Using the blog...

I have not been using this space very much over the last while. The reasons have been basically that I have had a lot less time than I did, the teaching being the main deal here. Also, probably, because I was teaching and have been at least marginally connected to the education establishment, I decided not to get in the habit of publicly speaking about the people I am connected to. This was not a choice made from fear, but rather one made out of respect; if I want to be seen as fair then I need to be fair myself, this regardless of how dirty those compatriots are. And probably the third was that there just wasn’t a whole lot to be gotten from this blogging business. Whether this is because my personal deal here regarding Polish corruption or Belarus’ struggle to exist (and right to self govern) is not all that interesting, or because I’m not video or a feed- just an old school text blogger with a picture in the upper left corner- may also be true, but in any case, what is is and what has been has been and the record shows that I haven’t done all that much writing for this blog.

But I am thinking that it is time to change all this and to go back to writing here and I have three real reasons for this, all of which are about my daughter Anya and her safety and future possibilities. The first is that I am about to enter into a very serious court fight with Tanya over who has the right to raise Anya. This fight has been brewing for a long time and my hope is that it has finally come to a head, but in any case, the actual description of the events and the details involved will be essential, and I would like things to be as clear as possible. Insofar as that is concerned, though I count myself as being reasonably lucid, there is nothing like a little exercise to clean things out and as of the moment, I can use all of the help I an get.

But the last reason is the most profound and disturbing: I really don’t think I can do this fight without making it public. The reason for this is that I will not simply be fighting Tanya, I will also have to fight the legal and judicial systems as well. Said plainly, the fight has been going on as long as it has for the simple reason that the police, one particular judge and the entire package of Pinsk legal help has been refusing to help me in any way over the course of the last year. And I am not talking about just one or two incidents; I am talking about the active pursuit of sustaining a situation in which Anya turns out to be the loser. So because of this, and because I really do not have such great mobility here, I have been thinking that allowing people (the press, politicians, the US embassy and even the President of Belarus) to know about what has been going on and the results, might be worth it.

I will try to do this a bit every day for a while and to include as many details as I can. In the end though, clarity, reason and making the world to live in the best reason to do anything. So lets see how this goes.