Hitlers birthday

It's Russian Orthodox Easter on Sunday. I haven't been out today but S tells me that when she went out earlier the queues around the churches stretched for miles mainly babushkas waiting to get their Kulich,Pashka and painted eggs blessed. It's an ordinary day for us Ganna doesn't do religion so we're having a peaceful Saturday in.

I have another reason to stay in.Hitlers birthday is on Monday so it's best to stay close to home this weekend . I'll definitely be staying in on Monday .It is an obscenity that fascist thugs manage to terrorise foreigners like this. Just as frightening is the fact that it's well known that worrying numbers of Russian police force share their views about foreigners in general and immigrants in particular. Therefore ,if anything happened you have to hope and pray that the policeman who comes to your aid is one of the few good ones. That said, even if the others did begrudgingly come to your aid you might have to wait a while. I've never been anywhere with more seriously overweight police than there are here in Moscow. I don't know what the application policy is for the police is here but i seriously doubt that fitness is a criterion given some of the evidence that I've seen.Add to that the fact the smoking is still a big thing here and you've got Keystone cops Russian style.

I feel really sad. This is a country whose language i fell in love with when i was 11 years old. I never dreamed that i would ever get the chance to study not only the language but it's history and culture. Sometimes as i go about my daily business here i almost want to pinch myself because i can't believe that I'm here..in Russia. It's easy to forget that there is tremendous beauty in this country when when your eyes are assaulted by industrial grime and filth everyday.It would be too easy to write off Russia as a nation of fascist thugs but i refuse to because, setting aside the amoebas, i believe that underneath the fear there are essentially good people here. Russia has long been and will always be a country of anomalies. Explain a country where you have amoebas and yet within the Russian education no child will ever leave school without having studied something by Pushkin.A man whose maternal great-grand-father was a black man.He is considered to have been Russia's greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.

The first 'Russian' to write using the language of the mass of Russian people and not the elite.The need by the elite to base their cultural aspirations in Europe meant that many spoke French and to a lesser extent German better than Russian. Therefore, what Pushkin achieved in using the language of the 'people' is an achievement ,researched ,discussed and written about by literary scholars the world over then as now. Alexander Pushkin has iconic status here and abroad and not just for students of Russian.

His family were minor nobility but that didn't always protect him from the obvious slings and arrows of racism because of his heritage. He was well aware of what some in Russian society thought of 'blackness. Read his , unfinished but beautifully poignant story,'Peter the Greats Negro'.However, he never denied his blood .His literary legacy has been too powerful to erase.Goodness knows, how often his name has been used in officialdom .Trust in good people, such is the nature of Russian history that I'm sure had there been command to do so his legacy could have been 'erased'.It wasn't , it hasn't been and will never be because good people somewhere made sure of it. Theirs is the energy we must all help build on when the fear stops.

Anyway, i been spending sometime today reading across the blogosphere.I been reading some 'big people' blogs.It'sgood to go outside your norm.Setting aside the big people stories I read a whole new youth vocabulary that has emerged Stateside. You have to keep upwith these things. On the plus side i thought that i lead a very sheltered life until i read one blog where with a blogger with a superstud size size ego was telling his 'homeboys' to google to find out where out where a womans c**t***s is !!!!! Well us grown folks can find it without googles help. My street-cred is in tact !