Ukraine Crush

 I don't think I have mentioned that one of my daughters-in-law is Ukrainian and speaks Russian. I have known her now for about 9 years I guess. She and C got married in 2014, bought a house in 2015 and had their first baby L in 2016. O's mother lives here in Asheville as well and we get together for special occasions. I love that my two granddaughters can understand Russian and the oldest one who is 6 now can understand it fluently, and can probably speak it, but doesn't choose to very much. I hope this will change for her as she becomes more confident. Anyway, Russia decided to do a full on invasion of Ukraine in February of this year (the 24th) after having occupied some areas of Ukraine by force since 2014. I didn't really know anything about Ukraine or its president or people and wasn't really making an effort to other than what I learned at our occasional get togethers, but after this war started I started learning lots more about Ukraine due to a new social app I started using sometime after the pandemic (that's another blog post) started I think. Or maybe slightly before either late 2019 or early 2020.

Tik Tok has been a platform where people from other parts of the world can be heard from within a short time of posting and once I started following Ukrainian war stories the algorithm started sending me more and more. Now I, like many other women and probably men, have a crush on the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Turns out he was a former actor and comedian who cowrote a TV show about a history teacher who got elected president to root out the corruption in his country and then a few years later he ran for president for real and won with over 70% of the vote. Propagandists say he is corrupt, but from what I can tell he is the least corrupt politician I know of. And he is going to go down in history as one of the greatest leaders of all time. A title his enemy Vladimir Putin resents and is envious of I am sure. While the war is causing significant damage to the infrastructure of Ukraine and has caused many casualties of civilians as well as soldiers, the circumstances have caused the countries in the EU to unite and actually the whole free world is supporting Ukraine in this war against an aggressor state that has no business invading and is lying about its intentions and reasons to its own people so they think the war is called for. It is a sad state of affairs and people in our own country even follow or believe the same propaganda because old Donald Trump, former president of the United States supports or endorses Putin and tells lies of his own. They are similar in that they both lie and don't care about anyone other than themselves. 

Maybe starting tomorrow I can start watching the next two seasons of the show Servant of the People that stars Zelenskyy who is one of the writers for the show. There is a great Times article about Zelenskyy that came out May 9 this year 2022....

It's been four years

I just reread my last post where I talked about being criticized for things I said on facebook. I just recently deactivated my account on there again because once again I felt like I couldn't say my true thoughts without being jumped on, attacked or ignored. Maybe they aren't attacking me and merely disagreeing with me, but they don't word it in such a way as to create room for dialogue but more to imply I am stupid or wrong not just that they disagree. I could take some lessons from this and be more mindful of my own comments under people's posts. But instead I just decided I didn't want to even talk anymore. I really don't like to argue, but not because I like to be right, but because I think I have already said my point and then I feel like I have to say it again to explain myself or to add more details or info to support my original comment and it just gets tiring. 

So, this may be more of a diary type entry than a blog post. What is a blog post supposed to be anyway? Commentary on my life? on life in general? a journal?