Russians have started bombing Donetsk. This finally persuaded my cousins in Donetsk to leave.

I see people on social media express confusion as to why Russia would now start bombing the city it controls, so I’ll explain.

Russia has been sending the troops from the “Donetsk People’s Republic” (a puppet regime Russians established in 2014) to fight in the worst, hottest spots of the war. They are Ukrainians, so why spare their lives? The DPR soldiers have no interest in fighting anywhere outside the Donetsk region, though. They rebel and kill the Russian commanders.

How to motivate them to go and fight? If they have nowhere to go back, if there’s nothing to live for, if their city is razed to the ground, that will motivate them. Especially if you tell them that Ukrainians destroyed Donetsk. So Russia started shelling the city.

Klara and I traveled in business class from Canada (points). At first, the passengers weren’t happy because nobody pays for business class to put up with a small child. But she’s a great traveler. At the end of the trip, the flight attendant asked, “I’m sorry, are you a teacher?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised at how she could know.

“I knew it!” the attendant said. “I’ve never seen a child her age behave so well on a flight. She’s so calm! I knew she had to be a teacher’s child.”

As a reward, the pilot invited Klara into the cabin, let her sit in the co-pilot seat, and explained how everything worked.

The secret to her great in-flight behavior is books on tape. She was listening to her gigantic Wizard of Oz collection for the third time, and that kept her calm and occupied. It was a genius move to get her an Audible. She doesn’t have the reading skills yet to read by herself for hours. But Audible is the next best thing. It does wonders for her vocabulary and gets her in the habit of needing books like one needs air and water.

I’ve noticed several more Ukrainian flags in town since I came back. And I only just came back and haven’t done much driving.

When people put up Ukrainian flags, they invariably pair them with US flags. It will never be not touching to imagine an American in a tiny Midwestern town, preparing the July 4 decorations and thinking of putting up a Ukrainian flag, too. People absolutely don’t have to care, and when they do it means everything.

For some unfathomable reason, the most engrossing books are the ones bought in airport bookstores.

After my father’s death I have done what I’d sworn I was never going to do and returned to paid translation work. And now I’m thinking, why did I ever leave translation to be a scholar? It’s so much easier for me to translate than to write. Writing is bloody torture.

Every day is Father’s Day if you are close with your Dad. Because you live out what he taught you in everything you do.

One of the important things my father taught me that when you experience a tragedy (which everybody does because that’s life), it’s crucial not to turn other people’s lives into hell because you are suffering. It’s a really important lesson.

He also taught me to yell “speedo!” whenever a yellow car passes by on a road. It brightens up any trip, guaranteed.

Happy Father’s Day!

Klara says, “Today was the best day of the trip, Mommy.”

“What did you like about it?”

“I had an important conversation with my uncle.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Family. Food. How I got my toy camel.”

“How did you get your toy camel?”

“Uncle gave it to me.”

The camel has “I ❤️ Qatar” written on its side. It’s really weird to think that the Peruvian uncle gave my American child a toy camel from Qatar while I was at an Indian restaurant with my Ukrainian sister.

A university is a big operation. Sometimes things don’t work as they should. Take toilets. They are crucial. But sometimes plumbing breaks. Our university-wide email notification system informs us if in one of the buildings toilets have to be closed for repairs. Then we know that it’s best to try our luck in other buildings and can plan accordingly.

The new top administrator was scandalized that there are messages about toilets coming through the email notification system. Eeew, nasty. So without warning anybody, he banned tasteless toilet talk from the messaging system.

And then, of course, plumbing broke down in my building. Since nobody received any notice, people were running around the building like scared rabbits, hoping to find a functioning toilet. If you know you’ll have to schlep across campus to do your business, you plan accordingly. But with no warning, it gets icky.

After repeated requests to give us our toilet news back, the new administrator relented. It’s kind of funny, though, that an adult person would have this intense reaction to such a normal, everyday subject.

It rained yesterday in Montreal. Some lightning and thunder, nothing special. It was a rain like a million others. But at the beginning of the rain, everybody got an amber alert-type warning on their phones about the upcoming precipitation. I’m not talking about a text message from a weather service. I’m talking about an alert that one usually gets only in extraordinary situations. The kind that covers your whole screen and you don’t choose whether you want to see it or not.

It turns out that this started with COVID. All of a sudden, the intrusive alert became something that appeared regularly on trivial pretexts.

This is one of the many ways we are trained to exist in a constant state of exception. There’s always a crisis going on. And a crisis justifies extraordinary measures.

People will say this is a little thing, and who cares? But these things always creep up on us in little steps. And then we accept endless intrusions into our phones, homes and bodies in the name of safety. “Oh, it’s just crazy stuff that happens on campuses. It has nothing to do with us.” “Ah, it’s just a phone notification, who cares?” But none of this is accidental. Little by little, it sneaks into every area of life. And then it’s too late to do anything.

I know a soccer fan who travelled to Qatar for the World Cup qualifying games. He says it’s not great at all. Doha is mostly dead. No alcohol is allowed at the stadium, which makes the games boring. I asked what the food is like (because what else do we expect me to ask?), and he said, “Chinese.”

Well, at least it’s an improvement over when the World Cup was held in Russia while Russia was waging a war on a neighboring country and sending mercenaries to Africa and Venezuela. Qatar is downright cute in comparison.