Culture & Customs

I get so much spam trash, that today I decided to harvest a line or two from each spam I got (well, the PG or less ones) and shuffle them together into a found poem. Trash into art? Not quite. But something...

"Raw beets and carrots," Ninotcha said in the eponymous film, when asked what she wants to eat. "This is a restaurant, not a pasture," the maitre de responds. What an appropriate segue into this issue's recipe for a tasty beet and carrot salad...

Saw an entry from Stanislav Mishin's Mat Rodina Blog, when it was posted to Johnson's List. A superb and well-argued summary of several things Russian business people need to attent to if they want to do business with the West. 

I just stumbled across this nice interview (July 07) of Victor Bogorad, who does the cartoons for our Survival Russian feature. Too bad the video is not archived online... 

Editor's choice of books about Russian folklore and folktales.

A Modern Russian Wedding: The Art of Getting Married. A look at Russian wedding traditions, past and present.

Many have scoffed at Cindy McCain's defense of Alaska Governor (and GOP Veep candidate) Sarah Palin's foreign policy chops with the assertion that "Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia." Scoff not. The truth is so more startling still.

Sorrel Soup is this issue's recipe, provided by a Moscow restaurant that believes simple is better...

The latest from the travel front.

Mead has a long history in Russian culture and, it turns out, diplomacy. Join us in a round of cranberry mead.

Russia has truly regained its prowess as a sports superpower, and it may rise further yet. It will surely be giving the U.S. a run for its money in the overall medals race at the Beijing Olympics in August... this rise in sports achievement takes place against the backdrop of a Russia that, without putting too fine a point on it, has bumbled from failure to failure in foreign policy in recent months