Klara was invited to a Halloween party at the house of school friends. I always have too much going on, so I forgot to check the property prices at the address where we were going. And of course, as my luck would have it, it turned out to be a rich people house. Like in one of those tomb-like mansions surrounding an artificial lake with a whole room serving as a wine cellar, a kitchen the size of my entire first floor, and 4 hired help to entertain 6 children.

I felt underdressed, frumpy, and mumsy the whole time.

On the positive side, the local rich people are better in terms of sociability than the local middle-class folks. I didn’t have to struggle painfully to draw them out.

And a really fantastic and very unusual thing was that nobody asked me where I was from, made any comments about my accent or name, or reacted to me any differently than to anybody else. This never happens to me at all, ever. And I really loved it.

P.S. As I understand it, I now need to feel cheated by cruel fate if Klara never makes enough to buy a house like this one and can only afford the kind of house we live in now, right?

When I was 9, there was this boy I liked, and I was so overwhelmed with these feelings that I used every opportunity to talk about him. The tenor of the discussion was almost always very negative because I didn’t want anybody to know how I felt. I persecuted everybody with stories of how mean, ugly, stupid and hopeless this boy was.

I grew up since then and now express my feelings in more productive way. But I remember those times when I see people for whom absolutely everything that happens is a reason to mention Trump.

“Nice weather today!”

“Yes. Of course, it’s a result of global warming that Trump is making irreversible.”

“Look at these Halloween decorations! They are spooky!”

“Well, I find few things as scary as Trump, to be honest.”

“Is that a new coat you are wearing? I love it .”

“I was so distraught over Trump’s latest antics that I had to do something nice for myself, so just went and bought it. I have no idea how I’ll pay for it but with all that Trump is doing to hasten global warming, we’ll probably all be dead soon anyway.”

It takes all I’ve got not to respond with “Trump and you were sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

Criminals have tried to defraud me as the treasurer of my association. But they are so dumb that it was obvious from the start. The real president of the organization would never write to me in English and refer to our scholarly organization as “a club.”

The police in Pittsburgh reported “multiple casualties” after responding to a report of an active shooter at a synagogue, a police commander said.

This is really horrible, folks. What a tragedy.

My tiny town in the Midwest has been immortalized by a Nigerian poet, no less.

That’s so cool.

Job wars.

You can request hand-crafted reading lists from a Brooklyn library online.

A great article on the demise of Sears.

The best conspiracy theory this week.

Transnistria. The article is light on insight but there’s a ton of photos.

The silent (and scared) majority.

The casualties of mainstream reporting practices.

Freedom of speech is not a human right in the EU. And that’s how the creators of the Enlightenment let it die.

People who foist screens on us realize they are dangerous.