On this one-year anniversary of you-know-who moving back into the White House, I’ve decided to take a break from politics for a few hours and look instead at what’s going on in the rest of the world: specifically, with my two favorite Russian-emigre families, the Canadian Feenstras (currently in Ontario) and the Australian Pulleys (holding down the fort in Nizhny Novgorod).

Not surprisingly, since it is January and the two locations are situated at nearly the same northern parallel, the common denominator is snow . . . and lots of it. But their lives couldn’t be any more different at the moment.

While the Feenstras celebrate son Eli’s eighth birthday with a day at the bowling alley, followed by a party at home featuring a figure-8-shaped cake baked by Nana and gifts of Legos, trucks and books:

. . . the Pulleys — with the farm buried in two feet of new-fallen snow and temperatures falling to -20 C. — dig their way out in order for Jason to be able to help a friend who lives at some (unspecified) distance, who is having to deal with the local police authorities. As he explains, she is not in trouble with the law; but her house, which had previously been shot at by a person or persons unknown, has now also been set afire while she was at home.

He didn’t go into further detail as to the extent of the damage, though fortunately no one was injured. But a police investigation in Russia has to be a scary thing, and the victim is lucky to have a friend like Jason to help her through it.

I do hope he follows up on this story, and that it turns out to be an isolated incident and not a local crime wave. I would hate to think of the Feenstras having moved to Russia to raise their children in their idea of a safe place, only to find that there are bad people everywhere.

But enough sarcasm.

Anita Pulley also commented, on a separate YouTube video, that there was a possibility of their “disappearing” from that channel, and that they can now also be found on the state-operated VK network — Russia’s answer to Facebook. So we have further verification of the current Kremlin crackdown on communications, which, while not surprising, is a disturbing reminder of the progressive “Sovietization” of the Putin regime.

And I find myself wondering again whether there is more behind this lengthy sojourn of the Feenstras than we are being told. With eldest daughter Cora having taken a job in Ontario for three months while the rest of the family plans to be on a road trip through the United States, and the Pulleys amping up their broadcasts from the farm in Nizhny Novgorod, this is looking much less like a vacation and more like a transition.

Of course, I could be reading too much into it. But we’ll see.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
1/20/26