{"id":8308,"date":"2018-10-01T12:37:25","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T20:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=8308"},"modified":"2022-02-24T07:48:00","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T15:48:00","slug":"the-lviv-international-book-forum-huge-hearts-tiny-bods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=8308","title":{"rendered":"The Lviv International Book Forum: Huge Hearts, Tiny Bods."},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Blessed Lyubochka of the Shuriken, the Ukrainian saint who was martyred by ninjas in 1645.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The first thing that occurs to me when I arrive\u2014 well, the second thing, after wondering about all the little plumes of smoke rising from the surrounding countryside (which nobody in Lviv seems to know anything about)\u2014 is Hey, this place really reminds me of Poland<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lviv actually used to be part of Poland, back between The Wars. Stanislaw Lem was born here. Lviv also largely avoided damage during WW2, meaning that\u2014 unlike, say, Kyiv, which got hammered to the ground and rebuilt in Chunky Soviet\u2014 all those picturesque houses and buildings have survived more or less unscathed to this very day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Most of them, anyway; I’m told that Lviv suffered only a single bomb strike during the whole war. Nobody I asked to was able to explain exactly how that happened. Did some Luftwaffe pilot get lost, somehow, and think he was bombing London? Did someone go rogue, decide to leave formation and fly to Lviv to bomb the house of a former landlord? How the hell does one lousy bomb<\/em> find its lonesome way all the way to Lviv?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ukrainian theology has in some ways diverged from canonical Christian belief. In this representation of The Second Coming, the Archangel Gabriel jams on a double bass.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, I take it as a good sign. They liked me in Poland; maybe they’ll like me here as well. And the fact that Lem was born there can’t hurt. Lemly places take well to me. Maybe it’s because his own unique way of hammering home the futility of existence softens people up for my own, more light-hearted stylings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share the ride in from the airport with a dude name of Igor Pomerantsev: Russian-born ex-pat, poet<\/a>, sonic wizard<\/a> and broadcaster<\/a> who’s currently based in England. He’s also a guest of the Festival; they’ve put us up in the same hotel. We chat over breakfast a couple of times across the ensuing days. He’s a fascinating guy. Doesn’t like Russia much, which is understandable given that he was arrested by the KGB back in the seventies. His wife produces documentaries; his son is an author and journalist and something of an expert on Putin’s “post-modern dictatorship”. Family get-togethers must be something to behold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Maria, who kept me on course. I think she’s in Poland now.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

My liaison is Maria Kalmykova, a woman who has somehow managed to squeeze a stint as a Festival volunteer in between trips to Hungary and Poland and too many internships and university applications to count. She is awesome. First night out she takes me on a walking tour of the neighborhood. We speak of chocolate, the inherent corruption of Ukraine politics, and her family from Crimea (including a grandmother who’s still down there).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Another Angel of the Apocalypse. This one slammed into me on roller skates and would not let go until I paid her $5CAD. Perhaps she’ll put it toward dental care.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

She is only the first; the war comes up a lot over the next few days. (I’m generally the one to broach the subject\u2014 hesitantly, at first, but nobody seems to mind talking about it.) It’s bloody surreal: a literary festival in a gorgeous, tranquil city in a nation undergoing armed invasion on two fronts[1]<\/sup><\/a> while everyone else\u2014 all those countries who swore up and down that if only Ukraine would disarm, they’d be there to pitch in if anyone ever tried to mess\u2014 just shrug and look the other way. There are so many disconnects here I have a hard time wrapping my head around them. Serhiy and Anastasia (whom you’ll meet in a moment) introduce me to the term “hybrid war<\/a>“.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I keep asking, without much hope, if there’s a chance Kyiv might have squirreled a few nukes away in a basement somewhere, just in case. I’m no big fan of nuclear brinksmanship, but at least it might make a government or two a bit less inclined to leave these people twisting in the wind once they got what they wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Believe it or not, I almost had opportunity to raise such issues with the President of Ukraine himself\u2014 or at least, in his hearing. Throughout most of August through to early September, I faced the prospect of giving a short speech at the Festival’s Opening Ceremonies. The president was going to be in attendance. They even gave me a subject to speak on: “The Cost of Freedom”. (It wasn’t a customized selection: it was the overarching theme of the whole Festival.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Despite my willingness to embrace Ukrainian culture, I had little desire to sample whatever this establishment was serving.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I asked for guidance, admitted that the prospect of blowing into town and lecturing about “the cost of freedom” to a populace that was in the midst of a literal armed invasion<\/em> seemed a bit, well, presumptuous. Not hearing back, I decided to run with it: after all, “the cost of freedom” is open to interpretation. My<\/em> chosen interpretation involved interrogating the question of what it would cost to free the biosphere of the devastating impact of 7.6 billion primates who can’t keep it in their pants. The cost, clearly, would be the eradication of those primates. I decided to spend my 8-10 minutes advocating for the extinction of Humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it turned out, though, the Office of the President decided that they didn’t want their leader exposed to any speakers they hadn’t selected themselves. On September 8 I was told that I was off the list. It was a relief. Honestly. Even though I’m sure my talk would’ve gone over really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Igor speaks at the opening ceremonies, even if I don’t. Good call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Bodyguards, rocket fuel, and (inset) Hideous Arm of Eyeball Infestation.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I never do get to meet the president. I do get to meet the mayor of Lviv and his wife, though, briefly. I’m in the midst of an interview \u2014 more precisely, helping a journalism student with his homework\u2014 when a gang of thuggish-looking dudes bursts into the coffee shop and tells me that Blindsight<\/em> has just won some sort of Special Best-of-Festival Award. I almost refuse to go with them\u2014 one of these guys has eyeballs tattooed all over his arm, and I’ve always feared the concept of eyeballs sprouting randomly from human flesh\u2014 but one of the other guys is my publisher, so I figured he’s just hired a couple of bodyguards to protect his newly-award-winning author. They drag me to a place full of arches and columns and smooth jazz, blue-lit like some dreamy undersea grotto. The party is hosted by the mayor’s wife; I shake hands with her and her spouse, exchange brief platitudes, and realize that there’s an open bar at the other end of the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
It doesn’t work any way you look at it.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This is also where I meet Lina Kwitka, a woman with the word “Power” tattooed on her chest in Braille. I have a hard time unpacking this. Only blind people will be able to read that, by running their fingers along Lina’s chest. Except it’s not really in Braille, because there are no raised surfaces; it’s just ink. So blind people won’t be able to read it after all. And they’d need a sighted person to even tell them there’s something there not to read in the first place. You need to be both Blind and Sighted to make sense of this. It’s either a very subtle call-out to my novel, or Lina just likes mocking the blind. Not wanting to appear egotistical, I accuse her of the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bodyguards introduce me to something they call “rocket fuel”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ambiance.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Maria has to be nice to me. It’s her job. It’s not anyone else’s; but everyone else steps up anyway. I swear, I pay for maybe two drinks the whole time I’m in Lviv.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
They fed me acid and took me to a graveyard. Draw your own conclusions.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Serhiy and Anastasia\u2014 both translators, Serhiy recently recareered as an artist\u2014 take me out to dinner one night, drag me to a big honking graveyard the next day. Sometime around there they also introduce me to something they call “Peppered Coffee”; more accurately described as “coffee-tinged battery acid designed to give you a sore throat for a period of 90 minutes”. They say it’s a “traditional Ukraine Thing”. None of the folks I ask about this subsequently\u2014 and I ask a lot of them\u2014 have ever heard of the stuff. Maybe the “tradition” S&A are referring to is the punking of tourists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s the man known only as “Toad Bird”, who introduces me to a veritable Buckaroo-Banzai team of friends (a cryptographer! a biologist! a geometric modeller of information systems! a Customs broker!)\u2014 and also to the one undeniably horrible element of my Ukraine experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Team Toadbird: stalking the night, and stumbling into it.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Pork ears. The horriblest thing about Ukraine. Imagine thin slices of kneecap, garnished with silicon.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Gen and me. Yes, that’s a hard hat. Be patient. It’ll all make sense eventually.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There’s Gen (Eugenie, if we’re being formal). She tails me for a couple of blocks on Day 1, watching me get increasingly lost as I try to find the location of some future panel. I see her from the corner of my eye. I’m actually a bit nervous by the time she pounces in and introduces herself. She’s a fan. She just kind of recognized me on the street. She helps get me where I’m going. We hang out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are Official Festival Parties in addition to these more impromptu get-togethers. I skip most of them, even the one with “Playboy” in the title. I go online instead, and chat with The BUG.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m told, by someone who attended the Playboy Party, that I made the right decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Festival itself is huge, twenty-two thousand strong. Ground Zero is a compound with a three-story building and a massive courtyard, jam-packed with dealers’ kiosks. But tendrils extend throughout the downtown core: to parks, to cinemas, even to the courtyards of financial institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Four days of this.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I never quite get over the fact that anyone even knows who I am, given that the Ukrainian edition of Blindsight <\/em>wasn’t even released until the Forum itself. I’m told the Russian translation is popular; also that the war is good for business, because Ukrainian anger over the invasion has inspired resurgent interest in homegrown publishing. People who already read the book in Russian are likely to buy it again in Ukrainian just to support the local industry. It’s a pretty thin silver lining, but I’ll take it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For whatever reason, I end up signing a lot of books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Giant, hypertrophied hearts, these folks. But surprisingly modest in height. I mean, just look at them!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Okay, well, maybe except for this guy.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As chance would have it, Dan Brooks\u2014 the evolutionary biologist I mention now and again on this ‘crawl\u2014 was in Ukraine a few months back, addressing the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences on the threat of emerging infectious diseases in a warming world. The Academy couldn’t afford to pick up his tab; Dan had to travel at his own expense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been looking for an opportunity to rail against this, against any system that treats a midlist SF writer to an all-expense paid trip with little boxed chocolates on his pillow each night yet can’t afford to support an acclaimed scientist speaking on matters of global import. Before I have a chance to splooge my virtue-signals in public, though, I meet this guy to the right: Roman Waschuk, Canadian Ambassador to Ukraine. He has a book for me to sign and some insight to go with it. Turns out the Festival didn’t pay my expenses after all; my own government did. The Festival approached the Canadian Embassy, told them they wanted me in Lviv; and\u2014 as Roman remarked\u2014 “We figure it can’t just be All Atwood All the Time.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Meanwhile, in a distant land…<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

It kind of blows me away that my own government would support me thus. Prophets are supposed to be without honor in their own country, after all (and that’s certainly been my experience at the con level). But here’s Ambassador Waschuk: not only hanging around for the panel, but describing it afterward on Twitter as an exploration of “hardcore sci-fi epistemology and neuropsychology issues”. Not the sort of terminology I expected from a professional diplomat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am impressed. I hope he enjoyed the discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Stalkers, while occasionally in evidence, were easily detected.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The thing about these panels is, you never know who you’re going to get. The dude asking me the pointed questions turns out not to be just your garden-variety fanboy, but a Professor of Philosophy of Mind<\/em>. The guy on the other side of me\u2014 the one I’m starting to look askance at, because his remarks have an almost religious<\/em> tinge to them\u2014 turns out to be a practicing neuropsychiatrist. (One of his patients is terrified of going to sleep, because he’s convinced that life ends when the continuity of consciousness is broken, and whatever wakes up the next day won’t be him\u2014 just some other being in the same chassis. I’ve been wanting to write a story based on that very premise for years, but I’ve never been able to come up with an actual plot past the basic set-up of patient-holds-therapist-at-gunpoint-and-demands-drugs-to-keep-him-awake.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
How do you translate “Hey, man, have you ever looked at your hand<\/i>? I mean, really looked<\/i> at it?” into Ukrainian?<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
This may have been the point at which I realized I was talking to Gene Piletsky, Professor of Philosophy of Mind. Can you see the dawning fear in my eyes?<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Let me emphasize: this is not a science fiction convention. This is not one of those specialty events where’d you expect to rub shoulders with fellow science nerds. This is a big-tent-all-genres literary<\/em> forum\/festival, with 1,200 writers and 22,000 visitors in attendance\u2014 and yet they stuck me in the ring with actual academics and practicing MDs. It was almost like being back in academia again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Minstrel Below the Gallery. Cue breathy flute.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
I basically just shut up and listened for this one. Shame I don’t understand Ukrainian.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

They’ve put me on five panels. One is basically All About Me, a kind of coming-out interview run by my publishers (who’ve done an exquisite job on the book, in case you haven’t noticed. Have you seen<\/em> that crisp, clean, dare-I-say literary<\/em> cover?). One is about Post-Humanism; another, about the impact of branding on society (the commercial-trademark kind, not the seared-flesh kind). One’s on the history and trajectory of the SF genre here in Ukraine: I mainly just sit and listen to that one, obviously, learn some really interesting stuff about the Soviet influence on the local writing scene. Finally, we wind up with an hour on Consciousness Theory and the Nature of Mind; that’s the one Ambassador Washcuk shows up for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the last panel’s over I’m relieved and exhilarated and ready to unwind. Gen helps out by introducing me to a local hangout that kicks every coffee shop you’ve ever experienced right in the gonads. It’s not even a coffee shop, according to the signage; it’s a coffee mine<\/em>. They give you a hard hat as you descend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You should watch the following clip to the end. It’s dark at first, but believe me: it gets bright near the end\u2014 right after the Turnstile of Erect Penises\u2014 when some eight-year-old nearly gets immolated. When we all do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That award I mentioned\u2014 it turns out to be real. The certificate is solid enough, and very classy\u2014 wax seal and everything\u2014 but the award does not appear to be juried. The winners are chosen by the President of the Festival\u2014 and even scrolling down to the bottom of the Official Announcement Page<\/a>, it’s not clear to me whether “Sleepiness<\/em>” won against twelve other finalists (including works by Hemingway and Hans Christian Andersen), or if there were just 13 Special Awards handed out. Probably that second thing; either that or there’s some genre category in which a science fiction novel can go head to head against both “Transformation Processes in the Financial Sector of the National Economy” and “Structure and dynamics of geophysical fields in Western Antarctica”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I turn to the wording on the plaque itself, run it through the camera function of Google Translate. Results are, well, inconclusive:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Google Translate’s camera function. Still a few bugs in the system. I hope.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Svitlana Taratorina. Lose the smile and the book, add a couple of prosthetic blades, you can totally see the resemblance.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There are interviews, ranging from fanzines to webcasts to one strange old guy who accosts me through a translator and says something about how the fate of the Earth is in my hands before he gets hustled off into the night and is never seen again. After one panel I’m interviewed by the assassin from “Kingsman: The Secret Service”, sans blades; I find out later she’s a fellow author, her own first novel dropped at this very event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another interview\u2014 with Justina Dobush\u2014 goes delightfully off the rails when I discover that she’s ambidextrous. She says that, when in ambi mode, she can hold two thoughts in her head at the same time. How does that work, I wonder. Assuming she’s not a split personality (in which case each conscious thought stream would be its own identity), there must be a third layer\u2014 a container to hold both processes, an overarching perspective that can look down on both thoughts without being<\/em> either. It hurts my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We spend the back half of the interview talking about drugs and writing. I don’t always know what Justina is saying, but I love the way she puts words together while saying it. (I especially like her thoughts about punching people<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
This is my publisher, \u041e\u043b\u0435\u043a\u0441\u0456\u0439 \u0416\u0443\u043f\u0430\u043d\u0441\u044c\u043a\u0438\u0439. Still trying to figure out how to pronounce that. Mostly I just say “Dude!”<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This trip is unsurpassed for Swag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s the usual Forum t-shirt, of course. There are a couple of bonus tees from my publisher<\/a> (the Big Brother shirt reminds me that I’ve just moved my website to a host called “1984.com” and a passer-by says “Oh, those guys are terrible<\/em>. Lost all our data, didn’t make backups.” Great.) But Serhiy also gifts me with one of his own Aliens-themed creations (which, though cool, is also a bit surprising, because the man eats breathes and lives “John Carpenter’s The Thing”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
And this…this is my translator, \u041e\u0441\u0442\u0430\u043f \u0423\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0457\u043d\u0435\u0446\u044c. Although he would be equally comfortable with “Ostap Ukrainets”.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

My new friends have friends. One of Gen’s is \u0415\u043a\u0430\u0442\u0435\u0440\u0438\u043d\u0430 \u0428\u0435\u043b\u044b\u0433\u0438\u043d\u0430 (which allegedly translates as “Kate Murphy”, although I remain skeptical), and she crafts artifacts out of sea glass. She has sent me an extremely cool hinged egg, which\u2014 in deference to our shared love of cats\u2014 I believe I will keep stocked with catnip. Sometime during the Toad Bird Night of Pork-Eared Debauchery I pick up a ceremonial scented Lviv candle and a floppy purple-red cat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Gene Piletsky\u2014 the Professor of Philosophy of Mind\u2014 passes along the coolest gift I’ve ever been able to fit in my pocket: an astrolabe hand-crafted by one\u2014 I want to say, Vsevolod Buravchenko[2]<\/sup><\/a>?\u2014 ostensibly in payment for all the freebies he’s downloaded from my Backlist page over the years. This thing is not just beautiful, it’s solid<\/em>: you could use it to smash in someone’s skull and it wouldn’t suffer a scratch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Many Lvivian toilets can only be accessed via underground catacombs. Somehow, they make it work.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Maria sees me to the airport. Our taxi passes electric trolleys pulled from the pages of a children’s book I once owned on trains of Europe, back in the nineteen sixties. I am amazed and impressed that they’re still running\u2014 imagining them, perhaps, as ancient alien machines humming smoothly without repair or maintenance, millennia after installation\u2014 but Maria wishes they’d just fucking get replaced already. Apparently they don’t<\/em> hum smoothly, after a measly fifty years. Apparently they break down in the boons, and Central Dispatch can’t find them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lviv seems pretty idyllic to some tourist who blows in for a few days, all expenses paid. To the people who live here, maybe not so much. It’s not just the invasion. Apparently a lot of Ukrainians sneak across the border into Poland, undocumented, seeking work. They only take jobs that the Poles won’t do anyway, Maria says. Anyway, she’s doing okay: she’s smart, she never stops, she’s got a scholarship that’s enough for her to get by on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

$50 USD, she says. I think she means per month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LOT flight LO766 out of Lviv is delayed an hour and a half (the running joke, apparently, is that LOT stands for “Later, Or Tomorrow”). I miss my connecting flight in Warsaw (which turns out to be the only Warsaw LOT flight that actually leaves on time the whole day). They put me up in the Marriott across the street. That’s okay. I could use a quiet night alone to just process the preceding week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I finally make it back into the air, some woman with a baby tucked under her arm tries to open the emergency exit, ten thousand meters up, mistaking the hatch for a fold-down diaper-changing table. There’s no real danger. Pressure differential would keep the hatch sealed tight even if we don’t ultimately dissuade her with our shouts and gesticulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a narrative standpoint it’s a shame: that would’ve been a hell of a way to end the story. Instead, I make it back home alive and unharmed, only to read<\/a> that a bunch of neo-Nazis in Lviv, armed with knives and hammers, beat up a group of left-wing activists while I was reveling in literature and fine companionship across town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You just can’t get away from this shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
I saw at least three publicity stills of me at the Festival. All were black and white, all taken prior to 2014. None were the current picture I actually sent for PR purposes, which you can see upper right. The only reasonable conclusion is that nobody thought anyone would want to buy a book by anyone who looks like I do now.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/sup><\/a> Three, if you count cyberattacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/sup><\/a> I want to say this because it’s the name of a recent Facebook Friend with pictures of astrolabes all over his timeline, so it’s a good bet. But the artifact itself is unsigned, and I’ve forgotten the name Gene told me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first thing that occurs to me when I arrive\u2014 well, the second thing, after wondering about all the little plumes of smoke rising from the surrounding countryside (which nobody in Lviv seems to know anything about)\u2014 is Hey, this place really reminds me of Poland. Lviv actually used to be part of Poland, back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-road","category-public-interface","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8308"}],"version-history":[{"count":99,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10163,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8308\/revisions\/10163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}