I look in on Klara at midnight. She sits up in bed, beaming.

“Everything is going great, Mommy!” she reports.

“What’s going great, honey?” I ask.

“The sleeping!” she says and immediately falls back to sleep.

“Паляниця” is a Ukrainian word that means a loaf of bread. It’s being used in the war to identify Russian spies, marauders, provocateurs, etc. Russians notoriously can’t pronounce it. There are hilarious videos of Russian soldiers practicing the word and failing to say it correctly. The articulation apparatus forms in early childhood. After that, the accent remains no matter what you do.

I rarely mention Putin in my posts on the war because I think he’s utterly unimportant and quite coincidental to what’s happening. But this is funny, and it’s good to have some comic relief among the barrage of bad news.

Putin spoke on the subject of the Western economic sanctions on Russia. “Well, so what that there are sanctions?” he said. “The USSR was always under sanctions, yet it achieved enormous successes.”

Russian people now have an opportunity to experience some of the most notable of those successes, such as empty shelves and zinc coffins.

This is an asylum for severely mentally disabled people in Kharkiv:

For now, it looks like the heroic doctors and nurses had managed to get all 330 patients into a bomb shelter before the Russians hit the building. From what I’ve been able to find, everybody survived. Which is great.

But imagine what this must feel like for the mentally disabled patients. Where are they going to go now? These are not people who can get transported easily. And wherever they go, who’s to say that place won’t get bombed tomorrow.

Russians are bombing Lutsk at this moment. Please see where Lutsk is on the map:

Hint: move your eyes closer to Poland.

To avoid sounding like those annoying food bloggers who make you scroll through thousands of words of text to get to the recipe, I’ll share the recipe first and then talk about the history of the dish.

Actually, there isn’t much of a recipe. You take split peas and boil them into oblivion. That’s it. That’s the famous kissel.

Of course, I like to fuss with mine and add a bunch of stuff to it:

• shredded carrots (because I put carrots into everything)
• dried mushrooms
• a cinnamon stick
• a bit of cubed potatoes
• lots of cracked black pepper
• dill
• and one of those Polish mushroom bouillon cubes because I’m addicted to them.

It’s supposed to be boiled down even more but I like some crunch to mine. Make sure there isn’t too much water because this isn’t a soup. Kissel is supposed to go hard overnight in the refrigerator. Then you slice it and heat it up. Or color it with some beet juice and call it “Lenten bologna.”

The pea kissel was very popular before the revolution of 1917. It was the major Lenten dish. But it was considered low-class food. Merchants who struck it rich would hide in their offices, lower the curtains, and indulge in some takeout kissel in secret.

After the revolution, the kissel somehow transformed into a completely different thing. The peas disappeared, and it became a sweet, dessert-type gooey beverage made out of starch, sugar, and some berries.

And here’s a picture of Lenten bologna that I didn’t make but it’s funny and I want to share it:

My university in Ukraine:

The university is the building in the background on the left.

How do the Russian media explain the war on Ukraine, the bombings of daycares and hospitals, and the destruction of residential areas?

Nazis.

Nazis, Nazis, Nazis. Those are all Nazis. And it’s the duty of all good people to kill Nazis. Civilians? Well, they are Nazis. Children? They are being brought up by Nazis to be little Nazis.

Nobody in their right mind would defend Nazis. If anybody annoys you, just call them a Nazi and you can do anything you wish to that dirty Nazi. The real power is the power to decide who’s a Nazi.

Hmm, this sounds strangely familiar but I can’t pinpoint where else I heard this. What a mystery.

This is a short recap of some of the “humanitarian corridors” Russia has used to trap and kill people trying to evacuate:

Doing this is not “manipulation.” But talking about it apparently is.

The exact same people who were posting about the need to resist emotional manipulation by Ukrainians are now posting outraged stories about some utterly fictitious Russians in Texas who got a few nasty looks for speaking Russian in public. Apparently, emotional manipulation is perfectly fine when you approve of the people who are doing the manipulation.

I also find it curious that some people are so tone-deaf and clueless that they are using the word “Russophobia” completely seriously. Yes, it’s unfortunate that a Tchaikovsky concert somewhere was cancelled (and five million others weren’t). I’m against cancelling concerts. But if that’s “a phobia” (and enough already with this medicalized language), then what’s the bombing of Ukrainians with a thermobaric bomb? What’s the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol? If you are so into handing down psychiatric diagnoses, why aren’t you talking about Ukrainophobia?

Also, people who are doing it are all on the right. These are people who should know better. Haven’t “transphobia” and Co taught us anything?

And by the way, I personally stood up against canceling Russian music on my campus. And I’m still proceding with the plan to revive our Russian program. So it’s possible to do this without being a mega-dick and throwing around “phobias.”