Longform: There is No There There

THERE IS NO THERE THERE. I know, because I tried to go. I spent seven days in the Ukraine in early 2014, just as Vladimir Putin was annexing Crimea, rebellion was fomenting in Kiev, and Russian troops were massing at the eastern border. I went to travel in the footsteps of my father’s father, from the moment of his 1902 birth until he left for America in 1922.