My passion is Russian literature. (Ph.D. in Russ. lit.). Taught Russian language, lit. and folklore for 30 years in an American university. Speak good Russian. Have published two books on Ivan Bunin, lectures and articles on Vladimir Nabokov. Taught in Russia on a Fulbright Scholar grant in 2000. I read and write khudozhestvennuju literaturu, am interested in communicating with someone who reads great lit. seriously.

I'm an introvert. Don't like being around groups of people, prefer being with just one or two friends. Don't like small talk or dinner parties. Within those limitations, however, I have a lively personality, a wicked sense of humor.

I have strong opinions about a lot of things, but I truly believe that we shouldn't judge people. Judge not! It's so easy to be critical of others, but we all too often don't realize the burdens that our fellow man/woman is carrying.

Retired now, living in Florida, snowbirding in Madison (May thru Sept.), still writing literary fiction. Trying to keep my mind and body fresh and active. Do mental exercises: translating passages from Dostoevsky (Notes from the Underground) from Russian into English, then, later, going back and translating the English back into Russian. This works the muscles of your mind! Physical exercise: one hour/day on an eliptical machine at the YMCA (like jogging for an hour). I'm in good shape.
In SC, before I moved to Fla., I delivered meals one day a week for Meals on Wheels.

I like traveling, seeing new places and favorite old places. California is my favorite state; I never get tired of going back to places like the Monterey Peninsula, where I was stationed for a year in the army.

I'm an intellectual; I'm good at using my mind. For some strange reason I'm also good at talking to little children (age 2-5), have always had a knack for this, and little kids like me. Not as good at relating to adults. Been sort of on my own wavelength all my life. Too late to change now. Ask God about the weird of the world, where the weird of the world come from, why the weird of the world are weird. God knows. But, as I say, it's too late to change now. Some people appreciate quirkiness, though. I know I do.

What do I like doing: I like walking on beaches. EVERYBODY likes walking on beaches and they all say so! Say something original! Okay, I like walking on my hands on beaches; I love the feel of the spindrift tickling my nose and the ocean froth lapping at my wrists. JOKE.

Hmm. That's a hard one. You can't step out of your own skin and step into the skin of someone else, then look back at yourself from within that skin. So it's hard to say what people notice about me. It probably depends on many things, one of them being what kind of mood I'm in at the moment that those other people happen to eyeball me.

Nikolai Gogol, that grand deranged master of Russian prose. American lit.: Flannery O'Connor is in a class all her own. I recently read, for the first time, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. Wonderful.

Great thing about books is, no matter how many you've read, there are always more good ones out there. Recently read Virginia Woolf for the first time (great stuff). My children bought me some books for Christmas. Have already read them: Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth (nothing special), Muck City (about Belle Glade, Florida football--interesting) Oliver Sacks, Hallucinations (great read).

I just resubscribed to two old periodical friends: The New Review of Books and The New Yorker.

Movies: Doctor Strangelove; Raising Arizona. I watch a lot of French movies on Netflix. Hollywood puts out 3-4 total movies worth watching every year. The rest are part of the huge wasteland that is American "culture." Shoot em up, blow em up, Batman.

Food: Fried okra, lentils, all fresh vegetables, sauteed scallops.

I like singing karoke. I do Elvis and a lot of country stuff. I appreciate the kind of country music that has almost died out by now (Merle Haggard, George Jones). The only other music I listen to is classical.

books, books, books, knigi, les livres, los libros

What's going on with the U.S.A.? Did we always have this many apparently insoluble problems (epidemic obesity, mass shootings, mindlessness, etc.)? Was it better when I was young, or did I just feel better because I was younger?

What can I do about any of this? Probably not much. So I should try to do what I can personally and not worry about things that I can't change.

I like cooking a nice meal, having somebody over to help me eat it, then watching a Netflix movie.

If it's private that means you're not going to admit it, so the very way the words of that phrase are put together leads us into a conundrum.

(1) you live somewhere near enough to meet; not interested in long-distance communication

(2) you are not politically correct. I love to laugh, even irreverently, and I can't stand political correctness

(3) you love Russian literature, or at least love great literature (Shakespeare, Nabokov, etc.)

(4) Esli vy govorite po-russki i obozhaete russkuju literaturu.