Burning not blogging

I won’t be blogging this week as I head off to Emergence Burn north of Charleston, but I do want to alert my readers to be thinking of Al Petelin, the young Russian artist whose drawing I bought last fall.

Al lives in Astrakhan, Russia. I’ve been thinking of him as the situation worsens, and yesterday I got an email from him. He is, as you might expect, depressed and angry. Almost all of his sales are in Europe, managed online, and that has suddenly come to an end.

His last Facebook post was Mar 11, and of course Putin has shut down Facebook as antithetical to Russia’s goals. Al has taken down the page with his artwork on his website. I was frankly surprised to receive an email from him.

Al is angry at his country, disgusted with its leaders. He finds himself unable to create, and we all know what that’s like.

I know this post is disjointed, but what can I say that would be helpful or comforting? Just be thinking of him. Yes, he’s safe at home; he’s not being shelled or shot at; he’s not having to escape to Poland. He would be the first to tell you that his situation is really not comparable to that of the Ukrainians. But I think I’m right to be concerned for him.