Month: October 2023

“In The Rear View” Documentary

Chicago International Film Festival is in progress, and I had absolutely no time to see anything. Except for when I saw that documentary in the list of participating films, I knew I would find a non-existent time.

It was not even in the Siskel Center, but fortunately, on my way from work to home (I had to leave about an hour earlier to make it, but there were only two screenings of this film!).

It’s an unimaginably difficult film to watch. Even though there is no fighting, no shooting, no explosions, and even though we’ve seen footage of buildings damaged by Russian shells, you feel it differently watching from inside an evacuation minibus. Most of the people whom Maciek was evacuating were Russian speakers, and it was especially horrible to hear them referring to the “Russian tanks” as enemy tanks. About twenty minutes into the documentary, I started to cross my heart and didn’t stop till the end.

Maciek Hamela was there! The funniest thing is that he entered the building right before me, and like I, he was a little bit uncertain about where theater 13 was, where the screening was about to take place. And I heard him talking in Polish on the phone, and I thought that he might be going to the same screening, but I could never imagine it was a filmmaker!
He talked a little bit before the screening and after (he answered many of the same questions in the interview below), and then he answered questions from the audience. And then people started to thank him and started to come down and hug him, and then I left.
May those who brought this war to the land of Ukraine burn in hell!

Official trailer

An interview with Maciek Hamela:

Lake Michigan Today

OHC 2023

The day started with the pouring rain, and I was unsure whether it was still a good idea to go with our original plans for the OHC Day. Igor said he would go with me or without:), and I decided to go, hoping for the rain to stop later in the day. It eventually stopped, and the trip “to the other side of the world” was totally worth it.

As usual, I hope to tell more about what I saw a little bit later, but judging by my recent level of busyness, it is not very likely to happen, so I will at least mention the highlights of the day.

First and foremost – Beverly Hills is so beautiful! Regardless of the OHC sites being open to public, it was such a pleasure to walk the streets, to see houses and trees, and just take in the spirit of the place.

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A Wonderful World Musical

This is a new musical about the life and career of Louis Armstrong, and I went to see it on Friday. That was one of the conflicts my neighbor and I an into because of having too many subscriptions :). Two long shows in two consecutive days is not a great idea, especially approaching the end of a busy week.

I really liked the singers, and the dances, and everything was spectacular, but I felt less impressed than the night before at Joffrey.

All pictures are from the playbill.

Frankenstein At Joffrey

I didn’t write anything about it because it was a complete Uber screw-up last night, and it took almost 40 minutes for me and my neighbor to finally get into a car (but we got Tesla:)). And having the ballet was very long I ended up being at home close to midnight.

But aside from getting home late, it was an amazing experience! Joffrey ballet amazes me pretty much each time I see their performance, but each time – in a new way.

Born and raised in Saint-Petersburg, I saw many classical ballets in my life, and I never doubt that Mariinsky Theater (“Marinka”) is the best in the world. When I first saw a Joffey performance, it struck me how lively a ballet can be! Several years later, Marinka was on the US tour, and I went to see the Swan Lake. That was yet another shock: the technique was flawless (after all, there is over 200 years of perfecting it!) but it looked like dry leaves in a herbarium in comparison with the live trees of Joffrey.

I do not know how Joffrey does it: it is classical ballet in its purest form, but at the same time, everybody is alive, you see a story, you see humans with their human feelings. The short clip does not show any of it, unfortunately. Also, it does not show the movements of the Creature – non-human, the movements of a live puppet, of something combined from several pieces, not all of them completely aligned. With all the horror and tragedy of the story, I was smiling the whole first act.

Wild Onion Market Fundraiser

I am a part of Wild Onion Market – I joined as an owner almost two years ago, and since then, donated several times. Now, our coop is in the final fundraising stretch, raising the remaining fund needed to open in December.

Today we had a fundraising event in the Rhapsody Theater. I bought two tickets because I felt I could do at least that, and took my mom there, since the theater is just two blocks away from her building. I was hoping to catch a program, but when we came thee at six, they told us that the programmimg won’t start till 8 PM, and I was not ready to stay that long.

I didn’t plan to participate in either silent auction or the live one, but since I had time, I decided to check out the silen auction items. To my surprise, I saw that a painting with the estimated price of $350 and initial bid of $75 didn’t get any bids. I quickly put a $100, and nobody put anything after me! That way, completely unexpectedly, I became an owner of this beautiful painting:

Monday Notes

  • Got an updated COVID-19 vaccine. After my double failure in Rogers Park (a long line for community vaccination and later, the Jewel on Howard told me that they only have walk-ins on weekday mornings (and no scheduling because of a website error), I booked an appointment in a CVS on North Michigan – convenient time after work, zero wait.
  • Managed to work almost uninterruptedly on a pressing issue at work and achieved the results I am proud of.
  • My neighbor stopped by, and even before I offered asked me whether she could have a cup of tea :). I consider that a tectonic cultural shift 😀

My Mom’s Family Photos

Mom made several attempts to record her family history with various degrees of success.Since both of my mom’s parents came from peasants’ families, I do not think I will ever learn much more about them than I know now. I will start with the earliest photos I have and will record everything I remember about them.

I know that my mom’s mother, baba Ania (full name Anna Petrovna), was born in the Pskov region in October 1911. Her maiden name was Grigorieva, and I believe I have somewhere an information about her brothers in one of the recording sessions with my mom in 2018 . Unfortuntely, I didn’t even start processing them. Surprisingly, I might know more about her childhood than my mom because I spent a lot of time with her during my second and third summers, and she used to tell me stories about her being a little girl. I never herd this storied from my mom, only from baba Ania herself. Being minimally educated, she recognized the importance of reading and self-improvement. She might have attended school for just a couple of years, but liked to tell me how she “already knew everything before she came to school” because “she read books.” She told me: And the teacher said, “well, Nura, you already know everything, so go and help me check other puples work. And here I am, walking along the rows of desks and checking everybody’s work. And all because I read a lot of books, that’s why.”

She left the village and moved to Leningrad when she was forteen to become a live-in nanny. Neither me nor my mom know anything about the family where she lived, except for that appeared to be well off and educated – some books baba Ania owned presumably came from that house.

In two years, she was already looking for a more prestigious job – a store clerk. On this picture, she is sixteen or seventeen, and she works in a grocery store near Warsaw railway station in Leningrad.

Bakarey department
Grocery department
With coworkers in the same store
In the Red Corner studying something politically-important

Looks like it was cold both inside the store and in the Red Corner since most people stay in their coats.

I can’t decode most of the slogans from the third photo background, but I can tell what was sold in the grocery department. Th list includes tea (“natural” and “surrogate”, sugar, buckwheat, millet, oatmeal, flour, coffee (also real and surrogate), several brands of sigaretts, matches, candles, shoe polish, black pepper and mustard.

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.

Theo Cabaret: Baked!

I learned about Theo almost by accident (I don’t even remember where I saw the ad), went to see the Three Penny Opera, and loved them! And I decided to subscribe for a season – just one seat for each performance, without my neighbor or anybody. When we went there together with Boris, we had the side seats, and I realized that if I wanted to have the best experience there, I needed to be at a table. That’s what I subscribed for, and it was a perfect experience indeed.

The authors of Baked! are young, and so is the cast, and it’s a little bit silly and naive but also heartbreakingly sincere! I really enjoyed it!

Camille Claudel Exhibit

Just back from the Art Institute, where I saw a Camille Claudel exhibit. It’s amazing. I am shocked, sad, and ashamed of how little I knew about her! Like “everybody else,” I knew her name, but the only reason I knew it was in connection with August Rodin – like “everybody else.” She is always mentioned as his apprentice and his muse, and Rodin’s bust, created by Claudel, is his most known representation.

That’s who she was in my mind. Not trying to compare myself with geniuses, I still felt like I could relate to a female character developing professionally in the shadow of a more famous male figure, inevitably treated as “a secondary” both by others and herself.

In reality, however, Camille faces way more obstacles, starting from not being allowed to work with nude models as most females, followed by constant comparing her with Rodin to the point of her works being attributed to him.

She left Rodin’s workshop to be her own person and explore the subjects she wanted to explore, only to receive more criticism for nudity in her sculptures and not receive grants for any of her works to become a full-size artwork. Then, exhibiting the signs of a mental illness, destroying most of her works and spending thirty years in the psychiatric hospital. Her family insisted on her being institutionalized despite the doctor’s suggestions to take her home and reintegrate into the family.

She died in the hospital in 1943 when France was occupied, and she was reburied in a common grave, so there is no even a place to mark. Her works were almost forgotten, and her personal exhibits happened years after she passed away.

Her art is amazing and so distinct from Rodin’s works – now I know!

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