I recently joined a Facebook group formed around Estonia and found a preview there to a very interesting film about the Singing Revolution of the late 80′s. Take a look.
H?id J?ule!
Merry Christmas (H?id J?ule) from Estonia!
Lea and I just got back from a great Christmas celebration with her family. I got to play the part of p?kkepikk – the gnome who hands out the presents. In Estonia, you have to recite a poem, sing a song or do some other sort of performance in order to get your gift. You can take a look at some of the pictures from our celebration in the pictures below.
Blessings to you all!
Great Start Sam!
Sam’s started off his 07/08 season well with a pin against rival U-High. Here’s a clip from a news report. The U-High wrestler mentioned in the segment following is the son of a fellow I wrestled back in the day.
If Memory Serves Me
Fort Defiance, AZ
Traveling through Arizona, we had a brief window between church visits and I had a sentimental desire to visit all the places that had been important to me in the past. ?I?ll show you the house where we lived when my folks were on the Navajo Reservation,? I told Lea as we drove toward Window Rock.
?My friend?s father had a motorcycle and he used to double us up on the back and ride us in and out of the wash. We held onto each other for dear life screaming over the rocks and dirt, chasing horned toads back into their holes. Joel and I would go down there and catch tadpoles in the summer. I?ll have to show you the wash.?
Lea and I drove down Kit Carson Drive past where my little school should have been and around the corner into town. I recognized the hill behind the school and remembered the bullies and standing on my tip-toes to reach the aluminum urinals. But neither bullies, nor urinals, nor preschool was anywhere to be seen. We turned the corner passing the old, abandoned hospital where my Dad used to work. Grass was growing through cracks in the parking lot.
Perspective
If memory served me, our house had been on the other side of town and looked out on a big triangular field. The field was immense. Its far border disappeared into the hinterlands where Indians lived and where birthday bikes disappeared. When I was a little boy, some one stole my new brown bike, the one I rode around the block and crashed into the fence after Dad got me going. It had white plastic hand grips and a shiny brown banana seat and one morning it was gone. I had stood looking across that field for a long time. The wild grass was tall and I could hardly see the houses on the other side let alone my new bike. It was a big field.
We lifted over a speed bump and started into the residential streets. ?We?ll drive all the way through town until we get to a big triangular field,? I told Lea. But even as we inched past the browning lawns, I began to have my doubts. I remembered the streets being further apart. Already now, and far too quickly, our road emptied out onto a small, triangular park filled with knee-high grass. I circled the field twice to let the dimensions sink in then drove to the far corner ? the hinterlands ? to look back at my old home only a stone?s throw away.
No doubt about it, the bike was long gone.
Baltic Bullies: Fear or Smear?
All summer long we have been hearing rumblings from the East about imbalanced portrayals of the Russian government at the hands of the Baltic states and unfair treatment of Russian minorities. A recent mission prayer calendar issued by my own denomination even indicated that mistreatment of Russian minorities in the Baltics may well amount to violations of human rights.
I must say that I’ve been fairly incredulous about these claims. I have indeed witnessed social tensions between Russians and Estonians, but these tensions have always varied in degree according to circumstances and have never amounted to “human rights violations”.
I have to admit though that I may have adopted an interpretive lens which is overly sympathetic to Estonian interests or have simply not been in the right places to observe these problems myself. If in fact these very serious accusations are correct, then I would most certainly agree that they must be addressed promptly and thoroughly and to the satisfaction of the international community.
In the interest of a fair assessment of news headlines, I want to also hold up the possibility that the reports I have been hearing are themselves politicized exaggerations aimed at discrediting three small but quickly growing independent states whose fairly recent escape from Soviet occupation contributed to the eventual collapse of that system. This would not seem too wild a possibility given the stream of nationalist rhetoric which has been emanating with increasing frequency and force from Moscow of late.
Given the seriousness of the situation – no matter which way the evidence leads – I want to advocate a cautious, diligent and open minded investigation of these reports. In the meantime, I will dig a bit deeper into the issue and see what I can find from resources on the net to give you the facts along with my own interpretation of their importance.
In the next few weeks I’ll post discussions about the following:
- Human Rights Issues in Estonia
- Russia: Wherein Lies the Threat?
- An Alien Point of View
- Christian Concerns: “The Alien Among You”
My sincere hope is that this investigation will encourage balanced thought on these important issues and provide a window into our daily realities in this part of the world. If you find these articles thought provoking or lacking in some regard, please leave your comments.
