Putin, the Little Dickens and More
(the original fun guy this guy)
I've been gone WAY too long here, driving a zillion miles the day after the election, talking my face off at a library workshop and then on WAMC Northeast Public Radio…and of course voting like everyone else and speaking of that here’s an Election Day lesson for ya: I promised to hold a sign for our new state rep Jason Lewis but being lame and pathetic said I could only do it for an hour - whereas one of my three fellow Jason Lewis signsters had been at the polls since 6am and said he could stay til suppertime if they needed him. He’d worked on Ted Kennedy’s Presidential run in 1980 and also for the late Gerry Studds, longtime congressman from the Cape. He knew from elections.
So did the second sign holder, at six foot six the tallest member of our cohort, a young guy in a watch cap and shades who I realized only a full minute into things was little Tim Waterbury from my Sixth Grade Sunday School class who back at age 11 liked to be courted to join the discussion but then came into it like gangbusters.
The third sign-holder was a beautiful blonde woman from Russia who told us her uncle had pioneered work on a below-the-radar, tunnel-under-the-earth missile system so scary and top secret that he could never leave Russia as she had done back in ’96. She gave her name but I know I didn’t catch it - Americans are idiots when it comes to understanding people from other countries even if they are speaking our very language - but I got to work asking her all sorts of questions anyway.
And she gave me lots of answers: About her children, and the free-for-all version of capitalism at play in the former Soviet Union now; about Strongman Putin in whom George Bush said he found such a soul mate; even about fun guy Putin's Driver's Ed pupil current Russian President Medvedev who yesterday’s news said could have that old steering wheel wrested away from him any day now by the little giant in the seat beside him.
It was coming on toward noon and when I said I had to go she also glanced won at her watch and said “probably I should go as well. I have a class at MIT at 1:30.”
"Oh, are you taking a course there?” I asked, thinking Adult ESL maybe, moron that I am.
"I’m teaching it!” she laughed. "My husband and I are geneticists there. And THANK GOD for intellectual property laws in US, because between the two of us we now hold six patents. If we are back in Russia? We hold nothing!” And with a laugh and a merry wave of her hand she was gone. 
The Tweedles (Dum and Dee)
