Persistence and patience. That's all it takes, persistence and patience.

I don't understand one (mostly irrelevant) part of the quote, though. "I used to work for the Soviets on Soviet trawlers as a Russian translator..." I can't for the life of me figure out why a Soviet trawler needed a Russian translator.

I guess I'm just being dense.

An English-Russian translator, I guess. To do business?

You made that up for votes. Hmmmph. ;-)

Boyd sez: "I can't for the life of me figure out why a Soviet trawler needed a Russian translator."

Cause Soviet Trawlers were typcially used off the East Coast of the U.S. to conduct spying ops. They would need someone to translate intercepted messages from English into Russian. :)

On the NON-moonbat front, I'm pleased to report that DC Cruisers over in infamous Monkey County, MD had a very nice party on Saturday and was able to collect 4 large boxes full of donations for the Wounded Warrior Foundation. The only downer was bike builder Paul Yaffe not showing up, but what the heck, there were some very nice bikes on display there anyway.

Cheers-
Bucky Katt

You made that up for votes.

Nope. I didn't make up the whole Dan Rather resigning thing, either. :-)

I'm the one who wrote Bill the e-mail this morning about converting from Moonbat-dom. Sorry, it was a little complicated to explain in the brief e-mail. In the 1980s, there was a Soviet-American joint fishing venture--Marine Resources Company, based out of Seattle. Within this company, the Americans caught cheap pelagic fish like hake with their small catcher boats, then passed it off at sea for the Soviets to process in their large at sea trawler/fish processing vessels. (Americans did not have those types of vessels at the time. The joint venture arose because in the late 1970s most countries world wide expanded their maritime boundaries from 3 to 200 miles off shore. There's a lot more to it than that, but I'll leave it be.) Anyway, the Americans needed an American on board the Soviet trawlers to translate during fish transfers--Russians weren't trusted for the job. That's why I was a Russian translater on board Soviet trawlers....

Barbo -
Ya gavareetyeh Pa-rooskie. "Gdyeh Pooshkinska ooolitsah!" That's about it. ;)

How does one say "moonbat" in Russian?

Hmm, Sarah. About as close as one can come to "moonbat" in Russian is "lunnaya letuchaya meesh," which, given the context, is best back-translated as "lunar flying mouse."

Wow, being a translator on a Russian fishing vessel... to a landlubber who speaks only English, Redneck, and a smidgeon of Spanglish, that's impressive. So is teaching engineering.

My god, she is Susan. Based out of Seattle and everything. Was she the only American girl on board? Flirting with the possibility of a relationship with the former Muscovite investigator?

Hi Ninme--I was Barb on the Mramorny & Izumrudny, '81-'82 and '82-'83 fishing seasons. It's described in the book "Hair of the Dog: Tales from aboard a Russian Trawler."

Ooh, I found it on Amazon. Are you *the* Barbara A Oakley?

LOL--yeah, I'm *the* Barbara A Oakley. Curses...foiled again.

Why curses? You should be thrilled to have people shilling for you. (Unless you're undercover, infiltrating the conservative blog world and... never mind.)

Have you ever read Polar Star? If you didn't get it, that what I was referring to with the whole Susan thing...

I knew about the Polar Star, but never read it, although I've read some other works by Martin Cruz Smith. Polar Star came out when I was writing the manuscript of my book, and I didn't want to be influenced by someone else's vision.
Now now now, I thought only moonbats were paranoid.... :)

How can you tell I grew up in the late Cold War?

When Barb said 'trawler', I immediately assumed that it was a spy ship. :)

The whole bit about actually fishing caught me completely by surprise.

Out on the trawlers we used to refer to THOSE kind of boats as "research vessels." As in "Gee, look how many antennas there are on that research vessel."

Hey, way better than those you were thinking of last week? Congrats!

Glad I’m not the only one who got the Polar Star reference. I absolutely devoured those four Arkady Renko books as they came out....by the time Red Square was published I was living about 50 metres from "treitsit voceim Petrovka" (Sorry, I’m not very good at the transliteration from cyrillic). For those who haven’t read them, that’s where his office was, in the main Militia office in Moscow.
Also where I read Gulag Archipelago for the first time....while stuck in the apartment during a coup attempt. Slightly bizzare that experience.

It's a super good book, Polar Star. Terribly interesting too. You should read it now that you've written your book and had a few years to let all the memories equalize in the back of your mind, see what you think. For those of us too young to live a life full of excitement on a Soviet Trawler or lived a few blocks away from the Coup when the Soviet Union crumbled, it's a good way to, ah, catch up.

It includes, by the way, the Gee, look how many antennas thing. Isn't it nice when you do use novels to catch up and find out they're actually largely based on truth. (And look at me, reading the same books as grownups who've lived exciting lives!)

I just ordered Polar Star on Amazon. I've been meaning to do it for years, but I was on the tenure track and awfully busy for quite a while. I've got tenure now, though, so I can afford the luxury of reading for fun again. Yippee! So thanks for the push.
I can't tell you how many times I've known some oddball factoid just because of some book I read when I was younger. Sometimes I think it's easier to pick up facts in well written fiction, particular historical fiction and, suprisingly, science fiction, than anything else. My students are usually impressed during introductions, because whatever they're interested in, I seem to know something about it. It's just that youthful reading. Oh, and ummm....I read the National Enquirer...

I agree completely! I think that's why I never read books by American authors, unless they're military/spy/Arkady Renkoish in nature. Except for romance novels (ahh, brain candy.), I have absolutely *no* interest in most Oprah reading list sorts of books about relationships, love and betrayal and all that, unless a) someone's getting killed, then it's a murder mystery, then it's fun, or b) it takes place in a different country or time so at least I'll learn something new about it. And to this day, the only competitive game I've ever been truly good at is trivial pursuit. I rock trivial pursuit.

Hmm, I'll bet ability at Trivial Pursuit is a mark of a good blogger. I checked your blog out and it's quite interesting. But I always like to read about the background of the blogger--who they are and why they're doing what they're doing(it's that National Enquirer part of my psyche) Couldn't find anything on your website. Can't find anything on INDC Bill's website either :( Maybe I'm just blind...

Yeah...That's cuz we're both CIA operatives infiltrating the conservative underground blog movement.

(I wish. I'd probably be a lot more solvent were that the case.)

No, actually, it's mostly cuz it's new, or at least, new again (there was an earlier incarnation, but I didn't like it, and ditched it), so I didn't want to include too much about myself until I'd sort of relaxed into a system. So. I appreciate comments there, though. Hate to be controversial without knowing if I am. Or the opposite.