For the last post of 2011, enjoy this holiday video by Chervona, featuring American Robotnik as an extra. Have the most excellent 2012!
Dec 312011
Dec 282011
[T]his journey, this long, enduring journey by car, this ground-level journey that spares you nothing of the tectonics of space and hence of time, allows the traveler to experience a mode of the finite that alone can allow him to come to terms with the finitude of landscapes and faces. Or rather: by yielding that sense of distance and gravity of places back to the traveler; by adding to that a sense of immensity; by pursuing a frontier that seems to keep hiding, growing ever more distant as he [...] Continue reading >
Dec 262011
Dec 242011
Dec 222011
They say Christmas in the U.S. begins the day after Thanksgiving, on Black Friday. Consider, then, for a moment, the people whose devotion to Christmas extends into much of their year and whom Jesse Rieser has photographed for his series, “Christmas in America: Happy Birthday, Jesus”: Beyond the glowing green and red lights, past the shimmering silvery tinsel, around the fragrant pine boughs, another Christmas lingers, a Christmas of contradictions. This Christmas is complex and at times, uncomfortable. It’s awkward and sometimes bleak. But it is also sincere and celebratory, colorful and creative. [...] Continue reading >
Dec 202011
The American Christmas table is different from the Slovak one: no fish, no potato salad, no bobaľky, but, most importantly, no kapustnica. Early on in my life as a transplant, I realized I could live without all the traditional Christmas dishes except for the sauerkraut soup. The holiday connotes a lot of things—the tree, presents (socks!), snow (if you’re lucky), family, old movies—but what really makes Christmas for me is, indeed, kapustnica. As the first course, it brings the family together at the dinner table. It’s the ultimate comfort [...] Continue reading >
Dec 182011
If you define a hero as someone who performs deeds which you cannot imagine yourself perform and which are marked by self-sacrifice for a greater good, Václav Havel, who passed away today at the age of 75 near Prague, was my hero. The 13-year old me learned his name early on in the Velvet Revolution, as he and his fellow dissidents negotiated the end of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia’s rule. With democracy taking hold in my country for the first time since 1938, details of his life emerged: [...] Continue reading >
Dec 152011
Over the past few years, Americans have had (the increasingly fashionable) option to give charitable Christmas gifts: instead of buying presents for a friend or a family member, you can give a donation in that loved one’s name or honor to an organization serving people in need. Whether it’s a sign of late capitalism, a backlash against materialism, or a cop-out for the self-righteous, giving someone the gift of helping a person or people neither of you may know is a good thing every time, and especially during the season [...] Continue reading >
Dec 132011
Portland’s Blue Sky Gallery has been on my radar screen since I discovered that it occasionally features photographs from Central/Eastern Europe. Over the past few years, I’ve seen, for example, Julie Denesha’s “Outcasts of Slovakia” (June 2009), Evžen Sobek’s “Life in Blue” (Czech Republic, May 2011), and Dana Popa’s “not Natasha” (Romania/Moldova, October 2011). Showing at Blue Sky Gallery in December, Joakim Eskildsen’s “The Roma Journeys” takes up where Julie Denesha left off. “The Roma Journeys” at Blue Sky is a selection from more than 300 images Joakim Eskildsen compiled on his travels through [...] Continue reading >
Dec 102011
I discovered the band Chervona by missing their street concert at the Polish Festival. I listened to their music online every time I postponed going to one of their bi-monthly shows around town. So I was going to be damned if I were to miss the video shoot for their Xmas song “Bottoms Up”. Advertised on Facebook with a call for talent, extras, and production help, the shoot took place last Thursday, December 8th, 2011, at Lents Commons, a Southeast Portland Coffee House. The “Russian genius painter Andrey Nedashkovskiy” created a beautiful, [...] Continue reading >
Dec 092011
“The Carnival Is Over” by Dead Can Dance, which appeared on their album Into the Labyrinth (1993) and the best-of compilation Wake (2003). Directing the 1994 video was Ondrej Rudavský, a Slovak émigré living in the U.S. since 1986.
Dec 072011
Two recent issues of The Economist featured articles exploring international marriage and diaspora business networks. Let’s take a look at each article from American Robotnik’s perspective. International Marriage and You Most Central Europeans I know in the U.S. (“my generation”) have come or stayed because of love and its legal expression, marriage. In “Herr and Madame, Señor and Mrs”, the thrust of the argument is that even though they’re tricky to define and data are scarce, international marriages are on the rise because “they reflect—and result from—globalization”. The U.S. [...] Continue reading >
Dec 062011
I’m betting on the bicycle.
Dec 052011
The jackalope is a mythical animal of North American folklore described as a jackrabbit with antelope horns or deer antlers and sometimes a pheasant’s tail (and often hind legs). The word “jackalope” is a portmanteau of “jackrabbit” and “antalope”, an archaic spelling of “antelope”. It is said to be a species of killer rabbit. —Wikipedia The first time I saw a jackalope was at Marsh’s Free Museum, a Long Beach, Washington, roadside attraction, whose main attraction is Jake the Alligator Man and that also features an eight-legged lamb and a two-headed [...] Continue reading >
Dec 032011
The immigrant needs to grow a memory, and grow it fast. Somehow or other, he must learn to convert the uncanny into the homely, in order to find a stable footing in the new land. —Jonathan Raban in “Driving Home: An American Journey”