On the road again

I'm so glad my summer storytelling season has begun! It's nice to be back in the libraries, even with all the driving required. Yesterday I drove to Ponca City, OK for a library show, then drove home, after a nice lunch with the librarian and her daughter (thanks, Janel!). That was about 8 hours in the car. On the way back, going through the Flint Hills, I took a few pictures out the window.  

The Flint Hills cover the central part of Kansas. I know, these pictures don't show them as hills, but they are. Really. Not like the hills of Vermont, where I grew up, but long and rolling landforms, often with cattle grazing on them in the spring. Ask the Buddha.

P.S. More Tsar Saltan videos

It occurred to me that you might want to watch the entire set of videos of Tsar Saltan, even in Russian. Each is about 10 minutes long. These from an amazing Youtube channel called Velikaya Rus.

The Story of Tsar Saltan

I've been thinking about this story lately. I just began condensing it to increments of 140 characters or less for Twitter and Facebook. 

I studied Russian at the University of Vermont almost 30 years ago. One summer I had some extra tutoring by a Russian woman who lived in Claremont, NH, across the river from my hometown of Springfield, VT. Galina's husband was Father Andrew Tregubov, a Russian Orthodox priest, iconographer and, as far as I understood, one of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's main guides in the US. Galina was learning English, so we spent time working on both languages.

I don't remember how I helped Galina, but I do remember very well that we read Skazka o Tsare Tsaltane, by Alexander Pushkin, a story-poem based on folk tradition. Galina gave me a cassette tape of the story. I loved the sound of the beginning, about 2:10 minutes in on this clip:

The illustrations by Ivan Bilibin show a cat in many scenes. The end of the story translates this way: 

I was there. I drank mead and beer, and barely got my whiskers damp.

The first lines have been popping into my head at odd times (in Russian), nudging me to learn the story to tell. Wonder when I'll be ready.  I'll continue the installments over on Twitter and Facebook.

Irises

I can't help it. I take pictures of my irises every year. Did you know they smell slightly of grape lollipops? 

I've expanded the bed two or three times since I moved here in 2000.  A few years ago I put in just a few yellow ones, but that summer I dug everything up and gave away at least a third of the corms (great word, huh?). No yellow flowers the next year, so I assumed I'd given those away. 

Surprise!