I have always liked his thinking, and certainly his biography, though he is sometimes puzzling and he does have that Russian tendency to pound an idea to the center of the earth. Yet I liked this story about the wolves going right by his writing desk in Vermont. It is about nothing, yet everything.
He crossed into Claremont, NH to go to the local Orthodox Church when he lived here. Greek Orthodox churches far outnumber Russian (or Romanian, Ukrainian) in New England, but this one has been primarily Russian throughout its marginal legacy. Perhaps that is why he settled nearby.
I saw a Canadian wolf about 2 weeks ago. I thought it was a little bear, as I saw one that might have been his mom a few minutes earlier, but bears don't have long tails. ;)
ReplyDeleteWikipedia will tell you there are less than 180 wolves on Vancouver Island. As is common, they are wrong. ;)
Off hand I found it strange that a wolf would be so near settlements during the day and during warm weather. Not what I'd expect.
ReplyDeleteMy home area had a fair number of people of Russian or Ukrainian background- mostly Ukrainian, IIRC. One time my Liberal Religious Youth group (all those Unitarian jokes are true..) attended a Russian Orthodox service, and talked afterwards with the priest. From work I knew a couple who had experienced the Holodomor as children. Slave labor in Germany during the war ended up freeing them- one of those ironies of history.
In Argentina I knew a Claremont NH native who had gone to South America as a Peace Corps volunteer. She was of French Canadian background.She married a Peruvian who became an academic in Argentina. She taught English and raised a family. Over the years I sent her a lot of hardbound books for her students. I stopped sending books when she wrote me that Customs started to charge import duties- on books I bought for a dollar. Her children, but not their parents, were of the STEM tribe: a Vet, a Dentist, a Physician, and a Chemist.