Manic Bookstore Cafe

It's that time of year. The semester is almost over, and everyone is desperate for spring (today is 75 degrees and windy, more snow expected on Monday). Our forsythia has given up trying to bloom. Жаворонки But as I was preparing for a talk I gave this week in Missoula, Montana, I was reminded of my lark buns. These traditional Russian buns can be made with milk and butter or according to the "lenten" recipe, with oil and water. Depending, of course, on whether spring is due before or after Orthodox Easter or, if you're just a regular American, on whether you are vegan. It seemed appropriate to end my Missoula talk on Russian cookbooks and cuisine with this slide -- especially as I had been invited to campus by my PhD student (who coincidentally is actually  vegan). It was such fun to stay with her family, to dine with my old grad school chums who happen to work at the University of Montana with her, and to meet many of her students and colleagues. My for...

My students this term have again been doing some of their own research, doing what I call "filling in the gaps" between the authors and texts we've been reading and exploring together. "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste" Some presentations have been more successful than others, but one last week on Futurism struck me as particularly timely. We've been emphasizing drama this semester, in particular performance and performativity, and so the stage was set for the Futurists and their 1912 manifesto "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste." For the students, the idea that one scholar has called "aesthetic disobedience" (in regards to Pussy Riot performances in recent years) was rather strange: "Why did anyone care how they dressed? Why couldn't they wear wooden spoons in their lapels if they wanted to? Why was a yellow shirt so shocking? What other color shirts were being made and worn, and why were they somehow less shockin...

When I was younger, I lived in a commune. Only briefly, and only part time, but the experience was life-changing. And somehow destiny -- since I chose Russian as my profession, and since my politics have always leaned left, it was almost inevitable that I embrace collective living at some point. The commune we lived in was quite famous, located in the so-called Happy Valley of Western Massachusetts. Founded by a group of radicals escaping New York City some thirty years earlier, the commune occupied a 19th century farmhouse perched on a hill, with its requisite old barn looming across the dead end road. Inside the house each section was heated with its own wood stove and occupied by members of the commune: a single guy, a woman, two couples, a family, plus a dog, two cats, and at least one guinea pig. The kitchen featured a long trestle table and an enormous "Russian stove." No one cooked in it, but it did heat that portion of the house thoroughly during cold New England...