Almost thirty-four years ago now, in the summer of 1988, my paternal grandmother took me on a trip up the Dnieper River with some of her chapter of the Alameda County Gray Panthers (of which I was the youngest member for quite a while.) The trip was co-sponsored by a local nuclear freeze group, SANE/FREEZE. We flew to Odessa/Odesa, and took a riverboat up to Kiev/Kyiv, with pauses in towns along the river and an excursion to the perimeter of the 30km exclusion zone outside of the (then very recent) reactor disaster at Chernobyl. I got to practice a bit of the Russian that I'd been studying at Berkeley, and learn a little bit of Ukrainian. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I will be thankful for it for the rest of my life.
All of these Ukrainian place names -- Karkhiv, Kherson, Cherkasy -- all of these are places where my feet have touched the ground. My heart is breaking today, and I am not resigned.
((Karl))
2 of Peanut's classmates have family in Ukraine - mostly in Kyiv. The parents are very worried, of course, but also a bit "here we go again." Ptui on Putin, I say.
Oh Karl. That's heartbreaking.
Although one or more of you (can't remember exactly who) gets credit for amusing my doctor - when she was warning me what sort of ultrasound she was ordering, I said, "Oh! Dildocam." She had never heard it before.
Heh. I once made my ObGyn turn bright red and choke/laugh using that term. "Is that what women call it?" "The women I know do."
I got through a lot of my to do list, and the remaining things on it I have decided I don't care about.
Now I'm torn between finding news I can listen to or read basically nonstop or completely avoiding the news.
I got back from vacation at 2am last night (this morning) and I have to say, I am really not impressed with my reentry into civilization. I would like to go away again and when I come back I would like for Russia NOT to be starting a massive world war and for Texas NOT to be actively engaged in state sponsored child abuse.
Worth a try, Jess. It would be nice if that worked!
Timelies all!
I'm back, after not being able to get onto the board fro over a week. I have to reset my password every day for some unknown reason, and the e-mails with the link to the password reset were either not getting to me at all, or getting to my inbox sufficiently late that the link didn't work. Added to that, we went to Boskone this past weekend, and the charger for my iPad decided to give up the ghost.
Anyways, glad to be here, and hopefully the e-mails will keep arriving in a timely fashion.
Oh, dear, Sheryl! Glad you made it today!
I'm looking at the world right now and my urge to just get in the car and start driving and just somehow get away from all of this is super strong. It's not a rational urge at all, but I can viscerally feel the pull to just start driving until I can be someplace to start over where the world isn't like this.
