My Communist demonsPosted on Jul 22, 2008 03:27:00 PM by Susanna Zaraysky for New America Media
I wanted to write on this topic over a week ago, but I was frankly too scared to tell anyone.
Born in the city baptized by Vladimir Lenin’s grandiose legend, I never seemed to rid myself of the vestiges of Communism [...]

I have been neglecting this blog for a while as I’ve been migrating my website and blog to Wordpress. However, the transfer of files has been slower than what I would have liked. I’ve also been busy preparing my two books, Budget Globetrotter and Language is Music ready to go to press. They’ll be published [...]

Last week, I finished reading, La fine e’ il mio inizio (The end is my beginning), a wonderful book by Tiziano Terzani, an Italian journalist . As a fellow writer and world enthusiast, I found his books incredibly poignant as at the end of his life he chose to travel inward rather than trot the [...]

Orchids in Southern Taiwan

The maladied interpreter (also published on the New America Media blog)
While listening to Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories on my IPod, I could relate to Mr. Kapasi, the Indian interpreter/driver protagonist, in The Interpreter of Maladies. Mr. Das is driving an Indian-American family visiting Konarak, India. He finds out that Mrs. Das, his [...]

Though Amtrak doesn’t have a stellar reputation, I am Santa Barbara bound tomorrow on the Pacific Starlight. After doing a carbon calculation, I realized how bad my frequent flying is to the environment. I bought carbon offsets and thought I’d try the train to Southern California instead of flying. I will spend the night tomorrow [...]

“Nostalgia is not what it used to be”
This is the title of Simone Signoret’s autobiography. I’ve never read it. But, I’ve always liked the title. It came to mind today as I was thinking about the books I had donated to the library and how happy I am to be getting rid of momentos and [...]

In an effort to get into shape and lessen my impact on global warming, I went to get a new bike today. I’ve been shopping for one for a while. Having been out of town for a little over a week, I came home tired of moving around by airplane and changing locations and time [...]

Today, I wake up in English, discuss household items in Russian, muse about life and love in French and go to bed in Italian.
As I lay in bed reading my nighttime book, Un altro giro di giostra (Another ride on the Merry-go-round), by Tiziano Terzani, I was thinking about how funny it is to have [...]

I’ve been at Book Expo America (BEA) in Los Angeles since yesterday learning about how to publish in a digital world. I’ve been learning a lot and have been connecting with experts in the area. So many authors and publishing companies don’t know how to attract online audiences, so the faster I learn, the more [...]