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 links to some of the Russian fiction, poetry and plays that he has rendered into English. He was, according to other sources, born in Poland, raised in Israel and came to the United States in 1959, where he earned both a bachelor's degree (in philosophy) and a master's (in English) from the University of New Orleans. He also seems to have some expertise in computers, judging by the number of times I saw his name on postings about technical arcana.

But "Sher's Russian Index" will likely be the link of greatest interest to you when you visit the site. It is apparently a key resource for Slavic studies at colleges and universities across the United States.

Start at the Art section, and you'll find links to 39 sites about Russian art. Some of them, in this and other sections of the Index, are in English, some in Russian. Some are to the history of art in Russia and famous collections there at museums like the Kremlin Museum and the Hermitage. But some are to Russian artists now working in the U.S.

There are sections for Books and Computers (useful for the links to Cyrillic converters). There's a section on Cuisine, with an interesting link to a site about Russian bread. The Culture section has links to songs and jokes. There are Geography and History sections, and, perhaps not surprisingly, large sections on Language and Literature. (The latter with several links to sites on Tolstoy, which could come in handy if you are participating in our Anna Karenina readathon.)

There's a dead link here and there, but suffice it to say that you could lose yourself for quite a few hours on "Sher's Russian Index" as you work to improve your knowledge of Russia, or your child's understanding of his homeland.