Russia Bound: My Heart Beats Faster in Past Times (Full Story - Free Audio/Podcast Download)

The illustration details are even more fun if you click on the the picture above

A Time Travel Short Story

copyright L.Shimer, 2011

Russia Bound: My Heart Beats Faster in Past Times

sprang from the pages of this art-journal

In Part 1: Trip Planning  Larisa found her old spiral notebook from Russian class  ..That notebook had a Peter Max design on the cover....Remember the poster of his we put up when we were freshmen, and what that gross boy down on the second floor wrote on it? 

Part 2-The Samovar's Story: 

Note To Self:Keep a low profile. Do not cheese the Empress off

Part 3-The Winter Palace: 

I put up one hand to the gaping bodice of my Worth-like costume, in almost a parody of feminine modesty, feeling suddenly breathless, and not only from the corset. It was as though an electric current had passed through me with the entrance of this man.

Part 4:  - My Heart Beats Faster 

I returned the stare, for a little longer than normal. What could there possibly be in a pair of eyes and a deep bass voice to make me feel a sense of immediate connection to a man I knew nothing about. The cool air of the church hammered against my lungs.

Part 5: - A Spot of Tea in the Winter Palace I'd never before seen a table spread with as much food as that one in the Winter Palace. While the hard-working peasants were struggling to grow enough food to content themselves with black bread, and the cabbage soup known in Russia as 'shee', the imperial court of the Romanovs, were- well now I know where the expression, 'eating royally' comes from.

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Did you begin to read this serial and wonder what happened next?
~ ~ ~
I've recorded the *complete story* as episode 5 of The Simple Romantic's podcasts, "Unpolished Performances", You can download it (it's free) at the iTunes store, by clicking on this link.

If you prefer, you can listen live on the web by clicking on this link.

Sewing: Cliff Rose Dreamin' Quilt (Lady Lizbeth's Sewing Chronicles)

~~More from "Lady Lizbeth's Sewin' Chronicles~
  The Pithy Sayings of Lady Margaret Hoby"

The comfort of mankind, should be your aim.~ Towards gentle folk, of course, should your product be directed, as they are fitted by a higher power to receive that which you sew.~ Very occasionally, however, the deserving poor might also be worthy of your gifts.

Please click on the illustration below to better enjoy the details of Lady Lizbeth's Cliff-Rose Dreamin' Quilt

Romancing the Job: Makin' A Buck

Just Makin' a Buck?

 He LOOOKS like a regular working man from the Andes but in truth he's...

Romancin' the Job: The Dairy

 The Dairy
Please click on the illustration above
for a fuller appreciation of a job enjoyed 

Bird in the Bush (Green Movement Humor)

Go ahead and click on the illustration above,
 to fully enjoy the details


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 Recent Letter to Japan: 
  
 Nature can be a tough friend 

Letter to Japan, March 11, 2011

Sister far island

I live on the edge here too

Sleep Pacific plate

Befuddled by Baht: Sherlock Holsemn’ the Coin

 Please click on the illustration above to enjoy the lovely details

Befuddled by Baht

Sherlock Holsemn’ the Coin

It’s a baht coin (฿) from Thailand.

Sherlock Holmes could, no doubt, have told you that in less than a minute. It took my husband, who spent the off hours of his childhood collecting coins, about a half an hour to find the coin’s primary origin.

But how did it make it way, way down the far reaches of our driveway? More precisely how did it turn up just in front of our back gate?

It’s extreme cleanliness told us that it hadn’t lain there long.

Besides, my husband is a geologist who spends much of his life looking for anomalies under foot. He was absolutely sure that it hadn’t been been there the day before.

Who do we know that’s been to Thailand? Nobody. There are several different different neighborhoods with asian flavors in our area, but as far as I know there haven't been a lot of people immigrating from Thailand. A few restaurants in the area are the extent of our connection. We have some vague sense of a faraway exotic locale full of  elephants, orchids, shrines and curry. Sherlock Holmes would have pointed out, however, that the photo of Bangkok on the web, doesn’t look like there’s a lot of room for large mammals.

Sherlock would have considered the possibility that it resulted from automatation. Our garbage, recycling and compost bins live near the gate. Did the great arms of the Recycling Works truck pick up the coin at somebody else house and deposit it on the lid of one of our bins? Then perhaps it flipped off when we banged the lid? You'd think dimes, quarters and pennies would be raining down if it worked like that.

Holmes might decide that someone came looking for us at our back gate, stood there uncertainly for a few minutes fingering the coins in her pocket, and then changed her mind. He’d know it was a woman, of course, because of something to do with the distance between gate and door. Don’t ask me to explain that.

Personally I think the baht coin is a sign. A sign that it’s my turn to do elephant duty.

฿