Shadows of a Forgotten World

I bought my tsymbaly (hammered dulcimer) from the Tafiychuks  –  a family of musicians and instrument makers that lives in the Carpathian Mountains. Mykhailo Tafiychuk, or "the Last Hutsul Musical Magician" as Cobblestone Freeway dubbed him in this article , makes many different ancient instruments such as the hurdy gurdy, tsymbaly, and duda (Ukrainian bagpipe). Very few master craftsmen of traditional Ukrainian instruments remain. Fortunately, Mykhailo's son has also learned to make instrument, and in fact he made my tsymbaly.

An NPR article about London's last gas lamps . Rich Preston/NPR "In the United Kingdom, British Gas employs 30,000 workers. Five of them could be said to carry a torch that has been burning for two centuries. They are the lamplighters, tending to gas lamps that still line the streets in some of London's oldest neighborhoods and parks. "London still has about 1,500 gas lamps. The group English Heritage decided to preserve them after almost all the others were replaced by electric lamps. These look almost exactly the same as when they were first installed 200 years ago. They're just a little taller to accommodate modern traffic. "The gas lamps that still stand in London are now protected by law. If one is knocked down, it is replaced with an exact replica. They cast a calming, mellow light, maintained by these few remaining lamplighters — literal keepers of the flame."

A documentary film was recently released about the dying tradition of shepherding in the Carpathian Mountains. The film, called The Living Fire (Жива Ватра), was directed by my acquaintance Ostap Kostyuk "ЖИВА ВАТРА" (The Living Fire) Ukraine, 2014, 77’ "A four-year-long project documenting three generations of Ukrainian Carpathian shepherds in their struggle to keep the age-old trade alive in the face of contemporary changes." "It is a film about pitiless daily labor that knows no weekends, a harmonious world that we’ve lost in our search for comfort, and the childhood that is left behind when one takes on the role of an adult…" Check out the film's website: http://zhyvavatra.com.ua/ And the English-language Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/livingfiredoc?fref=ts *** The Living Fire took the special jury prize in the international feature documentary category at the 2015 Hot Docs Canadian International Do...

Lviv, like most cities in the nineteenth century, needed chimney sweeps to keep chimneys clean from the soot that accumulated from burning coal. The bas-relief of a chimney sweep on Anhelovycha Street is one of the only reminders of the era of chimney sweeps . At the beginning of the twentieth century, the owner of the building which has the sign was a master in chimney cleaning.  Several years ago, the restaurant Dim Lehend (House of Legends) installed a statue of a chimney sweep on the building's chimney. A wonderful song about a chimney sweep by the band the Decemberists                                                            "The Chimbley Sweep" I am a chimbley, a chimbley sweep No bed to lie, no shoes to hold my feet Upon the rooftops in dead of night You'll hear me cry, I'll shake you from your sleep...

An interesting piece on NPR about obsolete occupations:  " As computers and automated systems increasingly take the jobs humans once held, entire professions are now extinct. Click through the gallery below to see examples of endangered professions, from milkman to telegrapher, and hear from people who once filled those oft-forgotten jobs." Article found here . The Milkman http://www.shorpy.com/node/9204 The Telegraph Operator http://scripophily.net/phofteop.html