Day 3848: Ukrainka and Arwa.

   

"Limbo": ink, acrylic, collage, digital.

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2GN2S ...

 

This month marks the 152nd birthday of Ukrainian poet, Larysa Kosach-Kvitka. She used a pseudonym, Lesia Ukrainka,  because in the Russian empire, publications in the Ukrainian language were forbidden.

Known for her plays, poems and for her political activism, Lesia Ukrainka is regarded as one of the most notable Ukrainian writers of Ukrainian literature. She traveled extensively throughout Europe and Egypt in search of treatment for tuberculosis, and she learned much about the world beyond her native land. Writing from Vienna in 1891 she said, “I look at the Europe and the Europeans before me, and I want to say something true even though I’m on the sidelines… My first impression was that I had entered another world – a better world, a freer world. It will be much harder for me now when I return to my country. I’m ashamed that we are so enslaved, that we carry such heavy shackles and sleep so peacefully under them. I have awakened, and I am sad and I grieve; I am in pain…”

Kosach-Kvitka had a gift for languages, speaking English, German, French, Italian, Greek, Latin, Polish, Russian, Bulgarian, and her native Ukrainian. She wrote prolifically in spite of a debilitating illness that often kept her bedridden for months.

Excerpt from Rufin and Priscilla  (1908)
“If this continues, we will soon become
strangers in our native land,
exiles from the heavenly state,
because it has no place in our world,
and we can not get there,
where we must first die to come to life
and lose all human likeness,
to become not people and not gods,but something like a shadow, like smoke, like steam. ”

 

 

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, and former CNN Senior International Correspondent Arwa Damon reflected on what she's learned from the crisis. The way the world has responded with care and aid throughout the devastation is unlike anything she's ever seen in a military conflict, she said: "The way people responded to Ukraine is the way that we should be responding to people in crisis.

 That should be our standard." So she started the nonprofit International Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance (INARA) to serve people in Ukraine, Turkey, Syria and other countries facing crises with humanitarian assistance for victims. Whether it's therapy for families who've experienced trauma or emergency medical treatment, INARA is now one of the groups on the ground providing aid and encouraging those of us at home to contribute. 

 

 

 

 

Throwback Thursday

 

 

Demura Sensei and Instructors

February, 2010

 

 

 

A 3-minute video, visiting birds, here.

 

Just because ...

 

Red-crested Turaco

 

Smiles for Thursday ...

 

  

 

  

 

                             Thanks for coming by today ...