May You Live In Interesting Times : A New World: Archive of Family Photographs and Documents Circa 1949 to 1960

Michael Ostrogorsky

ISBN 10: 0578919834 / ISBN 13: 9780578919836

Published by Blue Parrot Books Sep 2021, 2021

About this Item

Neuware - Years ago I inherited several boxes of family documents and photographs that my grandfather Vassilij (William) Yakovyevich Ostrogorsky collected during the last century. These documents passed down through the hands of my aunt Vera Vassilyevna and father Vassilij Vassilyevich, my mother Jadvyga Ivanuaskas, and my sister Helen Vassilyenva. Once the boxes fell into my hands they sat mostly forgotten gathering dust in a store room.Over the years I always intended to pull the boxes out of storage to compile a family history. Or at the least investigate the contents. In the words of the great eighteenth century English writer Dr. Samuel Johnson, 'Hell is paved with good intentions.'The realization of one's own mortality has a way of focusing the mind. I am now in the last year of my sixth decade riding this blue ball called Earth sailing through the outer reaches of the Milky Way. My grandfather died in the second year of his seventh.I pulled out the boxes. The contents astonished me. Photographs dating to 1920. Letters. Orders. Official certificates. Nazi work permits. Reports. Post-World War II pleas for shelter and assistance to the International Refugee Organization and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Military passes. Job applications. Applications to countries around the world in search of a new home. Red Cross medical reports, and even x-rays of all things!But what astonished me even more than the contents of the boxes, was the realization my grandfather carried these documents with him halfway around the world by train, foot, and steamship to a new life in America in the 1950s. By my count, these documents survived two revolutions, a civil war, two world wars, the Great Depression, a couple of military coups, a military invasion or two, Nazi conscription, and the Allied aerial bombing campaigns of World War II.I am pleased to present to you the Ostrogorsky-Ivanuaskas family history as best I can distilled from the documents my grandfather saved from oblivion, as well as notes my mother compiled in her last years, and family lore. Surviving photos are presented with this history. I am photographing the documents to be published in their entirety in a subsequent volume. I am pleased to report the entire archive will be curated with the Pacific Northwest Collection of the Special Collections Department of the University of Washington's Suzzallo Library.

Seller Inventory # 9780578919836

Bibliographic Details

• Title: May You Live In Interesting Times : A New World: Archive of Family Photographs and Documents Circa 1949 to 1960
• Publisher: Blue Parrot Books Sep 2021
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0578919834
• ISBN 13: 9780578919836
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 284W x 220H x 20D millimeters 284 millimeters width by 220 millimeters height by 20 millimeters depth
• Weight: 790 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Years ago I inherited several boxes of family documents and photographs that my grandfather Vassilij (William) Yakovyevich Ostrogorsky collected during the last century. These documents passed down through the hands of my aunt Vera Vassilyevna and father Vassilij Vassilyevich, my mother Jadvyga Ivanuaskas, and my sister Helen Vassilyenva. Once the boxes fell into my hands they sat mostly forgotten gathering dust in a store room.

Over the years I always intended to pull the boxes out of storage to compile a family history. Or at the least investigate the contents. In the words of the great eighteenth century English writer Dr. Samuel Johnson, "Hell is paved with good intentions."

The realization of one's own mortality has a way of focusing the mind. I am now in the last year of my sixth decade riding this blue ball called Earth sailing through the outer reaches of the Milky Way. My grandfather died in the second year of his seventh.

I pulled out the boxes. The contents astonished me. Photographs dating to 1920. Letters. Orders. Official certificates. Nazi work permits. Reports. Post-World War II pleas for shelter and assistance to the International Refugee Organization and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Military passes. Job applications. Applications to countries around the world in search of a new home. Red Cross medical reports, and even x-rays of all things!

But what astonished me even more than the contents of the boxes, was the realization my grandfather carried these documents with him halfway around the world by train, foot, and steamship to a new life in America in the 1950s. By my count, these documents survived two revolutions, a civil war, two world wars, the Great Depression, a couple of military coups, a military invasion or two, Nazi conscription, and the Allied aerial bombing campaigns of World War II.

I am pleased to present to you the Ostrogorsky-Ivanuaskas family history as best I can distilled from the documents my grandfather saved from oblivion, as well as notes my mother compiled in her last years, and family lore. Surviving photos are presented with this history. I am photographing the documents to be published in their entirety in a subsequent volume. I am pleased to report the entire archive will be curated with the Pacific Northwest Collection of the Special Collections Department of the University of Washington's Suzzallo Library.

About the Author

Michael Ostrogorsky is a retired academic historian and archaeologist with Ph.D.s in History and Historical Archaeology from the University of Idaho (1993). Dr. Ostrogorsky taught history and archaeology at the Universities of Alaska and Idaho, and worked as a research historian and archaeologist for Alaska State Parks and the Idaho Historical Museum, the United States National Park Service, Alaska, and for numerous corporations in the field of cultural resource management. Currently Dr. Ostrogorsky writes fantasy fiction with an historical twist, about a couple of Seattle history professors who encounter a parrot who just happens to be a shape-shifting witch. With a coffee addiction.