I learned from the limited resources that exist for family members, when coping with people in our lives who cannot be talked out of extreme conspiracies, we have to remind ourselves that often, “The facts are wrong but the feelings are right.” Bugonia throws that dynamic into sharp relief.

Ah the Jewish Partisans. They made living in the woods and picking off nazis from the bushes look so good.

Because there’s something wrong with me I look for surveillance cameras every time I enter some revered space like this basilica. Here one looks up at nothing in particular, maybe to appreciate a fresco.
Two more exist only to ensure you don’t steal a candle without paying the requisite offering.

Got kinda emotional looking at this little surveillance camera (pan-to-zoom style with a black dome, upper right perched on the brown marble ledge). It just sits there looking at art all day and night, generating thousands of eye-popping images that will mostly never be looked at by anyone.

Another reminder: cranberry sauce is amazing with Hannukah latkes. Consider bringing it back beyond its traditional holiday.

The Lukacs bath complex is an endless maze that feels like you’ve stepped through a portal in time. Most people in there are clearly regulars, and it makes you grateful for the Herculean effort locals put in to ensure it survives the ravages of time and water’s disastrous influence on old buildings.

Pics from the Lukacs baths wiki. Being in here was incredible, what they’ve tried to save of the marble and plasterwork, red grout between tiny pale coral tiles, the old Ottoman powder mill structure that holds these thermal rooms, all as Grand Budapest as it gets. Truly an enchanting old ruin.

And more info on these studios and lithographers: www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/pse-5.htm

Amazing thank you! Seems like a really fascinating lead, potentially a chain of studios across the Russian empire: lusadaran.org/artists/mikh...

Oh gosh, no wonder I was having such a hard time with it. Thank you!

But maybe the wildest thing of all: because of how many people are in this 120-130 y/o portrait, thousands of other Jews alive today can potentially trace their ancestry back to this one photo in my family’s collection. It made it to America when a lot of people didn’t. I’m very lucky to have it.