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Bread and War

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On Sunday evening we had a very enjoyable Hell's Kitchen party - the weather was beautiful, we had lots of food and drink, and a giant Jenga game! But later that evening, as we were returning home, a bomb hit the large warehouse where 2 months supply of flour for the Kitchen is kept.  Although the bags of flour were not destroyed, the fire damage was so extensive that it will be unusable.  Liuda and Yegor, the Kitchen owners/managers, are looking at options, whilst hoping that our regular donors will help us to replace the flour. One option will be to significantly reduce the number of rolls we make, e.g. by cancelling hospital bread orders. Because, of course, what matters is that hospital patients receive a balanced, nutritious diet of meat, fish or other proteins, carbohydrates - rice, pasta, potatoes (of course!) etc. - and vegetables. But our rolls are delicious, as everybody says, as well as being filling and calorific, and it would be a real shame to take them away. I c...
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Tuesday and Sunday afternoons

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Tuesday is usually my day off. Sometimes there are work meetings but last Tuesday I did normal things, like getting my hair cut and going shopping. It was a warm, sunny day and I spent most of the afternoon sitting on my porch. Although you can hear the sound of traffic, you can also hear birds and insects, and it felt lovely and peaceful. That is, until about 5 pm when I heard the first drone flying past. It continued to sound very close so I went inside, then heard and felt the ground-shaking blast of an explosion. Russian drone strikes continued, sporadically, throughout the evening and overnight on June 10, until the early morning: 26 drone strikes. There was widespread destruction and several injuries but no deaths reported. But on the previous night (June 9) a missile attack on nearby Chuhuiv, Kharkiv region, killed three people, including a 22-year-old woman who was 7 months pregnant.  https://suspilne.media/amp/kharkiv/1326501-so-vidomo-pro-naslidki-raketnoi-ataki-na-cuguiv...
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The month of May

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 It feels like a long time since my last post. Life has become very busy, sometimes stressful, in the last few weeks, with changes in our foreign volunteer management coinciding with a reduced number of  volunteers. In past years I've posted around Vyshyvanka Day (День вишиванки, the annual celebration of Ukraine's traditional vyshyvanka embroidered clothing), but this came and went on 21 May. This year, as well as people wearing their vyshyvanka shirts and dresses, a more poignant tradition was initiated: embroidered ribbons to tie somewhere, as a reminder of those who have lost their lives in this war. Ribbons were placed at the door of Hell's Kitchen for us to take. I placed mine near my apartment, where I'll pass it every day on my way to work. Russia's attacks on civilians have taken a grim turn for the worse, with significantly more drone and missile strikes, reportedly, over the last 2 months. Last Saturday night Russia used its nuclear-capable Oreshnik missi...
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