The brief and somewhat inarticulate version of our tour to Russia

Posted on August 9, 2012 by doradueck

The peal of bells, then a choir of men’s voices… Blessed art Thou, O Christ our God…. Voices that rise and fall with the text, with the melody. Gorgeous harmonies.

Our wonderful local Mennonite men’s choir? Close, if you mean the ache and beauty of the sound, but no, definitely not. It’s the monks of the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra and the Moscow Theological Schools, singing hymns of the Russian Orthodox Church. I’m listening, as I write, to the CD; we were given it as a bonus when we paid a tiny fee to photograph inside the churches at Sergiev Posad, the place considered the heart of Russian Orthodoxy. Continue reading →

The thrill of the chase

Posted on July 31, 2012 by doradueck

Anne Konrad’s parents were among those Mennonite refugees who managed to leave the Soviet Union in 1929, but most of her uncles and aunts were not. Over the past twenty years, Konrad, a writer living in Toronto, has been searching for and documenting the fates of relatives who stayed behind. She combed through old letters and documents, tramped around areas where her parents had lived, visited members of the extended family in various parts of the (eventually former) Soviet Union, and most dramatically, gained access to the police files of the trials and executions of her uncles. Continue reading →

Miscellanea: July

Posted on July 25, 2012 by doradueck

What I really appreciate about a blog is the opportunity to play — by which I mean, change things around if one likes, experiment, be of this mind for a while, or that look, and when it seems necessary, refresh it.

So, a year after beginning an author blog in an attempt to separate out my identity as an author from my other ramblings, I’ve decided to bring myself into just one web place again — here. If you’re interested, I offer an explanation in my last post there, but the short version is, it began to feel too complicated to be divided. (I don’t know what one does with abandoned sites, however; do I let the content there grow old and faded in the passing online weather, or do I remove it from public view?) Continue reading →