United in prayer for peace in Ukraine

NEW YORK (AP) — A journalist and former aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a book coming out this fall, one of the first announced releases about Zelenskyy and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

One Signal Publishers announced Wednesday that it had acquired Iuliia Mendel's “The Fight of Our Lives.” Mendel served as Zelenskyy's press secretary and spokesperson from 2019-2021 and has been sending dispatches about the war to the Washington Post. According to One Signal, a Simon & Schuster imprint, Mendel will write about everything from Zelenskyy's meetings with Soviet leader Vladimir Putin to the phone calls with then-President Donald Trump that led to his impeachment for trying to pressure Zelenskyy into investigating Joe Biden.

Mendel also will write on the “massive economic problems facing Ukraine, entrenched corrupt oligarchs in league with Russia, and — in shades of the United States’ recent federal election — the Kremlin’s repeated attacks to discredit Zelenskyy through disinformation and an army of bots and trolls,” One Signal's announcement reads in part.

Mendel, 35, has written for the Post and The New York Times among others.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My recently widowed mother, who’s a former advertising exec from Toronto, invited herself to visit me for a whole month recently — a 28-day sentence. I left Toronto to get away from her, because she befriended all my friends in high school and college.

Anyway, I gamely staged a little party for her at a restaurant, so she’d meet a few people. My friends loved her! She got them playing a mixer game, and everybody had fun.

But then, she went too far. She actually took down some of my girlfriends’ phone numbers on a little list and jotted a couple words on what they liked to do — like the super saleswoman she is. The next day she made lunch and touristy dates, for when I was at work.

A few days later one of them called me and finally spoke the words I didn’t want to hear: “Your mother is more fun than you are!” I blew up! I said back to her, “Well then, how come she had to leave Toronto and come way out here to Winnipeg to steal my friends?”

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My love life is strange right now. I went from having no boyfriend to having two I’m seeing, and a third I’m talking to on the phone at night. He’s just sniffing around, but lots of fun!

I met the first two on chats, and had lunches and dinners with them, and I’ve even gone out to a movie with one. I’m not enamoured with either, but I’ve never had so many laughs!

The third guy is all about sex, and so far we’ve only interacted by phone. And (blush!) we’ve had a lot of phone sex. That guy is definitely single and is dying to meet me. Do I have to actually meet him? He keeps sending me his pictures and he’s a cutie, alright.

I think I like keeping it on the phone, but that might be insulting to tell him. What do you think about all this?

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I’ve been trying to learn to drive in busy traffic. My boyfriend said he would teach me, but he gets too playfully amorous while I’m trying to drive his new car in busier areas like downtown. He thinks it’s a big joke, but when I yelled that he was distracting me, he said, “Good.”

So I pulled over, slammed on the brakes and got out, thinking he would get back into the driver’s seat and drive us home, but he didn’t budge. He was being a real jerk.

I got back in, drove us to my place in silence, left the keys in the ignition and went inside and locked my door. Now we’re not talking and neither one of us is apologizing. What do you think?

— Still Mad, St. James