SUDDENLY!

“Suddenly” is a word used often by the Russians.  I remember being told once in a writing workshop never to use the word “suddenly.” Only Dostoevsky can use that word, the teacher said.

Writing instructors often say that nothing in fiction happens without a stated or hinted reason. Dostoyevsky uses the word “suddenly” seven times in the first five pages of his short story the “White Nights.” In Russian history it is often the foreign ray, or light, or idea, or perspective that drives Russia, sometimes driving it crazy.

But, we generally know that human events do not usually happen suddenly. Like earthquakes, we feel them in a moment, but underneath the causal elements were long before inexorably moving toward the explosion. We, on the surface of things, measuring only what our senses tell us or what we want to believe, feel only the culminating shock. Read more »

Art Across the Ocean

The Los Angeles-St. Petersburg Sister City Committee again in 2011 has sponsored a Children’s Art Exchange Exhibition between the students of our sister cities.  The LA exhibit opened May 12 and will close June 4. About 200 paintings from LA Unified School District and 82 paintings from St. Petersburg are on display. It looks really beautiful. It can be seen at the Charles White Gallery: 2401 Wilshire blvd., LA , 90057. All are invited.

 Children and families attended the opening and many will go to the closing reception as well. The exhibit will then go to St. Petersburg, Russia  as last year for a special exhibit during the famous “Master Class International Art Festival,” in June. Our great thanks to Masha and Muriel and the officials of the LA Unified School District here in LA, and to the wonderful people in St. Petersburg for what they are doing there.

It is great to be sponsoring an event like this. There is so much good to be done with the children expressing their knowledge of and respect for their brothers and sisters across the sea. There is a growing respect and interaction between the US and Russia and we are proud to be part of it.

See last year’s exhibit on www.laspscc.org. 

Learn more. Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

St. Petersburg~A Favorite City of Mine

As usual in Russia, it is a place of mixed meaning and effect. Founded by Peter the Great in 1703 as his “Window on the West” it is still that and for that reason a place at arm’s length from the rest of Russia. And for that reason, one of the most fascinating cities in the world.

 St. Petersburg is a feminine city. She is an elegant and noble woman sitting draped with the jewels of her youth waiting for her prince to return. It is the most beautiful Italianate city in Europe. This “Venice of the North” with its symmetry, canals, architecture, statuary, museums, performing arts, palaces, gardens and languid summers with endless days make it a city never to be forgotten. The palaces are more flamboyant than Versailles and more numerous than anywhere in the world. I used to call it “Paris without paint,” but for the 300^th anniversary in 2003, the lady polished her nails, groomed her hair and donned a clean and colorful dress.  From my book, “Walking on Ice, an American Businessman in Russia.”

 St. Petersburg is not Russia; it is the historical myth of Imperial Russia. St. Petersburg is charming, gentle, romantic. It goes to bed at ten. But during the glorious summer White Nights it doesn’t sleep at all.

 As President of the Los Angeles/St.Petersburg Sister City Committee, I keep reasonably in touch.

 What do you think? Have you been there?

Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

Children’s Art ~ Friends across the Sea

Art knows no borders. The Los Angeles/St. Petersburg Sister City Committee is sponsoring an exchange of children’s art between LA and St. Petersburg, Russia to celebrate the committee’s 20^th anniversary. Recently I was happy to see the exhibit of that art from the schools, grades 1-12, of central LA and I was really impressed. Over 200 paintings will go to St. Petersburg and be displayed in “Master Class,” a major arts and entertainment event during the glorious “White Nights” that city celebrates every June.

The plan is for in 2011, in addition to again LA kid’s art going to the Russian city,  that art from St. Petersburg’s children will come to LA and there will be a major banquet and event in LA to celebrate that 20^th anniversary. St. Petersburg is the cultural center of Russia and a beautiful city. The amazing advance of all the arts in Los Angeles makes this exchange a mutually enjoyable celebration.

Buy the book here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

“Suddenly”

The monarchist Vasily Rozanov said that in Russia change happens quickly—in one-and-a-half or two days. Examples given were the Czar and the Army disappearing in two or three days, the elimination of the Patriarchy under Peter, and more lately, the demise of the Soviet Union. One day there was the Hammer and Sickle flying over The Kremlin, and the next day it was gone. The eminent Oxford professor Andre Zorin quoted Rozanov at a Summer Literary Seminar in St. Petersburg in 2004.

 “Suddenly” is a word much used by Russians. I remember in a past writing workshop we were told never to use the word “suddenly” —that only Dostoevsky could use that word. That nothing in fiction happens without a stated or hinted reason. In Dostoevsky’s “White Nights” he uses the word seven times in the first five pages. I used the word in my poem, “Russian Rivers,” “Suddenly, a foreign ray permeates the ice.” In Russian history it is often the foreign ray, or light, or idea, or perspective that drives Russia and Russians–sometimes crazy. Zorin used two words repeatedly in his lecture—“suddenly” and “incredible.” Those two words are apt when discussing Russian history and culture.

I mentioned to Zorin that it seemed to me that, like an earthquake, human events do not usually happen quickly. We feel them in a moment, but underneath the causal elements were long before inexorably moving toward a future explosion. We, on the surface of things, measuring only what our senses tell us or what we want to believe, feel only the culminating shock. I held up my hand and offered that The Russian Revolution started long before 1917—maybe in the 1860s when the artists in St. Petersburg, “The Wanderers,” rejected the European influence and moved near Moscow and began the great paintings of the Russian common man. Other hands went up and the protest was “No, it was the writers like Belinsky, Bakunin, etc. early in 1830s and the influence of the Enlightenment. The Czars were blind to this. Likewise, the Soviet Union was crumbling years before the flag came down, but we didn’t know it or want to know it. (Military-industrial complex pressures?) The Twin Towers collapsed in 102 minutes. Surely the inertia for that disaster began years before, unnoticed or ignored by political leaders.

Then on the other hand, there is the unpredictability of everyday Russian life. Do things happen suddenly, or are the shocks of life always the lack of a preconscious ignorance of predicting clues? If we were so smart to notice and measure all the tremors of coming explosions, we might be prepared for the resulting shocks. But then life, especially ironic Russian life, would not be judged so eloquently by the masters like Dostoevsky.

 Excerpted from “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”