David's Dreams: Rocking Out

What I should have focused on in college

Speaking of dreams ... about a month ago I dreamt that I was at a dinner party but wasn't really able to engage anyone in conversation or be entertaining. I found myself ruing my decision in college to study English instead of rocks (particularly "volcanic rocks"), because how many times have we all been in groups of people where someone or other wonders what kind of rock this is, and ... if I had focused my studies appropriately, that's knowledge I could have provided!

Stupid, stupid!

David's Dreams: In the Hands of the Devil

I don't really plan for this to be a dream journal, but hell, it's my blog, I can write about whatever I want.

So last night I dreamt that I was in Russia, for some reason, at night, sort of encouraging friends to resist the authoritarian government, when a gathering I was in was raided. Several of us escaped, and at some point it was me on the run with sisters Lena and Olga, two real-life former pupils of mine, both (in the dream) in their early-20s.

At some point, through the magical power of dreams, we were captured by Putin and one of his flunkies, being driven somewhere by Putin at the wheel of a rather cramped four-door sedan. He stopped, and let Olga go, suggesting only, with a sneer, that they could find her again if and when they needed. But then he turned to me, in the front passenger seat, and told me to buckle up snugly, and sit up stiff, with vague consequences for any resistance.

I was terrified — sitting up straight, in a seat with no escape, with him clearly planning some terrible act of violence on me. Lena, from the back seat, held my head steady in her hands, both holding me still and also trying to impart ... comfort and reassurance. And Putin (who, by the way, did not, in the dream, look anything like the current Russian President), leaned over, said, maliciously, "people do not know that I am ... the world's best tickler!" and ... tickled me, in the stomach. 

I laughed, more out of an attempt to placate him than anything else, and begged him to stop. I said, "is that what the punishment is going to be?" And he said, "oh, there'll be something else, but it's not a big deal," and tickled me again.

I was, in fact, terrified of the "something else," and wasn't sure if it was going to b a karate chop in my Adam's apple or a wicked punch in the stomach, and didn't know how to brace myself for what was going to be incredibly painful — Lena's hands still holding me still from behind — when Putin ... whipped out a long tube attached to a funnel, placed it on my stomach, dropped something in it, and then leaned into it and blew, violently.

"что это такое?!" ("shto eto takoi," or "what is that!??"), I screamed, and the man in back laughed and said "look, he picked words at random in Russian," and I turned to him and screamed "oh, you think?!" (not, it must be said, the best comeback ever). Putin said, "Knives. I have just placed many, many tiny knives into your bloodstream."

In terror, at that point I woke up. 

According to this site, "to dream of being tortured denotes that you will undergo disappointment and grief through the machination of false friends." But the site also says that "dreaming about being tortured indicates that you are feeling victimized or helpless in some relationship or situation." 

Hmm.  

Why Johnny B. Good?

Among the things for which I have always been most grateful in my relationship with my mother over the year is that, throughout my childhood, she took my questions seriously and engaged with them honestly.

Many of these questions involved religion and Christianity, because, although my father was an atheist (though he didn't make a big deal about it), my mother grew up going to church, and spent much of her professional life studying and writing about church history and doctrine, theology, and of course the Bible itself. I considered (and continue to consider) her an absolute authority, and while she has always certainly been able to explain to me what various theologians and experts have concluded on one subject or another, in general she does me the honor of considering my questions carefully before telling me what she thinks. 

There are numerous examples of this, but the one that comes to mind this afternoon involved me taking her stated belief that everyone gets into heaven — that God does not play favorites with His children — seriously, by asking her, as a teenager, why, then, at least insofar as God is concerned, "we should be good." I wasn't asking about ethics. I was asking about ... our spiritual health. Our immortal souls. Heaven. This was a serious question — not a challenge — and she took it as such.

She paused, and thought for a second. And she said, "I think we kind of just ... are what we are." I don't remember her exact explication of that, but what I remember, more or less, is the suggestion that ... we grow up exposed to different stimuli, different circumstances — in different families, in different places, and in different cultures, and with different brains, different intellects, and different functionings including differing degrees of mental health. We all have stories in our heads in which we're the hero, and we're all doing the best we can. So that, ultimately, with all that in mind, trying to distinguish between "good" and "bad" people is absurd — is an act of ego, of sanctimony, and (often) of cultural arrogance.

I think — and now I am putting words in her mouth — she would agree, of course, that there are good or bad acts, and probably that if we want to characterize people who commit a certain amount or kind of bad acts as themselves "bad" we certainly can. But that that definition has nothing to do with whom God loves or who gets into Heaven.

I'm getting off-subject. The point is, she took my question seriously, thought about her answer, avoided cliche, and engaged with me, respecting me and my intelligence enough to engage with me not just as an adult, but as a thinker. Thanks, Mom.

So Many Questions

Went to a movie a few weeks ago. Stopped in the men's room after the movie on the way out. One of the urinals was being used by a teenager who was standing before it, athletic shorts and underwear dropped to his ankles, bare butt confidently showing to the world.

And I thought ... does he think that's how one's supposed to do it? Was he taught that way? Does he notice that nobody else is standing that way? Does he have a physical or mental impairment that makes that necessary? Did he not notice that his pants and underwear are around his ankles? Should they put up a sign adding one additional bit of instruction? Are our schools failing?

Mainly I thought, both, "the world is going to hell," and "eh."

Flash from the Past

I don't quite understand this story. It's about 48 years old, now, and key details seem to be missing, both because of the number of years that have passed and because of how young I was when it happened. Still.

I must have been about ... 8 or 9 years old, and my parents were at a party somewhere, and my 2-year-old sister and I must have had a babysitter, though I have no memory of that, and it was about 11 pm or midnight, and I was ... awake watching television. This makes no sense. Maybe I came downstairs and the babysitter was watching TV and I joined her? Maybe ... no, no idea.

Anyway, back in the very last pre-cable-TV days, late night TV was ... terrible. But wonderful. But terrible. Other than the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, there simply wasn't much on. Maybe a late movie (inevitably "adult," which meant either boring or terrifying), or, sometimes, old serials.

Because what I remember watching this night was the old 1938 Flash Gordon serials, with Buster Crabbe, 15 minutes each, strung together. For a 9-year old in 1976 in Ann Arbor, they were awesome. With Flash and Dale, and Ming the Merciless, and cliff-hangers, and lasers, and robots. It kind of ... made me think ... growing up must be so much fun, because it meant you were able to stay up to watch those shows whenever you wanted. Indeed, those shows must to some extent have been made for adults — why else would they be shown when all the kids were asleep?! What a great life adulthood obviously was!

Buster Crabbe, I presume?

I think even a lot of the truly obsessed Star Wars fans today don't realize how much what George Lucas was doing was an overt homage to those serials. All the fans trying to do Star Wars world-building are wanting desperately to believe that Lucas was somehow trying to put together an adult and serious complete and thorough world, rather than a simple modern version of those crazy, violent, profoundly insane and fantastic (in the true meaning of the world) entertainments from the 1930s. 

In any event ... I don't understand how I could have been watching TV alone at midnight, with my parents not there, but ... I did. And thank goodness. Watching old Flash Gordon serials certainly helped prepare me for Star Wars when it came out a year later. And made me more eager than ever to get to adulthood: So many fun TV shows and movies to watch!

(It occurs to me, now, that at the time those Flash Gordon episodes I watched were less than 40 years old. In other words, more recent, then, than Star Wars is now. I can't quite believe 9-year-old kids today find themselves watching Star Wars for the first time with the same ... sense of accessing secret treasures the way I did, then. We just consume media in such different ways, now, and there are so many TV channels available that it's difficult to imagine kids at that age already knowing all about it. Eh, I don't care. My way — late at night, secret, staring open-mouthed at the TV — made it infinitely more wonderful and enticing.)

Travelers Through Time and Space

Magical

It's so difficult to remember, as we age into oblivion, how special — sometimes magical — things seemed when we were younger. Not that we were aware of it at the time, of course. But there was an excitement that is impossible to really describe associated even with unimportant things that was slowly extinguished as we entered and then grew accustomed to adulthood. 

When I was in high school most of the Detroit Tigers baseball games were not televised, leaving radio as the only option for those of us who enjoyed following the local team. Especially when the Tigers made their biannual West Coast swing through Seattle, Oakland, and Anaheim, with games during the week usually beginning at 10 pm EST, that could be difficult, especially when those swings tok place (as at least one of them inevitably did) during the school year. But also enticing — listening to those games before (or even sometimes while) I fell asleep was particularly fun.

The Tigers were really good in the mid-80s, of course, which made the games especially meaningful. Listening in my dark teenage boy's bedroom in Ann Arbor, lit only by the glowing dial of the radio, as the sounds of the crowd, the crack of the bat, the familiar tones of the announcers all were transported to me from 3000 miles away, was ... magic. I still think of radio waves carrying purposeful sounds as magic — and I really felt I was listening to broadcasts from a different planet, a different world.

This is the hard part to capture. Imagine it. It's absolutely dark and quiet and still outside, my house and its other residents all asleep, and the only sound is coming quietly from the radio — a tool for communicating with another world, where there were people and hot dog vendors and fountains, laughter and cheers, and important goings-on. As I got older I would sometimes catch the games while I was driving home from a friend's house or a late movie as well — again, Michigan roads more or less empty, but Ernie Harwell's and Paul Carey's voice coming through my radio from a far-away land of light and sound and excitement.

I loved those broadcasts far more than their actual significance would merit. 

The Big A

In the late spring of 1988, after my junior year of college, my Dad took me and my sister out to Los Angeles for a couple of days — my first ever trip out West. One evening my Dad got us a relatively cheap hotel room in Anaheim, and while he and Emily entertained themselves elsewhere, I walked over to the Big A on my own to catch a baseball game, with former Tiger Dan Petry on the mound for the Angels. 

Dan Dealing

I got a cheap upper deck seat, a Coke and a hot dog, and watched the game, not particularly caring who won, but enjoying being in the magical world I had only been able to experience from a distance before. I was part of that crowd, watching that scoreboard, following the game. I thought, as it approached 9 pm in Anaheim, about the high schoolers back out East wondering if they should stay up past midnight to keep listening, and about them trying to visualize the planet that I was now part of.

This obviously isn't much of a story. But I find myself remembering how self-aware I felt, how odd, thinking about how strange and wonderful it was to be, finally, briefly, on this distant planet I had only received transmissions from in the past.

Indeed, as I think about it now, I remember not thinking that this is where the excitement of the moment was, or about how time zones work. I really felt as if I were on a foreign planet. The real world — our world — was back home. The world of New York and Boston and Washington D.C. (and Ann Arbor, Michigan), which had given up and shut down for the day. These friendly but obviously self-deluded Angels fans were certainly allowed to think their world mattered, but ... it was an adjunct world, it was a concession to them made by the East, it was ... not real.

It was magic — or at least a magic trick. 

And for that evening, that game, I was on the stage, participating in the magic trick, instead of in the audience, admiring it.

It's worth remembering how much of the world seemed magical to us when we were young, even though we wouldn't have used that word to describe it. I don't think I've become jaded or cynical. But a lot of the magic has dissipated. It's inevitable. Maybe even necessary. But a little disappointing.

Finding My Tribe

When I really started playing a lot of tennis, in Prague, in the summer and fall of 2014, I was surprised to find out much I enjoyed it ... and how much it started to dominate my thoughts. Indeed, many was the night, that first year or two, when I would actually fall asleep thinking about how to improve my backhand swing, or visualizing how to get more topspin on my groundstrokes, or whatever. I felt a bit silly about it — I was certainly aware that Wimbledon was not in my future — but I had found something I really enjoyed, was pretty good at (relatively speaking), and was enjoying the process of getting better at. Those images flooded my brain as I lay in bed whether I wanted them to or not.

One day in the spring of 2018, now back in Budapest, I was taking the tram back home with a younger Hungarian guy (maybe 27/28?) I had just played (and beaten) in a social match. It's always easier to be friendly and helpful after a win, so I was being social and expansive. I mentioned to the young man, whose name I now unfortunately don't remember, how often I had, back in Prague, spent that time imagining and visualizing ways of improving my game, and how my friends and I would regularly find, exchange, and discuss valuable "how to improve your tennis game" videos on youtube (like this one). 

He looked at me open-mouthed. I'm probably misremembering him as speaking to me in a more dramatic tone than he actually did, but in my memory he almost whispered, "I thought I was the only one who did that."

I reassured him that there was a world of people who not only played tennis, but ... quickly became obsessed with it. It's something I've noticed here in Tucson, too — so many of my friends don't just play tennis sometimes, when there's nothing better to do, but ... whenever they can, inevitably 2 or 3 or 4 (or more) times a week, with license-plate holders and stickers on their cars reflecting their passion for the game. Clearly their spouses (most of whom are not similarly obsessed) know to accept and condone their enthusiasms, as they really spend a lot of time at the club. And a lot of us, despite our advanced age and limited prospects for advancement of any significant kind, nonetheless take lessons, or use the ball machine, or share tips (you're standing too close, or "finish your shot"), or whatever else we can think of to get better.

I'm aware that other people have other obsessions, whether it's racquetball or painting or yoga or ... reading or language-learning.  I'm not really suggesting that tennis is in any way unique. It's just ... nice to discover your passion, your people. And even though I now rarely fall asleep thinking about how to turn my body for overheads, and I don't have any idea whether this will last or will some day be replaced by something else ... I understand that young Hungarian man's relief at finding he'd found his tribe. It turns out that in this context like so many others, "I thought I was the only one" is almost never true.

RIP, Mr. Lavagetto

I suppose I didn't grow up as a complete baseball nerd the way some people do today (in those pre-personal-computer days it wasn't so easy). I didn't obsess over statistics, or know instinctively whether Jimmy Foxx hit left-handed or right. But I certainly loved the game, and in particular its legends — its almost mythological stories. Cool Papa Bell flipping the switch and getting under the covers before the room got dark. Johnny Bench, exasperated, catching a fastball barehanded. Josh Gibson hitting a ball that was still rising as it cleared the fence. Ty Cobb sharpening his spikes on the dugout steps.

And, of course, the moments. Mazeroski's homer. The Shot Heard 'Round the World. The Homer in the Gloamin.' Merkle's Boner. Babe Ruth calling his shot. 

I read the books, relished the stories and the personalities.

Ironically, though, when I worked for the Oakland A's in the summer of 1990, I didn't think about meeting any of these former players. It never even occurred to me. 

One day at the Oakland Coliseum, though, a colleague walked up to me and said there was a former player in the office named "Cookie," and did I want to meet him. I said "Cookie? The only Cookie I know is Cookie Lavagetto, who broke up a potential no-hitter by Floyd Bevins with two outs in the ninth in the World Series a couple years before the Don Larson perfect game." He smiled. "Yes, that's his name — Cookie Lavagetto. Do you want to meet him?"

I said absolutely, and we hustled over. Lavagetto was indeed there, an old man, having (as I remember it) come off the golf course. He was super friendly and kind, and when I told him how honored I was to meet him he was quite pleased. I really wanted his autograph, I said, but I didn't have anything appropriate to put it on, and putting it on a blank piece of paper didn't seem right. So we agreed he'd let me know next time he planned on coming in and I'd bring in my Baseball Encyclopedia so he could autograph his page.

He died in his sleep less than a week later, before I ever got the chance.

I suppose, thinking about it now, there's no real point in me regretting my failure to get an autograph from him. What would that have changed? But I do sort of wish I could have ... I don't know. Asked if I could buy him a coffee to hear his stories? Become his best friend? 😀

Still. Opportunities missed. RIP, Mr. Lavagetto. Say hi to Mr. Bevins for me, if he's talking to you yet.

David's Dream: So last night I had one of my "action movie" dreams. Two men of Middle Eastern descent, looking extremely similar, live together in a major city (Paris? Frankfurt?) as best friends, with one of them slightly slower-of-mind, and other making some extra cash delivering food for the Middle Eastern restaurant next door. At some point they discover an illicit opportunity to turn, like, $20,000 into $100,000, and they head to the designated meeting place. On the way they run into other people carrying their own cash to the meeting for the same purpose, and rob the first, then rob the second, a white couple. While running away, the smarter one (we'll call him "Don," though in the dream no names were given) takes the money and splits off, telling the slower one (we'll call him "Dave," since it was his journey my dream more or less followed) to meet him at the apartment. The dream involved an extended chase scene (on foot), until finally Dave is cornered in a public market area by the white man ("Frank"). Frank yells to the police to grab Dave, and they do, but when they search Dave, they find no money (of course) and that his identification has a different name than the one Frank claimed it would. (Dave and Don being look-alikes, remember). The police let Dave go, to Frank's (and his spouse/partner's ("Barbara")) frustration.

Dave goes back to their apartment, where the two (Don now is played by Kal Penn, for some reason) celebrate their good fortune. The Middle Eastern restaurant calls Don to tell him they have an order for delivery, and he agrees to make it. Dave is surprised — they have $40,000 and are being sought by Frank and Barbara, after all —don't go out! Don waves off Dave's concerns, reminding him that they don't want to raise suspicions by acting strangely.

Don makes the delivery, but when the door opens it is Barbara, smiling, a la the ending of The Taking of Pelham 123 (except slightly reversed). She had remembered making a similar order a week or two before, and that the driver was the look-alike of the guy who stole their money. (Once I woke up I thought of like 20 problems with this resolution, but at the time it seemed brilliant). 

Essentially The End, though even in the dream I considered the producers of the movie wondering if they should add one final twist. When Don/Kal Penn takes the police back to the apartment he shares with Dave, they discover the apartment empty and Dave and the money gone, with only a note: "Sorry ...". Yes, a little like the ending of Trainspotting, but also "Matchstick Man" (and undoubtedly others). The idea being that, whether or not Dave was actually smarter than he let on (I didn't address that in the dream), he had taken his and Don's money and run. A smile crosses Don's face as the credits run.

The End.

Russia Week (Bonus!): Cultural Differences

During training in Artyom I became friends with another volunteer, Mike, who had actually already served for a year in the Seychelles (where he would eat freshly caught fish grilled on the beach for dinner) before the Peace Corps closed that office, and he transferred over to the RFE. Several times I encountered his host family in Artyom as well, though all of my memories of them are now gone.

Except one. At some point Mike's host Mom asked whether I liked (eating) chicken hearts. I explained that I had no interest — that I'm sure they were fine, but most (northern, white, though I didn't go into that level of detail) Americans didn't really grow up eating any organs, really. Liver, maybe, and maybe kidney, but no hearts or brains, and not really tongue or tripe even. In any event, generalities aside, I didn't eat any of that stuff, and had no interest.

They were deeply amused. "But they're good," she said! "I'm sure they are," I said, "but ... you know, customs being what they are, it's not really something I have much interest in ...".

A week or two later they invited me to dinner, and included in the meal was a dish full of little acorn-sized piece of protein. "What's this?" I asked, of course knowing the truth. "Don't worry about it — just try it, you'll like it!"

Mmmmmm

Sighing inside, I had 2 or 3 of them, and they were pretty much what I expected. A little chewier than what I normally eat, and perhaps with a slightly stronger taste. Although honestly, maybe I imagined that? It's impossible, in that situation, not to focus on the taste and texture in a way you don't normally, so it's hard to know. 

In any event, I managed to get them down and offered a weak smile, and, when the host asked what I thought, said, "not bad, not bad!"

"They're chicken hearts!" she roared, deeply pleased with herself at tricking me. "Wow," I said, "who knew?"

I managed to avoid eating any more, at that time or any other (though I did eat cow brains once, 14 years later, in Morocco). But ... let me tell you, Peace Corps volunteers are forced to suffer, my friend. Oh yes. 

(My father, a far better cultural ambassador than I, would have devoured them with relish (especially if there was relish available), and would have expressed genuine rather than forced enthusiasm, regardless of what he really thought. My father was a better person.)

Russia Week (Seven): The Good Guys

Russian manhood is/was problematic. Although I'm sure the situation is better now, back in the mid-90s problems like rampant alcoholism, a limited job market, unfortunate gender role stereotypes, among many others, contributed to a significantly lower life expectancy for Russian men and a lot of social unrest.

Compulsory military service didn't help, either. That same teacher who cried at a party about her son having an American for a teacher also told me, later that same evening, with some real anger and fear in her voice, that "the military takes our sons and sends back monsters." I heard variations on this complaint multiple times — that a rampant and often sadistic culture of hazing, unfiltered machismo, alcohol abuse, poor funding, and general brutality transformed the kinds of sweet, talented, kind young men I had enjoyed so much in school into violent, alcoholic, profoundly unpleasant brutes. (I'm paraphrasing, and perhaps exaggerating, but you get the idea). This teacher friend of mine was terrified of losing her son to that process.

"On the other hand," (he said, before his Russian friends leapt to their feet in protest). I've already mentioned the difficulty I have attempting to describe "what people are like," because, in fact, I keep thinking of counter-examples, and ... let me tell you, I came across a number of Russian men who were flat out amazing. 

I'm going to focus on two in particular right now. One was an older man — maybe in his late 70s. I lived in what amounted to a dormitory room on the top floor (the 9th) of an apartment building in Yemar Bay, and midway through my second year this old man — short, balding, several gold teeth, and a twinkle in his eye like a leprechaun moved into a room down the hall from me. 

The front of my building (my apartment was on the other side)

I don't, unfortunately, remember his name, or even much about him. Except this: He spoke good English, he had served in WWII where he had refused to lead his men on a straight-ahead attempt to take a hill that had already wiped out several other platoons, instead taking a route around the side that was successful, but which led to him being put in an "institution" for several decades for insubordination, he had moved to Yemar perhaps specifically because he had heard I was there, he once went fishing out into the bay and came home with like 20 caught fish he kept cold in his bathtub, and he really wanted to be my friend. Unfortunately, I didn't drink at the time, and that's really ... what he wanted to do with me. I'm afraid as a result, though I spent a couple evenings chatting with him, and generally enjoyed his company, I don't think I ever fully let loose the way he wanted, and as a result I don't think we ever became the kind of soulmates he hoped. It's too bad, because he was, as you can imagine, full of stories, and he was (surprisingly, considering his story) happy, full of laughter, and ... someone I think my life would have been richer for having known better. C'est la vie. Missed opportunities.

But the person I really wanted to point to was Edik, my colleague Marina's husband (and the father of my 5th-and-6th grade student, Lyuba). He was, to my eyes, a star. He was relatively quiet, constantly good-humored, a handy-man, an outdoorsman, knew different plants, herbs, mushrooms, etc. Just solid. The story about Edik that most sticks in my mind came not when I lived in Yemar, but a year later, when I was back visiting. My friend Tanya had let me stay in her studio apartment, on the 3rd floor of the same building I used to live in, while she was at her parents' house for the summer. When the week ended I packed and prepared to head off to the airport, only to find that, about an hour before I had to leave for Artyom, that ... I had let Tanya's door close behind me, with the key (and my bags) still inside. Tanya was 200 miles away in Dalnerechensk, there was no spare key, and as far as I could tell my only option was to take an ax to her door.

Edik and Marina

Which is not to say I didn't add value to their lives as well!

Luckily, Edik stepped in. He took a long coil of rope (because of course he had a long coil of rope) and went to an apartment on the fourth floor, above Tanya's, but one to the right, and asked the owner for permission to attach one end of it there. He then did the same thing at the apartment two doors over, then tossed the rope from one window to the other, where I caught it. We attached that end as well, first wrapping it around him as a sort of harness. He then lowered himself from the fourth floor to the third, mountain-climber style, and he pushed open Tanya's window and let me in to the apartment. I made it to the airport in time.

This was done without objection, hesitation, or complaint. He lowered himself outside of an apartment building, a good 70 feet in the air, to help David, who had stupidly locked himself out of the flat he was staying in. And, of course, immediately and fervently rejected my begging that they let me do it. I think the general consensus was that I was a little bit "soft" in terms of risk-taking and daring —although ironically this opinion grew out of their affection for and even admiration for me (I think the assumption was that I was more intellectual and that America had to some extent evolved past the need for these kinds of jerry-rigged fixes) rather than scorn — and I suppose in their evaluation of me they weren't really wrong. I felt, of course, incredibly grateful, and not a little embarrassed. Marina, Edik's wife, looked on with not a little anxiety, although she pretended confidence.

My flat on the 9th floor pointed out in red, Tanya's flat pointed out in blue.

(As a quick digression, while I was in Russia I read a story from (perhaps) Newsweek describing Yuri Gagarin's famous 1961 orbit around the earth. According to this story, while Americans were terrified that his orbit demonstrated Soviet technological superiority, that was not really the entire story. In fact, his achievement was especially remarkable because the Soviets were so intent on beating the Americans that they pressured their scientists to put Gagarin in space as quickly as possible regardless of many safety risks or concerns. As a result, his Vostok 1 ship encountered multiple problems, almost failed multiple times, and Gagarin himself was forced to address breakdowns and problems during the flight, essentially hard-wiring the spacecraft while in flight with, essentially, a screwdriver and duct tape. The great achievement, in fact was not — or at least was not only — the technology itself, but Gagarin's coolness under pressure, and his (and the Soviet scientists') ability to jerry-rig solutions on the fly (as it were), with limited tools and resources. Having lived in Russia during a time where dependence on authorities for help was never going to work, and where people were required to make do for themselves and fix things that Americans would immediately have thrown out and replaced, I can completely understand that -- and rather than being a failing, it showed their creativity, courage, and quick problem-solving skills).

Anyway, there were, it now occurs to me, lots and lots of good men I met in Yemar, generally as caring, involved, helpful parents of the kids I taught. I wasn't friends with many — female teachers at School No. 72 outnumbered their male counterparts 10-1, at least. And, looking back on the first few paragraphs of this post, it should be noted that while I encountered a number of young men under 18, and a number of men over 35, I knew almost no men between those ages. So who knows what kinds of pressures they were put under, or how they dealt with them?

Still, as I write this during an era of serious military and geo-political conflict with Russia, and against a context of suspicion, resentment, and anger, I want to at least acknowledge that so many of the Russian men *I* met back in the 90s were friendly, not in any way violent or domineering, and often skilled at making their way in a rough and hostile world and finding ways to get their families to the next day.

It only, of course, makes my heart break for what's happening now.

Russia Week (Six): Teaching ... and Learning

It's just within the realm of possibility that the kids at School No. 72 in Yemar Bay were not the most intelligent, talented, and perceptive kids in the universe. I'm willing to hear arguments. I suppose it's possible that I'm easily impressed. It's conceivable that kids at all schools around the world possess the same array of talents, skills, and smarts that these kids had, and I am (and was) simply unfamiliar with the phenomenon. But ... it's doubtful. 

The fact is every one of these kids impressed the shoes off me, and I was in awe of their talent, their curiosity, their charm. Even the badly-behaved kids that sat and cracked jokes in the back of the classroom, I thought, had a charisma, an energy, that I had never seen before. I liked those trouble-makers as much as I did those who sat attentively up front.

My awe came quickly. Indeed, I had only been in Yemar Bar — assigned to this beachfront community near the end of our training — for a couple weeks when, one late October evening in 1995, I was invited by the school's Literature teacher (teaching what we would have called "English," but it wasn't, there, called "Russian") to attend a special "Литературный вечер," or "Literary Evening," in her classroom. When I got there, around 7 pm, there were about 20 kids in the room, and several parents, and the room was lit only by candlelight. I think there were cookies and tea, and then we all sat. The theme of the evening was "Love," and all the kids had memorized poems and songs on the theme to present for the group. The winner, as I recall, was 5th grader Vlada, who recited a Pushkin poem from memory with an emotion and power far far beyond her years. It was powerful, magical stuff, by candlelight, in this Russian schoolroom on a cold fall evening, and I remember being incredibly grateful to have been invited, and thinking, "oh, I may be over my head here."

Because as much as I loved those kids — and I did, powerfully, each and every one of them — I was a terrible, terrible teacher, in constant fear that I was failing them. I think I managed to come out ahead at the end of the day because of my engagement in the community, because of my hosting, organizing, and participating in several special holidays and celebrations at the school (more on Halloween and Meet Americans Day another time), and simply by exposing everyone in Yemar to a living/breathing American. (Since for many of them their exposure to Americans had been limited to Hollywood and the pop music industry, I used to joke that, before me, they thought all Americans were intellectual, talented, and charismatic, and I did a good job at disabusing them of that).

Indeed, on the subject of them being exposed to an American in person ... I remember one evening being at a party in a teacher's apartment when a colleague started crying — crying — that she had grown up dreaming of meeting an American one day ... and now her son had one for a teacher. (Referring to me). Later, another teacher, Natalya, one of my best friends, told me that, when she was growing up in Siberia and only hearing stories about Americans landing on the moon or making remarkable scientific breakthroughs, she had thought of us as a race of super-men and women, and felt ... inferior, and sad. Again, meeting me cleared up her feelings of inferiority quickly. 

In any event, while I did okay as a cultural representative and member of the community, as a teacher I was terrible. I had had no real experience teaching before I went to Russia, and the "training" we received for a couple months in Artyom was less-than-entirely-helpful. Indeed, one day during training the Peace Corps' RFE second-in-command came for a visit and was horrified at what she saw. She gathered us in a group and read us the riot act, threatening to send us all home if we didn't improve. We sort of did — certainly nobody was sent home — but by the skin of our teeth. One day during training, for example, I had to lesson plan, knowing that the teacher-trainer would be sitting in on my lesson the next day, and somehow — somehow — I came up with a genuinely inspired lesson about moods and personalities (happy, sad, curious, etc.), complete with opportunities for the kids to draw on the board and everything you'd want for one 45-minute lesson. It was great. And when the teacher-trainer came to watch the lesson, he nodded, impressed, 15 minutes in, completely satisfied, and left. I had come up with nothing as creative for any lesson before that, and never (never!) did after that, but somehow, with the pressure ratcheted up, I was able to vomit up something satisfactory to eke past the moment.

During training, trying to understand this stupid language

In any event, we got almost no training in classroom management —the assumption seems to have been that kids would always sit patiently, quietly, while your boring lessons gave them nothing to work on. I wasn't taught how to create a curriculum (what, exactly, does one start with?), how to teach without books (we only had books for 5th graders my first year -- and nothing for the teenagers in my classes), how to create lessons that engaged those with limited language skills without boring those whose skills were much more advanced (and vice-versa), and so on and so on. 

As a result, during my two years in Yemar, I certainly felt I was letting those amazing kids (and their parents) down, jumping from one language skill one day to another the next, settling desperately for trying to pacify the kids far too often with games of hang-man, struggling to keep everyone on task and interested ... and coming home each and every day for two years a wreck.

One of the few saving graces is that I wasn't alone in my frustration. While some of my fellow volunteers, may have been better prepared (either technically or emotionally, or both) for this than I was, and able to achieve more, many weren't, and get-togethers with friends in that latter group were inevitably restorative. My friend Maria, for instance, among other challenges, had one large male student —she was short and small — who would get up in the middle of her class, walk up to the chalkboard as she was writing on it, and follow her, erasing everything she had just written. Her only available response was "please, Slava, don't do that," which ... did not really achieve much.

One day, late in the first year, fellow volunteer Lynda — the only other Peace Corps volunteer with me in Yemar — sat in on one of my classes (she was an ecologist, and thus spared the kind of day-to-day teaching horrors I endured). Midway through the lesson I became so frustrated and overwhelmed that I had to walk out of the class into the hallway to calm down. While I was out, Lynda started reading the kids the riot act, chastising them for being out of control and, among other things, repeatedly referring to me with the informal pronoun instead of the formal pronoun. By the time I came back in, the class was cowed and docile. How embarrassing!

And lesson-planning was a nightly source of stress. In this I felt so at sea, and so ill-prepared by the Peace Corps, that I spent most of the first year simply retreating into the books I had snagged from the Peace Corps library, from the time I got home at 2 pm until shortly bedtime at 10:30, often reading a good 7-8 books a week. (I kept a list, which I still have somewhere). Then I would try to rack my brain quickly to think of something to do the next day. 

Grading was a real problem too. How could I grade kids for their failure to pick up language skills I hadn't effectively taught? But I couldn't give them all 5s — that would be unfair to those kids who were paying attention, worked hard, and were eager to learn. 

I lived with a very real pit in my stomach for almost all of the two years I was there.

Things at one point got so bad that, after the first year ended, I went to the Peace Corps RFE administration and said they should send me home. I was doing a terrible job, I said, and failing everybody, and all the kids in Yemar would be better off if I were sent home. Director Ken Hill almost laughed at me (kindly), then pulled me aside and pointed out that the teaching volunteers had only been put in places where they would not be replacing anybody, so any positive impact I had would be better than none. More importantly, he said, the Peace Corps had three primary mission goals: The first was imparting technical skills — in my case, teaching English — but, he confided, that was by far the least important of the three. The second was to teach the host-country nationals (in this case, the Russians) about America. And the third was to take what I learned in that country, and take it back to America to share at home. Those latter two were the goals that really mattered, and there was no doubt I was doing just fine at them.

That actually did help, and as I continued to struggle in the second year I reminded myself of his explanation repeatedly. And, indeed, as I mentioned previously, I did a good job, I think, at not only organizing and participating in various school celebrations and activities that meant a great deal to the kids, but in fact actually helping a few kids with their English, here and there. Indeed, midway through the first year I was asked to help with the 5th grade "Gymnasium" English class that had been taught by Marina Kanunnikova, a university English instructor (whose daughter, Lyuba, was in the class). For the rest of that first year Marina would walk the kids through the activities in the textbook and drill them on new language skills, and I would pitch in here and there, and to add fun games and songs ("The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" was a smash, as was the English-language paper fortune teller). That class, because they all spoke good English, and because Marina was in the room to help with discipline, and because they had a textbook to follow, was wonderful. In the second year, Marina wasn't able to teach, and I took it over, and those 3-4 hours a week were ... well, they weren't even work. Those hours were a joy, a pleasure, both because those kids were freaking amazing, and because I was feeling ... useful.

Itsy-Bitsy-Spidering

5th/6th graders Irina and Sasha

Also 5th and 6th graders Vlada (the Literary Evening star), Katya, and Lyuba Kanunnikova.
Amazing kids, all of them

There my native language skills, natural enthusiasm, and joy at working with those kids were allowed to come into play, and I'm proud of what I achieved with them.

As for the other classes, with older kids .... I don't know. I've managed to stay in touch with an ever-shrinking number of them over the years, and they continue to insist that I was popular and successful. Certainly, I tried, but ... the guilt gnaws at me more with them, and I think I could have done better, for those talented, smart, perceptive kids. They deserved the best, and I don't think they got it from me. But maybe that's sort of a lesson of life, no? You do the best you can.

Olga, Katya, and Oksana. Bright and fun.

Sisters Lena and Olga. Smart as whips.

Goofing around at prom.

Preparing for a "Spektakl" at the school. They danced to "Wannabe" -- the first time I ever heard it, and I smugly rolled my eyes at the pop music that was popular in Russia and never anywhere else. (As always, teenagers are way ahead of their teachers in knowing what's hip). My good friend Natalya, their homeroom teacher, is on the left.

The older kids. Rock stars, each and every one of them.
Olga, in the middle, holding the grade book. 

So my formal successes at School 72 came primarily from that 5th-and-then-6th grade class, and the celebrations/holidays I organized at the school. There were also, I have no doubt, some informal successes based on my personality and availability, and the excitement I was able to convey at working with those astounding young men and women. It was an honor, and ... well, I've called my two years there the best and most important of my life, and I believe it.

On the other hand, the stress nightmares about me realizing at 7:30 in the morning that I have six hours of classes ahead of me and nothing planned, or discovering I still have 18 months of teaching left ahead of me, finally ended about five years after I got home. It was hard. 

Moral of the Story: I miss the kids, I miss my friends, and ... especially in the current situation, I can only hope they're all ok and ... that the day will come we can meet again. They were, are, and always will be special to me.

I mean, I didn't say I was unpopular.

Russia Week (Five): GUMming up the Works

Over the years people have asked me "what is [country x] like," or "what are people in [country y] like," and I try to come up with an answer. I often do better in response to questions of the first type than the second, but ultimately, either way, I'm not sure my success rate is very high.

Especially, as I said, regarding people. It feels like I should know the answer. It feels like other people are able to generalize effectively about culture and national characteristics, but ... I always find myself immediately aware of counter-examples that defeat my best attempts. Hungarians, I have been told, are "melancholy," but then I think of Andi and Agi and Szabi, and nobody would use that word to describe them. Brazilians, I am told, are "laid-back and fun-loving," but then I think of Mariana or Dennis, and while they're both certainly happy people, they're also focused, hard-working, and professional. 

So I don't know. I'm a little better to speak about Americans, because I've seen us from the outside — and have seen enough people from other countries to understand ways in which we differ, but as for what commonalities there are among people in Cambodia, or Mexico, or Germany? I'm afraid I'm not the best source. Neither Walt Whitman nor America is alone in containing multitudes, it seems to me.

(Though — a brief digression — I do tend to joke that, among the last three countries I've lived in, while Hungarians are sad and frustrated at their country's diminished standing in the world ("nobody gives us the respect we deserve!"), which is obviously silly, and Americans tend to be overly jingoistic and impressed with themselves ("we're number 1!"), which is equally inane, the Czechs, alone in my experience, have their heads on straight: "We're a small land-locked country in Central Europe with in some ways an interesting history but certainly no claim to international superiority, and ... let's have another beer." To which I say, "right on."

Anyway, back to Russia. I have met lots and lots of wonderful, charming, helpful Russians, and I'll get to them at the end of Russia week, but ... not today.

Today I'll go back to the summer of 1996, the end of my first year in the Russian Far East (RFE), when my father came to visit. Actually, no, let me go back to July of 1995, when he put me on a plane to Russia (via San Francisco) at the Roanoke airport, and while my mother and .... 

No, wait. Just for fun, let's go back one more day, to July 8, 1995. My mother and sister had come to Lexington, Virginia, to see me off, and Saturday morning —the day before my departure — my father, wanting to take some family photos, positioned us outside his house in the Blue Ridge Mountains. At one point, as he carefully positioned me near a pile of chopped wood, I looked down and saw three bees sitting, unmoving, on my arm. "Huh," I thought. "That's certainly unusual." Turns out my father had innocently positioned me right next to a beehive, and said bees were objecting to my presence. All three of those bees immediately stung me, which was ... quite painful. My father was horrified and felt tremendously guilty, which I have to admit, helped with the pain (which, in any event, was completely gone in a minute or two).

We did go ahead later and get the photos.

The next morning the four of us drove to Roanoke Airport, and as we all waited, looking out at the tarmac, for my flight to be called, I noticed that my father was crying. We're not a particularly emotional family, in that particular way, and I remember being charmed and touched ... but also a bit amused. I hadn't thought of this as a particularly emotional leave-taking; my family traveled and moved around a great deal, and it was hardly unusual to leave for another place. Indeed, neither my mother nor sister was crying, and my father had never cried (that I had seen) before, so it was ... odd. But sweet.

Let's now move to a year later, in Yemar Bay, outside Vladivostok. My interest in Russia had come from my father in the first place, as he had studied the Russian language in college during the height of the Cold War (leading my grandmother to ask him, in all seriousness, "don't you like it here?"), had defended Khrushchev to me in my initial attempts at political engagement, and had visited Moscow in the late 1970s (bringing me back a Moscow Olympics bag and a Russian Pepsi bottle). So there was little doubt he was going to visit me at some point during my service in Russia.

Спасибо, папа

Still, it wasn't an easy visit for him. He had just had a large tumor removed from his foot a week or two before, so was on crutches. The RFE, at the time, was not in any handicapped-accessible, and I didn't have a car, so ... this was not an easy process for him. Indeed, seeing someone on crutches or a wheelchair was a highly unusual sight at the time, I later learned, in large part because they were usually left to rehabilitate (or live, out of sight) in hospitals, sanitoria, or other special care facilities. You just didn't see people with limited mobility, there, then.

Not that we didn't have fun!

But he came, and struggled to get around for those 8 days. On one of those days he and I took the elektrichka into the city, and (slowly) I took him to some of my favorite places, include my favorite pizzeria for lunch and the hill on top of the city with a view of th bay, and then we walked through the GUM department store, on Svetlanskaya St, the main drag. The store covered an entire city block, and the doors at the back end were essentially on the main plaza, from which we had immediate access to the last elektrichka of the day, scheduled to leave at around 6:10 pm, to take us home. 

Earlier That Day

We got there at, I don't know, around 5:30, and we explored their souvenirs and what-not, before, at 5:50 or so, we heard the announcement that the store was about to close and we should all head out. We had moved over the preceding 20 minutes from the main entrance to near the exit at the other end of the store, so walked to those doors, but ... found our way blocked by an officious 50-year old Russian man, who informed us that the back doors were already closed, and we would have to go back through the entire store and leave from the main entrance. "But he's on crutches!" I pointed out, "and we have very little time! Can't you just ... open the door and let us go out this way, please?" He was unmoved. "Nilzya," he repeated. Not possible. I begged one or two more times, but he was inflexible.

Rapidly running out of time, we turned and got to the front of the store as fast as we could — again, my father on crutches — then had to race back the entire length of the store on the street ... now 6:03, through the ploschad (now 6:05), up the steps leading over the train tracks (now 6:08), then down the steps leading to the platform (now 6:09), and got into the train as it slowly started to pull out of the station.

Exhausted. Panting. Furious.

My father somehow managed to avoid being physically sick, but never in my life had I seen him so absolutely depleted, destroyed, and on the verge of ... well, maybe not death. But he was covered in sweat, on the verge of throwing up, and unable to speak for 10 minutes or so. He was wrecked.

(It occurs to me that the guilt he felt for putting me on the bee hive the year before doesn't hold a candle to the guilt I felt a year later (and continue to feel) at this. We could have left the GUM earlier (or skipped it entirely). We could even have simply paid for a taxi! (Which might have cost us $20 to take us all the way to Yemar Bay -- horrors!). But no, since getting to the train was still a possibility, we both just went for it. Stupid.)

We did, finally, make it home an hour or so later, but he was forced to cancel our plans for dinner at the Kanunnikovas, and I think they were a little disappointed. Our explanation that "we only just made the train" was not, I think, considered fully satisfactory, though they, as the wonderful people they are, pretended to accept it.

Ok, almost at the end of the story (you're going to make it!). A day or two later I took my father to the Vladivostok Airport, located up in Artyom. Several Russian friends came along to see him off, including Margarita (the mother) and Konstantin (the early-20s son), who had hosted me during training in Artyom. 

The night before, my father had sat me down to explain that he had, several years before, been diagnosed as HIV positive. He had not wanted to trouble me with the news at the time (sigh), but the tumor that had been removed from his foot had been, he and his doctor had agreed, the first sign of full-blown AIDS, and things were likely to go downhill fairly quickly now. I was shocked, of course, and saddened, and I immediately asked him if I should leave the Peace Corps and return to the States with him. He dismissed the idea immediately, saying that that was why he hadn't wanted to tell me in the first place — this was the great adventure of my life, and he was proud of me for doing it — and he promised that, when he really got sick (in a matter of months? weeks?), he would tell me and then we could decide what to do.

All of a sudden his tears as I was leaving the US made more sense — he had assumed he would never see me again, at least in full health. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this time, as I said goodbye to him at the Vladivostok Airport, I was the one crying. Margarita, not understanding the circumstances, nonetheless felt I was a sweetly emotional young man, and attempted to console me, repeatedly noting that I would see him again in a year. Which was kind of her.

For what it's worth, upon arriving back home, my father was among the first recipients of the famous AIDS cocktail, and he lived a good and full life for another 23 years, before dying in 2018 of pancreatic cancer. 

So ok. Still, to that Russian guy in the GUM department store: "I get it, it was your job. And you weren't supposed to make any exceptions. But, in a world where you probably had fewer then four people in crutches in your store every year, and none who needed to catch the last train to Yemar Bay right at closing time ... come on, man, swap your professionalism for a little human compassion and decency!" My father always said that people who are empowered to say no think that they need to use it — why would they be given that power if they weren't supposed to use it?

My father, I believe, was a more compassionate and understanding person than I am.

Moral of the Story: Don't make your father race through 1990s Vladivostok on crutches? Seems like a good rule, though rarely invoked.

Russia Week (Four): Did You Play in the NBA?

I didn't play a lot of sports in Russia. I didn't really have many male friends my age where I lived (in Yemar Bay, a beach/resort community outside Vladivostok), and for some reason the teenagers in my community didn't invite the 28-year old foreigner who couldn't speak their language to join them in their games. Besides, since the entire community consisted essentially of three apartment buildings, there weren't really that many opportunities to join teams or weekly get-togethers anyway. Leisure activities involving physical activity mainly involved hiking in the wonderful forest that surrounded us, or, in the warmer months, swimming in the ocean.

(And, yes, it got very warm in the summer, and swimming was wonderful).

After a hike, looking down at Yemar Bay
(my building is second from the left)
from Mt. Tempur in the summer of 1996.

But I do have two basketball-related memories that stand out.

The first involved the school basketball team, which I (strangely, now that I think about it) wasn't much involved with, but which one afternoon played a social game against the teachers at the school, with a lot of kids from the school coming to watch and cheer.

I was ... I was awesome. Perhaps that's not surprising, as I had been playing for 15 years to their ... 3, as the world I came from had basketball courts and goals littered all over neighborhoods and gyms that were common and accessible, while their world had neither, and so on. And, of course, I was older and bigger (though, honestly, not much -- these were 16-and-17 year olds, so more or less my size). Still, for whatever reason, I was able to slice through people for easy lay-ups, hit most of my pull-ups, pass to teammates for easy baskets, steal the ball occasionally on defense, and so on. I didn't overdo it, as I recognized obviously that this was supposed to be fun for the kids, but ... the kids and other teachers in the bleachers were cheering for me, happily — I think they had become so accustomed to me not speaking Russian or knowing my way around that they were delighted to see there was something I could do well — and I really did enjoy having the opportunity to play basketball after over a year of not. Even if it was against teenagers who hadn't really grown up playing basketball.

Anyway, when the game ended I fell to the floor, gassed. Some of the kids came up to me to congratulate me, and one asked if I had played in the NBA. I thought about suggesting that, yes, I had played six years in Boston before running out the string in Phoenix, but I settled for noting that in fact I hadn't been able to start for my intra-mural team at St. Louis University, so ... no. Still, that may have been the highlight of my basketball career!

School No. 72, in Yemar Bay.
The site of my first Russia-related basketball triumph

.

The second memory is fairly similar, actually. One day, around the same time, the gym teacher at the school pulled me aside and said that the next day there was going to be a city-wide basketball tournament for public school teachers (primarily gym teachers, unsurprisingly) in Vladivostok, and asked if I'd like to play. 

We ended up playing at least two games —maybe three — though at this point I only really remember one. It quickly became apparent that I was our team's ringer, and my colleagues from School No. 72 passed me the ball every opportunity, encouraging me to do whatever I could to score. (I think, reflecting on it now, basketball among older amateurs in the Russian Far East at the time was still very much a bounce-the-ball-up-and-down-until-you-are-able-to-chuck-up-a-jumper game, and they simply weren't very practiced at (or familiar with) driving for lay-ups). In that one game I remember, at least, my main memory is of all the players on the competing team, loudly, expressing alarm at me, demanding help from one another, and insisting repeatedly that they needed to double-team me.

I can't even remember if we won. (As I said, I'm creating some of these posts more to save what memories I can rather than out of any sense that the stories themselves are profound in any way). Still, what I took away from both of these events was a sense of relief that my friends there had gotten an opportunity to see me actually be good at something for once, and of course a little happiness that they had actually asked me to play, both times, and even expressed confidence and pride in me as one of "theirs."

I didn't play at all, again, in the last year I was there, and, once in law school back in the States, I quickly returned to the intra-mural-league-off-the-bench role to which I was accustomed. But for those brief shining moments ...

Moral of the Story: The best way to appear good at something is to perform it where it's not commonly done, ideally in competition against school-kids.

* Bonus Content (David's Dream Last Night): Well, less a dream than a persistent sense of frustration that I could not remember the name of the Mexican dish that comes wrapped in a corn husk. My mind must, somehow, have run up against that in a dream, and then gotten stuck, like an old record. I must have spent four hours (both asleep and, once or twice awake when I got up to use the bathroom) thinking, "Tostada! No, dammit! Enchilada! No, dammit! Tostada! No, dammit." I mean, hours. Of course, once I really did wake up, fully, it came to me quite quickly. But ... sigh. To have spent four hours obsessing over this in my sleep was quite frustrating.