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Nov. 4th, 2010 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI got a failed delivery notice for a piece of registered mail earlier this week. Today, I used my lunch break to drive out to the post office and see what it was. I was vaguely worried that it would be something negative I'd have to deal with. Instead, it was the package I'd been waiting for from Ukraine.
There's something a little big magical to me about holding a package, hand addressed in some foreign country in a strange script, with that 'par avion' stamp telling me that this came from far, far away. I spent a few moments looking at the hand written addresses, trying to puzzle out the meaning of the strange characters in the return address, and what the person who'd put pen to paper was like.
I carefully cut the tape holding the edge-flap closed and withdrew the contents. It was a silvered cardboard pouch, stapled closed around something small and dense.
I pried the edges over the staples and apart to reveal the item I bought on Ebay about two weeks ago; a Soviet medal. Specifically, a medal awarded to a group of people called the Chernobyl Liquidators. I set the medal on top of the Cyrillic-covered back side of the pouch and took a picture. I have no idea what any of it says. The material seems like the same stuff that Chinese take out cartons are made of, and by the picture I'm guessing it's some kind of food packaging.
The text of the medal itself, though, I found a translation for. "Participant in the liquidation of the accident consequences" The four characters at the bottom are an acronym from the name of the generating station.
The symbol in the middle is representations of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation superimposed on a drop of blood. The blood is certainly appropriate; many people paid for this medal, and for their work in preserving the lives of so many others, with their own lives. Not immediately, for most of them, but gradually and inevitably.
I'm not quite sure how to explain why I want this medal. There are so many things it brings to mind. The rise of nuclear technology in the 20th century. The final ending of utopian dreams of the '50s of a perfect future where nuclear fission could solve all the world's ills. The sacrifices made by so many who gave their lives to further our knowledge, like Marie Curie, or Louis Slotin of the Manhattan Project. The intersection of scientific idealism and real-world application. And more directly, it's connected to some actual person, whose name I will probably never know, who was there in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic after the worst accidental nuclear disaster in history because, regardless of anything else, somebody had to clean this mess up. Someone had to make sure that this wasn't going to affect even more people. Whether the person who earned this badge knew what he or she was getting into or not, it's a connection that deserves respect, and that somehow personalizes an event, a disaster, and an era. It's a physical piece of the nuclear age and it has so many ties to other things in my mind.
It's a very neat thing to have.
There's something a little big magical to me about holding a package, hand addressed in some foreign country in a strange script, with that 'par avion' stamp telling me that this came from far, far away. I spent a few moments looking at the hand written addresses, trying to puzzle out the meaning of the strange characters in the return address, and what the person who'd put pen to paper was like.
I carefully cut the tape holding the edge-flap closed and withdrew the contents. It was a silvered cardboard pouch, stapled closed around something small and dense.
I pried the edges over the staples and apart to reveal the item I bought on Ebay about two weeks ago; a Soviet medal. Specifically, a medal awarded to a group of people called the Chernobyl Liquidators. I set the medal on top of the Cyrillic-covered back side of the pouch and took a picture. I have no idea what any of it says. The material seems like the same stuff that Chinese take out cartons are made of, and by the picture I'm guessing it's some kind of food packaging.
The text of the medal itself, though, I found a translation for. "Participant in the liquidation of the accident consequences" The four characters at the bottom are an acronym from the name of the generating station.
The symbol in the middle is representations of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation superimposed on a drop of blood. The blood is certainly appropriate; many people paid for this medal, and for their work in preserving the lives of so many others, with their own lives. Not immediately, for most of them, but gradually and inevitably.
I'm not quite sure how to explain why I want this medal. There are so many things it brings to mind. The rise of nuclear technology in the 20th century. The final ending of utopian dreams of the '50s of a perfect future where nuclear fission could solve all the world's ills. The sacrifices made by so many who gave their lives to further our knowledge, like Marie Curie, or Louis Slotin of the Manhattan Project. The intersection of scientific idealism and real-world application. And more directly, it's connected to some actual person, whose name I will probably never know, who was there in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic after the worst accidental nuclear disaster in history because, regardless of anything else, somebody had to clean this mess up. Someone had to make sure that this wasn't going to affect even more people. Whether the person who earned this badge knew what he or she was getting into or not, it's a connection that deserves respect, and that somehow personalizes an event, a disaster, and an era. It's a physical piece of the nuclear age and it has so many ties to other things in my mind.
It's a very neat thing to have.
