Those who've been reading my blog, or following me on Twitter, know that Grandma Tanya, my grandma on my dad's side, suffered a stroke last summer. And that she hadn't anywhere near recovered from that. Since then, she had two strokes, and the last one, which happened earlier this year, left her bed-ridden and not capable of much in a way of ( Read more... )

On March 15, Gov. JB Pritzker issued an executive order closing restaurants' and bars' dining rooms. By that point, government meetings and events were already getting cancelled left and right. When I talked to my mom on the phone, I said that i was worried about my assignments ( Read more... )

I'm still not entirely sure what happened - except that I asked someone out and got rejected. But I suppose everything else is window-dressing ( Read more... )

Since Grandpa Gena P. came back to St. Petersburg, I've been getting more information about what happened with Grandma Tanya since she had a strokeThing is, he has been kind of circumspect about certain details, and I didn't really feel like pushing my grandfather too hard. But, as it's often the case with journalism, sometimes you need to ask the ( Read more... )

I've been talking to Grandpa Gena P, my paternal grandfather, on almost weekly basis thanks to Skype. I haven't really written about all the health stuff he's been through over the past two years, and that deserves a separate post, but suffice to say that I'm glad that his doctor allowed him to spend the summer a village in his native Belarus, and ( Read more... )

Back in 2002, my great-uncle, Grandpa Slava, wrote a memoir about his mother, my great-grandmother, the one who my mom is named after. For those of you new to this blog, here is a brief rundown of why this isn't, to put it mildly, a happy story ( Read more... )

So, at some point between 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM, the management posted notices at all entrances, exists and other strategic locations throughout the building that there will be "financial walkthrough inspection" starting this Wednesday morning. That there will be an inspection of random apartments. And googling the last two words led to this:

An ( Read more... )

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Back on the afternoon of March 13, I got an e-mail from my editor at the Cook County Chronicle. They had to cut their freelance budget, he wrote. While I could turn in the article I worked on for that week and get paid for it, but past that, they wouldn’t pay for anything. Not even the three articles that were already approved a few weeks earlier.
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Today marks the 58th anniversary of the death of the great-grandmother I never got to meet, one of the thousands of victims of Stalin's regime. She lived long enough to be rehabilitated, but by that time, the intelligent, tenacious woman I've glimpsed through letters and stories of those who knew her was far too broken. She died too young ( Read more... )