The following post was mostly written on the train there and back, with some updates after I uploaded the photos and had some time to add them in.

So, after I made it onto the Empire Builder ( in spite of my best efforts), the actual trip to Williston went fairly smoothly.

Now, as I wrote in the original post, I booked a coach trip in both directions ( Read more... )

My trip to an oil boom town in North Dakota started off on a pretty nerve-wrecking note.

I feel like, at this point, “in spite of my best efforts, I managed to make my Amtrak train” has become a running joke. For every time I made it onto the station with plenty of time to spare, there are two times when I caught it pretty close, either because I ( Read more... )

This coming Friday, April 12, I will take Amtrak to Williston, North Dakota. The plan is basically to make it a weekend trip. If there are no delays (which is always a big if with Amtrak), the Empire Builder will arrive at Williston the following day, a little before noon. I’ll then catch the Chicago-bound Empire Builder at 7:21 PM, and it will ( Read more... )

It’s been a while since I posted anything in this platform - but given how much digital ink I spent on my journalism career, it didn’t feel right not to mark it here.

Back in mid-April 2022, I was hired as a part-time reporter at Growing Community media, which I freelanced for in my Chicago Journal days back in 2012 and then after the whole ( Read more... )

Over the past few months, Chicago has been dealing with waves of migrants from Central and South American countries, many of them bused in by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The African-American backlash to the  proposal to set up shelters in majority-Black Woodlawn and, more recently, majority-Black South Shore has been covered extensively on the news, ( Read more... )

Earlier this week, I (and some Russian dissidents) got into a conversation with a Ukrainian man. He suggested something I heard before, and he was fairly polite and conciliatory about it, in the "I know I may be asking a lot, but hear me out" kind of way. And what he suggested was a valid perspective - if you're a Ukrainian. But I'm not, and since ( Read more... )

After setting the goal of using Livejournal more during 2022, I ended up using this blog even less. Part of it is just that I've been busier (more on that, hopefully, later) - but the war played a part in it, too ( Read more... )

My mom recently wrote a post on her English-language blog that was mostly about the state of Russian society and Russian opposition to Putin’s rule, and… Those are some of the issues I’ve been thinking about, and this post just compelled me to finally put it to digital paper.

First of all, a bit of context that I’m not sure comes through in the ( Read more... )

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Say what one will about Myspace, Friendster, or even Xanga, but they never tried to become profitable by getting rid of and driving away the very people who kept them up and running.

Or, to put it in the way Russian-speakers would appreciate it, надо же умудриться так просрать.

( Seriously - это надо умудрится )