Masha Gessen is...

The Muscovite journalist Masha Gessen was in Princeton a couple of weeks ago giving a talk on censorship and self-censorship in Putin's Russia and gently stumping for her new book about her two grandmothers during the purges. One of them was, you guessed it, a censor, and the other one also had to make some accomodations with the Stalin regime, as did most. Since they bent a little and made it through, we have Masha, a no-nonsense investigative journalist in time and place not really suited for her ilk.

After her talk I joined Masha (whom I knew from Moscow) and a bunch of others for a dinner, and I asked her about our common friend Katia Petrovskaia, originally of Kiev but now in Berlin. Masha promised me to send Katia's email address, but hasn't done so just yet. Tsk tsk.

In a discussion of the so-called "World Wide Web," Masha recounted how she and some of her friends play a game called "Googlism" where they google the phrase "(Googler's name) is" and see what comes up. Lets see how soon it is that Masha plays that game, and if she pulls up the Grouse. Stay tuned, fair reader, for an update...