Sepia Saturday 168;

Natalya Fyodorovna Meklin née Kravtsova (Russian, Ukrainian:  1922–2005) was a much decorated World War II combat pilot in one of the three women-only Soviet air regiments. They were nicknamed the 'Night Witches' by their German opponents.
She was born on September 8, 1922, in Lubny, Ukraine. In 1940 she joined the glider school at the Kiev Young Pioneer Palace. When she was 19, in 1942 she joined the Night Witches, piloting a Polikarpov Po-2 light bomber, and by the end of the war had flown 980 night missions.
In 1953 she graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, subsequently she worked as a translator before retiring. She became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers. It is rewarded with the Order of Lenin, with Orders of the Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd degrees, of the Red Star, with medals. Several schools are named after her in Smolensk, Poltava, Stavropol' and other cities. She was entitled honorable citizen of the city of Gdansk (Poland). She died in Moscow on 5 June 2005.

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.
 Jean-Paul Sartre 

Allein! wieder allein!
 Einsam wie immer.
 Vorüber rauscht die Jugendzeit
 In langer, banger Einsamkeit.
 Mein Herz ist schwer und trüb mein Sinn,
 Ich sitz' im gold'nen Käfig drin.
 Es steht ein Soldat am Wolgastrand,
 Hält Wache für sein Vaterland.
 In dunkler Nacht allein und fern,
 Es leuchtet ihm kein Mond, kein Stern.

 Regungslos die Steppe schweigt,
 Eine Träne ihm ins Auge steigt:
 Und er fühlt, wie's im Herzen frißt und nagt,
 Wenn ein Mensch verlassen ist, und er klagt,
 Und er fragt:
 Hast du dort oben vergessen auf mich?
 Es sehnt doch mein Herz auch nach Liebe sich.
 Du hast im Himmel viel Engel bei dir!
 Schick doch einen davon auch zu mir.




Loosely translated

  Alone so alone;
  Lonely as ever.
  Over the sound of the youth
  In a long, anxious solitude.
  My heart is heavy and dulls my senses,
  I sit in a golden cage.
  A soldier stands on the banks of the Volga,
  Keeping watch for his country.
  A dark night alone and far away,
  No moon, no stars,
  Silent, motionless, the steppe sleeps,
  A tear falls from his eyes
  And he feels like his heart is eaten away
  He is so alone;
  And he asks:
  Did you forget me there up in heaven,
   my heart  is  also  full of love.
  Nobody is here for me,
  But you up there
  You have many  angels in heaven with you!
  Please send  one of them to me.

Now it is all history.

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Friday; you beauty...

Peruvian Morning glory;  the last, tiny crystal drop...A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

John Keats

Already Friday, don't you think the days are passing faster and faster, I think I am on  a roller coaster.

©Photo my garden.

Links

http://titania-lavenderandvanilla.blogspot.com.au/

http://t-picturesque.blogspot.com.au/

http://pelluciidityblogspotcom.blogspot.com.au/

Thursday; seriously..

STEPHON kissed me in the spring, 

Robin in the fall, 

But Colin only looked at me 

And never kissed at all.

Stephon's kiss was lost in jest, 

Robin's lost in play, 

But the kiss in Colin's eyes 

Haunts me night and day.

♥

The Kiss is an 1889 marble sculpture by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. . 

The sculpture, The Kiss, was originally titled Francesca da Rimini, as it depicts the 13th-century Italian noblewoman immortalised in Dante's Inferno who falls in love with her husband Giovanni Malatesta's younger brother Paolo.  

The couple are discovered and killed by Francesca's husband. 

When critics first saw the sculpture in 1887, they suggested the less specific title Le Baiser. 

Rodin indicated that his approach to sculpting women was of homage to them and their bodies, not just submitting to men but as full partners in ardor. The consequent eroticism in the sculpture made it controversial. A bronze version of The Kiss  was sent for display at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The sculpture was considered unsuitable for general display and relegated to an inner chamber with admission only by personal application.

Links

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http://pelluciidityblogspotcom.blogspot.com.au/

Wednesday; Island of Wings;

I have finished this book; it was very interesting, as I did not know much of the Hebrides.  Island of Wings, an Island of birds, has captured  the life and hardship of the inhabitants and the outsiders who have come  to bring and teach the gospel to the natives of Hirta. Both struggle to understand each other.The  McKenzie family lived there from 1830 until their departure from the Island in 1843. It is a wonderful account of a natural world with a bitter sweet ending.

The neonatal death rate on St.Kilda in the 1830 was about 60%. the cause of death, the St. Kildan inhabitants called the "eight day sickness" as the affected infants dies within a couple of weeks of birth, was neonatal Tetanus. The origin of Tetanus  was not known until 1884. Scientists have found high levels of the tetanus toxin  in the St. Kildan soil. Possibly due to the facts that bird carcasses were ploughed into the soil as manure. A suggestion was, that they used contaminated fulmar oil on the umbilical cord when a child was born. It is said it is more likely, that the infants were infected by the knife used to cut the cord in a very unhygenic enviroment.
Hirta was finally evacuated in 1930 after life on the Island had become unsustainable.

Exerpts from notes and acknoledgement, page 311.

St Kilda, Main Island of Hirta, a walk along 'Main street' with the remains of the old blackhouses and the 16 newer 1860 built replacement houses. 

The manse, the ministers home.

Interesting facts, click here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Kilda,_Scotland

Friday; flowers in the kitchen...

Blush from my Garden;

Challenge yourself a little bit everyday!

©Photo Ts

Wednesday;Bookshelf;

Reading now;  Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg;

July,1830, on the ten-hour sailing west from the Hebrides to the Island of St.Kilda...

Neil is to become the minister to the small community of Islanders...

Page 60;  They often make shoes out of the necks of gannets, they cut the head off at the eyes and the part  where the skull was serves as the heel of the shoe and the feathers on the throat  offer warmth and water proofing. They generally only last a couple of days, but at times there are so many birds that they can wear these disposable socks almost daily.

Page 61;  Yes it is true, that they are largely used to governing their own affairs, agreed the minister.

Forgive me sir, but do you not think that we have something to learn from them? George insisted.

Neil MacKenzie, the minister and his zealous Christianity, concentrating on his god, is way out of touch with life and how to live. Titania

Hirta (Scottish Gaelic: Hiort) is the largest island in the St Kilda archipelago, on the western edge of Scotland. The names "Hiort" (in Scottish Gaelic) and "Hirta" (historically in English) have also been applied to the entire archipelago.

The island measures 3.4 kilometres  from east to west, and 3.3 kilometres from north to south. It has an area of 6.285 square kilometres  and about 15 km of coastline. The only real landing place is in the shelter of Village Bay on the southeast side of the island. The island slopes gently down to the sea at Glen Bay (at the western end of the north coast), but the rocks go straight into the sea at a shallow angle and landing here is not easy if there is any swell at all. Apart from these two places, the cliffs rise sheer out of deep water. The highest summit in the island, Conachair, forms a precipice 430 m high .St Kilda is probably the core of a Tertiary volcano, but, besides volcanic rocks, it contains hills of sandstone in which the stratification is distinct.

The islands were continuously populated from prehistoric times until the 1930s, when the remaining inhabitants were evacuated
Viking burials have been found there. St. Kilda was part of the Lordship of the Isles, then a property of the MacLeods of Dunvegan from 1498 until 1930. There were three chapels on St. Kilda, dedicated to St Brendan, St Columba, and Christ Church, but little remains. There are also the remains of a beehive house, known as the Amazon's House.

The islanders had a tough life, and survived by exploiting the thousands of sea birds living on the islands. There are a large number of cleits, huts used for storing dried sea birds, fish, hay and turf. The islanders had a very democratic system, and decisions were taken by an island council, made up of all the menfolk. The present village was set out in the 1830s above Village Bay, but in the 1880s some of the population left for Australia, and the remaining inhabitants were finally evacuated in the 1930s because of hardship and storms that had cut off the islands for weeks.

Courtesy Wikipedia

Monday/Tuesday; rain;

Limp hangs the washing on the line, trees and shrubs are dripping; the clouds hang deep and grey; blue is rare and fickle.

The garden looks green and the plants rejoice in the rain falling in a steady drumming on my roof.

The Rainy Day

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)


THE DAY is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
    And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
    And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
    Some days must be dark and dreary.


©Photo Ts