Being momentarily in a career lull, I find myself stuck in the house a lot of the time. The weekends do not provide as much opportunity to get out as I would like, but I tend to feel better about taking the car and getting out of the house on Sundays, when nothing in particular urgently needs to be done and my father is usually parked in front of the living room TV set, watching some sporting event or other.
Today, I decided to get out of the house by visiting the local library. This was not strictly necessary; I had been earlier in the week. But I decided to go anyway, in pursuit of a Philippa Gregory novel I was keen to read.
While I was there, I also took the opportunity to look for Russian-themed videos. I was not expecting to find Solaris or Ivan the Terrible, just some sort of travelogue I could watch in order to look at pretty sites around Russia. I ended up picking up two videos, neither a travelogue. The first was a mediocre CNN production about the abortive 1991 putsch that ultimately brought Boris Yeltsin into power. But the other was a much more interesting production from the mid-1980s, called Russia Off the Record.
The stated aim of Russia Off the Record's producers was to dismantle American stereotypes of Russia (then the Soviet Union) and its citizens. For the most part, it did a pretty good job of it, showing that Russians do not lead a joyless existence under an ever-watchful KGB. But I felt as though its treatment of a lot of issues of Russian life were superficial at best.
For instance, the film treated the wastefulness of the command economy in only a cursory way. A few Russians were interviewed who said, essentially, that in earlier years, the priority of the state had been just to produce enough for everyone to have shoes, that issues of quality could not be addressed then but were starting to be now. A Russian journalist who had worked in the United States noted that, at the time, 20 percent of Russian families were still forced to share apartments with other families. But no real analysis was done of why this was so. I suspect the crew had its reasons for avoiding any clear discussion of how communism had utterly failed to produce enough shoes or apartments to meet Russia's needs.
The program also paraded a seemingly endless number of Russians before the camera to express their best wishes for the American people and for President Reagan, and their hopes for peace and friendship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now, of course, this seems intensely dated. But again, I felt analysis was lacking. Were these really the sentiments of the people who expressed them, or were these people merely saying what they thought Soviet officialdom would want American viewers to see and hear?
31 March 2008
28 March 2008
1000 Words in Russian
Stateside, I'm an avid Amazon customer. I will order a package on Amazon an average of a couple times a month, usually through Amazon's "Super Saver" program that provides free shipping on orders over twenty-five dollars. Basically, I cannot stand paying for shipping instead of for items I get some value or enjoyment out of. But sometimes the effort not to spring for shipping gets me into weird situations. It has also gotten me to notice a few things about the way Amazon operates its business I might not have otherwise.
Most recently, I got into my never-ending effort not to pay for shipping when I went searching for voltage converters to take with me to Moscow. I found some good and reasonably priced converters that work on the 220 voltage system, used in Russia and most of continental Europe. I had expected that, combind with a book on Russian grammar I wanted, I would easily be over the $25 threshhold for free shipping. But no--the voltage converters are sold not through Amazon but through a third party, so I had to look for something else to get to the magic twenty-five dollars.
I looked at a few different items in my quest to find something that would put my total over. I looked at a couple of different books on medieval history. From reading a more general book of Russian history, I've developed an interest in knowing more about the history of medieval Russia and thought one of these might be a good choice. I also looked at various other materials for learning Russian.
That, oddly, let me to a children's picture book, Usborne's 1000 Words in Russian. When I was young, I remember leafing through similar books Usborne had for French and German. I was happy to learn that, not only is there a similar title for Russian, but that all of the Usborne 1000 Words books have recently been updated to include online pronunciation guides. This looked like a good resource for building up some basic Russian vocabulary.
Another aspect of my shopping on Amazon is that I often have trouble making up my mind. I can leave books in my shopping cart for weeks without actually buying them, only to delete them or replace them. I find I have a particularly hard time when I'm trying to choose something to get over the $25 threshhold. So I put the Usborne book and a couple of the medieval history books I liked into my cart and let them linger.
Having done this a few times over the years, I've noticed that item prices frequently change between the time you put them in the cart and the time I check them out days or weeks later. Amazon always puts upa little notice when the price of an item has changed since you put it in the cart.
I put the Usborne book in the hopper two days ago. Yesterday, I looked into the cart and found that its price had risen slightly, by 65 cents. Not a big deal.
But today, I noticed that it had dropped again--by the same 65 cents.
I've written a couple of times already about not understanding how items are priced. Next to the price of prescription drugs, I understand this one the least. I'm sure Amazon uses some kind of program or mechanism to raise and lower prices in response to sales and inventory. But I am amazed that whatever they're using is sensitive enough to raise and lower a price literally every day if need be.
Most recently, I got into my never-ending effort not to pay for shipping when I went searching for voltage converters to take with me to Moscow. I found some good and reasonably priced converters that work on the 220 voltage system, used in Russia and most of continental Europe. I had expected that, combind with a book on Russian grammar I wanted, I would easily be over the $25 threshhold for free shipping. But no--the voltage converters are sold not through Amazon but through a third party, so I had to look for something else to get to the magic twenty-five dollars.
I looked at a few different items in my quest to find something that would put my total over. I looked at a couple of different books on medieval history. From reading a more general book of Russian history, I've developed an interest in knowing more about the history of medieval Russia and thought one of these might be a good choice. I also looked at various other materials for learning Russian.
That, oddly, let me to a children's picture book, Usborne's 1000 Words in Russian. When I was young, I remember leafing through similar books Usborne had for French and German. I was happy to learn that, not only is there a similar title for Russian, but that all of the Usborne 1000 Words books have recently been updated to include online pronunciation guides. This looked like a good resource for building up some basic Russian vocabulary.
Another aspect of my shopping on Amazon is that I often have trouble making up my mind. I can leave books in my shopping cart for weeks without actually buying them, only to delete them or replace them. I find I have a particularly hard time when I'm trying to choose something to get over the $25 threshhold. So I put the Usborne book and a couple of the medieval history books I liked into my cart and let them linger.
Having done this a few times over the years, I've noticed that item prices frequently change between the time you put them in the cart and the time I check them out days or weeks later. Amazon always puts upa little notice when the price of an item has changed since you put it in the cart.
I put the Usborne book in the hopper two days ago. Yesterday, I looked into the cart and found that its price had risen slightly, by 65 cents. Not a big deal.
But today, I noticed that it had dropped again--by the same 65 cents.
I've written a couple of times already about not understanding how items are priced. Next to the price of prescription drugs, I understand this one the least. I'm sure Amazon uses some kind of program or mechanism to raise and lower prices in response to sales and inventory. But I am amazed that whatever they're using is sensitive enough to raise and lower a price literally every day if need be.
The Prospect of Aspect
Happy was your roving reporter the day he got his passport back--yes, happier even than was Mrs. Bennet the day she rid herself of two daughters, and happier even that the publishers of a certain magazine in which, many oh many a moon ago, backwards ran sentences until reeled the mind. Happier still was your roving report to hear from his school that his new Letter of Invitation will be ready on the 10th of April--meaning, provided that DHL does its job efficiently, he should be able to have his visa processed and depart for Russia by the end of April.
I cannot say honestly that, overall, I feel much joy or gratitude for what has happened with respect to my passport, Letter of Invitation, and visa. It is hard to feel much gratitude for delay brought on my bureaucratic incompetence. But I am grateful that this additional time before heading off to Moscow is at least giving me more time to work on my Russian. I became even more grateful for more time to study Russian on my own because, on taking another look at my school's website, I realized that Russian lessons will not be free, as I had thought, but merely at a reduced price.
So far, my attempts to teach myself Russian are going well and not so well. I say they are going well because I am in lesson 9 of 20 in my Teach Yourself Russian course and will soon break out of the present tense and into the future and past. But I have not done a very good job and consolidating and retaining vocabulary. To improve my retention, I have finally resorted to making up flash cards that I can go through while watching television.
I have now about as much knowledge as I remember having at the end of my one, abortive semester of Russian in college. On the one hand, having revived this amount of Russian so quickly gives me a certain pride; on the other, I feel a growing trepidation, because I know I will soon have to delve into one of the more difficult aspects of the Russian language, which is, fittingly, called aspect.
Brief descriptions of the Russian tongue often give the impression that aspect is a feature unique to Russian. This is a half-truth; many languages have the ability to make distinctions similar to what is conveyed by aspect in Russian. Briefly, a Russian verb has two forms, called aspects. The first kind of aspect, called imperfective, is used for actions that are habitual, repeated, in progress, or of a general nature. The second kind of aspect, called perfective, is used for actions that are or will be completed. As near as I can tell, perfective aspect is used only in the future and past and has no present-tense form.
English has a litle of this in its use of progressive (am doing, has been doing, will be doing) tenses. Take, for example, the difference in meaning between these two sentences:
Jane has finished her homework.
Jane has been finishing her homework early every day.
The first sentence implies a completed action; we are speaking only of what Jane did today. The second, however, involves a continuing situation. Jane has finished her homework early for several days, is presumably still doing so, and will in all likelihood continue to do so. In Russian, this kind of distinction is made by using different aspects of the verb.
Since I know now I face the prospect of learning aspect fairly soon, I went to the library today and picked up a giant book of Russian verbs. Flipping through it, I got a sense of how complicated aspect will make my life. Every verb in the book is given as a double entry, with the imperfective form of the verb first and the perfective form second. For many, but alas not all, verbs, the perfective is formed by adding a prefix to the imperfective form of the verb. But because many Russian verbs are irregular, you cannot alway determine whether a verb you encounter in its infinitive form is a perfective or imperfective verb.
Aspect also creates vastly different forms of the future and past tenses in Russian. For imperfective verbs, the future tense is always a form of the verb "to be" followed by the infinitive, similar to the "am to/is to" future in English. Perfective verbs, on the other hand, have a future form that looks very similar to the imperfective present.
It's clear that all of this going to take a great deal of time to sort out. I am glad I have a little time to work on it, as I supect my time for Russian studies will initially be rather limited once I get to Moscow.
I cannot say honestly that, overall, I feel much joy or gratitude for what has happened with respect to my passport, Letter of Invitation, and visa. It is hard to feel much gratitude for delay brought on my bureaucratic incompetence. But I am grateful that this additional time before heading off to Moscow is at least giving me more time to work on my Russian. I became even more grateful for more time to study Russian on my own because, on taking another look at my school's website, I realized that Russian lessons will not be free, as I had thought, but merely at a reduced price.
So far, my attempts to teach myself Russian are going well and not so well. I say they are going well because I am in lesson 9 of 20 in my Teach Yourself Russian course and will soon break out of the present tense and into the future and past. But I have not done a very good job and consolidating and retaining vocabulary. To improve my retention, I have finally resorted to making up flash cards that I can go through while watching television.
I have now about as much knowledge as I remember having at the end of my one, abortive semester of Russian in college. On the one hand, having revived this amount of Russian so quickly gives me a certain pride; on the other, I feel a growing trepidation, because I know I will soon have to delve into one of the more difficult aspects of the Russian language, which is, fittingly, called aspect.
Brief descriptions of the Russian tongue often give the impression that aspect is a feature unique to Russian. This is a half-truth; many languages have the ability to make distinctions similar to what is conveyed by aspect in Russian. Briefly, a Russian verb has two forms, called aspects. The first kind of aspect, called imperfective, is used for actions that are habitual, repeated, in progress, or of a general nature. The second kind of aspect, called perfective, is used for actions that are or will be completed. As near as I can tell, perfective aspect is used only in the future and past and has no present-tense form.
English has a litle of this in its use of progressive (am doing, has been doing, will be doing) tenses. Take, for example, the difference in meaning between these two sentences:
Jane has finished her homework.
Jane has been finishing her homework early every day.
The first sentence implies a completed action; we are speaking only of what Jane did today. The second, however, involves a continuing situation. Jane has finished her homework early for several days, is presumably still doing so, and will in all likelihood continue to do so. In Russian, this kind of distinction is made by using different aspects of the verb.
Since I know now I face the prospect of learning aspect fairly soon, I went to the library today and picked up a giant book of Russian verbs. Flipping through it, I got a sense of how complicated aspect will make my life. Every verb in the book is given as a double entry, with the imperfective form of the verb first and the perfective form second. For many, but alas not all, verbs, the perfective is formed by adding a prefix to the imperfective form of the verb. But because many Russian verbs are irregular, you cannot alway determine whether a verb you encounter in its infinitive form is a perfective or imperfective verb.
Aspect also creates vastly different forms of the future and past tenses in Russian. For imperfective verbs, the future tense is always a form of the verb "to be" followed by the infinitive, similar to the "am to/is to" future in English. Perfective verbs, on the other hand, have a future form that looks very similar to the imperfective present.
It's clear that all of this going to take a great deal of time to sort out. I am glad I have a little time to work on it, as I supect my time for Russian studies will initially be rather limited once I get to Moscow.
21 March 2008
You Are Now Free to Move About the World
One ought to give thanks for small miracles as well as large. And so I am giving thanks for a small miracle that occurred today, courtesy of the U.S. State Department.
This morning, I checked the State Department's online system for tracking passport applications. I did so mainly to find out whether my application materials had even been received; I had heard that, because the law now requires citizens to present a passport when returning from Canada or Mexico, there is currently a backlog of applications. I ordered expedited service of my passport, which I understood should take three weeks but which I suspected might take even longer due to this backlog.
Miraculously, the system indicated that my passport had been completely processed and was on its way back to me! And even more miraculously, as I was puttering about the house this morning, the doorbell rang--it was my passport being delivered!
This will shave at least two weeks off the time I need to go to Russia. I expect that, if my school in Moscow takes four weeks to process a new Letter of Invitation, and if the Russian Embassy processes my visa application expeditiously this time around, I will be able to fly out in late April or early May, not mid-May or early June as I had anticipated.
I am now free to move about the world.
This morning, I checked the State Department's online system for tracking passport applications. I did so mainly to find out whether my application materials had even been received; I had heard that, because the law now requires citizens to present a passport when returning from Canada or Mexico, there is currently a backlog of applications. I ordered expedited service of my passport, which I understood should take three weeks but which I suspected might take even longer due to this backlog.
Miraculously, the system indicated that my passport had been completely processed and was on its way back to me! And even more miraculously, as I was puttering about the house this morning, the doorbell rang--it was my passport being delivered!
This will shave at least two weeks off the time I need to go to Russia. I expect that, if my school in Moscow takes four weeks to process a new Letter of Invitation, and if the Russian Embassy processes my visa application expeditiously this time around, I will be able to fly out in late April or early May, not mid-May or early June as I had anticipated.
I am now free to move about the world.
20 March 2008
The Price of Happiness
One of the defining experiences of being twentysomething and broke in New York City is participating in a paid drug study. There is nothing like long periods of unemployment (or sporadic employment) to make a person willing to subject his body to all manner of manipulation, and sometimes (I gather) outright quackery, for half the price of a meal at Le Cirque.
I was not aware of how widespread the phoenomenon of paid drug studies was until I found myself out of work in the middle of 2006. Losing a job for the second time in less than two years caused me to slide into a deep depression--or, possibly, made me realize how far I had slid into a depression that was already well underway.
A good friend of mine, who shall remain nameless but who is no doubt reading this, recommended that I participate in a drug study. She had been through a few herself, in the process trying practically everything that might grace a modern medicine cabinet, without having found anything that actually seemed to work with her depression. I had recently stopped seeing my shrink (let me tell you--this is a BAD move when you're out of work--BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD) but clearly needed something to get me to get off of my futon and do something to turn my life around. I asked my friend to e-mail me any drug studies she could find. She said they usually advertised on Craigslist, and I should just look around, but at some point she e-mailed me four.
I chose a psychiatric study because my main goal was to find something for my depression--and because, of the four, it was the only one at which I succeeded at getting an actual person when I made an initial phone call. And so I put my mind at the disposal of psychiatric research, for a mere $40 per visit ($20 of which was to cover my "transportation expenses" to and from the clinic, though what these might be to a New Yorker accustomed to using monthly subway passes I cannot guess).
Whatever they put me on not only did nothing for my depression, but actually made it worse. But the study promised that, after the trial period, I would be evaluated for the proper antidepressant. The promise was kept, and a nice lady in a white coat put me on Paxil. That seemed to work, to my great relief.
The first time I filled my prescription for Paxil, I went to the Duane Reade pharmacy on 48th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. For those of you who don't live in New York, Duane Reade is pretty much the default pharmacy for New Yorkers, the place you go when you have a splitting headache and are mostly concerned with how fast you can find a pharmacy, buy the necessary aspirin tablets, and get out. In Manhattan, there seems to be one about every three feet.
Initially, I was charged $75 for a 30-day supply of paroxetene, the generic of Paxil. The price seemed high, but I was new to buying prescription medication and had heard a lot about the high prices of psychiatric medicine, so I ponied up.
I didn't think much more aboout that price until my next meeting with the psychiatrist who had prescribed Paxil. She asked me a bit about what I had paid for it. Knowing that I was unemployed, she suggested I look into online Canadian pharmacies, as well as the pharmacy at Brooklyn's CostCo. She did not know the exact price for my medication, but she had heard CostCo had a very cheap pharmacy one could use even if one didn't have a CostCo membership.
As I needed my pills faster than I thought I could get them from Canada, I checked out the CostCo first. There, I was able to obtain a ninety days' supply of paroxetene for a mere $36--less than a sixth of the price I had paid at Duane Reade, where a 90-days' supply would have cost $225.
I thought that $36 price was pretty good until today, when I finally saw a doctor in Wichita who prescribed Paxil for me again. He told me to try out Dillon's, a local grocery chain with a pharmacy. Dillon's currently is offering some generic drugs for $4 per 30-days' supply--thus, $12 for a 90-day's supply. When I got home, I called a couple of pharmacies and got price quotes. One local pharmacy charged $37.40, roughly the same price as the Brooklyn CostCo had. But just as the doctor predicted, Dillon's was offering paroxetene for $4 per 30-days' supply--thus $12 for a 90-days' prescription.
Now, none of this makes much sense to me. I cannot fathom how the price of the same supply of this drug can possibly range from $12 to $225. And more to the point, I cannot see how Duane Reade manages to get away with charging $225 when so many cheaper alternatives exist. Nonetheless, just for laughts, here are a few theories:
1) "The $225 price reflects high New York prices and rents." Umm...nice try. But the cost at CostCo in Brooklyn was $36. Now, there are some (small) price differences between Brooklyn and Manhattan, but I know of no other product that is six times as expensive on the Island as in the Outer Boroughs.
This also fails to explain how the price at a local pharmacy in Kansas could actually be more than the cost in Brooklyn--$37.40 in Kansas versus $36.00 at the Brooklyn CostCo.
2) "The 225 price reflects lack of price discrimination on the part of people who work near the Duane Reade in Manhattan." "Price discrimination" is a fancy term economists use for, basically, how much consumers care about the price of a particular item. People often show much higher degrees of price discrimination for some items than for others. For instance, coffee shops in Grand Central can get away with charging $5 for a tiny cup of black coffee because morning commuters essentially don't care what they pay for a cup of joe. Used car dealers, on the other hand, have to be more careful, because people know they're making a big purchase and care much more about the price. This is why used-car dealers are never located in the centers of major cities--the consumer just won't bear the cost of Manhattan rents when they buy a used car the way they will when they're rushing to work and want their morning coffee NOW.
The 48th Street Duane Reade is located just across the street from Rockefeller Center. It could be argued that the customers there are mostly Yuppies who come to the pharmacy counter screaming into their Blackberrys--that their incomes are too high for them to worry about a $225 pharmacy bill, and that they aren't likely to hear the pharmacist give the price, anyhow.
The trouble is, these aren't the only people who work in the area. 48th Street in Manhattan in awash not just in Yuppies making $1,000,000 or more a year, but also secretaries and construction workers making $30,000. These people definitely do care what they pay for prescription drugs.
3) "CostCo and Dillon's are selling prescription drugs as a loss leader." A loss leader is a product a store sells at a loss, with the idea that the low price will get customers to come in and buy other products while they're there. For instance, a grocery store might sell sugar at below cost, with the idea that people who come in to buy cheap sugar will also buy bread, milk, and eggs.
It is likely that both CostCo and Dillon's are selling drugs as a loss leader. CostCo's strategy of doing this is well-known; the pharmacy is the only department in CostCo that can be used without a membership card. Clearly the idea is that people who come to fill a prescription will walk around the store while it's being filled, see things they want to buy, and sign up for a membership. Dillon's is almost certainly doing the same thing, although with less fanfare.
But this still does not explain the size of the price difference--$12 at Dillon's versus $225 at Duane Reade in Manhattan. This is a factor of almost 20. I could understand one store charging, say, $150 for a product it was selling as a loss leader that another store was selling for $225. I could accept some price differential between New York and Kansas. But a factor of twenty is inexplicable.
The only answer that makes any sense to me that may consumers are just ill-informed about the prices of prescription drugs; they're not as visible to us as the prices of homes, cars, and the myriad other goods we buy. And we should be angrier both that we aren't as well-informed as we should be, and that drug companies and pharmacies take advantage of that fact.
I was not aware of how widespread the phoenomenon of paid drug studies was until I found myself out of work in the middle of 2006. Losing a job for the second time in less than two years caused me to slide into a deep depression--or, possibly, made me realize how far I had slid into a depression that was already well underway.
A good friend of mine, who shall remain nameless but who is no doubt reading this, recommended that I participate in a drug study. She had been through a few herself, in the process trying practically everything that might grace a modern medicine cabinet, without having found anything that actually seemed to work with her depression. I had recently stopped seeing my shrink (let me tell you--this is a BAD move when you're out of work--BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD) but clearly needed something to get me to get off of my futon and do something to turn my life around. I asked my friend to e-mail me any drug studies she could find. She said they usually advertised on Craigslist, and I should just look around, but at some point she e-mailed me four.
I chose a psychiatric study because my main goal was to find something for my depression--and because, of the four, it was the only one at which I succeeded at getting an actual person when I made an initial phone call. And so I put my mind at the disposal of psychiatric research, for a mere $40 per visit ($20 of which was to cover my "transportation expenses" to and from the clinic, though what these might be to a New Yorker accustomed to using monthly subway passes I cannot guess).
Whatever they put me on not only did nothing for my depression, but actually made it worse. But the study promised that, after the trial period, I would be evaluated for the proper antidepressant. The promise was kept, and a nice lady in a white coat put me on Paxil. That seemed to work, to my great relief.
The first time I filled my prescription for Paxil, I went to the Duane Reade pharmacy on 48th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. For those of you who don't live in New York, Duane Reade is pretty much the default pharmacy for New Yorkers, the place you go when you have a splitting headache and are mostly concerned with how fast you can find a pharmacy, buy the necessary aspirin tablets, and get out. In Manhattan, there seems to be one about every three feet.
Initially, I was charged $75 for a 30-day supply of paroxetene, the generic of Paxil. The price seemed high, but I was new to buying prescription medication and had heard a lot about the high prices of psychiatric medicine, so I ponied up.
I didn't think much more aboout that price until my next meeting with the psychiatrist who had prescribed Paxil. She asked me a bit about what I had paid for it. Knowing that I was unemployed, she suggested I look into online Canadian pharmacies, as well as the pharmacy at Brooklyn's CostCo. She did not know the exact price for my medication, but she had heard CostCo had a very cheap pharmacy one could use even if one didn't have a CostCo membership.
As I needed my pills faster than I thought I could get them from Canada, I checked out the CostCo first. There, I was able to obtain a ninety days' supply of paroxetene for a mere $36--less than a sixth of the price I had paid at Duane Reade, where a 90-days' supply would have cost $225.
I thought that $36 price was pretty good until today, when I finally saw a doctor in Wichita who prescribed Paxil for me again. He told me to try out Dillon's, a local grocery chain with a pharmacy. Dillon's currently is offering some generic drugs for $4 per 30-days' supply--thus, $12 for a 90-day's supply. When I got home, I called a couple of pharmacies and got price quotes. One local pharmacy charged $37.40, roughly the same price as the Brooklyn CostCo had. But just as the doctor predicted, Dillon's was offering paroxetene for $4 per 30-days' supply--thus $12 for a 90-days' prescription.
Now, none of this makes much sense to me. I cannot fathom how the price of the same supply of this drug can possibly range from $12 to $225. And more to the point, I cannot see how Duane Reade manages to get away with charging $225 when so many cheaper alternatives exist. Nonetheless, just for laughts, here are a few theories:
1) "The $225 price reflects high New York prices and rents." Umm...nice try. But the cost at CostCo in Brooklyn was $36. Now, there are some (small) price differences between Brooklyn and Manhattan, but I know of no other product that is six times as expensive on the Island as in the Outer Boroughs.
This also fails to explain how the price at a local pharmacy in Kansas could actually be more than the cost in Brooklyn--$37.40 in Kansas versus $36.00 at the Brooklyn CostCo.
2) "The 225 price reflects lack of price discrimination on the part of people who work near the Duane Reade in Manhattan." "Price discrimination" is a fancy term economists use for, basically, how much consumers care about the price of a particular item. People often show much higher degrees of price discrimination for some items than for others. For instance, coffee shops in Grand Central can get away with charging $5 for a tiny cup of black coffee because morning commuters essentially don't care what they pay for a cup of joe. Used car dealers, on the other hand, have to be more careful, because people know they're making a big purchase and care much more about the price. This is why used-car dealers are never located in the centers of major cities--the consumer just won't bear the cost of Manhattan rents when they buy a used car the way they will when they're rushing to work and want their morning coffee NOW.
The 48th Street Duane Reade is located just across the street from Rockefeller Center. It could be argued that the customers there are mostly Yuppies who come to the pharmacy counter screaming into their Blackberrys--that their incomes are too high for them to worry about a $225 pharmacy bill, and that they aren't likely to hear the pharmacist give the price, anyhow.
The trouble is, these aren't the only people who work in the area. 48th Street in Manhattan in awash not just in Yuppies making $1,000,000 or more a year, but also secretaries and construction workers making $30,000. These people definitely do care what they pay for prescription drugs.
3) "CostCo and Dillon's are selling prescription drugs as a loss leader." A loss leader is a product a store sells at a loss, with the idea that the low price will get customers to come in and buy other products while they're there. For instance, a grocery store might sell sugar at below cost, with the idea that people who come in to buy cheap sugar will also buy bread, milk, and eggs.
It is likely that both CostCo and Dillon's are selling drugs as a loss leader. CostCo's strategy of doing this is well-known; the pharmacy is the only department in CostCo that can be used without a membership card. Clearly the idea is that people who come to fill a prescription will walk around the store while it's being filled, see things they want to buy, and sign up for a membership. Dillon's is almost certainly doing the same thing, although with less fanfare.
But this still does not explain the size of the price difference--$12 at Dillon's versus $225 at Duane Reade in Manhattan. This is a factor of almost 20. I could understand one store charging, say, $150 for a product it was selling as a loss leader that another store was selling for $225. I could accept some price differential between New York and Kansas. But a factor of twenty is inexplicable.
The only answer that makes any sense to me that may consumers are just ill-informed about the prices of prescription drugs; they're not as visible to us as the prices of homes, cars, and the myriad other goods we buy. And we should be angrier both that we aren't as well-informed as we should be, and that drug companies and pharmacies take advantage of that fact.
14 March 2008
We Deliver For You
I spent the day today going all over Wichita to get my passport application in order. I ended up having to go three different places: a local Kinko's to get passport photos taken, a local grocery store to obtain a money order, and my local post office to send off the bloody thing to a passport processing center in Philadelphia.
I ended up applying for a passport through the mail by expedited service. Although my school in Moscow didn't reply to my latest inquiry regarding how they wished me to handle the passport application, I figured based on the situation that expedited service through the mail was the most realistic option. Before I can apply for a visa, I will need a new Letter of Invitation from my school, which will take them four weeks to obtain from the Russian government once I have my new passport in hand. So there really isn't any realistic means of obtaining a passport faster by applying in person.
On reaching the post office, I discovered I could have taken care of everything there. The people at the counter were amazingly informative and helpful regarding how to get my application there the fastest, and what to do to make sure officialdom in Philadelphia knows I am requesting expedited service.
I tend to take a cynical view of postal workers. Partly, this is because my grandfather was a mailman for all of his working life and never had anything very nice to say about the postal service. I will always remember his great line about the USPS: "Imagine any other business where they'll deliver the product every day to you for free, but if you want to come down to the central office and pick it up yourself, they charge extra."
But today's experience at the post office was refreshing and gave me more confidence in a government bureaucracy (okay, quasi-government bureaucracy, if you want to be a stickler about it) than I have had in a long time.
Now, if only the Russian Embassy will issue me a visa promptly the next time around...
I ended up applying for a passport through the mail by expedited service. Although my school in Moscow didn't reply to my latest inquiry regarding how they wished me to handle the passport application, I figured based on the situation that expedited service through the mail was the most realistic option. Before I can apply for a visa, I will need a new Letter of Invitation from my school, which will take them four weeks to obtain from the Russian government once I have my new passport in hand. So there really isn't any realistic means of obtaining a passport faster by applying in person.
On reaching the post office, I discovered I could have taken care of everything there. The people at the counter were amazingly informative and helpful regarding how to get my application there the fastest, and what to do to make sure officialdom in Philadelphia knows I am requesting expedited service.
I tend to take a cynical view of postal workers. Partly, this is because my grandfather was a mailman for all of his working life and never had anything very nice to say about the postal service. I will always remember his great line about the USPS: "Imagine any other business where they'll deliver the product every day to you for free, but if you want to come down to the central office and pick it up yourself, they charge extra."
But today's experience at the post office was refreshing and gave me more confidence in a government bureaucracy (okay, quasi-government bureaucracy, if you want to be a stickler about it) than I have had in a long time.
Now, if only the Russian Embassy will issue me a visa promptly the next time around...
13 March 2008
Brought to You by Geritol
One of my earliest Jewish memories was going to see the film Quiz Show when it came out in 1994. At the time, I didn't know much about the quiz show scandals that had rocked American television in the 1950s. Which was probably a good thing, because, having since learned more about them and in particular about the almost euphoric reverence Americans had had for television before them, I probably would not have gone.
What I remember most about that celluloid treatment of the story of Herbert Stempel and Charles Van Doren was the final scene, at the Congressional hearings the scandals made necessary. In the scene, Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) finally admits to having been in on the fix of Twenty One. Various members of congress applaud his courage in finally coming forward.
And then, one congressman from New York, "a different [and less patrician] part of New York" than Van Doren, refuses to go along with the acolodates. Instead, he vigorously castigates Van Doren, saying he deserves no praise simply for "finally, at last, telling the truth."
A few weeks ago, I was flipping channels when I stumbled upon an episode of American Justice dealing with the quiz show scandals. Herbert Stempel was being interviewed, and I was shocked by what he had to say of his life, and what Bill Kurtis had to say of Van Doren's life, following the scandals. It is well known that Charles Van Doren lost his position on the Today show as well as his position as a lecturer at Columbia University. But he was eventually able to re-establish a respectable, white-collar career, eventually even becoming an editor of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
Herb Stempel, on the other hand, was permanently tarred by his involvement in the scandal--and not for having benefited from the fix. Instead, as he told American Justice, every time he went in for a job interview after that, he was immediately identified not as the man who revealed Twenty One's shenanigans, but as the man "who brought down Charlie Van Doren." While he did eventually become a social studies teacher in New York, the taint of his involvement in the scandal never left him as it eventually did the better-heeled Van Doren.
I thought of Quiz Show today while watching coverage of Eliot Spitzer's resignation as New York governor. In many ways, the scene was redolent of the '90s--a Democratic politician and former attorney refusing to admit culpability for something he very plainly did, avoiding any language that could be used against him at trial--but for me it evoked Quiz Show a lot more, because of the clear class biases that surrounded what coverage I saw of it, and what I expect to happen as a result of it.
The News Hour with Jim Lehrer had three attorneys, one of them David Boies of recount 2000 fame--discussing what was like to happpen to Spitzer now that his involvement in a prositution ring has been revealed.
One of these attorneys discussed the interstate aspect of Spitzer's solicitation. He said that, in the District of Columbia, it's unlikely for a john to be prosecuted unless he is nailed in a police sting. Basically, in the nation's capital, you have to proposition an undercover cop to get into any trouble for solicitation. Undercover stings take place almost exclusively in the context of street prostitution, not call girl operations or "escort" services. Which means, essentially, that the police nail the kind of men who solicit low-class prostiutes but not the kind of high-class hookers who serviced Spitzer. The chances are therefore slim that Spitzer will face prosecution in D.C., where at least some of his assignations took place.
As appalling as this was to hear, I then got to listen to David Boies essentially say that Spitzer did not deserve prosecution for his involvement in a high-class prostitution ring--that being forced out of the governorship was punishment enough.
The worst part of this, though, was when one of the attorneys suggested that high-profile people suffer worse consequences for their crimes than other people. I guess this attorney must have been out of the country when Johnny Cochran told a Los Angeles jury that "if the gloves don't fit, you must acquit."
I am horrified that Spitzer will most likely not face prosecution for what he did. Part of my horror stems from the way I view prostitution. I do not see prostitution as a "victimless crime." To me, prostitution has a very obvious victim--the prostitute. I do not believe that an act of prostitution is ever a truly consensual sex act. And in fact, this is the way some governments (though, sadly, not our own) world treat prostution. In Sweden, for instance, it is illegal to purchase a prostitute's services but not to sell those services.
But I am angrier that Spitzer's social class and (former) political prominence may shield him from the consequences of what he did. I don't know where the idea comes from that the high-class, white-collar consequences of disgrace and loss of prominence are somehow equal to the much more real consequence of jail time. Admittedly, johns in the District of Columbia rarely go to jail, but rather to something one of the News Hour attorneys identified as "john school" (what that could possibly be, I cannot fathom). The message D.C. is sending is pretty simple: pick up a hooker in your '83 Bonneville and you will be punished. Call Empire Escorts for horizontal company in your Watergate suite on a lobbying trip, and you won't.
This to me is the discrepancy at the heart of that line in Quiz Show. It's stupefying how little the world has really changed in 50 years. We still don't hold the wealthy, well-connected, and powerful to the same standards of behavior we expect of the general public. We let Paris Hilton out of jail on the flimsiest of excuses. And we let men get off scot free for soliciting hookers just because they do it in an Armani suit, via a Blackberry.
Somewhere in New York, I'm sure Herb Stempel is shaking his head. And I'm shaking my head with him.
What I remember most about that celluloid treatment of the story of Herbert Stempel and Charles Van Doren was the final scene, at the Congressional hearings the scandals made necessary. In the scene, Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) finally admits to having been in on the fix of Twenty One. Various members of congress applaud his courage in finally coming forward.
And then, one congressman from New York, "a different [and less patrician] part of New York" than Van Doren, refuses to go along with the acolodates. Instead, he vigorously castigates Van Doren, saying he deserves no praise simply for "finally, at last, telling the truth."
A few weeks ago, I was flipping channels when I stumbled upon an episode of American Justice dealing with the quiz show scandals. Herbert Stempel was being interviewed, and I was shocked by what he had to say of his life, and what Bill Kurtis had to say of Van Doren's life, following the scandals. It is well known that Charles Van Doren lost his position on the Today show as well as his position as a lecturer at Columbia University. But he was eventually able to re-establish a respectable, white-collar career, eventually even becoming an editor of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
Herb Stempel, on the other hand, was permanently tarred by his involvement in the scandal--and not for having benefited from the fix. Instead, as he told American Justice, every time he went in for a job interview after that, he was immediately identified not as the man who revealed Twenty One's shenanigans, but as the man "who brought down Charlie Van Doren." While he did eventually become a social studies teacher in New York, the taint of his involvement in the scandal never left him as it eventually did the better-heeled Van Doren.
I thought of Quiz Show today while watching coverage of Eliot Spitzer's resignation as New York governor. In many ways, the scene was redolent of the '90s--a Democratic politician and former attorney refusing to admit culpability for something he very plainly did, avoiding any language that could be used against him at trial--but for me it evoked Quiz Show a lot more, because of the clear class biases that surrounded what coverage I saw of it, and what I expect to happen as a result of it.
The News Hour with Jim Lehrer had three attorneys, one of them David Boies of recount 2000 fame--discussing what was like to happpen to Spitzer now that his involvement in a prositution ring has been revealed.
One of these attorneys discussed the interstate aspect of Spitzer's solicitation. He said that, in the District of Columbia, it's unlikely for a john to be prosecuted unless he is nailed in a police sting. Basically, in the nation's capital, you have to proposition an undercover cop to get into any trouble for solicitation. Undercover stings take place almost exclusively in the context of street prostitution, not call girl operations or "escort" services. Which means, essentially, that the police nail the kind of men who solicit low-class prostiutes but not the kind of high-class hookers who serviced Spitzer. The chances are therefore slim that Spitzer will face prosecution in D.C., where at least some of his assignations took place.
As appalling as this was to hear, I then got to listen to David Boies essentially say that Spitzer did not deserve prosecution for his involvement in a high-class prostitution ring--that being forced out of the governorship was punishment enough.
The worst part of this, though, was when one of the attorneys suggested that high-profile people suffer worse consequences for their crimes than other people. I guess this attorney must have been out of the country when Johnny Cochran told a Los Angeles jury that "if the gloves don't fit, you must acquit."
I am horrified that Spitzer will most likely not face prosecution for what he did. Part of my horror stems from the way I view prostitution. I do not see prostitution as a "victimless crime." To me, prostitution has a very obvious victim--the prostitute. I do not believe that an act of prostitution is ever a truly consensual sex act. And in fact, this is the way some governments (though, sadly, not our own) world treat prostution. In Sweden, for instance, it is illegal to purchase a prostitute's services but not to sell those services.
But I am angrier that Spitzer's social class and (former) political prominence may shield him from the consequences of what he did. I don't know where the idea comes from that the high-class, white-collar consequences of disgrace and loss of prominence are somehow equal to the much more real consequence of jail time. Admittedly, johns in the District of Columbia rarely go to jail, but rather to something one of the News Hour attorneys identified as "john school" (what that could possibly be, I cannot fathom). The message D.C. is sending is pretty simple: pick up a hooker in your '83 Bonneville and you will be punished. Call Empire Escorts for horizontal company in your Watergate suite on a lobbying trip, and you won't.
This to me is the discrepancy at the heart of that line in Quiz Show. It's stupefying how little the world has really changed in 50 years. We still don't hold the wealthy, well-connected, and powerful to the same standards of behavior we expect of the general public. We let Paris Hilton out of jail on the flimsiest of excuses. And we let men get off scot free for soliciting hookers just because they do it in an Armani suit, via a Blackberry.
Somewhere in New York, I'm sure Herb Stempel is shaking his head. And I'm shaking my head with him.
Passport Parcheesi
Well, I may not have to play visa roulette once I get to Russia. But until then, I am likely to be involved in a game of what I will call passport parcheesi.
A little after 9:00 this morning, the doorbell rang. I wasn't expecting anyone--in fact, since I'm on such a late sleeping schedule these days, I hadn't even gotten out of bed--but I got up to answer the door.
It was the FedEx man, returning to me something I immediately recognized as my Russian visa application materials, which I sent to Washington last Thursday. The website of the Embassy had led me to expect that processing of my visa would take at least six business days and possibly as many as ten. So I was surprised to get my materials back so quickly.
I opened the package to discover a note from someone at the Embassy. My materials were being returned to me, it said, because my passport was in such poor shape that the Embassy could not process a visa. I was instructed to get a new passport and reapply.
Now, the only thing wrong with my existing passport is that it's a little wrinkled. When I was living in Brooklyn, I had a window that, despite numerous attempts by the super to fix it, always leaked in a little water onto the sill whenever it rained. At the time, I used my passport as my form of identification to get into office buildings and so carried it with me every day. I tended to leave it on my window sill at night, and one night, it got soaked and transformed into its present, wrinkled state.
This passport got me into office buildings for years without comment. And despite all the problems I had with my visa situation in Taiwan, no one said or even suggested that the condition of my passport had anything to do with my failure to obtain the necessary tourist visa. The passport got me back and forth between Taiwan and Hong Kong with no problems. In fact, the only comment I've ever gotten about it was from someone in U.S. customs when I returned home. And even she only said it was "raggedy", not that it was invalid or unusable.
I suppose I should be thankful that the money order I sent to pay the application fee was returned along with everything else--that I at least was not charged $131 just to be told to get a new passport. But given the major hassle getting a new passport is likely to entail, I can hardly find this a cause for joy.
The regular process of getting a new passport takes 4-6 weeks. The State Department offers an expedited service through the mail that takes a mere three weeks. Or, after arranging an appointment in advance, one can apply for a passport in person at any of various passport offices around the country, which offices can issue a passport within a mere three days.
This last option is only available, however, for persons traveling within two weeks of the date of their personal application. From speaking with someone at a passport information hotline, however, I was able to learn that two weeks can be extended to three weeks if one needs to obtain a visa to one's destinaton of travel. And one needs proof (such as an airline ticket) of the date of one's travel plans.
These restrictions will likely rule out applying for a passport in person. I have yet to purchase a ticket to Russia, because I had yet to obtain a visa. I might be able to arrange a flight to Russia, although I imagine it would be difficult to get one that is refundable if I can't obtain a visa by my flight date.
After receiving this unwelcome package this morning, I e-mailed the woman at my school with whom I have been in contact about my visa and arrival plans. She had even more bad news for me. Because of my passport problems, the school will have to issue me a new Letter of Invitation in order for me to obtain my visa. They cannot even begin this process until they have a scan of the photo page of my passport.
The last Letter of Invitation took a month to be processed by the powers that be in Russia and to reach me.
All of this means that it could be as long as ten weeks before I set foot in Moscow, instead of the three or four weeks I had planned on.
I asked my school how they wished for me to apply for my passport but have not received a reply. The e-mail indicating I would need a new Letter of Invitation reached me at 10:00 AM my time, which would be 7:00 at night in Moscow. Chances are good that my school contact sent it out last thing before going home for the night. So I will likely not have a reply about how to apply for my new passport until tomorrow morning.
The school has been noncommital about the date they expect me to arrive in Moscow. When I made an inquiry, in order to purchase a ticket in advance, they would only say "as soon as possible" (though they did say at one point that I was right to wait until I got my visa to make definite travel plans). Until today, I thought their failing to nail down a date was due to some kind of misunderstanding of my e-mails, or a cultural misconception. But I am guessing now that it was due to their knowledge that things can be unpredictable when dealing with Russian bureaucracy.
A little after 9:00 this morning, the doorbell rang. I wasn't expecting anyone--in fact, since I'm on such a late sleeping schedule these days, I hadn't even gotten out of bed--but I got up to answer the door.
It was the FedEx man, returning to me something I immediately recognized as my Russian visa application materials, which I sent to Washington last Thursday. The website of the Embassy had led me to expect that processing of my visa would take at least six business days and possibly as many as ten. So I was surprised to get my materials back so quickly.
I opened the package to discover a note from someone at the Embassy. My materials were being returned to me, it said, because my passport was in such poor shape that the Embassy could not process a visa. I was instructed to get a new passport and reapply.
Now, the only thing wrong with my existing passport is that it's a little wrinkled. When I was living in Brooklyn, I had a window that, despite numerous attempts by the super to fix it, always leaked in a little water onto the sill whenever it rained. At the time, I used my passport as my form of identification to get into office buildings and so carried it with me every day. I tended to leave it on my window sill at night, and one night, it got soaked and transformed into its present, wrinkled state.
This passport got me into office buildings for years without comment. And despite all the problems I had with my visa situation in Taiwan, no one said or even suggested that the condition of my passport had anything to do with my failure to obtain the necessary tourist visa. The passport got me back and forth between Taiwan and Hong Kong with no problems. In fact, the only comment I've ever gotten about it was from someone in U.S. customs when I returned home. And even she only said it was "raggedy", not that it was invalid or unusable.
I suppose I should be thankful that the money order I sent to pay the application fee was returned along with everything else--that I at least was not charged $131 just to be told to get a new passport. But given the major hassle getting a new passport is likely to entail, I can hardly find this a cause for joy.
The regular process of getting a new passport takes 4-6 weeks. The State Department offers an expedited service through the mail that takes a mere three weeks. Or, after arranging an appointment in advance, one can apply for a passport in person at any of various passport offices around the country, which offices can issue a passport within a mere three days.
This last option is only available, however, for persons traveling within two weeks of the date of their personal application. From speaking with someone at a passport information hotline, however, I was able to learn that two weeks can be extended to three weeks if one needs to obtain a visa to one's destinaton of travel. And one needs proof (such as an airline ticket) of the date of one's travel plans.
These restrictions will likely rule out applying for a passport in person. I have yet to purchase a ticket to Russia, because I had yet to obtain a visa. I might be able to arrange a flight to Russia, although I imagine it would be difficult to get one that is refundable if I can't obtain a visa by my flight date.
After receiving this unwelcome package this morning, I e-mailed the woman at my school with whom I have been in contact about my visa and arrival plans. She had even more bad news for me. Because of my passport problems, the school will have to issue me a new Letter of Invitation in order for me to obtain my visa. They cannot even begin this process until they have a scan of the photo page of my passport.
The last Letter of Invitation took a month to be processed by the powers that be in Russia and to reach me.
All of this means that it could be as long as ten weeks before I set foot in Moscow, instead of the three or four weeks I had planned on.
I asked my school how they wished for me to apply for my passport but have not received a reply. The e-mail indicating I would need a new Letter of Invitation reached me at 10:00 AM my time, which would be 7:00 at night in Moscow. Chances are good that my school contact sent it out last thing before going home for the night. So I will likely not have a reply about how to apply for my new passport until tomorrow morning.
The school has been noncommital about the date they expect me to arrive in Moscow. When I made an inquiry, in order to purchase a ticket in advance, they would only say "as soon as possible" (though they did say at one point that I was right to wait until I got my visa to make definite travel plans). Until today, I thought their failing to nail down a date was due to some kind of misunderstanding of my e-mails, or a cultural misconception. But I am guessing now that it was due to their knowledge that things can be unpredictable when dealing with Russian bureaucracy.
08 March 2008
Curse You, St. Cyril
When I wrote my "Pet Project" post, I wanted to include the authentic Cyrillic forms of the Russian words I was discussing. The only way I knew to do it at that point was to copy and paste from an online Russian-English dictionary. But this proved frustrating, because the dictionary often didn't get the word I was actually looking for. When I typed "to love" into the dictionary, I got the entry for the word "to", not the English verb I was looking for. When I shortened it to "love", I got the noun, not the verb. And on and on.
So I decided today to figure out how to set my keyboard so that I could have the ability to type in Cyrillic as well as in Latin characters. It took a little hunting, but I managed to do it. My computer is now bilingual in English and Russian, even if its owner isn't.
Unfortunately, I've discovered that few of the Cyrillic letters have the same key as their Latin equivalent. For instance, Д (equivalent to "D" in English) is made by striking the "l" key on a conventional keyboard. Б (equivalent to "B") is on the comma key. And on and on. Almost nothing maps to an equivalent-sounding letter in English. This will make typing even the simplest words in Russian a real chore, at least for a while.
Additionally, use of punctuation will require shifting from Cyrillic back into English, just to type a semicolon or what have you, then immediately shifting back to Cyrillic to go on my merry way typing in Russian. This is because Russian has more letters than English has--33 as opposed to 26--and thus requires more of the QWERTY keyboard to produce all of them.
I imagine this must be very inconvenient for Russophones who use a standard QWERTY keyboard. And in this age of Dell and Apple, Russians are no doubt doing their typing on computer keyboards designed for English speakers. Or, to be more specific, designed to slow down English-speaking typists who might otherwise type fast enough to jam up the keys of a kind of manual typewriter that has probably not been manufactured since before the Second World War.
In general, my Russian studies are not coming along so well as I had hoped. Partly this is because I do not devote enough hours to my Teach Yourself Russian course. But it is also because I now find myself mired in the Russian case system. Much like Latin, Ancient Greek and Classical Hebrew, Russian has a case system. And in fact, Russian's case system is more elaborate than the case systems of Latin or Ancient Greek; Russian has six cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, and preopositional), compared to Latin's five and Greek's four.
On its own, this would not be so problematic, but when you mix in Russian's gender system, confusion can readily abound. Russian has three genders--masculine, feminine, and neuter. And sometimes a form that represents one case in one gender represents a completely different case in another.
For instance, in the nominative singular, the Russian word for "apartment" is квартура (kvartyoora), a feminine noun. The а-ending is the most common one for words of the feminine gender. But the а-ending is also used for the genitive of masculine-gender words that end in a consonant. So, the genitive of the common male name Борис (Boris) is Бориса (Boreesa). So simply seeing a word with an а-ending does not immediately tell you either its case or its gender.
If you encounter a word for the first time in the nominative, you can more often than not determine its gender (the one major exception being words that end with the Cyrillic character ь, a letter indicating a "soft sign" that has no sound of its own; words ending in ь in the nominative may be masculine or feminine). But if you encounter a word the first time in another case, you may have trouble determining its gender.
Add into this the erratic nature of Russian word order--as an inflected language, Russian can easily move around subjects, verbs, and objects in ways that an uninflected language like English cannot--and you have a prescription for massive confusion on the part of anyone not to the поместью (pomestyoo, or "manor") born. I suppose that, eventually, a Russian learner develops a sense of what all the possibility may be and can figure it all out from context. But for a foundation-level student such as myself, Russia's capricious case system causes the mind to reel.
So I decided today to figure out how to set my keyboard so that I could have the ability to type in Cyrillic as well as in Latin characters. It took a little hunting, but I managed to do it. My computer is now bilingual in English and Russian, even if its owner isn't.
Unfortunately, I've discovered that few of the Cyrillic letters have the same key as their Latin equivalent. For instance, Д (equivalent to "D" in English) is made by striking the "l" key on a conventional keyboard. Б (equivalent to "B") is on the comma key. And on and on. Almost nothing maps to an equivalent-sounding letter in English. This will make typing even the simplest words in Russian a real chore, at least for a while.
Additionally, use of punctuation will require shifting from Cyrillic back into English, just to type a semicolon or what have you, then immediately shifting back to Cyrillic to go on my merry way typing in Russian. This is because Russian has more letters than English has--33 as opposed to 26--and thus requires more of the QWERTY keyboard to produce all of them.
I imagine this must be very inconvenient for Russophones who use a standard QWERTY keyboard. And in this age of Dell and Apple, Russians are no doubt doing their typing on computer keyboards designed for English speakers. Or, to be more specific, designed to slow down English-speaking typists who might otherwise type fast enough to jam up the keys of a kind of manual typewriter that has probably not been manufactured since before the Second World War.
In general, my Russian studies are not coming along so well as I had hoped. Partly this is because I do not devote enough hours to my Teach Yourself Russian course. But it is also because I now find myself mired in the Russian case system. Much like Latin, Ancient Greek and Classical Hebrew, Russian has a case system. And in fact, Russian's case system is more elaborate than the case systems of Latin or Ancient Greek; Russian has six cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, and preopositional), compared to Latin's five and Greek's four.
On its own, this would not be so problematic, but when you mix in Russian's gender system, confusion can readily abound. Russian has three genders--masculine, feminine, and neuter. And sometimes a form that represents one case in one gender represents a completely different case in another.
For instance, in the nominative singular, the Russian word for "apartment" is квартура (kvartyoora), a feminine noun. The а-ending is the most common one for words of the feminine gender. But the а-ending is also used for the genitive of masculine-gender words that end in a consonant. So, the genitive of the common male name Борис (Boris) is Бориса (Boreesa). So simply seeing a word with an а-ending does not immediately tell you either its case or its gender.
If you encounter a word for the first time in the nominative, you can more often than not determine its gender (the one major exception being words that end with the Cyrillic character ь, a letter indicating a "soft sign" that has no sound of its own; words ending in ь in the nominative may be masculine or feminine). But if you encounter a word the first time in another case, you may have trouble determining its gender.
Add into this the erratic nature of Russian word order--as an inflected language, Russian can easily move around subjects, verbs, and objects in ways that an uninflected language like English cannot--and you have a prescription for massive confusion on the part of anyone not to the поместью (pomestyoo, or "manor") born. I suppose that, eventually, a Russian learner develops a sense of what all the possibility may be and can figure it all out from context. But for a foundation-level student such as myself, Russia's capricious case system causes the mind to reel.
06 March 2008
The Jew Sleuth
Those of you who know me well know that I am inordinately interested in the Who is a Jew question. There were times when my whole life seemed to be an investigation of the question. When I decided not to go to work in the Jewish community following graduation--something that might have been a logical step, given what I had done with myself as an undergraduate--I did so in no small part to get away from having to think about that question.
When I considered the issues as a less-than-disinterested college student, I always understood the question in denominational terms. The Orthodox were on one side of this issue; the rest of the Jewish community was on the other. It seemed self-evident that the question, as it related not only to Israel but to the Diaspora, was one of Orthodoxy--or at least, a definable segment of Orthodoxy--attempting to impose its power on the rest of the community, of inappropriately turning a theological debate into a political one.
Well, that view of things got blown out of the water today when I read a New York Times article about the hoops people sometimes have to go through to prove their Jewishness in Israel. The piece, published in the Times magazine this past weekend, was framed around a woman who could be any Jewish woman in America, encountering problems when she attempted to marry in Israel. The woman was the daughter of staunch Conservative Jews and had been raised in a Conservative congregation in the Midwest. Her mother's marriage had been performed a Conservative rabbi.
A brief bit of context: Israel has no system of civil marriage. To marry in Israel, one must go to the various religious bodies authorized by the State to perform marriage. And for Jews, there is only one such body: the official Orthodox rabbinate, often seen by the non-religious majority in Israel as hidebound, puritanical, and intrusive.
The basic crux of the article was that Israel's system is ill-fitted to dealing with the prevailing state of affairs in America. Well, duh. To those who follow the issue, this will hardly be news. Ninety percent of American Jews are not Orthodox. Fewer and fewer American Jews have a link one generation back to Orthodoxy. And so fewer and fewer have documentation (usually, a mother's or grandmother's Orthodox ketubah, or marriage contract) acceptable to those who determine who can marry in the Jewish State.
Enter an American-born Orthodox rabbi named Seth Faber. Faber has built a career of helping people establish their Jewish bona fides through geneological investigations. This can require even getting photographs of gravesites to show that a mother's mother had a "Jewish name" or the like.
The article indicated that Rabbi Faber's work has been made necessary in part because even within the Orthodox world, debate is starting to swirl around the Who is a Jew issue. Not in any way that would make me or other children of intermarriage have cause for celebration. But it is apparently now commonplace for Israel's Orthodox rabbinate to question the legitimacy of even American Orthodox rabbis to perform kosher conversions.
For those in the Orthodox world who are affected by this, I have a great deal of compassion. Yet it is somehow deeply satisfying to see mainstream Orthodox rabbis like Marc Angel--people who at one time insisted on the absolute necessity of Orthodox standards of Jewishness for the law of return--find themselves on the receiving end of this kind of rejection. We are now starting to see Orthodox voices calling for separation of synagogue and state in Israel, and for the institution of--horrors!--civil marriage.
It has always been hard for me to understand how some people can find holiness--and almost glee--in keeping others out of the Jewish people. This is not to say that I don't think the people Israel has boundaries, only that policing its boundaries is not its purpose. It was intriguing to find out from this article that even the Chazon Ish, one of the leading Orthodox poskim (decisors of Jewish law) in the middle of the twentieth century, did not take the exclusionary tack the Orthodox world has been taking for the past thirty years. He felt that those who showed up in Israel and claimed to be Jews were to be believed, even if nothing was known of their family of origin.
I find it appalling that someone should have to set himself up as a "Jew sleuth" to determine the bona fides of people wishing to married by the official rabbinate. There are so many more important things for rabbis of all stripes to be concerning themselves with--so many Jewish poor to be helped, so many mourners in Israel to be comforted, so many Jewish youth in need of education. If Moshiach comes, I predict it will be only on the day when a Jew sleuth ceases to be necessary.
When I considered the issues as a less-than-disinterested college student, I always understood the question in denominational terms. The Orthodox were on one side of this issue; the rest of the Jewish community was on the other. It seemed self-evident that the question, as it related not only to Israel but to the Diaspora, was one of Orthodoxy--or at least, a definable segment of Orthodoxy--attempting to impose its power on the rest of the community, of inappropriately turning a theological debate into a political one.
Well, that view of things got blown out of the water today when I read a New York Times article about the hoops people sometimes have to go through to prove their Jewishness in Israel. The piece, published in the Times magazine this past weekend, was framed around a woman who could be any Jewish woman in America, encountering problems when she attempted to marry in Israel. The woman was the daughter of staunch Conservative Jews and had been raised in a Conservative congregation in the Midwest. Her mother's marriage had been performed a Conservative rabbi.
A brief bit of context: Israel has no system of civil marriage. To marry in Israel, one must go to the various religious bodies authorized by the State to perform marriage. And for Jews, there is only one such body: the official Orthodox rabbinate, often seen by the non-religious majority in Israel as hidebound, puritanical, and intrusive.
The basic crux of the article was that Israel's system is ill-fitted to dealing with the prevailing state of affairs in America. Well, duh. To those who follow the issue, this will hardly be news. Ninety percent of American Jews are not Orthodox. Fewer and fewer American Jews have a link one generation back to Orthodoxy. And so fewer and fewer have documentation (usually, a mother's or grandmother's Orthodox ketubah, or marriage contract) acceptable to those who determine who can marry in the Jewish State.
Enter an American-born Orthodox rabbi named Seth Faber. Faber has built a career of helping people establish their Jewish bona fides through geneological investigations. This can require even getting photographs of gravesites to show that a mother's mother had a "Jewish name" or the like.
The article indicated that Rabbi Faber's work has been made necessary in part because even within the Orthodox world, debate is starting to swirl around the Who is a Jew issue. Not in any way that would make me or other children of intermarriage have cause for celebration. But it is apparently now commonplace for Israel's Orthodox rabbinate to question the legitimacy of even American Orthodox rabbis to perform kosher conversions.
For those in the Orthodox world who are affected by this, I have a great deal of compassion. Yet it is somehow deeply satisfying to see mainstream Orthodox rabbis like Marc Angel--people who at one time insisted on the absolute necessity of Orthodox standards of Jewishness for the law of return--find themselves on the receiving end of this kind of rejection. We are now starting to see Orthodox voices calling for separation of synagogue and state in Israel, and for the institution of--horrors!--civil marriage.
It has always been hard for me to understand how some people can find holiness--and almost glee--in keeping others out of the Jewish people. This is not to say that I don't think the people Israel has boundaries, only that policing its boundaries is not its purpose. It was intriguing to find out from this article that even the Chazon Ish, one of the leading Orthodox poskim (decisors of Jewish law) in the middle of the twentieth century, did not take the exclusionary tack the Orthodox world has been taking for the past thirty years. He felt that those who showed up in Israel and claimed to be Jews were to be believed, even if nothing was known of their family of origin.
I find it appalling that someone should have to set himself up as a "Jew sleuth" to determine the bona fides of people wishing to married by the official rabbinate. There are so many more important things for rabbis of all stripes to be concerning themselves with--so many Jewish poor to be helped, so many mourners in Israel to be comforted, so many Jewish youth in need of education. If Moshiach comes, I predict it will be only on the day when a Jew sleuth ceases to be necessary.
05 March 2008
Visa Roulette? Not This Time!
Last Friday, I received a DHL package from my school in Russia, containing everything I would need from them to apply for my visa. And today, I filled out the actual visa application. I had some questions regarding the cover letter I need to enclose with my visa and am waiting on a reply from my school. But if all is well, I expect to get all of my visa materials sent out on Thursday.
Russia has a reputation for being both bureaucratic and capricious, but, considering all of my visa problems in Taiwan, I am actually glad the visa process for Russia requires as much as it does. No one, and I mean no one, enters Russia without a visa; there are no "landing visas" in Russia. Even to cross Russia on the way elsewhere requires a pre-arranged transit visa, valid for anywhere from 72 hours to 14 days (to give tourists enough time to get all the way from Vladivostok to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railway).
Officially, I will be applying for a 3-month, single-entry business visa. Upon my arrival in Russia, the school will exchange this for a 12-month, multiple-entry visa. I have to be officially registered within a day of my arrival, which means I may be taken straight from the airport to the school so that my paperwork can be handed in on time. Not the most fun way to spent my first few, sleep-deprived hours in Russia, but one that will be better for me in the long run.
But the business visa I am applying for specifies that I am coming to teach. I imagine that the Russian embassy knows I am likely coming on a 3-month visa that will be exchanged once I am in the Russian Federation. At least this time around, I don't feel as if I am playing visa roulette, for the simple reason that this time, I am not lying to anyone about my purposes in going abroad. This fact alone should minimize my chances of being bouned around Eastern Europe the way I was bounced around East Asia.
It's hard to say just when this whole enterprise starts to feel "really real". Going to Taiwan, I found there were several moments when it became progressively more real: when I applied for the visa; when I moved out of my apartment; and finally when my plane landed on the far side of the Pacific. I imagine it will be much the same with Russia. Doing some work to revive the smidgin of Russian I got in college has made the whole thing seem more real this time around.
Russia has a reputation for being both bureaucratic and capricious, but, considering all of my visa problems in Taiwan, I am actually glad the visa process for Russia requires as much as it does. No one, and I mean no one, enters Russia without a visa; there are no "landing visas" in Russia. Even to cross Russia on the way elsewhere requires a pre-arranged transit visa, valid for anywhere from 72 hours to 14 days (to give tourists enough time to get all the way from Vladivostok to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railway).
Officially, I will be applying for a 3-month, single-entry business visa. Upon my arrival in Russia, the school will exchange this for a 12-month, multiple-entry visa. I have to be officially registered within a day of my arrival, which means I may be taken straight from the airport to the school so that my paperwork can be handed in on time. Not the most fun way to spent my first few, sleep-deprived hours in Russia, but one that will be better for me in the long run.
But the business visa I am applying for specifies that I am coming to teach. I imagine that the Russian embassy knows I am likely coming on a 3-month visa that will be exchanged once I am in the Russian Federation. At least this time around, I don't feel as if I am playing visa roulette, for the simple reason that this time, I am not lying to anyone about my purposes in going abroad. This fact alone should minimize my chances of being bouned around Eastern Europe the way I was bounced around East Asia.
It's hard to say just when this whole enterprise starts to feel "really real". Going to Taiwan, I found there were several moments when it became progressively more real: when I applied for the visa; when I moved out of my apartment; and finally when my plane landed on the far side of the Pacific. I imagine it will be much the same with Russia. Doing some work to revive the smidgin of Russian I got in college has made the whole thing seem more real this time around.
03 March 2008
A Pet Project
Not too long ago, I was looking for different Teach Yourself Russian courses, to find one that was both effective and reasonably priced. I made a point of reading Amazon reviews and whatever other information I could find on the internet. Most of the reviews I read were not particularly helpful, but I did read one for Rosetta Stone Russian that made me steer clear of it altogether.
Despite its high price--a full course in any language can cost as much as $450--Rosetta Stone courses have become bestsellers in the crash foreign language field. But from what my helpful reviewer said, the courses suffer from a pretty major conceptual flaw. You see, the courses are not really designed specifically for each language. One version was created for people attempting to learn English and then simply translated into the various languages Rosetta Stone offers.
What's the problem with this? Well, according to my reviewer of the Russian Rosetta Stone, it can result in some highly erroneous usages of the target language. My reviewer noted, for instance, a computer pop-up that asked the learner to identify which of four animals--a cat, a dog, a fish, and a cow--was not a "domesticated animal." This is actually nonsensical in Russian, because all four of these creatures would be considered "domestical animals", as they would be in English.
How did an error like this creep into the Russian Rosetta Stone program? Most likely, the reviewer surmised, because in the original English version of Rosetta Stone, the word translated into the Russian program as "domesticated animal" was the simple word "pet". But, according to the reviewer, Russian does not have a word for "pet" in the sense of an animal kept for fun or companionship, rather than for its ability to produce milk, meat, or fur.
Thus assertion prompted me to do a bit of investigation. An online translator I looked at translated "pet" as любимчик ("lyoobimchik"). Even with my limited background in Russian, I can tell this word has nothing to do with the animal kingdom. любимчик is clearly related, somehow, to the verb любить ("lyoobit"), meaning "to like" or "to love". So this word more likely means "pet" in the sense of "loved one", not in the sense of a creature that eats kibble and sleeps at the end of your bed.
I've also checked out the dictionary I bought for going to Russia, the Pocket Oxford Russian Dictionary. Although not the most exhaustive Russian-English dictionary available, it has the advantage of being the one readily available to your roving reporter. The English-to-Russian section of the dictionary lists two translations for "pet":, питомец ("pitometz") and домашнее животное ("domashnyee zhebotnayeh"). The latter word is clearly the one meaning "domesticated animal" misued by Rosetta Stone. So I tried to see what I could find on the first word, питомец ("pitometz").
The only real resource I have for investigating питомец ("pitometz") is the Russian-to-English section of the dictionary. But when I looked it up, Oxford had no listing for питомец ("pitometz"). What this indicates to me is that, whatever питомец ("pitometz") might mean, it's not a word in widespread use. If it were, the word would have an entry.
When I mentioned this to my parents, they both seemed amazed that Russian, or any language, could get along without so basic a word as "pet". But it's fairly conceivable to me that Russians simply do not divide the animal kingdom into "animals kept for a useful purpose" (notably, Russian does have a word for "livestock") and "animals kept for fun and companionship" (pets). It is possible that in the context of the Russian life before the twentieth century, no one kept an animal strictly for companionship. Dogs were valuable for hunting, cats for catching mice. People may just not have been able to be as sentimental about animals as we are.
On the other hand, one has to be careful about such assumptions. Looking at the world's languages, it is easy to assume that people other groups of people do not speak or write the way we do, they do not think the way we do, either. But such assumptions are often unfounded. Russian and Hebrew, for instance, both lack a verb equivalent to the English verb to have. But this does not mean that either Russian or Israelite/Jewish cultures lack a concept of possession; the Torah, after all, is replete with rules for handling property disputes. Rather, these languages simply deal with possession in a different way. In Russian or Hebrew, you indicate that some has something by saying that the thing is to him--"John has a car" would come out as "a car is to John". Linguistic determinism has major pitfalls.
Nonetheless, learning that Russian does not have a direct translation for "pet" reminded me of a brief adventure I had during my time being unemployed in New York. For about a week last summer, I did some freelance writing work for an attorney whose pet project is pet trusts. Yes, you read that right--pet trusts. There are actually lawyers in this world who make a living making sure that Fluffy and Fido will be taken care of and provided for in the event of your demise.
Incidentally, contrary to what about eighty million movies and television shows would have you believe, there are no eccentric millionaires who leave their entire estate to their pets. The closest you can get to this, legally, is establishing a trust that can be used for your pet's food and medical care, but courts and sometimes statut es limit the amount of money that can be placed in such a trust to what is reasonable for the pet's basic maintenance. While some wealthy people do choose to provide for their pets lavishly, and even excessively, through these trusts, there are no giant fortunes tied up in dogs and cats. You cannot will $100,000,000 to Fluffy.
I have no idea how I would even begin to explain to a Russian my experience working for the Pet Trust lady. I imagine that our culture's willingness to allow the establishment of "pet trusts" may be directly related to our having a word and concept of a "pet". Or the persistent myth of millionaires leaving their millions to their pets. But it's interesting that a habit of thought one would think is universal turns out to be so culturally defined. You certainly don't think of "pet" as a cultural term. It is used among all the English-speaking peoples; Britons, Canadians, Americans, South Africans, Australians, and New Zealanders all refer to their canine and feline friends as "pets".
I am beginning to wonder what a culture-free language would actually look like. As I noted in an earlier post, artificial languages created to be "universal" often prove to be much less universal than they claim (like Esperanto, which is based on European grammatical structures and largely on European vocabulary), being very clipped in what they can say (like various forms of English redesigned for business or international use), or are forced to express complex concepts in very roundabout ways (so that a bagel might end up being a chewy round hole bread or something similar). So how far can a language go before it is forced to make cultural choices?
From what I've seen, not very far.
Despite its high price--a full course in any language can cost as much as $450--Rosetta Stone courses have become bestsellers in the crash foreign language field. But from what my helpful reviewer said, the courses suffer from a pretty major conceptual flaw. You see, the courses are not really designed specifically for each language. One version was created for people attempting to learn English and then simply translated into the various languages Rosetta Stone offers.
What's the problem with this? Well, according to my reviewer of the Russian Rosetta Stone, it can result in some highly erroneous usages of the target language. My reviewer noted, for instance, a computer pop-up that asked the learner to identify which of four animals--a cat, a dog, a fish, and a cow--was not a "domesticated animal." This is actually nonsensical in Russian, because all four of these creatures would be considered "domestical animals", as they would be in English.
How did an error like this creep into the Russian Rosetta Stone program? Most likely, the reviewer surmised, because in the original English version of Rosetta Stone, the word translated into the Russian program as "domesticated animal" was the simple word "pet". But, according to the reviewer, Russian does not have a word for "pet" in the sense of an animal kept for fun or companionship, rather than for its ability to produce milk, meat, or fur.
Thus assertion prompted me to do a bit of investigation. An online translator I looked at translated "pet" as любимчик ("lyoobimchik"). Even with my limited background in Russian, I can tell this word has nothing to do with the animal kingdom. любимчик is clearly related, somehow, to the verb любить ("lyoobit"), meaning "to like" or "to love". So this word more likely means "pet" in the sense of "loved one", not in the sense of a creature that eats kibble and sleeps at the end of your bed.
I've also checked out the dictionary I bought for going to Russia, the Pocket Oxford Russian Dictionary. Although not the most exhaustive Russian-English dictionary available, it has the advantage of being the one readily available to your roving reporter. The English-to-Russian section of the dictionary lists two translations for "pet":, питомец ("pitometz") and домашнее животное ("domashnyee zhebotnayeh"). The latter word is clearly the one meaning "domesticated animal" misued by Rosetta Stone. So I tried to see what I could find on the first word, питомец ("pitometz").
The only real resource I have for investigating питомец ("pitometz") is the Russian-to-English section of the dictionary. But when I looked it up, Oxford had no listing for питомец ("pitometz"). What this indicates to me is that, whatever питомец ("pitometz") might mean, it's not a word in widespread use. If it were, the word would have an entry.
When I mentioned this to my parents, they both seemed amazed that Russian, or any language, could get along without so basic a word as "pet". But it's fairly conceivable to me that Russians simply do not divide the animal kingdom into "animals kept for a useful purpose" (notably, Russian does have a word for "livestock") and "animals kept for fun and companionship" (pets). It is possible that in the context of the Russian life before the twentieth century, no one kept an animal strictly for companionship. Dogs were valuable for hunting, cats for catching mice. People may just not have been able to be as sentimental about animals as we are.
On the other hand, one has to be careful about such assumptions. Looking at the world's languages, it is easy to assume that people other groups of people do not speak or write the way we do, they do not think the way we do, either. But such assumptions are often unfounded. Russian and Hebrew, for instance, both lack a verb equivalent to the English verb to have. But this does not mean that either Russian or Israelite/Jewish cultures lack a concept of possession; the Torah, after all, is replete with rules for handling property disputes. Rather, these languages simply deal with possession in a different way. In Russian or Hebrew, you indicate that some has something by saying that the thing is to him--"John has a car" would come out as "a car is to John". Linguistic determinism has major pitfalls.
Nonetheless, learning that Russian does not have a direct translation for "pet" reminded me of a brief adventure I had during my time being unemployed in New York. For about a week last summer, I did some freelance writing work for an attorney whose pet project is pet trusts. Yes, you read that right--pet trusts. There are actually lawyers in this world who make a living making sure that Fluffy and Fido will be taken care of and provided for in the event of your demise.
Incidentally, contrary to what about eighty million movies and television shows would have you believe, there are no eccentric millionaires who leave their entire estate to their pets. The closest you can get to this, legally, is establishing a trust that can be used for your pet's food and medical care, but courts and sometimes statut es limit the amount of money that can be placed in such a trust to what is reasonable for the pet's basic maintenance. While some wealthy people do choose to provide for their pets lavishly, and even excessively, through these trusts, there are no giant fortunes tied up in dogs and cats. You cannot will $100,000,000 to Fluffy.
I have no idea how I would even begin to explain to a Russian my experience working for the Pet Trust lady. I imagine that our culture's willingness to allow the establishment of "pet trusts" may be directly related to our having a word and concept of a "pet". Or the persistent myth of millionaires leaving their millions to their pets. But it's interesting that a habit of thought one would think is universal turns out to be so culturally defined. You certainly don't think of "pet" as a cultural term. It is used among all the English-speaking peoples; Britons, Canadians, Americans, South Africans, Australians, and New Zealanders all refer to their canine and feline friends as "pets".
I am beginning to wonder what a culture-free language would actually look like. As I noted in an earlier post, artificial languages created to be "universal" often prove to be much less universal than they claim (like Esperanto, which is based on European grammatical structures and largely on European vocabulary), being very clipped in what they can say (like various forms of English redesigned for business or international use), or are forced to express complex concepts in very roundabout ways (so that a bagel might end up being a chewy round hole bread or something similar). So how far can a language go before it is forced to make cultural choices?
From what I've seen, not very far.
Sisterhood is Powerless
Today, I let my father rouse me far earlier than I would have preferred in order to go see The Other Boleyn Girl, Hollywood's treatment of the Philippa Gregory novel of the same name. I had been in great anticipation about this movie, as I had greatly enjoyed reading the novel last May. With Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman providing the key performances, I assumed I would be seeing an at least passable adapation of Gregory's work.
Instead, what I saw was a mishmash from beginning to end. The main problem, as near as I could tell, is that the scriptwriter had no clue what Gregory's novel had been about. The novel is a treatment of the story of Anne Boleyn's courtship with Henry VIII largely from the point of view of Anne's sister, Mary--hence, the other Boleyn girl.
In Gregory's account, Mary is twelve years old--yes, twelve--when her family forms ambitions surrounding Henry VIII's alienation of affections from Catherine of Aragon, who has failed to bear him a male heir, much less a spare. Mary is at this time already married off to a cipher named William Carey, but the Boleyns have no scruples about cuckolding him to advance the family cause. Mary is all but shoved into the king's bed and enjoys a brief period as the king's favorite while Anne pursues a nobleman at court named Henry Percy, whom she ultimately weds on the sly. Learning of this clandestine marriage, the Boleyns force its annulment and send Anne packing to France. Meanwhile, Mary conceives Henry's child.
Mary's child proves to be the long longed-for boy, but all does not prove sunny for her. While she is recuperating from childbirth, the family puts Anne before the king in order to keep up his interest. Out of pure spite for Mary, who had revealed her marriage to the family, Anne schemes to divert Henry's attention from her and overwhelmingly succeeds
For Anne, the rest of the novel proceeds pretty much as we remember the romance of Anne and Henry from high school history. But for Mary, life becomes very interesting indeed. William Carey long out of the picture, she becomes involved with a servant named William Stafford, who has saved diligiently from his earnings at court and bought a little place in the country. He ultimately persuades her to leave her conniving family and become a fairly typical farm wife of the middling sort.
The interesting thing about the novel, for me, had been its clear focus on, and preference for, Mary. Throughout the novel, it's clear that Mary does not want to be a pawn in the Boleyn's games with Henry VIII but can find no way out. Anne, on the other hand, is shown as a woman of endless ambition. The film completely failed to retain the novel's focus on Mary and so devolved into just another tiresome treatment of the Anne and Henry soap opera.
The film also did a very bad of showing any real sense of Mary's feelings toward her sister. In the book, the relationship between Anne and Mary was frought and complex. But coming out of the the film, I felt I had no real sense of how Mary truly felt about the sister who treated her so mercilessly, so savagely, for the sake of fulfilling the family ambitions. True, Mary pleads--unsuccessfully--for her sister's life, but I found myself unable to discern whether this display of sisterly affection was genuine.
One review I saw of the movie said essentially that the film was about the Paris Hiltons of its day. Hardly--at least in the case of Mary. Unlike the notorious Ms. Hilton, Mary never sought the role into which her family had flung her. After Henry succeeds in ridding himself of Catherine of Aragon, the people of England turn on Anne, but not on Mary--indicating that they were unaware of her relationship with Henry. One never gets the sense, in either the novel or the film, that Mary is actively seeking the limelight. So the comparison with Paris Hilton is inept, inapt, and ultimately unjust.
Instead, what I saw was a mishmash from beginning to end. The main problem, as near as I could tell, is that the scriptwriter had no clue what Gregory's novel had been about. The novel is a treatment of the story of Anne Boleyn's courtship with Henry VIII largely from the point of view of Anne's sister, Mary--hence, the other Boleyn girl.
In Gregory's account, Mary is twelve years old--yes, twelve--when her family forms ambitions surrounding Henry VIII's alienation of affections from Catherine of Aragon, who has failed to bear him a male heir, much less a spare. Mary is at this time already married off to a cipher named William Carey, but the Boleyns have no scruples about cuckolding him to advance the family cause. Mary is all but shoved into the king's bed and enjoys a brief period as the king's favorite while Anne pursues a nobleman at court named Henry Percy, whom she ultimately weds on the sly. Learning of this clandestine marriage, the Boleyns force its annulment and send Anne packing to France. Meanwhile, Mary conceives Henry's child.
Mary's child proves to be the long longed-for boy, but all does not prove sunny for her. While she is recuperating from childbirth, the family puts Anne before the king in order to keep up his interest. Out of pure spite for Mary, who had revealed her marriage to the family, Anne schemes to divert Henry's attention from her and overwhelmingly succeeds
For Anne, the rest of the novel proceeds pretty much as we remember the romance of Anne and Henry from high school history. But for Mary, life becomes very interesting indeed. William Carey long out of the picture, she becomes involved with a servant named William Stafford, who has saved diligiently from his earnings at court and bought a little place in the country. He ultimately persuades her to leave her conniving family and become a fairly typical farm wife of the middling sort.
The interesting thing about the novel, for me, had been its clear focus on, and preference for, Mary. Throughout the novel, it's clear that Mary does not want to be a pawn in the Boleyn's games with Henry VIII but can find no way out. Anne, on the other hand, is shown as a woman of endless ambition. The film completely failed to retain the novel's focus on Mary and so devolved into just another tiresome treatment of the Anne and Henry soap opera.
The film also did a very bad of showing any real sense of Mary's feelings toward her sister. In the book, the relationship between Anne and Mary was frought and complex. But coming out of the the film, I felt I had no real sense of how Mary truly felt about the sister who treated her so mercilessly, so savagely, for the sake of fulfilling the family ambitions. True, Mary pleads--unsuccessfully--for her sister's life, but I found myself unable to discern whether this display of sisterly affection was genuine.
One review I saw of the movie said essentially that the film was about the Paris Hiltons of its day. Hardly--at least in the case of Mary. Unlike the notorious Ms. Hilton, Mary never sought the role into which her family had flung her. After Henry succeeds in ridding himself of Catherine of Aragon, the people of England turn on Anne, but not on Mary--indicating that they were unaware of her relationship with Henry. One never gets the sense, in either the novel or the film, that Mary is actively seeking the limelight. So the comparison with Paris Hilton is inept, inapt, and ultimately unjust.
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