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day I’ll be able to say I was there when it was all going on.” How right she was!
Her final scheduled day in Russia was during an attempted coup d’etat, and the
group managed to catch the last Finnair flight out of Leningrad, which took off
with seconds to spare. Two students almost missed the flight. A Finnair gate
agent walked them to the plane, ignoring demands that the students go through
the formal exit process.
Earlier I had flown to Ýstanbul in Turkey and taken the train to Sofia for four
days of consultations. The city government was undergoing a transition from
Communist to democratic control. The newcomers to government did not know
how to run a city, and the Communists, who had been doing it, wanted to keep
their jobs. Then I headed for Leningrad, stopping in Bucharest, Romania, for a
day, and spending another day working to get out of the country and into
Hungary. Once in Budapest I relaxed for a couple of days and then took night
trains to Warsaw, which I had visited in 1989, and Leningrad.
Central Warsaw had been rebuilt, finally, and looked pristine. The train to
Leningrad was not a good one. The ride took thirty hours through Belarus,
Lithuania and Latvia. I met some interesting people on board.
Zhenya’s father met me at the station and I spent a week with her family. It
was a wonderful time, seeing the others who had been to Santa Clarita and
greeting our contingent when they arrived on the train from Moscow early one
morning. My being there was very helpful to the students who would be
returning to the U.S. with me. I was able to talk the consulate into giving them
multi-year multiple-entry visas and Aeroflot into selling them tickets home from
the U.S. for rubles, which meant a roundtrip from New York would cost only $65
because rubles were almost worthless. A multiple-entry visa was prized because
it meant that the kids would not have to stand in line for an average of four days
each time they wanted a visa to attend college for another year in the U.S.
Changing their visas was easy because I could whisk them in the door reserved
for Americans, who did not wait in line.
On our arrival in Los Angeles we were met by a gorilla and my son-in-law,
Scotty Plummer, who was playing “Yes, We Have No Bananas” on his banjo.
The girls were huge fans of bananas, which were very scarce at home. The press
had speculated ahead of the event that the gorilla (my daughter Denise), might get
through security by slipping a few bananas to people there. 24
On my return I faced the need to catch up with developments on the Planning
Commission. Rita Garasi resigned after the general plan was finished, John Drew
of CARRING, Scott Voltz of Santa Clarita Residents for Responsible Planning,
and Ken Dean were among the first applicants for the vacant seat. I observed,
“I’m just not interested in dealing with candidates who have already shown a bias
one way or another. As for anybody who has taken a far-out stand on growth or
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no-growth, I think it’s really tasteless for them to apply.”
That feeling left Lee Schramling, David Doughman and George Offshack to
consider. With Jill Klajic absent the council could not break a tie on the method
used to select the candidate, whether one would be nominated by Buck McKeon,