The Ukraine

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From FaceBook post 11.3.25 by Volodymyr Vlad Kunko

I want to remember this and keep this photo here.

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March 2022 Kharkiv, Ukraine

This is not 1941 – it’s March 2022, Kharkiv. I turned a color photo into black and white.

This photo could be called “February–March 2022: The Railway Stations of Ukraine.”

My colleague, along with her daughter and little granddaughter, took a train like this one after spending several days at the Kyiv railway station.

Everything here is told from her words, exactly as she described it.

… Evacuation trains from Kyiv departed overcrowded, tense, and silent.

Confused, frightened children, nervous animals, tired and exhausted people. Some were lucky to find a seat, others simply collapsed onto the floor in the aisles and vestibules. Few belongings – yet they took up all the space that remained.

As the train pulled away from the station, the lights inside almost immediately went out. From near the doors, someone quietly passed along instructions: no phones, no bright lights, no internet connection, and God forbid – no geolocation. Everyone obediently dimmed their screens.

Darkness. Silence. The train crept carefully through equally dark fields and villages. Sometimes it paused, sometimes it jolted forward.

The children began to fuss – cartoons, bathroom, candy … There was nowhere to walk, and reaching the toilet was nearly impossible. But everyone understood, tucking in their legs, trying to make room. Parents did their best to calm the little ones, but as soon as one end of the car grew quiet, the other side woke up again.

An hour passed. Then another. By the normal schedule, they should already have been near Vinnytsia. They were told they wouldn’t reach Vinnytsia for at least two more hours – and there might not even be a stop. Some tried to protest, but they were quickly hushed. The children fell asleep. It became hot and stuffy. Boring. Frightening. They wanted to drink, but remembered – there would be no easy trips to the toilet.

Lights appeared ahead – Vinnytsia. The train sped through without stopping. The next possible stop: Khmelnytskyi. No one knew when they would get there.

Time dragged slowly. The children woke, and the cycle began again.

More lights ahead. The train slowed, the cabin lights flickered on. Everyone squinted, pulled out their phones, tried to check what was happening.

They arrived at a station. A voice announced a 5-minute stop. Some people frantically grabbed their things, their children, their cats – pushing toward the exit. They jumped onto the platform, but the car didn’t get any emptier.

Suddenly, a huge checkered market bag was thrown into the vestibule, then another two, and finally two women dragged in a fourth.

People began to grumble – “Where are you putting all that? There’s no room as it is!”

Someone replied, “Maybe there’s an animal inside, don’t start with them now.”

The women paid no attention. With quick, practiced motions, they opened the bags and began tossing small packages into the hands of those nearby.

“Quickly, pass them down! Three minutes left!”

People obediently passed them along. One bag empty, then another, and another.

Those still half-asleep tried to understand what was being handed to them.

One of the women shouted into the car:

— “Are there small children here?”

— “Yes!”

— “How many?”

— “About twenty.”

She opened the last bag and shook out more packages.

– “Pass them to the mothers!”

And through the car it rippled like a wave: “Pass them to the mothers, pass them to the mothers …”

The train jerked forward. One woman quickly gathered the empty bags, the other tossed the remaining packages onto the floor, and both jumped back out onto the platform.

“Liuda, water!”

Two crates of water were thrown into the vestibule just as the train started moving.

When people came to their senses, they began to open the packages they had been handed.

Each one contained three oatmeal cookies, a small cheese sandwich, a sandwich with butter and sausage, an apple, two chocolate candies, and a few “rachky” (caramel sweets).

The packages meant “for the mothers” contained a couple of diapers and three packs of baby food.

The lights went out again. Silence – only the rustle of candy wrappers and whispers asking for water.

Someone said the next stop would be Ternopil – but maybe there wouldn’t be a stop at all.

The dark train crept on through the dark fields and villages.

— Anastasia Haridzhuk

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Sharing with Sepia Saturday

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Two years later, Christmas 2025

“This year,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, “many Ukrainians are not at home — and some no longer have a home. But Russia cannot bomb or occupy what matters most: our Ukrainian heart, our faith in one another, and our unity.”

Zelensky contrasted Christmas music with the sounds of drones and missiles — the “noise of evil” that authoritarian power brings when it tries to crush a democratic nation by force.

On Christmas Eve, Russia again launched mass attacks — waves of Shahed drones and missiles. Zelensky framed the assault as the work of a regime with “nothing in common with Christianity — or anything human.”

2025

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Now, February 2026, a Norwegian member of the Nobel Committee has brought Zelensky's name into consideration for the Peace Prize.

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By Ukrainian artists, Anya Stasenko and Slava Leontiev

Subjects of the movie, Porcelain War. It shows actual videos of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

Please understand the importance of The Ukraine to all of Europe.

Maybe the Angry Women - 12

It was 1963.

New York City.

A twenty-eight-year-old freelance journalist was trying to get a serious assignment. She wanted to write about politics. She wanted to write about the growing civil rights movement.

But the male editors at the major magazines just laughed at her. They told her she was too pretty to be a serious reporter. They handed her assignments about nylon stockings, dating tips, and how to cook for a husband.

She realized that the media establishment was never going to give her a seat at the table. So, she decided to blow up the table.

She shoved her feet into three-inch stiletto heels. She strapped herself into a suffocatingly tight satin bodice. She pinned a fluffy white tail to her back and put on a pair of fake ears.

Her name was Gloria Steinem.

She went undercover as a "Bunny" at Hugh Hefner's wildly popular Playboy Club in Manhattan.

The media had spent years selling the Playboy Club as the ultimate symbol of glamorous, liberated, modern sexuality. Gloria didn't buy it. She suspected it was just the same old exploitation wrapped in a shiny new bow.

She was right.

She spent weeks working inside the club, taking meticulous notes. She documented the grueling physical demands, the rampant, normalized sexual harassment from customers, and the mathematically rigged wage system that kept the women broke and dependent on the club.

She published her two-part exposé, "A Bunny's Tale." It was a sensation. It completely shattered the glamorous facade of Hefner's empire.

But exposing the Playboy Club wasn't her endgame. It was just her opening act.

Gloria realized that as long as she was writing for magazines owned and edited by men, she would always be playing by their rules. The stories that actually mattered to women domestic violence, workplace discrimination, the fight for reproductive rights were considered "unprintable" by the mainstream press.

So, in 1971, she joined forces with a group of fierce, radical women to do something unprecedented.

They launched their own magazine.

They called it Ms. The title itself was a rebellion. At the time, women were defined entirely by their marital status Miss if you were single, Mrs. if you belonged to a man. Ms. was a declaration of independence.

The male publishing executives predicted the magazine would be a catastrophic failure. They gave it a month.

The preview issue sold out of its 300,000-copy run in just eight days.

Ms. magazine gave an entire generation of women the vocabulary to articulate their oppression. It became the beating heart of the second-wave feminist movement.

Gloria became the most famous feminist in the world. With her signature aviator glasses and streaked hair, she weaponized the very same conventional attractiveness that the media had tried to use to dismiss her. She forced the television cameras to pay attention, and when they rolled, she hit them with razor-sharp, unapologetic political demands.

She spent decades traveling the globe, organizing strikes, marching for the Equal Rights Amendment, and building a movement that spanned class and racial lines.

She is now in her nineties, and she has never stopped fighting.

As she famously warned: "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."

She taught us that if the establishment refuses to let you tell your story, you don't lower your voice. You build your own printing press.

She was the brilliant political journalist who went undercover in a bunny suit to expose an exploitative empire, and then forged a publishing revolution that fundamentally changed what it meant to be a woman in America."

SOURCE: Giggle Grid FB page

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"As a woman I am extremely aware that the reason I have my rights is because a woman somewhere got up, got MOUTHY, organised, raged, made herself INCREDIBLY inconvenient until things changed for the better for all of us. Which is precisely why I see women who uphold the patriarchy as traitors to all women. It's wild how some women are so quick to benefit from the sacrifices of others, yet they won't lift a finger to challenge the system.

These women are complicit in their own oppression, and it's heartbreaking. They're perpetuating the same toxic ideologies that have held us back for centuries. Newsflash: if you're not actively working to dismantle the patriarchy, you're contributing to it.

We need to call out these women, not celebrate them. We need to recognize the harm they're causing and encourage them to do better. The women who fought for our rights didn't do it so we could be silent accomplices to the system.

How do you think we can hold women accountable for upholding the patriarchy?

SOURCE: FB page Real Point

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Portland, Oregon! Showing up for multiracial democracy! For Renee Good and the people of Minneapolis! Out against the nightmare of violent authoritarian rule.