An alert reader calls attention to errata in my previous post about kartoshka, the Russian potato-shaped pastry (or confection) that may or may not have symbolic significance and also may or may not be delicious. The kartoshka, he points out, is more commonly found in a variation that interprets its vegetal [...]

If you go to a fancy pastry shop in Russia you will see behind the counter, next to the delicate and colorful Parisian-style mille-feuilles and fruit tartlets and cream-filled éclairs, something that looks like nothing more or less than a little potato.  You can ask for it by name: “kartoshka” (“potato.”)   Of course it isn’t [...]

On the flight over there was a baby crying in the bulkhead three rows ahead of me, like always.   The last time I’d been on an international flight, the requisite crying baby’s parents had seemed shattered, wincing every time their kid started up again with his deep-throated bad-seed growls.  If you glanced over at them [...]

It seems obvious to me now that anytime you write about a person online they are likely to read what you’ve written, so you should keep that in mind while writing. It’s odd to think that there was a time — relatively recently! — when I didn’t know this. It’s even odder [...]