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“DadDadDadDadDadDadDadDADDADDADDADDADDAAAAD!”  Not infrequently, this is what I wake up to, for any number of reasons.  As the Sisters grow older (now 18, 15, 14) their desire to “discuss” (code for argue) everything – in their lives, their friends’ lives, their schools, their community, the world at large – with Farmer Bob accelerates.  It’s not just about the best handcrafted ice cream, even mail order farm to cone ice cream, anymore.  He calls it “payback for family dinners and sharing good books,” but generally maintains his humor.  However, he tends to draw the line at certain types of music and inappropriate household language: no to being a big punk fan, and definitely a no on being a salty-language-during-normal-household-discourse fan.

Yeah, Farmer Bob was not initially a big fan of the Russian band called Pussy Riot.  Not impressed with the music, not very impressed with their overall political philosophy, in general just wished they hadn’t been inserted into his life.  So my youngest set out to provide some education on why they are so great, why NATO, the UN and democratic nations in general might want to take a page out of the Pussy Riot book when it comes to courage and making the tough calls.  Pussy Riot understands what taking risks to “speak truth to power” really looks like.

Started in 2011, right out of the gate Pussy Riot had something to say to Vladimir Putin and to the Russian Orthodox Church.  What better venue to say it than an impromptu performance at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior?  Arrested, three members of the band were sentenced to 2 years in Russian big girl prison, a portion of the USSR’s gulag archipelago still in operation.  Nothing like a US Club Fed for non-violent cheats, liars, and thieves, or a brief overnight stay at the county lockup for trying to burn down the neighborhood.  Sure, maybe the lyrics were hard to rhyme (Putin, rootin’ tootin’, high falutin’?) the production value was low, but hard prison time for a song?  For staging a concert in a venue with bad lighting, without a permit, and lyrics expressing a political opinion?  Apparently, the punk rock is mightier than the AK-47.

In 2014 the band was at it again, with an impromptu performance at the Sochi Olympics.  This time the band members were beaten with whips by Cossacks.  Yes, like Fiddler On The Roof Cossacks, bully boys of the Czars, persecutors of the serfs, etc, etc.  Additional attacks on band members have occurred over the years.  How medieval is this guy?  Oh, I forgot, he poisons people he doesn’t like, a far northern Medici.  And what is wrong with the free countries of the world, sitting idle while Ukraine is destroyed, its citizens murdered?  I find this all very … exasperating.

I wish the Lincoln Brigade was still a thing.  I wish that we could show that bum in Moscow the door and that the world had previously heeded the words of these brave women.  I wish ice cream, in the right hands, were a lethal weapon that could take out tanks and down planes, ‘cause we can make a lot of it, and we know how to ship ice cream.  I wish the world were a better place.