An Ordinary Week

A rainy day in Yekaterinburg

Although I may be mistaken, it looks like this is going to be a rather ordinary week.  I'm not dealing with hallucinations from jet lag, and I am settled in here in Yekaterinburg.

There are some housekeeping matters to attend to.  Slava keeps the place pretty clean while he's here, but I've noticed that there are things that still need doing.  I may be sexist, but I don't think that men remember as often as women to empty the crumb tray on a toaster.  Window sills need dusting, and then there's ordinary cooking and cleaning to do.

Tuesday and Wednesday I'm having friends over for tea, and Slava's family will come over for dinner on Friday or Saturday.  I'm scheduled to go back two more times to the agricultural college, although I don't think I did so well the first time.  Thinking that the faculty might want to learn about land grant universities in the United States, I've done some research on how they were set up in 1862 under the first Morrill Land Grant Act, signed into law by President Lincoln.  It should be noted that half the U.S. population at the time lived on farms.

As we were dealing with the consequences of slavery, Russian tsar Alexander II decided to free the serfs, saying, "it is better to liberate the peasants from above than wait until they win their freedom by risings from below."  The Russian nobility was not in a position to oppose this measure, because to maintain their lifestyle and get cash, the nobles had mortgaged an increasing percentage of this human property.  When 23 million serfs became free to leave the property on which they were born, they found their freedom as hollow as did many former slaves did in the U.S. during Reconstruction.

I diverge.  It turns out I won't be talking at the agricultural college about the set up of land grant colleges in the U.S., and I certainly won't be talking about Russian serfdom,  I also won't be talking about the agricultural experiment stations established under the Hatch Act of 1887, which sent cooperative extension agents into rural areas.  I've been asked to talk about international relations.  I'm rather certain this means, "How can we arrange to send someone to the United States?" and "Can we get anyone to come here as a visiting professor?"