Stumpp Book Quirks Strike Again

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Feb 052023
 
Stumpp Book Quirks Strike Again

You find the darndest things in the Stumpp book.[1] It’s a classic and almost beloved reference work for those researching their German ancestors who settled in the Russian Empire. It’s also infuriating for its gaps and sometimes just plain wrong information. And then other times, it’s…well…quirky. Lists of Odessa City Germans When Glueckstal researcher Tom […Read more]

Pandemic Perspective

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Apr 012020
 
Pandemic Perspective

I’m an explorer. Whether it’s traveling to explore ancestral towns, traveling to explore new places with friends and family, checking out new hiking trails in the mountains, or simply trying a new restaurant in my neighborhood, my life is all about being out and about. So being in lockdown for weeks, with no known end […Read more]

Adventures of an Election Observer

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Oct 242016
 
Adventures of an Election Observer

My reason for being in Ukraine became abundantly clear in a rundown bar on a Sunday morning in Odessa. I was serving as an international observer at Ukraine’s first parliamentary election after the Maidan Revolution had toppled the corrupt, Putin-puppet president eight months earlier. My observation partner, Kevin, and I had started the day early, […Read more]

Revolution is Coming

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May 302016
 
Revolution is Coming

There was joy. There was singing and dancing and borscht. There was violence and death. Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution was a complex progression of populist protest, community gathering, and deadly serious revolution that cost people their lives. Counting Sheep, the interactive “guerrilla folk opera,” brilliantly portrays Ukrainians’ hopes for a better future as they stand up […Read more]

Mar 092016
 
Hope/Nadiya/надія

I am an idiot. In the space of about 18 hours, I participated in two demonstrations (one in pouring rain), tweeted about both, participated in a Twitter storm (an online protest), wrote emails to my senators and congressional representative, and prayed for Nadiya Savchenko. Nadiya is a woman to admire—a pilot who was the first […Read more]

Feb 172016
 
Pilgrimage to Maidan

“I’m dying.” –Tweet from a 21-year-old volunteer medic, Olesya Zhukovskaya, February 20, 2014. This update was the first thing I saw in my Facebook feed that morning two years ago. I’d woken up determined to cut back on my obsessive reading of news about Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution. Since the day in November 2013 when brutal […Read more]