our little gymnast

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 08:30:09 -0500

juliette has great coordination and knows no fear! here she is in several clips that were shot back in april (2007) when we were still living in kyiv. thankfully the session ended without any broken bones....

(note: this clip is about 4mb so depending on your connection it might take a while to download)

juliette's song & dance

Wed, 7 Mar 2007 13:34:06 -0600

juliette loves to dance and sing! here she is in our apartment in kyiv, filmed on february 2, 2007

the hymn of ukraine (ukraine’s national anthem)

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 07:21:09 -0600

In 1992 the Ukrainian Parliament chose as the national anthem music composed in 1863 by Mykhailo Verbytsky, a western Ukrainian composer and Catholic priest. Verbytsky originally wrote the score as a solo song and later for orchestra to accompany a patriotic poem written in 1862 by Pavlo Chubynsky, a prominent ethnographer in the Kyiv region. In his poem Shche Ne Vmerla Ukrayina (which means "Ukraine has not died yet"), Chubynsky expressed the mixture of hope and desperation felt by Ukrainians over their continuous struggle to rule their own land. Widely sung around the country as the "Hymn to Ukraine," both the melody and lyrics were similar to those of Polish and Serbian anthems. In 1917 it became the anthem of the short-lived Ukrainian National Republic, but during the Soviet era it was replaced.
Over time there were various changes and additions to Chubynsky's original words, resulting in several slightly differing versions of the Hymn to Ukraine. Following independence in 1991, many Ukrainians were dissatisfied with the pessimistic tone, so the Ukrainian government made the Verbytsky score official but hesitated to approve the Chubynsky's lyrics. A commission sponsored contests for replacement lyrics, but none were decided on. Agreement finally came in 2003, when the Parliament passed and the President signed an act recognizing a slight change to the version of Chubynsky's lyrics that were usually sung. Only the first stanza and the refrain (which is sung twice) were approved in President Kuchma's official proclamation.

The translation:
Ukraine's glory hasn't perished, nor her freedom Upon us, fellow compatriots, fate shall smile once more. Our enemies will vanish, like dew in the morning sun, And we too shall rule, brothers, in a free land of our own.  We'll lay down our souls and bodies to attain our freedom, And we'll show that we, brothers, are of the [Kossack] nation.

....translated by Ihor W. Slabicky (Copyright 2003 by Ihor Slabicky)

excerpted from http://pages.prodigy.net/l.hodges/anthem.htm

extras

our little gymnast

juliette's song & dance

the hymn of ukraine (ukraine’s national anthem)