This is a remake of my August 2022 post, “Bella Ciao – Obiymy – Embrace Me – Despacito – Do Something.” I made one giant improvement. I removed almost everything I wrote, and left it to the Ukrainians. The old post is gone.
If you are new to this blog or perhaps did not get a look at them before, take another look at my posts about Ukraine. There’s a lot of history in those posts, plus art and music. I hope they raise awareness of the spirit of Ukraine.
What does Ukraine’s flag stand for? NATURE. Blue sky and yellow waves of wheat fields.
It is Day 436 of the Russian Criminal War of Genocide against the People of Ukraine.Volodymyr, with the call sign ‘Malysh,’ [“Baby,” according to Google Translate] is a sergeant in the 128th separate mountain assault Transcarpathian brigade. He signed his first contract at the age of 19. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Volodymyr’s unit has been at all the main frontline areas – Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Donetsk. Near Bakhmut, Volodymyr was injured. “Everything was working against us there – cannon and rocket artillery, mortars, tanks, grenade launchers, snipers… And no contact with the outside world,” says the brave warrior. Yet, despite all the extreme challenges and horrors of the war, Volodymyr and his brothers- and sisters-in-arms remain fully loyal to their heroic profession. “I do not regret joining the Armed Forces and will never regret it,” declares Volodymyr. –Photo and text source: Ukrainian World Congress
Слава Україні. Героям слава. Slava Ukraini. Heroyam slava. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the heroes.
Oi u luzi chervona kalyna (Oh, in the meadow a red guelder rose / kalyna tree flower) is a Ukrainian folk song, the anthem of the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen of the early 20th Century. It is like a “second national anthem” and a deeply cherished patriotic song in Ukraine. It is also known as “Hey, Hey, Rise Up!” It heralds the indomitable spirit of the Ukrainian People.
Below: Military orchestra rendition performed by active duty Ukrainian Soldiers. Premiered April 16, 2022 (2 months after the Russian invasion started).
Do not bend low, Oh red kalyna, you have a white flower.
Do not worry, glorious Ukraine, you have a free people.
And we’ll take that red kalyna and will raise it up,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!
And we’ll take that red kalyna and will raise it up,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!
Marching forward, our fellow volunteers, into a bloody fray,
For to free, our brother-Ukrainians, from hostile chains.
And we, our brother-Ukrainians, we will then liberate,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!
And we, our brother-Ukrainians, we will then liberate,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!
Oh in the field of early spring wheat, there’s a golden furrow,
Then began the Ukrainian riflemen to engage the enemy,
And we’ll take that precious early wheat and will gather it,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!
And we’ll take that precious early wheat and will gather it,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!
When the stormy winds blow forth from the wide steppes,
They will glorify, throughout Ukraine, the Sich riflemen.
And we’ll take the glory of the riflemen preserving it,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!
And we’ll take the glory of the riflemen preserving it,
And we, our glorious Ukraine, shall, hey – hey, cheer up – and rejoice!
Visit the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC). Subscribe to their newsletter to keep up on all matters pertaining to the war, locally and internationally.
“A 1919 review of the Ukrainian Republic Choir in the Genevan journal La Patrie Suisse mused that the Ukrainian National Republic established its independence through the motto, ‘I sing, therefore I am.’ Ukraine continues to sing and continues to be.” —Notes from Ukraine (carolofthebells100.org)
That choir performed for the first time in America in Carnegie Hall in 1922, during the war that ultimately led to Russia cramming Ukraine into the Soviet Union. Ukraine had made itself an independent nation already, and was the most important Republic in the Union. It became a democratic republic when it brought down the Soviet Union by rejecting it in favor of independence.
Ask the UN who were the first signatories to its charter in 1945. One of them was the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, a nation by UN’s definition, as it was before it was trapped into the Soviet Union. Ukraine was the first republic to break away from the Soviet Union, causing the collapse of that Union. It absolutely could not survive without Ukraine.
One hundred years after that concert in 1922, on December 4, 2022, Ukraine returned to Carnegie Hall to bring us again the power of music during yet another Russian war of aggression on Ukraine, the third such attempt at the impossibility of destroying the nation and the culture of Ukraine.
“CULTURE UNDER THREAT” says the website of Notes from Ukraine (carolofthebells100.org), and then, that culture again exerts its centuries-old power to overcome the threat. The website continues, with this inspiring statement:
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, has purposefully sought to destroy Ukrainian culture as part of its aims. Cultural sites have repeatedly been the target of attacks including works by painter Maria Prymachenko at the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum, the historic home and museum of Ukrainian poet and philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda in the Kharkiv region, and the Theater of Music and Drama in Mariupol.
Just as in 1922, the Ukrainian National Republic used the soft power of music to preserve and promote Ukraine’s independence, Ukrainian artists today are once again turning to culture to communicate with the world. A 1919 review of the Ukrainian Republic Choir in the Genevan journal La Patrie Suisse mused that the Ukrainian National Republic established its independence through the motto, “I sing, therefore I am.” Ukraine continues to sing and continues to be.
If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet,
you’ll come to understand that you’re connected to everything.
–Alan watts
This is true. However, it need not be a far, far forest. It can be near. In fact, it can be your backyard.
It reminds me of the joke where the Dalai Lama goes to a hot dog street vendor and says, “Make me one with everything.”
This photo was manipulated to resolve trouble with the output of the old 35mm film camera that shot this about 17 years ago, in not enough light as the sun was slipping away from the woods, but it is still true to the original, with perhaps an artsy touch.
I have always called it, “Reincarnation of a Birch,” but this fungus decoration is only one phase of the new world that will be created from this old gray birch stump.
It was in the campground at Taylor Pond, part of the Taylor Pond Wild Forest state land complex, which includes Taylor Pond Wild Forest, Terry Mountain State Forest, Burnt Hill State Forest and the Franklin Falls, Shell Rock and Black Brook Conservation Easement Tracts, a handful of my nearby nature immersion areas within 20 miles of Balsamea.
Cold Brook North Branch, June 2016. Click to enlarge.
Updated 20220705 20:12 – added pictures.
What’s a great way to enjoy a sweltering summer day with 90 degrees, drinkable humidity, magnified sunlight, and a chance of fast-moving wild thunderstorms? Do a creekwalk!
It is a style of bushwhacking. Instead of working through trailless woods, you work up or down the middle of a creek, brook or river. It is your route, but not a trail. Rain? So? You’re hiking in water. Don’t let the weather tell you what to do.
This is about my all-time favorite “creek walk,” way back in August 2009.
It was in tourist country, the Adirondack High Peaks Wilderness Area that is not a wilderness anymore because it is severely overrun by tourists. As beautiful as the High Peaks are, they are not worth sharing a few miles of trail with fifty people trashing it and even actually crapping on it.
Are her musical gifts enriched by color synesthesia? Join me for an introduction to a new star born in our midst.
(Note: Willa Blog Post Review is a YouTube playlist of all 24 videos shown or linked in this blog post, in the order presented, including the music, news and interviews. It is a one-stop source of all the video material presented here.)
I found Willa Amai while looking for covers of the 1993 song What’s Up by Linda Perry and 4 Non Blondes. It is a song that I would scream at the top of my lungs, as it says, if I could sing. (Image above snipped from Willa’s music video of What’s Up.)
The song offers no solution. Not a clue. It just says how things feel, and how they don’t make sense, and how we ache because of it, trying to keep the faith, wanting to hope, despite the impenetrable insanity of the inhuman side of humanity.
The song cries out loud from the heart for revolution, the only solution. As do I, at times in tears, wishing I knew how to start it, finding that all I have is a song short on hope.
It sings, “And I tried, oh my God did I try, I try all the time, in this institution. And I pray, oh my God do I pray, I pray every single day for a revolution!”
The line demands a middle finger thrust to the sky in revolt.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. ~ Chinese Proverb
The Balsamean; Scribblements from Balsamea contains 34 posts about relationships with trees or forests, out of 128 total posts in the ten years from September 2012 to May 2022. This is the 128 posts remaining after many were withdrawn from publication. (There were also many drafted and never published.) Still, of the published ones NOT removed, 34 of 128 are about trees, forests, and human integration with trees, or immersion in them. That’s 27% of the total posts. It is not enough.
Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world. –John Muir
Some of my beliefs, thoughts, and feelings I am unable to express as well as others can do for me. Hermann Hesse is one example, particularly on the topic of relationship with trees.
Right: Book cover illustration by Peter le Vasseur on the 1975 Picador/Pan Books Ltd. edition of Wandering, listed new at $1.75!
“Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. His best known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi) which explore an individual’s search for spirituality outside society.” —from goodreads Hesse author page
Hermann Hesse, Dutch National Archives
Hesse 1905 portrait by Ernst Würtenberger
Hesse 1946 Nobel Foundation
Hermann Hesse book “Wandering” (1920) translated from German by James Wright
Below I offer a large passage on trees from Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) in his book Wandering, Notes and Sketches (1920); translated by James Wright. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1972:
There is a comprehensive review of the book at Hermitary.com. It begins, “Hermann Hesse composed his little book Wanderung: Aufzeichnungen as fiction, but it reads as autobiography, as do most of his little sketches wherein a personable narrator reveals his convoluted emotions. Wandering finds the fictional narrator at a psychological crossroads, and Hesse’s clear, simple, and heartfelt prose makes the book a candid and attractive reflection.”
Rarely do I wake from a dream realizing that in the dream I knew I was dreaming.
I recently dreamed that I was lost in the woods, exhausted, when I found a cave just before dark. I reclined on a sloped rock with my head on my fanny pack and fell asleep. That’s when I dreamed that I knew I was dreaming, making it hard to separate reality from the dream. Even when I woke up I didn’t know if I was only dreaming that I did.
If you are new to this blog or perhaps did not get a look at them before, take another look at my posts about Ukraine. There’s a lot of history in those posts, plus art and music. I hope they raise awareness of the spirit of Ukraine.
The Balsamean 