I'm going to indulge in some reminiscencing here.
No, there's no sex in it.
May 17, 1995 was the happiest day of my life--never had one happier before, never had one happier since--the day I learned that the Republicans had taken over both houses of Congress the preceding November (and for the first time in my whole entire life, the House of Representatives), and that Nebraska had won the national championship in college football the preceding January.
I was out in the remote steppes of southwestern Russia when a package from home found its way to me.
When wandering around the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants, it was as if I were truly on the dark side of the moon, out of contact with the civilized world. For obvious reasons, I could never use a telephone (and at $25, American currency only, for three minutes), and the internet was still aborning, meaning e-mail wasn't in general use yet.
I wrote letters home. People back home wrote letters to me.
Which generally took 2-3 months to arrive at either destination, many times mistakenly misdirected to Cuba or Cameroon or China first (as the markings on the envelopes betrayed).
The socialist paradises were in considerable disarray at the time, utter chaos and anarchy and shambles, and English-language "resources" were rare, if at all.
So I always received news from home.....rather late.
On the sunny afternoon of May 17, 1995, the socialist post office delivered to me a package that had been sent shortly after the new year began five months previously. It was from Omaha.
The package of course had been rifled, there being hardly anything left in it besides crumpled-up editions of the Omaha World-Herald, used for padding.
The crumpled-up newspapers were from the day after election day November 1994 and a couple of days after the bowl games January 1995. This wasn't by mere lucky chance; this was on purpose.
I read the news, and let out a roar that surely was heard as far away as the Caucasus Mountains.
Then I rushed out of the cottage and did cart-wheels and hand-springs across the knee-high grass of the Russian steppes.
My faith in humanity having been restored--sometimes good guys win after all--the day after that, having been away for so long, I finally made arrangements to come back home, to come back to an America where Hope had recrudesced.
