Surrounding Myself with Ginger

At first I did not get why I was getting all sorts of ginger flavored candies.  I clearly had not done my homework on what the post chemotherapy nausea landscape might look like and what I might do to combat it.  These people knew more about what I was about to face than I did, and in retrospect I am grateful that they knew more than I did.

I was doing just fine with my anti-nausea medication, sailing along, eating and exercising, wondering what was the big deal.  All that ended on  Day 3.  Not to go into too many, or really, any details, let's just say I figured out very quickly what the big deal was all about.  I spent the entire day trying to get back into control, with modest success, but the thing that I did discover is that ginger really is a big comfort.  Don't leave home without it.  I have almost daily been reminded that there is abundant kindness in the world, and now I include that who taught me about ginger.

The Last Five Years (2015)

I cannot remember what the trailer for this movie was like, and what about it attracted me to it, but whatever it was, it misled me completely.
I am sure there are people who love this movie because it is really a musical and in the most modern sense of the word.  But almost literally every word of the movie is sung.  It is at least 90% told in song.  Which I find somewhat annoying, because when people are singing it is a lot harder to tell what they are feeling, or for that feeling to come across as genuine. 
The story is the break up of a relationship.  There clearly is sexual chemistry between the couple but the degree of intimacy they have is hard to gauge.  The don't have conversations, they sing about their relationship instead, and I really don't know how to figure that out.  It may be a very simple story that became way more complicated when they couldn't just tell us stuff.
The one good thing that I can say is that if you like singing, these guys can sing and there is nothing painful about that part of the movie.

Sergei Posad, Russia

 This was our first stop on our short trip around the Golden Ring.
The town's fame rests on the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergii (a Lavra is the highest rank of Orthodox monastery, and there are only four in all Russia), the Russian Orthodox equivalent of the Vatican, which has a complex of medieval buildings to rival those of the Kremlin.

The monastery is named after St. Sergii of Radonezh, a 14^th century monk from Rostov whose pious, ascetic existence attracted numerous followers to the hermit's retreat he had established in the forests around Moscow.

In 1476, Ivan the Great instructed craftsmen from Pskov to build the graceful Church of the Holy Ghost, a rectangular structure of white brick, topped by a slender, blue and gold domed bell-tower, which also acted as a lookout post.

Ivan the Terrible's successful assault on Kazan in 1552 was pro

mpted by the advice of Abbot Bassyan, head of the Trinity Lavra, and the Tsar expressed his gratitude by ordering the construction of the Cathedral of the Assumption. It was completed in 1585, during the regency of Boris Gudonov, who lies with his family in a modest tomb beneath the Cathedral walls. The Cathedral is similar in structure to its namesake in the Kremlin - and equally impressive - the major difference being in the color scheme: Here the white walls contrast with four azure domes and a larger central gold one. Inside the Cathedral, a two-headed eagle stands as monument to the time in 1685 when the future Peter the Great took refuge here with his mother and brother from the marauding Streltsy. The boy Tsar was only saved by the sanctity of the place and the fortuitous arrival of a loyal cavalry regiment.

Although the Russian capital moved to St. Petersburg, the Trinity Monastery remained the center of the Russian Church until 1920, when the monastery was closed by the Bolshevik government, and the monks were sent off to labor camps. Stalin permitted the reopening of the monastery as part of victory celebrations in 1946.

Ever since St. Sergii founded the monastery in the 14^th Century, it has been a hugely popular destination for pilgrims, revered by all from Tsars to Soviet pensioners (of which you will see many in the chapels). If you have the chance to make only one day trip out of Moscow, then this is certainly where you should go

The Golden Ring, Russia

The Golden Ring is the name for the medieval towns that more or less form a ring as you leave North-East of Moscow.  It's a great route to travel if you want to enjoy the quiet and peaceful life in the Russian province, beautiful countryside views, and enjoy ancient architecture.  The 'classical' route (counter clockwise) starts from Moscow, goes through Vladimir, Suzdal, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Rostov Velikiy, Pereslavl-Zalesskiy, Sergiev Posad. All cities and towns are located relatively close to each other, the 'Golden Ring' forms a ring, so from one place you can reach to another and make a circle until you get back to the one you started with. We only went to Sergiev Posad, Vladimir, and Suzdal.

These towns played a significant role in early Russian history and in the formation of the Russian Orthodox Church. The towns are full of ancient Russian architecture from the Middle Ages including kremlins (walled fortresses), monasteries, cathedrals and churches. Visiting the Golden Ring will give you a chance to go back in time and imagine a Russia that used to be. The cities are associated with Russian Princes and knights, early Tsars such as Ivan the Terrible, the Mongol invasions and many other historical figures and events. Listening to the history and legends told by your experienced guide will evoke memories of storybooks and fairy tales. The towns of the Golden Ring are all in the Russian countryside which is beautiful – full of forests and fields and rivers and lakes.

Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming

I was visited in the hospital while I was getting some chemotherapy infused by a woman that I know because she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and has been through exactly what I am going through now.  She has worked with the science of the disease, and so she is a wonderful source of support, both from an emotional standpoint (what it is exactly like to go through this) and from the sense of what to do next, once this part is behind me.  She is a gem.

She brought me a card, and she told me that the cards that she got throughout her treatment made all the difference to her.  She kept them all, and she reads through them still.  They are a talisman for her, a reminder of many things.  For me it is manifold as well.  I have been very touched by the sentiments that have been shared.  I love just looking at the images.  I am a visual person and the things that people chose are so wonderfully varied.  I am comforted by the sheer volume of them.  There really are a lot of great people in my life, and at times of trouble it is really nice to be reminded of that.  I do try to be someone who hangs on to what I have rather than dwell on what I have to lose, but it isn't always possible to be so positive, and the cards help keep the good part in focus.

Novodevichy Cemetary, Moscow, Russia

This is the cemetery where everyone who is anyone in Russian history is buried.  It is the most remarkable cemetery I have ever been to and I would highly recommend a visit when you are next in Moscow.

Novodevichye cemetery can be divided into two parts, the "old" one located on the convent grounds and a "new" one which is jointed to the territory of the cloister. From the times of its foundation the New Maiden convent has become the burial place of nuns of noble origin as well as prominent personalities of its time, heroes of Napoleonic war, historians, philosophers, merchants. The "new" cemetery was laid out later and became the most prestigious after the Kremlin necropolis in the Soviet period of time. Once strolling along its alleys you feel like in the park of sculptures. These sculptures are the tombstones of prominent writers, poets, artists, composers which narrate the life stories of their possessors. Some of these well-known personalities were buried here according to their last will. Some were just reburied by the order of Soviet government. Nicolay Gogol , the famous satirical writer, Anton Chekhov, the world famous playwright, were among them. 

The most renowned composers and singers were also entered here including Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergey Prokofiev, Feodor Chaliapin and others.  Chekov's grave is pictured.

The cemetery became also the final resting place for numerous military and political dignitaries and their relatives in the Soviet era, including the First Secretary of the Communist party Nikita Khruschev (see above), the wife of Stalin, Nadezhda Stalin-Allilueva, the wife of the last head of USSR, Raisa Gorbachev.

One of the most notable non-communists recently buried at Novodevichy is Boris Yeltsin, the first elected president of democratic Russia. Just 50 feet away is the grave of Mstislav Rostropovich, the renowned cellist and conductor, who died the same week as Yeltsin. 

These gravestones of prominent people keep riddles which can be revealed by your Moscow tour guide.

Russian Shop Windows

Yes, it is true.  There is caviar everywhere in Russian stores.  I took this photo in a shop in Red Square, the ultimate Russian shopping mall.  I am not much of a shopper myself.  I usually see the inside of more grocery stores than anything else when I am traveling.  I have been known to bring home many souvenirs of travel, but the experience of shopping is not one that I love.  I do enjoy walking in cities, though, and so window shopping is something that I very much enjoy.  Russia is a wonderful place to do that.  The culture is just foreign enough and just similar enough to be a real treat.    I was not prepared for how elegant a culture the Russians have, and as is almost always the case when traveling, I learned something.

Patience, Please

I have always found Oliver Sacks to be a man who was worth listening to, and his experiences as a patient are no different from his observations of his own patients.  It is very wise when you are thrust into the patient role, especially if it is going to last a long time, maybe the rest of your life,  to slow down, pick your battles and figure out what is really important.

All of which is far easier to say than it is to do, of course.  I am pretty sure that I have not even begun down this road.  When I had a prolonged hospitalization for abdominal surgery (they just will not let you go home until you can keep food down, and I was pretty resistant to complying with that criteria) I got a sense of the task in front of me.  Some things I could actually do for my self with a little ingenuity.  Those were the easy things to manage.  After that, though, there is a lot left over, and I had to prioritize what mattered and what did not.  Since I was fairly uncomfortable from the surgery itself, one priority was to minimize additional discomfort.  That helped a lot, because while there are many things that I would have done differently myself, there were very few things that made me uncomfortable to wait to have happen.  So I lay back, literally, read a few books, watched a season of a TV show, and channeled my inner patient patient, waiting to go home.  And it worked.  So up ahead, I need to continue on the path I made baby steps to go down.

Fallen Monument Park, Moscow, Russia

 This is a very unusual place.   There are three distinct styles represented.  The first is a  collection of Soviet sculptures is located in the park area immediately north of the exhibition building. These were removed from public squares and buildings around Moscow after the collapse of the Communist regime. Among the Socialist Realism sculptures are also memorials to the victims of the GULAG camps with Stalin featured prominently in front.
The second is The New Tretyakov Gallery, which is devoted to Russian art from the beginning of the 1900s to the present day. A part of the exhibition includes works of Socialist Realism, the Soviet Union’s only officially recognized art style, represented by paintings and, outside the building, sculptures.

Socialist Realism was an art style developed in the Soviet Union. It became the official state art policy for nearly 60 years and the objective was to further the goals of Communism. Artists who did not follow the official policy were pursued and severely punished. Socialist Realism was officially defined by four rules adopted at the Communist Party Congress in 1934:

• Proletarian: art relevant to the workers and understandable to them.
• Typical: scenes of the people’s everyday life.
• Realistic: in the representational sense.
• Prospective and revolutionary: supportive of the aims of the State and the Party.

The typical motifs showed happy and muscular farmers and workers at collective farms and factories, heroic portraits of the Communist leaders and romanticized everyday situations. All other kind of art styles, such as Impressionism and Cubism, that were practised in the Soviet countries prior to the revolution, were labeled as “decadent bourgeois art”, counter-revolutionary, unintelligible to the people, degenerative and pessimistic. Socialist realism was openly a part of the systems propaganda. Stalin described the artist as “engineers of souls”.

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia

The Tretyakov Gallery is a must see stop in Moscow.

The State Tretyakov Gallery possesses a unique collection of Russian art which includes masterpieces which span a period of a thousand years and much of it is unknown to Western eyes--or at least to my Western eyes.

.

The Gallery was founded by a Russian merchant and patron of the arts Pavel Tretyakov. He donated his collection to the city of Moscow in 1892. The State Tretyakov Gallery has since become a world-famous museum. Nowadays it contains more than 170,000 works by Russian artists from early religious paintings to modern art.  The very best parts are the medieval Russian icons and the ninteenth century Russian painters.  Icons are an acquired taste, but my spouse, who is not at all in love with religious artifacts, finds them fascinating.  The  Tretyakov collection is impressive but it can be hard it's hard for harder core art lovers to get over the derivative, Italian-influenced portraits and landscapes of the 18^th Century, but the rejection of the Imperial Academy's restrictive diktats and the attempt to create a national art for the people that gained momentum as the 19^th century progressed produced some fascinating results. Fans of Russian literature can entertain themselves by seeing how the concerns and ideals of the great 19^th century writers were reflected by the artists of the same period.

The art is one feature of the gallery--the other is the house in which it is housed.  Simply beautiful and a wonderful place to spend an afternoon.  I have never been much of one to hire a guide for a museum, but if you knwo nothing about Russian art, it would be well worth your while to get someone to help show up some of the wonderful highlights of the place.