Manic Bookstore Cafe

This is the week of the year when one should sit and reflect -- what good came of the year just ending? what adventures did we have? what mishaps might have been avoided? what conclusions can be drawn, and how might we proceed more wisely into the year to come? And for what, and whom, do we feel grateful? One of my friends has launched what she calls "The 2013 Gratitude Project" -- twenty-five acts of gratitude in 25 days to mark the year passing. We were excited to receive a "gratitude" package consisting primarily of Christmas cookies, with a lot of love to go with. We made the list in part because I had shared a pot of borscht with her and her family. (I love Darra Goldstein's vegetarian borscht, which includes almost every vegetable you can think of, more even than Molly Katzen's version , and every time I make it I think of how grateful I am to have a Cuisinart, and how useful it would be to have an army of serfs to do the chopping if one didn...

So I was talking with a friend today whose grandmother grew up in Russia ... or Ukraine. With Americans, you never really know which. The important thing is that her grandmother was extremely proud to have never eaten a raw vegetable. Ever. In her life. She ate cabbage, beets, potatoes, turnips, onions, even cucumbers -- but only in soup, or pickled, or in some way processed. This is a fascinating thing about Russian (and often Ukrainian) cooking. In some of the research I've been doing I have noticed a tendency to preserve everything. Tomato sauce, fresh salsa, jams and jellies -- and apple pie. I think it must be a genetic fear of the long, cold winter. And it's not limited to those living in the former tsarist lands. I felt it myself this autumn when I arrived back to my house from a half-year of sojourning through Europe and the east coast -- my shelves were empty, and I needed to fill them. So we canned about 12 quarts of tomato sauce, pints of raspberry and bl...

My stories of pay-to-play in Ukrainian academic circles are resonating with readers. Some react with surprise, others with their own stories. It seems to me that given the multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic nature of Ukraine, there are probably regional differences to the culture of corruption. My PhD story in the last post  was from Crimea, and my friend and colleague has just shared her own experience with corruption there. Pretty awesome. But before I go on, let me be clear: I really love Ukraine. I have even managed to get out of the Soviet-era habit of calling it The Ukraine in English, as if it were a region rather than a real country. And one of the reasons I know more about it than I might is that in the current era, it's a huge, expensive hassle to get a visa to Russia.  When I began to be invited to Russian-language conferences in Crimea -- in Yalta, for a Chekhov conference, in Alushta to commemorate Alexander Griboedov -- I realize one really great thing abou...

The NPR report   about Ukraine the other day focused on "Dr. Ironfist," the Ukrainian boxer Vitali Klitschko. This leader of the political party UDAR is inherently more trustworthy than most politicians, the journalist claimed, because the boxing champ made his money in sport, not business. I've been watching the events in Ukraine as closely as I can, and I am sending good wishes and energy in the direction of Euromaidan. (I wish I could send hot soup and blankets -- what a time of year to make a revolution!) If we really are watching the birth of a nation , I'll be the first to applaud. But what worries me is precisely the question of corruption, and this is where my experience of Ukraine becomes relevant. My Fulbright "minder" at the Studium Europy Wschodniej in Poland when I arrived January 30 was a young Ukrainian PhD student. In many ways Sasha made my transition to life in Poland easier than it might have been; there is a greater culture gap f...

When I think about 1987, I think of my first visit to the Soviet Union, to then Leningrad, where I met some of my best Russian friends and experienced firsthand what Mikhail Gorbachev, in the book we had to read for our classes at Leningrad State University, called "Novoe myshlenie," New Thinking. Glasnost', Perestroika, Demokratiia. Those were the catchwords of 1987. I've been revisiting those years lately for two reasons -- first, I'm teaching Soviet and post-Soviet literature and am trying to explain to my students what those years felt like and what it meant to have literature literally coming to life as the USSR headed to its demise. Secondly, my daughter is doing a graphic novel project for her 9th grade history class. She is supposed to do oral interviews with someone who experienced a big historical event -- and that someone is me. I was there as the Soviet Union began to unravel. I experienced lines and rationing and underground poetry readings that gr...