking more enjoyable because it has statistics and charts and stuff like that. So I walk two or three days then give my knees and hips a break for a day and continue on. The dogs are quite happy with this arrangement. I vary my routes so they have new places to sniff periodically.

Dasha, at three and a half, does what Dasha wants.  She was talking to Baba Tanya on Skype the other day and her mother wanted her to eat something. "I don't want to eat". Baba Tanya told her she needed to eat because her mother had made food for her.  "I SAID I don't want to eat". "But you must eat so you will be strong and healthy". "I'm not talking to you anymore" and she walked away.  Little wretch. Masha was quietly obstinate at that age.  Dasha is just obstinate.

A Legend-Dairy Pun