Manic Bookstore Cafe

Today we spent the afternoon at Eastern State Penitentiary . Haven't been there in years, in fact since before becoming parents. (First the children were too young to go, then they were old enough to enter according to the rules, but too impressionable...) And this amazing institution on the heights above downtown Philadelphia has changed. For those who don't know, Eastern State was the first  penitentiary and gave the meaning to the word. It was imagined and designed (as far back as 1829) as a place where criminals would be isolated and able to contemplate their offenses. In the process, they were to become penitent, and then leave the place ready to recommit to society. In those early days, there weren't a lot of tracking options -- no fingerprints, no electronic databases -- and so no one really knows how many people were able to reform.  What we do know is that initially the prisoners were given fairly short sentences and were left alone, with their bibl...

Death is funny. Not "ha-ha" funny, as we used to say when I was a kid, but funny odd, strange. I spend a lot of time thinking about death. That seems like a fairly obvious statement. After all, I teach Russian literature. When my now-sister-in-law heard that her brother was dating a Russian lit specialist, she famously asked: "Is she deep, or just depressed?" The answer is: neither. But even so, death is a big part of my life. Felix Lembersky, "Dusk: Matryona's House" Staraya Ladoga 1960-63 Writing my final exam bonus questions for my intro "Masterpieces of Russian Lit" course this spring -- questions about works we hadn't gotten to in class, but which I'd encouraged students to read anyway -- I began to wonder about my syllabus and the readings I choose. Here are the questions. Extra credit points:     1.      How and why does Mitya die in the story “Mitya’s Love”? (1+2)   2.      How and why does Matryona die in ...

When my husband married me, he knew I was an international woman of mystery. I felt compelled to remind him of that this past month while he was herding our three teenaged children on his own, desperately trying to guide the flock safely through the perilous landscape of the last weeks of high school here. Yes, three -- we picked up an extra child in January, an independent and good-natured 17-year-old boy from Italy, our exchange student Andi. Our own two were also busy with their activities -- baseball, the championship season in track, a piano recital, a musical review, and of course schoolwork, and although we have loved hosting Andi, we may have underestimated the logistics of three children, especially for a (temporarily) single parent. (We did this three years ago with another exchange student, Tina from Thailand, though that was a little easier because the children were younger. If I remember correctly, I also left the country in May that year...) May is a month that req...