Manic Bookstore Cafe, Year Two

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 left and handing it out to all kinds of folks, I thought I was ready to make a commitment. On average I wrote more than one post a week last year -- that sounds like an enterprise to which I am committed.

And since sending out the cards, I haven't written a word.

Not entirely true: I started a *new* blog that is the 2014 Recipe Project and wrote three posts there. And of course there's my academic writing. But the Manic Bookstore Cafe has been untended since the end of 2013, and that needs to change.

I have a few posts in mind, and will get to work this week. So stay tuned -- I will try to keep this enterprise in business. Retail it's not, but it's still a commitment.

Comments

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

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 by the

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,

Manic Bookstore Cafe

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