Manic Bookstore Cafe

Almost ten years ago my family and I moved to a small town. I grew up in the 1970s, so the world I knew was of biking to my gramma's and to the pool, of climbing trees on undeveloped land. A childhood spent in sneakers, walking to the library and to school. Many cold weather days with snow blowing all around and piling up all winter -- perfect for building igloos and for "snow pizzas." We lived in what had once been a rural small town. It became a "suburb," and many of our parents commuted to work by train or car, but it retained that small town flavor that was in its own way magical for children. When my husband and I noticed that much of suburban life in the 21st century meant driving around in our car -- to daycare and to the store, to the park and to the doctor, dentist, etc. -- we left it all behind for a place much like the 1970s. In the rural town where we now live, many people also commute to work by car. But lots of us choose to walk or bike as muc...

In my class, we have spent the last two weeks talking about shchi . We learned proverbs, looked at different recipes, contemplated "fasting" or vegetarian shchi versus shchi with meat. We read essays about shchi , discussed the history of shchi  in old Russia, and looked at images of shchi  in power point presentations. Or at least I did. Then one of the students -- whose Russian vocabulary seems extraordinary (she's the one who knew how to say "polar vortex" in Russian) -- asked a question. "What are shchi ?" I had decided to check in with the students about the pace of reading, degree of comprehension, etc., so we were speaking English. "Cabbage soup," I replied. "But then why is it plural?" This, of course, is the great question of Russian cuisine. Why is  a soup plural? The students were not convinced by my first suggestion: because the declensions are that much more fun: add some smetana  [sour cream] to your...

My course on cuisine is off to a good start. The students seem to be in shock from my expectations -- class in Russian, reading at home in Russian, lots of new vocabulary -- but I am encouraging them and taking my inspiration from Alexander Genis and his cabbage soup. Cabbage soup, Shchi , was our focus last week -- we read essays about it, talked about its history, looked it up in Russian culinary dictionaries, thought about how to slowly cook it in a traditional Russian stove, and of course practiced pronouncing it. We compared recipes: soup with mushrooms and sauerkraut; cabbage soup with pearl barley; "rich" cabbage soup. Cabbage soup with chicken, cabbage soup with beef, vegetarian or "fasting" cabbage soup. We contemplated whether it's worthwhile to eat cabbage soup without smetana , or sour cream. We also learned a proverb that will facilitate American students getting their tongues in the right position for those hushing sounds: Shchi da kasha, p...

Seems like kismet that I am teaching Eugene Onegin  in the week that I was asked to review a newly translated novella by Eugenia Kononenko called A Russian Story (Glagoslav Publications, 2012). This novella strikes at the heart of Russian-Ukrainian relations and the complicated post-Soviet global lives of former Ukrainian citizens. Featuring a hero named "Eugene Samarsky" ("derived not from the Russian place-name Samara on the Volga, but from the name of a minor Ukrainian river, a tributary of the Dnipro," as he never tires of explaining), the book explores the travels and travails of the post-Soviet son of Ukraine as he inexorably and with a certain self-aware incredulity follows the path of Pushkin's hero: he inherits an country estate (or at least a house) from a distant uncle, meets sisters named Tatiana and Olga, accidentally kills Olga's fiance Vladimir and has to flee the country and wander through foreign lands... In the meantime, the narrator...

In my Masterpieces of Russian Literature class, I like to start with Pushkin and Eugene Onegin . The beginning of the course can be difficult -- how can I convince my students that Pushkin really is the be all and end all of Russian literature, that poets and prose writers of the 19th, 20th, and even 21st century are often engaging with this Ur-poet? It is especially difficult because his poetic masterpieces don't always read well in English. This autumn I used "God Grant that I not Lose My Mind..." ... in an atrocious translation. I was reminded pretty quickly that in order to convince students of something, you need to show  them, not tell them. Which is why with Eugene Onegin I often use a pedagogical exercise a colleague, Romy Taylor, wrote about in  The Pushkin Review  a number of years ago. The translation I use, James Falen's, is excellent. I really like it. But as I say to the students, if Pushkin sparkles , then Falen only shines . Better than the th...

One of the problems with retail is that you have to keep regular hours. When a fabulous (if very bourgeois) gourmet shop opened in my neighborhood in Philadelphia a few years ago, they didn't post any hours. I would get up and go over to get a coffee and a croissant, or bagels for the kids, and the door would be locked. When I suggested that "before 8 a.m." was a good time for them to open up, the owner said: "yeah. We know. We're gearing up to committing to regular opening hours." The Milk & Honey Market at 45th & Baltimore, with owner Annie at the cash register. Blogs are like that. The statistics on numbers of blogs started are, I imagine, mind-boggling. And many times they peter out. It's as hard to have something to say in a blog on a regular basis as it is to open up at 7 a.m. day after day. (Well, maybe not quite as hard.) Commitment. Difficult in all its permutations. But in making up the silly business card pictured at le...