Earth Day

Save the Pianos

"Save the Souls of the Conservatory Pianos" and "Help the Pianos Play Again" were the titles of a fund-raising campaign that aimed to collect the necessary sums to have the pianos of our most famous last century composers brought to a functional state.
It was a successful campaign, many people have donated their valuable objects and the objects were auctioned. The first piano to be brought back to life will be the one that belonged to Dinu Lipatti, one of our greatest pianists. He was George Enescu's pupil and godson (he was an "enfant prodige", he played Mozart at his own baptism ceremony), but he died of cancer in his early 30's. Here is one of his performances.

Gold for cyanide

As you wrote that "business is business" I remembered a controversial project that came back into these days' media.
It's about allowing a Canadian company to extract the gold in a certain area using cyanide. The place where this should happen was very wild and savage mining was practiced there for a long time. There are historical (even Roman) vestiges too, but despite having these gold reservoirs, it's always been a very poor area. The strong public reactions had kept the project still for a while, but now it seems new interests- political ones- will revive it. Of course, the environment will suffer for a long time, and most of the population was already forced to move away.
I am too tired to write more, and it's too complicated. Here is some more data.
I think not everything should be for sale. Buildings -yes, but not places nor nature.

October 24th

International Day of Climate Action. I'll try to find out if anything happens here and I will let you know. I'm even thinking of doing something on Friday in my educational class, if I have time to think of it tomorrow night.

Blog Action Day

2,000 Bucharest dwellers ran for more bicycle tracks
Running for bike lanes! This was an unprecedented stakes contest taking place in our town last month. For each participant in cross country, the organizers have promised that they would build a meter of track. The result? Over 2,000 runners i.e. over 2000 meters of new cycling track.
The youngest participant in the running which took place on a course of nearly four kilometers has just turned three and the oldest runner was over 60 years old .

Take action!

Civilization

I only managed to find two of the ten kinds of posters of this contest, but you can see the rest of them here.
It's a team contest aiming to bring back or reinforce the ideas of respecting the ones around, the community as well as the nature. Each poster reflects one the rules of civil behaviour and the slogan is Move you common sense! (It's supercool to be civilized). The rules are simple, things we should all do without thinking: wait in the line, use the headphones when you listen to music, turn off the mobile phone at a show, use the garbage bins, take care of the environment etc. The teams are to choose a rule and find strategies in order to make it effective as widely as possible in the community.
As you see by the torn poster, some people around are already feeling threatend. Good! Let's hope they really are!

Letter to Santa Claus

As Christmas Day gets closer, children write letters to Santa and ask for the presents they wish. Some kids do more than that. This is a story that deeply touched me.

Students from a small village in Galati county (one of the poorest parts of the country) sold pies to their fellows villagers on Tuesday in order to collect money for the purpose of repairing their over 50 years old school. The action was rather an awareness call to the authorities concerning the precarious conditions in which children learn. The 200 students sold 200 pies and managed to obtain 200 Lei, that is almost 60 Euros.

The building is in an advanced state of decay. The walls are cracked, and the ceiling may collapse at any time. Overall, the school has six classrooms. In two of them no lessons can take place because the walls were cracked and there is a risk that students are wounded. Out of the other four remaining rooms, two are almost as affected as those closed.
The school's headmistress believes that the current building can not be rehabilitated because the structure of the resistance is seriously impaired. According to her, the place needs a new school. The local authorities have drawn up a draft for a new building, but the beginning of the work has been delayed from one year to another.

Contacted by telephone, the school general inspector said on Tuesday that he was up to date with the situation in the village and promised that he would follow it closely. "I know the situation there. In fact, I sent an inspector to take pictures. I made some efforts to start a rehabilitation and to bring the school to a normal state. For now, it's hard to estimate when it will be ready," the inspector said.

Does anyone reading this blog know Santa?

Red Spot

There is nothing new in the statement that Bucharest is hiding treasures that nobody bothers to dig for. We pass by old homes, left to turn into ruins every day and don't even take one look at them. But even if we did that, it would be hard to see the treasure behind a layer of dirt and debris.

I Love Bucharest is an innovative programme focused on the regeneration of the public space in our capital through artistic and public art projects proposed and carried out by artists, aiming to trigger the civic responsibility and participation of citizens in the process. In this European Intercultural Dialogue, I Love Bucharest initiated an event called Red Spot: an art project designed to be a signal, a warning and awareness call for the Bucharest's residents and authorities, civil society and private companies.
By starting the Red Spot, I Love Bucharest tried to show us some of the wounds of our city. Starting Nov. 27, for three nights, between 6p.m. and 7a.m., red spots were projected on the front of 11 neglected and damaged buildings holding a well-known aesthetic and historical value in downtown Bucharest. During the day, they were marked with a sticker. The project continues with an exhibition at the Peasant's Museum, between Dec. 9th and Dec. 15th. The exhibition includes black and white images of buildings condemned to "self-demolition" and video with interviews with residents.

Red Spot is a call to overcome the ignorance concerning our own history, its past and present, to overcome the indifference towards our own future. The purpose is to draw the attention of the Bucharest dwellers, to make them look up and accept the presence of these old buildings, which are part of the town's history and could make Bucharest a beautiful city with an original architectural style . Let's hope that things will evolve and we will do more than just accept their presence, and the authorities will take care of their protection and restoration.

Campaign

The following 16 days are International Day of Activism against Violence on Women. NGOs and UN Foundation fight against the domestic violence phenomenon.
In our capital, two campaigns meant to raise awareness of the phenomenon of domestic violence have simultaneously started. From today to December 10, a campaign under the name "Home is not a prison. Leave before it's too late! " takes place in the Tineretului Park in Bucharest. Here, a cell will be placed, looking exactly like those of the prison for women in Targsor . Leaflets will be handed to passers by, showing statistics of the number of cases in which women are abused at home and alternative solutions to the physical violence or to the other extreme situation: the one in which the woman is transformed from a victim into an aggressor.

Today also, the UN Population Fund and the UN Information Center for Romania triggered, in partnership with several institutions of the state, and cultural centers, the campaign called "Women in the shadows. Shadows. " The goal is the same: combating violence against women. "The series of seven documentary films - which will be broadcasted by the national television and will run on cinema screens - is an echo of the voices of women worldwide who have survived abuse. Also, through the theater plays associated with the campaign, the public will be brought closer to the drama and suffering of these women.

Those interested will thus find out more about this phenomenon which is growing lately, according to the latest statistics. 4395 women were victims of domestic violence this year. 9 of them died.

photo and information from Evenimentul zilei

Green

It's good to see these initiatives becoming more and more frequent in Bucharest.
The first poster is about the spring cleaning in the Botanical Garden. It's an activity that University students are doing for the third time this year.
And this one is for another initiative: the cleaning of the Baneasa Forest, which unfortunately is a very popular place for week-end get-aways and barbecues.
I've seen many similar projects lately, including a school project about week-ends of cleaning and spending time in the forests around our town, on-the-spot Botanics lessons and so on.
It's good to know that not all people want to leave a mark like this.