I went to a new local restaurant with a friend. And then people started coming in, and I know most of them. Then we heard sounds of an outdoor concert outside, and people started asking what it was, and I not only know who organized it but also one of the musicians in the band, and who started the band many years ago. It’s that guy I blogged about who was child free and then rediscovered himself as a happy family man.

Fifteen years ago, I would have hated it. I would have felt boxed in and provincial. But now I’m loving it. I feel like I’m part of this place.

Had to share, had to share my adventures in hair care.

I don’t know if people are noticing but in the leftist media there’s been an avalanche of anti-Ukrainian propaganda in the past couple of weeks. Washington Post comes out with some outlandish anti-Ukrainian conspiracy theory at least once a day. CBS aired an anti-Ukraine “documentary.” Amnesty International published a statement that Ukraine’s military endangered civilians by engaging in military action. The New York Times isn’t as bad as WashPo but it’s doing this, too.

Part of it is the usual leftist incapacity to like anybody they can’t condescend to. If you aren’t a pathetic, miserable, weepy victim, they don’t like you.

But the attack is so concerted and massive that there’s clearly something more insidious behind it.

This is an absolutely true story: I was once invited to a meeting to set a date for a meeting where we were going to plan a future event.

I only went because I thought there was a glitch in the email. Surely, nobody could meet to decide when to meet. Other than me, there were only 3 other people in that group. How was it possible that they seriously wanted to have a meeting to set the date for a meeting?

I probably looked so scandalized that people felt offended and never invited me again. Which is just as well because I wouldn’t have gone anyway.

When I’m in online events with Ukrainians who are in Ukraine, I always notice that, far from draining one’s energy, they give energy. I don’t understand how it happens but it does.

Yesterday, for instance, I started the day with a long, painful Zoom meeting with a colleague who is experiencing an imaginary oppression and several administrators who refuse to see said colleague as oppressed. This was very energy-draining. Then I had two more very depleting conversations with people on campus. Nothing major but it’s the kind of conversations that leave you eager not to talk or do much of anything for the rest of the day. I was completely beat.

And then at 6 pm I was in a Zoom event with a guy in Ukraine who goes into the heavily affected areas to find children in need of psychological rehabilitation. Not the happiest activity in the world. When the event started, it was 2 am in Ukraine. But somehow, at the end of a long, extremely hot and probably very grueling day, the Ukrainian guy had such luminous energy coming off him that it completely recharged me. When the event ended, I felt as if it were 9 am again, and I was fresh and ready to start the day.

The guy wasn’t a victim. He was a person with a quiet, self-sufficient certainty of purpose.

In other news, my sister in Canada had to make an appointment for her kid with a private pediatrician because – get this – public healthcare no longer provides pediatricians and has declared that children don’t need yearly (or any other) medical checkups. She received that piece of medical wisdom completely free. If you don’t count the ruinous taxes, of course.

So pediatricians gone, care for the disabled gone. There are still tons of COVID tests for everybody who needs them or not. Yay for free healthcare.