I am sitting on a stool underneath the cherry plum tree. Actually it’s more of a giant cherry plum bush. Another mutant, like me.

Did this morning go well? The truck with our winter’s wood did not show up yesterday. No call, no explanation. This had me worried because I’m not going to work on Saturday and if this is another one of their anti-semitic games forcing me to do something on my Saturday, I think I’d rather cut down the forest myself.

This morning they answered my call and told me they were coming pretty quickly. This was about 8:30 in the morning. It’s about 3:30 right now and we’ve been finished for about 45 minutes. Who is the we? Ghenna, Little t and Vanya. This was my Russian command. This is my new Russian Seinfeld. Three idiots and the woman who hangs out with them.

When I got the call saying that the wood would be by at 10:00, I called Ghenna and told him to bring a wheelbarrow and some friends. I told him this today, I told him this yesterday, I told him this the day before and I told him this at the end of last week.

When the truck arrived, we had another one of those Russian moments. This horrible monstrosity of an invention sat in front of my house with the driver waiting for me to show him what to do. I was dispatching jukes when he came and when I told him that the gate was open and I wanted him to drop the wood just inside, like almost everybody, he quit paying attention to me halfway through my sentence and just started driving. I ran as fast as I could but he was already driving onto my property and by the time he heard me banging my hands and screaming for him to stop he had already driven over about 5 cm of my new pickles.

What’s surprised me was I walked right up to him and physically pushed him back into the truck yelling at him to back the fuck out and not touch anything. I guess all this work and sword play and such has brought back an amount of physicality to me and amazingly, he heard me quite clearly once I got physical with him. It wasn’t too bad. Maybe five or six pickle plants are just not going to pray anymore thanks to this 10 tons of love.

The first robotnik to arrive was Little t and she managed to bring a wheelbarrow. I was already carrying loads of wood when she got there. She immediately recommended Vanya and she called him and he hobbled over. Vanya is pretty broken up physically so I worked with him at first in the woodshed stacking. After about 5 minutes, I figured out a better system for doing this work and one that would give me the least amount of alcoholic covid and I went out and started loading wheelbarrows to be carried into the shed.

Last year I worked alone with broken legs for about a week. This year, we were done before 3:00 which was actually our finishing time. There was a lot of screaming and yelling. Ghenna had the terrible habit of involving himself with everybody else’s work every time he made a pass. All I wanted him to do was grab the wheelbarrow drop off the wood in the wood shed and come back with the other one. We had two wheelbarrows.

I’d like to explain this for a second. Maybe this is more normal than I think but when you live here, the first thing everybody wants to know is everyone else’s breed. Personally, I’m offended by it but nobody else who lives here seems to think there’s anything wrong with what you are being more important than who you are. Nobody has any problems with racism and can’t for any reason understand why it’s not the most important thing in the world.

Little t told me with a slightly embarrassed expression that she was Hoholka, her family is from Ukraine. The same was true for Vanya. Ghenna is a Bulbash, he is Belararus. Me? Я еврей. But I’m also 50/50 Ukrainian and Belarusian, an American, a ball player, a musician and I guess I’m working on my pedigree as a Utopianist. All this meant is that I was paying for everything.

So, what was the score card according to race? The Ukrainians worked more diligently and the Belarusian never stopped talking or finding a reason to sneak off for a smoke hoping nobody was paying attention to them. What else would anyone expect?

I admit, I got to about to the end of my limit several times today. But I did my job and so did everyone else with the help of some screaming and shouting and extra emotions that basically tired everyone else more than the actual physical labor. Nobody knows how to talk to anybody without annoying them.

What next? It’s almost 4:00 and I’m watering the back part of the field. When that is done I’ll carry the hose around and give everybody a watering. The house is reasonably clean though I need to take a bath or a mikvah is more to the point and then do some cooking. It is of course the latest Shabbos of the year this week so I don’t really need to worry about anything until almost 9:00 this evening. I have 5 hours left which is plenty of time. Just some watering, cooking and to take care of the very last page of the Utopian to get straight.

What do I think of all of this? If they weren’t completely and systemically ruined as people, I could probably make use of this little group of humanity. We could create some service projects that we could run for enough profits to keep everyone going. This would improve the quality of the town and the quality of the lives of the people working. It’s possible I have the money to run this organization now but it would be a lot of money to carry the full burden myself. Also, if I really had the money, I might not choose these people for serious work or any work that might be perceived as quality.

But when I first came here, and this is well before the Russians decided that their presence was absolutely necessary for the Belarusian people, I saw how families and neighbors got together to gang up on jobs like planting potatoes or gathering potatoes or picking fruit, work that basically one person would be overwhelmed by. These were natural and organic groups where everyone knew their job and everyone worked well together. For this and to have a good solid 2 years of wood in the wood shed, I’m pretty grateful. And like I said, I still have a good 5 hours. I think I might even be able to catch some sleep before we get going.