May I whine?

So, theoretically, beginning today, I should be writing 500 words a day. I can’t write on Thursdays, though – my teaching days. I usually can’t write on Wednesdays – my preparing for teaching day (hey, those readings need to be done when you are a TF…). Fridays through Sundays are otherwise occupied. So I guess [...]

back in Russia

When I walk into my grandparent’s apartment I don’t know what to do with my elbows. It’s tiny, in a crumbling Khrushchev-vintage five-story building, gently falling apart. Not like the horror-story apartments you sometimes see on the news – with rusty exposed pipes, plaster peeling off the ceiling, screaming babies in damp cots in the [...]

I went for a walk on a lake today. A few miles. It’s a big lake. And what I wanted most of all, for an hour and a half, was for someone to call me and ask me where I was, just so I could say “On the Shartash lake. Close to the middle, I [...]

I’m back

in which the author ponders urban spaces, and promises pictures as soon as her home internet connection is restored

book advice?

in which the frozen historian asks for help

nobody understands us

in which the author bemoans the lack of accurate literary portrayals of academic life