During her long life, Poulina Samoylovskaya has lived in four countries, but she’s actually emigrated only once — when she took off for the United States in 1992. She lived in the three other nations without ever having to leave her hometown of Kiev. Born in imperial Russia in 1904, Samoylovskaya became a citizen of […]
Mila Dvoretskaya-Lemme
Mila Dvoretskaya-Lemme came to Springfield this summer as a newlywed. She is a
correspondent for Our Fair, a weekly
in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, and was the
subject of a recent column in Illinois Times.
Posted inNews
Coming home
Like any proud parent, Jeff Elston happily shows off pictures of his three children. Many people know that he and his wife, Toni, went to Ukraine to adopt two of them. But when they try to guess which is the couple’s natural child, they’re usually wrong, he says. Riker, who looks exactly like Jeff, is […]
Posted inNews
Privilege to give
They say it’s better to give than to receive. I went to last week’s Christmas food-and-gift giveaway at the Salvation Army to find out why — and what I discovered is that even for those with the least ability to help, the desire to give is never absent. Lubenia went to the giveaway to collect […]
Posted inOpinion
“Clean city” depends on where you look
My first impression of Springfield was “What a clean city!” But the longer I live here, the more I understand that this impression depends on where one is in the capital city. Yes, compared with any post-Soviet city, everything is neat in downtown Springfield: no discarded paper or shopping bags in the streets (which is […]
Posted inOpinion
Taking the public out of transit
My four months of struggle with Springfield’s public-transportation system makes me sure that people who don’t have cars here are victims of discrimination. Like most residents of my native Kazakhstan, I have never driven in my life. When I came here, I was sure that public transit would be better than it was at home. […]
