Family

Posts about both sides of my family

Her Last Easter in Russia Before They Escaped

My grandmother did not spend her last Easter in Russia at the beautiful Assumption Cathedral in Novorossiysk (pic above) but she did help decorate it on the Saturday afternoon before Easter, as described in her book, Upheaval. She was in Novorossiysk in the spring of 1919 waiting for my grandfather

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The Woman Carrying Two Giant Easter Eggs

Among the many postcards my mother and grandparents collected over the years is one which definitely speaks of Easter (pictured above). It is of a lady dressed colourfully, with a small red hat on her dark brown hair, an upturned collar and what looks like a green scarf tied around

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What will the world be like when all this is over?

As that virus plays havoc with hospitals and health workers the world over, I am guessing its impact on the world’s economy will be felt long after a vaccine is discovered. I often try to find similarities between current world events and those which took place in the history of

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Sick and Desperate: no hospital would admit her

Surrounded by panic about the spread of Covid-19, what better way to spend an afternoon than researching my grandmother’s experience with disease during the Russian Revolution. I turned to her book, Upheaval, to find out how she was affected. She is not the best at recording dates, but I can

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Looking through more than one window

There is a Chinese proverb about learning languages which goes: “To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world”. For a few years now I have been learning German. Although I stopped formal lessons some time ago, I have a couple of

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Past Pandemics: Did the Spanish Flu Kill Young Gabriele?

The Corona Virus, or COVID 19 as we are being told to call it, is everywhere. And when I say everywhere I mean reports of it are on every news channel and social media site. It is now officially a pandemic. Contagious by nature, the fear of it is contagious

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