News of the Kotlas Connection

Fall 2007

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Carl Daiker, Gregor Smith, and Ellen Corey stand on the stage at the Waterville Opera House. Daiker is holding a velour bag contained the award crystal that he is about to present. Photo by Phil Gonyar.

By Carl Daiker

The Kotlas Connection honored Gregor Smith as its volunteer of the year at this fall's annual REM awards. The presentation will was held on Saturday, November 3, at the Waterville Opera House.

Gregor has been involved with the Connection since 1991. That year marked his first visit to Kotlas. He has since been there two more times, the last in 2005. He was the driving force behind the Kotlas Connection's quarterly newsletter for seven years during the 1990's. He has also served as publicity coordinator and as secretary. He was a co-organizer of the two humanitarian aid shipments to Kotlas.

In 1997, Gregor launched the Kotlas Connection web site. The web site has grown considerably over the years, and is still ably tended by him. In addition to the Connection's web site, he maintains web sites for REM, which also honored him this year for his efforts on that organization's behalf, and for Summertime in the Belgrades, a weekly newspaper published between Memorial Day and Labor Day. He also enjoys choral singing, foreign language study, and acting in community theater.

Editor's Note: The REM Community Volunteer Awards are held each fall by the REM Partners, a coalition of over fifty area nonprofit organizations. Each REM Partner may select one or more of its volunteers to recognize at the ceremony. The Kotlas Connection has been a regular participant. For more information about the awards and the Kotlas Connection's past honorees, please visit our REM Awards page.

By Gregor Smith

Over two dozen area residents attended the 2007 annual meeting of the Kotlas Connection. There they watched a new video about Kotlas, met a high school exchange student, and elected an executive committee for 2008. The meeting took place on Tuesday, November 13, in the REM Forum at the Center on Main Street in Waterville.

The meeting opened with the presentation of a 20-minute video, "A Day in the City." Made in honor of the Kotlas's ninetieth anniversary, the video comprises a series of short segments, each focusing on a different place or activity that is part of the fabric of everyday life in our sister community. Each segment is set at a different time of day, and the segments are arranged chronologically, from morning to evening, with the image of a ticking clock separating each one.

Among the topics covered are schools, new housing, the business climate, the hospital, eateries, the shipyard, after school art and music programs, and a coffee house and a comedy club. The video also has a segment on Kotlas's two sister city relationships, with Greater Waterville and Tarnow in Poland. This segment included a couple of clips from a congratulatory DVD that we had sent to Kotlas last spring when our Russian Sampler guests returned home. (This specially made DVD contained scenes of Waterville and anniversary greetings from Waterville Mayor Paul LePage and Kotlas Connection Co-Chairwoman Ellen Corey.)

The video was entirely in Russian. In presenting it, we turned down sound so that Igor Borunov of Colby College could read a translation that he had prepared. Coming from St. Petersburg, Russia, Borunov is this year's Russian Language Assistant at the college.

Following the video presentation, exchange student Sergey Komarov gave his impressions of life in America and answered questions. (See the related article below.)

The meeting then turned to business. After the presentation of annual reports by the treasurer and co-chairpersons, the assembly elected next year's executive committee. Carl Daiker was re-elected to a second two-year term as co-chairman; Ellen Corey is halfway through her first term. Cindy Rowe was re-elected treasurer. Gregor Smith was elected to complete the second half of a two-year term as secretary. The position had been officially vacant.

Mary Ellen Miner

Re-elected to one year terms as at-large members of the committee were Mary Coombs, Joseph Couture, John Engle, Mark Fisher, Herb Foster, Philip Gonyar, Kenneth Green, Jack Mayhew, Pauline Mayhew, Sheila McCarthy, Martha Patterson, Julie Stowe, and Mike Waters.

The committee welcomed one relatively new member to its ranks, Mary Ellen Miner. ("Relatively new," as she actually became a member of the committee at its June meeting.) An Augusta resident, Miner is a part-time teacher of gifted and talented students from kindergarten to fifth grade in the Maranacook Area School System, which comprises Manchester, Readfield, and Wayne. She is also a prize-winning amateur photographer. She hosted English teacher Nadya Perepoylkina during Russian Sampler in March and visited Kotlas in 2002.

The meeting concluded with a social time with light refreshments.

Sergey Komarov and Alexey Sokolov at the Portland Observatory in August 2007. Photo by Mark Fisher.

Those attending the annual meeting got to meet Sergey Komarov, a Russian exchange student at Messalonskee High School in Oakland. A personably young man, Sergey hails from Omsk, a Siberian city 1,400 miles east of Moscow with 1.5 million souls.

In Omsk, Sergey lives with his parents, his grandmother, and two cats. Sergey is currently taking English and pre-calculus, among other subjects, and is looking forward to driver's ed. After he returns to Omsk next summer, he hopes to enroll in Omsk University and study international economics.

Sergey is the latest in a series of students from Russia and Eastern Europe to be hosted by Mark Fisher for yearlong stays. A member of the Kotlas Connection's executive committee, Fisher is a foster parent and town councilor in Oakland.

In the photo, Sergey (on the left) is shown with Alexey Sokolov, one of Fisher's former charges. Alexey attended Waterville High School during the 2003-2004 school year, receiving a diploma from that school at age 15. Now 20, he has finished 3½ years of university study in Law and Diplomacy in Russia. He returns to Maine periodically to visit his former host father.

A representative sample of the ornaments we had on for sale.

Thanks to the efforts of Sheila McCarthy, Ellen Corey, and students in Colby College's Russian Program, we were able to replenish our supply of Russian Christmas ornaments and thus hold another successful series of ornament sales in the Waterville area in November and December.

This year we had a fine selection of wooden ornaments, including bells, maidens in colorful dresses, and decorative spoons. Each ornament was hand-painted and hand-carved; no two were exactly alike.

The Kotlas Connection thanks all who volunteered their time at the various venues. We especially thank KFS (formerly Kennebec Federal Savings) for letting us set up little Christmas trees in the lobbies of both branches and handling the sales of the ornaments on those trees and Railroad Square Cinema for letting Kotlas Connection members sell ornaments in their lobby at a few prime movie-going times. We also sold ornaments at craft fairs at Waterville High School and Calvary Temple.

Our annual ornament sales are major fund-raisers for the Kotlas Connection. The proceeds are used to fund exchanges of teachers and students from Kotlas. This year, we raised slightly less than $900.

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