N and I are living stereotypes of Russians and Ukrainians to the point where it’s embarrassing. I’m gregarious,  exuberant and say 100 words per minute. He is silent, broody, fatalistic and very profound. I love tchotchkes and borscht while he doesn’t get the point of either. He is tragic and I’m chirpy. For him, everything is a bad sign. For me, everything is a good sign. I make decisions with the speed of lightning while he ponders.

Also, Ukrainians are the Latinos of Eastern Europe but without the tragic, broody substratum of the actual Latinos. Latinos fake exuberance as a form of self – protection. Ukrainians are actually that way.

So let’s further the noble cause of recognizing Ukrainians as people worthy of some good, juicy stereotypes. Let me offer a few:

1. Ukrainians only have 2 emotional states: we either cry or laugh, but we do both with complete abandon.

2. It is very difficult to annoy Ukrainians because we are so laid back and happy. But once you do, we become like elephants who crush everything in their way.

3. Ukrainians eat the most unhealthy food in the world. After Americans, of course.

4. Ukrainians get extremely attached to their houses and decorate them to the point where they become very Baroque.
5. Ukrainians are very hard – working but mostly in what concerns menial tasks or working on the land.

6. Ukrainians have a very joyful exuberant sexuality that knows little boundaries.

7. Ukrainians are great at singing but horrible at dancing.

8. Ukrainians are scarily talkative. Very,  very chatty people. Which you’d never guess based on the number of posts on this blog.

9. Ukrainian women are bossy and domineering in a way unequaled by women anywhere else in the world.

We were talking in class about cultural stereotypes,  and those discussions are great fun. I realized,  though, that there aren’t even any stereotypes about Ukrainians that would be known to everybody. We get to share stereotypes with Russians which is just sad.

I have, of course, a collection of stereotypes about Ukrainians but nobody even knows them. It’s so unfair given that we are a huge country.

Sorry for firing off posts in close succession but I just had top share the following gem. I’ve been laughing so hard I knocked a pile of papers from my desk. It’s totally the best:

“Girly thoughts tell women that they still have to be the ‘good girl’. This is a major trap at work and specifically for entrepreneurs,” explained Dr. O’Gorman. A common girly thought, she explained, is the one that tells women not to try because of the fear of failure, which can be particularly damaging for entrepreneurs.

“The fear of failure is so much more loaded (for women.) Women need to learn to roll with the professional ups and downs that are common at work and not to take failure personally,” she said.

So while men may engage in self-talk as well, they don’t necessarily have the same negative impact.

“Men have an inner dialogue but it very different,” explained Dr. O’Gorman.

I’ve been to Albany and I have no idea how “Dr. Patricia O’Gorman, an Albany, New-York based psychologist” managed to go through life without meeting a single man, but apparently she did. Of course, she defines her own job as “resiliency coach,” and if you see the word “coach” in the job description of anybody who doesn’t train athletes, you need to turn around and run away as fast as you can. 

The advice “Resiliency Coach O’Gorman” offers you is bizarrely bad and actually dangerous. The only way in which it can be helpful is if people do the exact opposite of what she suggests. But the very last piece of advice this quack offers is just something special:

Never be afraid to voice your opinion or disagree with your colleagues.

Wow, what a great piece of wisdom! It must be so totally easy to solve any problem once you have access to this crucial insight. For instance, you can tell alcoholics, “Never drink alcohol!” And they will respond, “Gosh, thank you! We never considered this possibility but now we are cured!”

Now let me use Coach O’Gorman’s method and cure her of being stupid: “O’Gorman, don’t say and write stupid things! Read books and educate yourself.” 

Let’s see if the method works.

Students need iPads like dehydrated people need seawater: it might seem like a good idea, but the devices are likely to create more problems than they solve. But that’s not going to stop Apple from giving away more than $100 million worth of its products to students in 29 states in an effort to “make a difference for students and communities” as part of President Obama’s ConnectED Initiative.

I have noticed that everybody wants to do something nice and helpful for students but nobody is in a hurry to ask them what they want to be done for them. So I decided to do something as radical and shocking as actually asking students a question about their needs.

The administration’s plan to ban textbook and give every student a tablet was greeted with eye-rolls and frustrated sighs.

“Why doesn’t anybody just give us books, real books?” one student asked. “That would actually be helpful.”

“So true!” another student said. “Having one more screen to stare at is not a pleasing prospect.”

In a fairly large room, I detected no excitement whatsoever at the prospect of substituting books with e-readers.

For some reason, everybody seems to believe that students can’t make decisions that will benefit them but it isn’t true. Maybe it makes sense to run these costly “reform” ideas by the supposed beneficiaries and see what they think.

P.S. Feel free to read the linked article but I warn you that, after the initial great sentence, everything else in it is utter garbage.

Our municipal authorities tell us that if we want to plant a tree, they will pay for half of it. We had to tear a tree out when we moved in because it had died, so we are definitely planting a new one. Here is a list of trees we can choose from:

1. Bald cypress
2. Basswood
3. Beech
4. Black Gum
5. Crabapple
6. Zelkova
7. Elm
8. Gingko (male)
9. Hackberry
10. Kentucky Coffee (male)
11. Magnolia
12. Hickory
13. Hornbeam
14. Larch
15. Linden
16. Sugar maple
17. Red maples
18. Oak
19. Pine
20. Spruce

N is opposed to beech because he doesn’t want to be stereotypically Russian, and we already have a magnolia. N is also opposed to a maple tree because he doesn’t want us to be stereotypically Canadian. There is a lot of space so we want a tree that will grow a crown and not remain a sad naked stick forever. We are also not opposed to coniferous trees. Does anybody have any suggestions? We were thinking in the direction of a larch tree. What think you, fellow tree-huggers?

From the responses to the poll, I’m seeing that people want more posts on relationships. This is unexpected but I’m always willing to do what I can to please my readers. This is why I’m starting a new series of posts on relationships. I’m not sure what kind of relationships people want to hear about, so I will discuss all kinds, from romantic to sexual to professional.

Story 1.

My friend Ellie is a strikingly beautiful woman. If you see her on the street, you are bound to stop and stare because she looks like a supermodel. Ellie is also brilliant, she speaks multiple languages, and there are few things she doesn’t know how to do. Because of her numerous accomplishments and amazing looks, Ellie is very popular with men and keeps getting married.

Ellie’s type is a quiet, nerdy, shy guy. Of course, such guys feel extremely flattered when a stunning woman like Ellie returns their affections. Sometimes, Ellie is the first woman ever to pay any attention to them. The early stages of the relationships are always the same: the new husband adores Ellie, showers her with gifts and attention, and treats her like a queen. I know from experience, however, that this stage will not last for long. Soon enough, Ellie will tell me what a horrible ogre her new husband is. He will deny her access to their bank account, take away all of her money, say horrible mean things about her appearance, and forbid her to talk to her friends and her mother. 

“I think I hear Jack at the door,” Ellie whispers to me over the phone. “I have to run or he will kill me. He says I talk too much.” I still remember how Jack would stare at her in absolute awe and would be afraid to breathe in her direction for fear of upsetting somebody so wonderful, so the transformation is very strange.

So far, Ellie has had 3 husbands and numerous boyfriends. Somehow, she manages to turn every single one of those quiet, gentle guys into controlling macho freaks. As a result of these experiences, Ellie has arrived at a conclusion that within all men a patriarchal monster is hiding. When she gets fed up with how manipulative and nasty her husband du jour is, she plots an escape. Then she finds a new guy, and the story repeats itself.

The reasons for this strange pattern became clear to me when I met Ellie’s family. She has 2 sisters, and all three daughters, the mother and the grandmother worship and fear Ellie’s father. He controls them, says nasty things to them, and they stare at him with awe and admiration, incapable of placing a limit on his behavior. Ellie is a strong woman who has overcome a lot of hardship. This is why it isn’t hard for her to bend her boyfriends to her will and push them into the scenario that is familiar and  comforting to her: an ogre of a man and an oppressed, self-sacrificing woman.