“Chernobus”

July 17th, 2026 - widespread fires from Canada has engulfed our city in dense smoke and barely breathable air.

My son just sent me this photo he took this morning while driving to his summer internship on the other side of Columbus.  He, my daughter, and I are watching “Chernobyl” on HBO and they are captivated by the whole phenomenon that played out at the end of my junior year of high school in the Ukraine.  We’re only two episodes in and they have been asking me a ton of questions about the time period and its cultural context.  

I am thoroughly enjoying it because I was a History and Political Science major at a conservative college where the Soviet Union was their favorite whipping boy and its dissolution was still a few years in the future.  And when I say “thoroughly enjoying it” I am well aware of the contradiction that that poses considering the horror of the situation and the potential it had for making a large swath of that region, to include western European countries, uninhabitable.

So my son sends me “Chernobus” and I can’t help but LOL at the creative spin he has put on this dark series we are watching together, tying it to our current pollution calamity where heavy smoke from Canadian fires has descended on our city.  He shared it in the chat that includes my daughter and so she added to the surreality of it by posting her own photo of a lifeguard getting ready to go out to the pool where she works.  These are strange times we live in…

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