Welcome, Buike!

It's official. We are now urban rednecks---three dogs, three cats, one house. (Some have tried to comfort us by insisting that our house is large, but that doesn't count for much when at least four animals are at your side constantly!)

Buike (pronounced Boo-key . . . a UK basketball player, we're told . . . keeping his name is still up for debate) will be three on March 3. He had a home until January, when his insistence on running through his electric fence landed him in a sheltie rescue. The rescue was Precious Secrets Sheltie Rescue (www.pssr.org), and he couldn't have had a more loving temporary home.

We brought him home yesterday, and he fit rights in to the chaos here. We assumed that we were in for a lot of obedience training---but last night when we asked Sam and Mickey to sit, we turned around and Buike was sitting like a model. He's house-trained, and he let us sleep until we woke up this morning; there he was, looking around, waiting for us to get with it. We're seriously wondering if we're just in a honeymoon period, because, so far, he's just SO EASY.

And, really, could he be ANY more handsome?
He goes for a bath and grooming this week.






And just for good measure . . .

new car!

Someday, this blog will again be about Russia. For the moment, though, I want to show off my 2008 Toyota Prius. I love it!

another random post

I love Agnes Scott.

On Tuesday, I had brunch with a development officer from Agnes Scott and two alumnae: class of '67 and class of '84. I had never met these women; we are decades apart . . . but we sat and talked for HOURS. The camaraderie among Scotties is incredible. I'm so used to having "my" Scotties in my life that I forget, sometimes, how remarkable it is to be so at ease with strangers, and how much I can have in common with people whose lives are different, in many ways, from my own.

Actually, I'd like to quote my good friend Lauren Love '99: If I were stuck on a deserted island, and had the choice of being with someone really nice, but uninteresting, or a Scottie who was really mean---I'd totally pick the Scottie, 'cause I'd know that I'd NEVER be bored.
Amen.

In the coming years, look for Agnes Scott to start a think tank---regarding global women's leadership. A think tank. At a college of 1,000 undergraduates (and a handful of graduates). Absurd. But it will happen. An Agnes Scott woman believes that she can do anything, and she's right.

Oh, and here's the bonus---the '84 alum knows of a place in Indy that takes plastics 3-7 for recycling! I'm ridiculously excited about this.

pictures from St. Petersburg!

FINALLY, here are the first of our pictures from beautiful St. Petersburg!

We spent all of our time in the city's historic center. After Helsinki (population 565,000), St. Petersburg (population 4.5 million) seemed HUGE to us, but we were able to walk to everything we wanted to see, and soon learned our way around---our navigation mostly involved daily treks up and down the city's main drag, Nevsky Prospect. We actually spent a good bit of time just wandering around, gawking . . . and avoiding being run over by the very determined Russian pedestrians. We were both pushed and shoved, even by babushki.

(And standing in a line is a contact sport. Both of us found this mentality difficult to adjust to . . . but, we've never had to stand in line hoping to buy bread, so we're pretty sure that we just don't get it.)

St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703, as his "window on Europe," and was Russia's capital until 1918. It still has a very European feel, with plenty of canals meandering off of the Neva River, and both Italian Baroque and French Art Noveau-inspired architecture. There are plenty of Russian/Eastern touches, too, which we'll add to the blog soon.

What you see below is what every first-time visitor should see: the Winter Palace and Hermitage buildings. The Hermitage is one of the greatest art museums in the world, but we both had trouble concentrating on the art because the galleries were so amazing! Throne rooms, banquet rooms . . . the opulence was overwhelming ( . . . and aggravating, when we thought about the poverty that lead to the Bolshevik Revolution). We especially loved the floors. The pictures below aren't the greatest---we took them hurriedly, as we hadn't purchased the Hermitage's photography permit. (Although we suspect that this is only advertised and not available . . . EVERYONE was taking pictures, and the security force---one babushka snoozing on a chair in one corner of each room---didn't approach anyone. Still, we were cautious.)

By the way, the Hermitage collection was largely the work of Catherine the Great, who charged her European ambassadors with acquiring outstanding works of art. (Later pieces in the collection came from the "nationalization" of private collections during Soviet times, as well as Nazi-era looting.) She also gave the museum its name: she called her art gallery her "hermitage" (she spoke French, which most eduated people in St. Petersburg did then), since so few people were admitted for viewing. Another incredible thing about being in Russia right now---seeing the galleries fully crowded with Russian people, visiting the collection that belongs to them (the Soviets didn't care much for historical art, but they didn't destroy it). Julie has decided that she's a big fan of Catherine the Great. If only Showtime would do a mini-series on her, a la The Tudors . . .

As we were in St. Petersburg just before our first wedding anniversary, and the traditional first anniversary gift is paper, I surprised Julie with tickets to see "Swan Lake" at the Hermitage Theater. This tiny place, which seats about 250 people, was built by Catherine the Great and hosted its first performance in 1785. Just sitting there, surrounded by so much history, was incredible. Watching the ballet---brought to Russia from France and nurtured into a national treasure---was powerful. The principal dancers were absolutely breath-taking, although the corps left a little to be desired. Oh, and the bathrooms---I'm pretty sure that those haven't been renovated since Catherine the Great's time! This evening was definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

Julie just looked over at these pictures and said, "Look at that! Were we there?" It IS pretty hard to believe.

More to come!

The gray, rainy weather was perfectly moody. And it didn't last.










It's kind of easy to understand how you could get to thinking that you were the most important person in the world, if you lived here.

Random note on life in the Midwest

Our internet is at about 90% now, so we'll share pictures starting tomorrow or Tuesday!

In the meantime, and since I'm thinking about keeping this blog post-trip, a note on life in the Midwest.

We spent the evening at an Ani DiFranco concert. Ani is on my list of "favorite people I don't actually know," and Julie is nuts about her, too. Plus, Melissa Ferrick opened. FUN!

Looking around the room, I couldn't believe that it was only about 65% full. Indianapolis is lame.

On the other hand, we left our gorgeous historic home half an hour before the concert started, parked for free on the street three blocks away, (thus) had both money and time for a drink before the show, and were home about 20 minutes after the show ended.

Maybe there's something to this Midwestern thing, after all.

Our Visit to Russia: The Beginning

Friends,

This is the first of what will become several entries devoted to our visit to Russia. I know that we're both going to find it difficult to summarize our experiences there, but we'll do our best.

In short, it was amazing. Difficult at times, overwhelming almost always . . . but absolutely worth every minute of stress and worry, every bit of fatigue, and, yes, every dollar. (I heard right before we left that Moscow is currently the world's most expensive city.) We were both struck when, on landing in Chicago, we saw signs celebrating the city's 170th birthday. Moscow celebrates its 860th birthday this year. Standing in Red Square, and in the Kremlin, we were constantly awestruck by how much had happened in these places. It was a privilege just to stand there.

The current realities of Russia were no less interesting. There is so much optimism there right now, such a sense that Russia is (or is going to be) the world's "Next Great Place"---it must at times feel like an odd throwback to Soviet times. It seemed that half of the buildings that we encountered were under construction, and that half of what wasn't was recently renovated. Both St. Petersburg and Moscow are full of very chic fusion restaurants (not a surprise, since Russian food is quite similar to Finnish food), mostly quite empty (most of the local population can't afford them), but sparkling new, preparing excellent food (albeit usually with rather strange service . . . "waiter/waitress" is likely a new career in Russia, and many of them seem unsure of what, exactly, they're supposed to do), waiting for the promised crowds. I hope they show up.

Witnessing, from the far outside, an evolving economy was interesting, too. Clearly, there are so many who have benefitted so much from the shift to a capitalist-style market economy. GUM, the shopping center on Red Square that used to stand nearly empty, now boasts 1,000 upscale stores. We saw a Rolls Royce dealership, and countless luxury cars . . . many parked on Moscow's sidewalk (the streets clearly weren't designed for so many private vehicles). The flip side of this is that the economic transformation has left so many people behind . . . especially the very old. We saw so many older people begging on the streets, or trying to eke out a living by selling small amounts of produce---it was heartbreaking. And, of course, the economic situation seems to be very different outside of the cities. The train between St. Petersburg and Moscow passed countless small villages, all crumbling. Seeing these places, only at a glance, it was easy to understand why so many are nostalgic for Communism.

That's another interesting thing----everything Soviet is trendy right now! And Lenin is as beloved as ever. It's too easy to be dismissive of Communism, which I think will benefit from revisionist history (thankfully, Stalin probably won't).

We're so excited to see what will happen in Russia over the next decades. We hope that it will involve an outsting of Putin and meaningful pensions for the elderly. St. Petersburg got under Julie's skin, and we will be back. (Moscow was just a little too overwhelming for both of us.)

Unfortunately, our internet connection is working verrrrrry slowly right now; too slowly for pictures. We will add pictures, and another update, as soon as it allows us to!

We're home!

We arrived home last night, and it feels wonderful to be here. Sorry for the lack of updates from Russia: internet access there was difficult and expensive. But as we regroup and recover, we'll share stories and pictures!