Dream Vacation

I was thinking after doing the Flickr Mosaic about what would my dream vacation. There are vacations that I love doing like going to Disney World, but there is one major once in a lifetime vacation that is my dream vacation.

I would love to fly to Alaska and visit Sitka, Alaska. Visit the The Russian Bishop's House, which is one of the oldest intact Russian buildings in North America. Also I would have to go see the New Archangel Dancers. Also while in Alaska visit Kodiak, Alaska and see the Baranov Museum which has some great exibits on the collonial Russia period in Alaska. I would also have to visit Juneau, but most of the Russian heritage has been lost there. Except St Nicholas's Church, here is a better photo of it.

Currently there is no easy way to go between Alaska and Vladivostok so most likely I would need to fly, but there has been talks of a bridge between Russia and Alaska or a ferry. So if it takes forever for me to take this trip then who knows how I will get between the two places.

Then I would cross over to Russia and take the trans-Siberian railroad from Vladivostok to Moscow. Currently there is one company major company that deals with Trans-Siberian railroad tours....that I trust. Most of their tours go West to East, but I know I don't want to go West to East, I want to go East to West. Their only East to West tour starts in Bejing, but I would want to start in Vladivostok which is a different spur of the Trans-Siberian railroad, it is the origanal rail.

So start in Vladivostok then head to Lake Baikal, maybe have day at the lake and hanging out at the beach. Then head on to Irkutsk visit some of the museums and historical landmarks there. During both the Decemberists Revolt and the civil war after Bolshevik Revolution had major battles in Irkutsk, so plenty of Historic sights.

Then on to Yekaterinburg, a place I have always wanted to visit. It is the city the Last Tsar and his family were executed. The house they were executed in was torn down by order of Yeltsin. It is also where Gary Powers was shot down on May 1, 1960, to it played a major part in both the Revolution and the Cold War, it is a must see during this dream vacation.

Then off to Moscow....there are so many things I want to see again in Moscow, that I wouldn't know where to start listing them. I love Moscow it is clearly a city built up around a fortress. If you look at a map of Moscow, you see the Kremlin in the center of circular roads. I am not going to bother to retype the history of the Kremlin go see it here if you are interested. So Moscow grew like a tree adding more circular roads as it grew.

Then I need to see the Moscow Metro again....when I saw it in 1986, it was amazing. it was clean and wasn't like any subway I have ever seen before or since. It had carvings on the walls, paintings on the ceilings, and chandeliers. It also has these very very steep very fast esculators. I need to see how the Metro has handled these really rough decade or two.

I have to go see St. Basil's again, it looks amazing in photos, but in person it is awe inspiring. Then there is Cathedral Square with all the other amazing Cathedrals, it is where all the major events happened during the Tsarist period until Peter the Great moved the capital to St. Petersburg.

There is enough stuff in Moscow that I would loved to do that I could spend months there without a problem, but then I sill need to make it to St. Petersburg. To me there is only one way to get from Moscow to St. Petersburg and that is one of the daily night trains. I would pick the Red Arrow because that is the most famous one of the bunch....plus it was the one I rode when I was there 22 years ago. I remember being way too late it leaves around midnight and catching the train and getting into Leningrad the next morning and it was well run and my first train experance so there is a soft spot in my heart for it.

Now with going to St. Petersburg the timing needs to be just right. I want to be there during the white nights. I need time to visit Tarskoye Selo.......hmm..I just realized that I can't narrow my list down to just a few places I want to visit there. Check out this virtual tour if you want to see why I can't narrow it down. I have to say Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, is my favorate city in the world. It is amazing. It is beautiful in a way most cities aren't...it is historical in a way I love. The major problem is coming to grips with the number of people who died while building the city for Peter the Great. About 300,000 people died building the city do to illness and lack of food and other things. So sometimes it is hard to balance the beauty with the horror. Also there is the amazing WWII history around St. Petersburg.

Oh one of the things I need to take a long time exploring is The Hermitage...I only had a day to see it last time and I didn't even make a small dent in it. I think at least a week would cover a good amount.

After all that I will fly home to Maine and take a long rest.

Page 123 meme plus musings

I am stealing this meme from Trees and flowers and birds. I have a vaige memory of doing something like this, but hey if I did it is a new book so might as well do it again.

The Rules

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more (no cheating!)

Find page 123

Find the first five sentences

Post the next three sentences

The book is "The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Most Famous Scientist." I just got this book in the mail a couple days ago that is why I know I didn't do this book before. :-)

"Each time Hoover's agents drew up a summary of Einstein's "Red front" affiliations, they included more groups. For several years during the early 1950s, his "subversive" list grew at the rate of nearly one new "front group" per month. It wasn't that Einstein joined so many organizations during those waning years of his life, but McCarthy-Hooverism expanded its power, the Subversive Activites Control Board (SACB) and HUAC, the authorities on "subversive" groups, kept enlarging their lists."

So far I have really enjoyed the book. I went on to this one after reading
Einstein: A Biography by Jürgen Neffe and Shelley Frisch. Which was a great book and having have read a handful of Einstein bios in high school it left me with more questions about him and Hoover, so I had to get this book I am reading now.

A little note here. Horse Girl's teacher is making noices about holding Horse Girl back next year and I have already decided I am not going to allow it for many reasons, but one of the big ones is that when I was her age I was like her. I could sort of maybe read depending on your defintion of reading. It didn't really click until I was 8 or 9 years old. (Horse Girl turns 8 this month.) So for me fast forward 30 years and here I am reading Einstein bios with no problem. I don't read fast, but I read and comprehend which is the most important part. So I really believe Horse Girl will figure things out and be fine just because of my history. That doesn't mean that Fly Guy and I are just sitting back and waiting, we work with her and her teachers work with her and she works hard at every thing she does. I know in my heart that she will be fine with time. I think sometimes it is harder for people who haven't been there, done that and bought several t-shirts, get too tied up with the here and now and don't look down the line.

There isn't a better bio to read then a good Einstein bio when you want to feel like a dyslexic can do anything. ;-) Dyslexics just see the world a different way. Which is why I don't like being told I "suffer" from dyslexia....I don't suffer I see things different then other people, which has bad parts to it and it has good parts. Einsein is one of those people who took the good parts and ran with them. Hmmmm.....a peace loving, socialist, dyslexic who becomes the world's most famous scientist, no wonder he is one of a handful of people who I would view as "my hero."

First Reading at Church on Oct 14, 2007

This past Sunday the first reading at Mass was 2 Kings chapter 5:14-17, which reminded me of something that I have wanted to post here for awhile. Back on June 25, 2007 a posted how rather use the term Shoah rather then the term Holocaust and I didn't go into it then because it wasn't the blog posting for it. As time went on I got busy and forgot about posting about it. Well this reading reminded me of it.
2 Kings 5:17 is "Naaman said: "If you will not accept, please let me, your servant, have two mule-loads of earth, for I will no longer offer holocaust or sacrifice to any other god except to the LORD." In this sentence holocaust is a religious sacrifice ( animal) that is completely consumed by fire. Holocaust is derived from the Greek holókauston (ὁλόκαυστον = ὁλον [completely] + καυστον [burnt]). A sacrifice is something that is done to please a god or goddess. So then a holocaust is a burnt offering that is pleasing to God.
Now why would anyone name the slaughter of 6 million Jews, plus all the other categories Soviet POWs ( 2 million), Serbs (600,000), Poles (200,000), Roma (250,000), Freemasons (100,000), Homosexual men (15,000), Spanish POWs (10,000), and Jehovah's' Witnesses (5000).....why would anyone call the slaughter of these people a burnt offering that is pleasing to God. To even think that the events in Nazi Germany were pleasing to God in any way makes my stomach turn.
Now because the term holocaust has become a synonym for genocide, people think they know what holocaust means, but most people do not track down the meaning of the word. I know I did not until I had nearly completed my BA in History. I hate the fact I did not research the term before I did my Senior Theses, because I used the term Holocaust in it, if I was to do it again, I would not.
So now you know why I use the word Shoah what happened during Nazi Germany. Shoah means "catastrophic upheaval" in Hebrew. Which seems to fit so much better then "an offering pleasing to God."
For other times and places I use genocide, because I believe holocaust should no longer be used in that way, it is a misappropriation of a word, so it should be fixed, but I know I am bucking the tide.