Sunday, April 27   

It’s Easter Sunday, celebrated here today on the Eastern Orthodox calendar. I’ve been invited to the home of one of our Ukrainian office workers for an Easter dinner.  

Monday, April 28  Note to Home  

Hello my friends & family in Santa Barbara and other U.S. domains.  

It's Easter here in Ukraine, a few weeks later than in the states -- the most sacred holiday on the Ukrainian Orthodox calendar. Fittingly, our finance director from Texas and I found our way to the Lavra Monastary, the most sacred center of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Crowds of the faithful worshipped outside and inside the many remaining and restored churches of the monastery, several of which were demolished by the Germans or the Soviets (depending on the version you believe) four months in to the German occupation of WWII. You can't help but be moved by the resurrected faith, forbidden during the Soviet era.  

I've been asked to describe just what it is I'm doing here (hi Betsy!) -- I'll try succinctly. Our project is under contract with USAID (United States Agency for International Development) to assist the Ukrainian government in explaining to the masses various components of the economic reforms underway (e.g., mass privatization, housing subsidies, capital markets, social assistance programs, etc.).  

We have a crackpot crew of American analysts that review the reform legislation and decrees, and pass the information on to the media department (which I head) to develop segments in our radio and television programs. We have three weekly television shows on national television: a news magazine (somewhat like 60 Minutes, only it's 30), a 15 minute investigative news program, and a puppet show (a popular format in this part of the world -- a recent show featured a fisherman ["business"] arguing with the worms ["citizens"] that they need to cooperate to land the big fish ["foreign investors"] -- it's cute, if not effective). We have similar programs that air on national radio. A recent survey shows we're getting results. Some 85% of the people attribute their understanding of reform issues to programs they've seen/heard on television/radio (that's us!)  

I'm developing a talk-show/call-in format for TV & radio, something along the lines of Larry King/Oprah/Howard Stern. What fun!

My biggest challenge is trying to place the topics within the context of Ukrainian terminology and experience. They live in quite a different world than Americans’. Concepts such as individual responsibility, initiative, inclusion, democratic representation, are not givens here. But still I'm often impressed by the sprouts of entrepreneurialism (e.g., a street kiosk video salesman -- all pirated films, of course -- didn't have the Russian movie I was looking for, but promised to find me a copy within two days).  

Thursday, May 1, 1997   

I spent the day learning the metro system, traversing the Dnepr, and hanging out on the main drag (Krashatik Ulitsa). Lots of young people and lively energy. I found an English movie theater down the street from my home (currently showing "Spy Hard") that I might hit tomorrow (my birthday). I also got some great deals on pirated CDs today (Enya, Beatles, Elton John, Vivaldi, Bach, Pink Floyd, Santana, Sade and Louis Armstrong). It's feeling more & more like a home here.  

The trees all suddenly bloomed today (May Day), and the city has turned a marvelous shade of green.  

Friday, May 2, 1997   

It’s a two-day holiday celebrating May Day -- the day of the worker solidarity. That means no work, and a long four-day weekend, including with my birthday today.  I walked around the town with Igor, our English-savy cameraman for the puppet show.  He showed me great historic cathedrals, statues of Shevchenko and city heroes, grave sites of the saints and city saviors, and shared much of the horrors and joys he knows of his home city in Kiev.  He has great hopes for a private film school (he teaches in a state institution about to go belly-up).  Yet, in typical Slavic style, for every ten suggestions I had on how he might do it, he had twenty on why it couldn’t be done.  I told him how when I worked in counseling psychology, whenever I sought out the obstacles between where someone was and where they wanted to be (economic, legal, physical, political perhaps), the biggest obstacle invariably was they didn’t believe they deserved better.  When you could get passed that, all the other obstacles often and sometimes quite quickly stepped aside.  I would sometimes simply repeat over & over the positive affirmation, “You are a good person, and you deserve better .... you are a good person and you deserve better.”  Seems to me, I told Igor, Ukraine could use some of the same.  For emphasis, I told him, “This is a great nation and it deserves better ... this is a great nation and it deserves better.”  Something inside Igor clicked, and for a moment he seemed to see the point.  Perhaps rather than so many US economists and political analysts we should send in a few therapists.  

One more thought, when I was working with thieves, killers, rapists for the Oregon Department of Corrections, I learned to lift people up you had to connect with them wherever they were at. Sometimes that meant reaching awfully low. I still have yet to plumb Ukraine’s depths.

Friday, May 9, 1997  Note to Home  

Sorry I've been quiet for awhile, but the work here is so intense it's swallowing every bit of creative juice in my shriveling psyche. Every inch of gain requires a mile of effort (Lord, I've got to climb four flights of stairs just to get to the office, and another three flights to drag my weary body and laptop back home).  

But we are finding some success. I just got approval for five new puppets for our weekly "kukli" show (expanding storyline and character possibilities), our journalists are becoming much more comfortable with the new concept of independent media, and I think it's beginning to sink in that bribes aren't the only way to accomplish your objectives (fine cognac seems to be the bribe of choice among top government officials).  

Aside from the (questionable) successes of the regular work, I sometimes find other ways to contribute, to my own relief.  

Well, my tired fingers are ready to stick a frozen fish fillet in the nuker. Speaking of which, I'm off to Chernobyl next week with a video crew for an update on what's happening with assistance programs for the 100s-of-thousands sickened by the fallout. The decaying sarcophagus is supposedly simmering, ready for another (and more deadly) blow. Stay tuned for news.  

Saturday, May 10, 1997 from Michele  

Dear Steve,

        It sounds as though you're being most successful.  Approval for 5 new puppets should expand possibilities greatly.  And you've not been in one mode so long that you get tangled in the "What is" and get blinded to the "What could be".  ...  5 more puppets to add to the "What can be" sounds like heaven.

        It also sounds as though you are finding ways to give gifts that will last a lifetime. 
Those boys will remember that gift long after they forget a lot of other events.

        I so enjoy your letters!  You're doing all this for (with?) the inspiration and possibilities
 and because your heart is as big as the sky (who said that originally?  Did s/he know you?)

        Happy Spring!  Love, Michele  

Saturday, May 10, 1997   

There's a popular fable here of Katarina, a Ukrainian peasant girl seduced, impregnated & abandoned by a Russian soldier (story by Shevchenko as a metaphor for Russia's rape of Ukraine -- of course he was sent to prison for sedition). I feel a little of Katarina's soul in any Ukrainian woman I'm lucky enough to find reason to hug here (the doubts & worries of betrayal -- well justified, I fear).  

Sunday, May 11, 1997  

A weekend picnic with our Ukrainian staff left me better acquainted with some of their stories: Ludmilla’s father gave up the priesthood during Stalin’s purges and pursued a safer career as a teacher. Not soon enough, it seems -- he was still taken to die in a Siberian gulag. Ludmilla no longer believes in God & angels.  Our television manager Tatyana’s husband was one of the first photo-journalists at Chernobyl after the meltdown. He died from radiation exposure some painful months later.  Valentine’s father was hijacked by off-duty police officers who stole his car, and left him dead and buried in the rural snow.  They followed the father’s ID to Valentine’s home, found his grandmother & her friend there, killed the grandma and left the friend near dead.  This was the scene Valentine found, but no sign of his father.  He later saw his dad’s car being driven in the city, & followed it to the killers’ hangout, & notified the police.  The killers led them to where the father was buried in the melting snow.  Vitally, our TV assistant, was nearly beaten to death leaving a public toilet after a late night’s editing.  The doctors had written him off as dead, and if Tatyana had not interceded with the Minister of Health, he would not have received his life-saving surgery.  Tatyana still reminds him to use the bathroom before he leaves the office.  Beautiful Irina tells me with tears in her eyes how hard she is trying to send her sick child to a health sanitarium. “All our children are sick,” she says, a statement well-supported by the stats (diphtheria, syphilis, AIDS, radiation exposure ...)  I have the feeling our hiring manager has a soft spot for hardships and orphans.  How could we have wound up with so many sad stories?  Sometimes I just don’t want to hear any more.  

Sunday, May 18, 1997    

The balance I'm trying to find is how to inoculate myself against the misery, without becoming indifferent to it. Some charming moments do happen, like yesterday -- the old woman who was so thrilled when I stopped for a moment and let her sniff the bouquet of blossoms in my fist. Or the two young pretty college girls who giggled and called me a "fantasy man" as I shared some stories about Santa Barbara and a quick English lesson sitting by a fountain on Kreshatic.  

I recall the words, "It’s easy to die for a cause; the challenge is to live for one."  

Friday, May 22, 1997  

Things they do better in Ukraine: soap (it lathers and lasts and lasts); doors (your home locks like a vault); water heaters (when you have one -- it heats water as you need it for an unlimited supply); candy, cakes & torts (yum!); music (soulful & real); churches (these people are true believers); women (graceful heart-wrenchers); metros (efficient works of art); pillows (huge & soft); monuments (they really mean something larger than life -- usually carnage); poetry (their national heroes are poets); parties (people say just what’s on their mind -- “small talk ... what’s that?”); lunch (a two-hour social affair); movies (no previews & no commercials); street markets (exciting commerce); friendships (their true national wealth); lovers (passionate & erotic); lights & lamps (functional with a flair); toilets (man do they flush -- but bring your own paper); television (the SECAM format gives a high-resolution picture if you can make out the English beneath the bad dubs); Obolon Kievski beer (sure beats Bud); architecture (design for design’s sake); time (the days seem to never end, but so does the work).  Others (per Teri Rucker): Street musicians (our betters are in studios & clubs); surprise factors (you never know what’s going to happen); contradictions and juxtapositions (5 foot tall old ladies & 6’3” young girls); how well they make something fun out of nothing even in their misery (empty holidays, a few balloons and some bread).  

Sunday, May 24, 1997   Note to Michele  

Sorry I haven't been more chatty, but some of the problems here are weighing heavily, and most of my (limited) brainpower has been directed thither. I fear (at least today) for the integrity of my work, and sometimes my own safety as I challenge certain forces which don't like to be challenged. It's all coming to a head in the next week or so.  

I miss some of the great ideals and clarity I (thought I) had so many years ago. As my head gets filled more with practical learning & "wisdom," it clutters my mind way too much. Great thoughts need lots of room to bounce around the skull, I think. I also tend to qualify way too many ideas I used to speak of with so much surety. Maybe it's simply relinquishing my youthful arrogance (e.g., "compromise with what's wrong is simply admitting defeat" and "belief is for the timid, truth is for the pure & brave hearted"). Or maybe it's my older arrogance that assumes such truth can’t reside in the human heart, our soiled hearts. Or my soiled human heart, anyway.  

Regarding secrets, I used to believe (or held as truth) -- "Sorry I can't hear your evasions when everything you are is screaming at me." I'm now surrounded by so many secrets and screaming evasions it's hard to find a quiet spot anywhere. Maybe it's a good thing I don't see more of the secrets -- if I had more clarity, I'd probably run from here screaming myself. So many horrors! So much of it our own American brand of imported corruption. More than for myself, I fear for these people, and our own American soul. We, the great beacon of hope. Ha!  

The US Ambassador read some words from Lincoln at a Ukrainian symphony performance the other night: "It is the eternal struggle between two principles"  -- (principalities?) -- "right and wrong throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says, 'You toil and work and earn bread -- and I'll eat it.'  No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle."   

Do we believe that? Do we hold that as truth? Did we ever?  

I used to know of the white magical forces aligning with the pure heart. My biggest challenge now is to find that realignment, and to ensure my heart is worthy. What an opportunity here. I want to be up to it. Perhaps my primary fear is that I won't.  

Cryptically yours,  
Steve  

Monday, May 25, 1997  Note from Michele  

You write of ideals and "realities" (I remember hating it when some macho guy would say, the real truth is, or in the real world).   And you write of personal safety and integrity and challenges.  I worry about you.  

I think maybe truths are both simple, and not, and that black and white is nice, but grey seems more descriptive because perceptions affect how we define colors.  But doubt not your intuitions - they are true.  

The white magical forces align with your heart.  You are where you are because of your beliefs, your intelligence and your strength. Worthy with intent and with purpose, and mistakes are allowed.  
An old affirmation: I am whole, I am beautiful, and I am human: fuckups allowed!

        Hugs - Michele  

Monday, May 25, 1997   Note to Sue  

Well, sure they spy on us. I'd be disappointed if they didn't. Can you imagine a group of Russian "consultants" in our own country, claiming to be working for the good of the American people, and we wouldn't take an intelligence interest in that? The main difference is our spies are bumblingly incompetent (we have a hard time tracking down spies in our own CIA headquarters, let alone on dark street corners) -- these guys here have it down cold. (Say hi to the nice people, Sue.) They are smart and efficient. They keep our basic needs met, so we will stick around so they can spy on us even more. And spies on the whole are a fairly likable lot -- it must be part of the job description. Actually, I'm glad they're watching.  

Why?  

1)    It makes me feel safer -- the streets here can be dangerous. 

2)   It's good to know SOMEBODY here cares about what I say.

3)   Maybe they'll see that I'm actually here to help. Maybe we can become friends. Maybe we can just sit down and share some straight talk over tea & torts. I really do like these people. This is such a remarkable part of the world with so much potential. They deserve much better than they've got now, and I hope they find it. Once they make their own take on the 21st century and the evolution of workable social systems, they will have much to offer all the rest of us -- at least those of us struggling to find a way to raise humanity from the muck.  

Monday, May 25, 1997   Note to Betsy  

How fun to watch these Harvard shock-therapy-people-be-damned geeks scramble! I was at a Jeffrey Sachs press conference the other week. Not a word about how much pain he expects the people to endure, which is considerable. I, because of my low-profile position, was not able to ask. And now some Harvard "expert" has a financial stake in the shock-therapy treatment. Perfect.  

Saturday, May 31, 1997   Note to Home  

The work in Kiev is a constant trial, but once in awhile it coughs up a treat:  

We are working with one of the top Ukrainian pop singers - Ani Lorak - to produce a video targeting teens with a musical message supporting economic reforms. She's an 18-year old songbird, with a powerful & passionate voice something like Whitney Houston. Ani is signing a contract with an American recording company, I believe she'll be a star in the States. My boss asked me to write English lyrics to the Ukrainian music video she's shooting with us, and help her with the pronunciation. We spent a long session together working on the tune. What a thrill to hear my words in her sweet voice! The lyrics are along the lines of casting her soul on the breeze of freedom, in a season of the wind blowing for those brave enough to fly. Can you believe I get paid to do this?  

Also, I accepted an invitation to be a guest speaker at a conference of reporters, journalism professors, and government flacks involved in global communications. It went well, and after my talk a few deans of journalism programs throughout Ukraine asked if I would give a similar presentation to their students around the country. Fortunately, such outreach is part of my job description. I don't know if I really have anything all that profound to say, but these educators -- only earning some $100 a month with very limited academic resources -- are eager for anything that might help add to their program. What's more, one of the professors heads the dissertation committee for the University of Kiev Institute of Journalism, and invited me to submit a 36-page article on developments in Western news media for an academic journal, and he'll consider it as a doctoral dissertation. Dr. Steve -- that's an offer too good to refuse.  

The rains have rolled back into Ukraine. The grey skies remind me of Santa Barbara summertime on the Mesa and its daily overcast, the fog line ending somewhere just beyond my house. Throughout June, July & August I just take it on faith that the Pacific & Channel Islands are still there. I try to keep that in mind here -- that somewhere in this grey muddle is something quite beautiful, and someday the fog will lift.  

Sunday, June 8, 1997   Note to Home  

I'm just getting back up from some exotic bug or other that flattened me for the last two days. Lots & lots of sleep -- maybe that's what I really needed. The misery of this place really eats at me sometimes. Seems every story I hear is even sadder than the last. It's time for me to take a trip home (June 23 - July 5). Just in time, I think.  

I believe suffering is like a gas: it disperses evenly throughout the volume that contains it. So sadness fills a soul. It's difficult to measure degrees of pain (whether it's the loss of a loved one to radiation sickness, or the loss of a job in Santa Barbara).  Suffering is suffering; unhappiness is unhappiness. Perhaps the difference is in the level of toxicity to those in proximity. It often just overwhelms me here. Platitudes like "Everything will be OK" ring quite hollow when the glaring reply is, "Oh yeah? Tell it to the 14-million murdered and buried in our earth still wet with their blood!"  

Tuesday, June 10, 1997  

I worked the audience of professional Ukrainian journalists, attending summer courses at the Kiev University Institute of Journalism.  It took at least 30 minutes of discussion to start breaking down the barriers.  It helped that the professor had either lazily or judiciously left the room at the start of my talk.  “Do you know how dangerous it is here for journalists?” one student finally asked.  I have met reporters here who have been beaten for simply seeking the truth, I told them.  What it does to the broken journalist is of course devastating.  The chill that descends on all other journalists is the true horror.  They skeptically accepted my assurances that we elsewhere in the world do hear about such abuses, and that we do care.  “Why should that matter?” one asked. Because such tyranny cannot stand up long to the light of world awareness.  And because I want so much to believe that this is true.  What would you like me to tell my colleagues back home about you?  “Please let them know we’re here.”  And that we’re being beaten, went unspoken.  

They perked up as we discussed ways to address the perversion of the powers of press freedom, the media’s sensationalistic glorification of society’s rubbish that Solzhinitsyn says “soils our immortal souls... we have the right of freedom FROM the press.”  How do we address this without relying on censorship or government controls?  They were especially interested in learning about the Santa Barbara Media Committee, and how we seek to encourage responsible journalism by simply recognizing and rewarding in our small way the reporters and editors that live up to the highest standards of their profession.  That by raising the desires of the media consumer, you raise the performance of the media marketers.  

Also when I responded to a question on how to become a reporter “superstar.”  First, try to stay alive (laugh).  Then, if you can accomplish the magic of transmitting a feeling from your heart, through your head, through your words, through your medium (print or broadcast), into the head of your audience, then finally into their hearts, if you can complete that mysterious communication circuit, then you will be a star.  

Finally, one cynical soul asked if I was in Ukraine simply to watch them in their suffering as some rabbits in an experiment.  I responded, I don’t see them as rabbits, but as heroes working in horrendous circumstances to help bring about the rebirth of their nation.  And I predicted that in ten years, perhaps some of them would come to America to lecture us on how they covered Ukraine’s rebirth, and how they wrote the first “rough draft” of their new nation’s history.  In ten years, America will likely be facing its own rebirthing issues.  It was an honor, truly, to be able to share such thoughts with such people.  I told them so.  

Saturday, June 14, 1997   Note to Home  

I'm heading home (yippee!) for a quick trip to take care of taxes, catch a Media Committee meeting, read mounds of mail, kayak, swing in my hammock, check on the nesting starlings in my attic, sleep in a real bed, eat Taco Bell, walk the beach, dry clean jackets, buy new socks & other treasure supplies, see movies in English, and generally just rest up before I return to Kiev for a major overhaul of our TV & radio programs for an all new "Fall Premier."  

If all goes right, I'll be on the plane Saturday June 21, arriving in SB the same day afternoon (the flight west is very time-zone friendly -- though I'll be enroute for 20 hours or so, I'll land in Santa Barbara just some 7 hours clock-time after I leave). The sun never sets heading home. (That sounds like a great book title ...)  

"Home" must be the most resonant word in English. So much said in just four letters.  

Love (also a well-packed four-letter word),  
Steve  

Santa Barbara, Friday, July 4, 1997  Note to Michele  

I'm off to spend my final full day here on a boat ride over to the Islands, with a visit to migrating whales and dolphins. I miss the sea most of all in land-locked Kiev, perhaps this will sate me. Funny though, I keep referring to my trip back to Ukraine as heading "home."  

I enjoyed a drive through the Santa Ynez valley the other day, the area I spent much of my growing-up time. I could still hear the mountain spirits in my mind, from the summits, recollected from infant years when my ears were still opened to those whispers.  

The United States is pretty much as I left it, perhaps the bullshit even more evident compared to the straight-ahead communication style of the Ukrainians (they have little time & energy for small-talk in their survival mode). That, and how much of our social foundation is based on misery. Why must we maintain such a vested economic interest in human suffering? Law, drugs, heathcare, religion, insurance, news, social services ... we have such a financial stake in misery, what incentive do we have to pursue happiness? Do you think we could ever find an economic system that penalizes misery and rewards joy?  

Back in Kiev, Monday, July 7, 1997  Note from Michele  

Hi Steve!

        By now you are home, and hopefully over the worst of the jet lag. Sounds like your trip back to S.B. was what you needed - touching that part of the States that is real:  ocean, whales, dolphins and that sense of infinity that is the gift of not being in constant survival mode.

        You know, I think that sense of injustice, of questioning misery, of not understanding the insanity we call economics is one of the threads of your soul.  It is woven into your being, and though its form of expression changes, it is a basic part of your identity.  I like it.  

Hugs - Michele  

Saturday, July 26, 1997  Note Home  

Sorry so long so quiet, but MOI BOG they've been working me. Budget changes (increases, actually), television program enhancements, new radio talk show, additional staff for my departments - it's all good stuff, but it's sure swallowed all my free-brain time.  

One nice plus from my trip home -- the office now looks like Santa Barbara: people wear the California T-shirts & hats I brought back, and there are Santa Barbara postcards posted in just about every cubicle and bulletin board.  

The weather here is turning to autumn already. The midnight sunglow from the sky is gone. The day grows bright now at 5:30 a.m. instead of 4:00, and the birds outside my window are moving south. I don't have to water my balcony flowers as often.  

I brought back lots of books (classical lit, language and even law books). As soon as the winter freeze really hits, I promise myself I'm going to expand my mind. That's the big plan anyway. When winter hit Moscow I just hibernated.  

Politically, economically, psychologically, the country still spirals down. But the downward momentum seems to be slowing. Or at least mine is, and things look better because of it.  

For fun I walk the streets and gather curious looks from people who can spot right away I'm an American (someone told me it's in my aura). And I hang out with poets on an online chat site where we play poetry games. Like "poet tag": someone gives you a topic ("tag - you're it"), and you have to compose something on the spot. The other night my topic was "toes," and I typed:  

    Toes, toes, wonderful toes 
      They point the way 
        The rest of you goes.  

Sorry. At least it kills some evening time. Unless you drink, hunt hookers, play slots, or hang out with mafiosi, there isn't much doing at night.  

Well, enough of my tales. Please send some of yours ...  

Monday, August 25, 1997  Note to Betsy  

I've been mulling your anti-Semitism question; it's not an easy one to answer with a few throwaway lines. There is strong anti-Semitism here yet, though it was interesting at a recent staff party with giveaway favors, a dreidel was one of the first gifts to disappear. It's even worse for blacks. Follow any group of visiting Africans for a bit, and it's not long before you seem them stopped by the street cops, harassed for passports & sometime beaten (as was recently the case when one crossed the road at the wrong place). I spoke with a Nigerian not too long ago -- he couldn't wait to get out of the country. You would think a people as subjugated as the Ukrainians would be more empathetic with other subjugates, but in the upside-down through-the-looking-glass world here, it's just not so. I guess that's not so surprising. Poverty breeds poverty, ignorance breeds ignorance, and subjugation breeds subjugation. Perhaps I'll have a more profound assessment after I've pondered and lived it more.  

On the upside, the Ukrainians really love dogs. Any dog. Even the mangy homeless street curs.  

Regarding sensitivity to misconstrued sentiments (anti-Semitic or otherwise), we have a group of fervent American feminists (USAID funded) here in Ukraine to hold training programs for journalists (that's only *female* journalists) on how to inject women's issues into news coverage. This pisses me off on several levels 
-- each of which gets me labeled as anti-women, pro-pig. I resent it as a journalist that they're coming in here telling us how to handle our news. I resent it as an American that this is one more example of an imperialist imposition of our morality on other nations. I resent it as a taxpayer that I'm helping to pay for this. I resent it as a male that it widens the schism between the sexes. I resent it as a human that this is not moving us forward. You can't fight hate with hate, and we shouldn't fight sexism with sexism (as in women-only seminars). That was the message of ML King, Gandhi, & Mother Theresa. These 'feminists' strike me somewhat like the tobacco  companies: they're losing their US market, so they target the FSU for new customers. So I say this and I'm a sexist. Criticize Israel and you're anti-Semitic. It's somewhat like patriotism: the last refuge of the wrong.

Thanks for letting me vent on that. Do I sound grouchy today?    

Thursday, August 28, 1997  Note to Dick  

So many horrors still haunt this country.  

Sometimes I wonder if these people deserve their pain, but then I think most everyone deserves their pain. Pain can often be a useful indicator that we are doing something wrong. But does self-inflicted pain preclude a need for help to move beyond it? It's a question I ask and try to answer often. The Catholics believe one cannot be absolved until one has confessed and truly repented. The Hindus believe karma exacts its own justice. Dante said, "Who is more arrogant within his soul, who is more impious than one who dares to sorrow at God's judgment?" Others say better to light a tiny candle than to curse the darkness.  

I simply try to drag myself out of bed some mornings.  

Work here is very intense right now, but I constantly find fulfilling moments amid all the frustration and gloom. It's the little things I take the most pleasure in. A worker who shows a rare flash of dedication to duty. A new concept that suddenly registers, and I see them incorporate it as their own. An instant where our distant cultures merge and we can share a mutually understood bit of humor. That stuff makes me happy.  

Autumn is fast settling in Kiev -- the leaves are turning, the temperatures are dropping, the rain is falling. Snow comes in September.  

Sunday, September 7, 1997  Note Home  

I've been getting notes from home wondering if I'm still alive or if Chernobyl has blown again or if I've lost my limbs or some other such silencing mayhem. I must be really overdue writing. There have been three prime (and lame) excuses:  

1) My connections home have been sporadic lately -- our international lines have gone down for days at a time, and my Internet link has been equally flaky. It's a little spooky losing touch with home. But not so near as bad as it was in 1990 Soviet Russia, when the failing and falling Communists were then confiscating foreign journalists' gear (and sometimes confiscating foreign reporters) in midnight visits. When the phone lines went dead then, I *really* felt the separation from home.  

2) Lately I've been a little shell-shocked. So many battles waging: the Ukrainians trying to milk the Americans; the Americans trying to milk USAID; USAID trying to milk US taxpayers. And believe me it's a lonely war on each front. Fortunately my department workers and I are forming a solid team. They know I'll treat them fairly and more, and they help keep our media division running clean. Not easy to do when there's milk, milk, milk everywhere.

3) I didn't want to write a long & whiny note like this one.  

One final whine: I get to head home in a few weeks. Unfortunately it's to move out of my lovely home, which the owners just sold in the middle of a gold-rush on property in Santa Barbara. The house sold for a ridiculously high price, which means the buyer will likely get stuck with the loss once the prices get real again. So I get to lose my house, spend a couple of unexpected $-thousands flying back to the US to move, and give up my scheduled Christmas trip home.  

But all is not woeful. I really love my Ukrainian workers. And it's becoming more mutual as they further realize I don't want to be just another American overlord invading their homeland. I've been invited several times to "lecture" journalism students on concepts of an independent media. I like to sit my chair right in front of them, and exercise more of a Socratic Q&A session, which is a rare communication method here. These (even at the university) are students who still stand at attention when the professor enters the room, and sit silent through an hour of monotonous monologue. More of an indoctrination than education, really. But I give the professors marks for at least inviting a counterpoint into their classrooms. It's like they know their old ways are gone, and rather than admit it by changing themselves, they at least offer their students a chance to hear new ideas even as they condemn them.  

Our remodel of the national TV & radio programs for a "fall premiere" has gone even better than I hoped. I budgeted $-tens-of-thousands for the producers to introduce new segments, new graphics, new puppets, new jingles, new promos, new sets, etc. Not the kind of thing they're used to getting money for. They are very creative, and have heretofore accomplished wonders with next to nothing. You should see how they create a party with just a few balloons and some string. I'm really happy over what they've done with this relative budget bonanza (still peanuts by American broadcast standards). My only complaint is I have to interrupt this work with a trip home at such a critical time.  

But then I'm whining again.