Russian

I think the GG looks like an old Russian so-and-so in this pic although he is not Russian in any way shape or form. German-Irish-French-whatever like so many of us WASPy types although in my case, replace French with Scot and move Scot to the front of the line bigtime.

The GG has spent a lot of time reading about the Russian Revolution and once crashed a uMich seminar on the topic. I am fine with that except when I have to hear about it at great length. I was never a great student of history and have little patience for long boring man-‘splaining explanations about things in general. I have begun a *novel* that is set in the time of the Bolshevik revolution – A Gentleman in Moscow. I am enjoying it greatly so far. The GG is skeptical about whether it might reflect the reality of the times. He probably thinks it’s a romance novel or whatever🐽 I have suggested that it is likely well researched and will present history accurately if not exhaustively from a unique perspective without dwelling on the dry names and dates that put me off history as a kid. Names and dates are important but so often we don’t learn much about the the surrounding context, stories about how regular people in the population dealt with tumultuous change, etc. Often those people did not have the tools to document the stories of their lives. But we’ll see… *Maybe* it’ll serve to get me *interested* in the Russian Revolution enough to read some long boring man-‘splaining historical books about it. Don’t hold your breath.

Anyway, we hung out at the Oscar Tango for dinner on a big football weekend. On my drive home from Cubelandia I saw all kinds of big RVs festooned with uMich crapola coming toward me on Stadium. Heading over to the PiHi parking lot to start their tailgating early I guess. Can they really park there overnight? What if PiHi has its own football game? I do not know. Walking downtown I watched a great big plane with four engines fly lazily over the city. I did a double-take and yelled out “B52”, which caused a few people to look at me like I was nuts. I had heard that a B52 would do a fly-over at the Big House tomorrow but didn’t expect to see one in the sky tonight.

At any rate, my experience with B52 fly-overs is that when I was a kid at the moominbeach, the now long defunct air force base Kincheloe was 15 miles or so away and B52s would sometimes come screaming over our beach. I don’t think they were actually at tree-top level but they were pretty dern low in the sky. And SCARY! Of course my old coot and uncle Duke, both military pilots, got all excited and ran out to watch them with us kids in hot pursuit.

P.S. The Google tells me the plane I saw was likely a B29, not a B52. A B52 fly-over *is* scheduled for today though.

One Response to “Russian”

  1. Margaret Says:

    I think it’s the moustache? I’ve heard of that book, and it has mixed reviews. I do like books with an historical element and yet about people. It makes the facts more interested! I don’t recognize planes, but John sure does–both commercial and military. That’s what working for Boeing for nearly 40 years will do for you. 😉