There’s truly no better thing to be than an American mother. There are so many great activities, so much fun stuff to do. At a birthday party today, a 7-year-old girl comes up to me. “Klara’s mom, you look pretty!” The kids are giggling, running around, having their unclouded American childhoods.

China’s Northern city of Mohe is experiencing its coldest temperature ever on record: -53°C (-63F). Of course, compared to this winter’s cold weather in Russia – -73°C in one lucky region – this is practically tropical warmth.

Remember, people, this is evidence of global warming because absolutely any weather event is evidence of global warming.

I share these weather-related tidbits here because weather used to be a great item for small talk but now you can’t bring it up without some sour puss making a pious face at you and giving a mini-lecture about global warming.

I have been elected to the Executive Board of a professional organization. In the two communications I have had with the board members so far, they have addressed me as “Khalida” and “Professor Slocum.” There is no Khalida Slocum on the organization rolls, I checked. Neither Khalida nor Slocum are remotely similar to anything in my first and last names. The closest I got phonetically to these names is that I’m from Kharkiv.

I understand that these are people in the field of foreign languages but I thought there was a general understanding that names don’t get translated.

I always wondered, why are the woke so bureaucratic? They generate insane bureaucracy in every sphere of endeavor. What causes this?

I found an answer in Whittaker Chambers’ brilliant autobiography Witness. He calls the wokes ‘revolutionists’, and his explanation makes a lot of sense:

They have broken, or are trying to break, the continuity of order in society. By that act, they repudiate tradition, and the chaos they thereby unloose also threatens them. In breaking the continuity of tradition, the revolutionist must seek a cementing substitute. All he has left to fall back on… are those dead papers, interminable procedures, formidable quiddities – and his incongruous regard for them.

Whittaker Chambers, Witness

Chambers also shows that what today we know as “cancel culture” wasn’t “like the USSR.” It was one of the procedures imposed on the US left directly from the USSR. Even an insignificant little worker’s newspaper where Chambers worked was controlled directly from Moscow, and all the Soviet rules were mandated from there.

I read a 400-page book in Russian in one day (yesterday). And it was a busy day. It’s a pity there’s little I want to read in Russian, or I’d be very well-read at this speed.

These days, when Klara gets into a funk, she starts writing letters to me and her father, detailing her emotional states. Eventually, she always alights at a solution of what would make her feel better. It can be a hug, or going to the park, or feeding her imaginary ladybug pet. Sometimes, writing out what she feels helps her realize that she’s cranky because she’s hungry, thirsty, or tired.

I didn’t teach her this. She figured out completely on her own that writing can help you feel better. And that you can trace emotions to their source to deal with them.

The capacities of the human brain are amazing.

Speaking about N, yesterday his mother, who hasn’t been in touch since 2013, suddenly sent him $8,000 in cryptocurrency. No message, nothing. It’s a small part of his money that she’s been appropriating but why now?

I have bad suspicions but it’s impossible to find anything out because nobody is talking to each other. N doesn’t even know if his sister has children. Weird stuff.

I almost gave my husband a heart attack, people. He got a flat screen TV for my room for New Year’s. And I connected it to my cloud so that when I pause it, random photos from my cloud appear on the screen.

Apparently, N had no idea this was an option. Yesterday he came into my room and started talking to me. All of a sudden, his face went blank, with a sort of a frozen, terrorized look. He pointed to the screen and croaked, “Who is that?”

“It’s your daughter Klara,” I said.

“How did she get there??” the poor man asked.

Imagine seeing your own child on TV all of a sudden. That could be very disturbing.

I’m afraid my review of the edited volume ended up being too gushy. But what can I do if I really loved that volume, inasmuch as it’s possible to love a collection of articles.

Two of the 16 articles in it are absolute garbage, three are detailed, conscientious retellings, one is brilliant, and the rest are simply good. That’s outstanding for an edited volume.