A Nod to Wordsworth

I am restoring my powers in Krakow.

For almost 48 glorious hours I have read, walked, visited with my wonderful extended extended cousin, and attempted to reflect tranquilly on the last month of unstoppable, intense work. There's a lot more tranquility to be recollected before the project gets edited and written, but I am, at this point, at least able to remember half of what Alison and I did in our weeks of work.

Alison flew out of Kyiv a few days ago with something like more than 10,000 images stored on various external hard drives. I have something like 40 hours of recorded interviews and songs and a notebook full of notes. We plan to cyber-manage all that information in the coming weeks, and I hope to update this blog occasionally with more images from our weeks of interviewing and travelling in Crimea in May. Our final day of documentation, on the Day of Deportation (May 18th) in Simferopol, felt like a very peculiar episode of "This Is Your Life." As Alison and I forged through the crowds in search of the ever-elusive Milara-odzha, we ran across countless people whom we had interviewed and photographed in the previous weeks all over Crimea.

Tonight, I will travel to Berlin where Susan and I will kick off our slapdash Debutante Hour European tour, and then meander our way down to Italy, across to Poland, and then back to Ukraine, where we will finish out with a performance at the Les Kurbas Theater in L'viv. Then, I will go back to Crimea, where I will begin another 6 weeks of research generously supported by an SSRC pre-dissertation fellowship.

More to come...

Crimea Looks Good

Alison has been shooting lots of photos. And I have been taking interviews. We have been drinking coffee. Four or five times a day.

We have also been attending Khydyrlez celebrations, the annual Crimean Tatar May celebration of strength and vitality on the occasion of two prophets meeting. Alison manages to get photos of everything while I stand around and shmooze.

At Khydyrlez celebrations, there is music and dance.

There are tests of strength.

There is a lot of hanging out with old friends:

Sometimes, when Khydyrlez takes place on a holy site, there are wishing trees.

There is always plov.

We have also started making the rounds to a variety of Crimean Tatar homes, including "vremianky" (from the Russian время meaning time, indicating that these homes are temporary or, in many cases, just markers to land claims waiting to be legalized). Today we photographed a family in Доброе, outside of Simferopol, who have been living in their vremianka since December. Theirs are the only kids on the block so far.

We have travelled to pre-deportation homes, such as this young aspiring politician in front of his grandfather's house (now occupied by a Slavic family).

We have been fortunate to visit the most prominent Tatar politician, Mustafa Dzhemilev, in his home.

We have photographed families that are still building, families done building, and families about to start building. We have recorded stories of deportation and repatriation and some beautiful songs. 

And I have gotten a little time to soak up some sunlight and pose.

More to come.