bikelane

Having come from the very oppressive Soviet Russia, my wife knows very little of her Jewish heritage, culture and customs. Our kids are Jewish, and we both feel compelled to do right by them by raising them in a Jewish household. I also feel strongly that, while not particularly religious, I want to be Jewish. If you think it odd that a descendant of Ojibwa would feel this way, you might wish to read William Warren’s “History of the Ojibwa People,” in which he hypothesizes a surprising historical relationship.

My wife is Russian, and we’ve been together for 20 years. You’d think I might have learned a fair bit by now, but I have only a very limited vocabulary (with all the choicest, most colorful expletives, of course—very important in Russian, I have learned) and can only understand a fraction of what I hear. My son is studying Russian, and I hope my daughter will soon follow. We are planning a trip to Moscow in about six months (my second trip, but it’ll be my wife’s first trip back to her birthplace since she left in 1976). It’s proven far more challenging to speak Russian around the house for the benefit of the kids.

...how hard it would be to finish a masters degree program in mechanical engineering. My undergraduate degree is in M.E. (from Texas A&M), and I really thought this was something I wanted to do, and something that I could do. But, I hadn’t counted on how difficult it would be to finish my research and thesis while being the only breadwinner for a family of four, among all the other obligations, social, personal and otherwise, that my life has presented. I’ve finished all the coursework, and now simply need to write the damned thesis. (Just coming up with a thesis took an embarrassing amount of time, with several false starts, and I’m still not convinced that what I’ve finally landed on is viable—let alone interesting or valuable. Oy!)