This is another one of those posts I've been meaning to write for a while, and I figure I better write it now, before the news cycle ramps up again.

My mom moved to Chicago back in early May 2021. May 9, which Russia and some other ex-Soviet countries mark as Victory (in Europe) Day, which was... interestingly auspicious. This was something she ( Read more... )

For the past few months, the United States Postal Service has been experiencing the kind of dips in reliability I would normally expect from Russian postal service. I even get paid to write about it a bit. Just when I start to think things might get better, I get letters delivered two months late (not a trivial example - back in early March, I got ( Read more... )

Back when the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois started imposing stay-at-home restrictions to try to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, people would congregate on the Lakeshore Trail (which, as the name implies, follows most of the Chicago portion of the shore of Lake Michigan) and many lakefront parks and beaches. Worried about social ( Read more... )

Last week, I was reading an issue of Sunday Sun-Times when I came across a story about Chris Mathis, a Kansas pawnshop owner who was looking for a homeless veteran named Woodrow Wilson Jr. Wilson pawned off a few $100 savings bonds back in the 1980s. Since then, the bonds have fully matured. Since the bonds were sold to the pawn shop fair and ( Read more... )

So I was sitting in my apartment, catching up on my social media, when suddenly, there was a bright flash of light. Like lightning, but there was no thunder ( Read more... )

Last Sunday, January 29, I was coming back home from an event when I saw this on my building's bulletin board


( Read more... )

Earlier today, at around 8:00 PM, I was walking Lakeview, through the part that, depending on who you ask, may or may not be part of Boystown [Note](it depends on whether you count Halsted Street or the entire area around the historic Chicago Pride Parade route). As I crossed Belmont and kept walking north on Broadway, past the Walgreens, I noticed a ( Read more... )

And on a lighter side.

During and after college, I used to work for Demos Express, a company that basically sent out contractors to stores to hand out samples of everything from snacks to cologne. (This was the source of tweelore's "In Soviet Russia, we fire Jewel" story she still loves telling people to this day - but that's a whole other post ( Read more... )

So I was riding the Red Line home tonight when a woman sitting next to me called someone.

"Are you awake?" she said. "Okay. Cool. Listen - so I just got past Belmont, so I'm going to be at Howard soon, and I was just thinking... If you're awake, can you... you know?"

And my immediate thought was Oh my God, is she trying to arrange a hook-up? From ( Read more... )

So last night, I was coming back from Devon Market grocery store, waiting for the bus with two Russian ladies in their late 50s/early 60s. Once I revealed myself as a Russian, the conversation quickly turned to cultural assimilation and how - in the two women's opinion - there is some innate Russianess, the indominable Russian spirit, if you will, ( Read more... )