Blogs which describe moments in my life, or the lives of my family.
Surrounded by panic about the spread of Covid-19, what better way to spend an afternoon than researching my grandmother’s experience with disease during the Russian Revolution. I turned to her book, Upheaval, to find out how she was affected. She is not the best at recording dates, but I can
There is a Chinese proverb about learning languages which goes: “To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world”. For a few years now I have been learning German. Although I stopped formal lessons some time ago, I have a couple of
The Corona Virus, or COVID 19 as we are being told to call it, is everywhere. And when I say everywhere I mean reports of it are on every news channel and social media site. It is now officially a pandemic. Contagious by nature, the fear of it is contagious
The photo collage above shows various pictures of the strong women in my immediate family – my mother, and both my grandmothers. I do not have to look very far from these three women to find strength, courage and determination. Although from different backgrounds, both of my grandmothers were refugees,
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once wrote, “Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.” If I can make a judgement from this comment alone, my parents, especially my father, left me a very substantial way to remember them. The tub in the photo only holds
Apparently my grandmother kept a diary. It was brought to my attention last week when a friend, who speaks Russian, was kind enough to look through the documents I have. With her help I have been able to label and sort the various papers. Now I know what I should