At last, queuing has come to my small Ohio town. It's Saturday morning, and I sit here in my study, listening to the birds and the lawnmowers, feeling shock and awe at the merging of two worlds. Not often do my Soviet experiences translate into my American life. I remember when I first arrived in the Soviet Union as a 21-year-old, and people asked me: "what did you expect to find? bears wandering the streets?" I would simply reply: "nothing. I had no expectations. I came to find whatever was here." And it was a rich and sometimes bewildering experience. Recently my daughter wrote a graphic novel for history class about me. She needed a person to interview who had lived through a "historic event," so we chose perestroika and the demise of the Soviet system. Certainly my stories seemed exotic to her -- standing in line, being chastised on the street by grandmothers who thought I should be wearing a warmer hat, standing in line, having my mail arri...
A blog about travel and staying put, reading and writing, food and food for thought.