Missouri is the "Show Me State" (in the USA), and I lived there once, and "Pakazhitye Mnye" is "show me," and never mind. I had a very involved dream last night. I've been having lots …

"It would be nice to have a soundtrack to my life. Because then I could go out and buy it, and I could tell what's going to happen. Like, if Barber's Adagio for Strings is …

Recently, I've attempted to row a boat, sung patriotic songs, attended (in body but not in spirit) some Russian theater, and seen some Russian art. I guess I'm in St. Petersburg, eh? Happy US Independence …

More seriously, right now I want to note some rather trite-seeming (to me) observations that I have made whilst studying Russian here in St. Petersburg, and before. And a shout-out to Sean and Cinzia, who …

Maybe the reason the Roman Empire fell was that its inhabitants were just sick and tired of asking, "should this be in the dative or the accusative?" and instead said, "[expletive] it, we'll just stop …

Did I ever write about sterile tears? They remind me of the problem of symptoms. I was about to take some sterile tears in my eyes the other days. Then I thought that dry eyes …

Or perhaps, given the foci of my Russian classes lately: Verbs of Motion II: They're Back, and They're Going to Tell You How They Got Here! I went to the Hermitage for the first time …

In the past two weeks (my goodness, I've been in St. Petersburg for two weeks), I've had two dreams somehow involving Hillary Rodham Clinton. But, even though my alarm clock by my bedside ticks really …

George Orwell wrote 1984 after reading We and Brave New World. (I'm reading We right now -- or I guess I should call it Mui, since I'm reading it in Russia and it was written …

Classes here in St. Petersburg have been actual work. And I'm not just talking about homework. Every day it's exhausting to go through six hours of struggling through it all in bad Russian. At least …