Second part. First part is here.
On 28 August, 1963, I came home from somewhere one mid-afternoon. The new school year hadn't started, so the early part of the day remains a blank. Except that I was in Charleston, West Virginia, and we lived in a big ramshackle white house at the end of a dead-end street way up in the hills.
When I walked through the door, our … Read the rest
This is part two. Read part one here.
Контент 16+
It is one thing to describe the desirable physical attributes of women (Russian or otherwise), and quite another to talk about their character. Again, it seems…somehow…an invasion of privacy, and one risks making a fool of oneself. At best it is like tasting some exotic new soup which you can't say immediately if you like it or not; at worst … Read the rest
The news that the Russian wheelchair-bound singer Yulia Samoylova has been given a three-year ban from entering Ukraine — thus spoiling her chances of representing her country in the Eurovision — causes me to recall the time when I first came to Russia. I confess — with more than a little shame now — that back then I couldn't have told you much about which country was which. I thought … Read the rest
Контент 14+
One summer day I packed my backpack and headed out on an ethnographic expedition. I had just passed my exams and finished my first year as a student of the Moscow Academy of Music. This annual tour involves different students every go around because only several professors are engaged yet all students must participate at least once.
Our ethnographic laboratory had been studying the Bryansk region on the … Read the rest
