The Whine thread.

[Alelou]

Do you ever google this stuff?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_Ranks

[WarpGirl]

I have that one yes. However, I don't need the government. Just the family. The chart in that link is the one I have in my book. What I'm looking for is very different. Not all members of the Imperial Family had administrative postitions in the government. For example Grand Duke Micheal Alexandrovich had one job KEEP ALIVE, in case his nephew Alexie Nicholevich died.

[Alelou]

Oh, sorry.

In England, rank would normally have to do with nearness to the throne/nobility of title, with marriage and age being the next factors of privilege, in that order.

[WarpGirl]

Unfortunately Russia like to be VERY complicated. But lovely Ludmila has been so generous to help me out. I'm closer to finding what I need. I'm beginning to think a private dinner with the enitre family is unknown... Not good for my story unfortunately.

[Ludmila]

Unfortunately Russia like to be VERY complicated. But lovely Ludmila has been so generous to help me out. I'm closer to finding what I need. I'm beginning to think a private dinner with the enitre family is unknown... Not good for my story unfortunately.

No, private dinners took place but I must find the details.

[WarpGirl]

You're way too nice. Thank you. My mom thanks you too. She just doesn't know yet.

[Elessar]

My Russian teacher used to teach us about culture once in awhile. I remember her talking about Russia (today) like it was 19th century England. Or that's how it sounded like... I kind of got the impression she was romanticizing it a little much. She made it sound like you just walk into your neighbor's home for a visit and they're like socially obligated to make you a meal and some tea and all this... and like, haha, there was this subtlety that if you make their tea really hot, it tells them you want them to stay and talk, because they would have to let to cool to drink it... and if you make it just lukewarm, it's like a subtle gesture to say your business and GTFO

I don't know, I just thought to myself, this sounds more like old people than the entire country. It sounded more like how you "hear" things work in other countries when you live in another country b/c they want you to think it's quaint and sophisticated... and then you go there, and you see people hollering and carousing and having fun at bars and just casually acting the same as anywhere, just like anyone else. Maybe it's the process of westernization.

[Alelou]

Maybe young people who spend so much time online really are coming to seem much the same all over the world, but these kinds of differences are real.

Puerto Ricans on the island think nothing of stopping in unannounced for a visit, especially to the extended family. Once here, though (if my husband's family is any indication, and they are about half here and half there), they soon adopt the American custom of making arrangements or even expecting invitations and begin to get just as annoyed as we do at family suddenly appearing. But I suppose even in PR you can tell how convenient your visit is by whether the lady of the house immediately gets excited and starts frying chicken and making coffee or whatever, or instead just sits around politely talking to you in the living room.

[Aquarius]

Heck, those kinds of differences exist even in our own country. It used to blow my ex's mind that I had a key to my mom's house, could go over there any time I wanted to, didn't have to call first, and could let myself in if she wasn't home, 'cos that's what I had the key for. Same thing with my Grandma's. I don't have her key but Mom or my aunt would let me in if she wasn't home, and I can go there unexpectedly. Same thing with my aunts, too, probably. He never would've stopped in at his dad's unannounced, and he didn't have a key to the house from the time he moved out when he was 18.

[Ludmila]

My Russian teacher used to teach us about culture once in awhile. I remember her talking about Russia (today) like it was 19th century England. Or that's how it sounded like... I kind of got the impression she was romanticizing it a little much. She made it sound like you just walk into your neighbor's home for a visit and they're like socially obligated to make you a meal and some tea and all this... and like, haha, there was this subtlety that if you make their tea really hot, it tells them you want them to stay and talk, because they would have to let to cool to drink it... and if you make it just lukewarm, it's like a subtle gesture to say your business and GTFO

I never heard about such subtlety but the people from the different places of our ex-big country or only Russian places have the different tastes in the tea ceremonies. It is important not only the temperature but and the volume of the beverage. My friend married Russian boy from the family of the Seventh-Day Adventists. Her new relatives had grudge if you did not fill their cups fully with practically letting overflow. I heard that you must fill only little fluid in the southern regions (for example, in Uzbekistan) because you can show your respect to your guest constantly adding the tea or other beverages.
The traditions differ now more strongly not by the national sign but by the place of living. Megalopolis inhabitants frequently go by Korean big city tradition (my research supervisor told me about such the first), when people try to meet in the café not at somebody's house. In the small city you indeed frequently "obligated to make you a meal and some tea and all this". I have the impression that the villages thinking about the house of neighbor as about their house. But I am sure that it was only the single case.
It is not less important your social status. My cousin is a businessman ad lives in the small city. His house traditions are like the ones in the megalopolis.
My parents think that the neighbours are the best friends and try to do it. It is Caucasian tradition and my father is Caucasian. They live in Vladikavkaz (the city near the big Caucasian mountains). But I always try to stay away from nosy neighbours. Unfortunately, there are the nosy people even in Moscow.
In summary, the people and their tradition are different in many cases even in one city and one can study and honour them or go by one's way and face some problems. I always do by the second way in all different places where I lived or visited and I was lucky to find the friends practically always.

[Aikiweezie]

[Alelou]

Maybe he's afraid that other people will learn all those favors you did for him all those years. Sometimes the kind of people who like to take and use want try to erase history if they think it might interfere with their bullshit.

Once we had a priest who systematically drove away all the people who had supported him when he wanted to move from being our interim to applying for the full-time job even though that was against the rules of the diocese. It was mind-boggling to watch it unfold (and it took awhile to figure out what the pattern was). Except for one privileged family, EVERYONE ELSE who had 'campaigned' in his favor was driven away in one way or another. (We had thought it was a bad idea to break the rules and let him go for it, so we were safe...! But I couldn't stay in that church after that. It felt too much like being a collaborator.)

[Aquarius]

I hate analyzing poetry. And I have a rough draft of a paper due on Monday in which I have to do exactly that.

[Alelou]

I think it's very easy to analyze poems to death. I'm going to do my best to keep that line-by-line stuff to a minimum. Once in awhile you need to do it, just so people who want to read that closely can see what's going on and apply that to their own reading and writing, but for most young people I'm convinced that it kills the pleasure they might otherwise find in a poem.

But it will be interesting to see whether I succeed.

And yes, Honeybee, I'm wondering what my students will make of J. Alfred Prufrock. I'm not entirely sure what I make of it, though I like it. This may be because I read it first on my own, though, and not in a class.

(I take it, Aquarius, that you are expected to do a textual analysis of things like rhyme scheme, and can't just take refuge in an ethical consideration of the poem's apparent message? I would think that as a writer yourself you'd have a fairly easy time noticing effective language choice and such.)

[Aquarius]

The thing is, I just generally don't like poetry. Once in a while I'll see a poem I think is nice, maybe write one on a rare occasion, but I don't pick it to death. When I'm done, I want the experience to be over, and I don't waste time on stuff I don't like. Furthermore, I feel poetry is so subjective, I feel more resistance when being told there is a right conclusion and a wrong one. Not digging this New Criticism thing. I go to class or crack open my book and I get dizzy and want to burn something.

Sorry. I know I don't have to like it, I just have to do it. But this is the most miserable and frustrating part of my major.