Before you settle in to read this post, check if you have a dollar in your pocket. That's where dollar bills hang out because, by themselves, they can't do much. You can't get a cup of coffee for a dollar in most places; you certainly can't buy lunch or a bed or a bathroom.

Or can you?

Lisa Finneran and her husband Mike are just back from visiting 12 Russian orphanages and they think $1 can go a long way. Especially if they get one million of them.

If you think those names sound familiar, you're right. I wrote about the Finneran's... more

I found the mother lode of information on Russia last night.

It's called "Sher's Russian Index", and it is a portal to all things Russian--art, culture, sports, science, language and much, much more. Well, there's not a section on adoption, but I can forgive its creator that because of all the other material that's here.

A word on the site's creator. He is one Benjamin Sher, and after a bit of sleuthing, I learned that he is a Russian translator by profession. His main Web site contains... more

No news on the accreditation front yet, but some news that may affect your adoption travels to Russia. Kommersant and the Moscow Times are reporting that its Transportation Ministry is going to be going with same kind of liquids and gels restrictions that we now face for domestic travel in the United States. Russia has been enforcing the so-called 3-1-1 rule for travel between Russia and the U.S. and Canada since October 2006; the new decree would extend... more

I've been chuckling my way through a thread that began on the Russia Adoption forum last week: "Am I the only one out there who is 45 PLUS in age...," the poster asked, "and have a 5 year old child???"

Get in line sister, get in line. I'm doing some writing now for a college and I keep dropping broad hints about getting them to offer senior citizen discounts. I'll need them by the time I get to my tuition-paying years.

But with... more

I'm going to ask you today to take a moment to think about aiding the children in Russia's orphanages.

Why? Well, I got a note yesterday from the agency that helped me in both of my adoptions from Russia, and it made the reasons quite clear.

Because fewer children are being adopted from Russia now, there are more of them in the orphanages. Those of you who have been to Russia's orphanages in the past know how their resources were often stretched thin. Imagine how much farther they have to go now.

But it's not just that... more

The week began with the death of Boris Yeltsin, the man who set adoption upon the path on which it now finds itself in Russia. Yeltsin, Russia's first democratically elected president, was buried on Wednesday; former U.S. President Bill Clinton attended.

One day later, Russia's current president (and Yeltsin's chosen successor), Vladimir Putin, gave Russia's equivalent of a state of the... more

Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation and the man who dissolved the Soviet Union, died today in Moscow at 76. News sources say Yeltsin died of a heart attack. He had a long history of heart trouble, which contributed to his early retirement from the presidency in 1999.

Yeltsin was born in Sverdlovsk and joined the Communist Party in 1961. He had an up and down career within the party, gaining points for demolishing the house in Sverdlovsk in which Russia's last tsar had been killed but losing them--and... more

Since I was prepping for an Earth Day presentation at church, I decided to spend a few minutes looking at the state of the environment in Russia, too. Today, I'm going to turn what I learned into two posts: Russia's eco-profile and my thoughts on raising environmentally responsible kids who were born there, but now live here.

Some of Russia's current ecological state is the legacy of the Soviet Union: Its economy, like many others in the developed world,... more

Let's start with the weirdest news first this week: Russia wants to build a tunnel to Alaska.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the tunnel would be the world's longest and would run under the Bering Strait. Why build a tunnel that far off the beaten path? To create a quicker way to move oil, natural gas and electricity from Siberia to the U.S. The report says the tunnel would take 10 to 15 years to complete.

Next in line, Boris... more

In the arts and cultural events calendar that I put up at the beginning of the month, I noted that there was going to be a big sale of Russian art at Christie's in New York mid-month. Well, if one picture is worth a thousand words, then the results of this sale--and a similar sale at Sotheby's--say more about the state of Russia's economic development than several hundred copies of Anna... more