Back in the USSR

I've spent most of the past week immersed in historical television dramas on Soviet themes. Despite their grim subjects, I can't deny the deep nostalgia for Russia that these shows evoked. They reminded me of our universal human capacities for kindness and cruelty, humor and cynicism, acceptance and resistance ... and the specific ways I experienced these capacities in Russia and other places in the former Soviet Union, ever since my first visit in the fall of 1975.

---

The first program I devoured over these last few days was HBO/Sky's miniseries Chernobyl. I thought that for an American to create a program on the USSR's most serious nuclear accident was nervy -- just imagine all the political and cultural distortions that could result. But I remembered the U.S. television coverage at the time (sample: CBS Evening News) ... surely a carefully constructed drama would be better than those speculative TV news summaries that filled the information vacuum of the time?

I was aware that the HBO/Sky series was getting good marks from a lot of critics, even Russian critics. In Novaya Gazeta, one columnist essentially said "This is the film we should have made." As I weighed the many specific criticisms made by both western and Russian commentators, I appreciated the accompanying five-part podcast in which host Peter Sagal talks with series creator Craig Mazin about his creative choices, and the deviations from the historical record that critics often refer to.

The "voice" of the Sagal/Mazin podcast is typically American -- mostly upbeat, offhand, slangy, sometimes verging on glib. But one thing comes through this conversation constantly: in the series itself, Mazin and his co-workers were determined to show respect to the men and women who risked (and sometimes gave) their lives to save their fellow citizens and potentially a whole continent. They demonstrated that respect by choosing to focus on individuals and stories that exemplified human decency and generosity and the finest aspects of patriotism -- all of which combined to contain the worst possible outcomes of the disaster. Even self-serving bureaucrats occasionally displayed flashes of humanity; the series avoided presenting us with total villains. However, the overwhelming desire of the ruling system to protect itself at all costs, deny problems, and avoid humiliation, was presented with brutal realism -- and (despite some oversimplifications and dramatic exaggerations) rightly so.

"Our goal is the happiness of all humanity."

There were imperfections in the series and podcast accompaniment that aren't explained by the choices imposed by compression and dramatic continuity. For example, in episode four, one of the squads sent out to catch and eliminate abandoned pets is eating and chatting outside a cultural center. A squad member points out a banner attached to the building: "Our goal is the happiness of all humanity." The irony isn't lost on the squad, but even so I wasn't happy that Sagal and Mazin mocked the sentiment. Maybe it's my own exaggerated idealism, but those slogans (however compromised by official corruption and everyday coping mechanisms) reflected real pride among Soviet people. Today those old banners and slogans evoke nostalgia among many Russians who look about in vain for similar ideals in our own time.

Other critics have pointed out historical inaccuracies -- the reactors' deficiencies were not that secret; the authorities were generally no longer threatening executions; the courtroom scenes were practically fictional; the apartment buildings had modern windows, and so on. You can find these complaints for yourself. They don't diminish the main point for me: the enormous wave of heroism among ordinary human beings in the face of a catastrophe that they cannot even understand.

Finally: apart from the riveting plot, a very rewarding aspect of the TV series for me was the attention to visual detail, to the texture of daily life in the mid-1980's USSR. The hospitals I've seen in Russia still look like those in Chernobyl. Same with the older apartment buildings, and with such details as clocks, telephones, stoves, radios, wallpaper, stairwells, and so on. Chernobyl isn't a one-stop substitute for deeper research and reading, but it is a very worthwhile attempt to dramatize history with care and respect for its human dimensions.

---

The second program was one I'm returning to after almost a dozen years since I first saw it. Here's how I described Shtrafbat after my first binge-watching exposure to the series: (Thanksgiving 2007) ...

I just gave eleven hours of my free time to a fascinating Russian television miniseries, Shtrafbat ("Penal Battalion") on DVD. In WWII Russia, penal battalions were the most expendable of soldiers, made up of criminals and "enemies of the people" who were offered this service as a way to get out of the GULags and redeem themselves by blood from the crimes they'd allegedly committed. The series has some battle scenes, but it's far more devoted to the human relationships among the characters--between regular Red Army and the shtrafniki, between the criminals and the politicals, between the Red Army's military officers and the political officers, between atheists and believers, between wounded soldiers and nurses, and occasionally between Russians and Germans.

Source: IMDB  

In these eleven episodes, there were so many memorable characters and moments of drama. And complete frankness about the NKVD (predecessor to the KGB) and its horrible methods. The battalion commander Tverdokhlebov mentions to his assistant that, when they go into action, the NKVD will station troops behind them to shoot anyone who turns back, even if they're wounded. (It happened.) And the assistant, Glymov, smiles and says, "Ah, how our Soviet leaders so lovingly look after their citizens." Later, after their beloved commander has been arrested by the NKVD on trumped-up charges, the soldiers are standing in formation and the NKVD colonel introduces them to the new commander. One of the soldiers asks, "And what about Tverdokhlebov?" In the confrontation that ensues, the colonel says, "You are enemies of the people. Nothing! Useless!" Glymov waves at the ragged penal battalion troops behind him and says, "These boys still have a bit of usefulness left in them. As for you, your loss wouldn't make a bit of difference."

This could have been a concept ready-made for exploitative violence and sensational gore, or for mindless patriotism and militarism. Instead, the series believably brings to life an almost-forgotten dimension of Russia's wartime experience. At one point, Glymov says that the secret of his survival to that point was not courage, but rather sheer cunning. Nevertheless, we see genuine kindness in his character. I can't help wondering whether, in similar circumstances, I would have been able to preserve as much humanity.

At the time I first saw this series, I wasn't aware of some of the controversy it raised. Some of the controversy I'm inclined to minimize -- for example, I totally disagree with the charge that the series exaggerates the role of penal battalions in the USSR's victory over Germany, or demeans the victory itself. There are no such implications, although in the context of today's victory cult, Shtrafbat's distinctly anti-Stalinist tone might be out of fashion. In fact, (spoiler alert), the last penal-battalion attack on the Germans is merely intended as a diversionary nuisance, although these soldiers don't know it.

Yuri Stepanov in role of Glymov the thief, about to volunteer.

Headquarters.

Alexei Serebryakov (comm-batt Tverdokhlebov), Stepanov. Screenshots made from episodes at Советское кино.

More serious criticisms involve the actual composition of the USSR's penal forces, most of which apparently consisted of active soldiers condemned to this form of service as punishment for military infractions, as with Tverdokhlebov in this series, who escaped from German capture. They rarely consisted of GULAG conscripts, either criminal or political, and their officers were likewise drawn from officer ranks rather than from the soldiers being so punished.

One critic pointed out the unlikelihood of a priest serving in a penal company (although another source vouched for one such actual case).

Whether or not these criticisms were 100% justified, we know from both combat literature and GULAG literature that the characters who come to life in Shtrafbat are realistic, both in their range of opinions and their mixed motives for service. Many of the supporting characters are of necessity two-dimensional; even the main characters sometimes slip into well-worn stereotypes, but the ensemble acting is truly inspired. Furthermore, the debates between the politicals and the criminals -- debates that reflect tensions going back to the Civil War and collectivization -- have an immediacy that reminds us of the constant interplay between authoritarian government and a long-suffering but wily population determined to survive.

Father Mikhail, the priest (played by Dmitri Nazarov) who first appears in episode seven presented a bit of a challenge. When Germans unexpectedly attack the battalions in a small village that our heroes have been ordered to clear, he is in the church's bell tower, ringing the bell to warn of the approaching Germans. As German snipers force him off the tower, he seizes a gun and joins the defense, and subsequently throws his lot in with the soldiers. Eleven years ago I thought this character threatened to bring an element of mixed absurdity and sentimentality into a drama built on painstaking realism. The priest seems to be custom-built to fulfill a stereotypical role as a bigger-than-life warrior-confessor, source of pithy observations and sonorous blessings. In the climactic battle, spraying the enemy with machine-gun bullets, he roars "Find your graves, you damn thieves! ... Forgive me, Lord."

This time through, I put more weight on the fascinating dialogues between the priest and various soldiers (many utterly skeptical). Right away they challenge him on the propriety of a priest killing. He agrees that it's problematic: "Even sins committed by necessity must be cleansed. I won't be able to take communion for three years.... I'd miss ten years if it's the Lord's will." The priest's presence in the ranks also becomes a political problem, and contributes to the arrest and torture of battalion commander Tverdokhlebov.

I'm not in a position to argue that such figures and incidents never arose in real life. And the drama, after all, still ground on to its bloody conclusion.

The reason I began watching this series all over again was that I stumbled across the fact that the whole series is available through Amazon, with decent subtitles (although the English-language descriptions of the series and its episodes on the Amazon site are hopelessly bad). I had no subtitles to help me back in 2007, so a lot of the rapid-fire slang in soldiers' dialogues went right past me. Now, once again I can enjoy the friendship between battalion commander Tverdokhlebov (played by Alexei Serebryakov) and his company commander Glymov (Yuri Stepanov) as they figure out how to fulfill the impossible demands on their pitiful band of shtrafniki by the general, Lykov (Alexei Zharkov). We see both the respect and the exasperation within the relationship between Lykov and Tverdokhlebov, complicated by the close watch on them both on the part of the NKVD officer, Kharchenko (played by Roman Madyanov), assigned to Lykov's headquarters to ensure strict political compliance. Excellent actors, every one of them.

If you have some Russian [this blog post was originally written for an English-speaking audience] and would like to try watching the series without subtitles and without Amazon, all eleven episodes are here. Whichever source you choose, be prepared to meet some unforgettable characters.

---

This article is cross-posted from my personal blog Can You Believe?

---

The latest from Playing for Change: "Walking Blues."

Status of this blog

by Larisa Mishkina

Since Judy and I are back in the USA and not planning to return to Elektrostal on a full-time basis, I won't be updating this blog regularly. I will keep it here as an archive (and a reminder to myself of all the joy of working with our dear students and colleagues).

I'll also stay active on facebook and vk.com. Questions about English usage are always welcome. Also be sure to let me know if you're planning to visit the USA!

Many of the images embedded on these pages were hosted by photobucket. I am in the process of transferring these images to another server. If you see a page with broken image or media links, and you'd like me to fix that page, just let me know. (johan@canyoubelieve.me). 

It Ain't Necessarily So: Rules, Audiences, and Arakin

My contribution to the most recent "Dialogue of Languages and Cultures" conference:

If you were an American high school student in 2002 and took the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) as part of your college entrance preparations, you would have been asked whether this sentence had an error:

Toni Morrison’s genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured.

The intended correct answer was “no error” but controversy erupted when a high school journalism teacher publicly disagreed: the pronoun “her” cannot take a possessive phrase (“Tony Morrison’s”) as its antecedent, according to several manuals of usage. Ultimately the exam’s publisher, the Educational Testing Service, agreed to remove the question from its scoring process. [Denham/Lobeck 2012:231.]

If the venerable and authoritative Educational Testing Service cannot calibrate its tests correctly, what chance do our students have to navigate all the rules and exceptions of English usage? Here are three suggestions, based on my own classroom experience.

First, don’t teach “rules”; teach guidelines based on respect for the audience. There is almost no rule in English that great writers and orators have not broken, so we ought not to pretend that good English depends on rules. In the PSAT example above, Toni Morrison might not be the antecedent of “her” in a mechanical sense, but she certainly is in a notional sense. Pinker [2014:3714] resorts to no less an authority than the King James Bible for an example: “And Joseph’s master took him, and put him into the prison.” The key point is to avoid confusing the audience with more than one candidate antecedent: “Sophie’s mother thinks she’s fat.” (Again, Pinker 2014.) Who is fat, Sophie or her mother?

Among the many rules that are subject to being reinterpreted as common-sense guidelines, more or less negotiable in practice, are these:

• distinguishing between “fewer” and “less”
• distinguishing between “that” and “which”
• avoiding splitting infinitives
• avoiding beginning sentences with conjunctions or ending them with prepositions
• knowing when to use “who” and “whom”

(Here readers can no doubt add many more examples!)

At the heart of this “guideline” approach is helping students develop a sense of their audience. In formal English speech and writing, correct use of “whom” is important because mistakes distract the audience and reduce the speaker’s credibility. In informal conversation, however, correct use might occasionally be distracting!

Suggestion number two: Let’s include these language controversies in our classroom materials, so that students get first-hand exposure to the issues and trade-offs involved. The Toni Morrison/PSAT story is a good case study. Steven Pinker’s recent The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century is an excellent introduction to these issues. [Pinker 2014.] Two Guardian articles based on this book (see Источники) can be used as short and convenient introductions for classroom discussion. Pinker’s work provides several advantages: For one thing, he strikes a sensible balance between blind faith in rules and completely abandoning them. He often shows how best usage is linked to cognitive psychology, reminding writers that the number of thoughts and paths our audience can hold in their minds at one time is limited, and why the most important freight in an effective sentence usually comes at the end. Don’t get in the way! Also, his writing is enjoyable -- a good model for the principles he advances.

Finally, let’s apply this audience-centered perspective to our existing curricular materials. In my paper for last year’s conference (“Three questions about cheating” [Maurer 2014:91]), I argued that even the relatively rigid format of ЕГЭ preparation lessons allowed critical examination of texts as well as student creativity in designing exercises and homework assignments.

The same applies to textbooks such as the Arakin series, Практический курс английского языка. In fact, with Arakin’s texts, the application of critical student involvement and awareness of audience is urgent. As a source of rules and patterns, Arakin suffers the same problem as any other typical textbook: in the words of one student, “We forget the rule three seconds after we close the book.” In general, students remember rules and patterns that they themselves discuss, compare, question, and practice. Last week, we had a long conversation with students on the differences between “ignore” and “neglect” [Аракин 2003:126.] Our interpretation of this difference was not the same as Arakin’s, but the priority is not deciding whose interpretation is superior; it is making the question memorable for the student.

Unfortunately, the Arakin textbooks are full of errors. (I just opened randomly to this one [page 118]: “He was dressed in the affection of wealth to which colored people lent themselves.” Disregarding the narrator’s questionable generalization for the moment, the word “affection” should be “affectation.”) But the most serious problem with the Arakin series (or, to put it positively, the most important opportunity to engage students in critical examination) is its separation from contemporary English-speaking audiences. The series claims to be “практический” but it is impossible to overemphasize how stilted, mannered, and class-bound some of the texts are. The vocabulary lists are good, but the texts, commentaries, and exercises give no hint of the inappropriateness of the language for the audiences that students are likely to meet. Some students already know that Arakin has defects, but it is up to instructors to redeem the material by inviting students to read it critically in light of real-world audiences.

Examples: By contemporary standards, R. Gordon’s description of female medical students [page 8] is offensive. This might not be surprising; after all, it’s a linguistic time capsule from three generations ago! However, there is no invitation to students to identify the offense and consider how to avoid it in their own communication. E.L. Doctorow’s excerpt [pages 118-122] and accompanying commentary and exercises seem completely tone-deaf to the condescending portrayals of black people (especially without the context of the original novel). The offensive term “coon songs” is given this strange, unenlightening definition: “White American Negro (Black) folksongs.”

All of these supposed defects could serve as take-off points for lively classroom discussions, encouraging students to identify problems in the text and propose or research solutions. We thereby strengthen our students’ ability to communicate clearly and confidently with their intended audiences, instead of fearfully navigating obstacle courses of linguistic and cultural rules … or forgetting those rules altogether three seconds after they close the book.

Источники:

Аракин В.Д. и др. Практический курс английского языка. 4 курс. М:ВЛАДОС, 2003. 352 стр.

Denham, K. and Lobeck, A. Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction. Boston: Cengage Learning, 2012. 576 стр.

Maurer, J. Three questions about cheating // Диалог языков и культур в современном мире / Материалы Четвертой Международной научно-практической конференции. Электросталь: Новый гуманитарный институт, 2014. с. 88-93.

Pinker, S. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. / Электронная версия. New York: Penguin Books, 2014. 368 стр.

Pinker, S. [Электронный ресурс] Many of the alleged rules of writing are actually superstitions // Guardian 6 октября 2014 / URL www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/oct/06/steven-pinker-alleged-rules-of-writing-superstitions ссылка проверена 24 ноября 2015).

Pinker, S. [Электронный ресурс] 10 grammar rules it’s OK to break (sometimes) // Guardian 15 августа 2014 / URL www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/15/steven-pinker-10-grammar-rules-break ссылка проверена 24 ноября 2015.

City Day 2013

City Day 2013, a set on Flickr.

Congratulations on Elektrostal's 75th birthday.

"Political Correctness in the English-Language Classroom"

From my article published in the proceedings of our institute's March conference, "Образование. Язык. Наука. Культура"--

. . . Accuracy is in fact the first goal of the “politically correct” classroom. When I advise students to use categories, pronouns, and titles relating to race and sex correctly, I do so not out of any fear that some linguistic mafia (apology to Italians!) will hunt us down for our every mistake. The blunt truth is that English has changed—and if our students’ English usage doesn’t reflect these changes, their credibility as actors on the global stage will be reduced.

It’s not that I fear my students will give offense by using out-of-date terms for racial groups (for example); almost everyone understands that non-native speakers are at a disadvantage, and allowances are therefore made. (Beyond that, almost any error can be neutralized by a sincere apology.) The value of inclusive speech is not so much in avoiding offense as in avoiding distraction. When my student uses a wrong or obsolete term, the hearer will almost certainly stop to wonder whether the speaker really is not aware that this term hasn’t been used among educated people since the 1960’s.

Here it may be useful to define a couple of terms. Inclusive language is usage that avoids making social distinctions that are misleading, biased, or insulting. In spiritual terms, inclusive language is a form of linguistic hospitality, signaling that the person, group, profession, or social situation referred to by the speaker is seen as wholly human, not as some lesser object. Political correctness is a label that is (often humorously or ironically) applied to this humane concern to use inclusive language. Critics of political correctness sometimes imply that inclusive terms are circumlocutions or euphemisms, but this is not true. Inclusive terms are more accurate in two ways: first, they neutralize historical or cultural disadvantages that obscure human value and equality; secondly, they reflect what people being referred to actually want to be called. I call this the “Berdy standard” after Michele A. Berdy’s important article, “Bias-Free and Inclusive English” [Berdy 2004; see link in sidebar at right].

Correspondingly, we teachers want to be accurate for two distinct, if related, reasons. First of all, we want our students to be technically correct, technically proficient. Second, as David Smith and Barbara Carvill emphasized in their wonderful book The Gift of the Stranger, we want each student to be “a blessing as a stranger” when abroad, and to practice “hospitality to the stranger” when at home [Smith and Carvill 2000]. This goes beyond proficiency to the very heart of cross-cultural communication: a recognition of our common humanity.

In practical terms, what are the classroom situations where we come face to face with issues of political correctness and inclusive language? Alex Case, in his useful overview “Politically Correct Language in the EFL Classroom” [Case n.d.], provides a convenient list of awkward “teachable moments”:

• They [the students] didn’t know that it [an error] was politically incorrect
• It is not politically incorrect in their language
• The word or expression has become politically incorrect since they learnt it
• What they said was a slight mistranslation
• The place where they got the word from, e.g. an electronic dictionary, doesn’t have information on connotations
• They didn’t learn that it was not PC when they learnt the word.
• They learnt it from a text that was old, very informal (e.g. rap), or deliberately politically incorrect (e.g. a stand-up comedian)

Let’s take some examples.

The word “Negro” fits several categories: “not politically incorrect in their language” (i.e., “негр”, “негритянский”); possibly “a text that was old”; and possibly “they didn’t know it wasn’t PC when they learned it.” Berdy’s standard provides the antidote: we accurately and professionally teach what English-speaking black people actually prefer to be called. We expect English-speaking students of Russian to learn the difference between “русский” and “российский”; it is no less reasonable for us to teach the difference between the historical “Negro” and the contemporary “black” or “African American.”

[Update: See also this interview with Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland.]

V.D. Arakin, whose books play a central role for English instruction in our Institute, provides a beautifully nuanced and elegant foundation for each student. But here again we need to provide an update. When, for example, Arakin provides such uncorrected samples as “What does the reader bring to the study of his first literary work in a foreign language?” [Arakin 2000: 58], we must tell our students that they should no longer rely on the old universal masculine (“his”). While it is quite true that pockets of resistance remain—authors who insist on the inclusive masculine—our students should be aware that, whether we like it or not, to many if not most of their English-speaking peers, this usage will sound faintly odd at best, ignorant at worst.

Here the antidote is not to prescribe clumsy patches such as “he/she” and “him/her” but, as in so many other cases of awkward or ambiguous constructions, simply to learn to rewrite our way around the problem: “What do readers bring to the study of their first literary work in a foreign language?” This useful skill happens to be the same skill that is needed in so many other situations, such as the ever-popular ambiguous antecedent or the run-on sentence.

Far from being a laughable form of trivial fastidiousness, “political correctness” in its linguistic application is very simply a concern for humane accuracy. Just as we want our students to reveal their facility with grammar and lexicology, we also want to equip them with an awareness of the changes brought about by almost five decades of inclusive language, so that their encounter with their international peers will lead to mutual respect and mutual blessings.

The full article, and the rest of the conference articles, can be found in this PDF-format book.

U.S. diplomat's visit

Jonathon A. Kent, second secretary at the U.S Embassy in Moscow, visited our Institute last Thursday.
He began his visit with a brief tour of Elektrostal--making a circuit around the city that included Lenin, Nikolaev, Soviet (including Oktyabr cultural center), Zakharchenko, Karl Marx (and the cultural center), and Mir (including the Kristall arena and sports complex).

After a visit with Sergei Kazantsev and lunch with Johan, Judy, Larisa Kazantseva, and Sergei Serov, Jonathon Kent met with students of the fifth year. Natalya Razumovskaya and some students from other groups also joined us. Jonathon began with a presentation on U.S.-Russian bilateral trade and investments--including recent developments and potential for growth.

In the following question-and-answer period, he asked students what drew them to study English. Students talked about their studies and their diploma work, and their plans for future careers. Jonathon described his own education--physics as an undergraduate, and economics in his graduate studies. We had a chance to compare the role of the liberal arts in both the USA and Russian higher education.

In the tea following class, we had a chance for a more personal discussion. Jonathon described his preparation for service in the U.S. Foreign Service, and a typical day in the life of a diplomat. Summing up his impressions of the day, he said that he was impressed by the level of English of our students and their thoughtful insights on education in Russia and language learning, broadly. He was happy for the opportunity to spend time in our part of Moscow oblast--his first visit here since arriving in Moscow.

For further reading on the themes of his presentation to 501/502: Jonathon Kent recommends the following articles (in both Russian and English) from ambassador Michael McFaul's LJ blog:

Russia joins the WTO (with chart of Russian-US trade volume)
Sochi Investment Forum 2012
Golden Autumn: U.S.-Russia agricultural ties
The New Normal: U.S., Russia--equal trading partners

Thank you, students and instructors, for making our guest welcome at NGI!

Adventures of an American Shurik in Russia.

This book my colleagues gave me for my 60th birthday really is priceless!

(By the way, the second frame, showing the original Shurik. isn't in the book--I added it for the American audience.)

Enjoy! And remember--be careful about posting your pictures online--who knows where they might end up!?

My summer

Dear students! I hope you had a wonderful summer and will return refreshed to the School or Institute next week. I'm looking forward to seeing you.

Judy and I spent part of the summer in the northwestern part of the USA, in the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Judy is still in the U.S. at this moment--but right now she's in the opposite end of the country, in Maine.

Among the high points of our summer was the week we spent in rural Idaho. We visited friends who own a farm. One day they invited us to come with them as they herded cattle from one pasture to another:

A few days later we were in Oregon. There I spent four days at the Waterfront Blues Festival and saw some of my favorite musicians:


I was able to photograph Charlie Musselwhite (large picture above, with his attache case of harmonicas). In the EGE class, we will be using a couple of his songs during the school year. In the row of photos below, from left to right: Booker T. Jones, whose career goes back nearly fifty years; Kid Ramos (here performing with the Mannish Boys); and Jim Wallace (here performing with the Suburban Slim Band). All of these bands were on one of the four festival stages on Portland's beautiful Willamette River waterfront:

But for now I'm glad to be back home in Elektrostal, sitting at my desk with Skripachka sitting next to me as I'm getting my papers in order for the coming school year. Come and visit me here often; I'll have information here about homework, I'll post song audio files and lyrics and (when possible) videos, and I'll also try to post other useful information. For the Institute classes, I'll post the weekly schedules here, too.

For official Institute information, be sure to visit the Institute's Web site. I hear that the School will soon have an official Web site of its own.

See you in just a few days!

Keeping you in my heart...

To all my students in Institute groups 501 and 502, and School groups 201-206:

Thank you for a wonderful year. At the start of the year, I asked you to observe two simple rules:

1) be kind

2) try

and you did far, far more than the minimum required! I will think about you often, and hope to see you again soon!

Love,

Johan

Here are photos from the Institute's Last Bell concert

... and from the Last Bell program of the School.

The summer in pictures

Welcome back! I'm looking forward to seeing you again next week. First I have to spend a few days in Paris, France, where I'll see our son Luke, who is on a research fellowship here.

Sergei Anatolyevich will teach my Friday classes on September 2, but I'll be back the following week.

You'll come back to a very busy Institute. Look what's happening behind 32 Radio Street! ...

Onward to Mongolia

We are not carrying video equipment on our rail journey from Moscow to Ulan Batar, so I was glad to see this video made by a Danish traveler. The Danish sounds very nice to my Norwegian ears, but if you don't know the Scandinavian languages, there are elegant English subtitles.

We will get off the train at Sukhe Batar, just across the border with Russia, and stay there for a few days. Then we will take another overnight train to Ulan Batar, but unfortunately we have to go from there to the USA by airplane. *sigh*

The Trans-Mongolian Railway from Inuk Jørgensen on Vimeo.