Greetings, friends. (XL)

Greetings, friends. It’s the extra large edition of this journal! I’m kidding. Actually this post will be shorter than others, probably. I wonder when I will give up on using Roman numerals to sequence them.

I received a number of deeply sympathetic responses to my post about inheriting a bucket of fermented urine. I am grateful for everyone’s expressions of compassion and understanding.

It was hard to talk about. I told Adah I was going to write about the experience. She asked me if I was going to be explicit about what I thought the contents of the bucket were. I said I was not, because I was concerned that the details would be off-putting to the friends reading this. It’s just gross, ya know?

“But,” Adah said, “That’s what makes it so hilarious!”

As usual my sister is wiser than I am.

The thing that struck me from your varied and thoughtful responses was how many of you have been through this, or are aware that you have some version of this to look forward to. It is baffling to me that literally everyone dies, and yet so many of us cannot look past the heartache of departing this life, and all the plans to be left undone, in order to think compassionately of the loved ones they are leaving behind. Death is universal and yet, at least in our society, everyone seems utterly unprepared to deal with it.

I am trying to respond to every comment. But I will summarize by saying that you have my sympathies in return.

On a thoroughly different topic, yesterday was the one year anniversary of Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine. I say “latest” because the ongoing war of aggression by Russia against its much smaller neighbor actually started almost exactly nine years ago in Feburary 2014, when Putin declared publicly that Donbas was actually rightfully Russian.

I have always admired the grimly cheerful patience of the Ukrainian people I have had the privilege to meet. When I rented a car in Lviv to drive out to the countryside around Tarnopol, I had to sign a rider to the contract agreeing not to drive the car into Donbas or Luhansk.

I said to the rental agent, quite inappropriately, “There’s no prohibition on driving to Pripyat?” Meaning, the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The agent looked at me deadpan and, with the tiniest of smiles said, “There is no prohibition. It won’t hurt the car.”

The Ukrainian people are engaged in a struggle for their freedom in an era of creeping fascism and despotism. They are justified in using whatever means at their disposal, short of war crimes, to evict every last Russian soldier and mercenary from their soil forever, including Crimea, Luhansk, and Donbas. They are fighting on the literal front lines of the democratic world. They are protecting us. They deserve our help.

I have donated sums to organizations there who buy drones for military purposes. It doesn’t feel like enough. I emailed the consulate in San Francisco a year ago to find out what the requirements for joining the Ukrainian foreign legion were. They never answered. They were probably too busy to reply to an idiot with no military training. I feel fortunate in some sense that I broke my ankle in a motorcycle accident the following weekend because it probably saved me from doing something stupid.

Anyway, Putin is such a parody of a comic book villain that it would be laughable if were not so absolutely evil. Putin is evil, his war is evil, and the incompetence of his army is the laughable consequence of despotism. I hope he dies in miserable agony, but that still would not be justice for his crimes.

I am a Jew whose ancestors fled what is now Ukraine because, honestly, Ukrainian society has been pretty damned anti-Semitic at times. I have had to reckon with myself over brandishing their patriotic symbols, like the flag decal I put on my car. But it makes me feel better to see it and make other people see it.

Meanwhile, their president is a Jew and also a goddamn hero and I hope those facts make Putin seethe with jealousy every time he thinks about it.

I don’t know. You didn’t come here to read this, because I’m not saying anything new. But do me a favor please and think about what you can do to help those people. I guess I’m going to donate more money. Let me know if you know of or can think of anything else that might help.

I got one last thing to say about it: Slava Ukraini, heroiam slava! Glory to the heroes, glory to Ukraine! 🇺🇦