Martin's Almanack

When I am dead, bury me In my beloved Ukraine, My tomb upon a grave mound high Amid the spreading plain, So that the fields, the boundless steppes, The Dnieper's plunging shore My eyes could see, my ears could hear The mighty river roar. ... -- Taras Schevchenko, The Testament, 1845 A formerly powerful Europen nation felt humiliated by its treatment at the hands of others. It lost territory, its economy was in shambles. And then a new type of a charismatic leader came to power. He was admired by some and feared by others. He rewarded friends and persecuted and killed his enemies. Eventually, he rebuilt his economy and modernized his armies. Then he got into the habit of breaking all kinds of international norms and treaties and started talking and behaving in more and more aggresive ways. But "the West" was worried about confronting him. There was political turmoil in their lands. People with radical thoughts on al...

Today, Russians invaded Ukraine (again) and are poised to subjugate her people (again). This has happened before. Invading and oppressing their neighbors is an integral part of Russian history and culture and has been so for centuries. Many parts of Russia were first invaded, then annexed and then ethnically cleansed (by murder or resettlement) while large numbers of ethnic Russians were brought in. Stalin, himself a Russified Georgian , deported from their native land and russified (or killed) scores of peoples: Volga Germans , Crimean Tatars , Chechens , Ingush , Balkars , Kamyks , (some) Ukrainians , Balts and Estonians . But that pattern of behaviour and Russification has been the modus operandi of the Russian state for centuries, not just in the 20th. For example, the Circassian genocide in the 19th century killed over a million people in the area of the Black Sea, not far from the where today's invasion is taking place. My own birth country, Czechoslovakia...

Today, February 14, is St.Valentine Day. It is a day to celebrate love. Happy St.Valentine's! “The rose is red, the violet’s blue, The honey’s sweet, and so are you. Thou art my love and I am thine; I drew thee to my Valentine: The lot was cast and then I drew, And Fortune said it shou’d be you.” -- English nursery rhyme ( Gammer Gurton's Garland , 1784) The day was set up (in the 5th century) as a feast to commemorate the (violent) death of a 3rd century clergyman who ministered to persecuted Christians and also married young couples, which saved the men from being drafted as soldiers. That was not viewed favourably by authorities. He was arrested and jailed, but then he tried to persuade the Roman emperor Claudius II to convert to Christianity. The emperor was not persuaded and instead ordered Valentine to be clubbed, stoned and beheaded. However, before that, Valentine wrote a good-bye note to Julia, the daughter of his ...

First of all, February 1 was the start of the Chinese Lunar Calendar, so Happy New Year! This is my first installment of what I hope will be a bi-weekly feature of "Fortnight Quiz" , where I will semi-humorously (?) ask about your knowledge of the world around you. Every week I am putting such questions to my co-workers, which is meant only to lightly entertain us - the overworked, overstressed crowd - and not much else. So I decided to share those questions here, too. But a weekly format seems a bit too frequent (= too much work) and a monthly format a bit too sparse (= blog would get too long). The word fortnight derives from the Old English term fēowertyne niht , which meant "fourteen nights" . So 14 days seems to be an OK compromise (for now). More importantly, though, I like the word fortnight , because to people used to American/Canadian English it sounds archaic and odd, like a character from some story about Kin...