Month: November 2024

Books

Just a short list of what I recently read so that I won’t postpone it for three months again.

The Song of Achilles. This was our workplace book club reading, and I loved this book! Maybe it partially helped that I read it while I was in Greece, but I think I would love it regardless.

She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street. This book was recommended by a co-worker. OK. Not bad, but less exciting than I thought it would be

Skin and Bones. Very good! I didn’t expect it to be so captivating—I kept listening whenever I had a minute to spare. I can’t recall which recommendation list it came from, but I am so glad I read it!

“Blue” at Lyric

I thought that “Blue” was a very recent opera – it sounded like it emerged from the Black Lives matter movement, but when I looked it up, it turned out that it was written almost ten years ago. That means that nothing changed in these last ten years – nothing!

What you hear from the stage is extremely painful and way closer to reality than any opera should be. The Father focused on keeping his black son alive, not knowing how to protect him:

run/do not run/look at their faces/do not look straight at their faces/keep your hands out of your pockets/take off this hoody/pull up your pants…

Each word is a pain. Each word strikes home.

And it’s just opera. People will clap and go home. And will look suspiciously at the black teen on the train.

Thanksgiving

I never know what to write about Thanksgiving. We made it :). Actually, the cooking time was the least effort I remember. It took me more time cleaning up, doing the dishes, and packing the food to go, but I am done with that, or with most of that. Boris helped me a lot (probably more than ever), and I am also very thankful for that. I am tired, but also, since Boris and I were chatting all the time while I was cooking and he was helping, I got a lot of new Postgres ideas that I want to try 🙂

I know I am hopeless:)

My son-in-law said I have a secret extra day of the week – I wish!!!

One thing we always have for Thanksgiving are pies from Vanille:)

How Math Became My Favorite Subject, But Not Right Away

I was a good student from the very beginning of school: my mom, Aunt Kima, and Baba Fania would never allow me to be less than that. However, I didn’t have a favorite subject for a while. I loved books and reciting poetry, so I was always the kid who opened the shows, but other than that, I didn’t have any special talents.

We didn’t have science or social studies lessons until the fifth grade, although I read many popular science books. We started to study Russian history in the fourth grade and botany and geography in the fifth. I immediately fell in love with biology, especially because by then, I had read many books about the wonders of nature, the mysteries of cells, endangered species, and so on.

In the fifth grade, I started to attend academic competitions, which were called olympiads. We had school olympiads, and the winners attended district olympiads, and the winners of district olympiads were sent to the city-wide competitions. All of them took place on the weekends, and having that we had school on Saturdays meant no weekends at all.

My first competitions were in biology, and I easily made it to the city-wide olympiad and easily got a second-degree diploma, finishing the fifth person in my grade level. I remember that I did great in microbiology and almost failed zoology (we didn’t have zoology at school yet, and I didn’t read enough by myself). I could not tell the difference between the black grouse and the wood grouse, could not identify the birds by skeletons, and so on. In the end, the examiner asked me what I wanted to talk about, and I told them what I knew about birds’ migration, and somehow got a passing grade in biology. The last subject was ecology and wildlife protection, and I spoke my heart out and got a top grade. I remember that I was very nervous about not remembering the names of the national parks and the dates they were founded, but my examiner said: please, spare me from the dates and name; tell me what you think about protecting endangered species. And I rocked!

My mom became very nervous about my fascination with biology because all of the craziness with genetics and Lysenko was fairly recent, and she didn’t want me to be in trouble. She started to steer me towards math. I liked math, but not even close to how much I loved biology. Besides, there was a new thread on the horizon – I started to be very interested in history.

How we were taught history in school will be a topic for a separate post, and in any case, we didn’t have any history olympiads – I guess it was dangerous to know too much about history. However, we had olympiads in math, physics, chemistry, and literature, and I participated in all of them.

My mom wanted me to focus on math because it was the only safe subject from her perspective. I was not against math, but I didn’t feel strongly about it. In the sixth grade, I started attending a Youth Math School, an after-school activity hosted at the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics of Leningrad State University. Back then, the Department had yet to move to the out-of-the-city campus, and the classes took place in the old building on the 10th linia of Vasilevsky Island, about 15 15-minute tram ride from my home. Most times, I was the only girl in the class, and I always felt stupid. Our teachers were first- or second-year university students, and they rarely had enough pedagogical skills. The boys pretended they understood all that was said, and sometimes, they could solve complicated problems, and I was barely able to keep up with them. Still, I thought it was cool to come to the University once or twice a week, so I kept coming. In the sixth grade, I participated in the district math olympiad but didn’t make it to the city-wide.

I kept attending the Youth Math School in the seventh grade and still didn’t get any diploma at the olympiad, but I quite unexpectedly made it to the city-wide essay competition, got a second-degree diploma, and was interviewed for a radio show. I suspect that made my mom even more alarmed :), especially because my award-winning essay was about Euguene Schwarts’ plays. It’s not like Schwarts was a forbidden writer, but he never praised the Soviet State and the Communist Party, many of his friends and peers were imprisoned, and the officials silently ignored him.

Fortunately for my mom, things changed when I started the eighth grade.
To be continued.

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.

How I Beat The System – Again!

Boris tells me that it’s my specialty to get through any bureaucratic or technological challenges, citing my battle with Finnair for my missing points, my battle with Lyric Opera for my money to be returned, and the most recent for the trademark agreement. Here is one more of my accomplishments that I am extremely proud of.

The Illinois Department Of Human Services (IDHS) has a very non-user-friendly website, so it was not unusual for me to call their customer service to validate my mom’s eligibility for benefits or whether they were ever renewed because it was impossible to understand from the website. Many people, especially those who had to communicate with this system more often than I used, told me the only way to resolve issues was to come in person. A couple of months ago, I decided to try to apply for additional benefits for Mom, but when I logged into the website, I found that they switched to the new logins (they are using ILogin, same as many other sites) and that I need to create ILoging and link it to the existing account.

I followed all the steps, and almost at the very end of the process, I accidentally copied a blank at the beginning of the password I prepared, and after that, nothing worked. I could not confirm the password, and I could not reset it. I tried to use the “reset your password” buttons, but I didn’t receive any links by email or text. Then, I found that there was no phone number to call for any login issues anymore because IDHS no longer maintains logins, and I needed to submit an issue online.

The online system, as you can imagine, requires ILogin to submit an issue :). It took me several attempts to get to the page where I could submit a ticket without a login, but then I got lost in the questions like “location of the service (work/home)”, “new/old hardware,” etc.
In the next several weeks, I tried to repeat the sequence of actions with similar results. Finally, I decided that I had to break through the system, and followed all these steps about “at work/at home/new/old hardware.” In the comments section, I described the issues in detail.

Hurray – I received a ticket number! Two days later, I saw a call from Springfield on my phone, and it was customer support calling. I repeated the whole story, and they said that they would reset the login and send me a link – “watch for the email.”

Three days later, I indeed received an email. I could follow the link and create a new password! And I am more proud of myself than ever! I am only wondering how they expect seniors to navigate this system! the existing account.

Pictured From The ‘Secret Garden”

I knew, Theo would publish more pictures of the show 🙂

Skating

I opened the skating season on Monday. It was still warm, but the cooling system for the McCormick skating rink worked fine, and I made sure to come right after resurfacing. Not many people are skating yet (closer to Christmas, I won’t even try to go), and the ice quality is great.

Mom

A quick review of the past couple of weeks. Health-wise, she is doing great. I took her to her doctor two weeks ago (that was the hospital visit follow-up), and he was really impressed. He said that unless there are any concerns, he does not need to see her until June. At the same time, after we reported everything that happened to my mom, he looked at me and said: you realize that that’s just the beginning? Make sure to call her every morning to check that everything is alright.

I understand that, and that was one of the reasons I was still looking for a caregiver closer to my mom’s house. The one who started to visit my mom before I went on my trip, turned out to be great. Mom really likes her, and I asked her to meet with my mom at least once a week even if there are no specific needs. It is also great that she can take my mom to places where my help is not really needed, like the nail salon. I even asked her to take my mom to the blood test. To be honest, this small help frees up a lot of my work time, and that’s the primary reason I feel like I am becoming a human being again.

We ran out of the nurses’ visits, which was not so bad because there were objectively no reasons for them and because my mom insisted on somebody being there during the visits, even though the nurse spoke Russian. The insurance won’t cover it anymore; as I said, it’s good enough for now.

One of the things the nurse arranged was a social worker’s visit. Mom had this weird idea that if she would admit she needed help, I would send her to the nursing home, so she always said that she didn’t need any help. The social worker came anyway, and she assigned a Russian-speaking case manager for Mom. This case manager called me a week later (not three weeks later, as we were told). I had to take off work again, but at least I got some valuable information, especially regarding the subsidized housing. Now that I have learned how it works, I am not surprised that we are experiencing a housing crisis. Anyway, I contacted both subsidized housing and filled in applications. One was accepted, and another was returned, and we still need to fix the issues and turn it back. I don’t know what to make out of the fact that two houses have entirely different applications!

For a reason unknown to me, my mom believes that she will be placed in a room “with somebody else,” and she still thinks that it’s “a nursing home.” I hope she will realize that this housing is much better than where she lives now and, more importantly, that she will have Russian-speaking neighbors. To be honest, that’s the sole reason I want her to move into one of these buildings, and if I could pay the full price for her to live there, I would be happy to do so!

In addition, the case manager performed a memory evaluation for my mom, and since I know what it should look like, I realized that she did a very basic one. I guess that anything better than complete dementia is considered to be “ok” at this age. A side note: my mom got very upset with this evaluation and said that she is not a mad old lady :), which is very true!

I think those are all updates for now!

One More Time Magazine Article: Immigration Playbook

One of many good articles I saw recently: Democrats Need a New Immigrant Playbook. The fact that most new immigrants tend to be more conservative is well-known, and I was wondering why it has been so widely ignored. My co-worker who came to the US a while ago from Venezuela told me right away: these are the worst of our people; I do not want to see them here.

The full text is under the cut.

Continue reading “One More Time Magazine Article: Immigration Playbook” →

Hope Instead Of Cynicism

I really love this Time Magazine Essay: If Optimism Feels Ridiculous Now, Try Hope.

I love that it highlights the danger of cynicism, which I pointed out so many times recently, and I love that it explains the power of hope.

Although you can read the full text of the article below, as usual, I also wanted to highlight a very important paragraph:

Research clearly demonstrates that more than 80% of Americans—including Democrats and Republicans voters—would prefer greater peace between political parties; most respect democratic rule. Across surveys, a supermajority of the country support policies to protect poor people and the climate. But almost no one knows that.

Both Democrats and Republicans vastly overestimate how extreme, hateful, anti-democratic, and violent their opponents are. Media companies thrive on outrage, inundating us with extreme and inflammatory portrayals of the “other side.” When we uncritically consume these messages, we miss out on vast swaths of common ground that most Americans share.

That’s, by the way, what surveys were showing even before the elections, and that’s what votes were saying going to the polls. I am glad that I see more and more in-depth analysis of why Americans voted the way they voted. There is no time to cry. It’s time to get things done.

Continue reading “Hope Instead Of Cynicism” →