I have returned to Dnipropetrovsk after a wonderful Vermont summer. I've been here four days and already I feel pretty settled in. It's nice to come back to the apartment we had last spring. I will be here until February 1, 2008, when I move to Lviv. I have already rented an apartment in Lviv, which is near the border with Poland.

I started teaching yesterday. It was fun to see the students again, and to plan with them what we will read this year. They had some ideas, which they voiced-I guess the “participatory” classroom I was trying to create worked.

One class of third year psychology students decided to read A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I am re-reading it now. I had forgotten what a well-written book it is. It describes World War II, but from an American perspective. However, it is primarily about relationships and coming of age. I hope they will enjoy it.

The parliamentary elections here are September 30. There were billboards in Kyiv, but there is little hoopla here. I will be one of many “international observers” for the elections. I will be paired with a Russian or Ukrainian-speaking observer. I plan to observe in Kyiv, about six hours north of here. Later this month we will get training from the U.S. Embassy and from OSCE, which oversees elections in different countries.

This is not a presidential election; it is an election for members of parliament. However, it will serve as a referendum on the president and prime minister. Most expect that Viktor Yushchenko will lose some influence as a result of this election.

It is difficult to find any election fervor here - no one here has yet mentioned the election to me. Disillusionment, disinterest and apathy are the main reactions, rather than interest.

Another Fulbrighter has come to Dnipropetrovsk, Dr. Young-Tae Shin. I have enjoyed getting to know her. She teaches Political Science in Oklahoma. She will be here until the end of June.

Tomorrow I will visit an art therapy program at a hospital for disabled children, and then take a walk by the river with Young-Tae. Monday I meet with a television crew (help!) called Encyclopedia, and then I teach in the afternoon. Tuesday, I begin my Russian lessons.

Anya, our Ukrainian student visitor, has arrived back in Dnipropetrovsk and is visiting her family outside the city before returning for classes. She is studying to be a mining engineer, and enjoyed visiting Rock of Ages, which (coincidentally) owns a mine in Ukraine! Olga, my friend and translator, flies home to Dnipropetrovsk tomorrow. This summer has been a whirlwind of activity and impressions which none of us will soon forget.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the Alps on my way home from Ukraine in July. I spent three nights in Interlaken with my sister and nephew. We took cog railways and other "teleferiques" to the “top” (well, almost) of the Jungfrau, and to Murren, a carless village. Then I spent about 8 nights in the Chamonix valley/Mont Blanc area. I fell in love with it, despite persistent downpours. My home base was Argentiere, a perfect village outside of Chamonix. I did hike, and spent two nights in mountain “refuges” on the Tour de Mont Blanc (everyone should do this once). Then, chauffeured by my French sister and her son, Simon, we visited the Vallee d'Aoste in Italy for two nights. My French mother, “Maman”/”Ninette,” in her 80s, is still up and able, as energetic as ever. It was truly wonderful to see her in her mountain home again. Two nights in Chaville, outside of Paris, completed a wonderful time in Western Europe - long evenings chatting with my French sister, Cati, who is working on a plan to move the family back to Savoie after a long stint in the outskirts of Paris.

Finally, David's 60th birthday bash in late July was an event to remember. David wore the Irish flag throughout, even as he led the over-60s to victory in whiffle-ball. You might say the young'uns let him win, as he was the ONLY over-60 who played. Our sons Devin and Bryce came home for the event, and we were all gratified by good friends, good food and a gorgeous Vermont day. The next one is 70, and, well, after that the rental cars don't let you rent anymore.

September 2007

In Dnipropetrovsk, there are very few libraries, and those that do exist have few new books. Students have almost no ability to borrow a recent book, or to browse a shelf. There are very few bookstores. Those that exist have a limited number of books, very few of them in English.

I started to create resource shelves in academic buildings in Dnipropetrovsk. These will hold English language books on open shelves, which can be borrowed for two weeks at a time. Students and others will sign the books out, and return them, using an honor system. I have sent and brought more than 500 books for these centers, including history, literature, anthologies, science, women's studies, creative writing, gender studies, psychology, poetry, atlases, biographies and memoirs. I have included dozens of magazines as well, particularly The Economist and National Geographic. Each book has a bookplate saying it is a gift of the Fulbright program (and providing the Fulbright websites in Ukraine and in the U.S.). These "open shelves" will be in Buildings One and Two of the Dnipropetrovsk National University, as well as in the Window on America room on Karl Marx Prospekt. A smaller collection of International Relations and International Economics books is in the faculty room in Building Nine. Student and faculty are already borrowing books from these shelves, and passing them around. In some cases, I have provided multiple copies of novels or memoirs. These can be used as classroom texts. A small book discussion group will meet in January 2008 to discuss such readings. In addition, where possible, the resource shelves contain films based on the books.

I have been coaching actors in a locally produced educational television program. The program is designed to teach English in entertaining ways, through a humor club, a cooking club and so on. Two of "my" students are acting in these scenes as well -- dressed as aliens! Several talented local newscasters perform in the series. The Ukraine Fulbright program and website are featured in the credits for each show.

Mobile phone: 8095 186 3503

For more updates from Ukraine, and for more pictures, see www.linda-gray.blogspot.com and picasaweb.google.com/linda.b.gray.

Radishes in the potholes, cell phones at the ready, and old luggage in the market

This bunch of radishes was by far the best thing I have witnessed in a while. A cement sidewalk paver, about six inches square, was missing from the sidewalk in front of a retail store. So the thoughtful shopkeeper had put a bunch of radishes in the depression where the paver belonged.

These radishes were wet and muddy. At first, I thought that someone had dropped the radishes. Then I realized that I've never seen usable food on the ground in Ukraine. If you put food down, someone picks it up within about thirty seconds. People were walking past these radishes like they were not there.

Aha! What a great substitute for an orange cone. Radishes as a warning: "Don't trip!"

That kind of ingenuity is something I see every day in Ukraine, although I have to admit, this was the funniest and the most surprising. People know how to get by. They turn something into something else. Nothing is wasted. Need a bowl? Cut a large water bottle in half and voila! A bowl! Strong cloth used as a hinge. A hymn becomes a beggar's trade. Need a belt? Tear a strip of cloth and link it through the two back belt loops. Cinch it tight, and your pants will fit.

A young seminarian with his long black robes wears a snazzy daypack, strides with big steps, and pulls out his cell phone.

A forty year-old beggar with no legs sits on a low rolling skateboard-sized platform with his white baseball hat on the pavement in front of him for donations. Bored, he smokes a cigarette and talks on his cell phone.

Europe never knew it could be colonized. However, while Europe was sleeping, the cell (here, "mobile") phone took over their world. Mobile phone stores occupy the swankiest downtown retail locations; their advertisements dominate the billboards. Students buy chips and cards from several different service providers, as many providers have "call your friend" programs that work for free. Very important meetings are frequently interrupted by cell phone jingles, anything from a laughing baby to a symphony to Tina Turner might ring out at any quiet moment. The only gatherings I have seen which are not interrupted in this way are church services.

Mobile phones are so necessary and ubiquitous now, that they have leap-frogged the need for Internet and e-mail. A Ukrainian with a phone at his or her ear is at work - no matter whether s/he is at the office or shopping for ice cream. My time here has been full of surprises, but it is the babushkas, with a few plastic soda bottles of fresh unpasteurized milk and a few green onions to sell, waiting for customers while talking on their cell phones, who represent, for me, the changing face of present-day Ukraine.

In just three weeks I must end my stay in Ukraine. My sadness at leaving is tempered, somewhat, by the sweat pouring down my face as I pack my mementos. I may be sad to leave, but I don't want to carry all the baggage I have accumulated here. The metaphorical baggage that is in my head and heart I carry with me gladly. The literal baggage is another matter. What to take with me, what to leave here?

Separating things by kind and color are kindergarten skills, and although I have a Ph.D., I never quite grasped the sorting skills that make for a confident five-year-old. So, today, I had the familiar Ukraine Fulbright experience. I took five heavy packages to MEEST in Lviv to ship home.

I had packed and repacked these things, everything was wrapped and separated and pillowed and safe. In the Lviv market I had bought two almost identical suitcases to hold my things. They were each at least fifty years old. The price? Seventy-five hryvnias (about $15) each.

At the market, I was trying to decide if I wanted them. Would they fit the things I was planning to put into them? Was it a good price? Did I need them; were they in good shape? Many shoppers came by to lend advice. "Ruski" they pointed to one. "Nimtsi" pointing to the other. All agreed the German one was better. Besides, it still had a functioning handle.

I bought them both. Like many in Galicia (a region of western Ukraine and neighboring Poland, now bisected by the international border), I was unable to decide between the strength of the Nazis and the Red Army, between the German and Soviet occupations. At home I gave them a fuller inspection. The German one was much lighter and just as sturdy as the Russian one. The Russian one had a leather handle (now ripped and not repairable); the German one had a strong metal handle that will last into the next millennium. The German one had better latches and locks. The Russian one needed string to hold it together.

Ultimately I used them both. I sent them off today with a vague sense of regret. Who else had used these, where and when, and why? Is it acceptable to take them across the Atlantic now, after all these years and trips and travels and emigrations and hidings and fleeing?

Forced migrations, midnight departures, famine, disease and war were endemic in twentieth-century Europe. Today, sixty years after the treaties were signed, World War II (or, in the Russophile regions of the former USSR "the war for the motherland") still rages. The desperate actions and choices of residents of Ukraine during that period are still remembered with trauma, or, far more frequently, denied and repressed. And, though Halychany (residents of Galicia) would phrase it differently, the German army (like the suitcase) at one time represented the more reasonable choice. Better trained, better funded, better equipped, better motivated and benefiting from a tradition of efficient work, the Germans appeared to be the likely victors in 1942, when their army pushed through Lviv on their way to Kyiv and Stalingrad.

It is sobering to consider that by stalwartly resisting the Nazi assault at Stalingrad, the indefatigable and valiant soldiers of the Red Army, who understood that "one step back" would mean execution for treason, saved western European civilization from itself. After an almost endless siege, starving, poorly equipped, untrained and often leaderless, these men and women fought no longer for the motherland, but, as in wars everywhere, for each other, for the next soldier in the dugout. The youth of one of Western Europe's oldest and brightest Germanic cultures, along with the impossibly courageous youth of the Soviet Union, bled into the soil out of compassion for their compatriots.

When veterans and partisans gather in intimate circles on Prospekt Svobody in Lviv as they do every Sunday to discuss world events and politics, they frequently end their evenings by singing songs which date from this period - a period of compassion and brotherhood alongside savagery and terror. Women and men who witnessed at close hand the worst inhumanity that the twentieth century had to offer, straighten their shoulders, plant their feet, and take off their hats. An occasional tear wells up, and, unhindered, rolls to the chin. The songs carry the spirit, the old eyes sparkle, and in the glorious five-part a capella harmony that is every Ukrainian's musical birthright, they sense again how purposeful and unified they felt at one time, and for a brief, poignant moment, their potential to feel compassion and union once again.