It's much messier than we ever could have known-- more tragic (and beautiful), too.

We're good, but living in a new reality. School and life marches on as we figure out ways to take in and support refugees. Never did we expect to be this close to war. As I read, learn and work to understand the horrors and atrocities that occurred here in Poland 80 years ago these experiences have collided with all that is happening just a few hours away. We are consumed with media and continue to search for ways to process. Our pride and compassion for Poland increases daily as we watch a country who knows all too well what it's neighbors are going through welcome 1M+ refugees into their hearts and their homes.

This winter, I read The Spy Who Loved, MAUS I and II, and Travels with Heroditus. Reading about a Polish-born, female, bad-ass British WWII spy who loved her country and traversed Europe to fight against the Germans all while her country was torn apart by both Russian and German forces helped me to better understand the challenge of watching a war from afar (she is in France in ‘44 when it is liberated only to find out that her country still besieged and had the worse #warsawuprising to come). The MAUS books were in our house before they were in the news because Lolly was teaching them and Reed was reading them. Their learning became our learning with a trip to the Jewish Museum of Warsaw - a place worth exploring time many more times and a must for all visitors. And, with Travels with Heroditus, I am able to see that history truly does repeat itself, here in real-time as we watch our very own empiric battles on the fertile fields of Ukraine.

In our home, the girls now share a room as we opened up a space for a displaced American artist, Clemens Poole (ig) who has been living and working in Ukraine for the past 5+ years. He is now coordinating support efforts to get supplies to the border. He is good friends with a former student, Alex Fisher. He has friends, colleagues and a partner in Ukraine, and the stories and information that he shares with us daily is heart wrenching. Our dinner conversations go on and on, and we never come to any conclusions. We are incredibly fortunate to have him in our home to share his knowledge, experiences and interpretation of all that is coming out of Ukraine at the moment. We literally have history, art and culture lessons nightly.

We are also helping another family - mother and 2 children (ages 7 and 12) - settle in with friends of ours up the street (Miranda Rose and Nicolas Pavlos) as they await entry into Great Britain. They had to say goodbye to their father/husband and dog last week when they fled their homeland. When Lolly spoke to the mom on the phone yesterday, she merely said that she was “glad her kids didn’t have to listen to bombs at night.” I will pick them up on Saturday...the learning continues.

And, today, we had Vice President Harris come to our campus for some meetings and diplomacy. While we didn’t get to meet her (we didn't make that short list), it is surreal to be this close to all that the world is watching.

If you want to help out, there are a ton of ways. Our school is collecting donations, supplies, and funding to help support the refugees - we will use some of this directly with the folks that we are supporting! Check that website out here. We are also looking for ways to help support Clemens and his work. You can message me or Lolly if you want to help provide funding to help him, or get funding more directly to some of the work that we are doing here (for example, the girls went and bought phone battery chargers at the mall the other day to send to the border). We can figure something out, I’m sure (paypal, venmo…etc).

Much love to you all--