Looking Past Volodya

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Does Putin See What Is Ahead for Russia?

When we look at Russia today, do we see past Putin at all? Or has his iron will and determination proved to be an impenetrable veil which prevents us from seeing Russia as it actually is?

Vladimir (Volodya is the common Russian nickname for Vladimir) Putin has been the face of Russia as seen by our news outlets. It’s a pity because there is so much more to Russian civilization than the face of a dour tyrant who is probably even now entering the endgame of his life.

As an Eastern European myself, I have made a point of familiarizing myself with Russian literature, music, and history. What I find when I look there are many admirable things. The one thing which is not admirable is that the nation has not, by and large, been ruled by leaders who have benefited their people. The autocratic czars were replaced by equally autocratic commissars.

The result was a brave and talented people who were constantly being suppressed. That led to such strange scenes as a purge of army generals by Stalin just when Hitler decided to invade. And, when Stalin lay on the floor dying in 1953, his own associates were afraid of calling in a doctor, because the medical profession was undergoing a purge for their “disloyalty” to the régime.

To get a feeling for the absurdity of it all, see the 2017 movie The Death of Stalin, whose far-out humor is not far from the truth.

I like the Russian people that I have met. They tend to be friendly, talented, and hard-working. I enjoy reading Russian literature. My current read is the fourth novel (of six) in the Night Watch series, entitled Last Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko.

In the near future, I hope to do a post entitled “Looking Past the Donald.”

Hope Begins to Dawn

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Ever since Donald Trump began his “Revenge Tour” in January 2025, I have avoided discussing politics with my friends. Trump’s presidency depressed me to the extent that I began to distrust the American voters: How could they elect someone who was so evidently in it for himself only? Someone who was so obviously mendacious and corrupt? The only solution was to break the man—but that was something beyond my power to effect. I could vote, and I did vote; but I saw that mere complaining was only going to upset me.

Above all, I had to keep myself in one piece. Parochial political discussions were useless.

With the 2026 midterm election, I see the first glimmerings of hope. It will take time to heal, and I don’t entirely trust the Democrats either. They can still emerge as the circular firing squad they used to be over the last several decades. Or they could rise to the occasion.

As usual, I was not completely satisfied with the election (I never am). I was against many of the Propositions that passed. And I was dismayed that Brian Goldsmith will be my State Senator. Well, I have been represented before by jackals in the halls in Sacramento and Washington, DC. That’s nothing new.

A Poem for November

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I thought I would mark the eleventh month of 2026 by posting a poem from Emily Dickinson called, simply, “November”:

November

Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.

A few incisive mornings,
A few ascetic eyes, —
Gone Mr. Bryant’s golden-rod,
And Mr. Thomson’s sheaves.

Still is the bustle in the brook,
Sealed are the spicy valves;
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The eyes of many elves.

Perhaps a squirrel may remain,
My sentiments to share.
Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
Thy windy will to bear!

Needless to say, this is a portrait of a fall day in the poet’s native Amherst, Massachusetts. Things are a little more mixed up in Southern California, where I remember seeing snow at ground level only once in sixty years. And, of course, it melted before it was able to accumulate.

I remember the autumns of my four years at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, a place which Emily would have recognized.

Eight Evil Vampires

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Scene from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1931)

Note that I didn’t say sexy vampire or funny vampire or really cool vampire. The vampire film has mutated over the years into all sorts of things that don’t interest me very much. That’s why the following list is so short and why there are only two films on it made since 1970. As with yesterday’s witch/warlock post, the entries below are in alphabetical order by title:

  1. Blood and Roses (1960). Lesbian vampires. French title: Et Mourir de Plaisir. Directed by Roger Vadim based on a great novelette by Sheridan LeFanu entitled Carmilla.
  2. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) with Gary Oldman. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
  3. Dracula (1931) with Béla Lugosi. Directed by Tod Browning.
  4. Dracula Prince of Darkness (1966) with Christopher Lee. My favorite of the Hammer Draculas, directed by Terence Fisher.
  5. Horror of Dracula (1958) with Christopher Lee. The original Hammer Dracula. Directed by Terence Fisher.
  6. Nosferatu (1922) with “Max Schreck” (real name unknown). Directed in Germany by F. W. Murnau. Truly terrifying.
  7. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979 with Klaus Kinski and Isabelle Adjani. Almost a shot-by-shot remake of Murnau’s version. Directed in Germany by Werner Herzog.
  8. Vampyr (1932). Directed in Denmark by Carl Theodor Dreyer. A must-see classic.

Since this is Halloween, I thought I would send you to some earlier postings on the subject of horror literature and film:

  • Ten short horror stories that have impressed me. For some reason, I’ve found that short stories are particularly good at conveying a sense of terror.
  • Thirteen horror films that I love.
  • A special nod to my favorite horror filmmaker, Val Lewton.

Nine Witches and One Warlock

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Lisbeth Movin as the Witch’s Daughter in Day of Wrath

In honor of Halloween, I decided to list my favorite movies involving witches, plus one with a warlock. Bear in mind that, for the most part, I don’t care as much for recent films; so a number of recent titles which you might include are not represented here. The films are listed below in alphabetical order:

  1. Bell, Book and Candle (1958). Kim Novak as the witch. Directed by Richard Quine.
  2. Black Sunday (1960). Barbara Steele as the witch. Directed by Mario Bava. Gorgeous B/W photography.
  3. Curse of the Demon (1957). Released in England as Night of the Demon. Niall MacGinnis as the warlock. Directed by Jacques Tourneur. A truly terrifying film based on the short story “The Casting of the Runes.”
  4. Day of Wrath (1943). The lovely Lisbeth Movin as the witch’s daughter. Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer in Denmark. By far the best film on this list.
  5. The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), also known as All That Money Can Buy. The stunning Simone Simon as the witch. Directed by William Dieterle.
  6. Häxan (1922). Numerous witches. Directed by Benjamin Christensen in Denmark.
  7. I Married a Witch (1942). A comedy starring Veronica Lake as the witch. Directed by René Clair.
  8. Rosemary’s Baby (1968). I guess Ruth Gordon would be the witch. Directed by Roman Polanski.
  9. The Wicker Man (1973) with a whole island of witches and warlocks, led by Christopher Lee. Directed by Robin Hardy in England.
  10. The Wizard of Oz (1939). Margaret Hamilton and Billie Burke as the evil and good witch respectively. Directed by Victor Fleming and George Cukor.

I will try tomorrow to present my ten favorite vampire films.

Dicorus

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Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I Dicorus

The following humorous anecdote is from a speech that English Poet Robert Graves made at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1956. It is reprinted in his collection of essays entitled The Crane Bag and Other Disputed Subjects.

This has started me thinking about the Epeirot recruit from Dyrrhachium who enlisted in the Byzantine Army in the middle of the fifth century A.D. He was a tough, shrewd, energetic peasant and distinguished from all the other tough, shrewd, energetic peasant recruits that year, because he had eyes of two different colours. His name was Anastasius, but they nicknamed him ‘Dicorus’, which is the Greek for that peculiarity. Well, you can guess how it was. The captain of his company didn’t know half his men by sight or name but always recognized Dicorus; and as Diocorus was always clean on parade and alert on sentry duty, and held the correct religious views, the Captain naturally promoted him to corporal, and then to sergeant. The Colonel, similarly, did not know half the sergeants by sight, but Dicorus was easily distinguished by his eyes; so because he had a crisp word of command and kept his section in good order, the Colonel made him sergeant-major. One day an inspecting General remarked: ‘A very fine body of men, Colonel. I suppose you owe a lot to that sergeant-major of yours—fascinating, his eyes, eh? Significant, even. My old grandmother used to say that two eyes of different colours are lucky. I’m going to take him on my staff in the “Silentiaries”’—meaning the Lifeguards.

Meanwhile, Diocorus had been studying Frontinus and Vegetius and Army Regulations. He made a good Staff Officer, and went up the tree quickly, because he was a distinguished man, and had significant eyes. Indeed, everyone thought, when the Emperor Zeno died, that Dicorus was obviously the man to fill the vacant throne and marry the Empress Ariadne. So he became the Emperor Athanasius, but they continued to call him ‘Dicorus’, because he was the only Emperor to have eyes of different colours; and all their grandmothers had always told them what a lucky sign this was. He made, by the way, a most unsuccessful Emperor, and all his successors for the next thousand years had both eyes of the same colour.

I cannot help but think that the same general principle of promotion applies to the corporate business environment.

Money and Politics

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I cast my ballot in the 2026 Midterm Election last week by dropping it in a Board of Elections lockbox situated at Stoner Park just under a mile from my apartment. Why did I vote early? Basically, I was so sick and tired of having my mailbox stuffed with multicolored ads claiming the support of the police and firefighters and full of outrageous lies and name calling. Now I could funnel all that stuff straight into the garbage where it belongs.

Democracy can be enervating in the extreme, especially when it is bloated with the cash of billionaires who are trying to push candidates and propositions that would favor their quest for power. I am sure that, human nature being what it is, the lies and name calling will always be a part of elections. The existence of so much money in campaigns, however, makes it ever so much more intense and vicious.

A month ago today, I posted about a candidate for California State Senate named Brian Goldsmith. He has been particularly energetic about stuffing my mailbox and TV screen with lies against his opponent, a fellow Democrat named John Erickson. His TV ads concentrate on attacking Erickson for daring to suggest cutting the staff of the LA sheriff’s department despite the crime rate going up 137%. Why, then, does the L.A. sheriff Robert Luna endorse Erickson? Does he want to see the L.A. sheriffs get gutted?

It seems that Goldsmith is a political consultant who is massively funded by several PACs with bland names. Although he is running as a Democrat, he was recently a Republican and changed parties. That’s a shrewd move in a state that at present is anti-Republican. But then why is he being endorsed by Republicans?

You have to be wide awake when voting. Things are never what they seem to be.

El Gobernador de California

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I am currently reading a book by Carlos Manuel Salomon entitled Pío Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California. Already I’ve made some interesting discoveries. Apparently, at the founding of Los Angeles, the majority of its residents were Mexicans of mixed race, predominantly black.

Also, I knew that, toward the end of his life, Pico was cheated by a Yanqui swindler of his ranch in Whittier, which Martine and I visited in 2019. But, as Salomon states in his Introduction:

Anglo-American avarice and greed was not the underlying factor in Pico’s demise. He and his Californio counterparts were often fiercely independent and dictated their own fates.

The Pío Pico State Historical Park is a charming bastion of early California history in otherwise charmless Whittier. There is another associated location in Mission Hills, which was where Pío’s brother Andrés lived: The Andrés Pico Adobe. Finally, the place where Pío Pico is buried is the Workman & Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry.

All of these are places Martine and I have visited because of our interest in Southern California’s Passport 2 History program, which is run out of the Leonis Adobe in Calabasas. They publish a booklet about interesting historical sites in Los Angeles, Kern, Orange, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties.

Now that the weather in L.A. has cooled down, I will try to visit (and write about) more of these sites.

Oscar Wilde on American Women

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Irish Writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Reading an 1893 play by Oscar Wilde entitled A Woman of No Importance, I ran across some of the author’s famous wit at the expense of American womanhood:

Lady Caroline. These American girls carry off all the good matches. Why can’t they stay in their own country? They are always telling us it is the Paradise of women.

Lord Illingworth. It is, Lady Caroline. That is why, like Eve, they are so extremely anxious to get out of it.

Lady Caroline. Who are Miss Worsley’s parents?

Lord Illingworth. American women are wonderfully clever in concealing their parents.

Lady Hunstanton. My dear Lord Illingworth, what do you mean? Miss Worsley, Caroline, is an orphan. Her father was a very wealthy millionaire, or philanthropist, or both, I believe, who entertained my son quite hospitably, when he visited Boston. I don’t know how he made his money originally.

Kelvil. I fancy in American dry goods.

Lady Hunstanton. What are American dry goods?

Lord Illingworth, American novels.

Lady Hunstanton. How very singular! . . . Well, from whatever source her large fortune came, I have a great esteem for Miss Worsley. She dresses exceedingly well. All Americans do dress well. They get their clothes in Paris.

Mrs Allonby. They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris.

Lady Hunstanton. Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to?

Lord Illingworth. Oh, they go to America.