The Library to My Rescue, Part 1

From time to time we all miss hearing something in the news, for if we lead productive lives, we can’t be slaves to the computer, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, or to those technological communicators you hold in your hand. One person hears this, another hears that. But I have yet to find someone among my acquaintances who recalls witnessing two events I "saw" that are possibly and probably happenings certain politicos would like to keep out of history books. I heard only one reference to these occurrences. Usually the news channels bombard a news item to death till we almost wish they had another catastrophe to serve up.

When I tell you these two, I wish everyone who caught either of these in the news would speak up, because both of them are hard to believe, but important. They were definitely on the telly, one on CNN and the other perhaps on Fox News.

The earlier one showed former Soviet Union Premier Mikhail Gorbachev getting off a plane and with no fanfare, no hands to shake, etc., as if he had been the only passenger aboard. He had been missing for several days and was now returning to Moscow. He stepped off the plane with his eyes large with wonder, as if he did n0t know what was going on and even if it were safe to deplane. Then there was nothing more. I’d like to know why he was kidnapped and why we heard no more about it. Eventually, Gorbachev and his wife came to live in the United States, where he had a cushy position as a writer--a columnist, I think--in some foremost periodical. The Internet has not helped in my research, but I have sent the question to the local public library, through the email offering “ask-a-librarian.” I hope the library has more than an ordinary Internet to consult.

Ah! Here’s the answer (I add with permission from the librarian) in less than five minutes:

Hi Lindsley,

Thanks for the great question.

According to PBS's American Experience on President Reagan, it looks like Mikhail Gorbachev was indeed kidnapped and returned. You can read more in this article:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reagan/peopleevents/pande01.html It mentions the kidnapping toward the bottom.

And you are correct- Mikhail Gorbachev writes a column for the International Herald Tribune (the Global version of the New York Times) that is still running. You can access the articles in full text from our database called ProQuest Central that is accessible from our website here: http://www.boisepubliclibrary.org/eCollections/Databases/Name/p.asp, or you can browse through some of the most recent articles directly from the International Herald Tribune's site.

Hope that helps; please let us know if you have any more questions!

Best
Lindsay Wyatt
Reference Librarian
208.384.4043

Isn’t that remarkably fast? And so complete an answer! I am charmed. But Lindsay didn’t send Lindsley a batch of time to pursue it. That will come later.

Part 2 tomorrow.

♥