We got some news about flooded Hola Prystan from guests at our barbecue last weekend. The news trickles out slowly. The only communications medium remaining is SMS, and that only works sometimes.
George's parents' house was under 6 feet of water. They accepted the invitation to go to a friends house that was under a bit less. Somehow they kept their noses above water – I don't know if it was on the roof or a second floor.
As in communist days, an odd assortment of people took care of each other. George described one strapping young fellow about his age, strong but somewhat lacking in social skills. He was welcome in the group because they needed his physical strength. They tolerated the fact that he had a large appetite and was oblivious to the fact that groceries were limited.
George's parents cannot move back home. The interior walls of the 110-year-old structure, made of adobe, simply melted in the flood. As the water has receded they have retrieved their belongings by digging through the mud.
They repeatedly turned down the Russians' offers to ferry them to safety. They understand that people who accepted the offer wind up 50 km or so distant and beholden to the Russians. They want no part of it. George's parents observed that there are enough abandoned houses in the town that they will have no trouble finding a place to live.
George made the wry observation that as he was in the middle of one of these difficult exchanges of messages, his parents texted that they had to go. It was time for tea. Despite all the hardship civil life goes on.
I had a Mike Rowe experience this morning. Yesterday the exercise bicycle I bought used five years ago crapped out. My constant pedaling had made the weld that held the seat post to the frame give out. Metal fatigue.
I took the seat off the post and took it down to the outdoor hardware market which is also home to people who fix lawnmowers, pumps and stuff like that. I was pretty sure I had seen a welder down there.
I found a 60-ish fellow hard at work welding. I showed him the problem, which he understood immediately. Understanding me was a bit more of a trick. An 80-year-old American shows up by bicycle, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, having broken his exercise bicycle through overuse. It is not a story they see every day in Ukraine.
The guy did a very thorough job, taking all the plastic parts off so there was nothing left but steel. He anchored it to a workbench and went at it with an electric welding apparatus. The kind that has clamp holding a cathode affixed to one part of the work and a metal anode at the other end to complete the circuit. The electricity goes through the anode, melting and fusing it into place on the work. At least that's my understanding.
The work itself took no more than a couple of minutes, after which he cleaned it up with a drill-driven grindstone and a metal file. He tested it to be sure was strong and gave it to me. He said he would accept what I thought was fair. I gave him $13, certainly more than he usually makes on an hourly basis but clearly worth it to me.
Because Eddie uses the same model bike, I can show how the post looked before it broke and after it was fixed. The broken picture would be the same as on the left, except with a gaping half-moon shaped break in the metal around the right side of the joint between the post and the support.
I come out of it with more appreciation for Ukraine, and he comes out of it with a story to tell his wife when he gets home. A good deal all around. I have put the exercise bike back together and look forward to having at it in an hour or two.
I took advantage of the trip to buy things that are hard to get elsewhere in town. Whole-grain oats to make oatmeal, seeds for lavender, and raw sunflower seeds to bake for Grandpa Sasha, as well as other more common groceries that are simply a bit cheaper at this market.
Eddie will pick up the results of his entrance exam later today. We have established that he did not know how to tackle the simultaneous equations problem - a topic not covered in the 6th grade - and he had made a simple error in a simpler problem, determining the last digit of the number 2023^2023.
There is a second round of testing for children who are not accepted in the first round. It will not break my heart if we do another year of home schooling. This school requires the standard vaccinations, and we are agreed that if we cannot finesse that requirement one way or another he simply won’t attend this school in any case.
That’s the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the kids are now swimming just about every day. I need to wrap up and do so myself.
Dear Graham, the second part of your newsletter brings up many thoughts with me. My late husband was an expert boilermaker/welder and in his last few years worked out of his workshop here on a country road not too far but far enough from Melbourne, Australia. Aside from genuine requests, he would also field a lot a jobs brought in by usually older men dragging a piece of equipment down the driveway. After the person had gone he would call me over to survey the wreckage of some or other machinery part which was riddled with rust and could not be saved. He would carefully make a new part to replace it, muttering away to himself about how some people expected a miracle. He never charged for the amount of time it took to restore the piece to usefulness. The last piece he completed was only a few weeks before his death - the damaged baffle plate of someone's old wood heater. He did it not because he felt up to it which he definitely did not, but because he could not phone up the man and tell him he could not finish the job. These people had so much confidence in him. So yes, I was the wife who got to hear the stories. One frequent comment from both of us was 'How in the name of the Living Jesus did anyone do that?' Your job at least seems self-explanatory.
Floods are terrible, whether man or weather caused. We have been having them frequently lately in this dryest of all continents.
There is a lot of discussion going on about the economic cost of the war to Ukraine and how much money will be needed for Ukraine to ever recover. I think all that talk is utterly misguided. It isn't going to be money from anywhere that will rebuild Ukraine, it will be Ukrainians building and repairing and digging and planting. That is what builds real economies and that is what the Ukrainians seem to excel at. Once the war ends, I predict an economic recovery that will startle the world. As long as the politicans, economists and aid organisations can be prevented from 'helping' too much.