Month: October 2023

More Family Photos

Baba Ania’s birthday was on Sunday. When I went to Mom for our traditional afternoon Sunday coffee, I also took a small bottle of liquor with me, and we drank in memory of Baba Ania (for some reason, my mom was surprised I remembered the day (?!)).

Unfortunately, I can’t get any new information from my mom in addition to what I already know. Maybe I will be able to fill in the gaps later – I made some recordings of mom’s stories when she first came to the US, but now I need to find and decipher them.

I know that Baba Ania was “from a village”; however, the photograph below shows a group that could be anybody but peasants. These are four Grigoriev brothers; the first from the left, Petr, is Baba Ania’s father.

According to mom’s notes, Petr was either the second or the third of the brothers, next is Stepan, the fifth (the youngest) next is FIlipp (either the second or the third) next – Alexey, the fourth child, and last one is the oldest brother, Nikolay. Unfortunately, no information about when this photo was taken.

In this picture, Petr should be the first person on the left in the second row from the bottom, according to mom’s notes:

Was it the beginning of WWI? I can’t tell. One more picture, judging by its quality, taken by some “official” photographer, also hints the wartime, but mom’s notes indicate that she could not locate Grandfather Petr in this picture:

No images of Baba Ania’s mother. No images of Baba Ania as a child. The pictures I showed in the previous post were the earliest Baba Ania pictures I have.

And here is the last one prior to her marriage to my grandfather. For her excellent work, she was promoted, and the picture below shows her among the employees of the Eliseyev store – the number one grocery/delicatessen store in Saint Petersburg before the Revolution and later in Leningrad. See this wiki article for details.

Can you find my grandmother? She is in the top row, second from the right.

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.

Baked Apple Pancake

Baked Apple Pancake

Jarvis Family Full Moon Fest

We had a family activities day at Jarvis Square on Saturday. It was the first time we had such a family-style celebration (the adult part followed after 8 PM). There was free face painting, and free s’mores, and trick-or-treating, and drumming, and Taro fortune telling. Most importantly, there were kids in costumes who had enormous fun! I walked there with my mom, and we walked around and made our s’mores over the fire, and then I got the butternut latte in the Charmer’s Cafe for myself and caramel cider for mom, and we sat there and watched the kids running around with the buckets, sitting for the face painting and drumming.

Mom was saying that it’s too bad we can’t take pictures, and then she added that it’s impossible to tell others how good it was because no words and no pictures can reflect the feeling and the atmosphere. That was one of the rare moments when she felt the way I hoped she would feel after moving here.

We saw Channel 5, and one kid yelled: Mom, we are on the news! The reported was interviewing one of the organizers, and I heard that she said that “it feels very safe,” which I couldn’t agree more.

The Great Lake

While I was going through the pictures I took yesterday, I thought again about how much positive energy my Fort Sheridan trip gave me. I feel that I can make it through this week :). And the best thing at Fort Sheridan is undoubtedly the Lake. Seeing the Lake in a forest preserve is very different from seeing it chained in steel and granite. When I approach Lake Michigan from the forest or the prairie, I feel its wild greatness even more. I do not have the proper words to describe it:)

I ended up returning to the train station in between trains, and I didn’t feel like waiting for an hour and forty minutes, so I called Uber. When we were almost at my place (turning into Sheridan from Birchwood) the driver saw what was on the horizon and said: oh, you live so close to the sea! I replied: thank you! Thank you for calling it a sea!

Fall Colors At Fort Sheridan

I went to Fort Sheridan for the second time, and this time, I liked there even more. Yes, it’s not as close to me as Deer Grove was when I lived in Palatine, but when I am there, I feel so good! I am inhaling the feeling of being there, being united with Nature. Yes, I am a city girl, but I miss the forest and the prairie, and as it turned out that time, I miss the prairie the most!

Last time, it was my first exploration, and this time, I ventured into more different paths, and made a bigger loop, and walked and walked! I decided that I was not trying to “make” the next train, and I would stay there as much as I wanted, and if anything, there is always Uber.

Fort Sheridan has some similarities with Deer Grove – the prairie in the middle and the surrounding forest, but the presence of the Lake makes a gigantic difference! Also, I noticed that even though nature restoration is in the initial stage, there are way fewer invasives (I think it’s because there was never a farm! )

And now, I am done with talking and switching to the pictures showing!

Continue reading “Fall Colors At Fort Sheridan” →

Closing Escorting Season

Most likely, Saturday was my last escorting day in 2023. It became sharply colder overnight, and no matter how much I tried to prepare for the temperature drop, I was still not prepared and barely stayed till the end of the first shift. That, and all of the things that are coming up in November and December (Thanksgiving, Anna’s surgery, my conference, and Christmas:)) does not leave me any options.

Saturday’s highlight was police presence! Not like it used to be before, when they would come to protect the antis, or they would come responding to our call and leave. No, this time, seven (or more?) officers showed up before 7 AM, and they stayed till after 9 AM. They were exceptionally friendly and asked us many questions about how things looked like, and we explained to them all of the details and our fight for the quiet zone, etc. A couple of the female officers asked us about the abortion costs (we do not really know) and who pays for abortion (different options), and then our shift lead talked about the influx of patients after Dobbs. I mentioned that I am a MAC host and that now, most women do not need to travel that far, but it was a nightmare last summer. In the end, we got “Thank you for all you do!” which we often hear from the organization leaders and passers-by, but it was the first time I heard it from police officers!

27

That is another post that I should have written a week ago, and I pretty much wrote it in my head, but that was the day we traveled to Milwaukee, and then life took over.

October 22, 1996, was the day when I (together with Vlad and Anna) came to the US, and our very first day in the US is described here. Last week, Boris and I recalled this day twenty-seven years ago, and I asked him whether he really thought at that time that his life was over. He said that that was the case, which made me wonder for the hundredth time why we were such idiots. Boris disagrees :). He says that we were just uninformed. Possibly, but each time I think about what lies ahead, and each time I think that I’ve planned everything perfectly, I recall how, in the fall of 1996, both Boris and I were so sure that everything important in our lives had happened…

Grimm

Theater Above the Law is the best of all Rogers Park small theaters. On Friday, my mom, Igor, and I went to see “Grimm,” and it was flawless! My mom, not being able to understand what’s going on, still appreciates their acting each time I take her to Above the Law. I can’t stop comparing them with the Lifeline Theater – I made the right choice when I decided to subscribe to Above the Law and to hold off with the Lifeline.

It is flattering when the theater director recognizes me even from afar, and waiving: Hi Henrietta, your family is already in!

The play was great. A very accurate take on the Grimm Brothers’ tales, without any “humanization” and “adaptation.” Horrible stories of horrible times.

The Most Famous Spy

I meant to write about this back in June when Robert Hanssen died, but I kept forgetting about it. Now that I started listening to The Code Name Blue Wren, which mentions Robert Hanssen in the introductory chapter, I remembered that this post was sitting in the Drafts.

When Anna went to Knox College (which is one of the best things that happened in her life not counting our arrival to the US) we learned a lot about this amazing educational institution. Among other things we learned that one of the graduates Knox was most proud of was a double spy, who for several years was a head of the task force dedicated to finding himself 🙂

Speaking Up

I mentioned another mentoring volunteering organization I joined in September. I thought it would be more organized than OMD, but it turned out the other way. 🙂 I believe the core of the problem was the same – all of a sudden, the program expanded dramatically, and it became more difficult to keep up with mentor/mentee matching and overall organization. I was not matched for a long time, then I was matched with the wrong scholar (a person who wanted to be in a different program), and then, I was matched last moment with somebody who was absolutely not into STEM (I am not sure why she signed up on the first place). I think she will end up dropping.

However, while I am/was still on the roll, I joined a workshop with Dr. Valerie Lewis, and I am so impressed with her! She’s everything: incredibly smart, and her research is her primary focus; however, she does not live in an ivory tower. She navigated the complicated path of being a woman of color in STEM, not ignoring the obstacles. Another workshop participant said: “I am just doing my work and ignoring everything else.” That’s not Dr. Lewis’s position. She faces challenges, discrimination, and assumptions. She is tired of them, but she has the courage and boldness to address them openly. At the same time, she is not making this fight the first and primary goal of her life, nor does she become bitter. She still has a shiny positive personality. Let me say it again. She does not ignore problems; she stands up for herself, but she does not allow the problems to own her life. I wish I could be friends with her!

On another, however, related topic. At work, we just had a mandatory workplace harassment prevention training. It was a new course, and it was very well done – I learned something new about the techniques of identifying harassement and microagressions. One of my coworkers has being relating to me for a while that they were treated poorly by their manager. To be precise, they didn’t complain to me, but since we are in the office, I overheard multiple conversations, and after there most severe ones, I could not help but asking them privately how they felt. I’ve encouraged my co-worker to complaint about the situation, and not look for excuses for their manager (the manager had an ongoing difficult family situation). After that training, my coworker finally decided to act. Firstm they complained to the manager’s manager that there were no regular one-on-ones, and then, when one-on-one was scheduled, my coworker related to their manager how they felt about certain situations. I saw the change in their manager’s behavior immediately, so I knew that the conversation happened (which was later confirmed). Obviously, only time will tell whether the change is permanent, but I was incredibly proud of my coworker for finding enough courage to speak and relate all their grievances. I know that it was pushing the envelope, and that it was difficult! They thought that nothing will change, but things changed right away (for good or temporarily – we’ll have to see!