I am Ukrainian and Canadian and American

I was at an optimization conference in Florida when the violence in Ukraine started to escalate and, coincidentally, two other U.S.-based faculty, who were also at the conference, but were born in Ukraine, brought this news to my attention.

Since my return to Amherst the news in Ukraine has only gotten worse with horrifying bloodshed and deaths and with many vivid reports -- see the one by Frida Ghitis, writing for CNN, with whom I have communicated.

The country of my parents, Ukraine, and that of my first language, is now frontpage news not only in the European press but also in the U.S.

I was born in Canada but did not learn how to speak English until we immigrated to the U.S., and I entered kindergarten.  Ukrainian was the language that we spoke at home. I, finally, visited Ukraine, when  I was invited to give a keynote talk in Yalta in August 2010 at the Network Science conference.

I first made a stop in Kiev,  now the epicenter of the demonstrations, which began in November, and which have reached a tipping point this week because of the frustration of the people.

Below are some photos from Kiev, where I was welcomed by a colleague from the University of Pittsbrugh, and ate the most delicious borshcht in my life and the same for the varenyky!

Yalta, the site of the conference, was spectacular as the photos below reveal and another location of historical importance plus the conference was fantastic!

Given the suffering in Ukraine, and that even one of my former doctoral students at the Isenberg School, Dmytro Matsypura, who is now tenured at the School of Business at the University of Sydney in Australia, took part in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, I had to speak out.

Please, let the people be free. The government should protect its own citizens and let them be governed as they wish to be.  Look at how brilliantly Poland is doing, Ukraine's neighbor to the west.

Yesterday, after not much sleep, since I had returned from the Florida conference in the wee hours of the morn, I gathered some beautiful Ukrainian creations and photographed them. I display them below -- from our Easter eggs, to our ceramics, to lavish embroideries. Let's make peace and have art, beauty, and science rule instead of hatred and violence.

I am Ukrainian and Canadian and American.

The Art of Ukrainian Easter Eggs -- Pysanky

This is the season during which many (at least those of us living north of the equator) continue to celebrate the holidays associated with spring.

My heritage is Ukrainian and Ukrainian is my first language.

Although I was born in Canada (and was in Canada last week to give a talk at the University of Waterloo), I can say that I grew up in Yonkers, New York, before going off to Brown University, my alma mater (four times over since I have 4 Brown degrees including the PhD).

As I was growing up, every spring, a group of us would gather to make pysanky, which are Ukrainian Easter eggs. This is a delicate endeavor, requiring steady hands, plus a beeswax candle, a stylus, and various colorful dyes. The beeswax is layered over the eggs in patterns to preserve the latest dye color that the egg has been dipped into. One starts with "drawing" a pattern with beeswax on the white, undyed egg, proceeds to dye it in a yellow color, draws another pattern, and proceeds in this fashion, all the way through the final and darkest color, which is, typically, black.

The raw eggs can first be blown out of their contents, which requires almost a surgeon's skill. Then it's time for for their "painting" and decorating. I always worked on my pysanky with eggs, whose contents had not been removed (and, luckily, over the years, we have broken no more than 2 such pysanky -- the odor can be quite unpleasant, so handle with care).

Yesterday, after dropping our daughter off at Deerfield Academy -- her team was off to Andover for a big Saturday track meet, we stopped by a bazaar in South Deerfield, where some pysanky were being sold, along with many baked goods, and even beautiful Ukrainian ceramics. I was overcome by nostalgia. There were several pysanky made out of large goose eggs, and they were simply stunning!

The above pysanky are from our collection and we have acquired them from family and friends (a few underneath the top ones we even made ourselves). The various symbols on the pysanky have specific meanings -- I especially like the delicate wheat patterns and the animal patterns, in addition to the embroidery-like designs. Many have agricultural themes.

You can find out more about how to make beautiful pysanky here.

Eggs symbolize birth, and the making of pysanky is just one tradition that gets handed down from generation to generation, and whose art and beauty everyone can enjoy.