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 :-).

Taste

Why do otherwise sensible adults portray the difficult period of childhood as a Golden age of happiness?
Possibly because at that time we are together with people who are later separated from us forever.
I remember that, when my brother and I were children, the spring was a season of awaiting cherries. We both liked fruits, and they were practically absent from the spring market until the appearance of cherries in late May. My mother was always telling us that there would be cherries after May 24. This is a Bulgarian holiday which she had set as arbitrary threshold to add accuracy to our expectation.
Once, when we were having a full dish of cherries, my brother pulled out a particularly large and red one, called it Count Cherry after a character from Gianni Rodari's Adventures of the Little Onion and suggested we make a contest and use the cherry as a prize. He won the contest but then laughingly said that "Count Cherry" was rotten inside. Life always brings nasty surprises...
Like many other siblings, we had a quasi-language just for us two. This now extinct language included a special anagram for grapes, another favourite fruit.
What else did my brother like to eat? It is difficult to remember, because he hadn't the sin of gluttony and always cared for the others. He liked chocolate but never ate more than his fair share of it while I sometimes took from his share. There is a traditional Bulgarian dish, meat-and-eggplants hash (musaka sas sini domati). It is considered a refined dish because it is difficult to prepare, but actually few people like it. My mother thought he liked it, and he was duly eating it in order to make her happy. It took years for him to confess the truth.
Unlike him, I have always refused to eat things I do not like and never resisted the things I like. To me, no great painting or symphony can compare with the pleasure given by the tasty roasted meat, the sweet chocolate and ice-cream, the fresh fruits and other tasty foods.
I admit I have the sin of gluttony. But there may be more to it. Taste is our tool to evaluate the substances that will build and power our body. Hence, of all our senses it is the only one directly related to our self-perpetuation, to the machinery of being alive.
And now, when I enjoy some piece of tasty food between my tongue and palate, often a quick thought pierces my mind that my brother will never again taste anything.

My site is moving

My site, until now at www.mayamarkova.com, is moving to a new domain - www.mayamarkov.com (the English home page is at http://www.mayamarkov.com/index_eng.html).
If you have linked to it, please update your links.
I'll tell some other time the story of the site, and why I had to move it.

Confession

(Warning - long post.)

Photo shows Tiber river at evening.

From June 6 to 11, I attended the Cell Model Systems Summer school at Tor Vergata Research Establishment, Rome. It was great experience and I learned a lot about liposomes and other membrane models, cytotoxic membrane-permeabilizing peptides, new materials based on plasma technology as well as current concepts about the origin of life - all this quite interesting and useful for a teacher in a broad-spectrum biology course like me. I saw first-hand how liposomes and nanomaterials are prepared, and how the atomic force microscope works, about which I had only read in articles. I am very thankful to my professor who recommended me for the summer school, to the organizers who approved my application, to the lecturers, and to my fellow participants. I whole-heartedly recommend CMS to every young researcher or teacher in life sciences. I also keep warm memories of our late-afternoon tours in Rome and in the beautiful nearby town of Frascati where we were accomodated, at the excellent hotel Cacciani.
But this is just an introduction - the post, unfortunately, is centered on something else.
Back in the 1990s, Bulgaria was even more miserable than it is today. And even more depressing than the crude reality was the feeling of hopelessness, of a lacking future. The ability to see future where it actually isn't, to see open spaces and blue skies while looking at a brick wall, was a vital skill. Those who hadn't it had to emigrate or let misery crush their souls. Among them was my brother. He had a rare gift in math that he later developed into computing, he was a good musician (though this was not his favourite occupation), but he was completely unable to see dungeon walls as open spaces. So he wished to emigrate to a country with a future.
From the European countries, three were considered seriously as prospective new homes - Germany and Switzerland, where we had relatives, and Italy, where my brother (sometimes accompanied by my sister in-law) traveled several times for temporary work with a student orchestra. Switzerland was most hostile to Eastern Europeans and was soon cancelled as a realistic possibility. My brother travelled to Germany to apply for a job, but without success. We had there a first cousin married to a German who owned small but successful business. This man said, "If you had a permit to work in Germany, I could give you a job at my shop. But I cannot obtain this permit for you - according to our laws, I have to prove that I cannot find a German to do the job, and this is impossible."
My brother actually liked Italy most because, as he said, the Southern temperament of Italians was making them similar to Bulgarians. A short Italian dictionary and a booklet titled Buon giorno - How to learn Italian in 10 days are still kept somewhere at my mother's library. But there, again, the attempt was unsuccessful. What to do - Western Europeans in those years were shutting us Eastern Europeans out as if we were leprosy-infected.
At the end of 1990s, my sister in-law and my brother obtained immigrant visas for the USA and settled there. He worked at days and learned English and computer science at night, then enrolled to study at a local college, then became computer programmer at the same college. He fulfilled the American dream... as more than one person said at his funeral ceremony.
You have surely read about parallel worlds - that when reality faces an alternative, it goes both ways, splitting into two. As a description of the physical world, parallel worlds are bullshit, but they excellently reflect the attempts of our mind to protect itself by shielding itself from unacceptable reality. The "what if" magical thinking. I still have a strong feeling about parallel worlds, and the impression that I have wandered into the wrong one that is not truly real. On Monday, March 22 I met my mother and we discussed the menu for the Friday dinner, when my family had to visit her. I asked her to fry meatballs, and we were very happy. This last happy day was in fact undeserved, because my brother was already dead - we just did not know it yet. Then on Friday, I felt trapped in a parallel world, in a wrong reality. Why was I in my home, when I had to be at my mother's apartment, eating meatballs? My mother of course had not cooked meatballs - she had flown to America the previous day to attend her son's funeral.
I had a similar feeling the night of June 6th when I arrived to Rome. The organizers of the summer school had sent a shuttle car to pick me and an Italian participant from the airport. As we travelled, my Italian colleague chatted with the driver. I was silently watching the landscape and I imagined that the shuttle car was actually sent by my brother and sister in-law, who were living in Italy. At one moment, the driver asked me in English whether I spoke any Italian. I said no, he jokingly asked why not, and I answered that I had no relations in Italy. As if reading my thoughts, he said, "Now is a very nice time to have relations."
In the next days, the summer school and the majesty of this great city distracted me and helped my recovery, well described by some psychologist as "adaptation to a world from which one's loved one is missing." Rome, Frascati, Italy are names that evoke good memories in me. Yet at the same time Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the entire "old Europe" carry for me the cold touch of the rejection. Because they did not accept my brother, that is, they were not here when I truly needed them. If he had gone to Italy or Germany, his life would not have ended so early. Or, at the very least, I would have seen him more often during these last years, and I would attend his funeral.
I have never want to emigrate myself - in fact, I spent most of my adult life struggling against other people urging me to emigrate, for my own good. But the visa refusals obtained by my loved ones scarred me with a rejection trauma without which I would be another (and almost certainly better) person. In particular, it made me more xenophobic than I would have been otherwise. Of course many immigrants are wonderful people and gain to old Europe, as would be my brother if he had been accepted. However, there are also the other kind of immigrants (let's not start a topic about freedom of speech, films, cartoons and so on). And I think I would not rant so much against multicultural Europe if I were not asking myself why such and such people have been allowed into Europe and my brother was rejected.
It is no use to try and explain down the world to me by reason. You need not mention that many immigrants are such and such because "old Europeans" wanted illiterate guest workers to clean their toilets for no money, rather than educated immigrants with Western mentality to join them as equals. My reason knows it perfectly but the irrational core of me refuses to come to terms with it. It is also of no use to mention that today Bulgarians, or at least white Christian Bulgarians, can move to any European country of their choice. In my world, now is just too late. This is my experience, and I give it absolute importance. For other people, especially for younger people who do not clearly remember the 1990s, my experience will be irrelevant. So, with rare exceptions such as this post, I'll keep it to myself, like a gem too precious to be appreciated by the populace. Value your experience, even if nobody else does. For good or for bad, it makes you who you are.

Choice of profession

Generally, a person has to choose two important things in his life: a profession and a partner.
With the exception of traditional cultures where parents arrange marriages of their children, we choose our partners freely when we are already conscious adults. This doesn't mean that we are always wise and successful in this task. We actually seem to be even less wise and successful than the parents in traditional cultures. Very often we make serious mistakes and trap ourselves in short-lived or unhappy marriages. But at least the decision has been only ours.
Things are different with profession - at least in poor countries. The decision to acquire one or another profession has to be made in the teen years, if not earlier. At this tender age, it is heavily influenced by parents and other family members. And if the young person later wants to change his profession, it comes at a terribly high cost, or is not possible at all.
The written and unwritten laws of society are based on the working hypothesis that parents wish the best for their children. Unfortunately, too often this is not the case. And even when parents try their best, they are likely to make their child unhappy. They burden him with their own fulfilled and unfulfilled desires and ambitions, while neglecting or even fighting his wishes, gifts and inclinations. Just to give an example, here at the Medical University every year we have a legion of children of doctors, dentists and pharmacists, and a considerable part of these students lack the abilities needed for the chosen profession and/or the true wish to practice it. Their parents have pushed them into the medical profession, as commanders push their soldiers into battle.
Because this phenomenon remains in the private sphere of our life, the enormous damages inflicted by it are not very visible and the problem is not discussed in public. But it is real. Happily, economic progress brings spontaneous improvement. I mean, in a prosperous society young people are more empowered and independent and less likely to let their lives be ruined this way. And they have a second chance because they can earn the resources needed to change profession, even if it means new university study. So a mistake made early in life, either by themselves or by their parents, does not mean being directed into a one-way tunnel.
An improvement of the educational system would also help. I am against too early specialization which deprives the student from knowledges and skills in many area. Education must be broad and multi-disciplinary until the end of secondary school. And if some schools issue diplomas that are not accepted by universities, their graduates must be given the chance to obtain the needed certificate by some sort of exam.
Meanwhile, I wish to quote a man unknown to me but apparently a wise and good father. Talking to his teenage son about the choice of profession, he said, "This is very important for you and I do not wish to interfere with your decision. But please keep in mind that whatever you choose, you are expected to be doing it for 40 years to come, so it must be a thing you like doing."

All through the night

This post is a greeting to all who are having hard times, and particularly to one of my dearest people for whom I know that principally reads my blog (though I am not sure whether she is reading it right now).
The quoted verses are from the old Welsh song All Through the Night.

"Deep the silence round us spreading,
All through the night;
Dark the path that we are treading,
All through the night...
Though our hearts be wrapt in sorrow,
From the hope of dawn we borrow
Promise of a glad tomorrow,
All through the night."

The entire song is here.

"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.

Flashback

I rarely publish photos of my loved ones, because of concerns about their privacy.

But now I just wish to share with you this charming document of happy life that was and will never be again.

The photo was taken about a year ago, presumably by my sister in-law who is absent from it.

Left to right: my late brother, I, his daughter, my sons and my husband.

"Let the memory live again."

Keep breathing

The text below is copied from the blog of a lady writing under the name "On the edge" - from her Feb 1, 2009 post Remembering to breathe. It is strange how different people are the same inside and feel the same.

"There have been times in my life when I have literally forgotten to breathe. I remember the first time it happened. I was 15 and the boy I had loved since I was 4 years old told me he was marrying... I can remember my heart stopped beating and I couldn't catch my breath for a minute. He broke my heart.
Then it happened again when the doctor told my sisters and me that our mother had colon cancer and would not live more than a year or two... She died just three short months later.
The day we got the lab reports back telling us our youngest son had HIV/AIDS, my head started to buzz and all I could think was no, it wasn't true. I had prayed so hard to Allah to make it not true. It couldn't be. There had to be some mistake in the lab work, but it was true.
When he died and they came to tell me, I was calm, but later after all business of the funeral was over, I would remember he was dead at odd moments. It would catch me off guard. I would stop breathing. The ache in my heart was so strong, it squashed all breath out of my lungs. I had to keep reminding myself to breathe off and on... The disbelief that my son was gone forever was almost more than I could bare.
I learned to get through these losses by taking one breath at a time. One minute, then two, pretty soon I was breathing whole blocks of time without reminding myself to keep inhaling and exhaling air. Amazing how resilient the spirit is when faced with the end of the world.
So, if this ever happens to you, just try to remember one breath at a time is all it takes to carry on with the business of life. One breath, then two, then three and soon it just happens on its own. Even if you wished it wouldn't ."

Tragedy

On March 22, I lost my beloved brother George.
He died suddenly at age 41, leaving behind a wife and a 4-year-old daughter.
Please do not leave comments to this post.

Manuscript troubles

Why is it that the demands and problems presented by a co-author are always inversely proportional to his actual contribution to the work?
(Don't ask me about the events behind this post.)

Playing the guilt game

A year ago, Prometheus published a post titled How they do the voodoo that they do so well - Part 2 ("they" are the alternative medicine practitioners). I am quoting it below:

"Eventually, even the most successful, charismatic “alternative” practitioner will have a patient who doesn’t improve enough... For those situations, there are a number of strategies that are typically used. (The first one is,) Did you follow my instructions to the letter? One of the oldest dodges in the “alternative” medicine “biz” is to prescribe a regimen of treatment that is too complicated for most patients to follow. If they get better (by chance), then it was due to the “treatment” – if they don’t get better….well, they didn’t follow all of the instructions exactly, did they?"

I wish to add that, unfortunately, some real doctors also like playing the guilt game and blaming any unfortunate outcome on the patient's non-compliance. Even when - especially when - the neglected bit of medical advice has been backed by about as much evidence as the typical alt-med "treatment".
(The events that inspired this post are too personal to be revealed here.)

I prefer "cyclosome" to "anaphase-promoting complex"

I have spent much of the recent weeks updating and preparing for publication my texts about the cell division cycle.
The original version was written in January and early February 1997, so I had the gloomy feeling of having done too little for too long time that is natural for anyone resuming a 12 year old project. It was made only stronger by another similarity: early 1997 was also marked by anti-government protests. Every afternoon I was leaving work to join the rally beginning at 4 PM in front of the Palace of Culture, conveniently close to my workplace. After the end of the demonstration, by about 6 PM, I was returning to resume work. I was single, so my evenings were free from other duties. The current protests against the government led by the Socialists (like the one 12 years ago) make me feel like trapped in a circle, though this time I have left the struggle to others.
Nevertheless, the work is now finished and uploaded. The original text is now divided in two chapters devoted, respectively, to the cell cycle in purely descriptive terms and to its control. And here I want to touch a question regarding the terminology used to describe the cell cycle, though I am no expert in this field.
One of the key components of cell cycle engine is a multisubunit enzyme called anaphase-promoting complex or cyclosome. The former name is used far more often and is usually abbreviated to APC. However, I prefer the name "cyclosome" and would appeal to colleagues to use it more often, if possible.
As Orwell noted, modern language is plagued by abbreviations. They are especially popular in science, possibly because preoccupation of scientists with their objects often leads to neglecting the language used to describe these objects. Still, some linguistic sense can be traced because most of the abbreviations are composed of three letters. It is clear that we shall never get rid of the basic ones such as DNA, RNA, ATP and so on. But why not make an effort towards their non-proliferation? I was glad to see such good new-coined terms as "condensin", "cohesin", "securin", "separase", "geminin". All of them came across as I was refreshing my cell cycle knowledge, and the first two (to my delight) will partially replace the abbreviation SMC (structural maintenance of chromosomes) which I admit I always confuse with MCM (mini-chromosome maintenance), another group of proteins needed for cell cycle progression. Isn't it enough that in this subject we already are forever stuck with CDC (cell division cycle) and CDK (cyclin-dependent kinase), both abbreviations relating to multiple proteins? Not to mention that an important Cdk is, for historical reasons, known as MPF (maturation-, mitosis- or M-phase-promoting factor).
Besides, there is a finite number of three-letter abbreviations, so the problem of disambiguation soon appears. Years ago, searching PubMed for the enzyme nitric oxide synthase (abbr. NOS), I obtained also many entries about Not Otherwise Specified (NOS) carcinomas. And, coming back to the cyclosome/anaphase-promoting complex, there already is one important abbreviation APC in life sciences - Antigen-Presenting Cell, a term too fundamental for any freshman to go without.

Our local school is closed

My elder son is now 5 years old, so 1st grade is within seeing distance and I am already collecting information about schools. In Bulgaria, parents are allowed to choose which public school their child will attend (as long as there are vacant places in the chosen school).
My friends with schoolchildren enrolled them in schools with high requirements. However, their children were not only with above-average intelligence but also very disciplined. The situation with my son is different because of his hyperlexia. He was a late talker and still is more than a year behind his peers in speech. Worse, he rejects the very concept of discipline. As said his classmate, "he doesn't obey at all, never follows orders". So a school with high requirements would hardly be suitable for him. On the contrary, we need a tolerant school where difficult children are not regarded as things to get rid of.
I first thought of our local school, Primary School No. 110. Indeed, our district of Zaharna Fabrika (Sugar Factory) is mixed, so we could expect some Gypsy students. Most of my friends would never consider educating their children together with Gypsy ones, because this automatically lowers the quality of teaching (and if some opponent here objects and starts talking about racism, I would kindly ask him to bring his head out of the sand). However, I would not be bothered if my son has Gypsy classmates, as long as they don't bully him. This is not because I am less racist than my friends but because my son anyway learns what he is willing and ready to learn, rather than what he is taught, so the classroom environment isn't as important for him as it is for other children.
However, as soon as I found the school building (a rather nice one, with noble dark-red colour), I heard that it has been closed, most likely forever. My city of Sofia has so few schools that all of them work in two shifts, so the news of closing a school sounded insane. My mother in-law, who (unlike me) has lived for decades in Zaharna Fabrika and knows all local gossip, told me how it happened.
"The school was closed because it had too few students; as you know, schools with a number of students below the reglament are closed. When the downward trend first appeared, teachers and municipality officials tried to recruit additional students from the Gypsy ghetto. There were many school-age children there, but their parents didn't want to let them attend school. The officials offered the parents benefit money and they agreed. However, when those Gypsy children started going to the school, Bulgarian parents moved their children to other schools. Very soon there were fewer students than before enrolling the Gypsies, so the school had to be closed. I don't think it will ever be opened again. The building will most likely be sold and used for other purposes."
If you ask what happened to the Gypsy schoolchildren - I cannot be sure, but I guess they have returned to their so-called parents and now don't go to any school.
My husband, who had attended School No. 110, was saddened when he heard about its demise. His mother laughed and said that he may now pretend to be sad, but does he remember how after the big earthquake in 1977 he expressed hope that the school building has collapsed?
To end the post - I don't intend for the moment to discuss the big question of educating all children and inclusion vs. segregation. Let me just mention here that if regarding disadvantaged children as mere obstacles to other children's education is troubling, I find at least as troubling the attitude of regarding "privileged" children as little civil servants who are obliged to go to school in order to educate and integrate, rather than to learn. I'll be thankful to readers who share their own experience in these matters.

Souvenir from the summer

These photos are taken in the village of Rasnik. The stork nest is located not far from our summer house. The images aren't very good, so I have to explain what is happening. Initially, one of the parents is in the nest with the two young. Then the second parent flies in (both adults can be seen in photo No. 6) and the first one flies out.

I have blogged before about this nest and its inhabitants. One of the storks that used to live there was killed by a stone three years ago; its partner disappeared the following spring. Then in 2007 another pair came to the nest but left it without hatching young. And now, the same or another pair has returned and reproduced.

The photos are dated July. Three or four weeks after they were taken, the young could fly well and the entire family left the nest. I hope they are now well under another blue sky, while here cold winds are tearing down the last leaves.

Don't buy stolen things

Several days ago, as my friend was travelling in a tram, two or three Gypsy women raided through it and her cellular phone disappeared from her bag. Usually in such cases people rush to blame the victim ("Why didn't you look after your things?"), so let me mention that pickpockets know their job well and, besides, my friend was a bit out of touch with the surrounding because she was just returning from a funeral.
The phone had been bought via monthly payments, so my friend for a couple of months will continue to pay for a device she no longer owns. However, she is not a material person and easily got over this. She regrets only the digital photos she had made, about 40 files that were stored only in the phone. "They stole my moments," she complained to me.
The police apparently aren't in a hurry to do anything. They said, "Cellular phones are often found but it takes a long time." As far as I know, the mode of operation of a cellular phone allows it to be located within hours.
I don't want to muse now about these nasty Gypsy thieves who make a living by preying on hard-working people too poor to afford a car. They are miserable creatures, how good that we weren't born in one of their families to grow up like them. Neither am I going to rant about our police. We all know that it isn't there to help us. I am now thinking of the white, educated, law-abiding Bulgarians who buy a second-hand phone without much thought about its origin and then brag about the good deal. These people are the reason why cellular phones are stolen. If pickpockets couldn't sell so easily what they steal, they would pick only a few cellular phones to supply themselves and their family members.
So my appeal is: Don't buy a second-hand cellular phone unless you know and trust its former owner. In countries like Bulgaria, there is much chance for the phones offered for sale to be stolen. The same holds true for second-hand computers, car radios, CD players and many other devices.

Back to business

After my long maternity leave, I have been back to work for almost two months.
It is refreshing to resume the job one likes and, to be honest, to have a break from the never-ending and brain-devouring work of a housewife. However, there are always "buts".
We are stuck in life like spoons in a cup of puree: if a spoon is taken out, its place stays for a little, then the puree fills it without a trace. You feel it every time when you "return" to a place where you have been absent for a long time: life has intruded into what has been your place.
The most difficult bit is the condition of my lab. It actually belongs to the Medical University, resp. to the Bulgarian government, but I call it mine because I have contributed to it, the criterion used by Exupery's Little Prince to call the little planet his own. Unfortunately, few of my colleagues value the lab as much. Or at least they don't understand what a working lab looks like. They think the important thing about a lab is being clean and tidy. So things making it untidy should be cleared away, even if they are e.g. balances needed to weigh substances and prepare solutions.
The analytical balance had been moved to a corner without proper care. Now it is out of order and I am desperately trying to find someone - anyone - to fix it. There used to be two skilled men at our Faculty able to do this job. Now, one of them has died, the other has retired and nobody can tell me his phone number. It sometimes seems to me that all people in this country who could do something have emigrated, retired or died.
The technical balance had just disappeared. After some - how to say? - balance-hunt I found it in a corner in the restroom, and nobody could tell me how it got there. Actually, I don't really want to investigate it. This means to look back into the past, and I prefer to look to the future.
Last week, a colleague needed to weigh some substance. She asked me, "After all these affairs, have you a working balance of any kind?" I pointed to the long-suffering technical balance recovered from the toilet and she used it successfully. I was so proud of my lab. I hope it will be again what it used to be, and even better.
I wish to write about many things, but there is so much work to be done that I have all but stopped blogging. Please have patience with me.

More artwork by my son

(Non-parents are advised to skip this post.)

On Sept. 3, 2007 I posted some drawing by my elder son on his doodle. Let me now show some more, though fairly old - from last November when he was 4. These works were prompted by my husband, because my son doesn't like drawing very much (except on walls and furniture).

A bird.

A helicopter.

A steamship.

A house flanked by two trees, with sun and grass.

Concept for unity of life, kindergarten-level

At the beach, I collected a handful of seaweed and showed them to my son.
"Do you know what this is?" I asked.
"Fish," was the answer.

Some people throw things into water, other people rescue things

The Short Reign of Pippin IV isn't among the best works of John Steynbeck. However, it contained a scene that impressed me. The main character, Pippin, once walked by a river and saw several young men dragging a statue to the water and an old man trying to stop them. Pippin rushed to help the old man but the result was that he was himself thrown into the water, together with the statue, after a little beating.
When the hooligans left, the old man helped Pippin come out of the water.
"Why did they throw the statue into the river?" Pippin asked.
"Some people just seem to like throwing things," the old man answered. "Besides this statue, they have thrown three more into the river. Here are the empty pedestals."
"I can go back into the water and look for the statues, I am all wet anyway."
"No, you shouldn't, you'll catch cold if you do. I'll take care. I do it regularly."
"Why do you do it?"
"Some people just rescue things."
"That's true, you rescued me as well. But why don't you attach the statues firmly to their pedestals?"
"Oh, you don't understand. If I do this, the youths will submerge them again, pedestals and all. And I am not sure I'll be strong enough to bring the statues out if they are with their pedestals."
I remembered this scene when I heard of recent events at my workplace. After I went into maternity leave, all reagents and equipments used by me remained under the care of my colleagues. Unfortunately, they weren't quite as caring as I had hoped. About a week ago, they discarded as unusable the refrigerator and a microscope, without informing me.
Happily, my colleagues and friends working in another room saw the refrigerator in the corridor and were quick to take action. They opened it and found it full of my bottles of reagents. The latter had spent God knows how long at room temperature and were covered by mould reaching centimeters in length.
My friends selected the reagents that looked saveable, brushed the mould off their packages and sheltered them in their regrigerator. They told me by the phone what had happened and suggested to check a small freezing camera where I also had reagents. Unlike the refrigerator, it wasn't presumed to be out of order. It was "just" disconnected from power supply and, again, there was no sensible explanation why.
As for the microscope, I had actually never used it. Its power supply had disappeared and, although I was planning to find a new one, I never found the time and money to do this before the maternity leave. I didn't even need this microscope because there was another, working one in my room. So I wasn't in a hurry and just left it stand quietly behind my back, doing absolutely no harm to anybody. Why was it scheduled for destruction? Don't ask me. Luckily, a younger colleague saw it in the corridor and took it to his room. However, in a striking resemblance to Steinbeck's story, he couldn't rescue the microscope stand because it was too heavy for him. I hope the microscope will be able to work well without its stand.