The winter way, a lot of grey

Hello :) Just want to show some pictures from where I live now. Done today at noon. I was walking towards metro.

There are just pictures from my way, across the housing and a school yard, because it is a shorter way. Pictures are clickable, if you manage to find something fancy to want a more detailed view.

It is a snowy winter. There were almost minus 30C frosts this season, but right now here are quite comfortable minus 11.

The school. With bás-reliefs of Russian literature classics. Building is from the middle of the twentieth century, so here is some architecture (modern schools are generally like boxes).

The school stadium, occupied for Saturdays for football (soccer). Yes, it is played on the snow.

Announcement board. Used as adverts boards mostly.

Somebody`s Saturday morning. Winter reflection.

Empty.

According to some horoscopes 2010 is the year of Tiger. So some people decorate cars (or anything else) with toy-tigers. For good luck or just without any particular purpose. Perhaps just because you`ve got several tigers as a gift. I think I got three or four. You know, all that stuff about commercialized holiday season. As for the photo, it is awful, but I was not going to attract attention picturing somebody`s car.

Not the Abbey Road, but sort of close visually. In fact, the road ahead is the Volgogradsky prospect (the Volgograd avenue, and by the way it is huge). "Volgograd" is the current name of the town "Stalingrad", for those who are in the history. For those who are more in linguistics, "Volgograd" means "town on the Volga", and the Volga is the river (for those who are in geography :))

So is the Kuzminky underground station in Moscow (named after the village which was here before). South-East, overcrowded. It is not very light without sun, I decided not to Photoshop to show the real light. It may start snowing soon, if it is that dark.

M n` M. One “M” is for underground (or metropolitain, or metro). Another one is also quite well-recognized.

That was grey, I agree. But hopefully you enjoed it :) See you later!

My Father`s Day

Don`t remember if I posted this picture. It is one of my favorite ones. In fact, it is the only photo of our family together. Made like twenty years ago, I guess, in Kovrov (Vladimir region) where we lived before.

My father was from the family of a military officer (Ivan), though his parents divorced when he was little. His elder brother (Valery) was sent to a boarding school somewhere far away, because he had hearing and speaking problems, in fact he was mute and deaf. His middle brother (Victor) was living less than a year. My father (Vladimir) was the third son.

When he was seven, he was already living in Kovrov where they moved after the Far East. As far as I know, his mother (Anna) had a stroke and was paralyzed, so my little father at the age of seven was the only one to take care of her. And he was taking care. By the way they were living in a communal apartment – it was sort of wooden barack, to put it clear. There were couple of dozens rooms for couple of dozens families, one kitchen and one wc. The bath was somewhere in the district. My father was a successful pupil, though the one with a character, the one who is ready to question things and make discussions with teaches – not the best quality for Soviet schools. Anyway he was good with his studies. Anna died when my father was finishing them.

At the age of eighteen he went to the army, compulsory military service. He was definitely a natural born leader, always caring about people around, doing things and making changes. He was a strong personality, a successful professional, with great sense of humor. He graduated the university as a lawyer. Having started his career in the public prosecution office, he very soon switched over to administrative work and became what may be called a high official. I think he did it because he just wanted to make a bigger impact. Power and authority are needed if you want to do things, and he had this high social responsibility. When he achieved everything in Kovrov, which is a provincial town with well developed industry and population of 200.000, we moved to Vladimir.

I do remember his phrase when the country, the USSR, started to collapse. He definitely understood that something was wrong with the system, though when you live within the system, you may function and you see positive results – you just live according to the existing rules, I guess. He definitely had a lot of insider information, but when all the new information appeared, the archives were opened and so on… Once two of us were watching the evening news and he just dropped, mostly to himself, I guess: “I can`t believe that the whole idea was criminal from the beginning”. I was still too young to participate in such conversations as an equal party and I really regret about it now. As for the country and my father`s role, I think, that when you feel responsibility for you country, for your people – you just do things. You just care. Even when living in the system which is wrong.

My father was born on the Russian Far East (town of Korsakov, the Sakhalin island). When he was 39 he went on a business trip to Ukraine (town of Zdolbunov, Rovno region – it is almost Poland). It is nine time zones in between. He never came back. He had a heart attack, as far as I know he just felt asleep. It was early afternoon and he was going on a car as passenger. It was February 2nd, 1992.

I remember a huge crowd we had around us eighteen years ago, shock and tears of so many people, talks and small remarks. Little pieces of information, and that was all we were left with. Crowd that disappeared, another crowd that remained, still many people who remember him. He was a huge person, my father. Think about him today.

Photo: My Dad in the army. 1976