Carol Bergman

And it may seem now like it's someone else's children but there's no such thing as someone else's children…It was just what happened to certain places, to certain people, they became balls of pale white light.

--Omar Al Akkad, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

I try to imagine what it must be like to be a Palestinian right now, to witness another  Nakba (catastrophe)—unfold in real time from a street far away in a peaceful town in the mid-Hudson Valley in New York, and to wonder which friends and relatives have been deracinated from their homes in Gaza, or gravely wounded, or buried under rubble. Was it the same for Jews in the diaspora as the Warsaw Ghetto was obliterated? Such an imagining is both necessary and futile. Necessary to remain sane and empathetic. Futile because the killing juggernaut could not be stopped. The Jewish Holocaust continued unabated,  the promise of a Palestinian nation-state has not been realized, and Khartoum has been over-run by descendants of the murderous Janjaweed militia. How far back in time do we have to go to find such genocidal killing sprees at their source? How far forward in time until they end?  Razan Sadeq-Keyes, resident of Huguenot Street in New Paltz, has created an installation as a set for a theatrical production next to her house that asks us to reflect on the ongoing devastation in Gaza. "I have several Jewish neighbors and they have all been very supportive," she told me in a recent telephone interview.

It took ten days for Razan to write a script for the agitprop production. It was performed by friends and colleagues on Halloween. Resident of Huguenot Street since 2021 with her American-born husband and now two young children, Razan, who works for a tech company, does not have a background in theater. "I felt like a vessel  as I was writing," she told me.  She participated in the performance holding her baby, and describes the emotional sensation as "embodying grief." After the performance, the "set," a replica of a tent in a refugee camp, remains standing.

When her father registered her as a citizen of Palestine in Nablus in the West Bank 25 years ago, Razan could not have understood what it meant.  But she does now. "If Palestine is ever a country, I will have citizenship there," she says.

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Maintaining a sense of humor in an operating theater, while  more or less awake I must add, is not easy. We'd had a 5 a.m. wake-up on the morning of my first cataract surgery, and a humorous perspective, shall we say, was not top of mind. We got there, I paid the hefty co-pay, we relaxed in the waiting room, my husband fell back to sleep under his baseball hat. And then, finally, I was called into the staging area for all the preliminaries—more drops in the eyes, blood pressure, etc. etc. The woman next to me said, "I've heard this surgery is a breeze."

"Well, it depends what you mean by "breeze," I mumbled. I was not feeling particularly breezy. I was tense. I was hungry. I was exhausted. Maybe it was because I had been fasting and was ravenous, or because I'd had little sleep, but it took a while for my observing writer's brain to kick in and note, with satisfaction and curiosity, the diversity of all the attending nurses and techs, particularly their eyewear. One very tall tech was flirting with the anesthesiologist who had just checked my height and weight for what he called  "twilight" anesthesia.  He was handsome, true, but she was embarrassing herself, and me, with the twists and turns of her lanky body. And her eyewear: thick black funky frames. Have you noticed that both men and women are wearing thick funky color-coordinated frames these days? I interrupted her flirtation with, "I like your frames." She turned, laughed, and thanked me.  I was suddenly in focus again, not as a patient, but as a person

Then I started feeling cold and asked for a blanket. I had been instructed to wear a loose-fitting blouse. I don't wear blouses so I borrowed one of my husband's interesting shirts. I liked it, it cheered me, but the surgical staging area was arctic. I asked for a blanket. No problem, it was on me in minutes. I think it was made of disposable papier mâché. It felt like candy floss, more air and light than substance.

Finally it was my turn to be walked into the operating theater and settled onto a slab-like gurney. An array of men dressed in blue scrubs were standing at attention to one side—instrument reps, I think, supervising the installation of an update of the laser? An update!!  So bright were those circular lights that I felt as though I was entering a space ship. I let my mind drift as my surgeon told me I was doing great, really great, and there were only a few seconds left of floating in outer space.

When it was over the doc asked how I was feeling. "It was like childbirth, " I said to her.

"Childbirth?" she asked, perplexed.

I was too drowsy to explain what I meant. And I am not exactly sure what I meant except to say: all the pre-op instructions did not prepare me sufficiently for the actual event. The actual event was much more interesting.

When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.

― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

A pun on eyes to begin my blog post today as I am having cataract surgery on Tuesday. Eye #1 gets an update. And I am relieved; it's blurry. Now comes the hard part: the cost of "laser assisted" surgery which is required in my case. I figure the surgeon knows of what she recommends. I do not doubt her. But my insurance company does. There is only a code for ultrasound, they say, not laser.  Are you sure she is in network?  And so on and so forth, as the conversation spins off into outer space.

Who will take responsibility? Who is in charge? Who will untangle the patient from the tentacles of worry about surgery, payment for the surgery, and the unending phone calls to the provider and the insurance company until she is so exhausted she gives up and pays out of pocket, which is exactly what the insurance company, who is not exactly insuring her, wants her to do.

I have a letter I wrote to United Health Care after my husband's cataract surgery. It's addressed to the former CEO of the company who has since been killed on the streets of New York City. That letter is now a collectible. I suppose the company has had a lot of meetings since then re: how do we save our customer base and grow it? I was not surprised to receive three phone calls in the past three weeks from 1) customer service (Taylor) and 2) the grievance department (Jan). Nice people, both of them. Polite, affable, friendly, interesting, seemingly concerned. Jan grew up in my neighborhood and misses it, Taylor is in South Carolina as he speaks and wishes me well with the surgery. But I still have to pay up front and then apply for reimbursement.

I asked Taylor and Jan if they'd heard of Catch-22, if they know what it is: a world in which no one takes responsibility. My question was a conversation stopper.

So, in a country without the safety net of universal health care, what does health insurance mean exactly? Not enough. It's not a "system" that works, and it is not sustainable.

I reflect often these days on the decade I lived in the UK where everyone is the beneficiary of universal health care and where my daughter was born. Before her birth we received delivery of a "layette," the basic necessities for the first few weeks of life. Our primary care physician made house calls. There was no charge for medications. I could go on.

I am sure much has changed since we left the UK re: problems with funding and waiting lists for life-saving procedures. But the intent is there, and  no matter the government in power, medical care is considered a human right. The populace, meaning everyone,  is spared the indignity and stress of begging an "insurance" company for coverage.  

When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk…

-Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (2005)

Because, to put it reductively, what gets attention is a very different category from what's important for sustaining a flourishing society.

― Chris Hayes, The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource (2025)

I read Postman in grad school and have recently returned to his books in between and alongside Chris Hayes' mindbender. Inspired by Postman and Hayes, kindred thinkers a generation apart, I've been keeping my eye on the firings, defunding, abnegations, and resistance in media organizations.

I am sure, for example, that the commentators on Morning Joe were thrilled when they heard that John Grisham had been booked to publicize "The Widow," his 51st book. There were questions that any experienced journalist might have asked during that interview, but everyone around the table was dumbstruck and fawning. I've always wondered if Grisham had any assistants poring over the news to generate story ideas, or a plot. Why didn't anyone ask that question? And what about his former active opposition to the death penalty? Is he still involved in that struggle given the retro climate in the country? And so on. Instead, Grisham was allowed time to recount his well-known daily writing routine without interruption, and ended with the complacent "and then I go out and play a round of golf."  Everyone dissolved into giggles.

Bad news for professional media watchers accelerated when Bari Weiss became Editor-in-Chief of CBS news and asked—or  insisted, or suggested—that 60-minutes reporter, Leslie Stahl, interview  "peace negotiator" Steve Witkoff and his sidekick, Jared Kushner, last week. Why did Leslie Stahl agree to Weiss's "request?"  What did Bari Weiss, or someone else, say to her behind closed doors? To watch Leslie Stahl stumble as she asked inane questions was painful, until she got to the word "genocide." For an instant, the bold Leslie Stahl surfaced.

The authors of Project 2025 would undoubtedly prefer the silencing of intelligent, informed interlocutors, and an unquestioning stupefied populace, to complete the demolition of American democracy. 

The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.     -John Adams

A people fired ... with love of their country and of liberty, a zeal for the public good, and a noble emulation of glory, will not be disheartened or dispirited by a succession of unfortunate events. But like them, may we learn by defeat the power of becoming invincible.    - Abigail Adams

―  From The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

Early in the morning of the No Kings demonstrations, before sunrise, before breakfast, I called a dear friend in Bath, UK, to remind myself that as much as I resisted leaving England after a decade, an eventual return to America was inevitable for personal, political, professional and historical reason. In conversation with my dear friend, explaining and complaining about all that has transpired here, I wanted to test my commitment to the American Experiment. I complained more than I explained, and for an instant I felt disloyal, which is a strange sensation for me. I consider myself cosmopolitan and transnational most of the time, and I love London (and Bath) with a heart-stopping devotion.  So why this sensation of disloyalty?

I had turned down Austrian and EU citizenship—the  first phase of my self-imposed test—though  I had fantasized often about once again sitting in cafés in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and London and meeting a cohort of writer friends at the end of each working day. But this was before the implementation of Project 2025, the not so slow-moving fascist coup. Now that we are in the midst of a myriad of day-to-day challenges that have impacted every family in my orbit in some way, I cannot imagine jumping ship, or can I?  And how privileged I am to even contemplate such an eventuality.

I put on a yellow headband for No Kings Day. I thought of the British reverence for their still extant monarchy despite the recent disturbing news about Prince Andrew, and an experience I had in the House of Lords when I was called to testify to a committee about an article I'd written for The Times Educational Supplement. And one of the Lords said, "We thank Mrs. Bergman for her article and suggest she return to America posthaste."  If memory serves, and it usually doesn't, I think he also said, "where she belongs."

So, America is where I belong and where I set out on No Kings Day to donate a bag of clothes to a local church and dump my compost in the compost pile before attending a celebration sponsored by the Margaret Wade Lewis Center which will be housed in the Anne Oliver House on Broadhead Avenue in New Paltz. It seemed appropriate on this celebration of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech day to show up there to support Esi Lewis after her house had been violated with racist tropes; the perpetrator has still not been caught. She's the President of the Center; her mother, Margaret Wade Lewis, was one of the first Chairs of the Black Studies Department at SUNY New Paltz. The Ulster County Executive, Jen Metzger, was there, as was the Town Supervisor, Amanda Gotto. I chatted to Amanda about the outpouring of camaraderie, the massive turnouts at protests everywhere, and then snapped some photos. It was a mellow, sunny day and everyone was engaged, high-spirited, and optimistic. 

Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.

-Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech December 10, 1964

The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible, as did our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God.

-President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10 2009

I've been listening to Martin Luther King Jr.'s  and Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speeches—available on the Nobel site. The speeches are biblical in their exalted intensity, though Obama's is sometimes grounded in descriptions of the particular challenges his administration was confronting. Although he sometimes sounded like a preacher, he was not a preacher; he was a politician. King was a schooled preacher, then and now an unsurpassed orator. Both men led their flock to activism and hope.

I thought of both of them today after receiving texts and emails from friends in New Paltz about a disturbing incident that took place just steps away from my home. It has not, as yet, been officially designated a hate crime—motivation must be established—and the perpetrator is at large, but it feels and looks like one to me. It is reminiscent of the swastikas scrawled on Jewish businesses and homes in Germany as Hitler rose to power.

Here is an excerpt from Terence Ward's report in the October 10 issue of Hudson Valley One:

The New Paltz town council member was setting off to drop [Esi] Lewis' nine-year-old at school when the pair saw the graffiti scrawled in dark spray paint on their house, which included crude sexual imagery, a profane instruction regarding an intimate act, and that nine-year-old's name. They were both deeply disturbed, Lewis confirmed. "We are afraid to be home." 

An image of the "graffiti"—a  regrettable use of the word as it implies street art—appeared in the paper. I won't use it to illustrate this blog post, for obvious reasons. 

Just a word about Esi Lewis—a lawyer, the DEI officer for Ulster County, a member of the Town Board, a devoted parent, and the President of the evolving Margaret Wade Lewis Cultural Center in New Paltz, named after her mother, a founding faculty member of the Black Studies Department at SUNY New Paltz. None of my description fully describes Esi's energy and devotion to the town where she was born and raised; she made a conscious decision to return here. As a parent myself, I cannot imagine what it must have felt like to see the verbal attack on her home with her child in tow.

I have interviewed Esi, and crossed paths with her at various events over the years. I trust her deeply-felt concerns about racism in this ostensibly "liberal" town. When I first arrived here in 2018, there was little recognition of the history of enslavement, for example, or the legacy of Jim Crow after emancipation. Much has changed in the intervening years, and awareness is evolving, particularly on Historic Huguenot Street where signage of stone houses with their slave quarters has been updated. 

"People of color are afraid to be involved in public life…We are not honest as a community about racism — it's a real problem. This country was built and founded on racism. We are not immune," Esi told Terence Ward.

I reflect on this dissonant reality often, especially in the current fraught social media-driven climate. The breakdown of civil discourse, the cruelty we witness every day with round-ups and deportations, is inflammatory. Those who hate have been given permission to speak their hatred aloud, or to act on it. Peaceful existence and co-existence cannot be achieved, or re-established, in such an unsettling and unsafe climate.

To understand a working definition of hate speech, and the best protocols to counter its potentially violent effects, consult the UN's Fact Sheet:   https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/notohate_fact_sheets_en.pdf

I wasn't old enough to know how to pretend that everything was fine.

 
-Richard Powers, Playground

I was listening to the #SistersinLaw podcast on the way to the swimming pool. Joyce, Kim, Barbara and Jill have become my best friends of late. Imagined, of course. I turn to them for calm assessment and hope that the "rule of law," as commentators iterate and reiterate ad infinitum, has not been utterly sundered. But on this Saturday morning, the Saturday of which I speak, the sisters were chitchatting as they usually do before they launch into their chosen legal topics of the week, and I was paying close attention to the prompt: what do you do to relax?  The answers were variable, of course. Lots of word games, sports, and walks. Joyce has her chickens, Barbara is a football fan, Jill and Kim enjoy their dogs. The prompt got me to thinking: do I ever relax? Well, I was on the way to the pool to swim my meditative laps so I was confident in that moment, at least, that I do. But there are days when I am not attentive enough to self-care, especially if the news is so engaging, albeit painful, that I cannot quit reading articles about it, or listening to podcasts. PS: I begin my day with a BBC podcast as opposed to NPR these days. "Happy Talk News," has now permeated the American media sphere, corporate overseers are editing copy, firing and shifting personnel, succumbing to pressure, etc. Well, here I go again, and still.

Unlike many in my cohort of friends and family, I have a high tolerance for bad news. I've reported on war, atrocity, discrimination and cruelty often over the years. Indeed, I started writing about tough stuff when I was very young, and the protective callous has rarely been pierced. But I'm older now, feeling more vulnerable, and the cumulative witnessing has taken its toll. Not to mention that the news is more excruciating than it has ever been in my lifetime. Self-care, as modeled by my #SistersinLaw, is essential to continue important work, write freely, and remain steady. To this end, I have established new guidelines for myself and initiated new activities:

   *Fresh air and sunshine, or cloud watching, daily.

* Regular coffee/tea dates with kindred spirits.

*Reread Jane Austen to honor her 250th birthday.

*Visit art galleries with a sketchbook, no words allowed on the page.

* Indulge in restorative naps.  

*No news after 6 p.m.

* Study French yet again.

    *Study German yet again. 

I hope, dear reader, you enjoy my 8-point plan, which is fluid, and will change and amplify, as needed. It requires no diplomacy, abnegation, secrecy, or ultimatums. I thank the #SistersinLaw for leading the way to rest and recovery, by example. I dedicate this blog post to them.

The belief that we have a responsibility to others isn't short sighted sentimentalism; it's the moral foundation of a meaningful life

-Craig Spencer, Emergency Room Physician, NY Times 7/7/25

Basman Dewari and Michal Rubin met in a Consequence Forum Zoom poetry workshop at the end of 2024. Basman, a graduate of Al-Azhar University in Gaza, is a physiotherapist, Michal, a cantor, is also a psychotherapist. He was born in Kuwait, and raised in Gaza by his Palestinian parents; she was born in Israel. Both are poets, both are healers. Michal lives safely in South Carolina, Basman is exiled in Cairo where he happened to be visiting on October 7th. Within days of the Israeli bombardments, his sister, her husband, and children were killed. Ignoring—or momentarily suppressing—his grief, Basman scrambled to save his mother and two brothers; they are now living with him in Cairo.

Once he used to be a morning writer, he told me during a recent Zoom visit, but as his life turned upside down, he began to write in the evenings, though he still wakes "with words in my head." Michal writes when she can in between her professional commitments. Basman cannot work professionally in Cairo, so he spends his days reading and writing, reading and writing. He's in touch with friends still alive in Gaza. Each confirms what we all already know: there is famine, exposure to the elements without the protection of scarce tents, astonishing violence from the sky and at ground level, death everywhere and every day, the hostages long abandoned as collateral damage, many IDF soldiers resistant, or exhausted.

Basman and Michal's initial wariness of one another at the beginning of the poetry workshop has evolved into a deep affection—obvious in our Zoom interview—and  a poetry project culminating in a book, Your Stories Look Me in The Eyes. The poems are  a conversation, a dialogue. Here are two from the poetry workshop, not included in the book. They illustrate how the connection began for Michal and Basman in the midst of war, across the Palestinian-Israeli divide:

I can't finish the story

© by Michal Rubin (March, 2025)

I started something that couldn't wait
when I wanted to be with a girl blinded by a bullet,
a wandering bullet like a wandering Jew that entered
into someone's house, had its own story,
but I met this guy from Gaza, he carried the concrete-
remains of his home in his pockets/

I wanted to tell you about him so you absorb the story
like a bullet that went through the boundary of a body,
it settled inside the wall, evicting the living, expelling
years of ownership sending the carrier of the blinded girl
onto the gravel road, and Basman from Gaza lives
outside of the memories of his dead sister/

the words he scattered around the bodies of his nephews
became sentences my friends don't want to hear,
too painful to know of our capabilities when
we shoot bullets as if people are squirrels,
attacking the bird feeders/

But he kept shooting his words into our eyes
and we wanted to become blind,
so the letters would disappear
inside the black holes
that were stamped
onto our faces/

~

This is the story

© by Basman Derawi (April 2025)

They say in a story you could live forever.
I don't care about "forever".
But I want my sister, my nephews,
my friends to keep living.
To be alive with me at this distant long dark night.

I shoot their name alive tonight on a rooftop,
Scared an advanced technological missile
would assassinate even the names.
I bet no news media would be interested
to tell this boring story.

Yet I would steal a moment,
recreate it in my head.
Where I sit again at Gaza's beach,
Singing with Essa and Ouda,
spitting watermelon's seeds and laughing.

A moment where I hug Eman again.
Ignoring the fact that the physicality of
the moment is stolen forever.
Can I be the thief just one time?

I would carry the pictures of my home on my shoulders.
A blanket to warm me from the coldness of the world
until I could return again in the present.
But every time I look at the blanket,
It's full of the holes of bullets.
I put the blanket on Michal's shoulders
She sees the holes and the remains of me.
But her friends are too blind
as if the snipers are unknown ghosts
and the story should be short.

I don't shoot the words into any eye to see.
I shoot words in the air,
a fragile attempt for one bomb less night.

My throat is hurting from shooting words
for a moment to cry, a moment to a mourn.
for a small spoon of silence from the echoes of explosions.
for being killed seventy-seven years and not being a victim once.
for a cemetery that doesn't swallow the whole earth.

Basman made it clear during our conversation that nothing he writes, or Michal writes, or I write, should contribute to a sensation of "normalization" of the genocidal war against the Palestinian people. There are no "history lessons," here, Michal has said, no justifications or explanations, just literary minds and sensibilities, a heartfelt reaching out, a deep listening through poetry. Nor is the continuing dialogue between the two poets, and between the three of us during the Zoom call, or this blog post, a "solution,"  as posited by pundits and politicians. It is a modest, continuing attempt to deepen the commitment to each other's humanity and shared values, the fervent hope that a sustainable peace will come as Your Stories Look Me in The Eyes goes to press.

I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for my work and the feeling I have for my life.

-Henri Matisse

I am channeling Jenny Holzer this morning, among other artists I have known and  loved. "I want to tell you what I know," she wrote on one of her projected wall pieces, "in case it is of use." And what a visual artist knows is usually expressed without words, or in combination with words in a collage. Linda Appell uses cut or torn fragments of old newspapers to create frames around, or within, her dry point prints. In the image I have chosen to illustrate this blog post, the evocation of a human's loving attachment to a dog is calmly settled in its historic framing, complete and entire.

Linda Appell is a friend, a long ago friend from college in fact, and I reconnected with her and her photographer husband, Michael Gold—whose photos have graced my blogs—when I moved out of the city to Upstate New York. It was a serendipitous reconnection as we'd fallen out of touch for many years, a reconnection for which I am deeply grateful.

We are living through difficult times, and those of us who work as artists—no matter the art form—must make extra efforts to continue generating new work, not only for ourselves, but for the survival of our loving attachments to one another, our beleaguered country, and the world. However we are able to raise reflective sensations through our work is worthwhile, even if it is a struggle. So, when I heard that Linda had attended a print-making workshop over the summer and produced 30 finished pieces, I knew I had to designate a special visit to view her work, and talk about it.

We had tea together that afternoon. Michael set my plate artfully with a single grape in acknowledgment of my peculiar eating habits, and to make me laugh, which I did, of course. He then posted the "still life of a grape on a plate" on his Facebook page.

Those of you who have followed my blog or my publications over the years know that I have a special connection with the visual arts, and have written about art and artists often. My father was a collector, and he also drew well.  He would show me a painting he had just purchased, stand in front of it, and try to explain how it was rendered, and how it made him feel. His love for art remained inside me, as words; I became a writer. And though I became a writer, to be in the presence of visual artists is an inspiration, a pleasure, and a privilege.  

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.

― Confucius

12 p.m.. ET and my phone pings with audio messages on What's App. Peter Zalmayev, well known Ukrainian journalist, has answered all of my questions on Day 362 of his nearly year-long journey in the Global South--40  countries in 400 days. He's in Madagascar as he speaks, recuperating from a tough bout of Covid. "I'm a survivor," he says, as is Ukraine, I wanted to add. But his predictions for Ukraine are grim. "Putin won't give up; he's fixated," he says. How long Ukraine will be able to "outrun the bear," as the Russian saying goes, is unpredictable right now even with more armaments arriving from the EU and Ukraine's revved-up drone factories. His family safely out of the country, Peter has been reporting from the front line and living on his own for nearly three years. He needed a respite, of sorts, one with a purpose: to broadcast Ukraine's struggle and garner support beyond the European nexus.

Tall, bearded, tri-lingual-English, Russian and Ukrainian—Peter has facility with languages, challenging terrain, and circumstances; he crosses borders with ease and greets everyone with curiosity. Like Paul Theroux, his hero, he has avoided air travel so that once he arrives he is already acclimated to a new language and new people. And he's unflappable. He was arrested in Johannesburg when he graffitied an image of Putin on a wall mural. When I wrote to ask if he was okay, he confirmed that he had been released.

First stop in a capital city is usually the Ukrainian ambassador. "They've all been helpful, welcoming. In fact I was dubbed 'unofficial ambassador,'  by one of the diplomats, and though I don't know whether or not Zelensky has been told about my trip, I am sure the Foreign Ministry knows what I have been doing."

With the outsize influence of both Russia and China in the developing world, Peter's presence, albeit unofficial, has raised Europe's profile, as well as Ukraine's. He is interviewed in both the print and broadcast media wherever he lands, continues sending back dispatches to his Sunday television program in Kyiv, "The Week," and remains a steady presence as a commentator on BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and France 4.  His social media feeds go viral.

"I've been gratified by my welcome in every country, astounded really. I'll probably end my journey in Ethiopia and then make a decision about when to return to Kyiv. I know my future will be in Ukraine."  Still? Eventually? He was not explicit. The uncertainty in his voice as he reflects on his future, and that of his children, is understandable. Should Putin ever take Kyiv, Peter and other journalists would be endangered, and the Ukrainian nation once again a vassal state in Putin's Imperium.

 "This war started in 2014 when Putin invaded Crimea," Peter told me during our first interview in 2022. "I knew that when Putin couldn't take Kyiv, it would continue, it would be a much longer war." Unfortunately, his prognosis was correct.  Bombing has intensified since Putin and Trump's "summit" in Alaska, with no end in sight.