God Knige

A Happy Boxing Day to you. Hopefully you've got the day off, but somehow I'm guessing a lot of you don't. For you in the UK or with super duper satellite, enjoy the Boxing Day Matches (not boxing matches).

This was the year of the Russian book. Two academic texts on early Soviet culture, a guide to etiquette and manners in Russia, a huge copy of The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn, and a Lonely Planet guide to Russia and Belarus. It's gonna be great having that stuff, but now I wonder how heavy my bag's gonna be with all them books in it. I now have a meagre library of books on Russian history, Russian language, and some literary works by Russian authors. My plan is to take them with me (just the literary texts) and read them on my monstrous flight and while living in Petersburg. Don't know how well that'll work. Oddly, I don't have any Tolstoy. I have two obscure Dostoevsky novellas (The Idiot and Notes From the Underground), a Chekov play (The Cherry Orchard), Gulag, a Socialist Realist novel (Time, Forward! by Valentin Kataev) and two novels by Mikhail Bulgakov (Heart of a Dog and Master and Margarita). I think all that, on top of the two or three travel guides I'll have, might be a bit much for the pack.

I had to work on Christmas eve and I was riding the light rail up from Lake Street to where I had to get off. I sat down across the aisle from this guy dressed in gangsta style with huge, baggy jeans, an oversized hooded sweatshirt and big black shoes. He got off at Franklin Ave. and just as he was about to get off the carriage he turns to those of us sitting where he was and says, "Y'all have a Merry Christmas" and leaves. Sorry to say, I was totally shocked by this rather surprising display of good cheer and openness. I chalk it up to my rather hasty predisposition towards people who dress like they're rap stars. But, after the shock wore off, I was really pleased to see that there was at least someone with enough good cheer and who wasn't too afraid of offending potentially touchy Jews or East Africans, to wish a Merry Christmas to a bunch of strangers. That's pretty rare these days. I told the story to my friend:00 AMy at church later that night. She is a part-time high school teacher and a lot of the kids that she works with tend to fit into that gangsta style. She was saying that she always encourages them to be that kind of person who is polite and openly courteous and generous because most of the public are so quick to categorize them because of their dress. But, she said, when you do something like wish everyone a Merry Christmas, you have the potential to absolutely blow their minds and shatter stereotypes, which I'm all for. I was glad to experience it.