Such a beautiful piece! And it so resonates with me and with my relationships with the Lake! Here
Month: January 2023
Today’s War News
That’s how my morning was: the first thing I saw on my phone was, “Soledar is taken by Russians.” Then – “According to Ukraine, the fight is still going on.” And then the news about the tanks. I am so hopeful that this will finally happen – that the tank will reach the front. If it takes the Soledar standoff to make it a reality, I would say it was not for nothing. At least something is coming.
Since the day Biden announced that we are giving tanks to Ukraine, I kept asking Boris how the tanks would get to Ukraine and how long it could take. But it’s not even a question of “how long,” because I do not think something happened since they were promised.
That’s where I am, between hope and despair. And meanwhile, everything in my life is going great. So good, that even with my boundless optimism, I am starting to worry about how long the universe is going to treat me so well. I thank the universe for everything every day, grateful that I am able to support so many people and causes, but how much I wish I would not have to support that cause!
A Book I Am Excited About
I am finishing the Berlin Dairy by Willian Shirer. What an amazing book! I can’t believe I knew nothing about it until I saw a recommendation from a friend. William Shirer was a CBS broadcaster who worked in Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1941. He wrote several books about the history of WWII and the history of Nazism, and now I want to read them all!
I think that it is a combination of two factors that make this book so amazing: first, he was an outstanding journalist with an extraordinary analytical mind who knew both how to get access to information and how to interpret it. And second – that it is an actual diary, so the readers follow events in “real-time.” When he wrote something in his journal, he did not know what would happen next or the implications of the events he had just recorded. It’s something like: I can’t believe Molotov and Ribbentrop are meeting! How can they negotiate when Russia is the most fierce critic of Nazism. How is it possible that they could reach any agreement?! They did?!
It turned out there were lots of historical facts I didn’t know. Take the Winter War – I thought I knew everything as much as I could, visiting Finland several times a year. Still, I had no idea that it started with the air raid shelling Helsinki – I thought that all the war events happened at the frontline.
This book has way too many parallels with the current war in Ukraine, like when the author explains how Germans have “no morals.” A German is lamenting about “bad Finns who fight against Russians, and why they are doing such a horrible thing as resisting? When Shirer says that Finns are fighting for their independence and asks won’t the Germans do the same if they were invaded, the response it: but that’s different! Russians are our friends!
Or when he cites a conversation with a German waitress about the British air raids: why are they bombarding us? – Well, because you are bombarding London! – But we only shell military objects, and they through bombs on our civilian objects? – Why do you think that Germans only bombard military objects? – That’s what our newspapers say!
Sounds familiar, right?! Way too familiar!
I almost finished this book, and I have three other books in queue, but I am urged to drop them all and read all the rest of the books by Willian Shirer(which will definitely take a while!)
Mom’S Birthday
Mom turned eighty-eight on Tuesday. Since she always refused to celebrate her birthday before the actual birthday (the superstition that you can die not reaching it in this case), and since next weekend didn’t work either, Igor and I took her out on the day of her birthday.
Fortunately, since Igor discovered Eurasia cafe, we can always go there for the food that mom likes. We ordered several different Russian dishes, and gave her our presents, and everything was good. At leat, she seemed happy and thanked us. Although for the next two days, when I talk to her on the phone it sounds like she found some reason to be unhappy, but I am pretending I do not notice:).
Only In Chicago!
It is in the mid-40s and sunny. And almost no wind. Amazing weather for the past couple of days.
On Tuesday, I was in the office and went skating during the lunch break. Today,
I had unplanned work from home and went biking during the lunch break.
How is it possible that the weather is perfect for both?!
‘Only in Chicago! (c)
And One More Time About Breakfast At Work…
It is great, because:
- you do not need to think about making breakfast in the morning and whether you will have time for it
- it is ready when you come to the office
- the window view from the cafeteria
- you have these ten minutes to sit, enjoy the view, food and coffee and get ready for the great start of the day
- you feel that your employer cares
PGSQL Phriday #004 Recap
I am very thiankful for the opportunity to host the January edition of PGSQL Phriday series. I hope that this series will continue and more people will join the discussions!
Thank you to everybody who contributed to the January PGSQL Phriday topic! I suggested “Postgres and Software Development,” while being very well aware that this topic is not popular in the PostgreSQL community. To be completely honest, I thought that it was possible that only Ryan Booz would contribute!
That being said – a big thank you to everyone who participated! Please find a summary of contributions below, and please let me know if I missed your post!
The first person to contribute was Andreas Scherbaum with his blog post PGSQL Phriday #004: PostgreSQL and Software Development. Andreas had a huge advantage as he could summarize the information from over 140 interviews he conducted for his “PostgreSQL person of the week” series. His blog post mainly focuses on what people are saying about the development for PostgeSQL – patch submissions and other details of how PostgreSQL…
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Not Over Yet!
The Christmas Tree is already gone, and all Christmas decorations are in storage, but still, I got more cards and presents in the mail!
:)
Summer 1970: Narva-Joesuu
That was my last summer before school, and that summer, I was not sent to a dacha with detsky sad, and I didn’t go to the sanatorium. Instead, it was the first of many summers I spent in Estonia, in Narva-Joesuu. When I published my old home movies, I talked about that time here. I know that my father’s side of the family spent summers there for many years before that. My great-grandfather (the father of my father’s mother, David Solomonovich Levitin died there and was buried at the local cemetery. As I mentioned earlier, I know that I spent at least some part of my very first simmer there, and I have no idea what happened later and why I never went there for seven years.
These questions didn’t bother me back then, though. For most of the summer, I was there with my great aunt Fania, whom I called granma (baba) in the absence of an actual grandma. As I mentioned earlier, my great uncle Mish and his wife Nadia rented another room in the same house. In contrast to baba Fania, uncle Misha, eight years younger than her, didn’t like being perceived as a “grandpa,” so I called him uncle. His wife Nadia was even more concerned with looking younger than she was, and I called her aunt. I know that the rest of the family just barely tolerated aunt Nadia. I do not know the actual reason, but I remember that she was criticized for exactly that: behaving as a grand dame, taking good care of herself, etc. In the pictures below, she helps me to get into the “bridge” position (remember my PE/figure skating?). Since uncle Misha was 58 at that time, she should have been fifty-something and looked outrageously good for her age (by that time’s standards).
More of me doing exercises:
Hettie's Reflections 