To the Russians Who Follow This Blog

It appears there are about 5 of you who, on any given day, read these letters. I have readers in other countries, too, but I have some idea who they might be or how they might have discovered my blog. Those are kind of a Kevin Bacon, six degrees thing. If you’re not sure what that is, google it. We measure our connections to each other in the world by Bacon.

St. Basil's, Moscow

But Russia? I have no ties, nor ties to ties, that I know of, so I have a lot of questions. How did you find this? Many of our workplaces have strict policies about using the computers at work and the Internet for personal, and I wonder if you broke the policy, bored one day at lunch and after following a few links, found this. Do you have to worry your boss will find out? Do you have to erase all the cookies and history before you leave for the day? Do you all know each other, sit next to each other, complain about your workday the way I used to when I worked in an office? Do you email links or just crowd around one computer and read out loud?

Second, are you Russians or American ex-pats? Are you looking for glimpses of a country you’ve never been to or a country you left behind? Do these letters shed light on who we are and remind you either why you stay there or why you left here? Does it make you miss a home you never had or one you did? Or do you just feel relieved?

Finally, where in Russia are you? Moscow? St. Petersburg? One of the big cities all of us in the US have heard of? Like the way you know New York and Los Angeles? Maybe Dallas?

Coat of Arms for the City of Nalchik

Or are you in Nalchik? It's about the size of Akron. Horseshoe shaped around mountains. Are you professors or students at the local university? Do you teach writing? Do you wonder what happened to the attention spans of the kids? Do you like their music? Do you go home, like I have done, to the Dostoevsky or the Chekhov on your bookshelves? Do you wonder what you will write today? If there is anything left in this world to say?