Petlura at the Gates

Great and terrible was the year of Our Lord 1918, of the Revolution the second.  Its summer abundant with warmth and sun, its winter with snow, highest in its heaven stood two stars:  the shepherds' star, eventide Venus; and Mars - quivering, red.

But in days of blood as in days of peace the years fly like an arrow and the thick frost of a hoary white December, season of Christmas trees, Santa Claus, joy and glittering snow, overtook the young Turbins unawares. . . .

Those are the opening lines of Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard in the translation of Michael Glenny.  It was December 1918, and Petlura stood at the gates of Kyiv.  

Kyiv in 1918-19.  I don't recall how many times the city changed hands, but it was at least a dozen times or more.  For many of the educated Russian elite who escaped there from Moscow and Petrograd, Kyiv seemed to offer an oasis, the hope of a non-Bolshevik future.  First there was the German occupation under Hetman Skoropadsky that, had Germany prevailed in World War I, might have continued for years if not decades.  Then there was Petlura.  Then the Bolsheviks.  Then the White Army under General Denikin in its drive na Moskvu to restore a Great Russia.  Then the Bolsheviks again, with many of the educated elite fleeing together with the Whites for Crimea and a final, doomed stand against the Bolsheviks.

13 Alekseevsky spusk, Kyiv

With the world churning around them, the Turbin family huddled together in their home on Alekseevsky Spusk No. 13 in Kyiv.  It was a holiday season saddened by the loss of their mother and by the uncertainties of what 1919 would bring.  As best they could, they laughed, sang, and made light of their fears, writing graffiti on their tiled Dutch stove to poke fun at the competing political movements and revolutions that would destroy them.

Bulgakov Museum, Kyiv; the Dutch Stove

I've been thinking of the Turbins at the end of this year.  In 1918 Symon Petlura, a Ukrainian nationalist, perhaps even a populist, stood at the gates of Kyiv, leader of the first of a series of political and military movements that would destroy the way of life that the Turbins and others in the educated elite had taken for granted.  As 2017 dawns, many of us fear what the new Trumpist revolution will bring and what it will mean for the liberal democracy that we thought would last forever.  Like the Turbins, we have found comfort in family and friends this Christmas-New Year week.  For one week we can push away the reality that is standing at our gates.

Symon Petlura

2017 also marks the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Great October Soviet Socialist Revolution.  One could say that it was the November Surprise of Russian political life that year.  (Since Russia was still using the Julian calendar, the October Revolution actually took place in November.)  A ruinous war had demoralized the country, and both the army and the broad masses of workers and peasants were fertile ground for the Bolshevik rallying cry of Peace, Land, Bread!  Few had any presentiment that those same workers and, in particular, the peasants would have the most to lose in decades of Communism, Stalinism, collectivization of agriculture, and five year plans.  I wonder how Moscow will choose to note this 100th anniversary?  

Days of the Turbins, Stage Production

Another image from my university years comes to mind, that of U.Va. history professor Walter Sablinsky telling us that when the Russian Empire collapsed, it went down with its flags flying and trumpets sounding.  The Romanovs had just celebrated their tricentennial.  Their order and that of the European continent seemed permanent.  War in Europe was unthinkable, yet World War I and revolution were about to sweep it all away. 

So how will we look back 100 years from now?  Will the Trumpist ascendancy fizzle out and mainstream politics reassert themselves?  Or, like Russia in 2017, are we destined for an authoritarian future and just don't know the outlines yet?  Is the post-World War II order coming to an end?

All I can offer today for those of us who supported Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders is the same comfort that the Turbins found at the end of 1918.  Like the Turbins, we can look for sardonic humor, posting it to our Facebook pages, the Dutch stoves of our times.  And may we, unlike the Turbins, look back a year from now and not find that events have forced us to wipe those stoves clean as censorship and self-censorship become the norm of a new age.  

So for the moment let's find comfort, joy, and solace in our family and friends.  It's still 2016.  Petlura is only at the gates of the city, not yet inside.  

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NOTES:

1) Many who read The White Guard come to it after reading Bulgakov's more famous novel Master and Margarita, but I came to it in a different way.  While a history student at the University of Virginia in the 1970s, I read George Kennan's The Decision To Intervene about the U.S. decision to intervene in the Russian Civil War that followed the revolutions of 1917.  Kennan began his historical account by quoting these opening lines from The White Guard, which he referred to as an out-of-print novel by a nearly forgotten author.  Ironically, Stalin liked The Days of the Turbins, the stage production of The White Guard at the Moscow Art Theater in the 1920s.  Nevertheless, Stalin slammed the doors shut on Bulgakov's literary career.  When Bulgakov wrote Master and Margarita in the 1930s, he wrote it for the desk, knowing it would not be published in his lifetime.  When Kennan wrote The Decision To Intervene in the 1950s, Bulgakov was indeed nearly unknown outside the Soviet Union.  Only when Master and Margarita was published posthumously in the 1960s did Bulgakov become recognized as one of the Russian literary greats of the twentieth century.

2) A very Soviet, 1976 film version of Days of the Turbins can be found on YouTube in two parts:  Part 1 and Part 2 .

3) A serialized film version of The White Guard premiered on Russian television in 2012.  Brilliantly filmed and acted, this 2012 version contains a subtext, comparing the situation in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union with that in 1918.

Trotsky, French Novels, and Us

Leon Trotsky, The Prophet in the biographical trilogy by Isaac Deutscher, is not someone most of us think about on a regular basis.  Since the U.S. election in November, however, he's been on my mind.  More precisely, my mind has been conjuring up a particular image, that of Trotsky reading French novels as his political life was crashing down.

Leon Trotsky (1924)

No one, least of all Trotsky, could envision that Stalin, the grey blur with the functional position of General Secretary, would destroy all opposition in the Bolshevik Party through intrigue, deft use of wedge issues and personality differences among his opponents, and outright terror.  Trotsky's reaction as the noose tightened around his political neck in 1924-27 is one that still surprises and astounds biographers and historians:  he withdrew.  As Neal Ascheson writes in his review of Deutscher's Trotsky trilogy:

This passivity remains the mystery of his life.  After that Congress [XIV Party Congress of December 1925], his fate and that of the opposition were sealed; events moved slowly towards his exclusion, his deportation to Alma Ata in 1927 and his expulsion to Istanbul in 1929.  In that crucial period of 1924-27, one of the most forceful, restless personalities in history behaved like a Hamlet.  Why?  A sort of pathological disconnection, perhaps, which distanced him from political intrigues he found revolting?  Or intellectual arrogance:  the refusal to compete against people he secretly considered his inferiors?  He was certainly arrogant; to take a comic example, he probably had no idea of the resentment he caused by reading French novels during Central Committee sessions. 

Trotsky reading French novels.  I wonder if some, perhaps most, of the U.S. electorate that voted for Donald Trump doesn't view supporters of the Democratic Party in the same way, as divorced from reality, arrogantly reading French novels that they see as having little relationship to their lives?

XIV Party Congress, December 1925

Since the election I have been forcing myself to listen to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and other conservative talk show hosts and Fox News broadcasts.  They make for difficult, painful listening.  If Bernie Sanders and other Democratic Party politicians talk about trying to find common ground on issues such as rebuilding U.S. infrastructure, this is not what I am hearing on conservative talk shows.  Rather, elation at victory over the liberal establishment and charges that those opposed to the incoming administration are hysterical are louder than what mainstream media had led me to believe before the election.

Joseph Stalin (1920s)

If there is a lesson from the life of Trotsky, it is that those of us being charged with liberal hysteria need to put away our French novels.  As post-election maps have shown, we are a nation that is deeply split both culturally and politically.  We move in our own groups with almost no communication, almost no exposure to each other.  If I can give myself an undeserved pat on the shoulder, it's that I unwittingly find myself as a blue homesteader in a red district, having moved to rural Maine in 2009.  (I may just be the only Hillary Clinton voter in my small town.)  As such, I know the pain of small town Mainers who saw their lives upended when NAFTA resulted in closed factories and as mills closed up shop.  The median income in my town is a tad below $12,000 with jobs becoming scarcer all the time.  The cost of higher education has put it out of reach for most.  Is it any surprise that the natural beauty that attracted me to Maine belies a growing drug problem for a population that sees a life that is increasingly without hope?  Is it any surprise that my neighbors would vote for someone who promises to smash the existing Washington system?  Is it any surprise that they would view the Democratic Party or even the mainstream Republican Party as divorced from their reality?

The Democratic Party is indeed going through a time of tumult as it attempts to grasp the post-election reality that promises to sweep away much of the legacy of past eight years.  Yet the need to continue U.S. leadership in climate change remains.  So does support for human rights in all of its dimensions both within and outside the US.  And this is not a time for a dramatic shift in our alliances and relations with other major powers.  

Another lesson from the Soviet Union from the Stalin period is that Stalin was wildly popular among the common population.  In his way he may even have been a populist.  That popularity endured throughout his authoritarian rule and has never faded away despite attempts by Khrushchev and others to publicize the crimes against humanity during his rule.  Only those directly affected by Stalinist terror came to understand the nature of his rule, often only after being arrested, convicted, and sent to the Gulag or, in the case of many, just as the executioner's bullet entered their brains.  Stalin distrusted the educated elite that he viewed as a source of opposition, and this elite suffered more than many other groups as Stalinist terror rolled across the country in repeated waves.  Even at the height of the Great Terror in 1936-38, the average person likely saw the accused as rightly convicted and sentenced, in the words of prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky, to be shot "like the mad dogs they are."  To many, the removal of a Western educated specialist meant an opportunity for a worker, a Red specialist, to move up in the world.

I do not wish to imply any equivalence between the Soviet Union of the 1920s and 30s with the United States of today.  There is none.  Trotsky was a major player in creating the system that allowed Stalin to destroy him.  Nor do I view Trotsky as romantic or heroic.  Had he lived, he may have been more ideologically pure but just as bloody to his opponents as Stalin.  Yet as someone who has spent much of her life studying Russian and Soviet history, I believe there is a lesson to be drawn from Trotsky's downfall.  

For those of us who voted for Hillary Clinton or, during the primaries, for Bernie Sanders, it is time to work harder than ever to communicate what we believe in as core principles:  protection of human and civil rights for all both at home and abroad, saving this planet for posterity, promoting equality for all, and advancing the interests and equality of the working and middle classes.  It is a time to organize, to write letters to our elected representatives, calling on them to oppose cabinet nominations or policy changes that we consider dangerous.  It's time to donate and commit time to non-governmental organizations whose programs we support.  It's no longer sufficient for those committed to liberal principles just to vote.  

Let's not allow the November 2016 election be our equivalent of the Soviet XIV Party Congress.  We need to put away our French novels, not acquiesce to passivity, and get to work.  The consequences of not doing so are too frightful to contemplate.

Resistance Is Not Futile

The morning of November 9 found me in Copenhagen.  As I awoke that morning, the Trump victory was not yet a foregone conclusion.  Hillary could still pull it out, I felt sure as I headed out the door of my hotel.  Surely she will pull it out.  But by the time I reached the conference on environmental and related issues for which I had come to Denmark, it was over.  I spent the day in numbed shock, feeling I must still be asleep in a nightmare from which I would surely wake.  Then came Wednesday night and the following days.  The reality sank in.  The age of endarkenment seemingly had spread across my country.  Would it ever be the same?  Would any of us?

At some level I had seen this coming.  Over a year ago, when it came time for me to bid on my post-Kazakhstan posting in 2017, I had a choice of staying overseas or returning to Washington.  I chose the latter, largely for personal reasons but also because I knew the pattern of presidential races has been for any party that has been in power for two terms to be voted out.  The odds were good that the Republican Party would regain the presidency, and I did not want to be overseas in a position where I would have to defend policies with which I fundamentally disagree.  By going back to a largely non-political job in Washington, I would not have to say words in public that would make me turn red with embarrassment and cause me to retch when I would get back to the privacy of my own quarters.

That was a year ago.  Still, as the presidential campaign wore on, the hope inside me grew that I was wrong.  Donald Trump's campaign based on populist say whatever the current crowd wants to hear with its racist overtones could not possibly succeed.  His appeal to the most base emotions with scarcely a shred of real policy proposals was doomed to fail.  No educated person could stomach him for long.

But it has come to pass.  Donald Trump, like it or not, has been anointed, largely by white men who long for a return of the 1950s when a white man could buy a car, buy a house, and support a family while working a high-paying factory job.  Industry in Germany, the UK, France, Japan, and the Soviet Union had been leveled by World War II.  Only the US stood unscathed, and we ruled the world.  Life was good . . .

Unless one was black, female, LGBT, an immigrant, or member of some other minority group that could easily be ignored by privileged white males.  That began to change in the 1950s with the civil rights movement, followed closely thereupon by the anti-war movement and women's liberation.  Then came Nixon and Watergate and disillusionment that led first to the election of Jimmy Carter and then . . . to Reagan!

It was with the election of Reagan in 1980 that I first sensed I was out of touch with that large segment of the U.S. population that had elected him.  Having grown up in New York City, having been educated at leading East Coast public and private universities, and having a deep knowledge of at least one foreign country together with its language and culture, I had become what much of the country despises:  a member of the educated, cosmopolitan elite.  

Therein lies the tragedy of the Democratic Party:  we lost touch with the working classes that in the past had been at the center of labor activism that supported progressive policies.  Unions were allowed to fail, and little was done to oppose Republican policies that hastened the unraveling of what unions had fought so hard to achieve.  Of all our failures, the greatest was to allow the cost of higher education to climb to the skies at the same time that the quality of secondary education was falling.  The divide between the working class and the educated class widened.  Workers with only high school educations found themselves at service jobs for minimum wage and looked enviously at the educated class even as many members of that class were far from being in the top 1% of the moneyed elite.  

Is it any surprise that a populist message, even when that appealed to angry racist instincts, would appeal to those who felt left out in this modern global economy?  Sound bites and tweets took the place of well-reasoned dialog that a large portion of the U.S. population had lost the ability to engage in.  The coming of a man like Donald Trump is something we should have seen coming but, hoping against hope and talking only to ourselves, did not.

I worry to the depths over what the incoming Trump administration will do to the country, to the progressive social fabric that had moved inexorably forward through most of my life, and to the planet.  Most of all I fear what will happen to the Paris Agreement on climate change that has been at the center of much of my work for the past two years.  Will it all be swept away by a man who believes climate change is a hoax?

I have been devouring the opinion columns in the International New York Times each day since the dark morning of November 10.  Of the many columns I have read, I take heart most of all from a November 12-13 column by Timothy Egan, Resistance Is not Futile.  I particularly like his comment about my own employer:

The State Department, which usually tries to be a force for good, advocating human rights over bottom lines, cannot be easily pressed into aiding the globe's gangsters and oligarchs, even if New Gingrich is secretary of state.

I hope I can look back four years from now and say those words applied to me.  With less than three years left until retirement, I have no career ladder to climb, no career to risk.  The professionals I work with care deeply about their issues.  Even if a different direction is given at the top, it will take a full purge to rid the State Department and other government agencies of their educated professionals.  For once, bureaucracy can be a force for good, standing in the way of policies likely to unhinge this planet from its moorings.

Meanwhile, I take courage from the scenes of peaceful anti-Trump demonstrations in many U.S. cities.  Just as in the days of the civil rights movement, this is the time for the exercise of freedom of speech and peaceful resistance.  It will be a time for civil disobedience if Trump insists on pushing through much of his campaign rhetoric as policy.  May that power of the people then extend to the Democratic Party as it reorganizes and reestablishes communication with the working class that it left behind.  

Resistance is not futile.  It is, rather, the only way left to us.    

Journaling in Kazakhstan

Many months have passed since I last wrote in this web journal.  It has not been for lack of subject matter.  The heights and depths of emotion and experience in Kazakhstan have been every bit as great as they were in Romania, my previous post, but the countries and cultures are different.  The experiences in Kazakhstan that have been of greatest significance to me are not ones that can be written about openly without whitewashing or otherwise removing all that made them significant.  Thus I choose to remain mum.

But I am keeping a record for myself in the old fashioned way that puts pen to paper.  I've kept such handwritten journals at other times in my life, and I can't say that I've gone back to consult them more than out of curiosity.  This time is different.  My last year in Kazakhstan -- the last year of my international life -- is starting.  It is a year I will want to remember in detail, and a handwritten journal kept regularly will see to this.

So what is to become of this web journal?  Writing here is also a good exercise, and I do not intend to abandon it.  There are still things in Kazakhstan I can write about, and as I get closer and closer to the end of the international life, my future plans will be more and more in view.  But readers should also know that most of what has been of greatest significance to me in Kazakhstan will remain in handwritten form.

With that caveat now aired and made plain, I invite readers to continue following Alice in State.  And if you have been wondering if the title of this journal is a play on words, let me remove all doubt by saying . . . who knows?

Two Wheels to Akkol and Nature

I advertise this occasional web journal as the Continuing Adventures of a Foreign Service Bicyclist, but the bicycle has been conspicuously missing from these posts.  It's time to correct that omission.

And there is good reason!  I just completed one of my rare longer-distance rides.  The story begins with Alan Bessen, a young ecologist and activist who would like to accomplish in Akkol, Kazakhstan, what the Green Mountain Club did in Vermont almost a century ago.  Before it is overrun by development and the leftover pollution from Soviet times, Alan wants to clean up the lakes, forests, and hills around Akkol and make them a destination for those who love ecologically friendly outdoor pursuits.  One of his projects is the first blazed, marked trail in Kazakhstan that will take the hiker on a 30-km loop hike through the hills and forests around Akkol.

When Alan visited the U.S. Embassy some three weeks ago, he invited me to a conference in Akkol on April 29 that would highlight the projects he envisions with the goal of attracting attention and investment.  I knew in a moment I would go and that I wouldn't let anything get in my way.

February Snowshoe Hike in Akkol

You see, I already knew about and loved Akkol.  It is a favorite destination for our informal international hiking club.  It's only an hour's drive to the north of Astana, and I was there for the first time a few months after my arrival in Kazakhstan.  We go snow shoeing there in the winter, and we go on day hikes in the summer.  The last time we went snow shoeing in February, I thought to myself what a great destination Akkol would be by bicycle.  "It's only 100+ km from Astana," I thought.  "Surely I can manage that, can't I?"  I started to think that I would ride up on a long weekend in May or June, rest for a day, and then ride back.  Alan's telling me of the April 29 conference moved up that plan by at least a month.  More than that, I would represent the U.S. Embassy at the conference and set a green example for all who were there.

Arriving in Akkol Under a Threatening Sky

And so it was that I headed out around 11am on Thursday morning.  The road north from Astana is one of the best in Kazakhstan, but it was still cool, only in the upper 0s or lower 10s C.  There was a breeze blowing from the north.  The coolness together with the breeze had me wondering.  I'm not in the physical shape I once was.  I had biked through the winter indoors on rollers, but my riding was minimal, just enough to keep me from falling apart completely.  I had done a 30-mile a month ago and a 24-mile ride the previous week, but 125km (77+ miles), was something I had done only once the previous summer . . . and that only because I had gotten lost.  As I got closer to Akkol, the Sun disappeared behind clouds and rain threatened even as I found myself stopping every 5 miles for a short rest.

Lake House

At long last I coasted into Akkol at 6:30pm with hardly any strength left in my legs.  Alan and visiting Almaty -based ecologist and activist Zhanar Sambetova met me on the main street, and we walked the final ten minutes to Lake House, Alan's rustic home on town's main lake.  By the time we got there I could barely move my fingers.  Zhanar had to help me take off my gloves and jacket.  I was that cold and tired!

Alan Bessen

But from that point onward it was a weekend of warmth and magic.  Alan already had a fire going in the wood stove.  He and Zhanar commanded me to sit and revive myself as the two of them got dinner on the table.  With the wood fire and Alexandra the cat on my lap, I began to come back to life.  The rest of the evening was spent in talking about the events planned for the next two days.

Friday's conference, Wake Up Akkol, was a modest affair at the town's civic center, but a number of speakers had traveled some distance to participate.  Dressed very unofficially in my travel clothes, I had the pleasure of telling the hall how much Astana's diplomatic community already loves Akkol for hiking and snow shoeing and how much more we will like it if Alan succeeds in his plans to clean the lakes and woods and create a marked hiking trail.  I found a number of microphones in my face afterward as local news correspondents asked for interviews.  This was one of those rare instances in my life as a Foreign Service Officer where I felt I was doing positive good just by showing up . . . and showing up, moreover, by bicycle.

Zhanar Sambetova Takes Me on a Bike Tour

Akkol Lake

After the conference Zhanar led me on a bicycle tour around Akkol.  There are two lakes right in and outside of town that would be ideal destinations for kayakers, canoers, and campers if only the trash that litters the lake shores and surrounding wetlands could be cleaned up.  As Alan later told me, the lakes themselves are in need of help.  Soviet methods continue in Akkol, and that includes the dumping of trash and raw sewage into the lakes.  As Zhanar, Alan, and I watched a beautiful red sunset over the lake that evening, however, I could see why Alan is so passionate.  As the Sun hung on the horizon, the trash dropped from view, replaced by birds drifting on a peaceful lake.

Alan's plan for Saturday was a day hike.  The meeting point for the hike was the town square, but we were surprised when we got there to see that the square was filling rapidly with students who, we surmised, were not coming for a hike.  Then we remembered that the next day would be May 1, which is still a national holiday in Kazakhstan.  The students had come to rehearse their May Day procession.  Still, somehow we hikers managed to find each other.

The first part of the hike was through city streets to the outskirts of town.  The houses we passed were  of a typical Russian-style wood construction, some of them perhaps a hundred years old.  Many leaned in one direction or another in response to decades of brutal winds and long winters.  

Hilltop View

Finally out of the town, we headed first into grassland and then up a forest road to a low hill.  The altitude was likely not more than 300m, but the panoramic view from the top showed just how rich the region is in hills and forests.  Before long we had a fire going and prepared a picnic lunch, sharing around what each person had brought.  Stories were told as we basked under a warm Sun and a clear blue sky.

We finished up the day back at Alan's Lake House.  Zhanar, our new friend Raisa, and I cooked dinner in the kitchen making use of whatever we could find and doing what we could in a kitchen with no running water and only the wood stove and a hot plate for cooking.  We ended up with what we called Meat ala Akkol, a mixture of beef and vegetables that on that evening tasted better than any restaurant meal we could imagine.

Zhanar and Raisa caught early trains the next morning while Alan and I lingered long over tea and breakfast.  Then I was on the bike again, feeling much stronger and happier than when I had set out on Thursday.  The previous day's clear, warm weather continued, and warm memories of the preceding two days replayed in my mind.  In Alan and Zhanar I felt I had met kindred spirits who love the outdoors and nature as much as I do.  The environmental movement in Kazakhstan is small and new, but it is growing.  Alan and Zhanar know what they want to achieve in Akkol, and is is my ardent wish to see them succeed.  With those thoughts in my mind, I made good time and was home in just over six hours . . . with a smile on my face for the people I had met and their vision for a Kazakhstan where nature is valued and nurtured as a gift to future generations.

Eclipse

I've been in Bangkok this week for a regional conference on environment, science, technology, and health (ESTH) issues.  As such conferences go, it was not a bad one; there was reason to escape from Astana for a few days.  Add to that the escape from winter to the tropical climate of Thailand, and it was not a bad few days even if I saw little other than my hotel room and the conference hall.  Well, add to that the first massage I have had in years.  In fact, make that two.  The first one on the evening of my arrival was so good that I had to go back for another on my last night.


Due to flight schedules, I actually arrived in Bangkok Monday evening, March 7, even though the conference itself did not begin until Wednesday.  That meant I had a day to luxuriate without a care.  I've been in Bangkok before such that I was not intent on spending the day as a tourist.  Rather, like any sane woman who has spent her winter as an icicle in Astana, I went shopping, finally finding those hair care and other products that are not be be found on the steppe and that can not be shipped through the diplomatic pouch.  Just sipping coffee in the shopping mall with no particular schedule to keep was a mini-holiday.


A partial solar eclipse on March 9 was an added bonus.  A friend at home in the US reminded me of it; otherwise I might have missed it altogether.  The eclipse was only 40% in Bangkok -- one would have had to travel further south to Indonesia to see it total -- but there it was, the Sun clearly reduced to a thick sickle as it rose on Wednesday morning.  I took a minute to watch it through mylar glasses before running on to my conference.


Partial eclipse.  That's a rather apt description of my life in Central Asia.  A Washington colleague asked me during an evening happy hour how the assignment in Astana has been going.  I answered, “Professionally it's wonderful.”  Then, lubricated by the first margarita I had tasted in a couple of years at least, I blurted, “But personally it's been a disaster.”

That blurted admission also explains why, other than overwork, I have written so little here.  As Thumper says to Bambi, “If you can't say something nice . . . don't say nothing at all.”  

Yet, with apologies to Shakespeare and John Steinbeck, this has been my winter of discontent.  I've already listed the reasons in The Last Thing on My Mind; repeating them here would just be tedious and tiresome.  Yet, I do need to say plainly one thing I only implied last October: 

No single or divorced woman born when Eisenhower was President should accept an assignment as an FSO in Astana.  

She might be OK if she's committed to living in a monastery as far as intimate personal life is concerned, but for the rest of us, Astana is a disaster.  Hear my warning written here in black and white:

• If you had an intimate relationship before leaving the US, it will not survive the eleven time zone separation;
• If you fall in love while on R&R at home in the US, you will awaken one frigid winter morning in Astana to find it was an illusion no matter how passionate your words expressed across time zones may have been;
• You will find no eligible men among the expats in Astana, and local men will see you as official, foreign, and unapproachable;
• If you, a 20th century woman, take the plunge of trying OKCupid, you will receive a quick 21st century introduction to the art of the romance spam . . . with some spammers being more sophisticated than you might imagine.  After all, who but a spammer would engage with a woman on a dating site who is looking for a date on her next R&R to the States that is still months away?  Also, you will wonder why so many guys listed on hikersingles.com seem to have only the faintest interest in hiking.

Have I made myself clear?  Do not come to Astana unless you are prepared to be alone, for that is what you will be.

Having finished my rant, I hasten to add that all the mitigating circumstances I listed in The Last Thing on My Mind still apply.  Of these, the most important is friends.  The nature of my work is such that my network is smaller in Astana than it has been at previous posts, but it is those close friends, in particular NN, EU, BL, and ET who have seen me through the isolation and hard times.  Also, although work involves the usual overwhelming mix of competing State Department priorities, I have now been in Astana long enough to see that I have and am making a difference.

An Earlier Total Solar Eclipse in My Life:  March 7, 1970

I quietly passed the midpoint of my three-year assignment to Astana in early March.  If my Astana assignment has been an eclipse, then it has been a partial one much like the 40% eclipse in Bangkok this week, not the total eclipse that applied to much of my early life.  I'm in the dark umbral shadow as far as the intimate life is concerned, but the warming rays of friendship pull me through.  And just as the Moon moves on, uncovering the Sun, so too will this Astana assignment move into history.  I've reached deepest eclipse.  Personal life, intimate personal life included, will get better.  With some luck the long, frigid Astana winters will help preserve my youthful looks for another year.

And so, if you should happen to know of an eligible bachelor who is willing to wait through the time and distance for just another year and a bit, here's my personal ad:

A Hiking, Biking, Snowshoeing U.S. Foreign Service Officer, Temporarily in Kazakhstan but Hailing from Maine, seeks a life partner who --

• Has a pulse. 

• Loves the outdoors.  Doesn't have to be a fanatic but must enjoy hiking, backpacking, showshoeing, cross country skiing, kayaking, bicycling, and/or canoeing.

• Loves mountains and the state of Maine.

• Loves the night sky far from city lights; thinks that viewing the August 2017 total solar eclipse from somewhere near Yellowstone is a neat idea.

• Has a passport and likes to travel . . . perhaps even to Central Asia?

• Wants to visit as many of our U.S. national parks as possible.

• Is politically a left-of-center liberal Democrat, perhaps even a European-style socialist.  

• Likes Pete Seger, folk music, folk festivals, and the singer-songwriter tradition that started in the 50s & 60s.

• Believes in the power of words and letters to keep a relationship alive at a distance.

March 13 in Astana:  Spring Coming Soon?

End of rant.  Promise.  Spring will come to Astana, and this partial eclipse will have its end.

Meanwhile, to my Circle of Friends, I offer the following song by one of my favorite singers, Mary McCaslin, in tribute and thanks.  Mary's words apply.  Without my Circle of Friends, I would have curtailed and packed out of here months ago.

Ode to a Computer Printer and a Christmas Past

Today I placed an old HP DeskJet 400 printer in a trash bag and carried it out in the -28C morning air to deposit in the container to which all trash must go.  It was not a moment of ceremony, just a toss . . . and onward I went.

But although it may seem strange to pause and reflect over a now discarded plastic box of electronics, that is exactly what I'm going to do.  There are memories attached to that printer.

Christmas 1995.  In the latter part of my former life, it was one of the good years, perhaps the best.  Our son had just turned seven years old.  Relations with my spouse were better than they had ever been as we cared for our son and renovated our Silver Spring, MD, bungalow.  That year we had just refinished our basement and put on a new roof.  I had become something of an accomplished plumber in those years, and I still remember soldering those last joints in the copper pipes connecting the basement radiators that a friend had helped me collect from southern Maryland.  I didn't know then that those would be the last joints I would ever solder.

The days before Christmas 1995 found me at the Computer Depot on Rt. 355 in Rockville - Gaithersberg.  Computer electronics were to be a large part of that Christmas as we upgraded to whatever the technology flavor of the year was, maybe one of the first Pentiums running Windows 95?  I do remember with excitement that there would be a DVD drive.  As I made my way to the cash register, I saw it on prominent display:  an HP DeskJet 400 ink jet printer.  The price was a bargain, not even $100 as I recall.  Should I?  I thought about the dot matrix printer that had served us well but got excited over the thought that with an ink jet we would be able to print photos.  I added the printer to my cart.


Christmas morning was a good one, and I recall us watching our first-ever DVD on the big 20-inch color VGA monitor.  But it was the printer that stole the show.  It printed in color!  True, one had to swap cartridges to switch between color and B&W, but it seemed like magic watching the paper with printed image appear in minutes, a time that in those days seemed to us unbelievably fast.

The years went on, and one by one every computer-related device from that Christmas became outmoded and was moved to the attic if not to the trash.  The HP DeskJet 400 lingered longest and served us well until it, too, found its way to the attic, supplanted by something that seemed at the time faster and better even if I have no recollection what that might have been.

The HP DeskJet 400 gathered dust in the attic, alternately freezing and broiling for five or more years until I happened upon it again in the summer of 2005.  I was getting ready to go Moscow for my first overseas assignment as a Foreign Service Officer.  I didn't want to remove anything of great value from our home and was, rather, combing the attic for things we didn't need but that could still be of service to me.  Our HP DeskJet 400 was soon in a container bound for a new life in Europe.

For ten years the HP DeskJet 400 served me faithfully.  In 2006 I turned my back on Microsoft and switched completely to Linux that among its other traits gives renewed life to old hardware that is incapable of running current Microsoft operating systems.  I had pressed old computer hardware including a vintage late 1980s 486 computer back into service, and anyone seeing my home office in Moscow would have felt he was entering a museum.  My HP DeskJet 400 hummed along as she always had even if I could no longer find ink cartridges for her.  Instead, every few months I would sit over an open newspaper to refill the cartridges I had using a syringe.

My HP DeskJet 400 returned briefly to the US in 2007, but I think it was the return to Silver Spring in 2013 that broke her heart.  I lived only a mile from the home I had shared with my spouse and son when that Christmas morning dawned in 1995.  Much heartache and heartbreak had filled the intervening years even if, in the end, I think we all ended up in the places we needed to be, places that were better for all of us.  Our HP DeskJet 400 ached and groaned now, unwillingly ingesting new pieces of paper.  I had to feed each sheet carefully by hand much as one might feed an elderly friend no longer able to feed herself.

When I unpacked her in Kazakhstan in 2014, our HP DeskJet 400 would no longer accept paper no matter how carefully I coaxed.  In the end I put her aside, even buying a specialized tool so that I could open her and attempt a surgical cure.  Work intervened, and the printer sat forlornly for a year.  Only this Christmas, some twenty years after that Christmas of 1995, did I finally find the time.  I studied and diagnosed as best I could.  I thought I saw the problem, rollers that no longer had sufficient surface to grab paper.  I attempted a cure using pieces of cork cut to size and glued in place carefully.  Yesterday morning I put the HP DeskJet 400 back together, reconnected her to the parallel port on my old computer, and sent the print command.  Ever hopeful, my heart dropped as I saw nothing had changed.  Even with my careful coaxing, she would not accept the paper.  I opened the printer, adjusted, and tried again without success.

The time had come to say goodbye.  As I near the end of this Foreign Service career and look toward retirement in a small home in Maine, I know I will need to discard, give away, or leave behind many things even as I look to that future with joy.  This morning, placing our HP DeskJet 400 that had served me and our family so well for so long in the trash container, I said my first goodbye.

Correction.  In writing this note I am saying my goodbye.  Memories of that Christmas twenty years ago fill my mind.  I have no photos from those years; they were all lost during the years of heartache, separation, and divorce.  I have only the snapshots of memory.  For all the pain of a troubled marriage, there were good moments, and that Christmas morning of 1995 was one of them . . . when a wrapped box under the tree opened to reveal an HP DeskJet 400 printer that was still shiny and new, ready with joy to print what in those days seemed to us the miracle of color photos of a young couple with a young son for whom the world was just beginning.  Farewell, faithful friend, with gratitude for serving us so well and for so many years.

* * * * * * * *

PS -- If any of my readers are raising eyebrows over this ode to a plastic box containing computer-related electronics, let me help raise them further by informing as to what printer I selected to take the place of this trusty HP DeskJet 400.  After the HP ceased working shortly after my arrival in Kazakhstan in 2014, I went on eBay and purchased . . . a Panasonic KX-P2135 dot matrix printer not that much different from the Epson printer I had used in the late 1980s.  No refilling of cartridges needed here!  Ribbons are still available and last seemingly forever.  I've just needed to get used to that dot matrix printing sound all over again.