Happy New Year

Using the blog...

I have not been using this space very much over the last while. The reasons have been basically that I have had a lot less time than I did, the teaching being the main deal here. Also, probably, because I was teaching and have been at least marginally connected to the education establishment, I decided not to get in the habit of publicly speaking about the people I am connected to. This was not a choice made from fear, but rather one made out of respect; if I want to be seen as fair then I need to be fair myself, this regardless of how dirty those compatriots are. And probably the third was that there just wasn’t a whole lot to be gotten from this blogging business. Whether this is because my personal deal here regarding Polish corruption or Belarus’ struggle to exist (and right to self govern) is not all that interesting, or because I’m not video or a feed- just an old school text blogger with a picture in the upper left corner- may also be true, but in any case, what is is and what has been has been and the record shows that I haven’t done all that much writing for this blog.

But I am thinking that it is time to change all this and to go back to writing here and I have three real reasons for this, all of which are about my daughter Anya and her safety and future possibilities. The first is that I am about to enter into a very serious court fight with Tanya over who has the right to raise Anya. This fight has been brewing for a long time and my hope is that it has finally come to a head, but in any case, the actual description of the events and the details involved will be essential, and I would like things to be as clear as possible. Insofar as that is concerned, though I count myself as being reasonably lucid, there is nothing like a little exercise to clean things out and as of the moment, I can use all of the help I an get.

But the last reason is the most profound and disturbing: I really don’t think I can do this fight without making it public. The reason for this is that I will not simply be fighting Tanya, I will also have to fight the legal and judicial systems as well. Said plainly, the fight has been going on as long as it has for the simple reason that the police, one particular judge and the entire package of Pinsk legal help has been refusing to help me in any way over the course of the last year. And I am not talking about just one or two incidents; I am talking about the active pursuit of sustaining a situation in which Anya turns out to be the loser. So because of this, and because I really do not have such great mobility here, I have been thinking that allowing people (the press, politicians, the US embassy and even the President of Belarus) to know about what has been going on and the results, might be worth it.

I will try to do this a bit every day for a while and to include as many details as I can. In the end though, clarity, reason and making the world to live in the best reason to do anything. So lets see how this goes.

Nova Reklama...

Here's the new commercial made for Pinsk Television. I like it.

Snapshots from the beach...

I like summer. I suppose this is a ridiculous thing to say because everybody likes summer, but I am these days becoming more appreciative of the little gifts we receive from the world and in Pinsk; a truly beautiful, hot summer day is actually a bit of a rarity. The weather is in general not really so harsh as one might think. We are in the south of the country and not that far from Ukraine, and so the winters are not Dostoyevskyan really, cold yes, snow and ice yes, but not even really as dark and grey as Minnesota was.

But having free time in the summers is one of the things that is really cool about being a teacher. And I do really like being a teacher, just so you know. An old friend from California was a teacher and he likes to say that his three favorite things about being a teacher are June, July and August. And I can certainly see that this is true especially as I had to work through last summer because there wasn’t enough money to stop. Learning my lessons however this year I saved my money in advance of the slow down and, having already stuffed enough nuts in my tree to be at least reasonably comfortable, even by Belarusian standards, I have been able to hit the beaches without being too troubled by the economics of it all. And believe me, the rest was needed and appreciated.

But it is August which means we are now spinning towards the end of the summer of 2009 and I thought I might write about a sunny day last week when Anya and I made our way to the beach.

The city of Pinsk, which borders along the Polesskie Marsh, has a long stretch of beach across the Pina River. I suppose you could say there are three beaches, a grassy expanse to the left of the bridge and a sandy stretch to the right and the nicest, a sandy incline on the peninsula reaching into the confluence of the Pina with the Prypyat. This last is straight across the river from Gorodskoi (City) Park and is accessible either by traveling left after the bridge around the boat works, or by rowboat taxi from the park, the cost of which is a nominal 500 rubles (maybe 20 cents) for adults. The beach itself is rather steep and flattens out at the top into a vast sandy area, surrounded by trees, which is big enough for football and volleyball matches.

We were three in this party hopping off the launch in our bare feet, myself, Anya and her new best friend Paulina, a pretty neighbor girl with a broad infectious smile. After having a brief look around we hiked up the incline and Anya, as usual, picked out our spot which, bless her heart, was close to an amazingly beautiful, dark skinned goddess with long black hair, large breasts and smooth curves, all barely covered by her brown thong bikini. One tries not to gawk, but in this first moment I found it rather impossible not to and only Anya’s persistent tugging at my shorts reminded me that I needed to spread our blanket and inflate the girl’s floatation devices. The Hawaiian Tropic model, the only reasonable way to describe her, smiled at my attention creating all sorts of fluttering internally and all I could do was to return the smile. Like I say, I like going to the beach in the summer.

But of course, first things first and the girls wanted to get into the water as fast a possible. Anya has recently graduated from water ring to water wings, two inflated collars which are worn on her upper arms that keep her head above water. Paulina has the same pair, though she is not that willing to allow her feet to leave land and so the three of us waded out into the Pina’s soft brown water together. I know I shouldn’t take liberties with other people’s children, but I couldn’t help dragging Paulina gently a bit further out so she could experience actually floating, a moment she handled with laughter followed by a protest that she didn’t know how to swim back. However, she disproved the theory herself in about 5 seconds when I refused to help and she had no choice but to try. I got a kiss on the cheek for that, by the way, when she figured it out.

At about this moment, back on the beach, Hawaiian Tropic had come down to take a languid cool off dip and again smiled at me, leaving me again dumfounded and in awe of her curves. Finding somehow the region where speech is created in my now completely adolescent brain, the thought occurred to ask her her name, and I mumbled my own. But then suddenly I was for some reason compelled to offer “a line”. I don’t know why I needed to do this because though I really admired how attractive she was, I wasn’t actually thinking of pursuing the matter, I am old after all. But then again, maybe I thought that she was used to this and that I ought to at least put up an effort to appear to be aggressive so as not to insult her. Anyway…

“You know,” I said in halting Russian, unsure of exactly how the grammar would work for this but hoping for a laugh in any case, “you should work for the Pinsk tourist bureau.”

“Why is that?” She asked.

“Because, if they took your picture right now about two million men would flock to Pinsk just to come to this beach.” The line was well received and her warm smile was more than equal to the sunny afternoon. Her name by the way was Marina.

After our swim, the girls and I warmed up under blankets and munched potato chips. A young blond boy came to us and wanted to borrow our small red ball which we either kick around as a football or I use as a pillow. I gave it to him, which angered Anya for some reason, though the chips kept her from chasing after him when he left with it. The boy headed off towards another attractive single lady, long blond hair and a teal bikini, sunning nearby. I guessed that the both of them being blond, she must be the boy’s mother and when I asked, she answered that yes, he was. Children hook up almost instantly and so when the chips were done, the girls and the blond boy all went back to the water to play some more. I stayed up top and read while lying on my belly.

After a while, the blond got up, went to one of the blue metal changing cubicles and retuned after a moment in her street clothes. She picked up her bag and blanket and headed off to the launch. I thought maybe she was only going across the river to buy something to eat, but she never came back. The boy seemed awfully young to be left on a beach though. Later, the boy brought the ball back and then went back down to swim some more, but didn’t seem to have the slightest care that he had been abandoned or at least that his mom had suddenly and without mentioning anything, simply disappeared. Strange.

About that time, Paulina’s mother came to join us. I had asked her to come when she agreed to let Paulina come along with Anya and I to the beach. Vika is shy and was a bit hesitant to agree, but I guess she decided that trusting me with her child might also mean trusting me in general and so here she was. Vika is 23 and comes from Baku, Azerbaijan. Her husband works for the railroad and she is looking for work. She has a quiet way of talking on about things that is very soothing, this strikingly different from Paulina who has the habit of screaming without a minute's notice and shifting moods from bright happiness to stern scolding if she is not presented with appropriate attention. But Vika does like to go on and to have an appreciative ear, so basically my part of the conversation was to nod and smile and offer a chuckle to the humorous parts. Not an unpleasant task, really.

Now, listening to Vika is not such an unpleasant task really but, after a while, and well calmed by her mellifluous recountings, I needed to head down to the beach to have a swim. I dove in and swam under the water for a bit and then swam out to the red, cone shaped buoys marking the end of the swimming area and from there, turned left and headed up stream. The current in the river was strong and I labored for a while against it until I was near the end of the beach and then rolled onto my back and let the river take me back down, my ears under the water and only the sound of my own breathing and beautiful blue sky over head to pay attention to.

Returning to the world I saw that Vika had also found her way in for a swim, taking great care not to let her abundant black hair become wet. Near her though were two young teenage girls who obviously couldn’t swim, though they were tying with great comic effort to do so. One of them, a tall blond whose bikini top was perpetually situated halfway up her breasts, took notice of my speaking to Anya in English and started in like a clinical scientist to find out where I was from. I gave her the usual sarcastic answers (Kirova Square) but apparently English was not recognizable as being anything but foreign and after a bit more 20 questions, I had her convinced that I was Italian. Still unsatisfied, the girl started in questioning the whole of my picture:

“Who is she?” She asked, referring to Vika who was bobbing Paulina up and down in hip deep water. Vika stopped and tuned in to hear my answer.

“She is my neighbor.” I said. “The dark haired girl is her daughter and the other one is mine.” Anya smiled. The conversation went on and as usual, Anya was asked if she spoke English (and as usual she answered “Da”) and after a while I gave up and explained that I taught English and yes, she and her friend could contact me if they wanted for lessons and yes, it costs money, because really, business is business but it really isn’t so expensive all things considered, and you know, English is the international language so really, it should be considered an investment in your future and other such usual bullshit. After all of this though, and regardless of inanity, the meeting was enough to create a nice, reasonable peace between us and we agreed that they should take my number for future considerations and we left it at that.

Relaxed from the swimming and bantering, everybody hiked up the incline to rest and eat more chips. The blond boy came again to borrow the ball and again Anya told him off, this time more harshly. But just as the boy was trying to figure out what to do about Anya, Marina, our Hawaiian Tropic model, got up, called the blond boy to her to get ready to go and unfortunately started packing away her amazing figure as well. Well, that solved the mystery of the abandoned blond boy but I tell you, they really didn’t look anything alike and more so, when I asked Marina about this, she seemed kind of glum about the association. I mean, I am sure she loves her boy, but I guess she also likes getting attention herself and maybe, having this little urchin to take care of isn’t always seen as an asset in the sex symbol business. Understandable I suppose. But really, he was a very cool kid. Fearless.

Without Marina to sneak peeks at, I tuned my attention back to Vika who was now quietly going on about her family in Baku and about an uncle who had lost his teeth and couldn’t speak very well (though all could understand him) but after a while, I found myself losing the thread of the conversation and, instead of listening, I started trying to capture a decent picture of Marina as a souvenir of the day. But this sort of thing has no real value and even picturing her out of the bathing suit, not such a great leap really, only made me start thinking about how lonely I have been feeling lately and dwelling on that pretty much sent me tumbling downward. Vika was, I think, now into describing a conversation she had with her mother when she was 9 and that was it, the synapses turned off and I was just about asleep when suddenly a volleyball whacked me in the head.

The ball had come from an errant spike from a game of circle volleyball, if this is what it is called. The game is basically about keeping the ball aloft by the group rather than attacking territory and mis-hits get you banished to the middle of the circle, where you kneel down and become the target of such spikes. If you are lucky enough to receive one in the head or back, you are free to return to the game. I got up to return the ball and was greeted by a rather perfect eighteen year old girl in a green bathing suit who had come to retrieve it. It’s funny how the universe works in that you can be thinking how nice it would be to be with a woman you love and then right in that moment, a viable example of exactly what you were thinking of comes walking towards you with a sympathetic expression on her face. My G-d she was beautiful. And you know, though I don’t really know how or why these things are the way they are, in that moment, every muscle in my body told me that I would never forget this stupid moment. And I mean, it is stupid because I’m not a kid, I’m 45 already. But you are telling me I can still get a rush up my spine from just handing back a volleyball? G-d, she was beautiful! Or did I already say that? Anyway, it was an explosion, and probably, the real reason I am writing these words. Or maybe I am overdoing it.

But in any case, it was a beautiful day. The sun was dazzlingly hot and the air crisp and clean and university registration had brought all of the students back to town, the weather sending them to this beach after the paperwork was complete so really, though that girl in the green bathing suit will probably be with me forever, the truth of the matter was Pinsk Belarus in this day certainly had as nice a beach as anything Greece or Southern France might have to offer. I mean, I might be prejudiced, but at least it seemed that way to me.

But then it was five o’clock and I had business at 6:00, which meant it was time to go. The view of Pinsk from the top of the hill is rather nice. The line of trees along the promenade, the Vitebsk, our tour boat which takes you down and back up the river on 45 minute excursions, the newly painted Prypyat Hotel and of course the boat memorial to the heroes who rescued Pinsk and the end of the Great Patriotic War. Everything was green and nice and all who were remaining were still happily enjoying such a rare and perfect day. We climbed aboard the launch and were rowed back to reality. I didn’t want this day to end. I guess they call that nostalgia, when you realize that something so beautiful is also only fleeting or worse, has already been. Summer doesn’t last long in Pinsk, nor does being four years old or even being young and beautiful enough to inspire fantasy. Time does indeed march along. But certainly, taking a picture helps and hopefully, these which I have described will still be with me when the winter comes around.

A bit more about Joe and the Volcano...

Simeon Migelovich, Ukranian-born Jew, and allegedly, boss of the Red Mafia

Just a couple of thoughts for the day today. That piece I wrote about Joe Biden and his remarks about the volatility and susceptibility of Russia seems to have been echoed elsewhere on the web. Fox News calls Biden blunt and states that he has "run afoul" of his own advice, given in the same interview with the Wall Street Journal:

"It is never smart to embarrass an individual or a country when they're dealing with significant loss of face," Biden said. "My dad used to put it another way: Never put another man in a corner where the only way out is over you."

Again according to the article even the Russians were taken aback by Biden's directness:

"The U.S. vice president's intention to tie this serious work (on cutting nuclear weapons stockpiles) to economic reasons rather than to the responsibility that Russia and the U.S. bear to the international community are absolutely incomprehensible," -Sergei Prikhodko, an aide to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The rest of the article goes on to show other instances of Biden's bluntness and includes a knowing quote from Democratic consultant Tara Dowdell:

"You know what you get when you get Joe Biden," she told FOX News. "I think he's pretty candid. I think a lot of the stuff he says is actually what he's thinking. In politics, unfortunately you can't always say what you're thinking."

Couldn't have said it better.

Politics are politics and the purpose of being a mediator of for the public trust is that you really do need to show that you can be trusted by the public to do the job you are being paid to do. If for example you are invited to sit peacefully at a campfire one night, it might be a better idea to play the guitar than to throw balloons filled with gasoline at the fire. Of course throwing those balloons might seem pretty funny to a lot of people, but spending the evening near the lake is imminently better than spending it at the emergency room or the burn center. Thus my opinion is that if you are trying to enter talks about reducing nuclear arsenals with a volatile and power mongering country, it might be somewhat wiser not to provoke a fight with them while doing so. I mean, nobody said you have to like the Russians, we are just saying that we need to talk reasonably with them. That is the job at hand.

This brings me to the second piece of business which comes from a photo I picked up to illustrate the story about Semion Mogilevich, the alleged mafia kingpin, who was released by the Russians a few days ago despite attempted extraditions by the US (and possibly other countries). The rather banal Washington Post article I reprinted in the BHTimes speaks basically about the machinations of Mogilevich's lawyers and how there might be some political connection to the problems between Gazprom and Ukraine.

However, the real kick in the head came while I was typing in the information about that picture I used whose original source was a 1998 Village Voice article by Robert I Friedman which named Semion Mogilevich the "most dangerous mobster in the world". That article (which can also be found HERE) goes on to speak about a remarkable stream of violence and heinous crimes and an organization of almost empirical proportions. In that article, Mogilevich is said to have been the leader of the "Red Mafia" and involved in extortion, money laundering, trafficking in nuclear materials, drugs, prostitutes, precious gems, and stolen art. It talks about scams with Faberge eggs, Pilfering money from Jews exiting the country during Perestroika, as well as several "legitimate" businesses such as weapons manufacturing and trade firms, which were basically fronts for money laundering.

The article starts out telling us exactly how ruthless Mogilevich is:

In two posh villas outside the small town of Ricany, near Prague, one of the most dreaded mob families in the world savagely murders its terrified victims. The mob's young enforcers, trained by veterans of the Afghanistan war, are infamous for their extreme brutality. Their quarry, usually businessmen who have balked at extortion demands, are repeatedly stabbed and tortured, then mutilated before they are butchered. The carnage is so hideous that it has scared the daylights out of competing crime groups in the area.

The torture chambers are run by what international police officials call the Red Mafia, a notorious Russian mob family that in only six years has become a nefarious global crime cartel. Based in Budapest, it has key centers in New York, Pennsylvania, Southern California, and as far away as New Zealand.

and ends with a rather impressive CV:

Israeli and U.S. law enforcement sources agree that the Red Mafia, though in existence for a mere six years, has become one of the most formidable Russian organized-crime families in the world. Strongest in the Ukraine, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the U.S., Mogilevich has increased his strength by forging ties with other powerful Russian mob groups as well as with the Italian Camorra. His reported ties to the German BND and ex-police officers in Hungary keep him informed of police efforts to penetrate his organization. ''He also ingratiates himself with the police by providing information on other [Russian crime] groups' activities, thus appearing to be a cooperative good citizen,'' says a classified FBI report. This, along with his strong leadership qualities, his acute financial skills, his talented and highly educated associates, and his use of cutting-edge technology, has so far made the ''Brainy Don'' impervious to prosecution.

To me, and this is from the my quiet little position in my not-so-palatial suite here in Pinsk Belarus, it is always good to remember that where you came from has a lot to do with who you are. It is said about Americans that people who lived through the depression were changed by the experience and forever after retained quirks and foibles about money. People who lost mothers and father when they were young also retain issues.

The post-glasnost, fall of the wall period was known as the "time of the bandits". I suppose one could equate this realistically with the American Wild West or with the prohibition period of the late 20's and 30's. Certainly the clean up period, which is now seemingly underway, in which the government takes over from the "entrepreneurs" is also like what happened during those times. But also, just as gangsters and gunfighters are a popular theme for American literature and film, it is also so with the Russians. They like their tough guy past and feel a connection and identify with the heroes or anti-heroes.

I suppose a not so subtle irony is from American movies about gangsters which have always been popular (found very cheaply now thanks to pirate discs). In fact, I remember seeing a Polish film called I think "Sara", which is about a clandestine love affair between a washed up soldier who has lost his wife and family but who has an affair with the spoiled though ridiculously sexy daughter of the mafia head who hired him to be her bodyguard. The one scene I remember is one in which the soldier has an interview with the mafia boss. The boss is eating a nice supper complete with the obligatory glass of wine, but what was interesting is that he was also watching "The Godfather" on video (the scene in which Michael takes Apollonia to bed) while he was eating. And of course he loses concentration on the subject when she drops her slip- a real problem amongst Poles, I suppose and of course this loss of concentration is the eventual slip-up that leads to his undoing.

But in any case, and this is going back to Joe Biden’s slip-up, I like diplomacy more than I like threats and provocations, and this is especially true when dealing with the Russians, who are still in, or at least not so very far removed from their own Wild West and Al Capone times. But I also like generally the idea of respecting people more than dismissing them. I really enjoyed my life much more after Gorbachev allowed that there was not going to be a nuclear war. I was very bothered by that thought when I was a child and felt great relief when it was gone. I am much older now and am not as sensitive as I was then, but I still don't like the idea of mixing it up with people who have the power to Nagasaki New York in reply to an American housewarming gift from a previous visit. And I also wonder if, if they had it to do over again and knew what the subsequent two decades would be like, if the Soviet Union would not have been allowed to tumble. All something to think about, I am sure.

A little wisdom, a little patience and a little mutual business. This is all that is needed to insure a nice evening around the campfire and a better day tomorrow.

Note: Also, please see HERE for an excelent interview with Semion Mogilevich.

Tailgunner Joe...

“I can see Putin sitting in Moscow saying, 'Jesus Christ, Iran gets the nuclear weapon, who goes first?' Moscow, not Washington.” -Joe Biden

I am watching a Russian war movie, a gift from a student who always has a new film as he comes along to his lessons. In the scene I have just seen, a Russian soldier runs down a Chechnya soldier; they have been in a fire fight, the Chechnya has been running, but simply, the Russian soldier has more energy and at the river, overtakes him, clunking him over the head with the butt of his AK. And this is the moment, here in this Russian film, that the Russian soldier, without panic or any particular fear, washes his face and head in the river while the Chechnya lies a few meters away. But there is no move to kill him (and I suppose no thought in the “Saving Private Ryan” sense that allowing him to live my allow the man to come back and kill more Russians later on) and the Russian simply allows the Chechnya to live and only asks that he accepts his fate as the loser. A simple deal, really: Simply see that you are beaten and there is no need to kill you.

So this moment got me thinking about some remarks made by Joe Biden recently:

Biden Says Weakened Russia Will Bend to U.S.

From: WSJ

Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview that Russia's economy is "withering," and suggested the trend will force the country to make accommodations to the West on a wide range of national-security issues, including loosening its grip on former Soviet republics and shrinking its vast nuclear arsenal.

Mr. Biden said he believes Russia's economic problems are part of a series of developments that have contributed to a significant rethinking by Moscow of its international self-interest. The geographical proximity of the emerging nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea is also likely to make Russia more cooperative with the U.S. in blocking their growth, he said.

But in the interview, at the end of a four-day trip to Ukraine and Georgia, Mr. Biden said domestic troubles are the most important factor driving Russia's new global outlook. "I think we vastly underestimate the hand that we hold," he said.

"Russia has to make some very difficult, calculated decisions," Mr. Biden said. "They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they're in a situation where the world is changing before them and they're clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable."

Now, I am sure that most of us know, and I am relatively sure that Biden knew, the Russian mind set when he gave this speech. That Russian soldure is exactly a perfect representation of the local attitude towards its neighbors and especially towards $10-a-ticket-Americans. I am personally sure even that this has always been exactly what the Russian mentality is and probably has been since since the time of the tsars or at least since they were shooting dogs into the cosmos. Tanya’s attitude towards me not the least of my evidences attesting to this.

But in reading that article, I received a rather unfortunate feeling when thinking about these remarks made by our current Vice President of the United States of American (how one of my students likes to say it). To me, to speak of actually winning against the Russians, and this even after how many years of the cold war?- because of strength yet and because of a lack of comprehension on the part of the Kremlin, is exactly the sort of nonsense that Russia thrives upon. It is their pap and pabulum, their daily bread and even their rason-de-etre probably for keeping their neo-nazi, $100- a-month, gas-mongering, milk-warring way of life going. And I am not just speaking about the “Brat” films (Did you become strong by stealing the money? No, you did not!”), works of genius by the way, which everyone should take trouble of finding and sitting though, even if the humor escapes, in terms of local philosophy and wisdom. It is just that even the idea of playing a heavy hand is so ridiculous. I mean, don’t we know better already? If Biden, and Obama truly feel that they have the wherewithal, man and technical power and, and especially in these times of crisis, the fiscal means to overwhelm and finally put away the Russians, as if this was a useful solution, they are truly kidding themselves.

I mean first of all, exactly how many years now have the Russian people been living on fumes and vapor and light and shadow? How many years of experience have there been following the horse and plow, in their rubber boots, sweeping with a bundle of twigs and burying potatoes in the winter without any other possibility to feed the family? How many years now have they already been living on nothing? What’s the point of threats and irresponsibly pompous ideas of winning and losing? Why even strike such a ridiculous stance?

What I am trying to get at this evening is that the Russians, and the Belarusian’s of course, our new gambling partners of the not so far east, are not going to buy into this sort of shoot from the hip, all words and no muscle kind of rhetoric. They have lived tough, through ridiculously difficult times, and that is all that have ever known. And in these times of crises, where, if you can even imagine this, it is getting even worse, and yet they are still carrying on and plaguing each other with bureaucratically controlled suppressions and threats, why would we ever think that there is going to be another wall tumbling, flag waving, newsworthy sound bite for the disinterest of an American audience, hitting its collective bong and laconically surfing porn sites while waiting for their pizza to arrive? I mean, look at Ukraine where even the oh-my-she-is-still sexy Yulia Tymishenko went back to the Russians, a Babe Ruth to the Red Sox shocker if ever there was. Or, even if there were actually another way other than being in violent, philosophical opposition to the only 233-year old, poor, tired, huddled masses, truth, justice and the American way rhetoric (Joe McCarthy now spinning away like a top) the Russkies would still have to process the idea via a filter made in the good ol’ USSR, that vodka fueled love nest of nostalgia, that warm spot in the heart which even the young, who never actually knew of such a thing, remember with fondest of brotherly memory. Of course, that fleeting majority, that pensioner fueled fifty-first percent which might still yet believe that Badkie has something to say, is now fading away in deference to European money and empty cable TV dreams, but there isn’t and has never been any real possibilities to finance anything but the skeleton of such dreams. So even if the seed actually pachinko’d through and landed in a few centimeters of clean soil, it would get trampled by the constant current Poland-like assaults of greed, avarice and mutual distrust.

So in the end, what you never get is a feel good story because it simply doesn’t exist here. And worse, adding insult to injury might still lend itself only to a kamikaze, Planet of the Apes response of “yea, well, we already know how to farm irradiated land by hand so fuck you”, sort of mentality. Can you understand me?

So, what I am saying is: What was the point of the bravado?

If I have understood correctly, the man we have so interestingly entrusted our near future was supposed to be a negotiator, a real politician, a real bargain maker and a real bringer-together of even epic proportions, if I am not being too MLK-y by saying so. And heck, even I believe in Obama and I wouldn’t believe in a coin toss if you gave me heads, tails and a thousand-to-one-odds that the son of a bitch lands standing up on its side! People, that American flag you see flying over my still, though amazingly so, publicly accessed bit of nonsense, the Being Had Times, is and only is there because America has elected one Mr. Barak Obama. Read the sidebar. It says: I am an American living in Belarus! I like this guy and I like him specifically because of his "lets shine some light on the problems and see if we can’t clean up the mess a little" attitude. He is not George Bush, he’s rational.

So it was and only was because of the fact that we seem to have elected a reasonable man, that I am so shocked, amused and depressed by this piece of cold war rhetoric by Joe Biden. Joe, please, I know we don’t know each other, but please, explain to me to which audience did you think you were speaking to when you made those remarks? Were you playing to the lowest common denominator here? Were you thinking USA Today and a quick and glib sound bite? Was this an ego thing and you just wanted to get away with personally dropping a Slim Pickens’ Bombarino straight down on Stalin himself as some throw-back high school fantasy, some sort of dreamy, fetish-like, Patrick-Swazy-was-hot-in-Red-Dawn sort of deal? Do you still live in the 20th century? Or do you really think that you are going to get under Vladimir Putin’s, uh, sorry, I mean Medvedev’s skin? What’s the gain of trash talking? Why the provocation?

No remark, no matter how glib, is going to mobilize three hundred million, $100-a-month share-croppers to vote no. The game’s already over. It’s all just about money. We all already know they are fascists and all of those golden, second-hand Russian (ironically) roulette tables, spinning away nightly here in Belarus already tell the tale of who actually won that great, endless, frozen combat. Hey, drugs, prostitutes and gambling. Michael Corleone would’ve been proud.

I say it is not needed because in the end, adding insult to injury does not an open-handshake make. The game’s already over, just take your free cocktail, put your two bucks down and shut the fuck up already.

The 1000th Polish Police and Administrative Corruption post

Well, this is the 1000th post for the Polish Police and Administrative corruption page. What do you think about that? 1000 yellow stories about Poland and Polish misfits, con artists, swindlers, killers, body thieves, bilkers of old ladies, drunks, back stabbers, killers, bribe takers and of course those from the public trust and the football establishment who seem to always be ready to go the extra mile to keep things depressingly ugly in Warsaw. They say here in Belarus that Being Polish is not a nationality, it is a profession and I believe this completely. I mean, I have believed it since May of 2002 and hopefully, these 1000 stories will help convince others of the same.

Obviously, I have sort of stopped writing for this blog. I say sort of because in my heart, I am always here. Or maybe that was a bit flowery and it is just that I keep the newspaper happening and the PPAC going. But I thought to take advantage of the occasion and say a little something. 1000 is a big number. Maybe that number would have been bigger before I allowed myself this extremely bureaucratic one-story-a-day quota to fill. Once you start being bureaucratic in any endeavor, even malice and hatred, these things tend to become monotonous and inevitable. But nevertheless, it did take a while to build up a reserve of this size and in a way, I guess I could say that I am proud of it.

The reasons I seem to have stopped writing though are actually a bit delicate. On the one hand, the decision to stop had something to do with boredom and a feeling that I really and truly was wasting my time. As you might imagine, hopelessness can actually be rather depressing. But then there was also an idea that I didn’t want to get in the habit of writing about the people I was working with. I am talking here about the local education people and of course, the Pinsk police. I wasn’t thinking fear however, as I am sure everyoone’s first guess would be, but rather I was thinking more along the lines that I just didn’t want to talk about how ugly and corrupt my colleagues actually were (are). Sort of a “what you say here, stays here” stance which, probably somewhere in my delusional consciousness was meant to be an act of trust. Now however, with two full years having come and gone, I am not sure that I admire my decision on that all that much and actually, I really wish I would have taken the trouble to name a few names and spit at a few people who need being spit at. But I didn’t, and you know the page sort of died. Not the whole blog of course- I still have a steady flow of people coming through the newspaper and they do seem to be occasionally picking up a copy of the book on their way. That new stat counter by the way is reasonable close if a little low, so at least you can see for yourself what is going on. But yea, the story has become kind of lonely.

But even if I have not been writing here, this doesn’t mean I have not been busy because I have. I have been teaching English here and doing reasonably well. I have just finished a film script that I am trying to get around to showing people. I am working on picking up the pieces of a rather ugly break up with Tanya and seeing if we can keep her away from a new relationship before she kills us- her main talent in life, by the way. And of course there is thinking about next year, working on the apparently never-to-be-finished second book and, well, getting out to the beach as much as I can.

About the future though, I don’t really know. One would think that at my age I would have been dug in by now, but I don’t know that I am. I mean, I know the roads and where everything is, but I am I no way who I wanted to be when I came here. I am not saying that I wanted to be the mayor, but I did have an idea that it might be kind of cool to be a bit more in the mix socially. I have had my chances and it is not that I haven’t tried, but I don’t seem to have found the rhythm and obstacles or no, I can’t really brag about myself. I guess or I know that there is no one to blame for that but myself, but saying that doesn’t make it easier. So I am not satisfied with what I have and I need to get a bit more aggressive about making things better.

But in any case, as far as this blog goes, redundancy or no, I will keep trying and I guess I will just keep on putting out newspapers and adding to the corruption page list. I mean, I keep thinking that something will eventually give way somewhere and I’ll catch my break. I mean, have I got a story to tell yet? But even of I haven’t, maybe, if I can get back into the groove, I’ll do what I can to put out an interesting 1000 words or so a couple of times a week. I men why not? You go out of your way to make a little media spot for yourself, and hey, why not make use of it, right? I don’t really have a handle of what the theme is- maybe I’ll just leave this open for now, but I’ll see what I can do about getting some words on the screen, even if all it ever amounts to is a little mental exercise.

So this is the story. 1000 posts. That ain’t nothing. And really, it has always been about Poland and Polish corruption, greed, complicity, crime and social irresponsibility. And man, 1000 posts means there is a lot of it out there. And it’s all true. Take if from me. MY name is Adam Goodman and I am advising you NOT to go to Poland and offering 1000 reasons why not.

Cheers,

Hopefully, more soon…

Where is Chilly S?

Labor Day story: San Mateo Hero...

Bill Bliech, on of the dispatchers in this article has been a friend of mine for about 25 years and we still talk via internet almost every day. I just though we should congratulate a good worker who does an important job here on May 1st, International Labor Day.

Unsung heroes':San Mateo dispatchers awarded for response

By Dana Yates

San Mateo police Dispatcher Bill Bleich fields calls at the department’s dispatch center. The 18-year-veteran was one of three San Mateo dispatchers who recently received a county award for the way they handled a deadly incident on Hobart Avenue last year.

It was a bland Tuesday morning when the dispatchers at the San Mateo Police Department answered a 911 call with nothing more than the sound of children crying and a mother trying to comfort her kids.

“I heard the mom saying ‘it’ll be done soon,’” said San Mateo police Dispatcher Bill Bleich.

The call started a string of events that ultimately ended in an officer-involved shooting, a heroic rescue of children and the death of a desperate mother at the hands of a deranged stalker. What happened between the first 911 call from 24-year-old Loan Kim Nguyen and the final flurry of gunfire from Raymond Gee that took both their lives was in the hands of three San Mateo dispatchers. For their level-headed management of the adrenaline-fueled situation, Supervisor Rita Thibodeau and dispatchers Dave Barton and Bleich were recently awarded the 2008 San Mateo County Center of Excellence Award by other county dispatchers.

“They’re really the unsung heroes of the department and really the lifeline to the community,” said Deputy Chief Mike Callagy.

The three dispatchers working on Nov. 28 received the first wireless 911 call from Nguyen. They could hear children crying and a mom’s voice, but little more than that. Tracking devices located the cell phone tower from which the call was transmitted, allowing them to dispatch an officer to the general area. The officer was dispatched to the area of 13th Avenue between Palm Avenue and El Camino Real, Bleich said.

The officer was in a neighborhood with homes, multi-story businesses and one large apartment complex. Finding a victim with such limited information was nearly impossible.

Thibodeau heard her co-workers needed help and immediately moved from her nearby office to the dispatch desk. As Thibodeau was contacting the cell phone provider to learn the identity of the cell phone owner, another 911 call came into the dispatch center.

It was a man claiming his wife needed help. The address he gave them was close to the cell phone tower from which the previous 911 call came, Thibodeau said.

Dispatchers asked a very important question: What is your wife’s cell phone number?

That question led dispatchers to link the two calls and immediately send an officer who was already in the area to the couple’s Hobart Avenue home.

What happened after that seemed to happen over the course of 15 minutes, Thibodeau said.

In reality, it was a long and scary event that included shots being fired at officers and a standoff requiring the San Mateo County SWAT Team. The team of dispatchers managed a situation all the while worried that one of the 20 other police personnel on duty that day could have been shot and possibly killed.

Managing the situation went far beyond dispatching an officer and waiting for a response.

Thibodeau went as far as instructing the staff of a nearby day care center to shelter in place while the SWAT Team was across the street. The instructions included exactly where in the house to stand and how to respond in the event of gunfire, said Lt. Mike Brunicardi.

“They’re just outstanding. I wouldn’t want anyone else here,” Brunicardi said.

Time to sink in

For dispatchers, there is seldom closure. Most of the time they never know what happened on any given call. This time they did — by way of their co-workers and the press.

“Sometimes it takes a while to sink in. It sunk in a little when I went home for lunch. It really sunk in when I saw the press [reports],” Bleich said.

What happened that day was well documented.

Gee laid in wait on the side of the home Nguyen shared with her husband Dennis Quan. Nguyen called her husband after he left for work that morning reporting that the power had gone off. Quan returned home and switched the power back on, noticing that the garage door was partially open.

Police believe Gee gained entry into the home by switching off power to the house and opening the garage door. His fingerprints were identified on the power box on the side of the house.

He brought with him a bag that included a knife, handcuffs, pepper spray and prescription muscle relaxants.

Gee met Nguyen at a Halloween party and obtained her cell phone number by allowing her to use his phone to call hers when she lost it at the party. He also tracked her on Facebook.

Gee opened fire when police responded to the house. The SWAT Team was called in and a standoff occurred. Fearing for her life and the safety of her children, Nguyen told police she was going to lower her children out of a bedroom window to a SWAT vehicle below. As she was doing so, Gee opened fire through a bedroom wall, striking Nguyen and narrowly missing officers. Gee was later found dead of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

‘Unique profession’

For Bleich, the call stands out as the worst call in his career. For Thibodeau, it is another in a long history of interesting calls.

Calls that involve small children, sometimes calling in domestic violence, affects Thibodeau and Dispatcher Briana Coons the most.

It was Coons’ second day on the job when the Hobart incident was called into 911. She was at City Hall, but immediately returned to the department to do what she could to help. A part-time City Hall dispatcher also arrived at the Police Department to help field the many phone calls flooding the dispatch center that day, Thibodeau said.

Coons was undergoing a rigorous introduction to the department, which includes six months of on-the-job training — three answering phone calls and three dispatching officers.

“It’s a unique profession unlike any other. There are no classes for this. There are no criminal justice courses to take to learn how to be a dispatcher,” Callagy said.

San Mateo dispatchers work 10-hour shifts and cannot leave their station unless specifically scheduled to do so. It’s a multi-tasking job. Most of the day is spent prioritizing calls and referring people to other organizations for help. Sometimes dispatchers are faced with a major incident. Sometimes it’s a call of a deer head on someone’s doorstep or the “Beebusters” employee climbing trees at night to extract hives.

“Sometimes I think people think it’s all about Code 3, lights and sirens, all the time, all day. We usually spend the day giving a lot of referrals to other agencies,” Thibodeau said.

It also takes its toll on people. Those who don’t make it past the first six months are usually shocked by the strange hours. Thibodeau said a strong support system is necessary to get through the schedule of odd hours.

“Someone has to be here 24/7. Someone has to be here on Christmas. Someone has to be here on New Year’s Eve. Someone has to be here on their anniversary” Thibodeau said.

And then there’s the name calling. For the most part, the dispatchers seem to easily brush off insults from stressed out callers.

“They’re not calling on the best day of their life. I’m OK with that,” Thibodeau said.

Considering their daily duties are often unrecognized by the public, who generally thank the officers who actually respond to an emergency, the dispatchers were happy to accept for the first time the county award from their peers.

“In the public eye we’re kind of anonymous,” Thibodeau said.

Once every 28 years...

I want to pass something along that might kind of mean something. Today, Tuesday April 7th at Sundown or Wednesday at sunrise, there is a special Jewish prayer to be said. It is called Birkat Hachama and it only happens once every 28 years and is sort of a thank you for G-d creating the world or at least the sun. You can check it out on wiki:

Я хочу пройти, кое-что по этому могло бы отчасти означать кое-что. В этот вторник в Закате или в среду в восходе солнца, есть специальная еврейская просьба, которая будет сказана. Это называют Биркас Гохама, и это только случается однажды каждые 28 лет и - вид спасибо за б-г создание мира или по крайней мере солнце. Вы можете проверить это на wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birchat_Hachammah

I don't think you need to be Jewish to understand this or even to be particularly religious, but should you think of it, and if you thought that saying thank you for life on earth might mean something, you can say at about sundown Tuesday these words and maybe it will be some connection to our mutual heritage:

Я не думаю, что Вы должны быть еврейскими, чтобы понять это или даже быть особенно религиозным, но если Вы думаете об этом, и если Вы думали, что высказывание спасибо за жизнь на земле могло бы означать кое-что, Вы можете сказать в приблизительно закате во вторник эти слова, и возможно это будет некоторая связь с нашим взаимным наследием:
ברוך אתה ה' אלהינו מלך העולם עושה מעשה בראשית
(Барух ата хашем элохэйну мэлэх ха'олом аусэ маусэ бэрэшис)
(Baruch ata hashem, eloheinu melech ha'olam, a'useh ma'useh bereshis)

"Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the Universe who makes the works of Creation."

"Благословлены Вы, Господь, наш бог, Король Вселенной, который делает работы из Создания."

400 newspapers and 900 Polish corruption posts…

The reason why I am typing right now is because I feel some necessity to say something about another milestone in my blogging history. There are actually two milestones going on here- the Polish Police and Administrative Corruption Page is waiting to have its 900th post posted (I post them in advance to cover my "one yellow story a day" framework) and the Being Had Times is being published for the 400th time today.

I guess in the end we might say only that these are round numbers and, as I have just celebrated, or better, did not celebrate my 45th birthday for exactly the same reason, round numbers don't really mean crap. This thought actually was not mine but came instead from a 40ish neighbor lady who has obviously given aging some thought herself. But then again, maybe these sorts of things do have meaning. On an average, it takes about 2.5 hours to make a newspaper. Sometimes it takes longer on poor news days and sometimes there were technical snafus and I do remember losing 2 or 3 finished papers which had to be completely redone. I also have not been perfect at this and I think, if I remember correctly, I did not publish one time for computer failure, choosing not to do it at the internet café, something I had done once or twice. I think I have done these a couple of times on the road as well. Generally though, this two and half hours is a reasonable amount of time to plan on being spent every Wednesday and Sunday and I guess this means that I have spent at least 1000 hours of my life making these papers. We can also probably double that number for Story entries and then add in again for letter writing and other such duties and I am not even going to begin thinkinig about the book. So, in any case, this isn't nothing.

But again and again and again, it is not the quality or content of these web spaces that was at the heart of making them, nor was it ever about creating an artificial celebrity for my ego to play with. I mean, I don't actually like drawing attention to myself very much. I like getting attention for work I've done, this is cool, but on me personally, no. It is also not a money making enterprise in any way. Well, getting some money from this would have been nice, but basically about the only positives is that it has led to some interesting encounters and some new friends and I have been written to by students, business people and folks with roots in the region, so this is always nice. Eventually, the whole Being Had Blog was created only for the specific purpose of keeping alive on the web that Polish incident which happened so long ago. It has always been about being pulled out of my life for a year, the resulting damage to the people around me and about trying to create a situation which might make it difficult for this to happen for others. This is not to say that this newspaper and the Story are irrelevant- I have seen many things I have written have an effect on the general argument about Belarus. But it is only an advertiser to lead people to the book which is on the sidebar in WORD or PDF form and has so far been read, well, downloaded, a couple of thousand times. And, it is about corruption.

I hate corruption.

Despite the endless arguments I get from idiots (no apology) who seem to think that the highest level of enlightenment available to them is that they understand that there is corruption! (This great knowledge being I suppose their wake up call from the largess of childhood). "Hey Adam," they say, "don't be naïve. You gotta understand how things work!" And this from EVERYBODY. But I say no.

That's me beating my head against the wall at the bottom of the sidebar. And this is me, sitting next to the computer, a 25 watt bulb lighting the keyboard at four in the morning almost eight years later. And yea, as it always is, I am still griping and still publishing story after story after story about how screwed up and nefarious the people who stole my time were and are. And this is you too George W! This is me still trying to say that the world does need character before nepotism, pride of accomplishment before payoffs and responsibility and vested interest before standing in the road. It must be. Why must we only say that this is the way it is? I mean, why fight cancer if all we want is for things to be the way they are. Why bother?

What? Not fight cancer? Haven't you ever seen anyone with cancer? Don't you know how horrible it is?

Yes I have. And you know what? Corruption is cancer.

And here's one example. How about sport? Do you want to tell me that knowing that one team or player has less of a reason to try hard than another (the standings, the draft, etc) is a factor in making your bets on the game? Ok, this is reasonable. But sometimes teams that want to win lose because of the pressure. Tiger Woods doesn't win the open, Rocco Mediate losses it. And so does Sean O'Hair. But my question is this: would you care about these guys if you found out that O'Hair didn't choke and go 3 over par in the fourth round but was paid to do it? And as for another sport analogy, where are Bonds, McGuire and Sammy? Thousands write in to forums saying that we don't need Saint McGuire in the hall because in addition to all of the time he spent practicing his craft and lifting and running and training, and regardless of how much he gave us by playing how he played, he also added to his testosterone count via something other than Wheaties. Apparently we hate the thought of cheating so much, we happily throw these guys away despite the fact that they were literally gods to us in their time. We throw them and much of our love for the sport away along with them.

This is an example of corruption.

But listen to me: 200 players, owners and referees have been arrested in Poland for corruption and bribes in their premier league. You want to bitch about American baseball players being juiced because it makes it harder for you to enjoy strat-o-matic baseball? I'm talking here about a whole country of 1919 Black Sox. I'm talking about 900 entries about Poland and Polish people and Polish politicians- I am talking about an entire geographic entity, an entity which prides itself on being religious by the way, which cannot and does not believe in anything it does as being clean, or right or beautiful or even real.

Jesus.

So I bother. Of course it is still relevant. It is relevant everywhere. It'll be relevant until we, and that's a cool word there- we, until we decide we don't want it anymore. And I'm saying we shouldn't want it. I'm saying that fighting corruption is important. And all I have been doing is using my own experience as an example. It's not for me. It's never been for me. It's just what I have been given to do as my service to the world and I believe what I am saying is right.

Well, actually, I do it for that and because of one other little thing: When I was in Poland, the only actual argument ever brought against me in that farce of a trial was that, in the words of Stanislaw Wiesniakowski, the surely to be sainted public prosecutor, the damage to Tomas Zaremba's car could have be cause by a human hand. Now, we are not talking specifically my hand. They had my finger prints, there was very good evidence that the damage was pre-existing and also Zaremba himself used an estimate of damages to his car in court which was made some six weeks after our meeting after yet another vehicular incident. No, they justified taking a year of my life only because the damages to the car could have been caused by a hand.

So because of that, my argument for the continued publishing of these web objects is simply this:

After 400 newspapers, about 600 Stories and 900 entries in the Corruption journal, don't you think it is possible that my little affair could have been staged by Poland?

Anyway, again and again, thanks for reading me and for all the support.

Cheers.

A little teaching...

I had a bit of a victory today. I don't get many of these, or so it seems. But today I won a couple of battles and this feels good, as such a thing should. But of course it is tainted by the weight of the audacious ugliness that surrounds me. I know that this last was a bit dramatic and believe me, I am the last one to be in search of any extra drama. But it has been a difficult road and the war which seems to want to exist around me, though fought without a single shred of reason or wisdom or logic or moral right, does seem to be in want of an opponent and I, in all of my glory and ineptitude, seem to have been chosen here to represent all of the dreaded US of A in the minds of our post communist, Pinsk proletariat. And again, pardon the drama but this is about what I get here at the moment and in any case, I thought I would write a bit about today's victory as a means of leaving a reminder that there at least was supposed to be something nice and real and interesting going on here.

The victory was simply the momentary success of a pair of students. I teach English here and though I do like to claim a reasonable ability at the craft, actually having students advance and learn and grow and perhaps more specifically, have an exceptional day, is of course what it is supposed to be about. For any teacher, I would think that a victory for our students is our victory as well and so this is the game. But today, or actually yesterday as I didn't finish this last night, I proved a point to a pair of students, one a grown man and the other a girl of 10, that they could understand and actually use the language of Shakespeare, Steinbeck, London and Hemingway and that having this ability might help forge perhaps a brighter future. Or, in the case of the girl, to simply understand that great things are possible if one only is willing to try a bit.

But why it is even necessary to write about something like two students having a plateau is another part of this. This business of mine, and I am speaking about my private teaching here in Pinsk, is in the doldrums at the moment. I am not really willing to place the blame on the economic crisis though obviously, this is a part of it. But a much bigger reason has been both my decision to only try and work with more advanced students and the political pressure which has always been placed on me by the Ministry of Education and the local Bolshevics from the middle schools and universities.

That first limitation was set up as a reasonable response to the second. If the educational authorities were against me, their official reasoning was that they only wished to use their own locally trained teachers (This is not the real reason, Poland and corruption were, but anyway...) and they didn't wish to take jobs away from their own underpaid products of post soviet language education: nepotism before talent as Losha would say. But in any case, this seemed to be enough to justify their continued suppression. My decision then was, if I couldn't be recomended as effective and helpful, which I am, then I would agree that I didn't even want the common denominator, the student who sat passively staring at their cell phone and wondering where their next block of sexual stimulation would be coming from. Of course I wanted to be helpful (and to have more students), but if they were going to sit there throwing eggs at me, it did seem to add insult to injury to take responsibility for those students who weren't even willing to put pen to paper or allow for some reasonable study time to try and figure out that having a verb in every sentence might actually mean something. And of course there was the moral issue of actually taking money from people who only have $200-300 a month to work with. Yes, it is noble for a parent to try and help their children but if the children themselves won't even put up a fight to try and honor that 10-20% investment every month, I just couldn't agree to take their potato and bread money.

So over the course of this school year, when I did have a number of students who thought to do something other than read their books and work on their sentence structure, I made some cuts. Now, I try to run a kind table and I always have coffee, tea, cookies and crackers available. I don't ask for any extra money for materials and have pens and paper and a copier available. I also allow for extra time, e-mail communications, unlimited questions via telephone and even hand out my own books and movies when it is helpful, all at no extra charge. But in my mind all of this pleasantness is simply there to create a comfortable atmosphere for learning. But if the students aren't learning, or aren't even willing to try and learn, then you have a situation where you have children who only come for the free food and access to friends and to me, this means that someone is stealing the money. And so after some reasonable time for them to get the point, they are asked not to come back.

I believe by doing this that am being fair to their parent's pocketbooks. And it is not like I am such a hard ass; if the parents would agree that they don't care if there aren't any results and that their money is basically being spent on their children pleasuring themselves, and if the children would agree not to be a disruption to other students who might actually want to learn a little English, then hey, what the hell: As long as we understand each other, right? But this isn't how it goes because straight away the lazy ones go about slandering me as being a crap teacher. Of course it is my fault that the information didn't go across the table and it all had nothing to do with how much time was spend drawing, passing notes and waiting for messages from their friends on their cell phones.

This is where the problem has been. I get bad press from crap students trying to save face for having wasted their parent's investment and from the teaching authority who are defending the perpetual use of wrote teaching techniques from the time when keeping students well behind the iron curtain was of more important than allowing for the opportunity to speak to a larger section of the general population. And because I am George Bush. In any case, this has limited the amount of students who come to me and this is bad for business.

But that this is the situation makes victories like yesterday all the more sweet. That 10 year-old girl never studied English in her life. She has been taking German in school, so the letters and sounds were not a problem, but other than this she had never experienced a word before coming to me exactly 3 months ago. Now I explained to her parents when she did come what was required of her. I told them that though I did not ask for more than say, 30-45 minutes a day of study, I did require that time and that the student be prepared for every class. I also recommended one book to help with practicing grammar and started her off straight away translating Dr. Seuss into Russian using a dictionary. Both her parents were in the beginning a pain both to me and the girl, doing her homework for her, trying to explain grammar points and asking me why I wasn't doing this or that- but I held my ground and advised that she was the one who was learning here and she was the one who needed to be doing the work. After some little time, they stepped back a little and the girl started to learn.

My promise to them was that she would have something like reasonable competence in about six months to a year and that it would take her about 3 months to master the basic grammar. Yesterday, all the girl did was successfully, and without practice or preparation, do a grammar exercise that several adult students never mastered. To do the exercise, four decisions need to be made in each sentence concerning the wording of the verb in two separate forms. I did work with her on this, and explained it several times, and she even missed a class, her mother calling me saying that what I was doing was too intense for her. But she showed up yesterday on time and in a good mood and a bit ahead of schedule, I simply asked her to try the fabled student killing #174 and she got it right the first time. After this, I asked her to try simply reading her book, rather than worrying about the words she didn't know, this time reading a bit more quickly and adding emphasis on the story telling. And where until this moment, she had managed only six chapters over perhaps three weeks, yesterday in about 45 minutes we managed three whole chapters, the action so intense that even Anya was enthralled at the story telling. I guess the information had made its way across the table and needless to say the girl went home with something good to say to her parents.

The story was basically the same for the adult student. He is a businessman who wished to find a way to have a better relationship with foreign partners. His initial few months were often stormy. He put in his time in studying, more than I had asked for, but he never felt he could get a hold of the basic grammar and several times literally pounded my computer demanding that I show him why there were not several possible meanings to the sentences he was reading. "Why am I studying so much but actually getting worse?" he raged. The answer of course was to focus on the English and not the translation into Russian, an absolute imperative of western language teaching but completely antagonistic to the Russian style which basically treats learning a second language the same as studying mathematics or biology; everything stays on the page in front of you and is analyzed, dissected and discussed in Russian. And of course yesterday, after agreeing to progress without using Russian (at least out loud) the words finally started to come in and go out at something more resembling a conversational pace. Now, he still never gets my jokes, but he's getting there and also left the table feeling a bit more talented had he had before coming.

So that's the story. I'm heading into the last two months of this year extremely proud of the students who are with me. I have no failures this year and all are already conversational and able to read and write and speak and understand. The middle school students who have been with me have mastered their school English classes, several have had changes of heart regarding professions and all have chosen to allow themselves to think a bit more upward and to be a bit higher in their aspirations. The adults all have chances to be better connected to the world and even the children are aware of what they are doing and have become better students over all. I would have liked to have done more but I worked with who I had to work with and I think that my record speaks for itself.

But in the end, I chose to come to this town and I chose to try and be an English teacher here. There is nobody to complain to about any politics or under-the-table games which seem to be such a part of the fabric of the world I live in. It is of course all just part of the show. But yesterday… yea, yesterday was a very, very cool day. Yesterday, I very good teached English Language.

More mail...

My beautiful and honest face as portrayed elsewhere in my cowardly and deceitful website...

Got some flack about posting the last letter, the author thinking intellectual property and such. And I tried to tell him that actually getting intelligent and thoughtful mail was a bit of a blessing. To prove the point, I just got this one about five seconds ago from someone who either is or at least identifies with the marines. Hope he doesn't live to close to a high school...

Anyway, just thought it was worth a print just to give y'all a peak at the joy that is my post Polish existance and...uh, you know, keep an honest face.

From: This sender is DomainKeys verified "REDCELL" usmcwb@gmail.com
To: beinghad_mail@yahoo.com

Hey dirtbag,

I guess that's why you face away from the camera huh? You filthy coward. You live in a shithole called Belarus, where CORRUPTION is the very fabric of daily life and you think you know what's happening in Poland? You're clueless. FYI you zionist pig, Belarus is the most corrupt former Warsaw Pact country currently in existance. Just ask your new Belarussian president...oh wait I forgot...he's a Russian puppet and a near dictator. You're a complete moron. Show you face coward!

Note: And you have a nice day too...