Manic Bookstore Cafe

I haven't been to Georgia in forever. But I have several scholars coming from Tbilisi to a symposium I've organized at Ohio State, and one of my favorite former students has been living there for some time, so it's on my mind. The symposium, because of a variety of complicated scheduling factors, is actually set for November 7 and 8. November 7, for those of you living in a truly post-Soviet world, is the anniversary of the October (Bolshevik) Revolution of 1917. We are thinking of another anniversary these days: this autumn marks 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. A quarter of a century since the sphere of Soviet influence began to disintegrate. But in November 1988, 26 years ago, it was not self-evident that the Soviet system was failing. I was studying in Moscow at the Pushkin Institute of Language and Culture, on the south-west side of the city, and the group of Americans at our institute--under the leadership of our American professor--headed to Georgia in ...

On Tuesday, April 15, it snowed. Needless to say, this plunged many of my students, coworkers, and family members into despair. Never mind that spring has  to come some time -- they remained convinced that the winter would never end. So I decided to pull out all the stops. Oddly, this week has been Passover as well as Easter Week for both Orthodox and other Christians. Can't remember the last time that happened. For Russians, this should mean the last week of "fasting" foods, i.e. foods without animal products. I went to one of my Russian recipe go-to sites, gotovim-doma.ru, to find a recipe for the lark-shaped breads that are guaranteed to usher in spring weather. On Wednesday, I baked twenty  zhavoronki . (I meant to take pictures, but apparently did not.) The dough was a "fasting" dough, i.e. used water, yeast and flour, but no eggs or milk, and was phenomenally easy to manipulate into little birds. Just doing my part to make spring arrive -- and now i...