The Moses Statue in Washington Park, Albany NY… it’s only a brisk walk of less than 10 minutes from our apartment… oh yes, there are tulips at the Tulip Fest, dontcha know…
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VFR is now in its fourth year, which means that I’ve grown used to the seasonal fluctuations in readership. There’s always a dip around Christmas/New Year’s, and there’s always another drop in in late May before Memorial Day (yes, and Victoria Day a week earlier, in Canada), after college graduation here in the USA. In general, summer levels are somewhat below the rest of the year. It doesn’t matter if I post a lot or a little, the general seasonal patterns persist. There are weekly patterns, too (with the lowest readership on Fridays and Saturdays)…
Of course! We’re all out enjoying the good weather and doing stuff… we’ve all got lives, after all! This spring was no exception for me… the “Spring Season” here in Albany kicks off with the Tulip Festival on the first weekend of May, and, like everyone else within a 100-klick radius, we showed up. It’s like many another local fest anywhere else in the Northeastern USA… greasy food vendors, tchotchkes sellers, a roped-off area for the beer drinkers, loud local rock and country bands, and a kid’s play area with petting zoo. We’ve all been there… done that… it’s a ritual of the season up here, and most of us wouldn’t miss it for the world! There’s always something interesting lurking in the depths of the ocean of dreck… and one never knows who you might run into. This year, my Nicky got me one of those nice Palekh pins… nowadays (in the Northeast, at least), you can always count on one vendor selling “Russian” crafts… palekh pins, matroshka dolls, paintings of “Russian” scenes, etc. Another interesting thing was that Nicky ran into a woman wearing a St George Ribbon… she had gotten it in Russia, and she was wearing it because Victory Day was the following Monday.
The following Wednesday, I had a most surreal and Kafkaesque experience. I actually put in an application with the Transportation Safety Agency (it was more to see how far someone like me would get… I’m certainly not their sort)… passed the test last autumn, got through a preliminary clearance, and they even ran a credit check on me! The last one amused me… I put in an application for employment; I wasn’t putting in a request for a loan. Well, on Wednesday 11 May, I had an appointment for an “interview” at Albany “International” Airport. The “International” part is an absolute joke… there’s a few flights to Toronto and Montréal, that’s it. So, I got there on time.. and I had to wait in the public area of the terminal until a TSA flunkie showed up to pick me up. To make it short, there were supposed to be four other candidates, but I was the only one to show. Even before we got to the local office, I had to take off my shoes and show photo ID just to get past the first barrier. What a joke! There was none of this in the Cold War… and the USSR had real power… it COULD blow the USA off the face of the planet. The so-called “War on Terror” is a gigantic fraud from stem to stern… al Qaida is nothing but a toothless bogeyman that the Corporatists use as an excuse to pass repressive legislation like the Patriot Act. To cut to the ending… I “failed the interview”… isn’t that an odd choice of words? I answered all the questions that I was asked fully and honestly. Sheesh… no wonder that they’re getting bozos who break colostomy bags and are general boors. But… it wasn’t a big surprise… I’m too much of a “free spirit”… and it, no doubt, showed in my answers. As for most of the people I encountered, they were just ordinary sorts doing a job… they weren’t evil in the least… they did everything “according to script”, and, to be fair, if they didn’t, they’d lose their situation. One has to feel sorry for them… not hate them. Can you believe that DHS demanded more information of me after informing me that I “failed the interview?” To say the least, I laughed, and I didn’t send them a thing…
Finally, I found a good Russian source on real unexpurgated “spiritual stories”… they’re earthy and to the point. I’ve heard quite a few of them, but if I didn’t have an outside source, there are those who’d accuse me of making them up. The konvertsy think that Orthodoxy is found in books… trust me, that notion’s wrongheaded, crackbrained, and downright drop-dead funny. The real deal is found in the stories that passed amongst the people, from generation to generation. Now, that I’ve found a good source, Good Sense from Russia is going to be a regular feature. One short story of that sort is worth more than all the hot air that issues forth from SVS in a year.
Be good, kids… I enjoy putting this together… and many of you like coming here. I’m taking it easy the next couple of days… we all have lives, don’t we? Ciao… and do pass me the jug… it’s thirsty work, ya know!
Barbara-Marie Drezhlo
Wednesday 25 May 2011
Albany NY
