Hacking malware

I got a call yesterday from “The Windows Support Company.” I knew right away that it was one of those outfits that entice the user to put a virus onto their computer so the company can then remove it for a fee. I decided to string him along for a while, figuring I’m doing a public service if I keep him from calling another person.

The guy had an excellent script, but he lacked the skill to detect my irony. I was very amused when he told me that I had an especially virulent form of hacking malware on my computer. Wow. “Hacking malware.” I laughed and told him I was having a little trouble visualizing that, but he pressed on. He was very excited; urgent, even.

He started out by trying to figure out without directly asking, whether I have Windows or a Mac. He achieved this by asking about my keyboard, and I stretched out his investigation by describing the Windows key in terms nebulous enough that he couldn’t be sure I was talking about a Windows key or a Mac Option key. Tiring of the game, I said, “You know everything about my computer, don’t you?”

“Oh yes,” he assured me.

“Then what’s my IP address?” I asked.

“I can’t see that, but I see your Windows License Key,” he answered. “Let me prove it to you.” He proceeded to give me instructions, slowly, in painstaking detail. A dunce could not fail.

I didn’t actually type in the command he asked me to enter. Not into the command window, anyway. I typed it into my browser and found an article about the scam. I knew what he was going to tell me next. Exasperated, I told him “You’ve just asked me to look up a Class ID common to all Windows computers. You haven’t proven anything. I’ve been stringing you along here to see how long I could stretch this out, but I’ve had enough. How can you even live with yourself, scamming people for a living. Can you even sleep at night?”

“No,” he answered, “I don’t sleep very well. I’m very poor and this is the only way I can make a living.”

“I’d like to pray for you,” I countered. “Are you a Christian?” “Yes,” he said, “I am.”

I prayed aloud for him, and he told me he’d quit his job soon.

Where was I?

My blog posts keep getting farther and farther apart and the readers have noticed. Traffic to my blog site has gotten limited and I feel a little bit bad about it. But not too bad: I’ve been busy!

We began April with a few days of delightful springtime in Minsk. Then we flew to Boston via Istanbul, hoping to see the tulip festival. At the last minute, I threw a wool hat into my luggage because the weather forecast for Istanbul looked a little chilly. Good thing: The cold reached well beyond “chilly.” Undaunted, we left our hotel with all of our clothes on and walked to the park where we wanted to see the tulips. The park’s main gate was closed, but I led Alla through a pedestrian gate and got fifty meters inside before a guard came rushing over to ask what we thought we were doing.

We tried to negotiate with him, saying that we’d come to Turkey specifically to see those tulips and we had only one day. Finally, we talked him into letting us spend one minute beside the nearest bed, but he worried that strong winds would knock tree limbs onto our heads and he wouldn’t allow us to sneak behind him. We went into Topkapi Palace instead, where they had their own tulip garden and views over the park we couldn’t enter. We enjoyed the palace until we finally got so cold and wet that we went indoors to enjoy e a leisurely lunch, and we hung out indoors for the rest of the day.

Fortunately, we had enough time the next morning to walk the park end-to-end and enjoy the tulips before we rushed off to the airport.

There’s not much to say about Boston. It’s home and we like it, but we didn’t have any special adventures and I don’t want to bore you. At one point I wanted to write about how spring hadn’t even reached Boston when we got here and we still found a few piles of snow. I would have showed you the picture I took the day the parks service finally started putting water into the pond in the Boston Common. But now it’s spring and I feel like I missed the opportunity to make its absence into an interesting story.

Meanwhile, I went off to California for nine or ten days. I wanted to meet a couple of newborn cousins and had a very good time with much of their extended family. This coincided with a college reunion, so I saw a whole lot of people and reconnected with some whom I hadn’t seen in a long time.

By the time I got back to Boston, spring had finally arrived here. The city has been ablaze with flowering trees since I returned, and our social life has been ablaze in its own way as we attempt to reconnect with friends. It was a busy month.

If something surprising happens to me in the next few weeks, I’ll try to tell you about it. Meanwhile, I’m focused on my book, where I’m making much more progress.

Happy anniversary

Alla got an offer from Travel Zoo, offering a fancy lunch for two for $33 at the restaurant in a new hotel on the waterfront. She accepted the offer, and told them when she made the reservation that we’d be celebrating our anniversary. That worked out really well.

The restaurant, Aragosta, faces the Boston Harbor. They gave us a table by the window and offered us complimentary glasses of Champagne in celebration of our anniversary. Alla was very pleased by her drink, and was disappointed that I asked for a glass of sparkling water instead, since it turns out she was hoping I’d accept the Champagne and then let her drink it. Anyway, I enjoyed my water.

The menu didn’t strictly match the Travel Zoo coupon, so the waiter gave us a very liberal interpretation of the coupon’s value. We started with a huge platter of Italian meats and cheeses, moved on to seafood/pasta main dishes and ended with tiramisu and tea. The waiter included it all in the value of the coupon, even though we’d managed to order about a hundred bucks’ worth of food. It took us a long time to eat, and we ended up taking home a pretty big bag of leftovers after having a really good time.

We didn’t go directly home, however. We took a meandering walk along the shoreline, exploring hidden residential areas (where we’d love to live), various parks and the Boston Garden. The Boston Garden isn’t really a garden. It’s a big sports arena, home to the Boston Celtics and the Boston Bruins. The Bruins were getting ready for a Stanley Cup playoff game that night, so a festival atmosphere surrounded the building. We got carried away with the craziness and bought some small things in the souvenir store.

Boston is a great city for walking and touring. I’ve been making regular excursions in various directions on my bicycle, enjoying the spring flowers and all the other people enjoying the city. A couple of weeks ago I saw some musicians posing with their instruments for a picture. I stopped and asked them if they had any gigs coming up, which they did. They would play this evening at the French Cultural Center, so I got the information and promised to go. We came back from the concert a couple of hours ago, happy that we went. We enjoy an abundance of great music because we’re near several great musical schools. Since I like jazz and other types of popular music, I’m particularly happy about being near Berklee College of Music. Come to think of it, I’m pleased about most of what surrounds us.

Can this really be New England?

I used to embarrass myself here all the time by talking to strangers who pretended they couldn’t hear me. New Englanders weren’t as friendly as the Californians I’d grown up with, and they frequently preferred to ignore me rather than speak with a stranger. It’s gotten much better, and I don’t think about that much now. But still, I experienced so much friendliness in a few hours this morning that I’m having a hard time believing it.

I started out at the post office, mailing a letter. A few years ago, postal workers considered the Beacon Hill post office the worst place to work in the Boston area. Everybody wanted to transfer out, and they didn’t try very hard to hide their displeasure from their customers. That’s changed too. The disgruntled employees got their transfers, Mary the Clown (really! She works children’s parties) started working there and everybody else seems pretty cheerful most of the time. This morning they acted outright jolly.

I went from the post office to the athletic club where I work out. Fay sat down next to me at the Life Fitness machines and started to chat. We love Fay. She’s a garrulous Irish lady who practically lives at the gym. She does yoga, aerobics, Zumba, weight lifting; pretty much everything.

When Fay and I parted ways, I walked over to the water cooler to refill my bottle. Four people sat nearby, cooling off after a couple hours of group workout classes. One of them looked over at me and remarked, “You look like you’re ready to take on the day.” I answered affirmatively and she introduced herself and her friends. Everybody appeared happy to be meeting a stranger.

The last detail, that made me want to write all of this down, happened in the elevator as I left, carrying a recovery smoothie. Another passenger in the elevator had a smoothie too, and she raised her glass to mine. We toasted and the third passenger joined our conversation with animation as we rode four floors to the lobby. Everybody is so outgoing! It amazes me how much my surroundings appear to have changed over the course of a few years. It’s wonderful, and I hope it’s like this for everybody.

Reinserted in Boston

We’re back, and I’m getting the hang of life in Boston. We took our first rush-hour subway ride yesterday evening and I remembered to move slowly and touch no one. The Red Line ran at its usual stately pace, with a ten-minute pause between Central and Harvard Squares because a train ahead of us had mechanical difficulties. This did not bother us, because we left in time knowing what could happen.

We took that ride because we wanted to go to a free seminar on the Ten Commandments by some hot-shot professor at the Harvard Divinity School. We really love this about Boston, that we’re surrounded by universities with interesting programs for free or not much money. This free seminar ran about an hour, followed by a reception at the Harvard Semitic Museum. I’d never heard about the museum, which proved to be another great find. Admission is always free, and the room where they held the reception included a very interesting mock-up of an ancient Semitic home. We read all the display materials while enjoying delicious food and drink. I should pay better attention to what’s going on at Harvard.

The day before yesterday we met another professor, a linguist friend of our neighbors. He teaches at MIT and does research on the origins of language. He thinks that language is innate in humans and he told fascinating stories about his research and findings. We know interesting people in Belarus too, people who know things about which we’d like to learn. I like learning, and having the opportunity to do so makes me feel well-located.

Meanwhile we’ve unpacked and gotten back into our physical-training routines. I’m riding my bike a lot, which I enjoy more here than in Belarus because bikes are welcome on the city streets, drivers are nice to us, and I have a variety of pretty places to ride. I also prefer our indoor exercise facilities here since they are bigger, open longer hours, and better maintained.

So, nearly everything has come together. We are at home in Boston and life here is just as interesting as life in Minsk. Today I only wish that I could pop back and forth between the two cities at will, especially if I could do it at science-fiction speeds.

Scary

I scared a stranger yesterday, as I walked home from church. Nicely dressed, I walked briskly down Newbury Street thinking about the pros and cons of a new cell phone plan. As I overtook a slower pedestrian, she glanced over her shoulder. All in an instant, she saw me with alarm, her eyes bugging out and her lips rounding into a little knot of fright, and she spun off sideways in a defensive crouch. I laughed and told her that I’m not all that scary.

She responded, “Why would you do that?”

If I had greater presence of mind, I might have asked, “Do what?” but I didn’t. I explained that I was just walking past, and hurried off, stung by guilt and shame for alarming this person. So I ended up playing the event over in my thought. I presume she thought I was sneaking up on her, and maybe she found it scary that I was walking so much faster than she.

Or maybe she was frightened that I looked into her eyes when she turned. I enjoy making eye contact with passers-by and it’s become my pleasant habit. At least it usually seems mutually pleasant, but this time I wondered if I did something unusual or unkind. I don’t think so, but I thought about African-American friends who confided to me how unpleasant it is to have people respond with fear to their approach. This was the first time I remember having such a stark encounter. I did not like being identified as a Scary Person.

Years ago few in New England acknowledged strangers and I was definitely the outlier. When I started working downtown I’d seek out non-whites because I could make eye contact with them, and even say “hi” when appropriate, and they’d respond. The “Yankees” (lifelong New Englanders) would not. To the Yankees, I generally did not exist unless they knew me. Things have changed since then. Boston has become a more cosmopolitan city, and the influx of foreigners and immigrants has softened the populace so people generally seem pretty outgoing and welcoming of strangers.

Yesterday, however, I felt strange. But I’m really not all that scary.

When the weirdos come out

My step-daughter didn’t like to ride the Red Line through Harvard Square after 10 p.m. because, she insisted, that’s when the weirdos come out. I had my own encounter today long before Nika’s cutoff. A guy wearing an Arabic scarf around his neck got onto the train at Harvard Square and started harassing the young woman seated beside him. I heard him bellow, upon learning that she’s from Saudi Arabia, “Do you realize how f___ed-up your government is? It’s the most f___ed-up government in the whole world,” and carried on from there.

“Hey,” I called out, “why don’t you come over here and pick on somebody your own size?”

He didn’t move, but carried on with his theme. He asked if perhaps I were unaware of how evil things are in Saudi Arabia. I replied that I wasn’t interested in discussing that topic, but that I wished to spare an innocent guest from mistreatment as a result of her country of origin. Once again, I welcomed him to come over and carry on a conversation with me rather than bother the woman beside him.

He warmed to his task. Shocked, he accused me; “You probably support our government don’t you?” and proceeded to expound on his opinion of how I must feel about Obama, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and what a loser I must be.

I smiled and told him he was doing a good job.

“What?” he asked, incredulous.

I said, “I asked you to harass me instead of her, and you’re doing a very good job of it. Come on over and sit here beside me so the rest of the subway car doesn’t have to listen to our conversation.”

He wouldn’t budge. Staying in place, he suggested a few more things I must mistakenly believe. I pointed out that he didn’t know a thing about me, repeating my offer of a seat where he could more comfortably ask my opinions. It became quite a scene, as this fellow worked himself into a little frenzy without the slightest inkling of my political convictions.

I felt good, completely without malice and glad to have distracted this fellow from the foreigner beside him. Altogether it proved to be a rather pleasant ride home, in its own weird way.

Tree surgery

As I passed through the Boston Public Garden this morning, I noticed a guy pruning a big tree. He had a gleaming truck with a very long double-articulated hoist which he controlled from inside his bucket. When he saw me taking pictures, he swung his bucket over to me and came down so I’d get a good picture.

The whole situation caught my attention because it differed so greatly from tree surgery in my other home town of Minsk. In Minsk, the tree-pruning teams arrive in old Soviet trucks that leak oil when parked and billow black smoke when running. According to someone in a position to know, nobody on the job, and possibly nobody in the home office, has any special training in tree surgery. And as far as I can tell from the ground, the guy doing the cutting gets positioned by a confederate sitting on the back of the truck, and he can’t position himself. The two guys drive the truck up to the tree however it’s convenient for them and then hack away until they declare themselves finished.

The Boston guy’s truck was parked on wheel mats which protected the lawn from his truck’s tires, and the clean truck proclaimed the presence of a certified arborist. His confederates were far away, grinding up the branches he’d removed from another tree. The Boston guy could go almost anywhere with his double-articulated lift with telescoping extension. The Minsk guys have to jockey around in their trucks to get in a convenient position for the simpler arm (like a human arm with one elbow) that lifts the woodsman.

The arborist in Boston suggests to me a difference in the relative wealth of the two cities, though it may represent simply a difference in priorities. Perhaps I wouldn’t have stopped to marvel at the gleaming truck in the Public Garden if I didn’t have a point of comparison, but today I’m impressed.

Winter riding

I don’t ride my bike when there’s snow or ice around, which means that I don’t get to ride at all during the winters in Minsk. Sometimes in Boston I get all bundled up and ride when it’s cold, and sometimes we get lucky and I don’t even have to wear my warmest jackets. Saturday was one of those days. Although we had plenty of snow a few days before, temperatures jumped and I felt pretty good about the roads after a couple days’ thaw.

I told Alla that I’d go out for an hour or so just to stretch my legs, but I couldn’t do it. After an hour, I was still riding away from home, having a great time. The sun warmed my face and body, reflected off of the abundant snow still coating yards and parks. I felt fully alive, and connected with the world. Stopping alongside the Stony Brook Reservation I got out my phone to take this picture for my blog. As I stood there, phone in hand, a nice lady stopped her car to make sure I was OK.

Finally the road dipped out of the sun as I approached the Blue Hills Reservation and I decided I’d better turn back. I raced the early sunset and got home well enough before dark, invigorated and happy.

Wanting to share the experience, I talked Alla into taking a couple of tandem-bike rides with me in the next days. The snow has been melting away quickly, but the riding has been really great.

Yesterday I decided to reprise my Saturday ride, but this time I rode my fixie. A fixie is a fixed-gear bike. This means that if the wheels are turning, my legs are turning. And I can’t change gears. The hills are harder to get up, and harder to get down. It’s a very simple bike, and I like to ride it in winter because it’s a lot of work and it keeps me warm. Also, there’s not much to break, and the first rule of winter riding is to make sure your equipment won’t fail you.

Knowing the rule doesn’t mean I inspected my bike. I just rode it, almost as far as I went on Saturday. It would have been really inconvenient if anything had gone wrong so far from home, but I got my blowout about two or three miles from here. BANG! Suddenly I felt bare rim rumbling on hard asphalt. I got off my bike and thought about how cold I would get changing my tire in the chilly breeze. In preference to a taxi, I brought my bike into the center of an apartment complex where the wind couldn’t reach me. My overdue inspection revealed severe problems with the rear tire. Rubber peeled away from the casing in a couple of places, one of which opened into a significant hole matching a big hole in the tube within.

Normally I could not have gotten home on such a badly-damaged tire, but I was happy to discover a large supply of slime-green speed patches in a pocket of my tool kit. I stuck a mosaic of those dots onto the inside of the tire and layered in a dollar bill to give the tube some extra protection. Then I put everything back around a new tube and rode slowly home. Miraculously, I got all the way back without a second blowout.

I feel very good about the whole thing, especially because I was listening to this as I wrote the last part of this story. I'll say something about jazz in general and Duke Ellington in particular some other time.

Finally, something to write about

Museum of Modern Renaissance

I’ve been so busy with everyday life that I haven’t written any stories for my blog. After so long, I didn’t want to write about just anything, but we honestly didn’t do anything terribly interesting. Finally, that has changed.

We used to enjoy Russian-American cultural programs at the Museum of Modern Renaissance, but since we spend less time in Boston these days we haven’t managed to get to anything recently. When we got an invitation to their ten-year anniversary party, then, we knew we had to go. Remembering that they don’t have an elevated stage, we paid extra to get seats in the front row. We figured we wanted to support the museum anyway, and we enjoyed our unrestricted view. Occasionally we felt a little bit overwhelmed, however, when a lot of opera singers sang loudly all at once. They can be really loud.

We know the artistic director of last night’s program. In fact, he was the principal musician at our wedding a few years ago. He’s got many talents and a powerful sense of humor. Apparently he’s also got access to a lot of costumes. This all led him to concoct a ridiculous story upon which he stitched together a bunch of operatic arias, sometimes modified to suit his insane script. We’d seen some of these jokes as parts of previous programs, which seemed perfectly reasonable since they came back as part of the anniversary retrospective.

Speaking of insanity, the hall itself is highly idiosyncratic, as you can see in the slideshow above. A couple of artists, Kolya and Katya, bought a former Masonic Hall and converted it into a giant art project. They covered the entire interior with bright new-age imagery loosely after the style of a Russian Orthodox Church. Having decorated nearly every flat surface of the interior, they are now working on the façade. Just entering the space, one is instantly prepared for something special. As I understand it, they wanted to create an environment where the best of Russian and American cultures could combine in search of something altogether new. Just coming inside always fills us with delight. It’s the only place we know of in Boston where we can count on high-quality home-grown entertainment.

After the show, everybody came downstairs for food, drink and conversation. Somebody brought a Kievsky torte from New York, which pleased us both. I had read a story about Kievsky tortes in language class a couple of years ago. The story made me understand that everybody wants to eat these things, and I have not yet been to Kiev. Last night, Kiev came to me, however, and it’s delicious. It fully counter-balanced the mystery-meat bologna which I did not realize was even available in the States.

One of last night’s performers will be a soloist at a major concert in Verdi’s honor in Jordan Hall on January 24. If I still have any readers left, particularly any in Boston, you probably ought to check it out. I hear it’s going to be really good.

Relaxing

Actually, I've been pretty relaxed. We had a huge hurricane last week, but where we live there's no chance of a tree falling on our house and we're nestled among a bunch of buildings about the same height so the wind mostly went over our heads. As the storm whipped itself toward its peak fury, I decided I'd better buy a bottle of milk before the store ran out of the stuff. Alla begged me not to leave home, certain that I'd meet my demise on the street. I went anyway, but her concern heightened my awareness of the tall trees twisting and turning overhead as I walked toward the corner store. I wondered if I could really run away from a falling branch if I even noticed it breaking off, and decided that maybe I didn't need to go down to harborside at high tide after all.

I'm grateful to say that we sustained no damage (beyond some already-weathered furniture covers on our roof deck.) Friends weren't so lucky, but all things considered I think Boston made out much better than cities in coastal New Jersey and New York.

I did look forward to relaxing, however, because Alla has been a little wound up. She doesn't like travel nearly as much as she likes being at interesting destinations. Right now we're en route to Maui, in the Hawaiian Islands. Alla packed her suitcase two days ago. Somehow she finds it difficult to decide what not to bring, so she likes to start early in order to have time to reflect on her luggage and add important things she remembers later. This means that she never forgets anything important, but sometimes things get doubled up or lost underneath something that proved to be extra and unused. I tried to stay out of that process as much as possible, but I can never steer completely clear.

Anyway, here we are. We might be the only people on the plane with no affiliation to Microsoft. Everybody else, as far as we can tell, is receiving this vacation as an award from that company. They all seem to have those fancy new Surface tablet computers and/or Windows Phones or at least some sort of computer running Windows 8. One wife of a Microsoft employee confessed that she uses an iPhone. I'm using an Android tablet. There are plenty of Kindles on the plane too. Apparently it's not heretical for a Microsoftie to have a Kindle.

Anyway, everybody is feeling jolly. When we get off the plane, we'll have warm, sunny weather and warm starry nights. And at least most of us won't have to work for a few days. It sounds pretty relaxing indeed.

Getting ready for the storm

The weather forecasters think three different storms are about to converge on us at once. I guess that means the end of our pretty fall colors. We’ll miss them. Autumn has progressed very slowly due to unusually warm days, and we’ve been spending lots of time outside. It’s been great, and we knew it couldn’t last forever.

This morning, as soon as dawn broke, I looked out to see if the storm had arrived yet. I saw a little wind, but nothing worse. I wanted to get Alla out for a bike ride before I left for church, so I launched a strategic plan. Since she likes to sleep later than I do, I shaved and got myself as organized as possible before waking her up. “Do you want to go for a ride?” I finally asked.

Alla answered something sleepy and barely intelligible. I showed her the sky, suggesting that I could still see a little blueness. She saw only gray, but consented that the wind didn’t look too bad. She thought about it. I reminded her how much we’d enjoyed the afternoon walk she dragged me out for yesterday and she decided to be a good sport. Off we went.

While well over half the city’s leaves had already fallen from their trees, the remaining ones seemed even brighter. No doubt our orange bike glasses had something to do with it, as did the gentle morning light and the lateness of the season. We gasped and exclaimed as we rolled down the Emerald Necklace. The city seemed almost abandoned and we decided to take a bigger avenue we’d normally avoid. Historic buildings peeked out at us from behind the less-leafy trees until we made our way to the Arnold Arboretum. I finally got out my phone at the Arboretum and took a few photos. We understood once we stood still that we were watching the end unroll. Leaves cascaded down on us and the wind speed increased. We rode home in a headwind, and from time to time we couldn’t see pavement at all under the accumulating leaves. By noon, a light rain had started, and I’m pretty confident that the fall-color season has effectively ended.

I am hoarse

Johnny's Freshman boat. He's the one on the right.

Every year I go to watch crew races at the Head of the Charles Regatta. I don’t really care who wins, but I bring a megaphone and yell at lots of boats just because I enjoy it. I generally cheer for the local teams, and for whatever team seems to be doing better than expected. And I always cheer for Princeton. Long ago, my cousin’s son rowed for Princeton and his boats tended to win lots of races. He even got invited to join the U.S. National Team, but he moved on to “real life” after he wasn’t selected for the Olympic team. I still watch rowing, as I have since long before Johnny rowed his first Head of the Charles.

Yesterday Alla and I focused on the social aspects of the regatta. We watched a few races, but spent considerable amounts of time testing free food samples and hob-nobbing with some of the many visitors this event brings to the Boston area every year. Alla was excited to pose with a model Lufthansa plane in her hands, and the stewardess sent her home with a rubber ducky dressed in a Lufthansa uniform. I was excited to dig through the bargain bins at JL Racing, a manufacturer of sport clothing. Rowers tend to be tall and lanky, and this is a pretty good way for me to find athletic clothes that fit (or almost fit.)

Today I came back to the river straightaway after church. I stopped at the Radcliffe boat house and bought a bagel for a dollar, and received a big dollop of cream cheese for free. Then I looked for a free salad from Olivia’s, but they’d already run out so I finished my lunch with some new sports recovery drink and a couple of sample Lara Bars. Fortified, I sat down on the bank of the river and got out my megaphone, binoculars and program. I yelled at lots of boats and made friends with a couple of grandparents waiting for their granddaughter. The grandparents didn’t know anything about crew races, so suddenly I was an “expert.”

I’m not an expert, however, and this year I had been puzzling over why it appeared to be so hard for the coxswains in the long boats (8’s) to steer. Nobody near me knew much more about the sport than I do, so I felt free to leave when I finally got tired of sitting in one spot on the ground. I walked back to my favorite viewing spot, on the Anderson Bridge near Harvard’s Weld Boathouse. Soon I discovered that the tiny woman beside me has had considerable experience as a coxswain, including on the Charles River. She explained to me the ideal route from the Weeks Footbridge to our bridge, optimizing a short course and the fact that you really-really want to be pointed in the right direction when you get between the bridge piers. When some boats got congested between the piers I asked her if she’d slow a boat down in order to avoid contention in a tight spot like that. “Oh yeah,” she replied. “In a race, the rowers are a lot like animals. If you get them spooked it can throw off the rest of the race.” Needless to say, she was a wonderful conversationalist.

Crew people tend to make great company anyway. There’s something about getting up super-early in the morning to sit in a boat with the same people day after day that sorts out folks who can’t get along with others. It makes for a very pleasant spectator environment too. You end up with a lot of gregarious people egging each other on. In the end we scream and yell a lot and we tend to come home hoarse. It’s lots of fun.

Free Stuff

I’m back in the USA, the land of free stuff. It’s pretty amazing what we throw away or give away, especially in contrast to the thrifty culture I’ve just left. Our friends Malcolm and Judy help with a charity that gathers used furniture and linens from hotels and households and even gathers new furniture from warehouses and distribution centers. They then open their warehouse to families in need, who are allowed to choose a complete set of household goods to take home with them.

Last week I wondered if such a charity existed because I came home just in time to see the annual first-of-September ritual of the return of the students. Many people move in and out of our neighborhood at this time of year, and lots of them leave behind huge piles of household goods on the curbs as trash. Sometimes scavengers come by and rescue some of the best stuff, and sometimes we participate ourselves. For example, a couple of years ago we found a pretty nice wooden drop-leaf table out on the curb. We took it and gave it to Nika, who used it well and finally sold it when she needed something smaller for a new apartment. We’d like to figure out how to help the Household Goods Recycling people cream off the best stuff during moving season in our neighborhood.

We see lots of free stuff at festivals and other public events too. Companies have a tradition of giving away little gifts to attract attention. Common gifts include bags, water bottles, key rings, T-shirts, mugs and food. (The free food is usually samples of processed items like candy bars, ice cream, hummus and beverages, but I’ve even received free salads complete with dressing and a fork.) As I walked through Harvard Square yesterday I passed a bank with a big wheel of fortune. They invited me to spin the wheel and take whatever prize it indicated. I got a key ring with flashlight. I have several of these now, and I keep looking for opportunities to give them away.

My favorite free item arrived last week. I wanted to buy a new mobile phone and T-Mobile wanted me to buy a more expensive data plan to go with it because the new phone uses 4G and my subscription only gave me 3G. Somehow in the course of discussion the representative noticed that I’ve their customer for a long time and we barely use our American phones during the six months of every year when we’re living in Belarus. They decided to reward my loyalty and my annual subscription by giving me a Samsung Galaxy S3 phone for free. I thanked them very much, but told them that it would be hard to accept their gift if I had to pay more money for the data plan. They understood my concern, and upgraded my data plan on very favorable terms. I love T-Mobile. (And the phone works great. My internet service is faster on it than my home DSL service.)

All this free stuff is pretty amazing, but of course it comes with tradeoffs. The reason American businesses can give away samples and discounts is that their basic prices can be much higher than base prices in Belarus. Internet access, for example, costs so little in Belarus that it would seem almost free to an American. Still, I’m feeling pretty dazzled by all the good stuff I’ve seen up for grabs since I’ve been back. Let’s figure out how to get next year’s household goods off the curbs and into the hands of needy people in other neighborhoods.

Rollerblades

When rollerblading became popular in the 1990’s I went out and bought a pair of skates. Like any Bostonian, I went down to Eric Flaim’s Skate Sports. Flaim, a native of Massachusetts, won silver medals in the 1988 and 1994 Winter Olympics and lots of other prestigious medals in between. Everybody knew his name, and his store catered to serious skaters on and off the ice. I got some fast skates and a full suit of body armor to wear while skating. With the purchase, I got a one-hour skating lesson under a talented instructor named Lester.

Lester started out by making sure everybody knew how to put on our protective gear. Yes, we really did need a lesson for that, and still I forgot one time that the protective gear goes on before the skates. (And I learned that it’s impossible to stretch kneepads over skate wheels.) Geared up, we learned how to fall; forward onto our kneepads. Next, we learned how to stop by pushing one foot forward and dragging the skate brake. Once we knew how to fall and how to stop, Lester taught us how to go. By the end of the lesson, we all knew enough to go out and play on the Charles River Skate Path, and we also knew that we could improve a lot if we hired Lester for private lessons.

I never took any more lessons, preferring to learn by doing. I took my skates with me sometimes when I traveled for business. One time, for example, I spent a couple of nights in Berkeley, California. The first morning I skated down to the marina and back. I started early enough that the streets were pretty empty and I had a good time in the flat part of town. The next day I launched myself upward, into the Berkeley Hills. I hadn’t really planned to go into the hills, but that’s where I ended up after an hour or so of following my nose. I had a little trouble getting back because the hills were steeper than I had appreciated and I melted off most of my skate brake.

Somehow I set aside my skates about the time I started dating Alla, and I haven’t used them in a long time. In Minsk we live near an excellent bike path and I started thinking again about my skates. Before committing to bring them, however, I thought I’d better go out for a trial run in Boston and see if I still like it. I finally went skating today.

I remember Lester’s lessons, so I started by putting on my protective gear and then I pulled on the skates. Wow, I forgot how comfortable they are. They fit perfectly and support my ankles well. Dressed, I thought about how best do get down to the Charles River Bike Path. Oh yeah… That’s downhill from here. I thought about taking off my skates and walking down to the river, but decided I’d feel silly unless I took off the protective gear as well. I decided to go ahead and skate, hoping I could remember well enough how to stop. I tottered out and rolled a few meters down the brick sidewalk before deciding that I’d be better off in the street. I stopped against a signpost and waited until I couldn’t see any cars anywhere. Then I rolled down Revere Street and took a right on West Cedar.

Yikes! West Cedar Street is a horrifying mess of patched pavement, which I had not noticed until this moment as gravity hauled me forward faster than I wanted. I made it to the next corner, where I had to get onto the sidewalk. I remembered how to do this: Just step up and keep on going. Right. The very idea terrified me so I came almost to a complete stop before stepping very gingerly onto the sidewalk. Next I had to get up and over a footbridge crossing Storrow Drive. For reasons which escape me now, I went up the stairs instead of taking the ramp. I do remember why I didn’t skate down the ramp on the other side of the bridge: I felt safer on the stairs than trying to control my speed on the down ramp.

After all the drama of starting, the actual skating came as an anticlimax. It was easy. It was fun. It was no problem. I skated across Cambridge and turned around somewhere in Watertown. By the time I returned over the footbridge, I skated up and down the ramps with ease. I think I’m going to enjoy having my skates in Minsk, where we have many kilometers of bike paths. I’m especially excited about getting onto some of the exurban paths, like the one between two ski areas on the outskirts of town. I’ll bet I can even keep up with Sasha on his bike.

Duckling Day

Lots of kids throughout America know the story Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McCloskey. It’s especially popular in Boston, where the action takes place, and we always seem to have at least a few kids sitting on the bronze duck sculpture commemorating the story in the Public Garden. The Duckling story also led to a traditional spring parade of kids dressed up as ducklings visiting the landmarks depicted in the story.

This year we happened on the parade as we walked home from Sunday brunch. Well, to be truthful, we found a bunch of families having picnics long after the parade had finished. While McCloskey’s story is about mallards, the parade parents almost all dressed their kids in yellow, more like rubber bathtub ducks.

I wanted to write a story about this, but can’t think of anything to say. We thought the kids were cute, we took a few pictures, and then we went off for a bike ride. End of story.

(Not) Dancing in Boston

I took a bunch of salsa dance classes in Minsk and started going out regularly to the local dance club. I’m a morning person, so I’d get there early and leave early. I had a lot of fun and got good enough that I didn’t feel too boring as a partner. Earlier I took some salsa classes in Boston, but didn’t have so much fun. They didn’t turn us loose with partners very often and we spent most of each lesson drilling basic steps so we could do them with the precision of the Bolshoi Ballet. (No women for you until you can dance like Baryshnikov!)

When I got back to Boston this time I e-mailed the owner of the studio where I’d taken lessons and asked if I could try out for a higher level. I don’t think she likes me. She wrote back and said I’d be welcome to return to level two and at the end of the month she’d see if I could advance. I am happy to report that at the end of the month I am heading back to Belarus. No thanks, then, on the dance classes.

I’d heard about Salsa Sundays at a jazz club relatively close to home, so I looked them up on the internet. Ryles offers free dance classes for beginners at 6 p.m., and somehow I got the impression that general festivities started around 7:00. I arrived at 7:45 and found three couples still getting their free dance lessons. They hadn’t reached the point where music seemed necessary, and the instructor was counting out moves and the students struggled with the steps. Uninterested, I went across the street to a coffee house and drank a pot of tea. By the time I had drunk my tea, sent two e-mails and read ten chapters of the Bible on my phone, I decided it should be safe to return to Ryles.

When I got back at 9:00 I really hoped the salsa party had moved upstairs because all I could see downstairs was one couple dancing and three women sitting at a table chatting. Nope. The staircase was blocked. I was looking at the whole party, and I then realized that the lone male dancer was also the disk jockey, dance teacher and cashier. To be fair, I had heard from one person that she usually arrived at Ryles around ten o’clock. Apparently she gets there at the beginning. I should have realized this, because I know that the Tuesday evening dance party doesn’t start at all until that time. But as I said, I’m a morning person and I wanted it to be like Minsk, where enough people show up early that I can go home at 10:00 satisfied that I’ve already had plenty of fun.

In this case, I’d already been away from my slightly-frustrated wife most of my allotted time. And even if I got permission to stay out later, I wouldn’t stay out terribly late because I’ve got stuff to do in the morning. I couldn’t bring myself to spend the ten-dollar cover charge in order to find out if those three women actually knew how to dance, nor could I commit to staying out late on a Sunday night.

I miss my friends in Minsk.

Jury Duty

I had to go to court on Wednesday. The courts in Massachusetts choose their jurors at random from people who live nearby, and I guess there are plenty of criminals in the Boston area because I’ve been chosen several times. Mostly it’s pretty boring. I go down and wait around for a day and then they tell me to go home because that day’s business was settled outside of court or somebody wasn’t ready. Then they leave me alone for three years or so, after which I have to do it again.

The first time I got invited from the waiting room into the courtroom I was to hear a case about a woman accused of killing her daughter. They said that evidence would include a bullet-riddled door frame removed from her house and that we might even have to go see the house itself. It sounded interesting to me and I looked forward to hearing the stories, for and against. The defense lawyer asked that I be removed from the jury, however. I learned later that he made the request because I looked too long at the defendant while they were making their initial evaluations. Both the prosecutor and defense attorney had options of throwing out two jurors for any reasons they wanted, and off I went.

The second invitation came about three years ago. The case wasn’t nearly as interesting, but I got to be on the jury for the duration of the court trial, about three hours. I felt sorry for the defendant because her unpaid public defender didn’t do much to defend her. She seemed guilty as hell. Unfortunately I didn’t get to sit in on the deliberations because I was the thirteenth juror and none of the first twelve got sick or went home during the case and they didn’t need me in there. I had to wait in somebody’s office while the other twelve decided that they thought she was guilty. We all came back into the courtroom and the jury foreman informed the judge of their decision. Afterwards one of the twelve main jurors asked me what I thought. I said I thought she was guilty and the juror told me she was relieved to know that I agreed.

I went to the same courthouse on Wednesday. I know the routine, and arrived late. They ask us to show up at 8:30 because they really want us there at 9:00. I came at 9:00, the next-to-last person to arrive. We sat around for a while and then a judge came in to tell us how important we are and how we performed an important function just being there and don’t be disappointed if we go home without doing anything. At around 10:30 they let us out for a little break and the bailiff mentioned that we’d find a catering truck parked outside.

I didn’t want to eat a stale egg sandwich from the back of a truck so I walked around and found a little restaurant inside of a neighborhood grocery store. The restaurant, called International Gourmet, had opened nine days earlier. The owner told me that her name is Sandra and she told me what she would be serving for lunch. The food sounded good and I liked Sandra, so I bought a piece of cornbread and promised to come back. The cornbread was delicious. At around noon the bailiff came back and told us that they wouldn’t be needing any jurors today and we could all go home. Somebody else would have to deal with their issues on Thursday. I went straight back to Sandra’s restaurant. Sandra told me about her first week as a restaurant owner. She was excited to say that she’d broken even. I got all excited for her too, until she admitted that she had achieved this by working for free; working really hard.

I liked my lunch so I went home and wrote a favorable review on Yelp.com. I’m sorry I didn’t go back and take a picture of the restaurant when I thought of it, part-way home. But I promised myself that I’d go back soon, with Alla and take a picture to add to my review. And I definitely won’t wait until I’m called back for jury duty to do it.

I forgot the protocol

In the Minsk Metro (subway) there’s always room for one more. When the train pulls into the station, people press themselves into the car. Frequently, people on the platform press the people in front of them in order to help get more into the car quickly before the doors close. I’m used to that protocol, and I’ve got no problem with it. I just don’t ride the subway if I’m carrying eggs at rush hour.

Tonight I took my first rush-hour ride on the Boston subway since I’ve been gone. When the train pulled into the station it looked pretty full at first, but enough people got off that I knew those of us on the platform would all fit inside the car. A couple of people in front of me got on, and I could see plenty of space inside the car, but I had a problem: There was a very large woman standing in the doorway. I’m having a little trouble choosing the right words to describe her size. For various reasons, a lot of Americans grow bigger and wider than most Belarusians. But this woman stood twice the width of an ordinary American woman, and she filled about half of the doorway and I wasn’t sure how to get in.

My first inclination was just to give her a push and get in. There was plenty of empty space behind her and this would have been the normal approach on the Minsk Metro. I remembered before reaching the door, however, that we don’t touch each other on public transit in Boston. Still, I really wanted to get onto that car because even at rush hour our trains aren’t so frequent and I wanted to be on time for a meeting. I just had to squeeze between the fat woman and the little cluster of people trying to make room on the other side of the doorway. I touched her gently, guiding her to my left so I’d have room to squeeze behind her. “OW!,” she yelled. “Jesus!”

I thought about how I could possibly have hurt her. I replayed the memory of my hand on her back and affirmed that I had barely touched her. I quickly considered the hypothesis that somebody behind me had injured her in some way, but she reacted too soon for that. I even thought about telling her that Jesus Christ had nothing to do with this incident. But I just continued into the train, leaving space behind me for additional passengers and hoping that the fat woman would not press her attack. She did not.

I watched the people behind me as they got onto the train. They avoided touching and begged to be excused. “Excuse me:” the magic words I had forgotten. And I didn’t really need to hurry because the driver didn’t rush to close the door. He didn’t have to hurry because the trains are spaced at least five minutes apart. While occasionally somebody in Minsk pushes me so hard that I become annoyed, I generally prefer the Slavic tradition of fitting everybody in over the Bostonian no-touching protocol. But that’s there and I’m here, so I’ll try to follow the local rules. And when I go back, I’ll try to bring along Boston’s polite tradition of asking forgiveness before squeezing in.

First impressions of Boston

We returned a week ago, but I've been so busy reading six months' worth of mail, catching up with friends and family, riding my bike and putting stuff away that I haven't managed to write a word all week long.

My first bike ride here proved to be a bit of an eye-opener. As I rode through Boston and Cambridge, I saw people of all colors and styles; Asian, Indian, African, Russian and who-knows-whatian. In Belarus the great preponderance of faces all look pretty similar to each other. Here, variety is pretty much the norm, and I really enjoy that.

I rushed off to the local gourmet grocery store to load up on vegetables I hadn't seen in a few months. In particular, I wanted to eat asparagus and artichokes. I also enjoyed chard, Hass avocados, peas in the pod, lots of fresh corn, shallots, and numerous sights and smells. Yes, we can buy everything here; but it's breathtakingly expensive unless we go downtown on the weekend to buy poor-quality stuff at the open-air market.

I reflected on my willingness to buy expensive produce here in Boston. If you want vegetables, high prices are pretty much just the way it is. In Minsk, as I've already complained, almost everybody sells the same small selection of vegetables, at prices far below the norm for Boston. I am aware of at least one stand at the central market place that features exotic imported produce, and I've never shopped there because I considered their prices outrageous in comparison to "normal" Belarusian prices. Then I complained about my inability to find the variety I wanted. I guess I'd better check out the folks at the fancy stall next time I'm there. I know they have exotic fruits, and if they have exotic vegetables as well I think I'm finally willing to consider paying their prices.