It’s St Nick’s Day! Here’s an old Carpatho-Russian hymn to the saint. Thanks to Tim Connelly for the link. Happy angel day to all you Nicks out there! Remember that scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding… “Here’s Nick, Nick, Nick, Nickie, and Nick” (wasn’t that vignette with the Bundt Cake afterwards a real scream? Opa!).
In our Russian folklore, the bluebird is considered a sign of good luck and a harbinger of happy times. This looks like a greeting card from the 80s, in the last days of the old Soviet Union.
This greeting card is obviously from the ’70s… the radio is a dead give-away and note the old-style airmail envelope. Trust me, Dede is at his computer nowadays. Yes, Virginia, there was life before these things entered our lives.
On Friday, In Karelia, a ceremony marked the opening of a power line from the mainland to the island of Valaam. As reported by Interfax, the Karelian Republic’s government completed new power lines with a total length of some 50 kilometres (@31 miles) and a capacity of 35 kilowatts running from a substation in the village of Lyaskelya in Pitkäranta raion the area to a substation on the island of Valaam. This completed a project to bring power from the central grid to the archipelago in Lake Ladoga. The project cost more than 2 billion roubles (65.212 million USD. 45.492 million Euros. 40.366 million UK Pounds) and it entailed the arduous task of laying two cable lines of 25 kilometres (@15.5 miles) each on the shoreline and on the lakebed of Lake Ladoga. To prevent damage to the anchor cables of ships, the cable was buried a metre (@3.25 feet) under the lake bottom. Workers laid a fibre-optic communications line simultaneously with the power transmission lines to the island.
According to an official spokesman, the formal opening ceremony of the power grid connection will be at the brotherhood’s refectory of the central farm of Valaam Monastery. At the beginning of the ceremony, candles will light up the room, but, as soon as power from the central grid arrives at the island substation and flows through the associated distribution networks, the refectory lights will come on. To date, a diesel-powered generating station supplied electricity to the monastery and the village on Valaam Island. “Power users in the Valaam archipelago will have a steady power supply from the Karelian grid, which will facilitate the further development of the infrastructure of the island, as well as lower prices for electricity, which will cut the total power bill. The machinery at the diesel-generated power station will remain in place as an emergency backup”, the official spokesman said.
18 December 2009
Interfax-Religion
Voices from Russia 
You must be logged in to post a comment.