Postcard from Bishkek

Language is not static but changes with usage over the period of time with new words being coined, whilst other are “borrowed” from foreign languages.  Some words are replaced or simply dropped from common usage and others are transformed and given new meanings.  Thanks particularly to the internet, we are going through a period of […]

When the news broke last week that Pope Benedict had announced his resignation the thing that struck me as peculiarly odd was that I heard the news from twitter. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the fact that it was a tweet that alerted to the breaking news … twitter is a very useful tool in […]

Last week, I wrote about the impending arrival of Holy Relics being loaned to the Bishkek dioceses  from the Orthodox Church in Russia.  Although relics of three saints, (St. Matrona, Peter and Fevronia), were supposed to arrive on Thursday, it seems that only those of Matrona actually made it.  There was some story about getting permissions […]

It’s an old joke but it still brought a smile to my face when I saw the cartoon showing a man in Biblical dress running out of what looked like a tent, (not a stable); a star is visible over the structure. where a woman was bent over a manger with a variety of animals looking […]

The Orthodox Church seems to be getting more active – or at least I am hearing of more events. One of the reasons ius that some of our staff are devout Orthodox Christians who not only attend Church on Sundays and High Holidays, but take their faith very seriously … and knowing that my degree […]

One of the most iconic images of the twentieth century was taken Bill Anders, a member of the crew on the Apollo 8 mission, on December 24, 1968, showing the Earth seemingly rising above the lunar surface. This was the second manned mission of the Apollo space program, one of a series of flights to test the […]

A short while ago I ran into an acquaintance who is very active in trying to preserve and develop traditional Kyrgyz Crafts.   Whilst we were talking the topic of conversation drifted toward the environment and ecology, global warming and pollution … and it was then that she let drop her “bombshell” … well, to […]

Today is one of the nine holy days of the Bahai faith: the Birth of Baha’u’llah, in Tehran, Iran, in 1817.  (Bahá’u’lláh was the founder of the faith).  The Bahai faith, itself, was founded in Iran over 150 years ago, in 1844 and as such it is one of the youngest of the world’s major religions. It was […]

  The village of Gulistan is located in the South of Kyrgyzstan, in the region of Ala Bukin of Djalal Abad oblast, at the confluence of the Padsha Ata and Chanach Sai rivers.  It is the home of one of the most important Moslem shrines in Kyrgyzstan - Safed Bulan and the mausoleum of Shah Fazil. It is […]

There is a Kyrgyz legend that tells of the seven mazars, (or shrines – a term often used to refer to the graves of men venerated as Muslim “saints”), which have been built and named for the seven fathers of the Kyrgyz: Baba Ata; Cholpon Ata; Issyk Ata; Jumgal Ata; Kochkor Ata; Suleiman Ata and […]