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Gift list
People visiting from Russia sometimes ask me what I'd like for a gift. I usually say "just bring yourselves" and they bring Russian foods. Which are yummy, and I fully understand the cultural pressure to bring gifts. So, I'm going to do the honest thing. What I really want is:
1. Either poetry book by Елена Михайлик. OK, both.
2. This: http:// ( Read more... ) -
Han
Phrase for today: "The word names the feeling that arises as you are buried alive with your dead husband."
The full poem can be found here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/156413/american-han
I especially recommend it to
( Read more... ) -
Dolls
As of today there are 666 exhibits in the UC Berkeley's doll collection
https://portal.hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu/?f%5Bhasimages_s%5D%5B%5D=yes&objname_txt=doll+OR+dolls&op=AND&per_page=100&search_field=advanced&sort=objsortnum_s+asc&view=masonry
Surely this cannot be a coincidence -
Pronouns
One of my kid's classmates identifies as a tree. The tree's pronouns change occasionally, one can usually guess them from the outfit, but if one guesses wrong one will be gently corrected. (ELUCIDATION): This is in public. IRL. In school. With neither shaming nor bullying. I don't think this would have been possible when I was a kid and probably ( Read more... ) -
Random e-mails
https://www.reddit.com/r/pettyrevenge/comments/rfhjmw/use_my_email_face_the_consequences/ Turns out lots of people get e-mails for others, but I'm the only one who turned it into an opportunity to read reminiscences about student life in 60s Berkeley and meet some nice elderly distant relatives. Huh. -
(Untitled)
Когда человек умирает,
Изменяются его портреты.
По-другому глаза глядят, и губы
Улыбаются другой улыбкой.
Я заметила это, вернувшись
С похорон одного поэта.
И с тех пор проверяла часто,
И моя догадка подтвердилась.
Ахматова, 1940 -
When people say, “we have made it through worse before”
all I hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones
of those who did not make it, those who did not
survive to see the confetti fall from the sky, those who
did not live to watch the parade roll down the street.
I have grown accustomed to a lifetime of aphorisms
meant to assuage my fears, pithy sayings meant to
convey that everything ends up fine in ( Read more... ) -
Still not racism
In a wonderful example of a bad thing that is not racism (https://conuly.dreamwidth.org/3182500.html)
I just finished reading Tuesdays At The Castle by Jessica Day George, which would have been entirely wonderful if the main villain was not a heap of stale cliches about Russians. Even so, it's good enough (and cliches broad enough) that up until ( Read more... ) -
Залеточка
So, I had a dream in which I was reading a really fascinating book about birds. Thick dark-cream paper, very realistic multi-colored illustrations on each page (the finch pecking seeds in the lower-left corner of the last page I got to was particularly good and either seemed or was alive). As usual in my dreams the book was very large, almost too ( Read more... )
