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Darina
30 May 2012 @ 02:44 am
We only had a single day without any rain last week. I can't remember if we had any the previous week. We had almost a whole rain-free day today, and the streets were beginning to dry, when we were "treated" to an early-evening rainstorm.

Don't even start me on trying to dry laundry on the balcony! :P

I had very little space left on the memory card of my camera, so I couldn't experiment as much as I wanted with the photos of raindrops on plants, so... here is the best of what I managed. 

23 May, at the bus stop:
PICT5900

28 May, on my way back home from the dentist, when the rain had finally stopped for awhile:
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Four more photos )

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Darina
From what I managed to piece together from all the reports in Russian that I read, the police just arrested everybody who was wearing or carrying anything rainbow-coloured or a pink triangle button badge*, or was at the place of the unauthorized Pride event talking to the journalists, or carried a sign with anything written on it. Some "Christian activists" and "football fans" who were there to counter-protest managed to attack the Pride activists and start physical fights with them before the police interfered.

I don't know yet what happened for those who were arrested.

The "Church Banner Bearers" (I don't know how to better translate or explain their organization's name in English), who are already notorious for disrupting Pride events, got a very lenient treatment from the police - they were just asked to leave, so they went to the nearest church to pray (1:40-1:58) in the video. The police didn't arrest the Christian women in the kerchiefs either. The male Christian counter-protester who spoke to the journalists without holding a sign or anything got arrested too at 3:21.

You can see some "Christian activists" pestering the Pride participants at about 2:20 and telling them that "God hates sin". The guy in the blue T-shirt got sprinkled with holy water at about 2:50.  Then things got really rude at 3:30 when a lesbian activist tried to speak, and one of the male counter-protesters tore the shoulder strap of her dress.

It is just obvious in the videos and photos that some of the activists are already used to getting arrested, and don't seem to think much of it.


Finally a report in English (the video inside is the same as above): http://www.xtra.ca/blog/national/post/2012/05/27/Violence-arrests-break-up-Moscow-Pride-march-attempt.aspx

Radio Liberty's report in Russian with a photo gallery and a similar video: The sexual minorities: from the Moscow City Council to the police vans. PHOTOS.


Some highlights form that gallery:

This woman identified as heterosexual, but came to support the LGBT cause, according to Radio Liberty. I don't know if she was testing the boundaries with those fiber pens, or didn't have anything else rainbow-coloured or what.

Lesbian activist Elena Kostyuchenko in the police van.

The God-Fearing Christian women. The white T-shirt on the guy with them says "I'm against AIDS, drugs and faggots". I don't know if he identified as a Christian, or something else.

UPDATE: Here is the Washington Post report: Moscow police detain 40 as gay activists demand right to hold parade, face Christian protest
 
 
Darina
28 May 2012 @ 03:38 am

The article below is in Russian, but I thought that reposting it would be the decent way to share all those copyrighted photographs.

Here is my translation of most of the article (the details in the last paragraph won't mean anything to those who aren't familiar with the city, so I'm not translating it):

Several people were arrested on Sunday in front of the building of the Moscow City Duma, where gay-rights activists were holding an unauthorized action. The police arrested several Orthodox Christian activists, who had come to disrupt the "Gay Pride" event, and also a number of gay-rights activists.

The object of the discontent of Russian gays and lesbians was a law banning propaganda of homosexuality among minors, adopted in a number of Russian regions and under consideration in Moscow.

Besides that, as reported by Interfax, the organizer of the Moscow pride parades, Nikolay Alexeyev, was arrested later in front of the monument to Yuri Dolgoruky. He came near the City Hall, but did not manage to answer the questions of journalists, as he was immediately arrested. Alexeyev was taken to the police van. The police officers had to lift him and carry him to the van.

"Unauthorized" means that the organizers were refused a permit for their event by the city authorities.

The white sign in the fourth photo says "Moscow is not Sodom". The red sign says "The Eternal God kills off peoples for three mortal sins: 1. Legalized murder (abortions) 2. Legalized homosexuality 3. Legalized magic (occultism)"

I'll post links to whatever other materials I can gather, and piece together a more detailed report, in a separate entry tomorrow.

Originally posted by [info]ridus_admin at У Мосгордумы задержали ЛГБТ-активистов и их противников



Несколько человек был задержаны в воскресенье у здания Мосгордумы, где гей-активисты проводили, несогласованную с властями акцию. Полицейские задержали нескольких православных активистов, которые пришли, чтобы сорвать «гей-прайд», а также ряд гей-активистов.
Read more... )

 
 
Darina
25 May 2012 @ 08:30 pm
No, this is not my favourite Silver Linden (Tilia tomentosa), but another species (Tilia platyphyllos?) that goes into bloom earlier. I noticed the first open flowers on this tree on 15 May, and I think it was still too early, but maybe that was due to the short period of almost-summer weather we had before the rains began. I didn't manage to get a single photo in focus back then because of that notorious wind that kept moving the the branches, so here is what I have of a later stage.

The leaves of this species don't have the silvery undersides, and the stamens of the flowers have so long! They smell different fro Silver Linden flowers too.

21 May:

PICT5846-1

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Two more photos )

PICT5831
 
 
Darina
25 May 2012 @ 02:55 am
Who would have thought that parading a huge plastic phallus around could save your city from the fate of Sodom? Srsly. This is exactly what happened yesterday in Riga, the capital of Latvia, as a protest against a Pride rally that is planned for 2 June, Mixnews reports (in Rusian, but you could just look at the photos if you don't understand the text).

"We don't want Riga to turn into Sodom. We are for normal marriage. This event aims to glorify the holy acts of getting closer of all Latvian women and men," the organizers explained.

They also added that the cross itself was a kind of phallic symbol, and therefore the plastic-foam phallus that they were carrying was also a kind of cross. The organizer also accused the City Council of Riga of not defending Christian values and permitting a parade of gays and lesbians. (my translation from Russian)





My translation of the conversation at about 10:50 of the video in not very good Russian (in between what I suppose is Latvian):

Reporter: Excuse me, what is the purpose of this action?
Organizer: To save Riga from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Reporter: [...] from some kind of debauchery?
Organizer: Yes, of course, from homosexuality.


Now, my gentle readers, do you think that Christians who organize a phallic procession to protest against homosexuality are:

A) closet cases;
B) unconscious followers of some old pagan tradition;
C) just plain stupid;
D) all of the above
F) something else I haven't thought of?

*dies laughing*

(Thanks to [info]dimet for attracting my attention to this story.)
 
 
Current Mood: amusedamused
 
 
Darina
24 May 2012 @ 11:55 pm
A little Bulgarian national flag in honour of the Cyrillic Alphabet Day on our balcony. It got drenched with rain when we got a little afternoon storm, but it was dry again when I took the photo this evening. :)

i didn't go to any public celebrations today, but I celebrated quietly in my heart.

DSC03576

I guess it's pointless to write in Bulgarian here *sigh*, but at least I can use the last minutes before the day is over in my time zone to congratulate my Russian-writing audience:

С Днем славянской письменности и культуры, друзья. :)


 
 
Darina
24 May 2012 @ 04:22 am
These roses are in front of a cafe on the main street. I was so fascinated with them when I saw them in bloom that I kept returning to try to take photos of them on different days in spite of the wind that kept moving them just enough to get my photos out of focus.

Those marble stairs have been there as long as I remember (if I remember it right, of course), and I find the thought of that somehow soothing, although I don't have any remarkable childhood memories of them. They are just a little part of the presence of my home town around me. 

13 May:
PICT5729

17 May
Something had eaten a bit of the top petal here. :)
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Five more photos )

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Darina
24 May 2012 @ 12:40 am
It's already official: switching between English and Russian on my Friends Page drives me crazy - especially when I get a perfect alternation of English in Russian entries, for my sins. :P

Seriously, sometimes it gives me a very physical headache when I'm already tired or otherwise out of shape. Not to mention that I keep forgetting to switch to the other alphabet before I switch to commenting in the other language.

So, I discovered that I can use the Filter option to read only separate custom friend groups on my Friends Page -  it's the same concept as Circles on Google+.

Then I made two custom groups, which I named English and Russian, and it works. Now I can follow my English stream and my Russian stream separately when I don't feel like switching between languages all the time. The trouble is that I have to remember what I've read last in both groups to know how far back to go on my Friends Page, but that's still less inconvenient than any other random method I've tried to read (and now and then comment to) the English and the Russian entries separately.

Oddly enough, I felt tempted to leave my oldest Russian-writing additions [info]steinkrauz and[info]lipatriinu in my English stream because I'm already used to reading their entries in a stream that is otherwise in English, but I decided to be consistent. [info]theorybunny is so multilingual that he doesn't belong anywhere, but I decided that I can live with him in my English stream. :P

P.S. I still allow comments in Russian to my own entries.
Tags:
 
 
Darina
22 May 2012 @ 06:00 pm
There was an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.8-5.9 on the Richter scale near Sofia, the capital of my country, at about 3AM last night (just when I was preparing to go to bed - I know, I stayed up too late :P). I got the news in a surprise Skype message. Then the Bulgarian section of Facebook suddenly came to life with people exchanging links to what little news there was until there was finally a report on a national-range TV, checking each other up, and even sharing newly forged jokes about the earthquake. This early report didn't get it quite right - some of the population of Sofia still stayed stubbornly inside their homes. :) lI spent the rest of the night in front of the computer reading updates of the long series of (thankfully gentler) aftershocks on Facebook and Skype. Thankfully, there were no casualties. Here is a more detailed "technical" report on the earthquake itself (all the news sources I've linked to are in English). 

The impact in my home town was so weak that I didn't feel anything myself. Everybody around me just kept sleeping.

Sofia was considered safe enough after the first quake, but one of my friends there, a 17-yer-old boy, has family in the town of Pernik and one of the nearby villages - way too close to the epicenter, where people were advised to stay outside of buildings. His home in Sofia was shaky enough, but he still managed to laugh at himself in between the aftershocks. I stayed on Skype with him for moral support until almost 7 AM, and then left him to his local friends (the major aftershocks were over at that time anyway).

Reading real-time reports from people I actually knew on on Facebook and Skype was a very weird experience. Thankfully, I was already too tired for a serious adrenaline rush ("That's just because you aren't here," my young friend wrote to me).

Well, it's time for me to return to the prose of everyday life and do some cleaning. :P

 
 
Current Mood: tiredtired
 
 
Darina

I want the elephant and the doll with green arms and legs, and the dinosaur-like thing with a horn on its head... I'm not sure if the sheep is cute or scary or both. :)

Для тех, кто не понимает по-английски: кто-то сделал настоящие игрушки по детским рисункам. Фотографии здесь:

http://www.bitrebels.com/design/if-childrens-drawings-were-made-into-real-toys/

 
 
Current Mood: impressedimpressed