I am a National Enlightener

Yesterday, Nov. 1, was the Day of the National Enlighteners (Den na narodnite buditeli) in Bulgaria. National Enlighterners are, above all, the people who led the Bulgarian National Revival during the 19th century which culminated in the April Uprising of 1876 and the restoration of the Bulgarian independence after the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-78. However, Enlighteners in a broader sense are considered all who have contributed to the cultural advancement of the Bulgarian nation, including all conscientous teachers and scientists. For that reason, schools and universities have a day off on Nov. 1. I am proud to say that I qualify to be called a National Enlightener not only owing to my occupation but also by the merit of my own deeds.

Of course this pompous statement is tongue in cheek, but it is based on a real recent achievement. Not that I have written a good educational text popularizing science or that some research manuscript of mine has been accepted for publication by a peer-reviewed journal with impact factor (or be it even a journal without impact factor). Nope. Keep in mind, however, that all this intellectual activity associated with "enlightenment" is, as Marxians would call it, a superstructure. To be possible at all, it requires a base - a set of material preconditions. If a person isn't fed, dressed and comfortably positioned, he is totally unable to engage in any intellectual activity. Our students, thankfully, come to us fed and generally well dressed. However, when we come to the comfortable position, we have problems.

The microscopic observation in our teaching labs requires lab chairs with variable height. For many years, it has been impossible for our Department to buy such chairs. The Bulgarian law requires all equipment for government institutions to be bought by a complicated procedure, so our demands must be sent "above", to the Rector's office. The aim of this procedure is to prevent corruption, but the actual result is what you can expect if you let clerks disconnected from teaching and not too interested in its success to buy all items needed for teaching. The most urgently needed things somehow get cancelled from the list, the rest are supplied with great delay (up to a year) and usually in a form unsuitable for the purpose. In the case of lab chairs, some were indeed bought with variable height as required, but the maximum height was about 35 cm. We cannot even figure out how could such close-to-mother-Earth chairs be produced in the first place. Our only reasonable guess is that they have been meant for kindergartens.

So I have for years used some of my time at work to try and repair our available old lab chairs that become fewer and more valuable with each passing semester. Some of them still have their labels indicating that they were produced in the 1950s. I receive little acknowledgement for these efforts. Most colleagues mock me, and the students never think that someone may be doing hard work so that they have something to sit on. However, I know I am doing the right thing. My maternal grandfather, who was a carpenter, would be proud of me if he could know. Unfortunately, sooner or later every chair has its metal part broken, and at that point I give up, because I haven't the equipment and skills needed for welding.

This semester, we have another problem. Our building has been in renovation for more than a year already, with no end in sight. While this process is taking place, normal teaching and research is all but impossible, and if you at least save your things needed for work you are lucky. We have already lost reagents for many thousands euro because of incompetence of some electricians who disconnected the power supply to a freezer full of antibodies. Now, the workmen have come to the task of renovating the central heating. It is a rule in Bulgaria to renovate and repair the heating systems in the autumn-winter season when heating is actually needed. In our building, this was done last in the cold and hungry winter of 1996-97. At that time, apart from writing about cell cycle and protesting against government, I was busy to manage some heating at my workplace. Happily, the room where I spend most of my time had a glassware dryer suitable also as a heater. The same was true for one of our four teaching labs. But what about the other three?

I found two electric heaters which were dispensable at home and brought them to work. One of them was initially not working. I had recently re-read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Pirsig, which claims that everybody has the mental skills necessary to repair moderately complex technology such as motorcycles. I was young, trusting and stupid, so I thought that electric heaters are even simpler than motorcycles and tried to repair it myself. After the attempt, when I plugged the heater into the socket, there was a "puff" and some sparkles, then everything went dark. So I strongly advise readers not to follow Pirsig's theory with any electric device (or anything significantly more complex than a chair).

Close to my workplace, there was a garage turned into a shop. It was conveniently selling and repairing simple electric equipment. I brought there my blackened heater. The electrician said that a short circiut had destroyed all parts of the heater except for its corpus. He added, however, that due to the ongoing hyperinflation, it was still more advantageous to buy and install all these parts than to buy a new heater. So my poor old heater got a new life. Indeed, it had lost its legs long ago, but we are putting it on a metal test tube stand and it is OK.

This autumn, as weather turned cold, I placed the two heaters in two of the teaching labs. But what about the fourth lab? I don't remember how we managed it in 1996-97, but now I am in charge of the practical teaching and feeling responsible for it. My mother had mentioned that a heater had stopped working and she had bought an electric radiator. She immediately agreed to give me this heater for my workplace, as she had given me the two older ones.

Unfortunately, my friends at the garage-shop were no longer in business. The garage was not their but municipal property. The Mayor's office had raised the rent to some ridiculous level (about EUR 350 per month, they said). They could not afford it and moved out. Nobody rented the garage-shop after then. It is locked and slowly deteriorating, illustrating how government attempts to manage business invariably turn to slaughtering the egg-laying hen. I don't know whether the electricians have found a new place, but the fact is that our giant Medical University campus is deprived of their services. Who would repair my heater now?

To cut the long story short - finally, my husband did it. He is a man of technology, not some inspired Pirsig reader. So on Monday I gladly informed my colleages that we already have a heater in every teaching lab. I only asked them (and I keep praying) that nobody forgets to unplug the heater when leaving the room. Otherwise, a fire could easily ensue, we could share the fate of the Department of Pathophysiology, and to cap it all, I would be held responsible for bringing the heaters in the first place.

But let's not think of disasters likely to happen. At least, now we can let Grannie Winter come with all her merry white granddaughters (as a Bulgarian nursery rhyme says) without worrying that we have to teach at Celsium 5. And I have all right to call myself a National Enlightener, haven't I? Just try to say I haven't, to see your comment moderated :-).

Greeting to Libyan rebels

This is The Song of the Rebels of (the town of) Panaguirishte, a popular song from the 1870s - the age of Bulgarian struggle for independence; lyrics by Ivan Vazov, the author of music is unknown. Below is a slightly compressed translation:

The fight is starting and hearts beat loud.
Our oppressors are coming now.
Courage, my loyal friends, show the world
We are no longer submissive herd!

Show we have broken the dirty chains
And we are free men, rather than slaves!
Let us begin the glorious fight
And God will help us with all His might.

Chorus:
Come on, brothers, all like one - to the fight we rush!
Come on, brothers, all like one - enemy to crush!
Oh you my mother, dear my homeland,
Lovely as Eden on this earth you stand.

"Rufinka": Bulgarian folk song about death in spring

One of the best known and beloved Bulgarian folk songs is Rufinka bolna legnala (Rufinka was lying ill), originated some 150-200 years ago in the Rhodopa mountain (although, similarly to other Rhodopean songs, it is very difficult to sing). It was created by Bulgarian Muslims and, as far as I know, is the only element of their culture incorporated in mainstream Bulgarian culture. Once I read an article about the background of the song. According to it, Rufie (informally Rufinka) was a real person, a girl from a well-to-do family. About age 20 and before getting married, she succumbed to a progressive fatal disease, probably tuberculosis. Before her death, she was asked what she was more sorry for - her wedding dress or the world. The historical Rufie reportedly answered, "For the dress, because I shall never put it on." However, the character of the song gives a different answer - see below.

The lyrics in Bulgarian (in the original dialect) can be found e.g. at this forum. The participant supplying the text writes, "This is perhaps the only folk song I truly admire and when I listen to it, everything in me bristles up." My opinion is similar. This song in a very simple way gives you the tragedy of being human, of having a self-aware spirit longing for existence but trapped within a mortal body. It is felt even more clearly because of the mentioned abundance of life in spring, and because Rufinka despite her religion does not seem to believe in afterlife.

Here is my (quite rude) attempt of translation:

RUFINKA WAS LYING ILL

Rufinka was lying ill / there in the high mountain.

No one was by her side / only her old mother.

She was telling Rufinka, / "Rufinka my dear daughter,

Are you sorry for your wedding dress, / your dress and your beloved?"

"My dear, my dear mother, / I am not sorry for my dress,

I am sorry for the world, / because spring has come now,

Everything's coming out of earth, / and I shall go into earth.

Mother, call Mizho's Fatma, / let her come, and I'll tell her

To marry my beloved, / to take my wedding dress.

Iran struggling

Photo: Protesters in Tehran on June 17 (copied from Sandmonkey's blog, original source unknown).

After a fake election, Iranian people have taken to the street to protest, to stand for their votes and probably for something much more fundamental. Many have already been murdered by the regime's security forces; still, ther is hope that a change for better will come against all odds.

Below, I am trying to translate a part of The Blind Shephards' Herd, by Valeri Stankov. It is one of the most popular modern Bulgarian poems and was written in the near past when Bulgaria was not that different from today's Iran.

"Blind shephards pasture us for many ages.

They push us upward, make us climb forever

Where only dry and sticky weeds await us

With roots pulled out of earth by stormy weather.

We hardly see grass even after rainfall,

Though we are promised green and juicy meadows.

And if one steps aside to leave this main goal,

Then lurking wolves attack him from the shadows.

The shephards' voices all are hoarse from shouting,

They curse us, call us miserable bastards.

And we keep climbing up this desert mountain

In dire hope to reach their promised pastures...

But day shall come to reckon with the shephards:

Like avalanche, we'll fall on them together,

For butcher's knife is ultimately better

Than being led by a blind man forever."

Reminiscences from Bulgarian literature triggered by the Judge Rotenberg Center

The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center is an institution located near Boston that houses severely disabled students and uses on them various "behaviour modification techniques", including electric shocks. Last September, an article in Mother Jones magazine featured the Judge Rotenberg Center and I blogged about it under the title Double Standard.
To my surprise, the Center's Director, Dr. Matthew Israel, commented on my post and gave a link to his response to the Mother Jones article. I am not going to give a link to the response; those interested in it can follow the above link to my old post and find Dr. Israel's comment. At any rate, I wasn't impressed by it but I am not going to explain in details why. Joseph and Mike Stanton, here and here, explain it well in my humble opinion. I'll just paste a sentence from the latter Mike's post: "If Matthew Israel was treating diabetes he would dispense with medication and use electric shock every time they looked at a candy bar."
What was striking to me was that Dr. Israel cared to find my post and comment on it. This clearly shows that he is actively searching the blogosphere and putting his twopence on every blog that criticizes his institution, no matter how obscure. So the good doctor doesn't leave his cause undefended or, as we Bulgarians say, doesn't leave his donkey (stuck) in the mud!
Thinking of this, I remembered the 1923 poem Visiting the Devil by Bulgarian poet Hristo Smirnenski (1898 - 1923). Bulgarian readers can find the poem at Slovo; for other readers, I'll translate its beginning as I can:

In all my life, I'd never think
I could receive such favour:
To be invited for a drink
By no one else than Devil.

Or, I would say, to receive a comment by the Devil himself on one's humble blog.
Meanwhile, the New York Times also wrote about the Judge Rotenberg Center. The article, by Leslie Kaufman, is titled Parents Defend School’s Use of Shock Therapy. It is not exactly my cup of tea but, keeping in mind what I wrote last November, what else could be expected from the New York Times? In particular, the article suffers from the defect recently pointed by Andrea as "falsely ascribing equal weight to “both sides” of a controversy". Almost half of Kaufman's text is devoted to Susan Handon, who was unable to cope with her severely disabled daughter and because other institutions refused support, she was happy to have the girl placed in Judge Rotenberg Center and shocked. So, the experience of an exhausted mother is given the same weight as the long, painful path of civilization to renouncing torture.
Recently, another work of Bulgarian literature gave me a reminiscence of the Judge Rotenberg Center. It was the 1945 novel Doomed Souls by Dimitar Dimov (1909 - 1966). The plot of the book is the love of an Englishwoman to a Spanish Jesuit monk, and the scene is war-torn Spain in 1936. It is fiction, but it has its base in Dimov's observations on Spain in 1943-44. He was a vet and won a scholarship for a one-year study in the Cajal Institute in Madrid.
Dimov describes Spaniards from both sides of the civil war embracing their opposite causes with equal courage. (Alas, where was that courage in 2004? Nations develop and move away from old stereotypes.) Among them, the Jesuit, named Ricardo Eredia, is a character that no reader will forget. He is a medical doctor but has none of the enlightenment we tend to associate with this profession. On the contrary, he is a merciless fanatic possessed by the dream to build a global Catholic empire. I would describe him as the sort of person who today would go to Al-Qaeda and be met with open arms. Eredia has real prototypes - Jesuits met by Dimov in Spain, both in the Cajal Institute and outside it.
After returning to Bulgaria, Dimov described his arguments with Jesuit researchers in the Institute. The Jesuits had the opinion that only humans have souls and could feel joy and suffering. On the contrary, Dimov regarded the "soul-producing" human brain as a product of evolution and, hence, ascribed something soul-like also to other animals. Once in the lab, he pointed to the cage with experimental mice and asked his opponents, "Do you say that these creatures have no soul at all, no ability to feel and suffer?" The Jesuits replied, "Yes, none at all." To show his opinion more clearly, one of them took the cage and applied voltage to it. The animals began to squeak and writhe in pain and horror. However, the monks (who often talked about sympathy) were watching unmoved because, to them, animals were only biological machines unable to feel and suffer.
I'll add, perhaps some people think that disabled humans also have no souls and cannot suffer?
(The biographic information about Dimitar Dimov is from an essay by Krastyo Kuyumdjiev which is attached to the 1974 edition of Dimov's novels.)

Prison art

In the late 1940's, as the Communist regime was tightening its grip on Bulgaria, my father was among those who opposed it. He became member of a secret anti-communist organization. Unfortunately, the founder and leader of the group was a provocator. He lured the others and then gave them up to the authorities, quite as O'Brien did with Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984. They served prison time, 4 years for my father. While awaiting the trial, they were placed in the Sofia Central Prison.
Several days ago, my father remembered the prison church. Until 1950, priests in magnificent Orthodox vestments were allowed to read sermons there. The church was beautifully decorated. Inmates serving sentences in the first half of the 20th century had painted murals on the walls. They were excellent, although the prisoners were amateur artists. My father remembers, in particular, a Christ walking on water painted by Anton Prudkin. This interesting person was naturally drawn to the sea theme because he was a sailor. He was a terrorist and Russian agent and this was why he was jailed from 1925 to 1936 and later executed in 1942. However, he was not entirely evil. In 1939, he was captain of a ship that sailed 3 times between Bulgaria and Palestine, bringing there more than 2000 Jewish refugees.
In 1950, the religious freedom in the Sofia Central Prison was put to an end. The church walls were whitewashed with lime. (The Bulgarian reader will remember the moment in Ivaylo Petrov's novel Wolfhunt where the Communists led by Stoyan Kralev burn the icons of the village church.)
What is remarkable, the prison authorities themselves were clearly reluctant to destroy the murals. The chief jailer in front of some inmates scratched the newly formed lime layer with his fingernail and said, "Oh there is no problem. It will be easily scraped away." (The Communist regime often abolished the acts of folly it had ordered itself, sometimes quite shortly after imposing them.)
However, in this case the order was not cancelled. My father was transfered to another prison and had no more first-hand information, but other former inmates later told him that the lime layer had become tight and impossible to remove. My father wasn't surprised because he knew that lime becomes more and more stable with time. As he explained to me, this happens because calcium oxide takes up carbon dioxide from the air and turns into calcium carbonate.
At one moment, the former church reportedly became room for executions.
What has been its fate in recent years? I have no idea but I think that experts in chemistry and restoration must know a way to remove even an old, tight lime cover without much damage to the underlying paintings. But more than half a century later, does the prison personnel include even one employee who knows about the murals? And would anybody care?
There is little time to restore the prison art and capture the images. The municipal authorities of Sofia have scheduled the Central Prison building for demolition.