Seventy-seventh installment from the diary of my great-grandfather’s sister Alise, written during the First World War. When the diary starts, she is living just a few miles from the front lines of the Eastern Front, and is then forced to flee with her husband and two young daughters to her family’s house near Limbaži as the war moves even closer. Her third child, a son, was born there in February 1916. The family has now relocated (again) to a home near Valmiera, and the Russian Revolution is in full swing. For more background, see here, and click on the tag “diary entries” to see all of the entries that I have posted.

If there is mention of a recognizable historical figure and event, I will provide a Wikipedia link so that you can read more about the events that Alise is describing. It is with this entry here that the calendar in Latvia changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.

October 10, 1918

What a beautiful and lovely day, haven’t seen one in a long time. It’s a miracle what can make people happy, after long days of rain, and now the dear sun is shining again and turning the autumn foliage gold. My heart is full of good feelings. Everywhere where my eyes can see is full of bounty and wealth. If God protects you, then life will be good going ahead. Now, things in town are still expensive and getting more so – they ask 20 rubles for butter, same for pork, etc. Clothes are unbuyable. We read newspapers impatiently. When everything returns to normal, then life will be different. We all survived the new Spanish flu, which is cutting a wide swathe across the world and is an epidemic here in our region. There are homes where no one is healthy.