History in the Headlines

This past week has been a whirlwind of professional activity and inspiration for me.

In the couple of days before last weekend, an international history conference held in Vlad brought me into a lot more contact with fellow historians than I've had the chance to enjoy in recent months. Thanks to that contact, I also got a leap start in work at the Far Eastern state historical archive. And, perhaps most surprising, the current topic of my research came back to bite contemporary Russians, quite literally.

The federal health agency in Russia recently declared an epidemic of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), with over 30,000 people across the country infected with the disease, and 15 dead. Apparently the region suffering the most is Novosibirsk, with 12 thousand cases of infection, about a third of which are children. The Far East, where TBE was first observed and studied by modern medical virologists exactly 70 years ago this summer, is not among the very worst hit, although the region surrounding the other major city out here, Khabarovsk, apparently has reported about 4,000 cases.

It's not very clear what explains this year's rise in the incidence of infection. Gennadii Onishchenko, former Minister of Health (he now heads the federal Consumer Rights Surveillance Agency, which performs some of the functions that the FDA and the CDC are responsible for in the US), says the unusually warm winter and unseasonably warm spring that hit in Siberia and the Eastern parts of Russia are partly to blame. He also calls attention to lax planning on the part of regional officials. Apparently every year health officials in the regions are supposed to order up doses of preventive vaccine and the immunoglobulin treatment that is really the only recourse once a person is infected with TBE. This year, perhaps because 2005 and 2006 saw a downturn in infections, Onishchenko says the regions ignored his calls for orders and now find themselves scrambling for treatment doses that were not manufactured.

Some reports note that localities often spray parks and recreational areas to keep the tick population down. A Kommersant newspaper article points to local officials skimping on such spraying or doing it too late this year. Personally I was surprised to hear that they try to spray at all to help prevent this disease, since in my understanding the danger of being bitten by an infected tick is much higher out "in nature," as Russians like to say -- in other words, outside of town, at a remove from urban areas, and in places that cover enough territory that I would assume spraying is really not a feasible option. But apparently now that this year's epidemic has been declared, officials are trying to be particularly vigilant about spraying around children's camps, as most of the young population heads out for the summer.

Evidently the joke among virologists right now is that the ticks' heightened activity is their way of marking the anniversary of modern medical scientists having taken note of their viral baggage. I wonder what Lev Aleksandrovich Zilber -- head of the 1937 medical expedition whose participants sleuthed out the fundamentals of the disease -- would think if he were here today?

Junebug

OK, since it looks like I'm averaging a sad two and three-quarters posts per month, I should update you on the second half of May before delving into the first few days of June.

If you have looked at our photos or our videos recently, you know that we enjoyed a wet ride somewhere southwest of Vlad a short while ago. The irony was, Dan went back to a location about 150 meters north of where we forded that river/road three days later, to visit a nature preserve where some of the severely endangered Amur leopards live. (There is an interesting Voice of America piece whose second half is devoted to the leopards here and a World Wildlife Fund report on the recent incident that inspired Dan's trip here.)

There wasn't a whole lot more to report from late last month, other than another trip to the waterfront here in town for shashlyk and beer. Fortunately we were able to enjoy it some, despite the fact that this followed a very stressful departure from home, leaving Anya with a babysitter. We've moved her bedtime later, but we still don't have a regular babysitter who she's used to and who can come and play with her and put her to bed with a minimum of fuss. Last Thursday was the first of our attempts to do this (i.e. have someone come before she was already asleep), and hopefully it will only get better. (Well, seeing how upset Anya -- and subsequently I -- was that evening, I don't really see how it could realistically get worse.)

So, how is our June shaping up?

Well...., on Saturday we went to the mall. I guess we are about at that point in our stay here in Russia where we actually don't feel bad about doing that for an afternoon. Meaning, heck, we have no shame, why not spend an afternoon doing something wholly American in Vladivostok, as much as that can be recreated here? We found a store, "Oggi," that wasn't too expensive, selling women's clothing that was a good combination of fun and feminine and stylish, without being either garish, too expensive, or too cheaply made. I bought a couple of things.

We used our fold-up "umbrella" stroller that my mom got us in early February for what I am slightly sheepish to admit is the first real time on an outing beyond the area surrounding our house. Vlad is just not made for strollers (you'll see this when you visit, Mom), but I knew that the shopping center we were headed to had escalators, which makes it one of the few places in Vlad where a stroller is practical. Also, Anya is still growing into the stroller, and she's still a little small for it now. She's still a little slumpy no matter how you position her in the seat. But using it yesterday reminded me how nice and light it is, and how easily it folds up, so now I think we'll use it more when we go down to the waterfront and other specific destinations where you know there'll be level ground or not a great amount of stairs to climb.

We had a disappointing dinner out at Syndicate, the local steakhouse modeled on a (Russian interpretation of an) Al Capone, gangster theme that I described in an earlier post. We went there Saturday night with colleague out from Moscow on a short-term visit.

The prices had all gone up not insignificantly, including the sorry $10 per draught beer -- just too much. Entrees and everything had risen, too. I had an overpriced entree and a bottled Stella Artois; Dan and Cathy had burgers, and Dan splurged for a salad and a draught dark Leffe. Burger was very disappointing -- hard, dry, surrounded and overwhelmed by the fixings, too greasy to effectively eat without it spurting out from the bun and its sauces and trappings. Stellas weren't bad. My meal took forever to come; Dan and Cathy had finished their meals before mine arrived. The live music wasn't bad -- a jazz guitar trio. Too loud when we first got there, but we got used to it.

After the meal we headed for the waterfront, to drink another cheaper beer in a downmarket setting. Unfortunately we didn't know the place kind of closes down at 10:30. The shashlyk and beer places on the part of the waterfront that juts out into the harbor were nearly empty, and it was just as well, since the fog was coming in and it was getting chilly. (One of the only ways in which Vlad really is like San Francisco is the microclimate thing, and the way you need to always remember a jacket or sweater when you go out in on a warm evening, since it is guaranteed to cool down quite a bit.)

On Sunday, another great midday eating and walking around outside out at the Canadian brunch place and a walk in the sun, followed by the very sour disappointment of having bought the wrong Zodiac. After careful research by Dan on some films that got relatively high marks on the Tomatometer, including the recently-released "Zodiac," we bought a DVD of the less recent, shockingly low-rated "The Zodiac." (The lack of definite articles in Russian of course aided our mistake....) Also, the version of "Black Orchid" that we bought was of such poor production value (ahem, I realize I ask a lot, given the provenance of the disks) that we couldn't hear the undubbed English. (The movie looked terrible anyway, but, trust me, the muffled sound didn't help matters.)

Well, generally a couple of up and down days recently, but capped by an interesting evening last night among local and visiting historians. I'll presumably have more from the upcoming days of the conference they were gathered for, so stay tuned.