Saturday evening | May 6, 2006
Moscow
Summer weather, very warm and clear
10:00 pm and just getting dark
Streets full of people strolling and children playing in little gardens behind apt. buildings

We’ve landed in Moscow three days now unexpectedly.  The result is a small miracle, though the process was purely, wholly, completely and utterly Russian.  To make a LONG story short, we finally have internet access through a new, small mobile telephone which wirelessly links to our laptop and connects us to the internet.  We bought a reserve power source that works off our car battery and so we can write as we travel across the vast landscape that is Russia and that takes us to the villages.  The telephone has a camera and so we’ll try to send pictures along the way.

The next stop is Vetoshkino, the first village we worked in where Nikolai’s elderly Aunt Natalia and cousin, Tatyana, live. All day tomorrow we will prepare for the journey, packing the car with sacks of food, bottles of water to drink and other bottles of water to clean the headlights and windshield in case we run into mud.  We’ll take rope (in case you need to be towed), a small sack of tools, music cassettes, and most importantly, we have no less than three fantastic flashlights that don’t need batteries.  They work by being shaken and . . . given how much they will shake . . . they should work very well.

We now know we will definitely be doing the next library project in the Ural Mountains and this too is proving to be far better than our original plan to work north of Moscow.  More later on that theme.  There are many miles yet between here and the Urals. 

Some short snippets before signing off.  For the first time we filmed various Moscow scenes, including driving.  It should make for lively footage.  The first day I decided to prepare chicken for dinner, brought the little bird home only to find that they only clip off the feathers.  You have to pluck out all the little ends yourself.  It took a long time to make dinner as a result.

Next entry on the road to Vestoshkino.  --JF

Monday  |  May 8, 2006
Somewhere between Moscow and Nizhni Novgorod
Roads busy with merchants in big trucks; others pull carts by hand heaped
with wares
As always, countless women by the side of the road selling hand made things
and tomato plants
______

     We are about two hours out of Moscow as I write, heading toward Nizhni Novgorod, and have just turned around to go back to Moscow.  We got pulled over by the police, which is nothing unusal.  It just helps them pass the day as they stand on the side of the road with their little black and white batons in hand.  As always, Nikolai cheerily jumped out of the car and said, "Good morning, Comrade!  What is it that has caught your respectful attention?" 
     We were speeding, it seems, but just a little.  We didn't get a ticket as the policeman was very young and not quite sure how to handle Nikolai. But what did come of it was that Nikolai discovered that he had none of his documents on him (i.e. his passport or driver's license).  This was no minor event.  It is hard for those of us who have not lived in the Soviet Union to fathom how critical one's "papers" are here even now.  You don't go to the corner market for a loaf of bread withouth them. It is the first time I've ever seen Nikolai concerned.  Half way back to Moscow he broke the silence by saying, "It would have been better to lose $1,000 than to lose my documents."
      It was too early to ask how or if we could proceed without them.  Within 20 minutes, however, of returning to Moscow we found them but it was too late to turn around and go back.  Instead, we took care of a host of minor details that will make our journey better than had we gone ahead today without them.  Strange to say, but it feels like we're farther ahead even though we're yet another day delayed.  It's tending to the details in Russia that make all the difference in the end.  It is hard to fathom how Americans could possibly work, or even survive, in Russia without the help of a knowledgeable Russian working alongside: that is, knowing what to do, when to do it, who to ask for help and how, where to find the infinite number of tiny things you need, etc., etc.
     In any case, we leave tomorrow morning at 5:00 a.m.  One of the blessings in that is that tomorrow is "Victory Day" in Russia - the most revered holiday of all.  It not only celebrates Russia's victory in WWII, but is a day to show particular respect to all seniors who managed to survive that horrific time.  As a result, all along the way on the road, in all the little villages and towns, we'll see their celebrations and that will be very special.  There is no need to think that anything has gone wrong, despite the unexpected turn of events.  That is simply not the case.  You go forward from where you are and take advantage of all that each day brings.  --JF  



Thursday, May 11
This e-mail is from Jeannie's husband, Peter:

Got a call from Jeannie just now explaining her recent silence.  She and Nikolai are in Mwesee, but have lost Internet service for the moment.  (Don't know how long a Russian "moment" is!?!)  It worked fine when they first arrived, so they know it's possible.  She just wanted to post a brief update explaining the situation for those who are following things closely.  She said everything is going very well otherwise. The other main news is that they have a new house in Mwesee. The roof on the back part of the former house, which had not been replaced last fall, collapsed under the snow this winter.  So the townspeople gave them another house, which is even better in every way than any of the previous ones according to Jeannie.



Webmaster note: Although this entry is dated May 9, it arrived on May 13. Jeannie's entries will be posted in the order they are received...

Tuesday  |  May 9, 2006  |  12:20 pm

On the road between Nizhni Novgorod and Semyonov
400 miles to Kirov

Very few cars on the road (because today is a holiday) and so we are making very good time.  Such good time that we got stopped once again for speeding.  This time Nikolai jumped out of the car (you get out of the car here when you get stopped) and said, “Hello Comrade!  Ive come all the way from Moscow simply to wish you a happy Victory Day!”  The officer immediately started to laugh and didn’t bother to look at Nikolai’s papers. He wished us a happy holiday and sent us on our way.  One needs often to forgive Nikolai for speeding.  After all these years of getting stopped (in all the years we’ve worked together he’s been stopped no less than two or three dozen times) I’ve become accustomed to it and I no longer get concerned as he’s never been given a ticket.  Rather, I wait to hear what he will say to talk his way out of it. Each time it is something surprisingly original that gives the poor, bored officer a chuckle to brighten his day.  (Now having admitted this, I can no longer, in all good conscience, give my poor husband a hard time when he drives five miles over the speed limit.)

       Here, of course, everything is in kilometers and  I don’t know how to convert them into miles.  However, perhaps someone could e-mail me to tell me how fast 120 kilometers/hour is?  books@worldpath.net

At this point the only other news is that for the first time we’ve discovered that you can’t shut the heat off in the car.  We never noticed it in the winter.  It is quite noticeable now however.   The inside of the car e resembles the interior of Africa. 

          It is now close to eight hours later and we are in sight of Vetoshkino, our first destination.  Unfortunately we have somehow lost our Internet connection.  That is particularly frustrating given the DAYS we spent preparing for every possible technical problem so that we would be guaranteed a connection.  We phoned several people to see what mobile telephone connection is the best here; we went to the head office of that company in Moscow to learn what type of phone card we needed and other such things; we worked for days to make sure the link between the computer and the mobile phone would work . . . and, alas, Russia is simply enormous.  We are at the edge of utter remoteness where nothing is guaranteed.
     As we approach Vetoshkino we are still miles and miles away but can spot it on the horizon.  One of the most thrilling parts of the Kirov region is that you feel as if you can see into eternity itself.  Nothing interrupts your view.  It is a scene of endless fields and enormous billowy white clouds that hang low overhead like the too heavy tops of sunflowers.
     We arrived in Vetoshkino just 13 hours after leaving Moscow.  We have never made such good time.  (Usually the trip is closer to 17 hours, and has been as long as 25.)  The roads are hard and dry.  We have not had to deal with either mud or snow.  And, because of the holiday there were virtually no cars on the road.  There was one, however . . . on the side of the road. An elderly man was trying to change a flat tire while his wife, children and young grandson waited patiently.  When the grandfather saw us he waved us down.  Of course we stopped.  You never pass a stranded car
here.  Even more, we have been helped too many times not to help in return. Within minutes Nikolai had the flat tire off the car and the spare in its place. In the meantime, I found a trinket (a keychain flashlight) in the sack of presents we always carry with us to give to seven year old Misha. His older sister, Anna, I learned, is studying English in school and considered it a minor miracle to suddenly get to speak English to an American.  The mother said, for her part, she could never have dreamed that a foreigner would be willing to stop and help.  She was truly, simply amazed.  There was that look in her eyes that I have seen more than once: a perception of Americans was changed and she was startled by it.  It is such moments that we seek out.  They are the reason we travel these long, difficult roads, and they are what give the work such meaning.  Before we said good-bye we took a group photo with their camera and with ours.

________________________________
Friday  |  May 12, 2006  |  10:20 pm

Vetoshkino and Mwesee
Two + hours south of Kirov on the Vyatka River

I am sitting in the main room of the home of Tatyana, Mikhail and Babushka Natalia.  A curtain separates me from the kitchen where Babushka is busy at work with some new project.  She has been up since seven.  When I first saw her this morning she was carrying an armload of wood for the stove that would have been hard for me to manage.  After getting the woodstove going, she then separated the cream from the new milk that Tatyana had just brought in from the barn and took half the cream to heat in the center of the large stove that serves as oven, stove top, furnace, and, finally, bed at night.  The heated cream forms a golden crust on top which is, in a sense, their version of hot chocolate.  It is something that usually only children drink.  After that, Babushka went out to the side garden to clean the fish Mikhail caught yesterday.  When she was done with that she went into the cellar to collect a large bucket of potatoes.  I came into the kitchen just has she was hoisting them over her head and setting them on the kitchen floor.  I immediately reached out to take the heavy bucket from her not able to fathom how she can possible lift it. But after nine decades of such a life it is so automatic she doesn’t seem to wonder if any other life is possible.
     The potatoes are kept in the cellar below the kitchen.  The pumpkins and daily cash of fresh eggs are kept under her bed. Thanks to Babushka, I now know that you have to leave a few old eggs in the chickens’ nests so they know where you want them to lay them.  The carrots and onions are kept in two separate bins along side the banya and, lastly, fish hang on lines in the upper loft above the barn to dry and harden.  
     The long, narrow freezer at the head of Babushka’s bed (a little curtain separates her “bedroom” from the kitchen) contains various meat and whole chickens the family has themselves prepared.  Large chunks of meat are stacked on one side and the chickens on the other.  Every spare inch of the house is used in one way or the other.  There is no wasted space.
_____

     It is nearly impossible to describe all that has happened since we arrived.  We are still without Internet connection and so will either drive to Urzhum (where we fell into an ice hole five years ago) to send off this log or we will put in on our small backup device and give it to Sasha (Nikolai’s nephew) to send for us when he returns to Kirov in two or three days.
     The day after we arrived we went immediately to Mwesee (about six miles from Vetoshkino) to see the “American Home”.  It is a simple village home that had been given to our organization last year in gratitude to everyone in America who makes our work possible.  Their villagers desire was to provide a place to which any American family could come to see and experience Russian village life.  It was the simplest and purest desire for friendship.  It was a simple, pure act of good. 
     Thus, when we arrived we couldn’t possibly have imagined the surprise that awaited us. Last year we had left just enough money to repair the roof on the main part of the house. No one felt that more was needed.  Here, I will pause to say that we have gone slowly with each new step wanting to “test the waters” and see what was realistic, what was possible, in terms of bringing others here to visit.
        We pulled up to the south side of the house, parked the car, and then walked around to the north side, where the main entrance is, only to notice a surprising amount of light in the barn and “courtyard rooms”.  Then suddenly, we all looked up and then at each other in shock.  Half of the
courtyard and barn roof had collapsed under the huge amount of snow Russia had last winter.  It was apparently not only the amount of snow but the unusually severe cold last winter that caused the beams to snap under the snow and collapse.  (In much of Russia the schools were closed for over a month as the temperatures hit 40 and 50 below zero.)
      While I said nothing, apparently my face said much, for it was clear that the “American Home” project had just come to an end.  To repair the roof and barn could not be justified.  I went off on my own and sat by the bank of the Vyatka river to think, to cry and to pray.
      When I returned, our friend Nikolai Aleksandrovich had arrived from Votskoya – the village between Vetoshkino and Mwesee.  He is the head of both Mwesee and Votskoya, both of which still function as “kolhozes” or collective farms.  That means that the homes belong to the village and are given to families based on their needs.  Both Nikolai Aleksandrovich and a committee of villagers decide this. His face was equally sad.  His first words were, “Please don’t give up.  We are 100 percent against throwing in the towel.  We cannot say how much we want this friendship between your friends and our village to happen.  It gives us all hope and something to work for.”  The words were deeply sincere and came out of an even deeper desire to save this village that is so beautiful and once thrived.
     I could only reply that his words deeply touched me, but such a home was both beyond my strength and the means of our organization to repair and care for.  Nikolai Aleksandrovich then went on to say, “Since you were last here, another family left the village because the father found work in the city.  Come, look at the house.  If it pleases you we will give you that house.  Please just look at it.  Don’t be discouraged.  Don’t give up.” 
      As we headed off down the road, Nikolai said quietly, “You don’t have to accept the house, you just need to look at it so that they feel they have done all that they could to show you their sincerity.”

      We began work on the second home within minutes of seeing it and have not stopped since.  The home is even more wonderful than the first home. It is strong, solid and in excellent shape, needing only a very (VERY) thorough cleaning and painting.  We have worked day and night at getting it in shape for me to live in for the next four weeks.  From the first home we were given we took out a bed, two small tables, two benches, a little wall cabinet, and various instruments that you need to work with the woodstove and cook on it.  The second home already had a bed (plus the space you can sleep on top of the woodstove), a corner cupboard for dishes and an armoire for towels or canned goods, etc., and a huge number of buckets and basins. Here you QUICKLY learn to throw out little.  Even old buckets can be used in a number of essential ways, as can scraps of string, pieces of rope, and old sacks.
     Various neighbors have come each day to help with the cleaning and to make me feel welcome.  Directly across from the new house is a family of three.  The wife is a nurse and the husband a mechanic.  They have a little daughter named Olga.  The next house down belongs to Auntie Raiisa with whom I got acquainted last year having helped her carry her laundry home from the river.  As far as I can tell, the house next to ours is vacant and the house down from that belongs to Nikolai Aleksandrovich’s elderly mother.  Finally, the building kitty corner to our house (we are on the “corner” of the road) is absolutely beautiful.  It was the library when Mwesee was a thriving village.  All told, I’ve learned that there are some 70 people in the village, though it feels as if there are far fewer.  As to what they do to earn a living I will soon discover though it is clear that
unemployment is a huge problem. 

     The house has one main room heated by a woodstove in the center. There is one small walled off bedroom.  There is a large courtyard off of which is another room that can eventually be used as another bedroom. There is a large area for wood storage in which was left about two cords of good, dry solid wood.  That is a huge relief not to have to find scraps of wood to heat the woodstove.  Beyond that section is an incredible barn which I’ve just barely explored.  It has small stalls with low ceilings (helping the animals keep warm in the winter).  It appears as if the family had goats, a cow, pigs, rabbits and chickens, though there are no animals now.  We will buy two chickens for me which I will then give to Tatyana and Mikhail when I leave.  There is a wonderful hayloft which still has fresh hay.  I’ve used a portion of it to make a clean path to the woodpile. Here, every consideration is how to keep as much dust and dirt outside and not inside the home!  Water is the most precious commodity you own.  When you have to walk a quarter mile for it down the road and then down a hill (which means you carry full buckets UP the hill on the return trip) you think very carefully how you use it.  I spilled a cupful the other day and scolded myself for hours afterwards.
     Interestingly, there is a well with a pump directly outside the new house.  It still has ice and so cannot be used, but should be usable in another week.  That will make a huge difference in the ease of living in Mwesee.  And the point of my living here alone is to see if it is realistic for other Americans to come here and live.  That question I will answer in four weeks.
     Our plans have changed slightly in that we did not go directly to the Ural Mountains where the next library project will be.  To save both time and money, we decided that it was far more logical for me to remain here now while Nikolai works to prepare everything in the Urals for the library project.  In three or so weeks, Tatyana and Mikhail will put me on a train in Kirov which goes directly to Pervouralsk.  There Nikolai will meet me and we will stay in his mother’s house while we do the library project and yet another project in Marinsk where we work every year.
     There is MUCH more to write about, but this entry has already gone on far too long.  We cannot tell you how disappointed we are that the internet connection has proved so problematic when we did so much to make it work. But there is still time to find a solution.  --JF


 

Saturday | May 13, 2006  |  10:20 pm  Mwesee  

It is my first night in the American Home.  Tatyana, Sasha (Tatyana's son), and Nikolai have just left.  Having lived in the house less than one full day, I still managed to pull together a modest meal of soup, bread, apple sauce, tea, and cookies.  (Fortunately, Russians eat their main meal at noon and so it was not a problem not to have more to serve them.)  Still, as soon as the home felt it's woodstove working again, and the smell of fresh made soup filling the air, and curtains hanging in the windows (which a neighbor has been making the last two days), it once again began to live, breathe, and rejoice.       

There has been a HUGE amount of effort on the part of many people to make the American Home a reality.  In just four days we have transformed this little home.  Two huge truck loads of trash have been removed from the house, courtyard and barn -- and the house thoroughly cleaned from the ceiling down to the smallest crack in the floor.  How hard these people can -- and will work -- if they are rightly worked with.  They are strong and industrious, talented and, at the same time, willing to do the humblest, most unpleasant work, you can imagine.  Yes, they need constant supervision and someone to point out every detail -- though they know all too well how to do most anything, and to make the most useful tools and gadgets out of nothing.  They are good people who have been disappointed thousands of times.  They are kind people who are leery of strangers, (or perhaps it is better to say self-conscious in front of them) but who are willing to try to reach out and trust once again.  They suffer from purposelessness, though there are many who have found ways to succeed and progress during these difficult times in Russia.       

The villagers have been willing to help us.  Of course they are eager to earn money, but there is no fault to be found with that.  (For a day's work, depending on the work, a good salary is anywhere from $1 to $5.)  They want work desperately.  They want purpose. So much of their hesitation before a foreigner is that they fear being judged by their simple homes, their worn clothes, and their toothless smiles.  If you can see past all those things, there is a goodness in their hearts that is deep and sincere. We have also bought several absolutely wonderful old things for the house.  Of course, to the villagers there is nothing special in them and they cannot understand why I am so thrilled with the two old trunks we bought (for $3), the "dining room" table (for $5), and this little writing desk on which I am now working for $1.  Here Tatyana has been invaluable, knowing exactly what is a fair price: not too little and not too much.  It is incredible important that not too much be given.  It is extremely important to live here as a Russian neighbor and not as a "rich foreigner" - thus I rely on Tatyana to tell me how much to pay for everything.     

My neighbor across the street who is a nurse (Svetlana) is truly a Godsend.  She has been over at least a half dozen times today to see if I need anything.  She and her husband Mikhail have a cow and so for 25 cents each day I will buy a liter of milk.  I have two of my own chickens (which Tatyana and Mikhail loaned me) as well as a huge sack of potatoes, carrots and onions.  I bought a sack of flour when I first arrived and will live off of these supplies.  Once a week a truck comes from Votskoya that sells things like butter, sugar, flour, bread, etc.  Each week I thus have a chance to stock up on non-perishable staples.  If needed, I can walk to Votskoya (which is about three miles away) to buy things.  An even bigger store is in Vetoshkino, but that is a six-mile walk.  I thought I would have a bicycle, but the roads are too rough.  It is actually easier to walk.      Svetlana and Mikhail heat the banya (where you bathe) once a week (on Sunday) and have invited me to come use it each week.  That too is a Godsend.  The other days I will go to a little room off the courtyard where a three-foot tub awaits me.  You fill it half way up, stand in the middle of it and use a large cup to pour water over yourself.  The "other facilities" are also in this room which I have improvised and put there.  Technically, the outhouse is at the other end of the barn, but I have suddenly discovered what was once called a "bed pan" and have put it in that little room.      

It is hard to believe all I've learned in just one day.  For instance, every scrap of paper is saved to start a fire in the woodstove.  You collect the firewood each day and put enough by the backdoor so you don't have to walk through the barn to get it, thus bringing more dust and dirt into the house.  As soon as you get up, the first thing is to start a fire in the woodstove and then put a pot of soup on which will simmer all day.  There is a special basin that fits into a ring and lowers into the stove near the fire.  (Many such useful things were already in the house waiting to be used once again.)  They say that soup that simmers in such a pot over a wood fire has an altogether different taste than soup that is prepared on a stove top.     

The soup cooks all day not only for yourself, but to be ready for guests.  Next I have learned to ALWAYS keep a pot of fresh hot water going on the stove.  It is used for washing the dishes as well as your hands, or for making tea.  To wash the dishes you need three basins.  One where you put just a little soap (too many suds making the rinsing long and laborious).  The second basin is for the first rinse and the third basin is for the last rinse.  Like Babushka Natalia, my first eggs are in a little basket under the bed.  I have room to keep them in the kitchen, but putting them under the bed reminds me of her.  Like all Russian grandmothers, she was worried about me having enough to eat and so sent over several things she had made today with Tatyana and Nikolai.  Once Nikolai leaves for the Urals (which will most likely be Monday) I will see very little of Tatyana, Mikhail and Babushka.  I wish their village (Vetoshkino) was just a little closer, though theee times a week the older children in Mwesee walk the six miles to Vetoshkino and back to go to school.     

It is now 11:30 and time to go to bed.  Since I began writing this entry both Nikolai and Tatyana have phoned to see if everything is alright. So I am VERY well cared for and that is MUCH to be grateful for.  Already I feel that most any American who was adventurous, flexible, and willing to laugh about all the unexpected little "adventures" could live in this home and village quite easily.  --JF     



Sunday, May 13, 2006  |  10:33 pm

Mwesee

Beautiful warm spring days.  Bright blue skies, pale green new leaves budding everywhere.  At night and first thing in the morning you can hear “coo-coo” birds (as in coo-coo clocks) calling to each other.  Their songs, however, are more melodious than the clocks.
____

The morning was soft and misty with bright sun breaking through. Absolutely gorgeous.  I’ve discovered that there is a view of the Vyatka River from the front windows.  Once I finished breakfast, I opened the courtyard door so that the home, as much as possible, will give the feeling of welcome.  (That was at the suggestion of one of  four students from New Hampshire who are doing a special Mwesee Expedition project with me while I am here.)  At the suggestion of another of the Expeditioners, I made apple sauce first thing and left it on the stove. It not only fills the house with a lovely aroma (a friend sent me off with an incredible amount of fresh spices), but it is always ready to serve if someone drops by. . . and someone is always dropping by.  Applesauce is an unknown dish here.  No one so far has eaten it alone.  It seems to them that it should be spread on bread.
     My first guest arrived about 8 in the morning. (A small flock of geese have taken up residence in my front yard.  Wherever I am in the house, I know when a guest has arrived when the geese start to squawk.)  My first visitor was Tanya.  She lives one field over.  She is the postmaster.  She came to get acquainted and invited me to dinner next week.  The rest of the day proved to be a steady stream of visitors.  We had a large meal here at noon which Tatyana (Nikolai’s cousin) helped prepare.  There were seven of us all together.  It was a traditional “send off” as Nikolai is to leave for the Urals early tomorrow morning.
     We found, sadly, that two other houses in the village that have been vacant for many years, also lost their roofs under the heavy snow of last winter.  (Now we understand why we were given this home that has only been vacant a year.  The village is desperate to preserve the homes that are still strong.)  Nikolai and Tatyana went through the collapsed homes to see if there were special things that should be saved and that we could preserve in the American Home.  As a result, a beautiful samovar has now found its place on the hutch -- and an absolutely magical little spinning wheel is now in the front room next to the writing table.  It is deep green with goldish-yellow trim and design.  There is still wool on the spindle waiting to be finished.  There are probably hundreds of such spinning wheels in the village. When our friend Nikolai Aleksandrovich (the head of the village) and his wife Emelia came for dinner they were thrilled that we were “willing” to help preserve such village items.  So the home is slowly being filled with beauty and the villagers grateful and pleased that the work of their hands is valued. 
     I decided early on, that no matter how little food I had in the house, when guests arrived I would put out all that I could on the table and not worry about the next meal.  The reason is, again, to give the feeling that Americans can live here as friends and neighbors, and not as foreigners nor strangers.  Each time I have just about run out of food, some guest arrives with a sack full of food.  Thus, at the moment, I’m hoping I’ll have guests tomorrow as I have more food than I can eat alone and I don’t want it to spoil.--JF 



Monday, May 14, 2006  |  7:30 pm

Mwesee

By seven I was out in the front garden painting a small table and two small chairs.  Most of the furniture in the American Home needs painting, but the reason to haul it all outside is again at the suggestion of the students who are participating in the Mwesee Expedition project.  They recommended that I do as much as I can outside so that I can strike up conversations with the neighbors.  I thus got acquainted with three different elderly babushki (grandmothers).  Sadly, there are fewer people in the village than I expected as more and more migrate to the cities each year.
        A little dog has taken up residence in my courtyard.  He is white with pointy ears and a tail that never stops wagging.  He is very polite, never barking and never coming into the house though the door is open all day.  When I can’t eat all my lunch or dinner I give him the scraps which may have something to do with his loyalty.  I’m open to any suggestions for names if you’d like to e-mail me recommendations. 
      In addition, I painted the woodstove.  The stove is a technological wonder given all that it can do.  The most wonderful part is the spout I pour water into each morning.  Within an hour I have hot water that comes out of a spigot six or eight inches below the spout.  I don’t know how much the iron container built into the stove holds, but it is more than enough to give me hot water all day.  The stove is made of bricks which are then heavily plastered over.  Finally, there is a special white paint that is quite thick when it goes on and then becomes chalky once it’s dried.  (It’s water, and not oil, based paint.)
      The reason for rushing to get as much done as I can, is that some time this week there will be a truck load of children coming from Vetoshkino to visit the American Home.  (There isn’t a school bus here, or anywhere in the region, and so one of the farmers will load the children into the back of a hay wagon and carry them here.)  I will try to video tape our time together as they are preparing songs and dances to share with me.  Their biggest hope is that some year American children will come here with me to visit.
      I don’t think my hands will ever be the same.  In just a week’s time they’ve become thick and rough. The most challenging part of living here is not having a hot shower or bath after a long, grubby day of work.  I still haven’t learned how to get clothes really clean in the river, though technically it’s supposed to be more effective than a washing machine. Actually, you don’t wash the clothes in the river, you wash them in the three-foot tub you bathe in (if you don’t have a banya.)  You only rinse the clothes in the river.  And the rinsing, I’ve learned, has as much to do with getting them clean as the washing.  Along that line, I’d do anything to have trash bags, dust cloths, furniture polish . . . and a hot fudge sundae before going to bed.  If anyone has any suggestions for what I could make dust rags out of, I’d gladly welcome them.  I’m sorry now that we threw out a bunch of old ragged clothes on the first day.  It never dawned on me (since they were utterly grubby) that they could be washed and torn apart for cleaning rags. 
      I found an amazing little instrument today.  The handle resembles a foot long broom handle at the end of which is a “spiked” wooden attachment that resembles one of the pieces in the children game of jacks.  It is used, I learned, to knead bread.  It seems even more amazing as I look down and see it sitting here next to my laptop and mobile phone.     --JF 



Tuesday, May 16, 2006  |  10:50 am

Mwesee

It is cold and rainy this morning -- one of those damp, grey days that feels colder than it really is.  Two and a half hours after getting up, I had managed to start the woodstove, make breakfast and do the dishes.  For some reason it took me well over an hour to get the stove lit.  At one point I despaired of running out of both kindling and patience -- not to mention, hope  Yet, there was no choice.  I now have run out of clean clothes and have to do washing today.  Thus, I had to have a hot fire.  I finally found an old, unusable broom in the barn (here, brooms are made out of narrow, narrow tree limbs) which I broke up for kindling and got the stove going.  The frustrating part was, I didn’t know why the fire wasn’t catching.  I didn’t know if the wood was damp or if I did something improperly with the infinite number of little doors and vents you have to adjust as you start the stove and the other set you have to adjust once it gets going.  Thus, the morning is close to being over and I’ve only managed to get myself breakfast.  Already I’m having to think about putting water in the pot on the stove and peeling potatoes to make myself soup for lunch. Each day it amazes me how much time it takes just to do the most basic things.  I have virtually no free time. 
      After getting the stove going and breakfast made, I suddenly looked down to see that my last clean blouse was utterly filthy from carting wood, traipsing through the barn, and reaching in and out of the stove.  The next time I go to town I will try to buy a man’s large shirt to wear over my clothes to help keep them cleaner.  It also finally dawned on me that I could make a carrier to haul firewood by making four holes in a burlap sack I found and putting two short broom handles through the holes for handles. That too will help keep my clothes cleaner.  (Thank goodness that whoever lived here earlier saved all their old brooms!)  How quickly and, at the same time, how slowly, I feel like I’m learning to live here!  The story has a happy ending, however.  Before Nikolai left for the Urals, he brought over a box full of food supplies, including powder to make hot chocolate. Thus, once the stove was roaring, the dishes were washed and a new load of firewood was brought in, I sat down and treated myself to a cup of steaming hot chocolate.
      I have a small table in the kitchen on which I prepare food and wash the dishes.  It tilts to the left and then slightly forward.  I’ve now learned to keep a bucket at the left front leg to catch the water that spills off the table and on to the floor.  It can later be used to mop up something that has spilled or to clean some wonderful old object I find in the barn each day.  At the other end of the kitchen (the kitchen is a narrow “L” that wraps around the woodstove) is a small sink.  Nikolai found the sink in the barn and built a little stand for it.  The hole in the bottom has no pipe attached to it.  Instead, there is a small stool underneath it on which is set a bucket to catch the water.   Above the sink is a narrow metal bucket with a ¼ inch hole in the bottom and a long narrow stopper that hangs down.  When it is down, it seals off the water.  To wash your hands or brush your teeth, you push up the stopper and it lets the water out.  The tricky part is, you have to keep the stopper held up to have the water flow out.
         Svetlana was over until 11 last night.  She’s become a wonderful friend already.  She laughed and said that the villagers think that I must be a millionaire, being able to buy a ticket to come all the way to Mwesee. It is an image I must work hard to break through.  The perception of all Americans as rich and far removed from “common life” would keep a wall between us and much of the world.  I spoke with Tatyana this morning about it (she asks me to call her each morning to let her know everything is alright) and she said the only way through the stereotype is for the villagers to see me working each day doing the same, common, ordinary things they do.  Thus, on that note, I’m off to the river to do laundry.--JF 

Part II

Tuesday, May 16, 2006  |  5:50 pm

Mwesee

I had to write a Part II to this morning’s entry in the log book.  Despite the damp, grey skies, today turned out to be the day I have long waited for in Russia.  You could even say that it was an answer to my morning prayer. It was a day when those around me forgot to notice that I was different, or a stranger, and we all simply got on with living together as neighbors. 
      Again, as a result of an assignment I gave the Mwesee Expedition students to give me suggestions as to how I could become accepted in the village, I set out today to find a way to do something useful for my neighbors.  And the result was the following. 
       To get to the stream where you do your laundry, you have to cross a footbridge over a small ravine between two hills.  The footbridge has a series of long, narrow planks, one of which, at the far end of the bridge had rotted and fallen through.  It left only two narrow planks to walk on while carrying heavy water buckets or laundry baskets full of wet clothes. Then, when I got to the narrow platform on the bank of the stream where the laundry is done, there too things had decayed.  The board you stand on next to the water troughs had become like a teeter-totter as the ground under one end had washed away. 
       I’ll back up a minute to say that the stream you wash clothes in is astonishingly small and languid.  Yet, when you force even a small stream into a narrow trough and then dig the ground out below the trough to cause it to become a waterfall, the result is a rushing flow of water.  Below the water fall lie two additional large troughs (that resemble cradles) each of which have a hole in one end to let the water rush through.  By putting bricks over the hole, however, you can fill the troughs to rinse your laundry properly.  But the four old bricks used to stop up the troughs had disintegrated into several small pieces making it impossible to fill them. Thus I set my sack of laundry down on the mossy edge of the stream and headed back through the narrow valley and up the hill to the first house we had been given (whose roof collapsed last winter).  I remembered that it had a stack of bricks in the courtyard.  To make a long story short, I took several bricks back to the stream to put under the board you stand on (thus steadying it and keeping it out of the water) and put two more large bricks at the end of the troughs to use for sealing them up.  I went back once more to the house and found two very solid small doors that were probably used on pens that housed either sheep or goats.  They each had three planks solidly bound together by two cross planks.  As fortune would have it, they fit perfectly over the hole in the bridge enabling you to cross it safely now.  All of the repairs are very unprofessional, and merely cobbled together, but they at least work.  Finally, I happened upon a bunch of kindling in the first house that I can now use to start the woodstove every morning.
      But this is all not the point of the story.  The most important thing that happened was, that on the way home a couple of neighbors who had seen me working came out to say “Good morning”.  We had a wonderful chat which resulted in three of them coming to the American Home to have tea and sit and talk.  After tea I showed them the short films we’ve made of life in America.  Their smiles were worth all the time it took to make them.  But what I’m MOST grateful for is the ease with which we sat together “like neighbors”.  My heart absolutely leaped for joy when I got up to get more tea and from the kitchen heard one of the neighbors whisper to the other (they are elderly and so their whispers could be heard in Moscow), “She’s practically Russian.”  (Please forgive me for sharing such a self-centered comment.  The point is NOT to write about me, but to write about what is possible.)  It was my first hope that the infinite number of barriers that are falsely thrown up between peoples and nations are made of illusions and nothing truly solid.   --JF


I can’t thank everyone enough for their calls and e-mails.  They mean more than I can say.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006  |  5:20 pm
Mwesee

_________
Bright blue skies, but a penetratingly cold wind has been racing across the fields all day.  The village babushki (grandmothers) pointed out a particular tree yesterday whose leaves flip backward when it is about to be cold.  There is little they don’t know.
_____________

I happened to look out the window this morning just as she was turning off the path and up to the American Home.  She was bent at the waist at about a 45 degree angle and had a walking stick.  None the less she was sure footed and resolute over the bumpy path.  I swung open the kitchen window and waved her to come in.  Her head was wrapped in a flowered wool scarf and she wore an old man’s blue padded jacket.  She wore thick woolen socks and valenki.  Her toothless smile was an innocent as a baby’s.
     I soon learned that she was Auntie Vera, Nikolai Aleksandrovich’s 85-year old mother.  (He is the head of this village as well as Votskoya.) She had come to see if all was well, but really to see the inside of the American Home as word has spread quickly that it has all been made new, though really it has just been thoroughly cleaned.  She nodded in approval at where I had placed all the furniture and the color of the little stool and chair I painted two days ago.  “Harashor!  Harashor!” she said over and over.  “Very good.  Very good.”
     I, of course, immediately put the tea pot on and went to the sideboard where I still have two fresh oranges.  Fruit is a real treasure here and so I have saved it for company.  We shared an orange and tea as she sat and told me the history of the village.  Before we began to eat, she quietly and unobtrusively crossed herself.   She was born and raised here, never having lived anywhere else and never having traveled farther than Kirov.
      It is impossible not to notice the hands of the babushki.  They are so thick, rough, red, and worn.  I all too well now understand those hands. Like mine, they look unwashed, but they are not.  They are simply never without work:  scrubbing buckets with old rags, scrapping the scales off the freshly caught fish, fighting the endless battle against the dust that blows through the open windows, and rubbing the coarse laundry in the freezing stream.  (My hands were numb after doing yesterday’s laundry and it is mid-May!)  
      It was only when I walked Auntie Vera home, steadying her step by holding her arm, that I realized what an incredibly unselfish thing it had been for her to walk all the way to the American Home to welcome me.  I will make a fresh batch of apple sauce tomorrow and take to her.  She and her little silver and black cat, Masha, live in only one of two brick homes in the village.  It is classic.  The most beautiful home, in my opinion, in the village. 
          There are an infinite number of little details to notice all around you.  The babushki wrap their heads in scarves not to look like some quintessential illustration from a childrens book, but to both keep warm and, especially, to keep their hair clean.  As I get to have a banya only once a week now, I too go about the village in such a scarf. 
      If you look carefully, every babushka has a safety pin pinned on to either her apron or sweater.  (Babushka Natalia wears no less than four safety pins.)  She pinned one on my sweater before I left Vetoshkino for Mwesee. She said it was an old tradition of wishing a new homemaker well.  She said too that it would not be long before I understood the tradition.  Almost every day that little safety pin has been used in one way or another.
      Curtains hang in doorways (instead of doors) so that the woodstove can heat the entire house easily.  All the little doors here and there on the stove (our stove has seven) are not only to regulate the heat, but are used for cleaning the insides.  Two metal plates (that resemble narrow cutting boards) can be slid into two upper slots at night preserving the heat almost twice as long as it could be preserved otherwise.
      Everything left on the table (a bowl of fruit or nuts, the sugar or salt bowls) are covered with a cloth, not to keep things fresher, but against the dust.
      To let someone know you have arrived for a visit, you knock on the window.  Specifically, you knock on the “fortochka” – the little lower pane that opens separately from the window itself, allowing you to converse with people on the street.  You soon learn who has arrived by the strength of the knock -- whether it is a man, woman, or child.
      But by far, the thing you notice most of all, are the babushki’s hands.

     Today was Svetlana’s day to visit all the elderly villagers who can no longer easily go out of their homes.  She invited me to come with her so that she could show me the entire village.  I am amazed at how big it is. I had no idea.  There are four main roads, separated by fields.  The other streets, as Svetlana called them, are no more than a flattened strip of grass the width of your two feet.  Yet each of these little paths has a street name.  At one point, the “street” led us through a woods and then to a steep ravine.  Before I could see the ravine, Svetlana turned to me and said, “Are you afraid of heights?”  The steep path downward winding path is on the very edge of the drop off (literally on the edge of it). As I made my way gingerly along it I could only think of having to traverse it in the winter!  We then came to a bridge that crossed the ravine.  The bridge was no more than three feet wide and had no arm rails.  It slopped off to one side . . . and was made of sheet metal!  I still don’t believe that I crossed it.  “Isn’t it solid ice in the winter?” I asked Svetlana.  “I suppose so,” she replied.  “I’ve never thought about it.”
     It was a telling comment.  So much of what I’ve considered unimaginable living conditions, the villagers simply don’t notice.  They have never known anything else.
     Wherever we went, I was warmly welcomed.  It was a real treat to get to see the inside of so many homes.  Some were classic.  Others extremely modest.  Where I could, I took pictures, but often felt it was inappropriate on the first visit.  Everywhere some little thing was put out on the table for us to eat: a cup of cottage cheese, bread with honey, a cup of milk or tea – whatever there was to share.  Again, I could only think how unselfish it was, given that those we were visiting were very elderly and could not easily restock their pantries.
     Most every house has an ice house (though old refrigerators are common).  The ice houses have small doors that you must stoop to enter and very low ceilings.  They have a cellar hole filled with ice, covered by a thick board.  All the food is stacked on the board.
      In one home (the most classic and traditional of all the homes we were in) when you first entered you had to bend over the ceiling was so low.  It then opened up into the kitchen where the ceiling was normal height.  Later I saw that the low ceiling was built off the woodstove and was an upper platform off the stove where the family slept.  It’s hard to describe, but it was an ingenious design to keep warm through the night.
     We finally visited the home of a woman who is an “Old Believer”.  The traditional icon corner was in the right front corner of the kitchen draped with an intricately woven cloth.  The icons had been passed down from generation to generation.  They were worn with age and dimmed by the smoke of candles.  Still, they were truly beautiful.
     Tomorrow the weekly delivery truck arrives.  I’m out of only sugar. I’m hopeful to buy more fruit, but that is unlikely. If I can buy some candies I will buy those too to put out for company.  --JF 



Thursday, May 18, 2006  |  9:30 am
Mwesee
__________
I can’t thank everyone enough for their calls and e-mails.  They mean more than I can say. One friend wrote to suggest that I go out to the sheds where sacks of grain and flour would have been stored to find material for dust rags.  There I found two small cloth sacks filled with herbs of some sort and one burlap sack.  The larger of the two cloth sacks has now become a laundry bag, and the smaller a dust rag.  A portion of the old herb leaves are now on the bottom of my trash bucket to absorb moisture.  The burlap sack has been torn up for dust rags.  They are a real killer on your hands, but they clean things amazingly well.
     The question was asked as to how Russians’ take advantage of all the naturally growing herbs, plants, and leaves the land pours forth.  I’ll ask the villagers and answer the question as soon as I can.
________

Today’s Log Book Entry:
Part I

When I went out this morning before breakfast to get firewood, there was frost on the ground.  I had left enough wood in the house last night to start a quick fire, but wanted to bring in more before the day got going. For breakfast I had hot chocolate, bread with jam (the jam was a gift from Svetlana), and a cucumber that Babushka Natalia sent over with Mikhail two days ago.
      Even these moderately cold days make me realize what an enormous amount of effort it must take to live here in the winter.  I can’t fathom it.  I don’t know how the older ones do it.  I already realize that I’ve arranged the furniture in the house improperly.  I put the writing table in the far corner because it looked good there.  But it is the farthest point away from the woodstove.  Today I will move it next to the woodstove and put one of the trunks Nikolai bought in the corner instead.
     For all the work, there is a peacefulness and uncomplicated rhythm that fills the days -- a simplicity that is greatly to be desired.  There is a conscious sense of freedom that I have yet to be able to preserve when I return home.  It is a freedom from all the things we let bother, burden, and trouble us.  (The things we find so important at the moment -- even though it would be hard to say why.)  With so few things  -- and, in the villages at least, nothing to systematically educate people to want more and more -- and with so much work to be done each day, there is less time for foolish thoughts and concerns, and more need to simply take care of one another.  (I now understand why the village homes are built on top of one another.  Without the closeness you would feel utterly lost in this place – swallowed up by the land and the elements, and overwhelmed by the remoteness.  That is in part because the village is largely without cars. I have seen only two cars and one motorcycle in the entire village.  Thus, for virtually all of the villagers, the only way anywhere is by foot – and where you would walk to is beyond where your eyes can see.  Thus, without the close proximity of the homes, it would be ten times harder for people to help each other.  And you cannot live here without the help of others.) 
       It is humbling to live among people who are so poor (the laptop computer I work on cost more than they can earn in 10 years) and yet who have such an abundance of all those things that  give life so much worth and meaning.  Again, if you can get past their patched clothes, weathered faces, gnarled hands, and stooped forms, they are truly good and dear people. (We visited an elderly couple yesterday who make and sell honey. They must have 60 or 70 bee hives.  I didn’t dare, but I so wished I could photograph the seat of the grandfather’s pants.  They had a patch so huge it looked like a caricature.  Each knee had an additional patch the size of a large potholder.)  The people are no more remarkable than blades of green grass.  Yet, like the grass, they must give to earth something that, without which, the earth would be hard, brown, and dry.
        Yesterday I discovered a pile of split and stacked firewood out beyond the barn where the fields start.  It was hidden by some scrub bushes that have grown up since the house has been without a caretaker.  The wood has probably been there two or three years.  It is still usable, but will not be after another winter.  Thus I decided to save the wood that is stacked in the barn for next year, and use the wood in the field.  I carried in about eight loads after breakfast.  Because the wood is already very dry, I suspect it won’t last more than two days.
      The fields that belong to the house are enormous.  They are maybe four football fields in length and two football fields in width.  It had been plowed, it seems, before the owners left – as if they had not expected to leave.
       I am surprised how many verses in the Bible have taken on new meaning since living here.  For some reason, not once I have found myself thinking that it was just such people the Master lived in the midst of, and taught and healed.  The people he lived amongst were no different and no more remarkable than these.  And for some reason that thought has captivated me. Rather than their being disdained, I wonder if there is something in them waiting to be refound  -- something from them I need to relearn and regain.  --JF

Thursday, May 18, 2006  |  7:30 pm
Mwesee
__________
Part II

I made my most successful meal so far today and felt like I had eaten a feast.  Mid morning I made hearth bread and cream of potato soup.  About noon, I saw that most of the village had gathered  -- sitting together on benches in front of what was once the library, kitty-corner from the American Home.  I thus realized that the weekly produce truck would be arriving soon.  As I watched them from the window, I realized that it was the weekly “event” – something to look forward to as they sat and talked and laughed waiting for the truck.
     Seeing them all together, I suddenly got cold feet.  How should I approach them?  What should I say?  (Most of those who gathered were from different parts of the village and I didn’t know them).  The only thought that came to mind was that I should definitely go last so that they could purchase as much as they needed in case there was not an abundance of certain things.  I finally took off my apron, put on my headscarf, grabbed a cloth sack, and stood a moment by the door reaching out for a help beyond my own to find a way to blend easily with them.
       I waited by the front garden as, for a long time nothing seemed to happen or get started, and I didn’t know why.  Finally, one of the villagers who I met yesterday (the beekeeper) spotted me and called out “Zhenya!” (They can’t pronounce Jeannie) do you have a table to spare that we could use?  I hurried into the courtyard where there was just what was needed.  By that time two men were at my heels picking up the table and carrying it over to the truck.  It was all that was needed to be accepted. 
     As I approached the group they smiled openly and waved me to come nearer. We made small talk while two women in blue smocks unloaded the truck.  It was quite a production.  The table became the check out counter with two abacuses and a glass jar filled with change.  Then box after box of goods was laid out on the road: a box filled with nothing but matches (match boxes), another filled with bags of sugar and flour, another filled with sausage, another with spaghetti and macaroni, another with five small bags of apples and five more of sunflower seeds, one more box with sweets (cookies and candies), and yet another with household items (toilet paper, shampoo, soap, and work gloves). The end of the truck had racks of fresh made bread.  Only when the last box was laid on the ground did the villagers form a line and begin to inspect this week’s choices.  How patiently they wait!  To my surprise and delight, they didn’t mind in the least that I took photographs. When I took as many as I thought I could without overdoing it (I will take more next Thursday as well) I quietly went to the end of the line. 
     It seems that I was the only one interested in the apples (most likely because most of them have only a few teeth), and there were plenty of bags of spaghetti.  I bought the last stick of sausage and a jar of homemade tomato sauce they recommended I make soup with.  All in all, everyone couldn’t have been more warm or helpful.  They carefully explained what everything was and how to use it.  They are such dear little people.  I am so relieved that they don’t seem to be afraid of me.  One of the few elderly bachelors in the village asked if I was married.  Everyone laughed.
     Finally, we all hurried home with our sacks of food to make dinner. In addition to my bread and soup, I also had some sausage and half of the cucumber left over from breakfast.  After dinner I took a bowl of soup to Auntie Vera who I didn’t see among the crowd.  She hadn’t had dinner and it didn’t appear as if anything was in the process of being made.  Tomorrow I will take more soup as well as homemade apple sauce.  Eventually I’ll take a little cup to each of the neighbors I know.  If the villagers like it, we will have gotten the victory over their toothless mouths and apple sales should rise significantly.
     Each day, twelve-year-old Olya and Anton come by after school for a cookie, a glass of juice and a game of checkers.  (One of my friends sent me off with a wonderful little wooden checker board set that doubles as a tea tray.)  Both children are dear, but little Anton is a real heart melter.  He has huge blue eyes and an irresistible smile.  Olya and Anton are best friends and today they arrived with a chess set determined to teach me how to play.  It was hopeless of course, but we had a good laugh. While they were here, Nikolai Aleksandrovich arrived with a bunch of flowers he had picked on the road.  “A home is not a home without flowers” he said.  Apparently the children paid close attention to my true delight in having flowers, for an hour after they had gone home to have supper, they arrived once again – each with a bouquet in hand.  They then invited me to take a walk on their favorite road to the river.  It is only a short distance.  They darted off the road like little rabbits finding more flowers and running back with huge eager smiles.  When we got the the river, which is still very full from the spring rains, I then learned that the point of coming to the river is not to sit and gaze at it.  It is to jump all the little riverlets that are still flowing here and there without falling in the mud.  I watched, they jumped.   --JF



Friday, May 19, 2006  |  4:15 pm
Mwesee

     Help!  Can any of you think of games I can teach the children here? The ones who come by are in the 10 to 13 age range. 
     Also a question.  How long can butter sit out and not go bad?  This is homemade butter that is in a jar with a plastic cover (i.e. it is not margarine).
__________
Today’s Log Entry:

Each time I log on to my e-mail server I laugh.  It says “Pick up your mail anywhere in the world”.  If only they knew . . .

     Dear Auntie Vera walked all the way over again today to invite me to dinner at noon.  Just the walk over (let alone the invitation) was an act of pure unselfishness.  It demands so much of her to get here.  As I walked her back we had to stop half way and let her rest on a neighbor’s front bench.  Each house has its own wooden bench.  It is usually no more than a sturdy board set on two birch stumps.  It is along the front of the house where you can sit with neighbors and chat, but is also a place for anyone to stop and rest should they need to. Auntie Vera inhaled the hot applesauce.  Tomorrow we’ll see how Auntie Raiisa likes it.  She has even fewer teeth than Auntie Vera.
     As I bent under the low door into Auntie Vera’s kitchen I immediately saw dinner waiting on the table.  The table had a well worn green and yellow plastic cover over it, which is typical in village homes as the plastic covers are easy to wipe clean. (The beautiful tablecloth that a friend made me draws everyone’s attention.  Not only because it is so bright and cheerful, but because it is cloth.)   Auntie Vera’s tablecloth was only moderately clean, but there was no ill to be thought of that as she does not see well now.  It is clear that she works hard to keep house despite the fact that she needs to walk using a cane.  Everything in the kitchen was neat and orderly even if not clean. 
     On a plastic bag was a loaf of bread she had made yesterday and a long sharp knife.  There was one plate set in the middle of the table on which were four very, very small pickled tomatoes.  In addition, at my place and hers, set directly on the table, was a hot potato.  Thus we at our dinner of bread, two tomatoes, and a hot potato.  For dessert I had brought her a cup of hot applesauce.  She inhaled it.  Tomorrow we’ll see how Auntie Raiisa likes it.  She has even fewer teeth than Auntie Vera.  Again I was able to take pictures.  Auntie Vera was not the least self-conscious or hesitant.
     We sat and chatted for about 30 minutes after dinner, but I didn’t want to stay longer as it was clear that she was tired.  (For that matter, so was I.  I did very little today -- though every day demands hauling water, carting wood for the stove, and doing the dishes by hand.  Still, today I neither cleaned house nor washed clothes.  I had intended to pick up bits of trash on the road, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.) 
      As so often happens with the elderly babushkas, Auntie Vera quickly launched into a discussion of things religious.  She, like the others, wanted to know about churches in America, and if I go to church or am able to read the Bible.  (Not if it is allowed -- but simply if am I able to read it.  The Russian Bible of “Old Believers” is in a dialect no longer spoken, in addition to the fact that during their life times, for the most part, it was forbidden to read the Bible.)  There is an awe in their eyes that is very humbling when I tell them I read it daily.  You can see how much they yearned for such a privilege.  Yet, their sincerity and hunger for things spiritual seems to me to be equally yearned for.
     Before I left, Auntie Vera got up and made her way into her bedroom. I heard her rummaging through a drawer.  When she reappeared she had a little packet in her hand – a piece of paper folded over and over again. As she opened it she said, “When my children were little (she has seven children) I gave them each a cross.”  (A brave thing to do in communist times.)  “They kept losing them and so I had to keep a supply on hand.” (Though I can’t imagine where she got them.)  She then told me choose one for myself.  Most of them were about ¾ of an inch in height.  But then I spotted a very small one no more than a ¼" in height.  It was so worn than it was as thin as tissue paper.  Could I have that one, I asked?  She couldn’t imagine why I’d want the smallest and most worn one, but I told her that I thought it was the most beautiful one I had ever seen.  Thus I came home with a little cross in my pocket from Auntie Vera.  –JF

P.S.  The name Vera comes from the word “vereet” and “vera”. The first means “to believe” and the second means “faith”.



Saturday, May 20, 2006  |  3:45 pm
Mwesee

Today was the first tough day.  When two men, with a young child in hand, knocked on the window last night (it was still light, though it was close to 10 o'clock and the neighbors were still outside talking with one another), there was nothing to justify concern.  Their faces were weathered and their clothes worn, but that is no different than any villager. Immediately, I understood, that they had the child with them to signal to me that they wanted to do me no harm.  When I asked what they wanted, they replied that they wanted to know who had moved in and what type of books I wrote.
      I told them to come back tomorrow during the day if they wanted to talk, or they could go across the street and ask Svetlana about me.  With that they left the yard -- but left me with a storm of feelings which, even though I knew were wholly unjustified, I could not shake off.  How did they know I was a writer?  Why did they want to know what kind of books I wrote? Were they suspicious that I was here to write poorly of Russia?  Were they pleased or displeased, glad or angry, that an American was living here? (In all fairness, it is even clear to me how strange it must seem -- why an American would want to live in a beautiful, but utterly poor, village in the middle of nowhere.  Furthermore, they have no way of knowing how or what I write about.)
      Thus, when I woke up this morning it was with a lonely feeling of estrangement and that I could accomplish very little here because the differences between us were simply too great.  I was discouraged, as well as disgusted with myself that I had immediately rebuffed the two men and distrusted them. (In no circumstance would I have let them in at that hour, but I could have talked with them through the fortochka - the little window that opens within the kitchen window - or I could have gone outside where the neighbors were.)  It was against my whole reason for being here to so abruptly turn them away -- and against all that I proclaim I believe about the inherent worth of man.  Thus, the day seemed cold and grey both inside the house and out.   To make matters worse, my cell phone suddenly stopped working.
      I knew the depressed mood I was in had to be fought.  I forced myself, literally, to go down to the river and do "a load" of laundry. When I returned home, the feeling persisted and so again, with greater effort, I forced myself to go back to the river and finish the repair on the bridge.  Yet, I returned again still feeling low.
      At one point I looked out the window and saw Auntie Raiisa and the beekeeper (Svetlana's father-in-law) sitting on a bench, talking.  It took as much effort as lifting a bolder out of a hole, but I put on my jacket and went out to talk to them.  Immediately Svetlana appeared and said she was eager to talk to me and assure me that the men who stopped by last night were genuinely interested in meeting me.  She also said that she told them how stupid they had been to arrive so late and that naturally that would have frightened me.  With that they protested that they had brought the child along to show that they were kind, harmless people.  They had traveled all the way from Lee`byazha (some 15 miles away which is no small distance given the roads, gas prices, and the miniscule salaries people earn) to "meet the American".  Thus, they went away truly disappointed that they had not been able to talk to me.
     I then learned how they knew I was here.  As it turns out, the "fish are running" in the Vyatka River, and all the men from the surrounding villages are there stocking up for their families.  Someone from Mwesee shared the news that an American, who was a writer, had taken up residence. When the two men from Lee`byazha heard the story, they decided to make the drive to Mwesee as they had never met an American and one of them was a writer.
     It was an opportunity lost and, even worse, very likely left them with a view of Americans as unfriendly.  Thus, I have been spending the day wondering what it would take to live with "the risk" (as some might see it) of giving people a chance to be people and allowing them into our experience rather than shutting them out. 

___________
Monday, May 22, 2006  |  8:30 a.m.
Vetoshkino

As planned, Mikhail and Tatyana came to pick me up Saturday afternoon to spend the night with them in Vetoshkino.   However, after a long family discussion, we came to the unexpected conclusion that I will live here with the family until it is time for me to go the Urals.  The reason is three-fold.  First, we heard on the news that we are to get four or five days of heavy rain (which began last night).  If that is the case, the road to Mwesee will become impassable and that has made everyone uneasy.   And it is obviously not my purpose to be here to give others concern. 
     Secondly, the home in Mwesee has been made as livable as we can make it for Americans at this point.  I have lived there as easily as could have been expected (I think) and have learned what it will take for other Americans to live there.  Thus we have accomplished what we wanted in regard to the American Home.  Finally, it is clear that I can learn much more about the Russian people and Russian life (and they about Americans) living in Vetoshkino with the family.  And the thing you learn quickly is that village life is work without end -- every day of the week regardless of the season or weather.
      Each day I rise at 4:30 to give myself an hour by myself.  By 5:30 it is time to care for the cows and chickens.  By 6:30 it is time to make breakfast, which is eaten at 7:00.  If it is a week day, Tatyana and Mikhail go off to work.  Mikhail sells meat and milk products in Kirov, and Tatyana is the head (perhaps you could say the director) of the "kolhoz". Vetoshkino still operates as a kolhoz which means that the community hires people to do certain jobs which benefit everyone, and that other work is done by everyone and for everyone.  For example, this Saturday will be the first day the cows are put out to pasture some three miles away.  Each day of the week one man in the village is responsible for shepherding them to the pasture early in the morning, taking care of them during the day, and bringing them home at night.  They say when the cows approach the village they themselves know where to go and each heads off to her own home. During the summer, during people's "dinner break" at noon, the women ride in a truck out to the pasture to milk the cows.  In earlier times, Babushka said they'd have to walk to the pasture and carry the heavy milk buckets home by hand.  The truck is called a "kolhoz" truck.  That is, it belongs to the entire village and is used for communal work.
     On the weekends Mikhail and Tatyana do all it takes to keep the home, banya, barn, and gardens in repair and good order.  Sunday, for instance, after breakfast we headed to the outdoor market in Lee`byazha (under a pouring rain) to buy supplies for the week.  The market is open only once a week in Lee`byazha on Sunday.  Weather is not a factor.  Even if it is pouring rain, or 40 below zero, the merchants -- some 100 of them -- are there with their little makeshift stalls.  At the market you can buy everything from clothes to shoes, car parts, kitchen utensils, basic food stuffs (flour, sugar), and plants for your garden.  Here too you can "eat out" once a week as each "corner" of the market has grill where men make and sell shashlik (the Russian version of barbeque).  The merchants travel from town to town -- a different town each day of the week -- so as to supply all the surrounding villages.  If you forget to buy everything you need, or if you can't find what you need, you have to wait until the following week.  I have already gone through all the hand cream I brought with me and, sadly, the one merchant who sells such things was out.  Thus I'll have to wait until next week. 
     When we returned home from the market it was time to work.  (That word has taken on a whole new meaning for me.)

      From a distance, life on a farm is romantic: the fluffy hay spilling out of the loft, the roosters crowing, the black fields newly turned, the first wheat sprouting.  A little closer, however, and soon your hands, feet, clothes, and nose reveal a "slightly different" reality.  My first job Sunday afternoon was to plant this year's crop of onions.  Sack in hand I stooped over the rich, black earth and surveyed how long the furrow was I had to plant.  Tomorrow I'll walk it to measure it, but I'm sure the onion patch alone is two football fields in length (though the very narrow).  I selected my first onion and suddenly fell into doubt as to which end was supposed to be plunked into the ground.  Tatyana started to laugh, immediately summing up the situation, but said nothing.  When I chose the right end she simply nodded in approval and went off to get the "fertilized hay" to put over the row once I had planted it.  (That job makes me tired just thinking about it, the hay is so thick and heavy.)
     Half way down the row I apparently disturbed a bee on a dandelion who promptly welcomed me to farm life by stinging me.  Tatyana laughed again and ran over and pulled out the stinger, broke open an onion and rubbed it on my hand.  She then went back to work before I could say, "Was it my accent that offended him or are Americans considered a delicacy?"  In any case, I went back to work and finished the row before dinner.
     It was then time to cart wood into the banya and fill the five huge barrels with water.  (That job, though a heavy one, is one of the easiest in that it soon promises relief.  The wood begins to crackle in the stove, the barrels of water begin to heat up, and soon you are steaming away on a long bench.)  As you can do your laundry in the banya, I took along my work shirt and pants (did I say VERY dirty work shirt and pants?), and both pairs of thick socks that only recently were new and light blue.  This morning, however, I quickly learned that it is a mistake to wash both pairs of socks at once as neither dried over night.
     Thus I headed out to the barn at 5:30 to feed our one remaining cow and her calf with bare feet.  (One cow was sold to a neighbor last week, and two others were sold for meat.)  I still can't easily milk the cow and so I help by feeding her  . . . and cleaning the stall . . . three times a day. This, friends, is not for the faint of heart -- especially when you've washed both pair of socks and have no others to wear. There was no choice but to slip my bare feet into the two cold, thick rubber shoes that are worn for such work and get on with things.  The mother cow (Katusha) and her little calf (still to be named) greeted me with a gentle moo as I entered their stall.  Both acknowledged my rub down of their soft, silky necks by leaning against me as a dog does when you pat it -- though their "lean" is considerably more noticeable.   I then made my way to the place, shall we say, that needed the most work only to slowly discover that one of my rubber shoes, that held one of my bare feet, had a hole in it.  But as goes the Russian saying, nothing awful ever happens.  It's all just an adventure.  Next week at the market, I'll buy a third pair of socks. --JF 



Tuesday, May 23, 2006  |  5:15 pm
Vetoshkino

There is very little worth knowing that Babushka Natalia doesn't know.  Her life has been a hard (truly harsh) "school master," but it has taught her much.  Even so, she takes life easily.  There is little that upsets or concerns her, except perhaps, wasting even the slightest scrap of food or buying something new that you could make out of what is at hand.  Each day as I sit and write she comes in with something for me to eat: a cup of hot milk or entire loaf of bread.  This morning I returned from feeding the chickens to find that Babushka had set an entire loaf of steaming, hot bread on top of my closed computer to let me know it was for me.  (When the bread is finished baking, instead of setting the loaves on racks to eliminate the moisture on the bottom of the loaves, she simply turns them upside down across their pans and sets them in the oven for another five minutes.)
     Babushka works day in and day out without ceasing.  Her pace is slower now, but she nonetheless is busy at something every waking hour.  Yesterday she did all the family's laundry by hand, cleaned fish, ground meat into hamburger, restocked the onions and carrots, prepared the garlic bulbs for planting, worked in the garden tending to all the new plants in the hot houses, helped me get the banya ready for everyone's evening bath and, finally, set dough to rise before going to bed.  Her little bedroom at the end of the kitchen is virtually the center of life here.  There she braids onions and hangs them over the second little bed to keep.  There she stores the fresh egg in a bucket under the foot of the bed so that they are easily reached from the main part of the kitchen.  The weathered bucket is made of birch bark and was her mother's. On top of the second little bed is a host of useful things: an old shoe box that holds clothes clips, safety pins, and glue; old socks that are partly unraveled so that the yarn can be used for string, extra sponges to wash the dishes with, clothes needing mending, and a flashlight.  In addition, she now keeps the music box we found for her in Moscow on the pillow.  The bright red box has a picture of Mozart and plays 3 short sonatas.  The box came filled with candy.
     When it is time to hang the laundry out to dry it is on a host of lines that criss-cross each like a spider's web, the center of which is the apple tree whose branches are also used to hang out socks, underwear and handkerchiefs. In short, everything is useful.  Her apron serves to keep her one dress clean, hold little things in its pockets and, at a moment's notice, becomes a sack (turning up the sides and hem) in which to cart onion or potato peels out to the compost pile.
      Babushka's one dress is deep blue with flowers.  Her apron is an orange and brown paisley design and her head scarf is a yellow and green flower pattern.  I looked over at her the other day sitting in her chair fixing her hair, and from the angle I saw her, and for a brief moment, I could see what a beautiful woman she once was, though even today her toothless smile is truly dear. Babushka wears long heavy woolen socks which, I discovered last night as we went into the banya, are held up by strips of cloth she ties around her legs and socks just above the knee.
      We've had wonderful conversations since I've been here.  What respect I have for her!  She often speaks of her childhood when her only shoes were laptee (made of woven birch bark) and when the only light at night (and in the winter) was that gotten from strips of wood (resembling delicate strips of kindling) which were burned instead of candles -- which only the rich could afford.  Even here we use such kindling to start the woodstoves (instead of newspaper).  To make them you find a good, dry split log and a large knife.  You wedge the knife into the top of the log about 1/32 of an inch from the edge.  Getting the knife started is tricky, but then it slices off the wood strips like cutting through butter. 
      Babushka has known only poverty (or the bare essentials) all her life, and yet she does not carry herself as a demeaned or poor person. There is a dignity about her -- a resolve, resourcefulness, and determination -- that makes her life full and purposeful (even rich), and which has enabled her to survive two revolutions, two world wars, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The day she spoke of the second world war it was not of the fighting but of, as she put it, "raising three children on grass".  She said the years following the war were even more horrific. I've followed Babushka around incessantly, not only to learn how she does everything, but to photograph her.  Such are the women, I believe, that have held Russia together when so many things have relentlessly tried to tear it apart. --JF


 

Wednesday, May 24, 2006  |  11:30 pm Vetoshkino  

 The trials that beset village life are simpler, but weigh heavy on the heart nonetheless.  

     When the "master" (as they say of anyone who is able to fix something) arrived this morning to repair Babushka's sewing machine, it was the start of a very frustrating day for her.  The antique machine is run with a hand crank. When the master left and she went to use it, the finished stitches appeared on the bottom instead of the top and the hand crank would only work by turning toward her and not away from her as it should.  She shook her head and mumbled all afternoon about the "block head" who fixed the machine.       
     But even more traumatic, yesterday was the day when the calf had to be separated from its mother for the first time.  Soon the mother will be put out to pasture and if she is not separated from her offspring several days in advance, she will not stay in the pasture but will try to return home.  From my little room where I sleep I could hear her calling to her calf all night.      
    Today the road to Mwesee was passable and so we went to close up the house until next year and say goodbye to the neighbors.  Mikhail and a new friend, who is also named Mikhail, drove me in Mikhail's meat truck.  While they went to gather their fishing nets from the river (the nets are set at night and gathered the next morning) I worked in the house to put it in order.   It was much harder than I anticipated to say good-bye to Mwesee.  The villagers did everything in their power to open their hearts and their homes to me.  They could not have been kinder or tried harder to accept me.  
     I took Auntie Raiisa my large canister full of water and a little hand towel.  (The canister resembles a very large milk container you'd see on a farm and must be hauled by a little cart.)   I then went back to the house to fill a sack with my left over eggs, a head of cabbage, a jar of "tvorag" (a cross between cottage cheese and sour cream), and a box of tea.  This all would go to Auntie Vera.  I also had a little hand towel for her and the recipe for apple sauce.  We sat and talked perhaps 30 minutes.  It does not seem right to share the conversation as it was so intimate, but in general she lamented living until next summer to meet again.  She cried when it was time to go.  The parting was indeed difficult.  She then put her hand on my arm and told me to wait.  She got up and rustled in a drawer and returned with three balls of "raw" wool which still smelled of the sheep and barn it came from.  She said it made very warm socks for the winter.  They would be even warmer, I assured her, because the yarn came from her.
     I went home once more and gathered virtually all of my dry goods (flour, salt, noodles, spices, some canned goods, etc.) and took them to Svetlana. I saved my favorite hand towel for her.  I also gave her a little gift for her in-laws (the beekeepers) and for the post office clerk (whose son is Anton).  We sat out on the bench in front of her house and talked for almost an hour.  Svetlana is truly the saint of the village.  Without her neither the elderly, the sick, nor those who are often drunk could survive.  Her door is always open and she helps anyone who appears -- without question and without hesitation.  She works alone, and wholly unrecognized by anyone in the world save the villagers, but truly the world is a better place for such people.     
    I finally locked the house and left a pan of milk by the hole in the courtyard fence for the little white dog who came to stay with  me each day.  I learned that his name is Tomnik and that his real home is one field over.       
     Before I knew it Mwesee was left behind in the vast wilderness of land and sky that is Russia.  To my regret, I realized only this evening that I never took a picture of little Tomnik.  

Thursday, May 25, 2006  |  6:30 pm
Vetoshkino

In answer to the question as to how Russians take advantage of what grows all around, there is very little that they don't use.  Almost everything that grows is put to use, or at least appreciated.  Even the millions of dandelions that fill the fields are considered beautiful flowers and not weeds -- and to see their bright yellow faces blanketing vast stretches of land gives them a whole different character.  Juice from onions is considered the solution for taking the sting out of bee stings and the leaves of fresh cabbage or beets are used to wrap a wound instead of bandages or band aids.  There are thick stemmed leaves (the stems of which almost resemble celery) that are salted and eaten raw.  There are other leaves that are small and delicate, like four-leaf clovers, that are put in soup.  Actually, there are many different leaves along the road side (that look to me like weeds) that are put into soup or stews, though unfortunately I can't translate any of the names.  Mushrooms grow in abundance, no fewer than a dozen or more varieties. They are gathered in abundance and eaten year round. (Those eaten in the winter are either pickled or simply frozen.)  Wild onions grow in abundance and each variety has its own taste.  Fiddle heads are considered a delicacy (as they are everywhere), though here they are not as prolific as, say, in New England. By mid-summer there are at least four different wild berries that are gathered and made into jams and juice.  There are even certain roots that are boiled in soup broth.  In short, there is very little that grows that is not put to use.  All of this is called "the wisdom of the villagers, "that is, the wisdom of those who "live on the earth" (as opposed to living in apartment buildings).  Their understanding of all that grows has been passed down from generation to generation.  As a result, the children are well versed in how rich the earth is all around them and they have taught me as much as the adults.  You quickly come to appreciation the Russian people's love of "Mother Russia".  The phrase refers to the land itself and how it alone has never failed to provide for them.

     Once again the utter innocence of the children has touched me deeply and made me realize how wonderful it is when that quality is allowed to thrive in them.  It is the grandmothers, in particular, that seem to nurture that quality in the children and, in turn, the children thrive on the grandmothers' love and care.  Only this time have I realized what sheer contentment innocence gives to children.  Each day, two or three come by after school and invite me to go for a walk to the pond, or to the river, or simply through the village.  This time of year they love gathering flowers for their teachers or grandmothers . . . or for a guest from America.  On my writing table I have a large jar filled with bright red tulips, small white flowers that grow 20 or more to a long, willowy stem, and a clump of bright yellow flowers called "beautiful booklets".  They are tight little balls, about two inches in circumference, that open only one petal at a time.  They have an absolutely wonderful aroma to them. 
     When we go to the river, which winds and turns, and widens and narrows, the game of choice is seeing how many times you can jump from bank to bank without falling in.  (They invited me to play but I told them it was more fun to watch.)  They skip stones across the pond and delight in seeing the cows put out to pasture.  (It is truly a peaceful scene that you never tire of seeing.)  Even more fun is meeting all the new calves tied up to their owners' fences and in playing with all the new puppies the village has produced.  There is a joy in the children's faces, a happiness, that simply makes you smile.  They have showed me all their favorite paths and introduced me to all the grandmothers who sit out on their little benches under the afternoon sun, chatting.  Perhaps you could say that it all resembles a Russian version of a Norman Rockwell painting.
      Yesterday, Natasha and Kristina invited me to go to the river with them.  They study together in the 5th grade and are both learning English. On the return trip home, we met a kindly grandmother making her way along the road.  "That is Babushka Anna," the girls told me.  "She can't hear very well and so you have to wait until you are right next to her and then you have to shout into her ear, OK?"  Babushka Anna proved to be very dear and very pleased to see Natasha and Kristina.  While we chatted, Kristina suddenly said that she needed something at the store. (The store is a one room building that basically has flour and sugar, bread, sausage, apples, homemade cookies, hard candies, bottled water, and soda pop.  A long table that holds a few pair of slippers and goulashes divides the store whose second "department" contains things like soap, buckets and brushes). Kristina returned with a huge smile, four freshly baked cookies and one small bottle of orange soda.  To each one was given a cookie and a turn at having a drink.  Tomorrow I will tell her how I wrote about her.  --JF

Friday, May 26, 2006  |  8:30 pm
Vetoshkino
__________
I've discovered that Babushka can hear when she wants to hear -- depending on who she's with.  And, when she's alone, she puts easily 1/4 cup of sugar in her tea.  Of late, we eat breakfast together.  Usually Babushka eats all her meals alone because she is embarrassed that she doesn't have teeth.  It is such a privilege, however, to sit with her and hear her stories. Finally, I now understand why the family took so long to decide what air freshener to buy last week at the market.  There were three or four scents to choose from: lemon, apple-spice, pine scent, and wild berry.  After opening each one and spraying a little into the cap, they choose wild berry.  All of the care I only discovered today, was at my expense.  I both laughed and nearly cried when I found the expensive freshener in the outhouse today -- as if to make it a little more "citified".  Given that the outhouse is in the barn next to the cow stalls, the delicate wild berry scent gets a bit lost.  Nonetheless, the thought was sweet.
_________________

Today was truly a special day.  Early this morning two children arrived with a hand written invitation from the school inviting me to attend the graduation ceremony of the oldest class.  The ceremony, called "The last school bell," was to begin at 12:30.  It had been raining in the morning, but by noon the sun was shining and the day had turned absolutely gorgeous. By the time we arrived, most all the villagers had gathered and were sitting on little wooden benches on one side of the school courtyard while the children stood on the other side.  In between the two was a little table with a microphone and tape player.  At 12:30 promptly, the tape player was switched on and the volume turned up as loudly as it would go, playing an old, loved school song that I've heard in several soundtracks from movies of the 1950s.  The school doors swung open and out came five kindergarten students carrying red tulips and little bells tied with yellow ribbons.  Around each of their necks was a golden key made out of construction paper and tied with red yarn.  Behind them came the seven shy, but beaming, graduating students: two boys dressed in suits and five girls dressed in black dresses with white pinafores and white ribbons in their hair.  How proud everyone was!
     The graduating class put on a skit that politely made fun of the school director and their favorite teachers.  It was based on a film from the 1970s.  After that a young girl with an absolutely beautiful voice sang a traditional song about saying farewell to the years gone by, but not to friendships or to all that was learned and shared together.  Several teachers made short little speeches -- all of whom got choked up.  Only slowly did I realize that that was not only because they had watched these seven students grow up here, and had devoted all their time and energies to nurturing them, but also because the likelihood of the graduates going off to technical school (or a regular university) in Kirov -- and not returning again -- was great.  Yet each graduate -- who gave three tulips to each teacher, the school director, the guest speaker and, finally, to me -- spoke very movingly of their love for their school, their teachers, their families and the village.   Although the young people dream of a better life in the city, they clearly hold dear this village and count it to be both rich and beautiful.   Only after the ceremony as I took my daily afternoon walk with the children, did I see the village with different eyes.  Perhaps most interesting, or at least arresting, was the guest speaker's speech (the mayor of the region).  After congratulating the graduates, he immediately launched into a talk about the last 15 years and how difficult "perestroika" (period of change) has been.  Those who launched the change, he said, have still not found the way to make life better.  It was up to their generation to find the way to move the country forward.
     Finally, the five kindergarteners got up and began to ring the little bells, which were then given to the graduates -- along with a new book. The "key to success" (i.e. a good education) around each of the little one's necks were taken off and put around the necks of the graduates.  Hand in hand, the little ones and the graduates paraded around the circle while everyone cheered and applauded.  Finally, the graduates broke away, waved, and walked down the path for the last time as the little tape player played
on. --JF 



Saturday, May 27, 2006  |  10:45 pm Vetoshkino

Every time I think I'm utterly exhausted and can't do another thing, at that very moment, I inevitably come upon Babushka lifting the fifth bucket of potatoes out of the cellar above her head or hauling water out to the cabbage patch.  There's something humorously