In this photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, the Russian tanker Renda powers toward Nome, Alaska with the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy's assistance January 6, 2012 in the Bering Sea. (Photo by Sara Francis/U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images)

In northwest Russia, in a small village called Alekhovshchina, Nadia Sablin's aunts spend the warmer months together in the family home and live as the family has always lived, chopping wood to heat the house and making their own clothes. Sablin's book of photographs, “Aunties: The Seven Summers of Alevtina and Ludmila”, is published by Duke University Press. Here: “Two-Handed Saw, 2014”. (Photo by Nadia Sablin)

Members of the local Cossack community undergo military training at a boot camp set up by the Russkiye Vityazi (Russian Knights) military patriotic club in the village of Sengileyevskoye, south of Stavropol, March 22, 2015. A group of cossacks from the village of Kazanskaya, who are planning a professional career at the military intelligence service, has arrived at a camp for training under the leadership of professional instructors. (Photo by Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters)

In one of the best collaborations this blog has seen in ages, professional illustrator Mica Angela Hendricks has been collaborating with her 4-year-old daughter on a series of wonderful drawings that pass back and forther between mother and daugher until reaching an always unexpected final form. Each drawing begins with Hendricks drawing a detailed retro-ish head, after which her daughter snatches away the sketchbook to create rudimentary body (or animal!) parts as well as other random details. Afterward Hendricks goes back in to polish things up a bit and behold: dinosaur women, slug ladies, and beaver astronauts are born.

A Japanese twenty-year-old woman enjoys a cigarette during the annual Coming-of-Age Day ceremony at Toshimaen Amusement Park on January 11, 2010 in Tokyo, Japan. 1.27 million young people celebrate their passage into adulthood on the day while they become eligible to drink alcohol, smoke and vote at the age of 20. (Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images)

“A bare-breasted feminist activist bearing a threatening message on her body tried to attack the Russian Orthodox Church's leader Thursday, July 26, 2012, to protest alleged anti-Ukrainian policies by the church and the Kremlin”. – HeraldNet.com

Photo: A topless protester from the Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN is blocked by a security guard and a priest as she tries to throw herself at the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. (Photo by Associated Press)

An Orthodox activist (Right) clashes with a gay rights campaigner during a protest outside of the State Duma, Russian Parliament's lower chamber, in downtown Moscow, January 22, 2013. (Photo by Ilya Pitalev/RIA Novosti)

This Strange Russian Cartoon Shows Mario's Nasty Side and bogatyr or vityaz is a stock character in medieval East Slavic legends (byliny), akin to a Western European knight-errant.