Peanut Butter and Opera

It would be remissive of me to not start this post with a mention of the heartache I felt when I heard about the tragedy in Aurora.   Like many of my Sweeney relatives, I have wandered far and wide from the mountain vistas and blue skies of Colorado, but I have never once thought of any other place as home.  Colorado is a place of wonder and beauty, but it is most importantly a place that loves its neighbor.  Being so far away, I have taken heart in the knowledge that the families affected will be comforted and supported by the people and communities of my home. 

 

PEANUT BUTTER

Peanut butter what?  What does peanut butter have to with Russia?  Yes, I can hear these questions about why I have chosen to write about peanut butter.   In fact, I can even imagine that one might be wondering if I have lost it over here if all I can thing to write about in Russia is peanut butter.  Well, I have not lost it over here and I write about peanut butter because it has helped us bridge a gap I could not have imagined when we packed our first jars of Skippy.  

When we arrived here, we were stunned at the extent to which American pop culture has permeated life in Saratov.  On TV, there are direct knockoffs of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “King of Queens,” “Who’s the Boss” and “Married with Children” (down to the wife’s big red hair and shoe salesman).  Half of all songs played on the radio here are in English and Russia’s MTV also does not play music videos.  One can buy dubbed versions of just about every movie I have ever heard of on the streets for about $4.00 and I am amazed at the popularity of “The Godfather,” “Rambo,” “Die Hard” and John Wayne movies on television.  In short, the level of American cultural penetration here meant we were going to be hard pressed to find anything new about America to introduce to our friends, because they had already heard of Elvis.

 (Side note on “westernization”: It is almost impossible to find a t-shirt with Russian language writing on it. After mentioning our desire for this type of shirt to a friend, she special ordered us t-shirts with Russian writing.  I am not kidding.)

In truth, I am not sure if Karen and I really noticed this pop culture phenomenon until we started making friends and receiving invites to their houses.  It was at this point that we really understood how much of our pop culture is here, because we found it almost impossible to share anything of our culture that our hosts did not already know about America.   As a result, we were welcomed into our friend’s homes to eat their traditional foods and to share in their culture with only a de rigueur box of chocolates in our hands.  As the invites mounted, Karen and I really started to worry that we were not doing enough to share our culture. 

Our first thoughts on how to rectify this lack of cross cultural sharing were stymied because we had neither the facilities, i.e. table settings and serving platters, to host our friends nor the ability to buy the ingredients to our traditional foods.   

We continued to be stymied for a couple of months, until one day I opened up our cabinet and saw the one thing Russians know almost nothing about and exists in just about every house in America has: peanut butter.  Our friends had shared pelmeni (Russian Ravioli), kouliche (Easter Cake), shashlik (pork bar-b-q), etc. and now we had something to share with them that came from the center of our American food culture.   We had had peanut butter for the whole time, but it is so part and parcel to our diet that it never even dawned us that it was exactly the type of thing we needed to share our culture.  It is so quintessentially American that I knew we now had something to share with our Russian friends that would be unique and might possibly taste good to them on top of it all.  

What did Russian’s think of George Washington Carver’s invention?  Some absolutely loved it, most thought it was interesting and one absolutely hated it.   While I must say that I cannot understand how anyone can dislike peanut butter, I must admit that I will not go with a yard of caviar and that is close to a sin over here.  Who would have though peanut butter would help us share something new from our culture in a land where they have already heard of everything else American.  The jars we packed for our lunches turned out to be the one piece of American culture that we could readily share with our friends.

OPERA

There is an old and oft used literary reference to hayseeds falling off the country boy as he heads into town for the first time in his life.  For centuries, historians have relied on the term philistine to describe those peoples or persons that are neither learned nor interested in the acquisition of knowledge about the world around.  While I hate to think that I am a barbarian or just fell off the plow truck, I think both are potentially accurate descriptions of me when it comes to the world’s “finer” music, opera in particular.

Think I might be being a little harsh on myself? Wait, I think philistine and country hayseed may infer too much knowledge, I was a veritable babe in the woods as I entered the Saratov Opera House with my lovely wife a couple of months ago.  Prior to our attending a one night only performance of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly in May, I had never voluntarily listened to any opera in my life.  None. Not once.  My musical taste starts at Merle Haggard heads through the Stones and ends somewhere about Echo and the Bunnymen with a dose of The Clash. The only opera I had ever heard was the music that always seems to accompany the grisly scenes in mob movies.  

It is out of this glaring ignorance of an entire genre of music that had me agreeing to go with Karen for a night of culture.  I must admit that I was looking forward to this evening of culture like l look forward to paying taxes and visiting the dentist on the same day.   And I must admit that I was a complete moron to have avoided opera, at least live opera, for the first forty years of my life.  It was spectacular.

When the opera was being performed, I was like Julia Roberts (minus the tears and good looks) in the scene from Pretty Woman.  I was mesmerized.  In general, I cannot sit still- I fidget to fidget -but when the performers were on stage I could barely move a muscle as I tried to follow the story as I understood it from Karen’s reading the crib notes from Wikipedia to me before the show.  It was a good thing Karen had Googled the story, because I could not the read the Russian subtitles provided by the opera house. In reality, I think the subtitles would have been a distraction from the action, because I only half understood what was going on and my eyes still never left the stage for a minute.

What made the discovery of opera even cooler was that Karen and I were out on a date doing something other than just having a meal.  When we came over here, Karen and I had both wanted to expand the idea of date night to actually involve some culture.  Our first attempt at culture was an evening of chamber music and it was painful at times.  I had expected the same from opera, but learned that I will take an evening at the opera anytime.

RANDOM OBSERVATION

When thanking a driver in a car behind them for a kindness on the road, Russians engage their hazard lights rather put a hand out of their window or waving in the back window.  First time I saw this, I was riding in a car going Russia fast and the driver engaged the hazards.  The driver must have seen my unease with hazards being engaged at speed, because they chuckled at my discomfort while they explained the custom.