Diane Russell
The day after my 66th birthday, I looked through the paperbacks on my bookshelf. It was time to decide which books I would donate to the Friends of the Library for resale.
One book caught my eye, as it did every year. It was Ivanhoe, the classic authored by Sir Walter Scott. Only the book wasn’t mine. It was lent to me 39 years earlier by John Doe (pseudonym to protect privacy).
We both participated in the 1979-80 USSR academic exchange sponsored by IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board), an international nonprofit organization specializing in global education and development.
My spouse and I befriended John and his partner in August 1979 when we all took a month-long crash course in Russian while living in the Moscow State University dormitory. (More…)
