excerpt from "Scratching the Surface":

It’s just past midnight and I catch the metro to the Gulf of Finland. About a mile from the station are acres of birch trees and undergrowth. City workers cleaned it considerably since I was last there and it’s easier to see the tombstones. Blue crosses and red stars stand out in faint light filtering through leaves. Still it’s dark, and just seeing the path is a pain. I’ve strayed some to find a fallen-in casket stabbing out from the forest. Pictures of the deceased adorn headstones; small statues top other broken markers. One angel has no head, and one St Michael stands without wings. Family members or workers care for some plots where small tables stand within wrought-iron fences—relatives bring lunch or a snack and eat graveside on nice days. This night, however, except for a young inebriated couple, I’m alone.

excerpt from "Whores":

By the time I returned John had eaten breakfast and we sat in the room looking out at the Baltic and talked about the night. I showed him the seven icons I had settled on, paying particular attention to Our Lady of Kazan, painted on birch and about as Russian as I could find. Her face is smooth and pale, and high cheek bones call attention to her dark eyes. Her dress drapes in an elongated “es” curve, and her gentleness is clear by how her long slender fingers wrap tenderly about her Infant’s arm. Madonna has a long neck and her skin seems soft. The Child is calm and sitting up. He clearly is beyond His years and the classical icon reflects more of the medieval notion of showing Christ in His divinity instead of His humanity. The Baby is blessing the viewer and a small crown covers His head.

“Why are they selling these things?” John asked.
“They need the money.”

These workers buy from rich so-called businessmen in Land Rovers who rove the land for Russians in the country, far from the madding city, beyond the dachas and train stations. These people in country homes lost everything after the coup and now, fifteen years later, are still struggling to eat. They’ll sell anything to put food on the table. They sell the icons for ten or twenty dollars a piece, beautiful ones which once might have hung in local churches, or family heirlooms passed down hundreds of years during Czarist rule, then hidden carefully during the Soviet Regime. Now they hawk everything that hangs and hope someone will pay them well. If I knew how to reach the people myself I’d buy it directly from the poor, but I don’t. So some suited guy in an SUV buys their stuff, all of it, for just enough money so they can eat for a week. He sells it to some distributor, usually a professional Russian businessman who sells them to antique stores or flea markets, but sometimes to independent workers like Alexei. Then I pay him. It’s a professional business deal between consenting adults all the way around. Everyone benefits, even the peasant for whom food for a week is worth the value of a rare icon.

excerpt from "First Person":

I am not interested in familiar food, or similar structures, nor a common language. I don’t need to keep one foot in the west, one eye on the departure terminal. I’m fine with immersion; I am comfortable with the unfamiliar. But what I always look for and carry home are the common emotions: the old man on victory day laughing, drunk, medals covering his chest, alone on a corner until he wrapped his arms around two friends; the “god bless you” of an old woman near the monastery who just found the means for a loaf of bread; the injured soldier, one leg gone, the other rendered useless, who came home from Chechnya; the waiter at the small Italian restaurant, who, because of two travelers taking too long to order dessert, slammed down the menus and stormed off, cursing in Russian. Sometimes no translation is necessary.