Word: samovar
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...watchword ofour four years. We had regular teas to which wewore black dresses, white gloves, and little blackhats. Each one of us was required to pour. Since Icame from a background where tea was dispensedeither from a tea pot or a tea kettle, I was notprepared for the samovar used at formal teas. Whenmy turn came to pour, I was horrified to discoverthat moving the lever right or left failed to stemthe tide of tea. Just as my first poured cup wasabout to rise over the top, a dean rushed over andpushed the lever to the shut-off position...
...times. Mine included rehearsing the "Brahms Requiem" with the Radcliffe Choral Society, the Harvard Glee Club and the BSO; hanging out with some fairly pretentious literary types (among whom I include myself) in Eliot House getting high--I kid you not--on conversation and strong tea made in a samovar; attending a harmless little riot on Garden Street following an alleged robbery by Harvard boys on Radcliffe's dorms; helping to found Pro Tem, which was, as its Latin announced, an interim war-time magazine. Our advisor was Mark Schorer, then teaching English at Harvard...
...Germany attacks and destroys millions more. Members of the Gradov family, led by Dr. Boris Nikitovich, make their separate ways through history. Aksyonov impressively spreads out a panorama of suffering, but he overlays it with shameless melodrama, unconvincing uplift and grotesque humor. Readers who sling their hammock, move their samovar onto their veranda and settle down for an old-fashioned summer read may be distracted by a narrative farrago that includes a scene in which Dr. Gradov nearly wins the Order of Lenin for giving Stalin an emergency enema...