Christopher Dean’s Bulgarian Designs

Entrepreneur
Christopher Dean
wearing a silk twill tie
of his own design

Follow your dreams
and Be YOUR Version!

By Christopher-Joseph 

       Ravnopolski-Dean

It is a pleasure that Moristotle invited me here to share the mission of B. Version with the diverse and open-minded audience of Moristotle and Co.! Let us go on this journey together!

Seventy-four (74)

“They say it’s your birthday!”

By Moristotle

It was about three months before his 75th birthday when my father died. The fact that he died when he was the age I am today has been giving me pause for some months.

Sustainable agriculture through imitating Nature

By Christopher-Joseph Ravnopolski-Dean

[Editor’s Note: On September 25, 2016, we published Christopher’s article, “Sustainable Agriculture in Native America.” A day later I came across the September 23 NY Times article, “Why Industrial Farms Are Good for the Environment,” by Jayson Lusk, whose title alone raised my suspicions, leading me to wonder whether the author might be in the pocket of factory farming.

Sustainable Agriculture in Native America

By Christopher-Joseph Ravnopolski-Dean

I have a profound interest in agriculture, and more precisely sustainable agriculture, which uses an ecological approach towards nature – instead of fighting nature, it follows it.

Sunday Review: Before the Rain

A tale of the unexpected

By Christopher-Joseph Ravnopolski-Dean

You have picked the wrong film if you expect a banal happy-ending fairy tale from Milcho Manchevski’s Before the Rain (1994, from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, titled Пред дождот [Pred ‘dojdot] in Macedonian Bulgarian). Indeed, in the beginning we are promised a “tale in three parts,” and when we see the mesmerizing Macedonian natural surroundings, we are more than willing to believe the promise is true. Yet, the ensuing events make it impossible for the film to fit such a conventional form. It is still a tale because of the love stories, the sense of magical reality, the illogical and fantastic events, the reminiscences of the middle ages, but its content and construction continuously reveal an unexpectedness unusual for fairy tales.

Ask Wednesday: Another blogger on his Bulgarian cultural websites

By Morris Dean

It recently came to my attention that my grandson maintains a couple of blogs on Bulgarian culture. He has generously agreed to be interviewed about them.
    Christopher-Joseph Ravnopolski-Dean is an American-Bulgarian. If he had been born in the United States and lived here, I’d have said “Bulgarian-American,” but he was born in Sofia and lives there. He recently completed his freshman year at the American University in Bulgaria, in Blagoevgrad (some photos of which were included in my June 12, 2011 post, “Bulgarian travelogue concluded”).
    Our questions are in italics.

My grandson’s championing Dramsha

On December 24, my grandson, Christopher, was featured in a news segment on Bulgarian National Television. The segment reported his creation of a newsletter for the village of Dramsha, located about twenty miles north northwest of Sofia. (The photograph shows a road into the village.)
    A clip of the segment opens in Dramsha with short interviews of a few of the locals. At a minute and forty seconds in, we find ourselves in Christopher and his mother's home in Sofia, as he talks about the newsletter. Following a practice common in Germany, the newsletter is written in the local dialect.
    Christopher and his mother also collaborated in writing the lyrics and music for a song for Dramsha dedicated to Banat Bulgarians—Bulgarian Catholics. They are shown performing a portion of it, she playing the harp and both of them singing.

Christopher also set up a web newspaper for Dramsha (housed at blogspot.com, where Moristotle is located). Currently it can be displayed only in Bulgarian, but (assuming that you don't know Bulgarian anymore than I do) you can at least appreciate the coat of arms Christopher designed for the town, shown here as it appears in the blog's masthead:

Afterword: Christopher invites me to give you a small lexicon of Bulgarian words to learn:

selo – village
sega – now
arfa – harp
krastove – crosses
diado – grandpa
tradicia – tradition
edno – one
pesen – song
vestnik[vesnik] – newspaper (вестник)

Diado signing off now!