February starts off with a bang for those of you in the San Francisco Bay area. Today and tomorrow, the Russian Center of San Francisco is hosting its 20th annual celebration of Russian art, dance and music. This is a big shindig, and the event that inspired me to start a Russian cultural calendar for adoptive families last year. There is a great lineup, and even a large screen TV dedicated to the Super Bowl. Tickets are $10 for adults, but kids under 12 are free.

Also, today and tomorrow, a... more

It's December, which means, in the world of Russian art, dance and music in America, that it's time for The Nutcracker.

There are performances of the ballet set to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's music all over the United States. I turned up 10 performances in Florida alone, at the Palladium Theater at St. Petersburg College, the Emma Parish Theater in Titusville, the Van... more

Leading the Russian cultural calendar this month: something for the kids. It's "The Stone Flower", a puppet show that is being described as "an original Russian tale". It certainly sounds that way. The story line involves a young prince who must fend off danger and a scheming uncle to find a stone flower if he is to become the tsar. The show is at Children's Fairyland in Oakland, Calif. at 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on November 3 and 4.

On the other side of the country, a cabaret performance that deconstructs the Kurt Weill/Ira... more

Maybe it's because I've watched the "Wizard of Oz" too many times, but I can't write the word "tigers" without also whispering under my breath "lions and bears, oh my". As luck would have it, this is B week in my little guy's class and they will be having a day about bears. And no nation is more closely identified with bears than the country of his birth, Russia.

A Russian circus wouldn't be a Russian circus without a bear act. You'll find bears on some of the regional emblems around the country, and... more

I'm going to take things a bit out of chronological order this month because October 18 is a special date in Russian-U.S. history. As my Alaska readers know, Oct. 18, 1867 was the transfer of Russia's claim to Alaska to the United States. And if you are in Alaska, or going to Alaska this month, you should know that there is a full schedule of events in Sitka, where the transfer took place, for Alaska Day. They begin on Thursday, October 11 and run through the 18th, and include dancing, bike and kayak racing and an Alaska Day ball.

My... more

In Hollywood's hands, orphans are usually cute and cuddly, filled with boundless energy and determination, ready to break into song at a moment's notice. Even the orphan movies I don’t like have a happy ending.

It doesn't sound as if "12", a Russian movie that opened last week in Moscow, is that kind of movie. The central character is a boy from Chechnya, the region in southwest Russia that has been fighting to secede from Russia. He is an orphan, his parents having been killed in the fighting. And... more

Move over Disney and Nickelodeon: Russia has launched Bibigon.

Bibigon is a new children's television channel, that was launched on Saturday, by the Russian TV and radio company VGTRK, with--as several news reports were quick to point out--key backing by Russian President Vladimir Putin. You can see the channel's Internet home page here (or read through a lumpy English translation, courtesy of Babelfish.

The channel is named for a character created by the Russian children's poet... more

There are three Russian cultural festivals on the calendar in September. The first will be on Saturday, Sept. 9 from noon to 7 p.m. at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia. The Russian Mosaic Cultural Festival, organized by the Philadelphia Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, features folk, classical, and ballroom dance performances, and Russian, Jewish, Georgian, Moldavian and Middle Asian food.

If you're in Silicon Valley on Saturday, Sept. 22, try the Russian festival at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church... more

The other day, I wrote about people who were putting some part of their adoption journey into video format. But I realized, as I was poking around YouTube afterwards, that video sharing sites can serve another useful purpose: As part of the process of educating the child you adopted from Russia on the country of his or her birth.

I started, of course, by searching for videos on the Russian cities nearest and dearest to my heart: Vladivostok and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on Sakhalin Island.... more

Many of you have read, on this site and on others, accounts of what life is like in different parts of Russia. You've read stories about what prospective parents experienced as they traveled through places like Moscow for the first time. What they felt when they saw the town and the orphanage in which their child was living. What they were thinking when they met their child for the first time.

But what if you could see it all yourself?

Thanks to the Internet, increasingly, you can. There are a number of videos made by families... more