As I traveled from Niagara Falls toward Portland (Maine), the landscape of New York state gradually gave way to Massachusetts. We passed Buffalo and Rochester, bypassed Albany, and the highway hugged the rocky shore of the Hudson River. At that moment, looking at the gray water and granite cliffs, I felt a physical sense of déjà vu. I lived in Krasnoyarsk for three years, and that sight — a river squeezed between rocks — was my everyday reality. Only instead of the Hudson, it was the Yenisei, and instead of a highway, it was the road from Kuragino to Petropavlovka along the Kazyr River. Slightly inland from this route, the city of Oneonta remained. A small, quiet, academic town. A place that, like many points on the sister-city map, connects the two superpowers not through politics, but through landscape and science. The Geography of Memory: Rocks and WaterOneonta is a classic example of New York State. The name is presumably Iroquoian ("Place of Opened Rocks"), but for a Russian person, it is simply "Siberia in miniature."
Unlike industrial giants like Cleveland or Akron, Oneonta was never a factory town. It is a city of campuses. The tallest building here is only 14 stories high, and it belongs to the city's housing authority. It is a silence you appreciate so much after the noise of megacities. SisterhoodSister-city ties between Krasnoyarsk and Oneonta were established in 2004. It was a time when "citizen diplomacy" could still operate without looking over its shoulder at global crises. The interests of the cities were distributed very honestly and pragmatically:
The Professor's Robe on the Banks of the YeniseiThe result of this union manifested in 2008. This is a story that touches me to the core. The President of Oneonta College, Alan Donovan, was awarded a professorial robe and an honorary diploma from SibSAU (now SibFU named after Reshetnev) in Krasnoyarsk. Think about it: the president of a small college from American provinces, where the tallest building is 14 floors, flies to the heart of Siberia. He arrives not as a tourist, but as a partner. A delegation from one of the world's largest universities came to summarize years of cooperation. This is true globalization. Not the transfer of factories, but the exchange of knowledge. While politicians argue about sanctions, university rectors exchange students and academic gowns. My ConclusionDriving through these New York rocks, I thought about how small the world is. Krasnoyarsk is my home, a place of power. Oneonta is a dot on the map I have never seen in person. But we are connected by something more than the 2004 agreement. We are connected by the understanding of what it means to live by a large, fast river that flows among stones. And the knowledge that education is the only bridge that cannot be destroyed. David Polyakov (Special Correspondent for API TV, Oneonta, New York, USA) MORE: Sherman on Fifth Avenue: Triumph and the Shadow of the Civil War Odyssey of the Rust Belt: A Visit to Barons Bus Greyhound Lines: How I Swapped a Plane for an Intercity Bus First night in New York: not on Broadway, but on Busway White Among Blacks, Rich Among Poor: Survival in One of America's Dangerous Cities JFK — Manhattan: My First Steps in the USA Rockefeller Center: The Steel Flower of the Great Depression Cleveland: Where an Empire Was Born. The Story of Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller Akron, "All-America City 2025": One Year After the Triumph Древние люди из Сунгиря. Экспедиция Андрея Полякова «По Пути Афанасия Никитина» #ДавидПоляков #USA #Clevelend #CIP #наука #Экспедиция #АндрейПоляков #APITV #ЭкспедицияАндреяПолякова #Путешествия #Туризм #Авто | |
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