Baconbits Collective

A flag is a symbol of the aspirations of a people, a nation, their hopes, dreams and resolve to maintain self-determination. The Ukrainian people are under brutal assault, existentially challenging these aspirations. Their resolve demonstrates to the world the very best of humanity, while being confronted by the very worst. Our very small contribution, as a collective, offers a model of resiliency, as a flag, a land mass, a symbol of hope, absorbing incursion, transformed into gentle blowing sunflower petals (Ukraine's National Flower). The flag pulses, shifts and boils with the penetrating strikes, but it never tears, folds or falls. It remains resilient, as do the brave Ukrainian people.

Prior to the brutal, wholly unjustified, and illegal invasion of Ukraine by Putin, BaconBitsCollective was primarily an idea percolating in the minds of its founders. As the horrific attacks continued, their unique backgrounds contributed to a call to action that helped launch BBC, culminating in the collective's first piece: RESILIENT : [пружний]

I grew up hearing Russian, Yiddish, Chinese and heavily accented English during my childhood. For most of my life, I didn’t understand the distinction between my grandmother’s birth city of Odessa and the unspoken shame my grandfather had of his Russian birthplace. It was my grandparent’s adopted homeland of China, where most of the captivating stories took place. As a Jew, there was also the complication of never quite feeling native to any country of residence, a transitory port along a long diasporic struggle. However, seeing the courageous Jewish Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy risking his life to defend his homeland inspired me, introducing a new perspective to my own family’s history and identity.

I was born in 1970 and grew up during the 70s and 80s, I spent a formative number of years in my youth legitimately frightened at the prospect of Nuclear Holocaust sparked by World War III between the US and the Soviet Union. Much of the popular culture I consumed in my teenage years carried that narrative. In the late 80s, as I was graduating high school, the Soviet Union was undergoing reform (Perestroika) and Mikhail Gorbachev began his Glasnost policy of openness. In 1987 I joined a group of students from my high school on a trip to the Soviet Union with the American Council of International Studies. And it made a great impression on me as a seventeen year-old, so much so that I later embarked on a 22-year career as a United States military officer starting in 1992. I spent three years of that career as an Army Captain stationed in Germany. In 1989 we saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. All of these political events are directly related to what is happening in Ukraine today. As a much older and wiser man than I was in the late 80s, I feel a great deal of compassion for the Ukrainian people. And I am even more perplexed at the needless suffering that is being caused by Putin's aggressions, and the dread of what his actions potentially forebode for the world.