think

"and though they did not yet call themselves ukrainians, the term, unlike the ancient word ukrania, was not widely used until the end of the [19th] century, they knew very well that they were somethlng different from the loathed muscovites, the moskali...the little russians have widely used proverbs such as: 'be freindly with the muscovite but keep a stone under your coat' "_____"it was not until the end of the [19th] century that he stared thinking of himself as a 'ukrainian'. asked his identity, he probably would have replied that he was a muzhik, a peasant, or 'orthodox', or simply one of the the tuteshni, the 'people from here' ". anna reid "borderland" a journey through the history of ukraine"______________""the carpathian mountains marked the border in the southwest, but the gentle forests and fields in the northwest part of the country could not stop invading armies and neither would the wide open steppes in the east."___"more to the point, russia relied on ukraine's sugar, grain, and coal..."anne applebaum. "red famine: stalin's war on ukraine"___"little russians were always a tribe and never a people and much less a state" vissarion belinsky____________this isn't the first time ukraine has been invaded and ukrainians have ample reason to dislike and distrust poles, gremans,russians, hungarians, austrians, swedes,certainly georgians, and americans as well...geography alone hasn't been the reason they have had so much difficulty in establishing nationhood....the land and its resources have always tempted outsiders...from "russia relied" to the violent exceptionalism of the germans, the ukrainians have paid a huge price...ukraine is much in the news these days...

however i am disinclined to follow the times' advice on thinking...

since they want to influence ( if not control ) how i approach this...i would rather pick up a number of books...

and try to muddle though on my own...but i have more than books to go on...my maternal grandfather was born in uzhgorod in western ukraine and came to the united states as an adult ( my maternal grand mother was also born in eastern europe and shared my grandfather's ethnicty...we are just getting to that )...he was born in ukraine but wouldn't have identified himself as "ukrainian"...he was carpatho-rusyn and would have called himself "hutsul"...anna reid's "colorful mountain shepards" and spoke a dialect different from ukrainian...those invasions developed a variable population which didn't really help unity any more than what my great uncle called the more important divide between catholic and orthodox...my grandparents were orthodox and read and wrote ( peasants and shepards they may have been but they were literate ) in the cyrilic alphabet...other than the russians the bulk of the invaders who controlled ukraine were catholic...religion didn't help here...except for very brief intervals ukraine has only been an independent state since 1991 and, it would appear, that is at an end as russia reasserts its control over what it considers the breakaway province of southwest russia ( and let's not forget that vlad the impaler was kgb...paranoid spookworld weirdness in control of the state apparatus )...go back ninety or so years...read anne applebaum's book and you will have just one line of evidence concerning the ukrainian desire for independence...geography, ethnicity, and economic resources have seemingly always united to defeat that desire...call me "kulak" if you like, my sympathies are with ukraine...with or without the times' meddling...vlad wants to be stalin...the world is a miserable place and the dialectic grinds on...human cognition cannot grasp all the variables in contingency and there are always consequences.

call me svoloch

inflated fashion?

the infallible media tell me that inflation is at its worst level since ducth reagan rode high in the white house saddle ( economic woes under the adminsitration of the "best president ever"? nancy wouldn't like that )...and this may actually be true...lines of evidence are increasing daily...the price of hot dogs is up...

and even the faux surrealist pretention of the cover of last sunday's new york times "style" magazine's "women's fashion" issue can't divert attention from significant differences in presentation...and those differences would be in the communication of the cost of haute couture...as i leafed through the glossy color pages of the non-elitist times signature piece of consumerist propaganda i could not help but notice both the dearth of quoted fashion prices and the daunting number of "price upon request" captions...sticker shock comes to fashion...( and the time's elitist slip is showing..they need to be called on this in perpetuity )...still...

that is $203030 of clothing no self-respecting maid or matron of the upper crust should be forced to do without...there is a reason for fashion...the wealthy know this and have a keen eye for subtle displays of their superior social standing...why else would they covet a $6500 shirt ( it's allegedly in there somewhere ) and, as something of a poke in the eye of the economically oppressed, a $6150 scarf...no one said style was cheap.

"mile-high"

"who will build the ark" is an essay by mike davis built on the premise of a "self-debate" on the prospects of human surviving climate change...the first part presents a negative view of that possibility and in it he maintains that "meeting koyoto-type accords" necessitates that "wind-fall profits" (from fossil fuels) not being, among other things, "wasted on mile-high skyscrapers"...clearly he has no faith in "voluntary" cuts in carbon emisions or the willingnes of wealth to cooperate in anything that limits their preogatives...the second part is a presentation of the positive which is centered around urban living...cities as the most efficient way to distribute resources...however to achieve this cities need to overcome a number of things,"first among these is massive horizontal sprawl which combines the degradation of natural services, aquifiers, watersheds, truck farms, forests, coastal eco-systems, with the hugh costs of providing infrastructure to the sprawl." that "expansion" is favelas, shanty-towns, slums...to be efficient cities will need to shrink...greater mexico city covers 573 square miles with a population of 21,804,515 ( all total population figures are 2020 estimates ) using the united nation's figure of 31.6% of urban populations living in slums there are 6,890,226 slum dwellers there...greater lima peru covers 1088 square miles with a population of 10,882,572 meaning 3,438,949 living in slums...greater lagos nigeria covers 452 square miles and a population of 23,000,000 leaves 7,268,000 mired in shanty-towns...greater los angeles covers 501 square miles and has a population of 13,200,999 which should put 4,171,515 in slums, or rather homeless encampments...that may seem an over-estimate to some...you never know...who has counted recently?...if urban areas are going to shrink to habitable, efficient, walkable/public transport accomodating places vertical is the only way to go...you will need those "mile-high skyscrapers" to achieve that...the question then becomes how much of those "windfall profits" will be used to mitigate ( read bunker/walled comunity surrounded by private armies ) the impact of climate change on those of wealth rather than post-modern insulae for the "horizontal speawl".