In language school this summer, we had a big picnic at Lake Dunmore one day, and after a while of sitting about picnicing a Western Swing band showed up and started playing for the mainly old people sitting about on their folding chairs in the state park, in a little pavilion facing the water. They were a very Vermont-y Western, they were all over 50, and they arrived in the most amazing old tour bus I have ever seen. But they played great songs- Patsy Kline and Bob Wills and such, and it was very hard not to sing along, so we tried to sing along quietly in simultaneous Russian translation. I turned to the side and said to the person who happened to be standing next to me and started speaking very passionately about how wonderful America was and how I didn't know why I was choosing to leave such a wonderful country, and watching this band was the perfect American experience, out in the state park in the cool Vermont summer. The person to whom I addressed these remarks happened to be Nina Alexandrovna, my... well, I can't think of an appropriate adjective for Nina Alexandrovna... grammer teacher. And she looked sort of taken aback, and said something like, "Oh, yes, that gentleman's hawaiian shirt really looks good on him." Anyway, I did go through a stage for about a week of just walking around in wonder about how great everything in America was. And in the past 2 days I had flashes of this again, when I went to the dentist and to the hairdressers and the people working there knew me well and did their jobs with pride and committment and did their best to help me, when I subjected the people at my church to a fairly hastily-prepared presentation about icons, with half the slides on my powerpoint not working, and they spent the next two hours coming up to me and wishing me luck and acting interested (and blessing my suitcase at the "blesssing of the backpacks," during which only great diligence saved me from mowing over several first-graders with the 36-pound thing). One man gave me a little paper icon that a visiting Russian had once given him. People here are nice. Most people and institutions have a goal to make life more pleasant for other people (I don't necessarily think that Russians are not nice, and I love all the ones I know, but I think their concern extends only to people they know well, and businesses and institutions don't seem to be designed for helpfullness).
And today, in the Frederick News Post, there is an article, with a tie-in on the front page, about how PB&J is served in school cafeterias. THAT is the big news in Frederick County. Man. Oh the FNP, it's the one for me, as they they say. They being those hip young professionals on the TV commercials.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment