Category: Current Affairs

For years, my dream was to live overseas. I was obsessed, it was all I wanted to do. Live outside the US. "I don't care where. Anywhere!" When we were in Portland and Peter got in with the State Department or should I say, when they snatched him up, we were told we would get a direct assignment. That means, we would be assigned a place they couldn't coerce anyone currently employed to go to, some garden spot. I was pleasantly surprised when we were given a short list to choose from rather than just handed an assignment. That list: Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, some Ickystan I honestly can't remember the name of now and Niger. "I don't want to go to any of those places!" I moaned.

Our bid list last time was pretty darn sweet. It was easy to come up with six places we wanted to go after Niger. The list this time is ten times longer than our first-ever list–although not really if you take Baghdad, Islamabad and Kabul off the list–and I'm having the same reaction I had back in Portland. There is no Sofia, Bulgaria, no Budapest, no Romania, no Poland, let alone London or Vienna or even Prague. No Tokyo or Bangkok. No Tunisia or Morocco. And now I have to consider that this is where Camille will go high school in the fall of 2011. So a potentially sweet little post like Moldova isn't an option. As usual, there are tons of African posts, I mean, Ghana! Harare! Madagascar. I love Africa but it is so. far. away.

Peter is trying to talk me down out of my tree, "You loved Niger!" My head is swimming. Okay. Breathe. Kyiv is good. How about Kathmandu?

Oy. Suddenly I love Moscow so much, I'm hugging it hard.

For Peter and I, it's already Tuesday evening. There weren't any hamburger buns for our Bocca burgers at the commisary, so I'm baking yeast rolls to use for buns and Peter is playing guitar. We are so frustrated with the time difference between here and the US on election day. It's pretty much a twelve hour difference–okay it's eleven but it's easier to figure out if you just remember twelve– between us sitting here in our living room in Moscow and the West Coast…so I guess in the morning I'll find out how it's going…

We are sitting in DC missing our friends and families, even though we are still HERE. Talk about arrggg.

Last night we watched the Scorcese Rolling Stones concert/movie. I'd watched it, youtube-sized, on the plane here. I told Peter we could play Scrabble and watch it at the same time, but he disagreed, and thought it was so good we couldn't miss a second. And once it was on the huge tv here, I was riveted. I always knew I had to like Mick, but now I'm wearing my belt buckled to the side like Ron Woods. And don't even talk to me about Keith Richards. I had no idea I loved Keith Richards.

And the Wild Horses duet with the White Stripes guy? Peter reminded me that he had seen Eddie Vedder do that same duet in 1998. So we looked it up and compared Eddie Vedder to Helen's boyfriend, Dave Mathews. And I have earth-shaking news, alert the media: Dave Matthews is better than Eddie Vedder. 

Fun times on Pennsylvania Ave. Wish you were here.

All I can do right now is sit around waiting for my super slow internet connection to download all of David Cook’s songs. He’s like Clark Kent: when he talks he’s normal, but when he sings, good lord.

Watch it and develop your own crush.

Well, chill the vodka. Moscow it is.

At first we were shocked, in spite of it being number two on our bid list. "How did it end up as number two on our list?" Peter asks me. We can’t stop talking about ballet and salmon and sturgeon and snow and mushrooms and palaces and walks in the forest. Camille is campaigning hard for the Anglo-American school, Stefan says he doesn’t want to go to school at all.

Were you there twenty years ago today? Will I regret as deeply what I am wearing today as I regret the styles of the eighties?

See those two little girls in green velvet? Those are these two. The older one is now a mother, to Tyler, age three weeks.

Oh well, I figure there are a lot of people who had gorgeous wedding photography during stylistically non-embarrasing times but has their marriage been as happy? Well, maybe yes, but say no. It was a fun day, a gorgeous sunny November day in normally dreary, rainy Humboldt country, California, and it’s been the same ever since.

In order of fewest bidders to most bidders:

Kyiv
Moscow
Yerevan
Quito
Brasilia
Tokyo
Bangkok
Beijing
Budapest
Cairo

Camille’s second grade teacher from the Portland French School, Geraldine, has moved with her husband and tiny daughter to Kano, Nigeria! They will be teaching there for two years. They have a lot of pictures up of their house and the school, and the pictures inside the classrooms look just like Camille and Stefan’s school here–actually all the pictures look like they could have been taken in Niger. Link to their blog.

From the beautifully written Holland Cutter review of the exhibition of collages and shadow boxes by Joseph Cornell, “a poet of light, a connoisseur of stars, celestial and otherwise. An archivist of time…when you are born at sea, you follow what light you have, you make your own.” The show runs from 6 October to 6 January for anyone within getting-to distance of the SF MOMA, lucky dogs that you are. Years ago, Laurel insisted we go see some of his work in an exhibit, she told me I would love it. She was right. I remember standing in front of the piece they’ve used here for the catalog cover, enchanted.

Since Stefan is playing with a pile of lentils right now I feel really good about giving the link to Jennifer’s latest article.