PROSAIC DEMIURGIC: Red Square Dance

Well, hey, we ushered in 2009 in Red Square. Okay, not exactly in Red Square -- more like in a fancy hotel overlooking Red Square. That's what adventure is when you get to be my age. Still, it was a trip and a half, and the photos don't do it justice.

Here's Ded Moroz... Father Frost to you and me.

Actually, I'm pretty sure this is not the original Ded Moroz, but just a reasonable facsimile. But you know how it is: Santa is Santa wherever you go, and the kids don't mind so long as he brings the goods.

Here's a tower of the Kremlin in the waning daylight of New Year's Eve day (and yes, that is daylight, or at least what passes for it in Moscow in December.)

Speaking of the Kremlin, would you like to know how bad my Russian accent is? Yesterday I asked some passers-by for directions to the Kremlin, and couldn't even make them understand the word "Kremlin." Sad. So sad. Four months in country, I can't even say Kremlin correctly. Or maybe they were just having me on -- I could live here forever and never not be a tourist.

So here's some guy on a horse assaulting a Christmas tree.

Okay, it's really not an assault, but then again, it's really not a Christmas tree. Rather, it's a New Year's tree, a useful fiction left over from Soviet times, when Christmas was taboo. Kind of reminds me of when I was young, and my Jewish family called its Christmas tree a Chanukah bush.

And then fireworks.

And fireworks reflected off the roofs of two cars.

And finally the happy revelers, who managed to stay up past midnight, yay us.

Hey, for the record, I think 2009 is going to beat dour expectations. After all, we've got this groovy new president, and the world economy really has nowhere to go but up. So let's all put on our upper-lip stiffeners and dream of (and work for) pleasant days. I'm off to the States on Saturday, hooray, and then back to Moscow on January 19. The weather will be better by then, won't it?

Won't it?

More later, -jv