MOSCOW, 2 September 2004

LENIN

This morning, I joined a line that, at 10 o'clock, would enter to see the body of Vladimir I. Lenin who died 24 January 1924. Given that he had retired two years earlier because of ill health, this morning he couldn't have looked better than he was alive.

I reached for my glass case and the guard approached me, probably thinking I was about to take a picture.

It must be tough on a guy who worked so hard for the revolution and cannot get a quiet rest like the other party bigwigs buried outside the wall of the Kremlin, guys like Stalin, Yuri Gargarin, Andropov and Kosygin, for instance.

MY READERSHIP

I informed about 40 of my friends where to find my blog. Today, I am happy to report that at least three are devoted readers, 7.5 percent. I consider that a good number when I bet less than that number read Heinrich Boll's Missing Persons & Other Essays. Of course, my friends read me because I am their friend; all of Boll's friends read him because he was a great writer, not just because he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972.

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