Plugging Laughter in the Dark
My Moscow friend, fellow dissertator, and all around potty-mouth, Brigid has started a blog, Laughter in the Dark, all about her research travels. Her first post about her train ride from St. Petersburg to Smolensk is a must read. Here is an excerpt: Over the next five hours, I would learn that the old man was 85 years old, a WWII veteran who had fought in the battle of Stalingrad, a man who still pined for Lenin (though not for Stalin), a devout atheist, and a living repository of Soviet history. None of us ever learned his name; the other men just referred to him as “grandfather.” Volodia, from Nizhnii Novgorod, was quiet in the face of his conversational competitors, and proved (for now) the least uppity in our bunch. He was traveling to Smolensk to meet a colleague and loved to watch birds from his country home ..read more
