Kyiv Dispatch #3: Shirt Happens
In Kyiv, a laundry line becomes a front-row seat to the absurdity of war—and a missile’s wake-up call.
All seemed well when I strung up my laundry Sunday night. Sunset over Kyiv. Cathedral in view. A gentle breeze. I figured by morning I’d have air-kissed, war-zone-crisp shirts.
Does the hotel offer laundry? Sure. For something like $8 a shirt.
Such ripoffery. I’m not buying in. When you cover conflicts, you pack your own clothespins and pray the receipts make sense to HQ.
They dried, yes… but also absorbed the metallic tang of something explosive. A downed Russian drone, apparently, blew up a quarter mile from my hotel while I slept… and then didn’t.
I may reek of gunpowder and ozone…but dammit, I smell like fiscal responsibility.
Oh, and here’s my report from the next day, which includes what it sounded like from my balcony/laundromat.
Dan Rather titled a book The Camera Never Blinks.
My version: The camera never sniffs.
A Line From a Legend
In a warzone wired with chaos and meaning, a note arrives… “Relish it while you can.”
For the past three years, I’ve been trading the occasional email with one of my journalistic gods. Not a hero. The hero. The high priest of the craft. I won’t name him here… hell no. Not without his say-so. You don’t cold-call Olympus asking for a quote. When he answers, you don’t follow up. You absorb. You archive. You don’t tempt the gods twice.
Here’s one of those recent transmissions.
Me:
Greetings from Kyiv—where I sometimes imagine the atmosphere must echo Saigon during the war. That may be an indelicate comparison, but there’s no denying the magnetism of this place. It draws in the edge-dwellers, the lifers, the ones who can’t sit still. For better or worse, I suppose I count myself among them.
Him:
Jason,
I think you will understand when I say that I envy you. If I were a decade or so younger, I’d be right there with you in Ukraine. It is, like all war stories, fundamentally a tragedy—but also (like all war stories), studded with almost all the elements that make life rich and exciting.
Relish it while you can.
They Don’t Just Fade Into the Fog
War correspondery used to end with the dispatch.
You filed the story, packed up, moved on. But covering conflict in this era is different. The lines don’t get cut. The story doesn’t stop.
I stay in touch—with fighters, families, fixers, kids. Instagram. Signal. WhatsApp. Telegram. My inbox is a frontline of its own. The people I meet don’t vanish into the fog of war. They message back.
One of them is Yeva—a brilliant 14-year-old girl I met in Kharkiv. Last fall, I accompanied her to her first day of school. It was her first time in a real classroom in something like three years (covid, then Russian bombardment). Except it wasn’t a classroom—it was a subway station, deep underground.
We’ve stayed connected. And now my editor-in-chief, Linda Pattillo, and I are crafting an In the Shadows Short centered around her. Our story will publish next week. But for now, here’s how she described (via a Telegram message) her summer:
Yeva:
Life in Kharkiv is hard right now. There are more attacks again. I try to keep going, but honestly—I’ve forgotten what it feels like to get a full night’s sleep. Explosions are my new alarm clock. At this point, even the dog is developing a caffeine addiction… Just kidding. But seriously—it’s exhausting.
*Yeva says she is game to do a guest post for In The Moment. Stay tuned.
GPT-Zarathustra:
When children start speaking like old men, civilization has already failed them.
Evening Walk, Interrupted
I’ve grown strangely devoted to hitting 8,000 steps a day—so I’ve turned my evening walks in Kyiv into a ritual. I sync my stride to the sun’s descent—Kyiv turns gold, then ghostly. Tonight’s showtime: 9:10 p.m.
Most nights I keep a clip. Get the blood moving, get the legs tired. But sometimes the warzone throws something else at you…like music.
Last night, a street performer named Aiden had me planted on a patch of grass under the open sky. No air raid sirens, just fingerpicked magic.
He had a QR code taped to his guitar box. I scanned it. Led me to @aiden_sic… Ukrainian musician, channeling the vibes of Estas Tonne, this ethereal guitar savant who calls himself a modern-day troubadour.
Tonne’s also Ukrainian. Lives in New York now. His show just jumped to the top of the to-doery list—the one that really matters.
Postscriptery
Since the last dispatch: Walked 32,000 steps. Dodged laundry fees. Found one song worth sitting for. A hero responded to my email with words that now echo. Not an easy few days by any stretch. But I’m taking the advice to heart: Relish it while you can.