Katya Beznosova

Two nights ago I went renewed another set of old ties: with Katya Beznosova, the journalist who followed our sister City presence in Yakutsk from the first meeting with Pavel Borodin, and organized many televised events for our group.  You may remember her with her granddaughter Anya on the first cruise on the Lena River.  Her daughter, Tanya, took all of us (Katya, Anya, and me) to a lovely Uzbek restaurant near the Belorusskaya Metro. It reminded me of the time I spent in Tashkent with Juanita Helms and Mike Davis at a Sister Cities conference in 1989.  Katya, as energetic as ever, spends most of her time with her three grandchildren in Moscow: 9 year old Katya lives with her, and her daughter Masha lives nearby with two children of her own.  Tanya is working as chief accountant for Gala, a company which buys art film rights from mainly German companies, and Anya has just gotten a job as an accountant in a oil and gas development company.    I'll be posting more pictures of this family in the next few days, since we plan to go to dinner at Masha's home. 

Family Reunion!

Here you see my "Moscow family" in some ways, just as I remember them -- how many nights we sat together drinking tea in the kitchen!  Keeping contacts with families over the years is one of the many benefits of Sister Cities Relationships.  There on the left is Paulina, who was born while my family was visiting their small Yakutsk apartment on a hot August day fifteen years ago, next to her is Ilya, whom I used to take to nursery school in the predawn darkness, then Alesha, one of my best English students, and his wife, Olya, who was a dancer in the Yakutsk National Dance Ensemble, and in front of them, Rosa Kapitonovna, Kapitolina Alexeeva's sister and my wonderful host for the many months I spent in Yakutsk.

Into Moscow

What a change there is in 20 years in arriving at the Moscow Sheremetyevo airport!  It's brightly lit, full of tempting vending machines, people are pleasant and helpful.  I was able to call my friend rom my international phone to his cell phone to make sure he was really on his way to meet me.  Just outside the terminal there was a large brightly lit mall where one can buy any delicacy, knick-knack, jewlery or stylish clothing that one might wish.  We took a comfortable ride on a reasonably priced highspeed rail right into the center of Moscow that left us a Belorusskaya Station, near which he had parked his car, and in no time I was at the home of my Moscow friends, reminiscing about old times.

An interesting parallel with my first arrival with Juanita Helms and Mike Davis into Moscow in 1989: then, with glasnost and perestroika just beginning,  there were demonstrations about the closure of Red Square to the general public; when I arrived on Monday there had just been demonstrations about the recently conducted elections.  Of course, nobody knew then where the demonstrations would lead, just as nobody knows now whether the current demonstrations will influence the course of events over the next few months. 

Three years!

Three years have passed since I started this blog and so much has happened since then! Here's a brief overview to bring everyone up to date:
 2008: Juanita Helms, Don Lowell, Anastasia Bozhedonova, Bruce Shelt and I worked to set up the Alaskan Russian Center, a new non-profit organization to support exchanges.  I started work on my book about exchanges by conducting a series of interviews. 
2009: Summer: A trip planned to Yakutsk with Mayor Helms had to be postponed for issues of health and family.
October: I presented a paper about early exchanges, "Encounters across a Melting Ice Curtain" at the Alaska Historical Society in Dutch Harbor.
November: Juanita Helms, the Mayor of Fairbanks who started the Sister Cities project, passed away. Her celebration of life brought Anastasia Bozhedonova to Fairbanks with letters from Pavel Borodin an the Mayor of Yakutsk, Yuri Zabolev.  This coincided with the election of a new Fairbanks mayor, Luke Hopkins, who promised to continue to support the concept of sister cities.
2010. May The celebration of the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII was marked by honoring the Lend-Lease Project that joined Fairbanks and Yakutsk in common war efforts.  
June. Ed Clark visited Yakutsk and attended the first videoconference between Mayor Luke Hopkins and Yakutsk Mayor Yuri Zabolev.   
October. Historian and writer Ivan Negenblya visited Fairbanks with photos taken during the time of the Lend-Lease Program, attending the 2010 Aviation Experts' Conference.  He was accompanied by his wife Olga Siderova, interpreter Sergei Khatylykov, and Anastasia Bozhedonova of the Northern Forum.   The Fairbanks-Yakutsk Sister Cities Committee hosted visits and meetings, including a mayor's videoconference and a potluck dinner.   
November and December. Video conferences took place between university and elementary school students.
2011 October 22 The Alaskan Russian Center holds an event "Fairbanks-Yakutsk: Rekindling the Friendship" to educate about the Sister City Relationship and raise funds to support the concert presented by Bruce and Lena Shelt, Fairbanks' "Sister City couple" in Yakutsk in December.  An excellent article appears in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
November  Yakutsk begins preparations for the visit of Bruce and Lena Shelt and Terry and Mimi Chapin to Yakutsk in December. An article appears in the paper, Echo of Yakutia with an extensive interview with Claudia Fedorova, head of the North East Federal University's (formerly "YaGU") Office of International Relations, and one of our beloved interpreters and exchange coordinators.


So, this brings us up to this month, December 2011, when all sorts of things are happening!


Look for more posts soon!
Mimi