"WHEN THE NEVA THAWS'

by jim richmond

     Snow blanketed the ice-covered Neva, as the couple strolled arm in arm across the Kamennoostrovsky Bridge, then glancing in expensive Western style shop windows on Nevsky Prospect.

     "You like Piter. Don't you? You keep coming back and back," she asked, snuggling close against the howling wind coming down from the Gulf of Finland.

     "Is Hermitage why? The ballet? Or me?"

     "Ah, Hermitage is always a favorite, the ballet, in your lovely St. Petersburg," he sidestepped. "This trip, the guide took me in back rooms, the Nazi advances shot holes where paintings had hung."

     She went on about their seeing magician David Copperfield, the same restaurant the night before, in town for a performance.

     "You know he's really Russian," she said proudly, "David Kotkin."

    Tugging playfully at his coat, she laughed and said, "Are we getting engaged, soon?"

     "Americans take these things slowly. Perhaps when the Neva thaws, he replied.

HOW DO I KILL THE TWITTER MONSTER?

by jim richmond

     Somewhere in the dim recesses of time and memory, I must've signed up for Twitter.

     Now it ranks up there with sore ankles in the morning, telephone sales calls at 6 PM, no return calls from civic poo bas, and the lady right ahead with 85 grocery items in the "12 items or less" checkout line at Meijers.

     All I get on Twitter is a constant overflow of high school GOAT zingers from the last sports reporter standing at the Battle Creek Enquirer newspaper, and City Neighborhood tweets about lost dogs and uncut grass.

In fact, there's so many of the latter, I wonder if a gnome sits in the closet of the city manager's office, cranking out these tweets from 8 to 5.

     If anyone can tell me how to get rid of Twitter, I'll be all a Twitter.

     Thank God I didn't tweet up with The Donald.