permaculture

["Bart Anderson" <bart@cwo.com>]

The discussion about woodburning stoves reminds me of a Russian short story
I read years ago about a rural schoolteacher's struggle to get a traditional
stove working properly.  I was fascinated by the lore of traditional Russian
stovemaking.  Apparently the story was beloved by Russians of a certain
generation for its depiction of a way of life.

Here's how the story begins:

Stovemakers
By Alexander Tvardovsky

That stovemakers were very unusual people and the trade of the stovemaker a
very unusual trade, with a touch of mystery, even magic about it, I had
known ever since I was a boy, not so much from personal experience, it is
true, as from the innumberable stories, legends, and tales I had heard about
stoves and stovemakers.

In the place where I was born and grew up there was a stovemaker of great
renown called Mishechka.  We used this diminutive form of his real name, in
spite of his advanced age, perhaps because of his being so small, although
it was a common thing with us to call grown-ups and even old men by this
particular diminutive form: Mishechka for Mikhail, Grishechka for Grigory,
Yurochka for Yura, and so on.

Among other things, Mishechka was famous for his habit of eating clay.  This
I had seen him do with my own eyes, when he relaid the burnt-out bottom of
our own stove at home.   Having carefully mixed the clay with warm water and
kneaded it with his feet till it glistened like butter, he took a good-sized
lump on his finger, tucked it away in his cheek, chewed it and swallowed it,
smiling as he did so, very much like a conjuror who wishes to show that the
performance of his trick causes him no difficulty whatever.  I remember how
Mishechka crawled inside our stove and, sitting under its low vault, hacked
out the old floor bricks between his parted legs with a special stovemaker's
hammer.  How he managed to get there -- he may have been small but he was
not a baby -- I simply couldn't understand.

...And so by tradition, the people in our parts stood rather in awe of
stovemakers and went out of their way to please them.  One must also take
into account what a large place, both literally and figuratively, the stove
used to occupy in the old peasant home.  It was not only a source of warmth,
not only a kitchen in itself, but a bakery, a drying cupboard, a bath-house,
a laundry, and finally, the cosy nook for a well-earned rest after a long
day's work in the cold, after a journey, or simply when it was a matter of
curing various aches and pains.  To put the thing into a nutshell, no stove
means no home.  That I have learned by experience, and of late I have
thought so much and so deeply about stoves and stovemakers that I could
probably write a thesis on the subject." ...

(Written 1953-8.  Appears in various anthologies, including "Short Stories
by Soviet Writers #2, Parallel Texts" by Progress Publishers.  The text
doesn't seem to be online, at least in English)

Biography http://www.sovlit.com/bios/tvardovsky.html

-Bart