July 4th In Karkiv

We had a pretty quiet July 4th. I spent most of my time trying to figure out this trip to Moscow and Riga on the internet and on Skype, emailing and calling the airlines, the hotels, the train companies, and the travel agency!! I might as well have stayed home in LA - I just sat at the computer most of the day. No more trips from Kharkiv, that's clear - I'm waiting until we move to Kyiv. You can't get anywhere from here (or back either)! I did manage to squeeze in a few good Skype conversations with friends from home (that's why I'm smiling instead of growling in this photo). Maybe it's because it's July 4th - who knows - but I had the urge to hear some familiar voices.

We've really been chowing down here - ice cream almost every night, lots of very rich sour cream, butter and bread with every meal, and all that fried stuff! I really wanted to bring my scale with me (it's very slim and only weighs about 5 pounds), but Ed wouldn't let me. Well, yesterday we passed a woman on the street with a scale, very much like mine, who was charging 50 Kopeks (that's 10 cents) for a weigh-in! I told Ed I could have gone into business and made some money here to help pay for all our beers and bread and butter (not to mention pancakes with caviar!). No way I was going to weigh myself in public though.

This afternoon we went to see the two churches in town - there are three actually, but one has been converted into a venue for the Kharkiv Philharmonic. It's known as Organ Hall, but unfortunately the last concert of the season was on the night we had tickets for Swan Lake. We actually could have made it for the second half because the concert started at 8:30 p.m. and the ballet started at 6 and was over by 9, but I was so hepped up by the great ballet that I just didn't want to go to another event.

Ed really liked the churches. I thought they were okay, but not great. Ed tried to take some photos, and someone put a quick stop to that (but not before he got this picture of the interior of the monastery refectory). There were more people in the church (especially Pokrovsky Cathedral and Monastery which was built in 1869) than I expected on a Tuesday afternoon - mostly women, all with scarves on their heads - so I felt very out of place with my bare head, but no one said anything or asked me to leave. There were also lots of women working (I got the impression somehow that they were all volunteers) - cleaning out the wax from the many, many candle holders (there were several places where worshipers could buy tapers, which they would then light and place in the holders) and polishing the brass, which was plentiful! They were thrilled when they got the attention of one of the monks or priests. The second church we visited, Blagoveschensky Cathedral, built in 1901, was not nearly as popular, but that might be because it is on, what seems to me to be, the "wrong side of the tracks" - the tracks in this case being the Kharkiv River! We passed by Organ Hall (Upensky Cathedral), built in the late 18th century, but it was locked up and there was no way for us to look inside.

We got back in time for Ed to gather his things and go off to a meeting with the head of the local bar and Gennady and Arkadiy. Ed wants to make sure that the local bar knows that the Public Defender Office will not be in "competition" with the members of the bar, and he also wants the local bar to develop a list of lawyers to be appointed to represent indigents in the case of conflicts where the public defender cannot represent a particular defendant. (The OSJI Foundation will initially pay these lawyers, but the amount they will be paid is not yet determined - they will have to wait until data is accumulated by the pilot program demonstrating, among other things, how much time, on average, is required to adequately represent clients.) Under the current system a lawyer is appointed (generally after the defendant has "confessed") by the investigator, who works for the police and prosecutor - and usually this is a "pocket lawyer" who will work with the prosecution and plead the defendant guilty rather than put up a fight or, God forbid, challenge the validity of the confession. Of course, these appointed lawyers are paid the handsome sum of 3 Hryvnas a day (that's right, less than a dollar a day), so unless they are committed human rights advocates who are basically willing to volunteer to fight the good fight (like Ed!!!), their incentive to work hard on these cases is not very strong. Ed wants to get a signed agreement with the bar on these issues so that, if a lawyer is appointed in a conflict, and he doesn't show up (because, for example, he found a client who will pay more than 3 hrivnas that day for the lawyer to represent him), the Public Defender office and the project will not be held responsible.

Ed reported that the local bar representative was the first person he has met with (including all the new judges at the seminar he addressed), who was wearing a suit out of court, albeit a white suit with yellow pin stripes! He feels he made progress in the meeting and that the bar is supportive of the project. When they were finished, he and Gennady and Arkadiy went off to meet with two very interesting guys who work for the Minister of the Interior, are technically members of the police force, but who have PhDs in sociology and are "social investigators" whose job it is to conduct studies of nefarious police practices, particularly torture, in an effort to effect reform. One of the studies, if, as they represented,an accurate random sample was obtained across the country, shows that a half million people a year are beaten or tortured by the police and, of those, 50,000 are permanently disabled as a result! One of their objectives in meeting with Ed was to secure the help of the new Public Defender Project in gathering data that they will be able to use in supporting their conclusions (i.e., reports from defendants regarding pre-trial detention and beatings). Ed assured them that the project will cooperate, especially since the project can use the same data to try and get legislative reform. Ed warned them that lawyers hate filling out forms, and that they should keep their questions to a minimum and design the forms using closed-end questions that can be answered simply and briefly!

These guys spoke English perfectly and told Ed that the problems in the legal system are so systemic and pervasive because there is absolutely no money to pay the police adequately, with the result that qualified people don't apply and are not hired; even those that might not otherwise be corrupt cannot resist the opportunity, indeed the necessity, of supplementing their meager incomes with the bribes that are so easily demanded, and often offered without any demand having been made. So, what happens is, if you are middle class or rich, and you are picked up by the police for something, you usually bribe your way out of custody. If you are too poor to do this, they just beat the crap out of you until you confess, and then they give you a lawyer who gets 3 Hryvnas a day to represent you!!! It's pretty appalling. But I keep telling Ed that we have to remember that it wasn't so long ago in the good old U.S. of A. that the police routinely beat confessions out of suspects - that it is not only in our lifetime, but from about the time we were in law school, that things changed - it wasn't until the mid and late 60's that the courts recognized that a defendant has a right to a lawyer before the police question him, that he has to be informed of that right, and that if he can't afford a lawyer one must be appointed for him. It wasn't until then that the exclusionary rule was fashioned and coerced confessions were kept out of evidence as a remedy to prevent continuing abuse. So there is hope for poor Ukraine yet! And I personally think that Ed will have an impact in seeing this hope realized.

By the time we finished talking (over a bit of dinner of course), the sun was setting (here it is reflected on a building we see from our apartment window), and it was time to get ready (i.e., bring out the "morosivo" - the ice cream) for the first semi-final World Cup match (Germany v Italy).


Oh, and Fara, in answer to your question about my classic red pedicure - that is Teresa's work (no one here, or anywhere else for that matter, will be able to match that!). My last mani-pedi was just before I left, on June 1, and pretty soon I'm going to have to face the fact that I will have to get a hair cut and color here, and do something about my nails! Another project! But before I do that I have to first find a post office here - something I have been unable to do - nothing online, and when I ask people, they either don't know or they write something down (upon my request to napasheet) in illegible script! CYRHILLIC SCRIPT!!!! I can barely read the characters when they are printed - I have no idea how to read the script. On reflection, I realize that I have never seen a post box here, never seen a postal carrier, and I have never seen a letter in any of the "mail boxes" that are just inside the entrance to our apartment building. Finding the post office should be very satisfying. I see my next adventure on the horizon!