Incredible Sand Drawings Of Kseniya Simonova

Happy New Year From The Grand Rants Family To Yours!

While we all take a day off to over-eat and watch way too much football, I’d like to offer up this amazing visual treat.

Meet sand artist  Kseniya Simonova, who just won Ukraine’s version of “America’s Got Talent.” She uses a giant light box coupled with appropriate music to match her imagination and incredible talent as an artist, using sand as her media.

What comes across as talent honed over many years of practice is actually a skill she taught herself in less than a year when she appeared on the TV show shown here. She taught herself this skill after her business collapsed due to the credit crunch.

A friend of mine once operated a small store where he sold local art on consignment. At the time, he said, “Everyone has something to say with their hands.” I can’t think of a better description of an artist, and Kseniya “tells” an incredibly moving story here.  Watch in wonder as she interprets the German invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII.

Don’t worry. There will still be plenty of football left to watch when you’re done.

Gerry Ashley

Georgia, Russia, the U.S., the CIS, and Brinkmanship

In posts past, we talked about what’s going on in Georgia and the Soviet Uni… (oops!) Russia. Basically Georgia tried to snuggle up to NATO, and got smacked down. Hard… Now we have pretty clear info indicating that the USSR… (oops!) Russia has deployed SS-21 missiles into S. Ossetia (http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iiba8YaYXz88Y9n9OQBVKp9ofSig). If this is true, and it probably is, Russia can now reach out and touch Tbilisi. Checkmate. For all intents and purposes, the ten-member CIS is now the 9-member CIS.

And what can the U.S. do? Well, as Gerry suggested earlier, we could rattle our “rocket saber” and threaten to take our space program and go home. (Love them mixed metaphors!) But just as Gerry noted in the previous post, that plan probably wouldn’t work.

How about trying to bounce Russia out of the G8, and the WTO? Yeah, that would sting, but their reserves of natural gas and oil would see them through.

In the real world, there may be only one other alternative. (Aside from just letting the former Soviet Union yet again bully its way to “history’s unmarked grave of distorted lies”… Hopefully the next time it will stay buried. ) Nope… Our only real chance to stand up to Russia might well be to actively pursue the goal of making another member (Ukraine) of the CIS 9 a member in NATO PDQ. But that bit of brinkmanship is fraught with very tangible peril… “Ice Cold” Putin is not “Blow Hard” Khrushchev. In 2008, If America and “The Motherland” come nose to nose, someone will blink, and it won’t be Russia.

Perhaps now would be a good time to take comfort in our anti-missile deal with Poland, and let everything else cool down a bit.

A good read on all this is:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2008/05/mil-080514-rferl01.htm

Alan Speakman