Love this!

I love baby animals. If you love baby animals, check this out...

http://www.zooborns.com/

Suggestions Please...

LOOKING FOR SUGGESTIONS…

OK, just a quick post here…I am looking for suggestions in a few areas…

I just sorted out my scheduled obligations for the next few months…there are some really intense weeks on the horizon! But gleefully peppered with a few trips. This next week I go to Skopje, then for the weekend in Holland. Then in May I am meeting “PC” in Italy…HOORAY! I am also still hoping to take a long weekend in Istanbul in June as well. But that is not all sorted out yet, so more on that later.

So…this will be “PC’s” first trip to Europe! We are meeting in Rome and then going to Venice and Florence with a night in Bologna (for a taste of real Bolognese). I have been several times to Rome and Venice, only once to Florence, and have not been to Bologna. I am really excited to go. I usually have been there in the heat and crowd of summer so May should be nice. Given that he has not been to Europe and that he is so proud of his Italian heritage and loves food, I think we are going to have a great time!

***If anyone has suggestions for special or especially good restaurants (high end or budget) - in Rome especially, but also in Venice, Florence, and/or Bologna - please let me know. I am looking for treats in each place that may not be in the guidebook. ”PC” is an authentic “foodie” and knows tons about food and wine, so I want to try to take him to some good places and/or to be sure that we don’t miss a special good food or wine experience in each place. Please send me any suggestions you have.****

OK…a minor digression to tell you that …OWWWW! My knee is killing today!!! I fell again yesterday while walking home from work. I swear the crumbling pavement and my Judas ankles are conspiring to prevent me from remaining upright as much as possible!! Last time I sustained an injury here (as I detailed in an earlier post, with pics and all) I fell getting off the tram. I blamed my shoes and a hole in the street. That wound was gross looking but not really a bad injury. It was a huge bruise on my leg and bloody knees and hands. This time there is only a small mark, but the real injury is something behind my knee…it’s fine as long as I don’t try to bend it too much or straighten it too much! Which should be no problem considering that I walk everywhere, and live up several flights of stairs… right?

Damn! And I am leaving town Tuesday…I do hope it feels a bit better by then. And I hope I haven’t done permanent damage…for many reasons…not the least of which is that walking is important – both to my life here and to my life in general as well as to my plan to shed unwanted poundage. ARRGHHH! Why am I so clumsy! Along with my compulsive motor-mouth, my clumsiness is my most hated quality!

(OK…I almost let myself go on a litany of things I hate about myself here, but I am not going to do that to myself…or to you…positive thinking…focusing on spending the self-critiquing time and energy on critical scholarly writing instead…channel obsessive perfectionism into my work…more productive that way anyhow…)

OK…well other than that…I am planning on working for most of the weekend so I shouldn’t be moving around too much anyhow…the injury and the predicted snow for the weekend should keep me inside and productive.

So back to my request for various suggestions…next up…music…

So, to my surprise, I really like Amy Winehouse! I had never listened to her before, having avoided jumping on the train-smash band wagon, but I had seen the train wreck in the tabloids for a while. Well, I have been treating myself to a few new downloaded songs each week, and I finally gave in and decided to give her a listen. She is great! I especially love “Back in Black” and “Rehab.” I like her voice, I like the sound of the music, but what really makes it something fantastic is her ability to code really scandalous lyrics behind this retro/50s-innocent sound. She is totally unapologetically singing about co-dependence sex, enjoying crack, and most hilariously to me, at one point even about her lover not being able to “complete the task” because he is too wasted…things like this.

A few other faves at the moment that I have recently discovered include Duffy, Lilly Allen, Lady GaGa, Flo Rida, the Alison Krauss/Robert Plant stuff, and some great bluegrass, but especially some Jerry Garcia solo stuff (which, despite my youthful brush with the Grateful Dead, Dead tour, Dead-head life style and the dozens of Dead bootlegs I so religiously collected for so long, Jerry’s genuine brilliance is only now becoming clear to me, and I would rather hear the Jerry stuff over the Dead any day at this point).

As far as specific songs that have been in my current fave rotation…that song “Paper Planes” by MIA (from the Slumdog soundtrack – remix is good too! – In fact I pretty much love the whole Slumdog soundtrack), a Morrissey song “America is not the World,” a new discovery from old fave Tom Waits called “Jockey Full of Bourbon” (of course I love anything Bourbon related and anything Tom Waits related, so this is pretty much the perfect find!), and one of my super faves at the moment is the T.I./Justin Timberlake “Dead and Gone” track…very hot!

And now, for my most embarrassing admissions…(a little reward for any who have read this far)…I have also been stuck on 2 Miley Cyrus songs – “7 things” and “See you Again” – as well as many of the songs from Britney’s Circus album – especially “Womanizer” and “Circus” – as well as an assortment of remixes of two other Britney songs, “Piece of Me” (which I LOVE), and “Gimme More.”

Finally, two pop faves that I have been listening to since last summer, but that I am still loving…Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” (which I have a secret fantasy about singing at lesbian karaoke one night), and Nickleback’s “Rockstar” (which reminds me of my time in Budapest…with a few choice word changes to properly reflect “the group”).

Overall, I have a really wide and eclectic taste in music. I have over 6,000 songs on my ipod of every genre. Right now I am especially partial to global hip-hop (in English or otherwise), bluegrass, pop-remixes or mash-ups and of course Euro-pop. I am also a big fan of good acoustic stuff like Josh Rouse, Jack Johnson, etc. and bands of all sorts that just sound good to me like Scissor Sisters, Postal Service, and even Maroon 5. I love old stuff like Edith Piaf, old country like Johnny Cash and even Willie Nelson, and have been into rock of the decades lately like 90s stuff (Jane’s Addiction, Pearl Jam, STP, Alice in Chains, Black Crows and even NIN), 80s (Heart, Metallica), 70s (Sabbath, Aerosmith). But I actually love and/or appreciate most kinds of music – really, honestly, all kinds from all time periods, from all countries, from all genres…well most genres…

– (OK…DISCLAIMER: I don’t care for most Christian music. I hate nationalist super pro-American-new Country – I think Gretchen Wilson is emblematic of all I hate about US culture, and I feel ashamed anytime I hear any kind of “America will put a boot in your ass” type of country music [though I love old country, all bluegrass and some new pop-country]. Further, I am no longer angry enough at the world to enjoy screaming angry dark death metal [though I like old industrial, goth, and/or old metal like Sabbath or Metallica]. I feel very uncomfortable when I hear super angry violent misogynist hip-hop [though I love hip-hop with smooth grooves and nice lyrics and am especially partial to Eminem, Snoop, Biggie, and Nelly]. And, while I love most electronic music, my least favorites are probably garage techno, and drum-and-base. Finally, although I do love a lot of pop, there is plenty that is annoying and that I can’t tolerate [like that stupid Umbrella song, or that Beyonce “Put a ring on it” song])

****So with this in mind, any suggestions for artists or songs I should check out are appreciated.***

I have also been still a devotee of my weekly “The American Life” podcasts…I highly recommend this clever and enthralling weekly NPR radio documentary if you have not given it a shot! You can get free weekly downloads from Itunes, or can listen to any episode for free at http://www.thislife.org/ . And have recently enjoyed the John Stewart audiobook version of “America,” and the Steve Martin audiobook “Born Standing Up.” I really like when audiobooks are narrated by the author. I do enjoy audiobooks when travelling, but I still prefer a really good paperback page-turner. I love a good story...the kind you can't wait to find out what happens next!

***So my final request for suggestions…any suggestions you have for good audiobooks, podcasts or a really good page-turning piece of fiction that I should check out are appreciated***

OK, so back to work. Thanks for reading and I look forward to any suggestions you have. I hope you enjoyed, or at least got a giggle from, this list of my current music obsessions :-)

Moj Beogradski Zivot...

Well, I guess it has been quite some time since my last post detailing my Belgrade life. I had promised myself to try to post weekly, but things have sped up exponentially for me in the last month, increasing in intensity weekly, and while the blog has been on my “to do” list each weekend, my actual professional work has taken precedence. But in the interest of trying to record as much of my time here as possible, I figured I’d better take a moment to catch up here…so here goes…

Since my last post things have gotten quite busy and have been really exciting. I am now team teaching a graduate seminar in Critical Media Studies with my faculty mentor, “S,” and will be teaching a stand-alone undergraduate Critical Media course as well. So I am pretty excited about all of that.

My undergrad class is a great group. They are all women, which I am thrilled about, and they are really excited to learn. One student told me that at the university here, they rarely have an opportunity to take a critical seminar, nor to think critically about media and culture and the ways they intersect. The model of teaching here tends to be lecture-memorize-repeat, so a course that is largely discussion based is a very different experience for most undergraduates.

I am also team teaching a Women’s Studies course with a woman who I admire greatly, “D.”

“D,” a Serbian woman who incidentally got her PhD at Rutgers and who speaks finer English than I, recently gave a brilliant lecture here where she adapts some of the central ideas of Hannah Arendt to speak to the process of post-conflict transition here. “D” has been a great ally and friend to me, and I am so happy to know her!! Anyhow, “D” runs the Women’s Studies Center here in Belgrade. When she started the center it was considered too radical to be part of the university, and she built and maintained it all with outside funding, offering unofficial degrees with free classes taught by professors from the university, unpaid, that were taken by students on their own in conjunction with their regular courses. The center is now a part of the university, but it has been a long road, and the whole process has made “D” a well respected and admired member of the scholarly, peace-activist and feminist communities here.

Possibly the most exciting development in my own university-centered scholarly life here is that I have been invited by the university to stay on for the fall semester. I do not know if this will be a possibility as yet, because there still has to be funding from my fellowship to make this possible, but the embassy here has endorsed me, so now I am waiting to see what Washington will offer. If the offer is enough for me to live on, and if my current home institution in the US approves, I will stay until December.

While living here presents its unique challenges and it is certainly no picnic on a day-to-day basis, the work I am doing here feels so important and relevant, and I am getting so much writing and thinking done! I sincerely hope that it works out that I can stay. If so, I will come home to the US for 6 weeks, from mid-July through labor day, and will come back to Serbia through mid-December. If not, I will go home to NJ in mid-July and will prepare for my fall term in the US. Aside from the work I am doing at the university, another reason I would very much like to stay on here for a while more is my work with the local feminist peace activist group, Women in Black.

Since my last post, in the course of my volunteer position with Women In Black, I was able to attend a lecture by a local feminist scholar, Zagorica Golubovic. She had been part of a movement during the Tito years that was removed from the universities for anti-Tito protests, was reinstated in the 1980s, and then retired during the Milosevic years when she found she did not agree with nationalist policies either. Her lecture was fantastic! Very contemporary! And also most interesting to me was the fact that the entire lecture was in Serbian, yet she spoke so clearly and passionately that I totally understood. After the lecture, when I spoke with her, it turns out that she was a guest professor at Haverford during the years between her dismissal and her return to the Serbian academy…more evidence to me that Haverford College is a model institution in my mind!

The group hosts many interesting lectures. Today there was one by a Biology Professor on bio-ethics and embryonic research, in which the new Obama lift on Bush’s ban figured prominently. In a few weeks I will be speaking to the group as well…though I doubt if I will be as impressive as the people I have seen speak there so far!

Further, another important part of the group’s work is their public demonstrations. Ranging from post-war issues to gender equality to gay rights (a topic that receives a terrifying amount of venom here) the organization stages public demonstrations of many varieties. They also engage in various regional outreach programs and other related training seminars for would-be activists across the region.

I thoroughly enjoy working for this group. I am meeting so many fascinating people, learning endless things about the past and contemporary political and social culture of the region, and am gaining infinite insight for my scholarly writing. Also, due in no small part to the fact that the group’s figure head, a 3 time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and world renowned activist, speaks largely only in Serbian and at such a pace as to give my own notorious excited ramblings a run for their money, my language skills are improving exponentially! I have also been so fortunate as to have made a genuine friend here in “J.”

Honest, funny and charming with super-hero intellect and an ever greater gift for patience, “J,” an American girl from California with a degree from Smith who is here for a two year post in between her MA and PhD in history, has become a sort of “partner in crime.” Together we decipher Cyrillic signs, Serbian language and vague directions to traverse both the city and the landscape of the organization.

While my weeks here typically consist of week-days at the university, and at the Women in Black, and evenings and weekends in my apartment furiously writing, I have occasionally taken time for other things. Each week I usually have dinner at least one night with the family of my Fulbright colleague “E” and his wife “M.” This has become so enjoyable that I come to think of it as going home to the family for dinner. A concert of a nice home-cooked meal, (as opposed to my usual fair of packaged soup, pasta, frozen spinach or whatever else can be made in ten minutes or less), a few glasses of whiskey, and a few hours of conversation that ranges from music to the wonders of daily Serbian life to chats with the kids about various things (including their occasional sightings of the Belgrade zoo’s one-eyed seal pup, and the school-day intrigues of the two older boys), I look forward to these weekly meals.

Also, usually once a week, “J” and I try to go out for a drink and a chat. While finding the desired place is often a challenge, the truth is that the walk is typically more of the “event” than the sitting for the drink itself. While I have had a few good experiences going out in the city here, more often than not it is abundantly clear that we are not exactly the most desired clientele. It is hard to explain really…it is not anything specific about “J” and I, more about the culture here, and the way they feel about Americans in general. I think I can best explain it by way of a chance encounter I had on my way home a few days ago…

While walking down the street at about 9pm, I was approached by two women who were…unusually…smiling! They asked me in Serbian if I knew where a certain restaurant was located. Thrilled that I actually understood what they were asking, I answered in Serbian that I did not know, but that I had a Belgrade guidebook with me. I pulled out the book, and they immediately switched to accented English, exclaiming in giggles that they had been practicing what they would say in Serbian for 2 blocks before they decided to approach someone! It turned out I was talking with two Italians who work for their embassy here. I asked them how they like living in Belgrade and one responded “It’s OK…I mean we like it….it just takes some getting used to!” The other than chimed in “Yeah, I mean it is like there is a penalty for smiling here, as if it is against the law!”

And that about sums it up…it’s nice, but it takes some getting used to. People are lovely, but not exactly thrilled that you are here. And smiling, especially on the street in the company of strangers, is about as common as eyeglasses for a Cyclops. To further emphasize this point, Cafes, bars and restaurants will typically, even if empty, have “reserved” signs on the tables, and if you don’t appear to be their desired clientele, they will often claim that there is a birthday party coming in, and that they have no room.

This is frustrating, and makes me really uncomfortable because I hate knowing that I am in a situation where people do not like me. I don’t care that I know that there are people in the world that do not like me…as a concept I mean…because no one is liked by everyone and no one likes everyone, and usually I will either avoid people who I know do not like me, or if forced into a situation with them, both parties will be civil and make appropriate pretenses. So I find it difficult to know that at any given moment at least ½ of the people on the street already do not like me, simply because I am American.

Now, I completely understand why, in theory, people in other countries may not like Americans, especially given our foreign policy, our tradition of cultural and capitalist imperialism, and the ways in which we are somewhat of a loud, globally unaware, “bull in a China shop” as travelers – and especially given the local take on our role here in the 1990s, the NATO bombings in 1999, and what is perceived as our meddling in the affairs of this nation overall. However, these are stereotypes and one can make generalizations about any culture, or can dislike any nation’s government policies, but still, when you meet people, you give them a fair shake. Some people here do give us a fair shake, but many do not. This makes me supremely anxious and uncomfortable whenever I leave the house. I try to see it as an opportunity to be an “ambassador of my people,” but more often than not, I move through space being as invisible as possible, and hoping to avoid unanticipated encounters.

This in conjunction with the loose temporal urgency of people here (nothing is important enough to be done NOW), the broken streets that seem to conspire against my attempts to remain upright (I fell again today with the force of an egg dropped from a 5th story roof…my left knee is in such pain that I hope I have not done permanent damage), the grammatical puzzle that plagues my efforts to master the language (there are no prepositions, instead, each word changes its form to denote prepositions), and a host of other minor frustrations, as well as the overwhelming sadness I feel when I see the poverty of the formerly middle class, and the fact that there is so much potential and desire in the nation’s youth that is thwarted by the backwards bureaucracy so resistant to change and the draconian travel and visa restrictions that the rest of Europe and the US place on the people here because of the government and their f’d-up politics, means that this is not what I would consider a particularly easy place to be a foreigner.

Still, even with these frustrations, I am deliriously happy for the opportunity to be here. I love my work at the university and with the WiB. I love the fact that I am getting so much writing and scholarly work done. I love the challenges of learning to negotiate my day-to-day life here. And I especially love the fact that being here makes me hyper-aware of all of the things I take for granted every day, and, as cheesy as it is, makes me appreciate small things I have at home.

I love it that I am grappling with a foreign language, and that I live in a place where my every wish is not as easy as hopping in the car and heading to the nearest shop. I love it that students and interested citizens (as well as university profs and activists) will attend lectures or performances in their free time…without extra credit or incentive. I love that it is normal to have a beer or glass of wine with lunch, but that rarely do I see people intoxicated. I love walking everywhere (when I don’t fall down), and much of the time I actually like being invisible.

OK…one last bit to say here…

I want to tell you about a great night out I had last weekend…

We had been invited by the embassy to attend a performance at the Philharmonic hall of a string quartet that was visiting. I brought “J” and we met “E” and “M” there as well. We all got dressed in the best clothes we brought, which is not saying much considering you are only allowed 2 suitcases and one of mine was filled with books! When we arrived at the hall, the first thing I noticed was that everyone, from age 8 to age 80, was dressed in modern, stylish clothes with matching shoes and expensive handbags…yes I felt a little ashamed as I became increasingly aware of how shabby my clothes looked in comparison, but I was not going to let that put a damper on my evening…I had so been anticipating a fun evening out!

The performance was lovely! And afterward there was a wine and champagne reception – (where incidentally some of the same impeccably dressed folks could be seen pouring 3 or 4 free glasses of wine into larger cups to get as much free wine as possible) – and we stayed a bit, had a glass of wine and chatted. I was excited that I actually ran into a few Serbian people I now know here, as well as a few Americans I have met at the embassy.

Afterward, the four of us went to the nearby, well-known Plato café where we had a few cocktails and chatted. Having had a babysitter for the first time since their arrival in September, “E” and “M” went home at about 10pm, and “J” and I met up with a her roommate and another friend of hers. Us girls then went out to one of the hundreds of floating nightclubs that line the rivers here.

When we first arrived it was totally empty, with only us and the workers. We were about to leave when someone stopped us and said that within ½ hour the place would be packed. Skeptical, but ready for another drink, we decided to stay for one drink and see what happened. Almost immediately the music started and it was hot! Soon joined by a Serbian friend of one of the girls, we started chatting and dancing a bit, and true to the bartender’s word, the place was soon so packed there was barely room to move! The music was funky and fun, and we danced like crazy for hours! When we decided we were tired and ready to leave - at about 3am - the place was still so packed that it took us about 10 minutes to work our way to the door! All-in-all…the most fun night I’ve had out in Belgrade since my arrival! While my nights out in Budapest were all fantastic fun, I had not been out for a really fun night in Belgrade since my arrival, and this one was just what I had needed!!

So…next Tuesday I leave for Skopje, Macedonia for a conference, and will then spend the weekend with my cousin and some friends in Holland. In the five days before that adventure begins I have a mountain of work on my plate for this weekend, classes to teach, and a WiB day on Monday. I am looking forward to seeing Skopje, and to being back in Holland for a few days. After that, I will come back and will host a Dutch artist/activist for a few days while she does some work here in Belgrade, and will further come back to a schedule of classes, WiB work, writing and invited lectures that is already forming the foundations of the inevitable mountain of anxiety that I know will overcome me while I am gone.

Still I am excited for the inevitable adventures I will have in the next week, and I look forward to coming back and writing about it.

As always, thanks for reading! Until next time…

a quick trip down the ole Budapest memory lane...

Well…it has been a while since my last post, so I thought it was time again to offer an update…

In addition to my work and my life in Belgrade, which I will detail in another post, shortly after my last post, I travelled to Budapest for a weekend. As some of you know, I had lived for a time in Budapest before moving to Georgia to pursue my PhD studies. When I lived there, I met a most amazing group of people from all over the world, many of which with whom I am still very close. With this group I spent my every waking moment for the entire time I lived there. I have travelled many places, before that time and since, and have met people from all walks of life and from many nations, and sadly, many of their names and faces remain only in overlapping foggy bits of memory and the occasional photograph. Yet, the people who made-up the core group of my B’pest crew each remain as distinct and sharply drawn in my mind as when we were “the group,” nearly 10 years ago now…so much so that a few of us call the zenith of that time the “summer of love.” (and I am not sure I have any photographs of that time)

Many times since then I have tried to write about those people and our escapades, but have found myself at a loss. The truth is that anything I could say about any one of them would seem like a caricature of a person, or at the very least, would seem as if I were exaggerating, so I will not try here to paint them for you. What I will say is that, while in nostalgic memory, every moment of that time seems like the best time ever, it would not be accurate to remember that every moment was sunshine or that we all loved each other without exception at every turn. However, I think it would be accurate to say that, regardless of any flaws we may have occasionally found with one another, and regardless of any frustrations any one of us had with any other, over all I don’t think that anyone in retrospect would wish that any individual member of “the group” wouldn’t have been there. This is simply because, in my humble opinion, each of these people individually would likely have been one of the most unusual and interesting people that most people would ever have occasion to meet, so that in concert we kept each other endlessly entertained, and had occasion to take part in a seemingly infinite series of adventures.

In any event, I try to go back to Budapest for a few days whenever I am in Europe. There are still a few people from the old group living there, and usually a few more are passing through concurrently, so Budapest is always a fun old time. This time was no exception. Being in Budapest this time reminded me so much of why I loved living there…lots of fun things to do in the evenings, meeting random fun people in conjunction with old friends, dancing, drinking and general merriment into the wee-hours each night. Further, after being for several months now in Belgrade, where all the streets were planned long before urban planning was a concept, and where the narrow streets and compact features allow you to feel a bit closed-in, I was astonished by Budapest’s wide, beautiful streets and lovely buildings. The funny thing is that while I have always loved Budapest, and always thought it was pretty, I had never thought of it as really beautiful…I mean “it’s no Prague.” But this time I completely fell in love with it again!! It seemed so beautiful to me!!

Also while I was there we went to see Slumdog Millionaire…finally! I can’t believe I waited so long to see this film. I LOVED it!!! First of all…the soundtrack is brilliant! But I also loved the story. However, I am a little confused as to why to was billed a “feel good” movie…can someone please explain to me which part was supposed to make us feel good? Was it the part where the boy’s brother steals and sells the trophy for which the boy literally struggled through shit and crowds to obtain? Or perhaps it was the part where the boys’ mother was massacred? Or maybe it was the part where the kids were “rescued” from their life picking through trash at the city dump…only to be slaves? Or the part where the boy is blinded? Or the boy is electrocuted? Oh so many feel good moments! In fact, as the film ended (incidentally, I did think the ending was kind of lame) I had to sit for a good 10 minutes trying to stop the “feel good” tears before I could go into the light of the theatre lobby! Anyhow…despite the gross mislabeling of the film as “feel good,” and the trite ending, I loved loved loved this film, and have been listening to the soundtrack constantly ever since!!

OH…one more thing here…I had brought a book with me on the train trip which I anticipated reading on both the trip to and from Budapest. About ½ way there, I opened the book which was a little over 300 pages. By the time I arrived, I had about 100 pages left, which I finished the next morning! God I love a good story!! I ate this one up! It is called Water for Elephants…and I LOVED every minute of it. I don’t want to spoil it in case anyone wants to read it, but it you are in the market for a really engaging tale, I highly recommend it!

Anyhow, after my weekend trip to Budapest, I returned to Belgrade, and for the next week I felt in an utter panic. You see, somehow in the last several years I have become a sort of work-addict and while each time I take a break and go on some kind of holiday, I realize as soon as I leave how much I needed the break, I also constantly feel guilty for any moment I am not working, and as I am on the return trip my anxiety about all the things I should have been working on comes rushing upon me with intensity. So once I returned from B’pest, with the glow of a great weekend still persisting around me, I set out on a major work jag to rival any party-girl jag I would have undertaken a decade ago.

In closing, I miss my Budapest friends, and I hope to see them again soon…either again in B’pest or here in Belgrade. And while, of course, the care-free days of the “summer of love” can never fully be recaptured, I am so grateful that so many of these amazing people are still part of my life.

What a day to forget my camera!

What a day to forget my camera! Last Thursday was the 6th anniversary of the assassination of Serbian President Zoran Dzidzic. As I mentioned in a previous post, Dzindzic became president after the ousting of Milosevic, and was widely regarded as the “hope and change” president. He was assassinated by nationalist gangsters, and the nation mourned.

Last week I participated in the commemoration of Dzindzic’s death. Hundreds of people gathered at 11am to begin the commemorative march, which began near the place where he was killed. Many more people joined as the crowd walked through the streets, past the main square, Trg Rebuplika, and stopped first to meet current president Tadic. Tadic then took the lead, and the crowd proceeded to walk through the city, finally coming to a halt at around 1pm at the cemetery where Dzindzic is buried. There the group filed, one-by-one, past Dzindzic’s grave, each laying a flower upon the site. This process took several hours, but still the crowd was orderly. By the time it was my turn, the spot was completely covered with flowers. It was beautiful…both the hundreds of flowers and the fact that so many people turned out from every possible walk of life.

I had regarded Dzindzic’s death as a shadow over the hopefulness of the people that maybe they were emerging from the darkness of the Milosevic years. Yet seeing so many gathered to commemorate him what he represented made me both sad for the opportunity that was lost with his death and that so many people still feel his loss so strongly, but at the same time, happy in a sense because I think that people are ready and waiting for another leader like him.

I was unsure of what to expect when I showed up for this march. I had some fear of reprisal or of some kind of disruptive, sporadic violence, and my American colleague and I were silent for much of the time, wanting to avoid calling attention to ourselves. Yet this huge crowd, with everyone from dreadlocked hippy-types to young hip teens to stylish middle-aged women to feminist activists and older communist era loyalists, was peaceful, respectful, and reverent. The path of the march was blocked to traffic, and a combination of police and volunteers walked the edges of the crowd, but not in a threatening way.

I was also reminded how interesting Orthodox cemeteries are. Many of the gravesites have tiny photos of the dead on the headstone. Families of the dead are responsible for the upkeep of the site, so some are well kept while some are overgrown. It is traditional to leave flowers at the graves (in even numbers – which by the way, means that a dozen roses are NEVER an appropriate gift) and to light these small yellow beeswax candles with a prayer. Also often left at the sites are favorite things the person enjoyed in life, so that there are such things as cigarettes, beer, snack chips, and other such things frequently left at the sites. Then, as one leaves the graveyard, it is traditional to wash one’s hands before leaving, as if symbolically washing death away.

Aside from being able to be a part of this amazing event, because the path of the march traversed the city from end-to-end, I was able to take in so much of the city! And it was a beautiful early spring day! Rain was forecast, but the sun shone for most of the time. Overall, it was a very moving day, I was nearly moved to tears several times. I am so glad to have been able to witness all of it.

Pink dolphin...awesome!

This may be the most perfect creature ever! In the rivalry between polar bears and dolphins for my power animal, I think dolphins just pulled ahead!! Now if anyone sees an article about a blue polar bear, let me know...

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=67258209492&h=xyDWs&u=AO2vx

Boooogie-Voogie...

Thanks to Emma, I now know where the fantastic Booogie-Voogie song I mentioned in last week's post has come from. Check out this great song and video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGuFn0RPgaE