nipernaadiagain

Took a bus to Tartu in Thursday - listened to a lecture on topic of heraldic symbols, had a lunch with my son and took a walk.



Spotted sour looking graffiti of Poe on Poe street. No wonder Poe looks bit of embarrassed - he probably thought the street was named in his honor. But no, Poe street just means "Shop street" in Estonian.

( What more did I notice this time )

And what about you? How did your week go?

It was wise from Jo Walton to warn the potential readers of "Among Others" : "There never was such a year as 1979". I should have listened to her! But was I able to? No!

( Read more )

This is how March looks like here. Typical March snow:



The neighbors cat getting into March mood:



Laundry on line:

This is how I looked yesterday and today morning, helping my mother by bringing in wood for the stoves from the woodpiles they have too far from the house (if you ask me, that is! And I am SO grateful I am born as human and not as a horse, as I would not like to be pulling loads like that all my life)

Of course, my 80 years old mother was telling me how there was no need to come and help, she is able to get the wood herself. Father is in hospital, getting kidney stones demolished, that is why wood is also task of my mother.

But to balance out the too rustic tasks, the other help my mother needed was with changing her Facebook password. I also taught her to use the "like" feature, as a new small relative had been born 2 days ago.

Then I was off for the bus to the closest town Pärnu (where I had time for a side trip to buy some postcards) and from there back to Tallinn, leaving my mother entertaining herself with Facebook.

Turn right for post office, museum, library and Babtist church. What is your guess, to which of these would I have been most likely headed to?

( More sunny winter saturday under the cut )

A different view - one about the favorites to read to the children. My older son used to love a traffic rules book for children written by Kirill Teiter and drawn by Raivo Järvi. I had loved Raivo Järvi, a student of Estonian Academy of Arts who, with his ginger cat, led a TV show called Post Office of Cat Artur" back in the end of 1970-ies. So I eagerly bought the book and it was read to pieces ( I have now borrowed a copy from library just to show you )



My favorite panel about Karla the Punk. Karla tells off the evil alien Kurjam and fastens it to his ear as a decoration, but then falls to the "Are you some blind animal, man! Cannot you see the green light on the other side of the road, are you taking a nap here as some old wreck?"

His hairdo comes handy for Nurjam to stop him in time, as for the first part of the road there is still red light on.

( But there is more )

When standing in line in the post office today, waiting to send some homely nostalgia to my daughter in USA, I observed that the young woman in front of me was, apparently, doing the same. I mean sending taste of Estonia to someone far away. So in the box went the gingerbread cookies, the loaf of rye bread, the raw blood sausages ... wait a minute, WAIT A MINUTE! Raw blood sausages?!

The post office clerk asked: "Are you SURE you want to send these? They would most certainly go off during the journey and most countries do not let in raw products anyway."

So the young woman changed her mind, she and her boyfriend, who got the honor of having to carry away the sausages, will get to eat a LOT of blood sausages in near future and the friend in Italy will not, after all, get the food poisoning sent from home!

In case my story made your mouth water for some blood sausage, I have copied a recipe for you!

As it is big, ( it is hidden under the cut )

I have been thinking about some of my childhood favorites, about the books that I used to reread again and again. Elsa from "Born Free" was not the only lioness there.



On this picture you can see Vera Chaplina and lion cub Kinuli. Unlike Elsa, Kinuli grew up in a room of a communal flat in Moscow. And the story got internationally famous right away - for example, «The Christian Science Monitor» in USA wrote about Kinuli already in December 1935 and first translation of stories by Vera Chaplina "My Animal Friends" was published in London in 1939.

Those of you, who are able to read Russian, can learn (or remember, if they also used to love the animal stories by Vera Chaplina) more about Vera Chaplina in these wonderful LJ entries - 1 and 2. In fact, I would suggest even readers who do not know any Russian to take a look - as the photos are fun, too!

There is also a slide film (диафильм) from year 1936 and another one, in the end of which you can watch a bit of movie about Kinuli the lionesss.

I am so grateful that 1_9_6_3 has helped me to remember the pleasure I used to get from reading the stories by Vera Chaplina!

Columbina wrote in one of her entries:

"I had never been to Philadelphia before this trip. It may be a long time before I attempt to go there again.

I realize that's unfair of me, to blame Philadelphia for the fact that this trip was a three-day excursion into pain and torment. OR IS IT? Sure, you could take the position that all of these bad happenings cannot possibly be blamed on the town and its citizens in any way. OR you could take the position that this was all some diabolical conspiracy on the part of the anthropomorphized Philadelphia-massmind-entity to lure me in and then deal me an enormous smelly shit sandwich of misery.

No, no, I'm pretty sure I don't really believe that. But nonetheless, fair or unfair, Philadelphia is a little tainted for me right now, and while I apologize to all its residents and its attractions, which I'm sure are lovely, it may be a while before I can bring myself to pay it another visit."

For me Boston would be the opposite of what Philadelphia was to Columbina - always nice, sun comes out as soon as I come there, be it in April or in September.



( And after reavealing the friendly face of an aliean town, more Boston as I saw it hidden under the cut )