CULTURAL GENOCIDE

Kharkiv region: Russians destroy Skovoroda Museum with missile strike, one injured


Ukrayinska Pravda
Olha Hlushchenko - Saturday, 7 May 2022

Russian invaders have destroyed the Hryhorii Skovoroda National Museum in the Kharkiv region.

Source: Suspilne Kharkiv quoting Viktor Kovalenko, Head of the municipality (hromada) of Zolochiv

Details: The aggressors destroyed the building with a direct Russian missile strike on the night of 6-7 May.

The shell flew under the roof of the building, and a fire broke out. The fire engulfed the entire museum premises.

As a result of the shelling, the 35-year-old son of the museum director, who had stayed overnight to guard the premises, was injured. The man was pulled out from under the rubble, medics diagnosed him with a leg injury and sent him to hospital.

Why this is important: The museum is located in the village of Skovorodynivka. The building dated back to the XVIII century, on an estate where Hryhorii Skovoroda (outstanding and much-loved Ukrainian philosopher, poet, teacher and composer - ed.) worked for the last years of his life and was buried. Ukraine will celebrate the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Ukrainian philosopher this winter.

Ukraine's Zelenskiy 'speechless' after shelling destroys museum dedicated to Cossack poet & philosopher

 

Sat, May 7, 2022, 

(Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday he was speechless after Russian shelling destroyed a museum dedicated to the 18th century philosopher and poet Hryhoriy Skovoroda.

The overnight attack in the village of Skovorodynivka in eastern Ukraine hit the roof of the museum, setting the building ablaze and injuring a 35-year-old custodian. The most valuable items had earlier been moved for safety, said Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Sinegubov.

"Every day of this war the Russian army does something that leaves me speechless. But then the next day it does something else that makes you feel the same way again," Zelenskiy said in a late night video address.

"Targeted strikes against museums - not even terrorists would think of this. But this is the kind of army we are fighting against," he said.

Skovoroda, of Ukraine Cossack origin, spent the last years of his life in the village of Ivanovka, which was later renamed in his honour - Skovorodynivka.

"This year marks the 300th anniversary of the great philosopher's birth," Sinegubov said in a post on social media. "The occupiers can destroy the museum where Hryhoriy Skovoroda worked for the last years of his life and where he was buried. But they will not destroy our memory and our values."

Moscow calls its actions a "special military operation" to disarm Ukraine and rid it of what it calls anti-Russian nationalism fomented by the West. Ukraine and the West say Russia launched an unprovoked act of aggression.

Gregory Skovoroda - Wikipedia

Gregory Skovoroda, also Hryhoriy Skovoroda, or Grigory Skovoroda (Latin: Gregorius Scovoroda; Ukrainian: Григорій Савич Сковорода, Hryhoriy Savych Skovoroda; Russian: Григо́рий Са́ввич Сковорода́, Grigory Savvich Skovoroda; 3 December 1722 – 9 November 1794) was a philosopher of Ukrainian Cossack origin who lived and worked in the Russian Empire. He was also a poet, teacher and composer of liturgical music. His significant influence on his contemporaries and succeeding generations and his way of life were universally regarded as Socratic, and he was often called a "Socrates."^[2][3] Skovoroda's work contributed to the cultural heritage of both modern-day Ukraine and Russia.^[4][5][6][7]

Skovoroda wrote his texts in a mixture of three languages: Church Slavic, Russian, and Ukrainian, with a large number of Western-Europeanisms, and quotations in Latin and Greek.^[8] Most of his preserved letters were written in Latin or Greek, but a small fraction used the variety of Russian of the educated class in Sloboda Ukraine, a result of long Russification but with many Ukrainianisms still evident.^[8]

He received his education at the Kiev Mogila Academy in Kiev (now Kyiv, Ukraine). Haunted by worldly and spiritual powers, the philosopher led a life of an itinerant thinker-beggar. In his tracts and dialogs, biblical problems overlap with those examined earlier by Plato and the Stoics. Skovoroda's first book was issued after his death in 1798 in Saint Petersburg. Skovoroda's complete works were published for the first time in Saint Petersburg in 1861. Before this edition many of his works existed only in manuscript form.

Gregory Skovoroda
Born	3 December 1722 village of Chernukhi, Lubny Regiment, Cossack Hetmanate/Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine)
Died	9 November 1794 (age 71) village of Ivanovka, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine)
Occupation	Writer, composer, teacher
Language	Latin, Greek, Church Slavonic, Ukrainian, Russian[1]

War rumours bewilder Moldova's pro-Russian separatist enclave


Flags of Moldova's breakaway region of Transdniestria and Russia

 flutter in central Tiraspol

By Peter Graff

Fri, May 6, 2022, 

RYBNITSA, Transdniestria, Moldova (Reuters) -"Of course we're afraid," said pensioner Marina Martalog, walking across a long bridge over the Dniestr River to her home in Transdniestria, a pro-Russian breakaway sliver of Moldova along the border with Ukraine. "Who isn't afraid of war?"

Alongside her, the bridge was choked with cars and trucks, backed up across the entire 400 metre span because of extra checks from Transdniestria's separatist authorities, who have announced a state of emergency after what they say was a week of terrorist attacks aimed at drawing the region into the Ukraine war next door.

Reported shootings and explosions have turned the territory of Transdniestria - long an anomaly on the post-Soviet map rarely noticed by the outside world - into the subject of international speculation that the Ukraine war could spill over frontiers.

Transdniestria's separatist authorities blame Ukraine for attacking their territory to provoke war with Russian troops based in the enclave. Since last week, they say attackers shot up their security agency headquarters, blew up two radio masts, and sent a number of drones across the frontier from Ukraine armed with explosives.

"The situation is alarming because Transdniestria has suffered terrorist attacks," Vitaly Ignatiev, foreign minister of the separatist administration, told Reuters this week in an interview by video link from his office in Tiraspol, the region's capital.

"Honestly, I don't see any reason why the Ukrainian side would use such methods against Transdniestria. Transdniestria does not threaten Ukraine," he said. "I have said several times we are an absolutely peaceful state."

Ukrainian government officials have repeatedly denied any blame for the incidents in Transdniestria, saying they believed Russia was staging false-flag attacks to provoke war. Moscow, too, has denied blame, while saying it was concerned that Kyiv was trying to escalate.

Moldova's pro-Western President Maia Sandu blamed the unrest on "pro-war factions" among the separatists.

Reuters has been unable to independently verify who is behind the attacks.

For Martalog and some other residents of Rybnitsa, a factory town on the left bank of a wide and gentle stretch of the Dniestr River, there was only an ominous sense of bewilderment. Around half a dozen residents interviewed by Reuters said they did not know what to believe.

"We leave the apartment, come home. Everyone sees the same thing: what they show on the television," said Martalog, returning to Rybnitsa after a visit with family on the Moldovan-held side. "Who knows?"

The separatists who control the area say they have cancelled all foreign journalist accreditations under the state of emergency they imposed last week in the wake of the attacks.

Reuters was granted permission to enter the region, provided no interviews were conducted or pictures taken during the visit. For this story, a reporter walked through Rybnitsa, observing the town, before exiting separatist territory and speaking with some of the many residents crossing the bridge.

ALL QUIET

Apart from the extra traffic on the bridge itself, there was little sign of an emergency. There were no checks at all on the other, Moldovan-held side of the bridge, where a single policeman sat in a booth.

"You see? It's all peaceful," said Andrei Duca, a Rybnitsa resident walking with his pre-school son on his shoulders across the bridge for a day-trip to the smaller, tidier town of Rezina controlled by Moldovan authorities on the right bank.

"If the situation were serious, they'd have shut the border altogether. There would be speedboats zooming up and down the river. You see? It's all quiet," he said.

A small contingent of about 1,200 Russian soldiers has remained in Transdniestria since the breakup of the Soviet Union, guarding a huge weapons dump at the town of Cobasna, a short drive from Rybnitsa on the Ukrainian frontier.

Last month, a Russian general said one of Moscow's war aims was to seize a swathe of southern Ukrainian territory to link up with Transdniestria. The remarks drew a formal protest from the Moldovan government.

Inside separatist-held Rybnitsa, a fruit and veg market of covered stalls was humming, with fresh seasonal strawberries and mounds of fragrant tomatoes on sale. Shelves were full at a big, busy supermarket nearby.

It was a sunny, clear day. Upriver, faint smoke could be seen above a huge cement factory, one of the many heavy industrial enterprises that have thrived in Transdniestria thanks to heavily subsidised Russian gas. Kayakers were paddling in the river by the quay on the separatist side.

At a bus stop on the Moldovan side, Diana Blanari sat with a baby on her lap and a young daughter by her side.

"Of course you feel it, the people over there in Rybnitsa, they are afraid to suddenly be dragged into it. What with - where all the weapons are in Cobasna," she said.

But she smiled and so did her daughter.

"I think it will be alright. We don't believe in rumours," she said.

(Reporting by Peter Graff, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Gareth Jones)

Russia Expert Fiona Hill Explains Why 

Jan. 6 Was Key Moment For Putin And Ukraine

Lee Moran

Sat, May 7, 2022, 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would have played out very differently had Donald Trump succeeded in blocking the transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021, says former top National Security Council analyst Fiona Hill.

Russian President Vladimir Putin would have been massively emboldened and “would have probably just driven right into Ukraine himself,” said Hill, an expert on Russian affairs, in an interview with Bloomberg’s Emma Barnett released Friday.

Had former Vice President Mike Pence not blocked Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 election result, Putin “would have seen the United States as completely finished from a leadership perspective because we would be no different from any other country in the world that had just had a coup,” explained Hill.

But the attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol was still “a particular moment” that helped inspire the Russian leader to order the military invasion of Ukraine, agreed Hill.

Other motivating factors for the war, which is now in its 73rd day, were Putin’s increased isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic and his belief the West had become “weak and distracted,” she said.

Hill served as an intelligence analyst under former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama before joining the NSC under Trump, about whom she testified during his first impeachment.

Last month, she said the U.S. Capitol violence was Trump’s shot at “pulling a Putin.”

“In the course of his presidency, indeed, Trump would come more to resemble Putin in political practice and predilection than he resembled any of his recent American presidential predecessors,” Hill told The New York Times magazine.

Watch the full interview here. Hill’s comments about Putin are at the 9-minute mark:

Ukrainian scientists see working amid war as act of defiance
 

This March 2022 photo provided by Alona Shulenko shows her, right, and fellow zoologist Anton Vlaschenko outside the Feldman Ecopark area outpost of the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center in Kharkiv, Ukraine. “Our staying in Ukraine, our continuing to work – it’s some kind of resistance of Russian invasion,” Vlaschenko said via Zoom, a barrage of shelling audible in the background. “The people together in Ukraine are ready to fight, not only with guns. We don’t want to lose our country.” (Alona Shulenko via AP)

CHRISTINA LARSON
Sat, May 7, 2022

Anton Vlaschenko often hears shelling outside his office in Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv, not far from the front lines of the war. He sometimes even sees smoke rising from Russian tanks hit by missiles.

But the 40-year-old zoologist continues his work, dissecting and labeling bat tissue, as he probes the disease ecology of the flying mammals. When news of the war overwhelms him, he says, it helps to have something familiar to do with his hands.

He also sees it as an act of defiance.

"Our staying in Ukraine, our continuing to work — it’s some kind of resistance of Russian invasion,” Vlaschenko said via Zoom, a barrage of shelling audible in the background. “The people together in Ukraine are ready to fight, not only with guns. We don’t want to lose our country.”


His resolve isn't unique. Like other Ukrainians whose labors aren't essential to the war effort, the scientists and academics want to continue their important work where they can.

A common refrain is that they want to stay connected to their scholarly community, which provides a shard of normalcy amid the chaos and violence, and “keep the light of Ukrainian science and humanities alive,” said Yevheniia Polishchuk, who teaches at Kyiv National Economic University.

As vice chair of the Young Scientists Council at Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science, Polishchuk organized an online survey of academics to assess their situation and needs after the Feb. 24 invasion. An estimated 4,000 to 6,000 scholars had left Ukraine by early April — mostly women with families — but about 100,000 stayed.

Most who went abroad wound up in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, getting temporary positions at European institutions. Some scientists have received grants from the Polish Academy of Sciences, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and other organizations. Polishchuk, now in Krakow with her children and husband, is a visiting professor at a university for May and June but says she hopes to return to Kyiv when fighting stops.

“We don’t want the war to result in a brain drain from Ukraine,” she said.

While Ukrainian scholars are appealing to international scientific bodies for assistance — including remote work opportunities and access to journals, datasets, archives and other materials — there is also a will to prevent the war from permanently sapping talent and momentum from the country’s academic and professional ranks, which will be needed to rebuild after fighting stops.

“Most of our scholars do not want to move abroad permanently; they want to stay in Ukraine,” Polishchuk said.

Shortly after the war began, Ivan Slyusarev, a 34-year-old astronomer, helped the director of Kharkiv National University’s observatory move computers, monitors and other materials into the basement, which had sheltered equipment and historical artifacts when Nazi forces occupied the city during World War II.

The observatory’s main telescope is located in a field in Russia-occupied territory, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Kharkiv on the road to Donetsk. Slyusarev said he doesn’t know its condition, but thinks Ukrainian forces blew up a nearby bridge to stop the Russian advance.

He is relying on scientists outside Ukraine to continue his work. Astronomers in the Czech Republic have sent him observational data from their telescope so he can keep analyzing the properties of metallic asteroids. He also can see data from a small robotic telescope in Spain's Canary Islands. He operates mostly from a home office on the outskirts of Kharkiv.

Slyusarev, who says he became an astronomer because of “romantic” ideas about the stars, finds refuge in scientific discovery. Astronomy “produces only positive news” and is a welcome respite from daily life, he said.

“It’s very important in wartime,” he added.

After the war started, theoretical physicist and astronomer Oleksiy Golubov left Kharkiv to join his parents in Batkiv, a village in western Ukraine.

Although the buildings of the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology were “bombed and shelled and virtually destroyed,” Golubov said, the school continues to offer some remote classes. He has been keeping in touch with students online — in Kharkiv, in western Ukraine and in Poland and Germany.

The 36-year-old scientist is also a coordinator and trainer for the Ukrainian students preparing to compete in the International Physicists Tournament, a competition for tackling unsolved physics problems that is being held in Colombia this month. The students, who had been training online, met this week in Lviv for the first time — following train journeys delayed by the war.

“We still want to take part and prove that even inconveniences like war can’t stop us from doing good science and having a good education,” he said.

Golubov, who was turned down from joining the military because of a paralyzed hand, submitted a paper in March to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics and wrote in the acknowledgements, “We are grateful to Ukrainians who are fighting to stop the war so that we can safely finish the revision of this article.”

Some scholars, like Ivan Patrilyak, dean of the history department at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, have enlisted. Eighteen months ago, he was hosting a speaker series on the legacy of World War II and lecturing about the Holocaust. Now, he's with a territorial defense unit in Kyiv.

Igor Lyman, a historian at the State Pedagogical University in Berdyansk, had to flee when Russian forces occupied the port city early in the war. Before leaving, he had seen the troops break into dormitories to interrogate students and order administrators to teach in Russian, rather than Ukrainian, and use a Moscow-approved curriculum. He said the directors "refused and resigned.”

He later settled in a camp for internally displaced persons at Chernivtsi National University, living in a dormitory with academics from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Kherson and other cities.

“Each of these families has its own terrible story of war,” he wrote in an email. “And everyone, like me, dreams of our victory and coming back home.”

He said the Russian forces “are doing everything they can to impose their propaganda.”

Vlaschenko, the Kharkiv zoologist, wanted to protect 20 bats in his care from the shelling, so he carried them to his home, a walk of about an hour. It also helped to preserve his valuable research, which couldn't be easily replaced, even if buildings and labs can be rebuilt after the war.

“All the people who decided to stay in Kharkiv agreed to play this dangerous and potentially deadly lottery," he said, “because you never know in what areas a new rocket or new shell would hit.”

As he scrambles to record data and safeguard his rare samples, he sees it as part of his mission — “not only for us, but also for science in general.”

___

Follow Christina Larson on Twitter at @larsonchristina and AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

___

The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

 

In this March 2022 photo provided by zoologist Anton Vlaschenko, smoke rises from a fire after Russian shelling struck a street market in Kharkiv, Ukraine, close to the office of the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center. Even amid war, many Ukrainian scientists are continuing their research and teaching. A report published in April said Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science estimated that 4,000 to 6,000 scholars had already left Ukraine – mostly women with families – but around 100,000 remained. (Anton Vlaschenko via AP)

 

In this March 2022 photo provided by Anton Vlaschenko, fellow zoologist Maryna Yerofeieva prepares a bat skull to add to a scientific collection in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Even amid war, many Ukrainian scientists are continuing their research and teaching. A report published in April said Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science estimated that 4,000 to 6,000 scholars had already left Ukraine – mostly women with families – but around 100,000 remained. (Anton Vlaschenko via AP)

 

This March 2022 photo provided by zoologist Anton Vlaschenko shows the destroyed remains of a street market that was struck by Russian shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine, close to the office of the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center. Even amid war, many Ukrainian scientists are continuing their research and teaching. A report published in April said Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science estimated that 4,000 to 6,000 scholars had already left Ukraine – mostly women with families – but around 100,000 remained. (Anton Vlaschenko via AP)

 

In this March 2022 photo provided by Alona Shulenko, fellow zoologist Anton Vlaschenko, foreground, and a volunteer transport bats at the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The team released hibernating bats from their facilities in March. (Alona Shulenko via AP)

 

This March 2022 selfie photo provided by astronomer Ivan Slyusarev shows him in his home office in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He no longer has access to data from the Kharkiv National University's observatory, which is now in Russian-occupied territory. Slyusarev is using data from a colleague's telescope in the Czech Republic to continue his work analyzing metallic asteroids. (Ivan Slyusarev via AP)

 

In this March 17, 2022 photo provided by astronomer Ivan Slyusarev, smoke rises from the Barabashovo market in Kharkiv, Ukraine, after it was hit by shelling, 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) from his home office. He no longer has access to data from the Kharkiv National University's observatory, which is now in Russian-occupied territory, and is using data from a colleague's telescope in the Czech Republic to continue his work analyzing metallic asteroids. (Ivan Slyusarev via AP)

This May 2022 provided by Antonina Golubova shows her son, theoretical physicist Oleksiy Golubov, in Batkiv, Ukraine. He left Kharkiv to join his parents in Batkiv, a small village in western Ukraine, after the buildings of Kharkiv National University's Institute of Physics and Technology were "bombed and shelled and virtually destroyed," he said. (Antonina Golubova via AP)

Radioactive flask stolen by aggressors at Chornobyl nuclear power plant found in Bucha



Ukrayinska Pravda
Svitlana Kizilova - Saturday, 7 May 2022

One of the flasks containing radioactive material that was stolen by Russian troops at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant during the occupation has been found in Bucha.

Source: Energoatom on Telegram

Details: A Bucha resident found the flask in his own home after it had been "visited" by Russian aggressors. He immediately called mine clearance specialists.

The specialists who arrived following his call collected the hazardous container and handed it over for disposal.

Later, it was found that the radiation background of the flask, which contained mercury, was significantly higher than normal.

Background:

The Russians stole a lot of things from the Chornobyl zone. In particular, they robbed the police station located right on Chernobyl territory. Radioactive items, among other things, had been stored there.

Energoatom CEO Petro Kotin visited one of the areas of the Red Forest in the Chornobyl zone, where the Russian aggressors had been digging trenches, and said that they would in all likelihood be facing radiation sickness.

Ukraine exported over 1 million tonnes of grain in April despite war

 An agricultural worker drives a tractor spreading fertilizers to a field of winter wheat in Kiev region

Mon, May 9, 2022
By Pavel Polityuk

KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine has sown about 7 million hectares of spring crops so far this year, or 25-30% less than in the corresponding period of 2021, and exported 1.090 million tonnes of grain in April, Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyi said on Monday.

He underlined the importance of exports of Ukrainian grain via Romania while Russia is blockading Ukrainian ports, but said those exports could be complicated in two months by exports of the new wheat crop in Romania and Bulgaria.

"The sowing campaign is going on actively despite the difficulties associated primarily with logistics," Solskyi told a news conference.

He said the sowing this year was not of the same quality as last year and that the sowing area for corn was smaller.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February has added to volatility in international financial markets, sending commodity prices higher and affecting logistics.

Ukraine had been the world's fourth largest exporter of maize (corn) in the 2020/21 season and the number six wheat exporter, according to International Grains Council data.

Nearly 25 million tonnes of grains are stuck in Ukraine and unable to leave the country due to infrastructure challenges and blocked Black Sea ports, a U.N. food agency official said on Friday.

Ukrainian agriculture officials say the exportable surplus is around 12 million tonnes and analysts have said Ukraine's currently large stocks will leave no room for storing the new harvest when it comes.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that the problem of global food security could not be solved without restoring Ukrainian agricultural production to the world market.

Repeating allegations that Russia has been stealing grain from Ukraine during the war, Solskyi said Ukraine regarded any ships carrying grain via the port of Sevastopol in the Crimea region to be stolen.

"Work is under way so that this stolen grain can be quickly seized," he said, without giving details.

Russia, which annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, has denied stealing Ukrainian grain.

Solskyi welcomed the "interest and understanding" shown by Romania over exports of Ukrainian grain and said Baltic ports looked the most attractive alternative.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Fire-ravaged New Mexico villages cling to faith, ‘querencia’


 

FELICIA FONSECA
Fri, May 6, 2022, 12:30 PM·5 min read


Eileen Celestina Garcia raced down the mountain that overlooks her parents’ ranch home in northern New Mexico where friends and family have gathered for decades and where she has sat countless times among the stillness of the Ponderosa pines.

A wildfire was raging and Garcia knew she had just minutes to reach her parents and ensure they evacuated in time. Her hands grazed the trees as she spoke to them, thinking the least she could do is offer them gratitude and prayer in case they weren't there when she returned.

“You're trying not to panic — maybe it's not real — just asking for miracles, asking for it not to affect our valley and stop," she said.

Like many New Mexico families, Garcia's is deep-rooted not only in the land but in their Catholic faith. As the largest wildfire burning in the U.S. marches across the high alpine forests and grasslands of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, many in its path have pleaded with God for intervention in the form of rain and calm winds, and protection for their neighbors and beloved landscape.


They've invoked St. Florian, the patron saint of firefighters, the Virgin Mary as the blessed mother and the various patron saints of scattered villages. The fire has marched for several weeks across more than 262 square miles (678 square kilometers), destroying dozens of homes and forcing thousands of families to evacuate.

Favorable winds recently helped firefighters, but conditions are expected to worsen over the weekend, with consecutive days of red flag warnings. Forecasters warned of potentially historic conditions.

“There's not going to be any letup in these winds,” said John Pendergrast, an air resource adviser on the fire.

During trying times, the largely Hispanic working-class neighborhoods here also rely on community and the lessons of those who came before them. Simply put, it’s querencia — a love of home or attachment to a place.

Some described fleeing the wildfire and imagining the faces of their neighbors in the lush valleys who they've helped with baling hay, fixing cars or harvesting firewood.

“One of my neighbors described it as seeing the mountains around us burn is really like seeing a loved one burn,” said Fidel Trujillo, whose family evacuated from the tiny town of Mora. “And I don’t think that’s any kind of exaggeration.”

Religion is infused in homes across the mountains, where crosses hang above many doors. Elected officials and fire managers frequently credited prayer when winds calmed enough to allow firefighters to get a better handle on the blaze. They prayed even more when things got tough. Some started novenas, or nine-day prayers, and encouraged family and friends to join in.

The preservation of faith in this region was somewhat out of necessity. The Spanish settled the area centuries ago, but the Catholic Church as an institution was far away. Even now, deacons and priests rotate among the mission churches for Mass or to perform sacraments. People like Trujillo and his wife serve as mayordomos, or caretakers of those churches.

Also layered on the landscape are historic Spanish land grants, large ranches, traditional irrigation systems known as acequias, and moradas, which are meeting spaces for a religious brotherhood known as penitentes.

Prayer is intertwined in everything, Trujillo says, something that was passed down through generations. His dad has marked spots along hiking trails with crosses as a reminder to “pause, pray and give thanks," Trujillo said.

By the grace of God, he said, his father-in-law's ranch house in El Carmen survived the fire, and so did his childhood home in Ledoux. He's unsure about his current residence in Mora amid a valley prized for its Christmas trees.

“Sometimes when things are beyond your control, you have to lean on that faith,” Trujillo said. “That’s what faith is.”

For many New Mexicans, regardless of where they live, the pull back home is strong.

Felicia Ortiz, president of the Nevada board of education, recently bought 36 acres (14.5 hectares) behind one of the mission churches to maintain roots in New Mexico. The land burned, but she's hopeful some trees remain.

Nearby at her childhood home in Rociada, she remembers stomping on the dirt to make adobe bricks and peeling logs her family harvested to build a barn. She and her sister skated on a frozen pond in the yard and sledded down the hills. They watched the full moon rise over a tree next to their playhouse as her dad played “Bad Moon Rising” on vinyl.

Flames destroyed the house.

“I look at the pictures, and it looks like something out of a horror movie,” Ortiz said. “The tree that I had a swing on, it’s just a stick. The big piñon tree where we picked piñon, it’s like palitos (little sticks) now.”

Las Vegas Mayor Louie Trujillo called northern New Mexicans physically, emotionally and spiritually strong — “a breed of our own.” Many residents invoked the teachings and resilient spirits of their ancestors when offering up their homes to evacuees, feeding them, rescuing animals and starting fundraisers.

Garcia and her 9-year-old son, Leoncio, took refuge during the coronavirus pandemic at her parents' ranch in Sapello and haven't left. It's where her family milked cows and made cheese to sell to neighbors. It's where she sat among the trees overlooking the valley and dreamt about going to college and helping her family.

More recently, the trees gave her the solace she needed to write a chapter in a book about female trailblazers.

When fleeing, she grabbed pictures of relatives and a bag with religious items that she carried on a 100-mile (160-kilometer) pilgrimage she organized and walked for 10 years.

“If our ranch and our trees are still there, what I keep seeing is an opportunity to offer space for healing for folks to come and sit with the trees that they've lost," she said.

___

Fonseca is a member of the AP's Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/FonsecaAP

This April 2, 2021, photo provided by Fidel Trujillo shows the exterior of the San Isidro morada, a meeting space for a Catholic brotherhood, in Holman, New Mexico. Residents of the community were forced to evacuate because of a wildfire that has marched across 258 square miles of high alpine forest and grasslands at the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains.

 (Fidel Trujillo via AP)

Safecracker with a link to Houdini opens mystery safe for the town of Bristol




Donita Naylor, The Providence Journal
Sat, May 7, 2022, 6:55 PM·3 min read

BRISTOL — For a few hours Tuesday, Bristol put on a Facebook Live version of Geraldo Rivera's opening of Al Capone's secret vault on live TV in 1986.

In Bristol's case, the mystery involved a locked safe that had been forgotten for decades in the basement of the old Oliver School on State Street. For as far back as anyone remembers, the combination has been lost, and no one had any idea what was inside.

The town's Facebook page was open for wisecracks Monday after Town Administrator Steven Contente used it to announce that the town had hired a safecracking specialist, and the opening of the safe would be on Facebook Live on Tuesday.

What he didn't say was that the safecracker was trained by descendants of Harry Houdini's locksmith, the man who adjusted handcuffs, padlocks and other keyed mechanisms to make sure Houdini made his impossible escapes just in time every time.

So Houdini's act was rigged?

"I cannot divulge that, but let us say, I have knowledge," said Francesco Therisod, the vault-opening expert behind Castle Vault & Lock, where Contente was advised to seek the specialty service of breaking into a safe.

At 76, Therisod is semiretired. He has worked for the feds, opening seized assets and changing the combinations. He was hired to re-combo safes all over the state in 1999 when corporations feared losses from Y2K. When Gov. Bruce Sundlun shut down financial institutions to prevent collapses during the 1991 credit union crisis, Therisod was called in. He takes jobs like Bristol's, he said, because "I still have the rush when I turn the handle and open the safe."

He honed the specialty skill he learned from his wife's family. She is the former Linda J. Clark, the granddaughter of Herbert Clark, Houdini's behind-the-scenes locksmith. Herbert Clark moved to Rhode Island in 1901 when Houdini established his New England base in Providence.

Therisod prefers the term "safe technician" to safecracker, he said. He became a master at opening a safe by listening to the lock mechanism as he slowly turns the dial.

That's what he did in the Oliver School basement. He figured out the combination, but the bolts were rusty and wouldn't release.

His assistant drilled just under the lock and through the insulation, but even after "lots of banging" with a mallet, it still wouldn't budge.

Facebook commenters offered their takes on what was inside: milk money, little blue lunch tokens and Mount Hope Bridge tokens, Jimmy Hoffa, gold bars, dust, report cards, confiscated squirt guns and a whoopee cushion, the legendary "permanent record."

Contente wore a fedora for the Facebook Live reveal, to evoke the Al Capone era. He kept announcing delays and asking the Facebook Live audience to stand by.

"We were at the end of the second hour," Therisod said. He decided, "I'd like to go another way," and he was ready to stop and come back with the huge cutters.

Assistant Cesar Lecaros wanted to give it one last good whack with the mallet.
This time the bolts fell away

The door opened to reveal ... another locked door. Eventually Superintendent Ana Riley led viewers through the cubbies and drawers, pulling out annual reports from 1838, bus contracts, handwritten minutes of School Committee meetings, but nothing after 1976.

The safe will be moved to a Bristol administration building, and the Oliver School will be sold. Therisod gave it a new combination before he left, and he'll return to repair the drill hole and touch up the paint.

"A professional never ruins a safe," he explained. Bristol had bought a good one from a company that no longer exists. It was sold as a "double-door insulated fire safe," and he considers it a museum piece now.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Safecracker with a link to Houdini opens mystery safe in Oliver School

Coral reefs provide stunning images of a world under assault
 

    

CURT ANDERSON and CODY JACKSON
Sun, May 8, 2022, 

MIAMI (AP) — Humans don't know what they're missing under the surface of a busy shipping channel in the “cruise capital of the world.” Just below the keels of massive ships, an underwater camera provides a live feed from another world, showing marine life that's trying its best to resist global warming.

That camera in Miami's Government Cut is just one of the many ventures of a marine biologist and a musician who've been on a 15-year mission to raise awareness about dying coral reefs by combining science and art to bring undersea life into pop culture.

Their company — Coral Morphologic — is surfacing stunning images, putting gorgeous closeups of underwater creatures on social media, setting time-lapsed video of swaying, glowing coral to music and projecting it onto buildings, even selling a coral-themed beachwear line.

“We aren’t all art. We aren’t all science. We aren’t all tech. We are an alchemy,” said Colin Foord, who defies the looks of a typical scientist, with blue hair so spiky that it seems electrically charged. He and his business partner J.D. McKay sat down with The Associated Press to show off their work.

One of their most popular projects is the Coral City Camera, which recently passed 2 million views and usually has about 100 viewers online at any given time each day.

“We’re going to actually be able to document one year of coral growth, which has never been done before in situ on a coral reef, and that’s only possible because we have this technological connection right here at the port of Miami that allows us to have power and internet,” Foord said.

The livestream has already revealed that staghorn and other corals can adapt and thrive even in a highly urbanized undersea environment, along with 177 species of fish, dolphins, manatees and other sea life, Foord said.

“We have these very resilient corals growing here. The primary goal of us getting it underwater was to show people there is so much marine life right here in our city,” Foord said.

McKay, meanwhile, sounds like a Broadway producer as he describes how he also films the creatures in their Miami lab, growing coral in tanks to get them ready for closeups in glorious color.

“We essentially create a set with one of these aquariums, and then obviously there's actors — coral or shrimp or whatever — and then we film it, and then I get a vibe, whatever might be happening in the scene, and then I soundtrack it with some ambient like sounds, something very oceanic," McKay explained.

Their latest production, “ Coral City Flourotour, ” will be shown on the New World Center Wallscape this week as the Aspen Institute hosts a major climate conference in Miami Beach. Foord is speaking on a panel about how the ocean’s natural systems can help humans learn to combat impacts of climate change. The talk’s title? “The Ocean is a Superhero.”

"I think when we can recognize that we're all this one family of life and everything is interconnected, that hopefully we can make meaningful changes now, so that future generations don't have to live in a world of wildfires and melted ice caps and dead oceans," Foord told the AP.

Their mission is urgent: After 500 million years on Earth, these species are under assault from climate change. The warming oceans prompt coral bleaching and raise the risk of infectious diseases that can cause mass die-offs in coral, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Stronger storms and changes in water chemistry can destroy reef structures, while altered currents sweep away food and larvae.

“Climate change is the greatest global threat to coral reef ecosystems,” NOAA said in a recent report.

That gets at the second part of Coral Morphologic's name. “What does it mean to be morphologic? It really means having to adapt because the environment is always changing,” Foord said.

The staghorn, elkhorn and brain coral living in Government Cut provide a real-world example of how coral communities can adapt to such things as rising heat and polluted runoff, even in such an unlikely setting as the port of Miami. Their video has documented fluorescence in some of the coral, an unusual response in offshore waters that Foord said could be protecting them from solar rays.

“The port is a priceless place for coral research," Foord said. “We have to be realistic. You won't be able to return the ecosystems to the way they were 200 years ago. The options we are left with are more radical.”

Beyond the science, there's the clothes. Coral Morphologic sells a line of surf and swimwear that takes designs from flower anemones and brain coral and uses environmentally sustainable materials such as a type of nylon recycled from old fishing nets.

“We see the power of tech connecting people with nature. We are lucky as artists, and corals are benefitting,” Foord said.

 

 

Musician J.D. McKay, left, and marine biologist Colin Foord, right, pose for a photograph at their Coral Morphologic lab, Wednesday, March 2, 2022, in Miami. They have been on a 15-year mission to raise awareness about dying coral reefs with a company that presents the issue through science and art.

 (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

—-

Jackson reported from Miami and Anderson from St. Petersburg, Florida.