I got a call in February from a reporter in Rochester.  It was our second straight week of single digit temperatures with another whopping snowstorm heading up the coast.  The reporter's boss told him to find a story that would get people to stop complaining about the weather.  Could I contact a friend in Siberia, he asked, who might add a little perspective?  "No problem," I told him, "I'll call Uncle Vanya."
     Uncle Vanya and his wife, Anya, live in a village that could best be described as a long way from everywhere.  Babushka, Anya's mother, lives with them as well.  She works all day around the house, then stays up late listening to the family's "kitchen STORIES," though, in the winter, she no longer does shashlik [barbecuing in the woods].  It's not the cold, it's just that her short legs can't plow through the deep snow anymore.
     The village has the only k-12 school in the area, so children from the surrounding smaller villages walk as much as six miles to school each day.  There are no snow days, as there are no school busses.  There aren't any snow plows either but, then again, that's not really a problem, as most people don't have cars.  Walking keeps everyone healthy and guarantees they sleep well at night.
     "The secret to surviving a long winter," Uncle Vanya began, "is a samovar."
     "Tea doesn't seem like a very convincing solution, Uncle Vanya."
     "It's not the tea," he continued.  "Tea is just a way to have dushevnee razgavor [a conversation for the soul].  Just yesterday Babushka started to fill the samovar when there was a knock on the window.  I pulled back the curtain and who should be peering in but Misha.  He bellowed at me to hurry up.  He was frozen stiff.  It was -30°.  So I hustled out to let him in.
     "Misha smells dinner cooking and says, 'Why not give Ivan a call?  We'll have a good dushevnee razgavor.' "
     "So we call Ivan.  I say to him, 'Ivan!  How fast can you get here?  Babushka cooked potatoes in their jackets [baked potatoes].  Hurry up, they're horrible cold!'  Ivan loves potatoes in their jackets with a big plate of fish, so he got over here fast as a fly.  We kept the samovar going all night.  We had a great time."
     I began to worry.  Fish and potatoes, and even Earl Grey, weren't much of a story.  Still there was one hopeful clue.  "Did you say all night, Uncle Vanya?"
     "Of course!  We argued all night."
     "I thought you said you had a good time?"
     "We had a great time.  Who else can you argue with, without losing them, but real friends?"
     "I never thought about it like that before, Uncle Vanya."
     "We got off again on the topic of a refuge at the border."  [The border refers to the line where Europe meets Asia.  It's a very symbolic landmark in the Ural Mountains.]
     "What kind of refuge, Uncle Vanya?"
     "Sort of like a church.  But you can't describe it that way, because people have ruined the term.  Ivan wanted to turn it into a commercial resort.  I told him the world doesn't need one more resort.  No, I told him there has to be a place that feels like it belongs to everyone without any strings attached . . . sort of like the Bible.  It doesn't belong to any one group or nationality.  There should be a place like that. Unfortunately, we had to break it up at five.  We all had to be at work by eight."
      And that was Uncle Vanya's answer to a long winter.

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