On the road ... and at home

My daughter recently posted a revised version of our second day in Hong Kong, now an entire month ago. Seems crazy that we could have been exploring Hong Kong, and then China, and experiencing the heat and humidity there, and now we're in Philadelphia for our traditionally hot and humid summer experience.

It's good to be home. The rhythms of the farmers' market, biking through the city, seeing relatives and friends, cleaning and cooking, reading the newspaper and trying new recipes, staying busy enough that I never quite sit down to read a book and lose myself in it...

In Philadelphia for such a short time this summer, we're hyper-aware of the need to take a big bite. And we've done well so far. Still on the list of things to do are a long bike ride through the city on a Sunday afternoon; visits to museums, especially the new Barnes and the renovated and reopened Rodin Museum, and with any luck a visit to the fantastic Mercer Museum in Doylestown.

Plenty of work to do too, though, and it's great to read and write and think and plan.

The children are fascinated by the Olympics. But I admit to preferring the quiet of the house at night, a ride through the dark for a quick swim, a walk around the park.

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Sober Reflections on the Current State of Russia

UPDATE: Evan Gershkovich, with other American and Russian political prisoners, was freed on August 1. As someone posted somewhere, we can rejoice that our people are out and the Russians have received murderers and spies in return. The optics of Evan's (and Alsu's) rushed trials to make sure to convict before the trade deal went through are bad... but then, what is good out of Russia these days? Trying not to despair. This good news is something anyway. Just over five years ago, I found myself with ten days on my hands in Europe. I had taken a group of 20+ students to Hungary and Poland, and I was due to participate in a conference in Croatia. There was a window. Any normal person would head straight to the beaches of the Dalmatian Coast. Instead, I went to Rome, to John Cabot's Guarini Institute , where we held a panel on the topic of 30 years after 1989 ... and then I went to Russia. Musing on the former Soviet Union and my time there as a student--especially after wat...

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...

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...

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