Susan Silas


	Upcoming Tisza River Project (in progress) More and more often we hear the claim that in the future wars will be fought, not over oil, but over water. While I think about this often, my decision to trace the course of the Tisza River, from its entry point into the Hungary at Tiszabecs in the North, where one can easily swim the short distance to the Ukraine, to just south of Szeged where the river winds its way across the border into Serbia, did not stem from a conceptual model. It came from a lingering response to an image in a film whose name I’ve long ago forgotten. It was a Hungarian film about first cousins who decide to marry despite the severe taboo against first cousin marriage in their community. They are shunned from society and they take up residence in a small, remote cabin along the Tisza. It was an image of the river in this film that created the longing to float down this river. Now that I have begun, I am not certain exactly where my meandering will end. I will return to the river again when it next freezes in winter and when it floods in spring time. In a book celebrating a millennium of life on the river a quotation from the Hungarian writer István Széchenyi describes the Tisza Valley as "the cradle of our race". There is a keen awareness of the water level on the Tisza. Daily, a report is generated and posted on the internet measuring the height of the river at short intervals, noting whether it is rising or falling. (download PDF of Daily River Report) Bridges spanning the river and stairways leading down to its banks bear yardsticks so that even the casual passerby can have a accurate measure of its status. There is an intimate and daily relationship between the river and those who live along its banks and in the cradle of its valley. (images on this page from A Millennium on the Tisza, Damjanich Janos Muzeum, Szolnok)