Minor Celebrities in our Own Right.

Sometimes you try hard to get attention, but it just doesn't come. Other times, attention finds you without hardly trying. My wife and I find ourselves in the second situation.

I've been here in Kiev a bit over two years. My wife, decades longer. And in my former life back in the states, I never had much attention come my way. But now it's coming, from places thats maybe not too surprising, and from places that make you wonder, huh?

The first source of celebrity is of my own making. In 2005 and 2006, our family celebrated the US holiday Thanksgiving. And yes, it's a lot of work, since some typical Thanksgiving stuff is not readily available here. So this year, I suggested we might want to tone it down a bit; maybe invite a few less people than last year. But everyone who attended in the past most certainly wanted to attend again and we had to abandon the thought of scaling it back.

The second source of our celebrity came about in a more unusual fashion. I submitted an ad to the Kyiv Post, the English language newspaper in Kiev via email, and at the bottom of the email I included links to my websites, something I include on most outgoing emails. Well, someone at the paper clicked through to my websites, and figured that I would work well for an informal email interview. So just last week, on Thanksgiving no less, there I was, featured in the Kyiv Post.

The third source came quite unexpected, out of nowhere. We got several reports from my wife's family and friends, and her father's coworkers, that my wife and I were recently on TV. And not just a random stroll in the park picked up by a wandering TV crew. No, it was our wedding, on TV, 18 months after it happened.

In the states, this just wouldn't happen. Participants would have to be tracked down and paperwork signed and lawyers consulted. No, it seems a major Kiev TV station wanted to do a report on foreigners getting married to locals in Kiev. And out likely hundreds they could have tracked down, the ended up with ours. How? Likely from the videographer who took video of our wedding. Neither the videographer nor the TV station felt the need to track us down, and why should they? Apparently they are not required to. Still, having only gotten second hand reports that our wedding was on TV, it's hard not to feel a little bit violated, since neither of us really know what was being said about us, or whether we were treated a bit like a circus sideshow.

But that's how things often go in Ukraine, and elsewhere, no doubt.

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