Friday the 13th

Cindy is home again today, feeling much better than yesterday but still a bit on the tired side so I’m delighted she is taking care of herself by not pushing and rushing back to work.  It is a cold - what the Russians call ‘bird cherry cold’ which means a cold front in May - and rainy day here, perfect for her to do nothing but rest and recover. Always best to stay close to home on any Friday the 13^th.

The Arab Spring certainly is starting to fizzle.  What started as a great opportunity is turning into a tragedy of epic proportions.  Egypt, with no plan to replace a stable government, is now being taken over by criminals and violent Islamic factions that want to destroy the Christians.  Libya is a mess and has become a deadly stalemate; Bahrain continues to demand pledges of allegiance from its citizens or face deportation or imprisonment, Tunisians are overrunning Europe and taxing all of their resources and threatening the Schengen Agreement, and Syria has decided that Bahrain’s model of brute force and the hell with public perception is the best way to handle the protestors. 

I’ve mentioned how the dollar is sinking against the ruble, but what I didn’t know is that Putin, when he was president, told the central bank to increase their stockpile of gold as a hedge against the dollar and euro.  Five years ago they purchased lots of gold at $450 an ounce and it is now above $1500 an ounce.  Nice move Vlad!  On the other hand he may have plagiarized significant parts of his dissertation for his PhD in economics in 1996.  One never knows, does one?

Things are really starting to bloom here in Moscow. Yesterday I saw no evidence of any blossoms on the many chestnut trees in town.  Today, they all seemed to have popped open at once.  The lilacs are threatening to explode in color and scent sometime this weekend. These to my way of thinking are the real harbingers of late spring and I hope they stick around for a while.  We are off to the Bolshoi tomorrow for a matinee of Verdi’s Nabucco. If the weather holds we look forward to a long slow walk home through several parks to admire the new blossoming trees and shrubs.

I think there must be a Russian superstition that you can’t cross someone’s path from the back. Time after time I’m almost bowled over by someone coming from my left or right and racing in front of me, even when it is the longer route.  Kids do it, old folks do it, I would guess the most refined Russian lady bugs do it; it has to have some significance other than just being a pain in the rear.

Have a lovely weekend,  Cindy and Wm