Spring has sprung ... again

It's almost the last day of May, and it finally feels like May.

This winter was a tough one for many in central Ohio (and in other places across the world). As a writer and educator, I'm always in favor of new vocabulary words, but "polar vortex" was one I could have done without. Even more bitter, then, that it snowed through mid-April and that the first half of May was colder and wetter than usual. On May 17 there were still few leaves on the trees, and I stood in the cold rain at my daughter's conference track meet watching hail bounce off the track.

The cold winter echoed the feeling of cold war that emerged in the weeks after the Russian Olympics. I can barely remember my concerns about the dangers of terrorist attacks in Sochi, given what has transpired in Crimea and eastern Ukraine since then. Yesterday I heard the song "Get Lucky" in a shop in my town and was transported back to the week in February when I watched the Russian Police Choir performing the song over and over on youtube, amused and amazed.

Something in the faces of those singers suggested that we were all in on a big global joke now. Just because we're in uniform, they seemed to say, doesn't mean we're ready to take up nightsticks. In fact, we're just regular guys -- grandfathers who are feeling bemused at these crazy lyrics in English, young men who want to roll our hips instead of rolling through the streets in tanks.

And then came the tanks. One of my students from last year in Warsaw posted a video: "panzers in my home town!" He is a Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizen from a small town outside Donetsk. Perhaps he was glad to still be finishing his MA degree in Poland this spring rather than at home trying to sort out the verging-on-civil war conditions. I try to imagine tanks in my little Ohio town, or in the Chicago suburb where I grew up. Impossible.

That same student pointed me to the Polish entry to Eurovision, and I admit that I was even more nonplussed by "We are Slavic" than I had been by the Russian police. The entry clip was even more offensive than the live version, but its over-the-top imagery suggested what we are all hoping (and perhaps what my student intuited?) -- that "My Słowianie" was actually a huge joke.

In the world we live in, of Russian and Chechen infiltrators pumping up anti-Ukrainian feeling, of all kinds of people slinging the words "Nazi" and "Fascist" around as if meaning was a fungible category, of actual Slavic women portraying themselves as sexy sluts just longing to be trafficked into humiliating and debasing situations, it's good to stay off the computer, avoid the newspaper, and enjoy the weather.

Life has been busy here at the end of the school year, as I try to sort out what my summer projects will be. I've dived into the world of political commentary, made some inroads with my filing system, and baked several cheesecakes. I've taken some awesome bike rides, dug up and transplanted some perennials, and struggled with my son's cat, who seems to think the arrival of nice weather means he can spend whole days outside in the yard.

And now, as the academic year winds to an end, I am grateful for the polar vortex after all. Those many days my children were trapped inside this winter, unable to attend school in the below zero weather, mean three more days of school for them next week -- and three more days for me to figure out what summer has in store.

Cringeworthy? Really??

It's so sad. I've gotten my first reaction to my new book. Well, second reaction. My sweet husband was brought to tears reading the introduction (possibly because he remembered just how many drafts of each section of the book, and of all the sections left on the cutting room floor, that he had read, and read, and read before). But now I've heard from a potential reader that his Russian friend-in-exile (and more importantly that friend's teenage son) think the title is кринжовый. Ouch. That hurts. Why do we need Russian literature? Do we? My Polish friend wrote to encourage me when she saw my linked in post about the publication and assured me that SHE and all her friends still love Russian literature ... even and despite the fact that Russians sometimes misbehave. (Some Russians more than others, and sometimes not just misbehaving--the world's reaction to the murder of Alexey Navalny in prison is noteworthy and important. We need to hold those responsible in contem...

Personal Sanctions. Second Reactions

On Thursday I fled Denver in the face of what was promising to be an epic snowstorm. (My AirBnB host, who grew up in Michigan, advised that Denver is quick to hit the panic button, but I didn't dare stick around to find out. I needed to be home before Monday!) In the plane, waiting for de-icing, I checked my e-mail and learned that I had been added to a so-called "stop-list" of U.S. citizens who are being personally sanctioned for our attitudes toward the Russian government and its internal and foreign affairs. It's not often that you end up on a list with the head of Lockheed Martin--certainly nothing I ever expected. But then, I also had never thought of myself as a Russophobe, and now that's the label that has been affixed to me by the Russian Federation. I had just been upgraded to first class--apparently not a lot of people were fleeing Denver that morning!--so I did what any Russophobe would do: I ordered a vodka from the flight attendant. An American vodka,...

RIP Randy Nolde

In everyone's life there is a teacher who motivated her to try harder, strive for more, reach beyond. Or in my case, a teacher who teased, goaded, poked, pried, laughed, lampooned, and somehow created an atmosphere where I was ready to work my tail off to make him proud. Randy Nolde, we will miss you. Mr. Nolde was my Russian teacher in high school. I first got to know him as a younger person -- the Russian Club Banquet was quite the event in my home town, and my grandmother used to take us regularly even before my sister enrolled in Russian language class. Every year, the high school cafeteria underwent a magical metamorphosis. Huge murals of scenes from Russia -- fantastic, colorful onion-domed churches, and young peasants reaping wheat, and Armenian maidens with long braids and colorful costumes -- hung all around the edges of the room. On the menu: chicken Kiev made by the cafeteria ladies, supplemented with cafeteria salad, but also khachapuri and piroshki made b...

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