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and where my siblings were born and had died. It was overwhelming. Kilochky had not changed much since my parents left it 50 years before. The villagers were the descendants of those who had lived there at the time, and I was still able to see my grandfather's furrow between his field and his neighbor's. Only the ravine, where the bodies of the innocent victim's of Ukraine's Great Famine had been thrown, had changed. It had been leveled off, and a children's playground now stood on the site. The children were there the day I arrived, surprised that God was in their midst. For the first time, a prayer was intoned on their playground, smoke from the censer rising to heaven and pro claiming God's love and the promise of resurrection for the innocent souls. "Four Ears of Com" was originally published in 1993 in Witness, Stories o f Genocide and Urban Survival, created for middle school children in Chi cago through a grant from the City of Chicago's De partment of Cultural Affairs. The author is a mem ber of Chicago's UNWLA Branch 29. We would like to thank our authors for the wonder ful articles that they contribute to Our Life. We also appreciate comments from our readers and hope that you write and share your opinions about the materi als that we publish. Please forward your articles or letters to English language editor Tamara Stadny- chenko c/o UNWLA headquarters. We ask that all contributors include a telephone number to allow us to acknowledge submissions and verify information. As a young girl, I engaged in an activity pursued by many of my peers: I kept a diary, noting for myself (and perhaps for posterity) things I had done or seen that seemed meaningful and worth writing about. At first glance, it might seem a little pointless to be resuming a diary at my age (I am turning 50 this year), but somewhere in the first few days of the New Year, that’s exactly what I decided to do. I sat down at my computer and started typ ing, my fingers barely keeping up with a rapid suc cession of somewhat disjointed thoughts. While typ ing, I flashed back to the last diary I had: a cute little book covered in bright yellow fabric with a green and orange crocheted flower on top, which I used to lock with a tiny gold key and hide it in my dresser drawer under my socks. I was 13 years old. Admit tedly, the gap between the last entry in that yellow diary and the first entry on my Dell computer is pretty long— 37 years—but what the heck. A part of me thinks that all the interesting things in my life have already happened and my di ary entries from now on will contain nothing more exciting than which cereal I had for breakfast. After all, I have reached a very satisfying point in my ca reer; I’ve had two wonderful jobs: one at Radio Lib erty as an international broadcaster and another with the US Department of State for the last decade. I’ve lived abroad, hiked the Amazon rainforest, traveled throughout the world, parasailed in the Caribbean, and met and worked professionally with world lead ers. I’ve witnessed (and sometimes participated in) great events that have changed history, events I thought would never happen in my lifetime: the fall of the Soviet Union, the independence of Ukraine, the “Orange Revolution.” At 13, I was trying to convince the world that Ukraine was indeed a country, with a separate identity. My dairy entries commented on how unfair and insulting it was to lump Ukraine together with other ethnic groups that were all labeled “Russian.” At the time, I was dressing up in my embroidered blouse and marching in demonstrations down New York’s 5th Avenue in support of Captive Nations Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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