alice walker and one billion rising

One of my favorite organizations and favorite people supporting it (sigh). My hero.  I hope she's counting hawaii as a home because she's reunited with her daughter.

comfort and joy

Last Thanksgiving I put some photography slideshows of Europe and Colorado on youtube with music.  This year, I finally added / updated one with Boston and New England photos.   Do me a favor and click on the cog wheel settings and change to "720p" though, it looks much better.

The song is fitting, right? 

Mixmases and Christmas cards ship out on Dec. 21 ~ check your mailbox! 

Enjoy some comfort and joy.

God Willin'

Today is one of those days where everyone is worried and waiting, the television is doing nothing but hyping us to death about the storm to come. Businesses are closed, and folks are huddling together inside, ready for power outages. So it's a good time for a piping hot cup of gratitude. I'm taking a sip.

there's always leaves in weird places on my car in
the morning, like they slept in a weird position

I look back at my 2012 photo album on Facebook and realize this has likely been the best year of my life.  I am getting that "bucket list" checked off.  For starters, my mom, dad and I went out on a limb to find our relatives in Ukraine and Poland, and FOUND them. And we were able to walk in their communities, see the gorgeous scenery that is their back yards, and visit their churches and cemetaries. We will never forget this, and I really want to go back again with my sister.  My mom and I had also been daydreaming of walking the Cinque Terre and hanggliding in the Swiss Alps, and we made it happen.

back yard, working on what to do with it!

Despite trying to be firm on taking my time in house shopping, I fell in love with a little red cottage-type of 2 family home in Watertown last March and am thoroughly nested here (though still painting).  

I made it out to Cape Cod a few times with friends this year, which is more comforting than any other place I know.  My friend Stephenie (who's always the fun Thelma to my hardass Louise), visited my new home in September and we healed a real longing in our hearts to hang out together more and also just to gush and drool over Russell Brand in person.  She has promised she's visiting once a year from here on out.

World's End in Hull

This Autumn has been particularly spectacular, probably because I'm still not used to New England colors, but the weather has been sunny and warm, we've had very little rain so far (and here it comes, it's due).  New England has incredible festivals and in Cambridge, some really random costume fests like HONK! and the Carribbean Carnival. For Labor Day weekend, I met my New Yorker cousins (related to those Ukranian relatives, too) in Little Compton, Rhode Island which had to be the cutest beach & farm town I've ever seen.

World's End hike

In October, I was able to do a gorgeous Emersonian-type-a walk at World's End in Hull with my friend and cheese maven, Linda.   And last weekend, I had a rare opportunity to develop writing ideas, work ideas and life ideas at a 2-day retreat in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire with one close friend and multitude new friends.  It couldn't have been better.  We hiked, yogied, massaged, poetried, journaled, meditated, and I had dozens of breakthroughs in new ideas.

I'm listening to a Sandy soundtrack at the moment and debating if there will be time to make a mixmas for the holidays.

Reading a little Kahlil Gibran & chilling

blowin' in the wind at the top of one hike in New Hampshire

Highland Center, Bretton Woods, NH (retreat)

Daytrip to Providence

It had been on my calendar for 2 years to go to the RISD alumni art fair, so I finally did that this past Saturday, and lucked out that it was a glorious 80 degree day in October, windows down the whole drive.  I bought a little more jewelry than I set out to, but it was all-in-all fantastic road trip and got me in the mood for photography.  About 6 pm on the drive home, it downpoured and cooled the temperatures down quite a bit!

 anyone need a plush Rhode Island (below)? at Craftland on Westminster Street 

 old front of a buliding that's still up!  not sure if it will stay or go.

 view across the Woonasquatucket River downtown (nothing is ever 3 syllables here)

wannabe Venitian gondolas getting ready for the final WaterFire of the season (which I think ended up being rained out at the last minute!)

 pretty house on the Brown campus

 sexy food truck, Radish

the RISD bookstore which I wisely avoided going in (I would have spent $500 in a heartbeat) but I'll be back

RISD campus

A-freakin-mazing

I have always been a fan of swirly twirly photography, so I was infatuated to find Australian photographer Lincoln Harrison's website via photojojo yesterday.  Nuff said!  Just check this link out and feel your eyes slowly bugging out of your head. http://lincolnharrison.com/
(image below is my eiffel twirl)

Krakow, Losie & More

I never finished blogging the rest of the trip in Europe (left off in an internet cafe in Ukraine!) but we made it to Poland the next day, and found more family in a remote Southern part of the country where we had ancestors from the villages of Losie, Pielgrzymka and Klopotnica (more on this at www.avillagecluster.com)

Sadly Klopotnica is only a field now and Pielgrzymka had no remaining Teleps (our relatives) only a couple in the graveyard, but in Losie, we hit a homerun finding living Hubiaks (I have about 12 great-great-uncles and aunts in the Hubiak family all from the same family that came to Mayfield, Pennsylvania, so there are hundreds of Hubiaks throughout the U.S.) and we will definitely stay in touch with these guys!  They were so wonderful and showed us the church and the local history museum all about villagers.

My mom developed kidney stones at the end of the trip, so she had to skip the trip to the Polish little villages, and we were all really bummed about the timing (and she had a pretty lousy experience in Krakow's university hospital) but we carried on and she made it back to the U.S. last week safely.

Krakow was especially beautiful and fantastical, with romantic castles and spikey spires on many buildings. I would love to go back there again. 

this is a mosaic wall of the remains of Jewish gravestones that were destroyed by the Nazis in WWII

horses on Rynek Glowny

 yours truly at Poland's most touristed site, the Wawel Castle (notice strings of children on field trips behind me) 

 Rynek Glowny (main market square) glowing at night 

funky ceiling in our hotel

 a heartbreaking memorial to a loyal puppy in Kazimierz, the Jewish Quarter

Lion in the market square

I love that this airport bathroom mom is carrying Eva from WALL-E (the future of babies?)

Dad and I at the front of the town Losie (pronounced Washie) - impressed that this one has a sign marker!!

typical view of the countryside out the window of our train

the Hubiaks we met in Losie!

my dad's great-grandfather's brother's (or father's) grave in Losie... I enhanced this photo on my computer to try and make out the letters and shapes better - the word they are pointing to says HUBIAK.

the deserted Klopotnica

 cemetery in Pielgrzymka

РОДИНА (Family)

On Sunday, my parents and I had a rare experience of discovering relatives still living around the tiny village of Kudynivsky, outside L'viv in Ukraine. This is precisely what we came here for, and yet better than what we could've hoped for. When my great-grandfather Damian Kruck lived here, it was about 1890 - 1915, and he left for the U.S. knowing that war was approaching and conditions were probably terrible.  (my dad is pictured above-right)

When we drove down the dirt road off a highway, immediately an old little babushka came out to the street and tried greeting us, since there are rarely cars passing through.  My mom showed her a photocopy of our relative from a Massachusetts newspaper, with Russian description of his name and background, and she immediately ran inside to change her clothes so shold old walk us a few houses down, to the one "Kruk" in town.

There is one remaining Kruk in Kudynivsky, Eurgen (with the white hair, below), who embraced us lovingly, explained a few things through our friend and driver/translator Max, and showed us both where his parents and grandparents are buried in the town, showed us the church (which was just finishing services) and then he called up all of his children and nephews and nieces (in nearby Trenobil, maybe a half-hour away) to come over and have lunch with us.  They were incredibly friendly but even with a translator, we could barely exchange a few sentences.  Nonetheless, we exchanged addresses so we can send each other news and pictures.  The town itself was as rural as I imagined, but incredibly cute and begins at the end of a long several-miles long field of yellow mustard  flowers. This day was unbelievable.

the woman who helped us, below 

a typical house in the village

Eurgen's chickens with an old wooden horse and cart wagon (we asked how old it was, and he was like "only 15 years")

Mom trying to figure out our relations with Eurgen's daughters

Eurgen with two of his daughters and us, in front of the barn which is the oldest building on his property - they think this barn was there when my Grandfather and his Grandfather (either brothers or uncle and nephew) lived there, too
 

The village's beautiful little orthodox church

One of many decorative gravestones in the town cemetery (not one of our family's) - the curly spiral  seems to be distinctive in this area, we saw many fences with it as well.