It's still 95' where I am, and maybe it's time for a slight change of pace since it's the weekend. This item about the Russians in Alaska interested me mainly for the glorious photo.
Russians aren't so very remote from the US and never have been. There was the little matter of Alaska, for instance:
(https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/5WTplMAyP2MVaUULdDNWt2TEtmnVa4kjfTs9-I59kTMzyf-U_KJpzOO0HYlDMil1Z6-vU3CbupsKay-HAre6EhKTwzYXvWwPReBmghp2eA01MB7NsHd1TpKR2J7Jy30CYWiE3LG_tGnIO1GtxTwVn5j0nEYID7Bh3TLWS4LD3fe2_vPACyg=s0-d-e1-ft#https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/06/08/briefing/08backstory-us/08briefing-europe-slide-DANV-articleLarge.jpg)
Holy Ascension Russian Orthodox Church in Unalaska, a a reminder of the Russian community that once thrived in Alaska
Photo by Jim Wilson/The New York Times
From the New York Times, June 8:
Forget, for a moment, questions about Russian meddling in current American affairs, and look back to Russia’s history on the North American continent.
Czarist colonization in Alaska began in the 1740s, driven by the trade in sea otter fur, and it was often brutal.
But this month in 1788, Russia’s claim of a toehold in southern Alaska came peacefully.
In a scene framed by mountains, the native Tlingit tribe warmly greeted a hardy Russian mariner, Gerasim Izmailov, who had made it ashore. His entourage claimed the immense surroundings for Catherine the Great and traded iron and beads for a native boy to serve as interpreter.
Russian Alaska eventually consolidated under a vast trading corporation that reached to Hawaii and California, before receding. The region was sold to the U.S. in 1867, for $7.2 million (about $125 million today).
But the heritage endures: in the Russian dialect spoken in the village of Ninilchik; in the state’s name (“Alaska” is a Russian adaptation of an Aleut word meaning “the object toward which the action of the sea is directed”); in the thousands of adherents to the Russian Orthodox faith; and in the expansionist imaginations of some Russians who still grumble about the sale.