Category: Russia

I decided to take a picture (It is about 2:30 a.m. when I took these!) of all the parts of the monastery that are being gathered up to turn the village back to its original monastery habitat. It was a female monastery originally, but has been officially turned into a male monastery now. The Orthodox Church is slowly but relentlessly grabbing land and gathering pieces of the village, like an octopus, hiding in its cave…

I try to make people understand that they will lose their places, if they do not register the homes in their names. For years now, it has been mandatory for people to get their properties registered properly and time has run out. The Orthodox Church, which has the patience of Job, has all the time in the world. They wait and when the property becomes officially available. They either get it free or pay a pittance for the property…

It is legal, for people know and have known for a longtime to get their property in order. Russians literally all own their property, but Russians are lazy and some will lose their free properties to people who have patience…

I even know of some here in the village that have not claimed their land, but only the home. This allows people to buy the property from under them and that will effect future heirs to properties. It has to do with taxes and for the desire to not pay $20 or $30 dollars a year for the actual land. Could be future fatal…

Svetochka finally got their village property and home done. But only after I finally laid down the facts of a octopus church land grabbing. Vova finally got his property done, he got scared silly when the Orthodox Church realized his property is on their property and he was able to get his rights established, before they got theirs…

Another person is having a fit about the cemetery that was finally discovered in the field. I understand that his home is on that cemetery; And guess what? Right, he is not registered the property for its protection… Money is not an issue. He always has a bottle of vodka and a cigarette in his mouth. So $20 a year in taxes is not a problem…

The main thing I see is that the monastery seems to have ability to sway decisions involved and parts of the old school fall toward the monastery in rights. The truth is; 3/4 of this Tiny Russian Village is ontop the old monastery land…

Therefore, this is for the record of the story I will one day write about the Tiny Russian Village, otherwise known as Zarya Svobody, Ryazan Oblast, Russia…

https://www.google.com/maps/

WtR

My hand and elbow are swollen like fat sausages and itch like I got into poison ivy. Grumble, rumble and bumble….Did I say Horseflies suck?

So lets look at some pictures I like…

Did I say Horseflies SUCK?

Have a nice day!

WtR

Posting defunct today!

Went to Big Village, got bit (more like swords of death driven deep) on the right top of my hand by a horsefly. Hand is swollen now. Taken antihistamine for it. Itches like crazy. Grouchy and grumbly!

Then a horsefly bit my left elbow and now it is swollen, itchy and I am super grouchy…

Then Boza tangled with a honey bee and got stung on the nose. He doing okay…

We gonna ignore the world and start over tomorrow…

WtR

When I was a little kid, grandpa handed me a small shovel and bucket. He then pointed at the outhouse and told me to clean out the pit…

I was fascinated and scared at the same time. I had visions of monsters that lived in the bowls of an outhouse and ate all given to it. Or something like that. Never crossed my mind that we had to clean it out once in awhile. Those kind of things as a kid, just seem to be ignored and many people grow up in this world and never even think about the care of waste facilities…

I thank my family for raising me right. They might wonder about me at times, but I was taught the basics of life and those basics were on a earthy level. The earth (water and or soil) is life and life should respect that earth. From the dirt comes food, be it animal, plant and or insects. Life all comes from the earth itself…

Yesterday, I tore the seat out from inside the outhouse. The man who built it originally never put a back door to dig out the waste. I had to repair the seat anyway and took the time yesterday to reinforce the outhouse and I cleaned the pit out. Memories of being a kid washed over my mind and after a few minutes of work. I found I enjoyed myself and for the next few hours, I kept at the task. Soon I was done and realized that there are things that seem terrible in life, but things still have to get done…

For inquiring minds…. I fill a wheelbarrow twice, mounded high to the sky, with waste. Yummy…

I realized yesterday that the outhouse has about maybe two more years of usable life span and then it has to be rebuilt. Torn down and rebuilt. The next outhouse will be much bigger and the pit much deeper and lined with bricks, plus a back door to clean the pit out. You see, I am making plans as I work repairing things as to the lifespan and need to replace. Just like, this week, I will finish tearing the old chicken coop down and finish cleaning the back yard, at least enough to rebuild the back wall on the home. Thus, you have to constantly plan and prioritize…

Why do I talk about such tasteless issues?

Because, you should and must know how to deal with basics of life. We may not always have such a perfect unappreciated existence, as some of us do now. I am thankful for such a usable place to use facilities and care for it is very important…

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The monsoon rains have uncovered the roof to a tunnel section. The monastery is undermined with most likely a dozen tunnels. Some are just utility tunnels, but at least four of them are huge walk-able brick lined tunnels, that connected all the buildings together at one time. Monasteries are good about that… 😉

My issue is that now they will start to collapse, they have removed so much earth from the top of the landscape, that we will have future issues. I will watch and point it out to Father Pavel when I can…

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Last few things….The pear trees are alive and growing. They survived and it surprised me. I never gave up on them, but it still surprised me. I thought they had bit the dust…

We are uptown at our village. We have an actual set of stairs at the river. Can you believe that? WE have a solid set of stairs. It is really nice and the bridge is more solid than I have ever see here. I know why! Father Pavel is making sure his flock can get here. It is not because of us few measly villagers living here. We don’t count. But I take what I can get and one day there will be a car bridge built across this river. I see it coming…

Svetochka will be happy to see her strawberries doing good and I moved the hand wash station and made it very easy to work with. It is now solid and usable for all. That should make a happy girl when she comes to the village…

WtR

Biggest, bloodiest and or whatever Mass shooting/killing “ever” in America? Not really, but lets pretend it is for the sake of less arguments. Just think American Indian and that will focus your brain…

“Bloodiest mass murder in US history at a gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday, federal officials said…”

It is not the headlines that I give a crap about. It was bound to happen and most likely will get worse, before it gets better. We have set our own fate and time will tell how bad it gets. I have said one day that the chickens will come home to roost…

What bothers me is the fact that America has become a simmering pot of water and a simple turn of the stove dial, will send it boiling in an instant. Too many more of these happenings, will cause explosions in violent waves, all over America…

Sad! Sad for the murdered/injured/effected, sad for the country and sad for the state of affairs of all people in America. Too much, too soon, too late, too many, too varied, too straight, too gay, too LGBT, too black, too white, too you, too me, too them, too us, too drugged, too gender correct, too politically correct, too scared, too mad, too happy, too sad, too propagandized, too gamed, too stressed, too mixed, too emotional and way-way-way too much incomprehension of what is happening right under your/mine/their nose…

What! You need you face slapped twenty times to see what is happening?

WtR

Sveta picked up a old Samsung smartphone so that I could use GPS and have a always carry camera. Well neither worked properly and since it was Symbian operating system, there was not much I could do with it. Literally junk, until I thought about installing android in it. I knew that the phone had a high quality camera and it had GPS built in. I also knew that Android could be shoehorned in if I so desired…

I took the Android 4.4.2 operating system from a Fly I4490i phone download from the internet and recompiled it. Then using a flash program made for phones. I experimented and experimented. The image the phone took, before I Androidized, it was terrible…

The camera alone was worth the effort, but I also have a working GPS in a small form factor. Battery life doubled and the phone is just 100% more usable. It is a little bit slow, but I have more time than money!

To me it was astounding at how it went from such a cloudy image to a very clear image. It answers a question about life. Software makes a difference…

I know that the images are of different things, but I took few images with the old, that I have very little to compare with. You can see the difference…

By the way, I am a computer – Android nut by hobby. Not very good, just a NUT!

WtR

I put the poles one meter deep and supported with a brace driven at an angle over two feet each into the ground, then nailed to the main post. That way I was able to get some tension on the lines, without pulling the poles over. The sandy soil takes extra work to get things to stay upright sometimes and I know that the wet clothes get heavy at times…

So this morning, I built an old fashion style clothesline. I will pick up some standard clothesline rope, but for now, I have put my regular rope as the clotheslines. This is something that has needed to be done and gets all the clothes out of the main walkway…

That is what I did this morning and now to rest for a few hours…

Have a nice day…

WtR

Just photos all in a day in the Tiny Russian Village…

This hedgehog we found has such a bad attitude, that it had to be a girl! 😉 Not really, but I will call her Henrietta anyway. Boza found her at the side of the road and she was in a bad mood. She hissed, called us names and told me to tell Mr. Hedgehog up the hill, that she did not care for his advances and she wants to be left alone… Mr. Hedgehog…

So we passed the word on and Mr. Hedgehog shed one tear and went looking for another girl…

Today we received the wood to fix the back wall of the village home. Cost 3000 rubles delivered. That is about $46 dollars and someone sent a donation today for $50. Talk about answering a orison and a need. I had to have the wood and Boza and I decided to not eat for a few weeks to get the money from the budget, Well; not eat as much. Then bang, here came the exact money to pay for the wood. Talk about answering a orison and a need…

Did I tell you that I love peonies?

Our bench for babushkas as they walk to the monastery is becoming a good thing. They use it every time they come up…

The T-rose is doing great and I suspect that next year it will bloom. It is rooting now and getting new growth and I must figure out the best way to protect it from the harsh winters here. Did I say I love roses…

The caterpillar looks like a common Western Tent caterpillar in America. But who knows? Not sure!

The fish are being fed four times a day now and getting big…

Just things I love and take pictures of as Boza and I walk or work…

WtR

“Daimler AG is a German multinational automotive corporation. Daimler AG is headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.” Plans to localize production of Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Russia, skirts the issue of never ending sanctions. The plant will be built at the Esipovo Industrial Park in the Moscow region. The new plant will assemble E-Class, S-Class, A-Class model sedans as well as ML and GL models. The company intends to produce 25,000 cars annually. Specifically for the Russian market. Mercedes-Benz can not afford to lose that market. Thus, the Russian Trade Ministry has agreed that German automaker Daimler AG can begin the assembly of Mercedes-Benz vehicles in the Moscow region, according to Deputy Director of Transportation Vsevolod Babushkin…

“The plan has been approved by the ministry and is currently awaiting the green light from the regional authorities,” said Babushkin to the Rambler News Service…

This is the kind of things I have talked about in the past. Russia expects car companies who want to sell cars in Russia to locate themselves in Russia (due to sanction games by the west.) If you do not want to put your technology where your mouth is, then find another market. In the case of the Mercedes market in Russia, Russians love those Mercedes… 😉

You see lots of Fords in Russia! Why? Because they build them here…. Things like this are happening all over Russia. This is just Daimler’s way of telling the US and EU what they can do with their illegal sanctions…

WtR

When in a Tiny Russian Village, the comforts are what you make of it. If you are lazy and ignore all around you. Life gets rough and you have no one but yourself to blame. You let your fence collapse, that is your fault. You allow your house to fall apart, that is your fault. Anything can be fixed, stuff and parts are all around. A collapsed home that no one has lived in for many years is a treasure trove of parts. A piece of steel laying on the ground, after being dug up by the bulldozer, is a repair piece for the car. It is what you make of it, that is life…

Therefore, while I get comments about how stupid it is to live in squalor, I actually live in grandeur!

I have said before, “It is the little things that count!”

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The above said, now I must slow down…

Today, I must stop and smell the coffee! I realized last night that I have been driving myself to hard. Once again, I find myself driven. I do it to myself and no one else is to blame. That is what pushed me to become a corporate big wig and what almost killed me. Why I even feel guilty enough to write about it. I have to write this and realize that I have pushed too hard…

I still feel guilty and am self-driven to work harder. I never have enough time to get done what I have to do. In my world of corporations, tomorrow was always too late and too far away. Tomorrow was money lost and time was expensive…

Here in the Tiny Russian Village, I am learning, life not lived is lost and time is perfect tomorrow…..

It is called, “Balance!”

Can you say, “If I die tomorrow, I would be happy with my life?”

I can…

WtR