Dear e.,
Hope you get it. Sounds like it would be a rather cathartic experience.
My cousin Nadya tells me that on my father's side of the family -- Russian
Orthodox -- I've got more than a hundred relatives she's tracked down in
the Ukraine. She's over there now, finally, for good she says, finally
having escaped the 'foreign' land of her birth, USA. She says she's
always felt like she was a foreigner here. So now she's over there, doing
English/Russian translation of Quaker texts, practicing Kripalu yoga,
doing subsistence gardening, advocating for domiciles with a curvilinear
perimeter (don't ask!), and in general being a wild-eyed fanatic of grace
and beauty -- stark raving mad, of course.
Meanwhile, the Jewish side of my family -- my mother's -- doesn't want to
know from 'roots.' Our 'roots' are that we were fucking massacred. We're
the walking wounded, not wanting to even think about the vast human legacy
erased by the fell eraser of Mr. Adolf. Pus, slime, and the Republican
Party, USA are more appetizing topics for contemplation than our roots in
Ye Olde Country. I admit that we are in a very unhealthy place about
this. We could really use some therapy. Big time.
>i have this vague chance of getting a grant to travel to transylvania in
>order to find the family of the man who saved my fathers life during the
>war. it would be kinda like travelling into the middleages... tiny
>hungarian village in the mountains, in the middle of romania. people
>still travel in oxcarts there, from what i am told. they are also very
>poor.
You so rock. This would be amazing. It's really awesome that you are
even seriously thinking about doing it. I live vicariously through people
like you, who actually might have half of a ball (ovary?). I mean, hard
core gumption. I deeply admire your willingness to do something like
this.
mark
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