Month: January 2026

Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire

OMG, that was something! I knew this documentary would be interesting, but it was so powerful and thought-provoking that I found it challenging to participate in the Q&A immediately after: I felt I needed to process everything I had seen before asking any questions.

Wiesel’s “Night” is a classic; it’s part of most high schools’ curricula. It’s one of these rare books that “almost everyone read.” Still, so many things we do not know; at least, I didn’t know. Most importantly, I never saw any footage of Elie Wiesel’s public speaking. And the whole documentary is just that: his own voice. The film producer/editor Michael Chomet, who spoke with the audience after the screening, said the film was commissioned by the family, but the artistic direction was his, and the family didn’t see the movie until it was finished.

The parts which impressed me most were:

  • The footage of Wiesel talking with Ronald Reagan before receiving the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, when he explains to the President how his planned visit to the German cemetery will be perceived, and what he should do, and how, later, when speaking at the public ceremony where he receives this medal, he repeats the same speech. The way Reagan reacts and responds. (As I said, it’s hard to believe we had such an intelligent and sensible Republican President)
  • His Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, when he says he understands Palestinians but disapproves of their methods
  • His urge to speak up, not to be silent
  • The footage of 13-year-old high schoolers from a New Jersey magnet school, when they discuss “Night” (Rudavsky told us that they made a separate short documentary based on this footage)
  • Said multiple times, both by Wiesel and his former student: suffering is not a badge of honor; suffering is not something that defines you, it’s something that informs you. I can’t stress enough how much I agree with this statement.

I can talk at length about this documentary, but I still won’t be able to convey everything I felt while watching. Five-star rating.

“The Disappointed Tourist” Exhibit At CAC

As I mentioned last week, my attepmt to see two new exhibits at the Chicago Architectural Center was unsuccessful, since they switched to reduced hours after the holidays. Yesterday, I was planning to attend the show at the Siskel Center, which started at 4:30PM, and I figured I can visit the CAC right before that.

The first exhibit is called “Framed Views”, and it shows the photos taken during the Open House Chicago. If was really nice, and I liked many of the photographs on display, but nothing unexpected.

The second one, however, was one big Awww!

This exhibit is called “The Disappointed Tourist”, and it’s descrition reads:

Is there some place that you would like to visit or revisit that no longer exists?” This is the question posed by The Disappointed Tourist, an ongoing project by artist Ellen Harvey presented in nearly 300 paintings at the CAC.

Based on this description, I thought it will be mostly about demolished buildings and such, but it was much more than that! It also covered real places which were gone long time ago, as well as some mythical ones.

Each picture includes the time when the building or placce was gone, and for me, the most horrifying were the pictures of ancient monuments gone during the most recent wars.

I startled when I saw Atlantis on this wall, because I first thought that this exhibit only concerned the recently demolished buildings, but it turned out, it was much more than that. Then, I followed down and saw the Hanging Gardens of Babilon
Continue reading ““The Disappointed Tourist” Exhibit At CAC” →

My Mom’s 91 Birthday

My mom turned 91 yesterday, and we had a small celebration at Anto Pizza by Jarvis Square. This place never fails us; it’s perfect for any small family-style celebrations. They are officially BYOB and happy to provide glasses and bottle openers. I stopped by them last week and asked whether we could also bring our own dessert. They were surprised by request but said: sure!

Anna ordered a cake at a bakery just outside the border of Chicago, Sweet Temptations Bake Shop, and it was excellent! They used raspberry mousse instead of icing inside, and fresh raspberries for decoration.

My mom liked that the celebration was so small and cosy, and I think she also liked that John drove her both ways. At least, she didn’t complain about anything, neither at the restaurant, nor later in the evening when I called her.

The logistics for both Friday and Saturday were exceptionally complicated, because Friday night was my gift night for John and Anna: they had tickets for Phantom of the Opera and a night at Palmer House hotel, and I had the girls, and in the morning, the girls had a CSO for Kids concert, and then we had to pick up the cake, to pick up mom, and get my gift for her from my house.

I opened the Armenian pomegranate wine, which I bought on my recent trip, and it was also exceptionally good! Now I regret I got only one bottle!

2025. Health And Wellness

Health

The most important health-related event of 2025 was regaining sight in my left eye. Just to be clear, my vision is not perfect, and my two eyes still see differently and are still not completely synchronized. But I can get around without glasses or contacts most of the time, and that gave me the long-forgotten level of freedom. My only inconvenience is that because of the lasic in my right eye, I can’t wear a multifocal on it anymore, which means that when I wear contacts, I need to put on reading glasses any time I need to read something, not just some of the time. And unfortunately, multifocal glasses do not help. But those are such minor problems compared to the situation two years ago that I can’t complain. I probably should try to get a better multifocal prescription.

Because of the eye surgeries, I missed at least one routine test, even though I promised my GP I would schedule it. Now I need to have three procedures in 2026 :), but I already scheduled everything, so chances are they all will happen.

I definitely feel aging this year; the first area is reduced flexibility, and the second is facial aging. I think I’ve come to terms with the latter and hopefully figured out how to age gracefully, but the first one is a concern. Last year, I noticed for the first time that if I do not practice yoga for more than a week, I lose flexibility, and if I do not practice specific poses for several weeks, I lose them as well. That was an alarm bell for me, and I am trying to be more consistent with yoga than ever before.

I forget words periodically, but it happens with the same frequency as it has been for the past three years – about once a week on average. I am keeping track of it and checking with my doctor. I am glad I asked to take a baseline test two years ago, so now I can compare myself to myself :).

Other than the above, 2025 was rather uneventful healthwise.

Physical Activity

I am reasonably happy with the level of physical activity this year. The biggest achievement was increasing biking distance (both individual rides and total mileage). This year, Bike the Drive was almost not challenging. All my indoor exercisers are on the same level as last year, although I figured out how to increase the intensity of my indoor biking.

I was not consistent with yoga; there were different reasons for that, but all came down to me not trying hard enough to make time, and that’s one of the things I am trying to change in 2026; I do not want to lose my flexibility.

Update: checking the app, I can confirm that most of my active calories came from more biking, and I was hitting higher daily totals during the biking season, especially in July and August. Funny enough, the exercise minutes were almost the same throughout the year.

Food

I have a follow-up appointment with my GP in February, because I need to figure out the reason for my cholesterol still going up, especially with the changes I made last year. Since it is not a one-time spike but a three-year trend, I want to get to the bottom of it.

Sleep

In 2025, I made serious efforts to increase my sleep duration to six hours. I know that my need for sleep increased slightly in comparison to my lifetime minimum, and I do need to switch from 5 – 5.5 hours to six. I am trying with moderate success, and I especially didn’t like the last five weeks of 2025, when I slept an average of just four hours a night. If not for this last stretch, I would feel more successful in this area.

Update: just checked the health app. According to it, my average sleep in 2025 was 5 h 18 min, with December being 4 h 37 min. Some months, the average was over 5h 30 min, reaching 5 h 40 – 5 h 50 min, but this didn’t stick. Also, I looked at the time when the app recorded “time in bed” in addition to sleep, and remembered that when I was trying to get to bed earlier, it resulted in more time in bed than more time sleeping. So I should probably set more realistic goals 🙂

To summarize: not bad, but lots of areas for improvement.

Early Birthday Gift

My friend from Kenya was in the US over the holidays, visiting her friends in Pittsburgh. I mailed her cookies to her friends’ address, and she mailed me the gift she brought from Kenya. It was a really bright spot in my challenging week.

Bruce Goff Exhibit

I briefly saw this exhibit when I was at the Art Institute with my granddaughters during their winter break, and I wanted to go back and see it one more time when not in a rush (and possibly more times later – I usually try to visit each new exhibit several times). My original plan to do it on January 3 didn’t work, so my next opportunity was this Thursday, when the Art Institute is open until 8 PM. I still had to visit my mom on that day, so I planned to be there for no more than 1.5 hours, and maybe come one more time later.

When I entered the hallway which led to the exhibit, I saw a sign “Free event today,” but since I had never seen any evening free events in the Art Institute (just fancy receptions sometimes), I thought that this sign was left there since midday. But to my surprise, when I walked into the exhibit hall, I heard a conversation which sounded exremely interesting, and I hurried up to join it.

It turned out that there were two docents conversing with the group of visitors. I can’t even call it a tour, because it was very informal, and both docents were passing the ball of the conversation to each other, happily including the visitors, and turning their questions into the prompts to tell more. It was a million times better than any lecture!

These drawings represented different music genres

Goff was an artist, an architect and a composer, and he didn’t want to follow conventional way in anything he did, including the choice of materials.

From Goff’s shirt collection. He loved extravagant shirts, and people were gifting shirts to him.
Continue reading “Bruce Goff Exhibit” →

Catching The Vanishing Christmas

For reasons already mentioned multiple times, I didn’t do enough Christmas in 2025, and during the first days of 2026, I was trying to catch the last bits of it. On Monday, I was working from home, and went to Charmer’s for breakfast. I almost ordered a cappuccino, but stopped myself and asked whether they still had any holiday drinks, and they had!

And on Tuesday, my 6:30 AM train happened to be a Holiday train (somehow, they didn’t have time to remove decorations!), and that was another treat, because it was the only time this season!

Now I checked all the boxes, and finally ready to have the Christmas season over!

2025. Part 2

Civic activities

Here, there are more negative than positive results. My biggest regret of 2025 is that I didn’t do enough during the election campaign. To be precise, I did zero canvassing and a very moderate amount of convincing people of what the right thing to do is. I knew it was wrong, but I kept telling myself that organizing Prairie Postgres is more important at that moment, and that I can’t do everything, and… I didn’t speak up enough, which I also regret. I post very little, if anything, political on LinkedIn, where I am most visible, and the list continues. I will never do it again!

I’ve done a little bit better at supporting DEI, regardless of the political climate, but I wasn’t consistent enough, so one of my goals for this year is to always keep this support on my radar.

Even with simple things like attending the rallies, I did way less than I did in previous years. Once again, my excuse was that I was twice as busy as before because of Prairie Postgres and my activities in the professional community. Still, I should always remember that if the country’s civic values are at risk, the interests of my professional community are at risk as well. I want to make an intentional effort to attend rallies when I really care about the cause. I know that society’s well-being depends on each individual’s actions, so I have no excuse. I know that each person matters. Earlier in 2025, I tried to become more involved in local initiatives, but I had to drop these activities because they looked like a very insignificant outcome for the time spent. I will try to get involved again in a couple of years, when I retire.

Cultural activities and reading

According to Goodreads, I read fewer books in 2025 than in 2024, but I believe that’s because I didn’t record books that ended up being a waste of time, and there were more of those in 2025. The majority of books were audiobooks, and that’s something I want to address. I switched to audiobooks because it is easier to listen while I am doing something else, and also because of my vision problems. Now that my vision is better, I am looking to find ways to read e-books again. Today, I realized I have a new option: I started taking the L more often, and when on the L, I can find a place to sit, but there isn’t enough space to open my computer, especially since I switched from Mac Air back to Mac Pro. This is the time when I can read e-books.

As for the other cultural activities, I attended many exhibits, concerts, operas, and different theatrical performances, but I didn’t keep track of them, and that’s something I want to do next year. I am still hungry for more cultural activities and want to see more performances than I have time to see, and oftentimes I feel disappointed because I do not like the show. Next year, I want to get more organized with all these activities, keep track of them, and what I like and what I don’t, so I can figure out how much I really want to see and what exactly.

To be continued

2025. Part 1

2025 was a difficult year, though which year isn’t? I had been through many fights and won many battles, but a significant portion of those victories were Pyrrhic, so by the end of the year, I was not sure whether I had achieved anything. Still, I wanted to write a short summary of what I consider the wins of 2025 (and what’s not), and how I am going to build on them. I plan to have it in three separate parts.

Money

It starts with money, because if you do not have enough of it, nothing else can happen. Everyone who knows me believes my money management is perfect; however, the only reason it appears that way is that I plan with large margins. Last year, I realized that although I was not overspending (not spending more than I make), my budget became rather mythical, and that I lost a clear distinction between what was “necessary” and what was “extra.” I haven’t changed anything in this classification since I first set it up 20+ years ago, and I was wondering why my wealth manager and I couldn’t find common ground. A year ago, I completely redesigned my budget (the totals didn’t change, but everything else did :)), and at the end of the year, it ended up being very close to reality. I didn’t make any major changes, only some minor adjustments, and I consider this result to be one of my best achievements of 2025.

Professional

Many years ago, when I first told Boris what I wanted to do when I retired, he told me it was not a retirement but a change of profession. Although I still have at least a couple of years until retirement, I feel like my profession has partially changed, or rather, I have added something new to it. Speaking strictly about my technical expertise, I am extremely happy that in 2025, I learned new techniques and technologies and became better at what I have already been doing very well. I have been presented with several major technical challenges, and I have resolved them in a new way, not relying solely on my previous experience. I consider it a very important achievement, because that’s what keeps me at the top of my profession, but at the same time, I know I could do more. There are several areas that I have never touched before because “it was not my thing,” but I believe that the time has come to broaden my expertise and not to be solely focused on the areas I am already good at. I have a list of techniques and tools I want to learn in 2026, and I hope it comes true.

For the first time since I started at my current job, I was able to create new open-source projects. My current job does not leave me much time to pursue professional projects outside the job itself, but this year I added one new project and almost added another. Formally speaking, I added it yesterday, but the work was done in Q4 of 2025.

Prairie Postgres

This is part of my volunteer work, but it is so massive that it warrants a separate section. Obviously, that’s the first time in my life of running a not-for-profit, and I still think I had more fails than successes. The level of responsibilities was no less than in my “normal” job, and I was not fully prepared for that. For much of the year, I felt like a complete failure because I didn’t have time to do everything this “other job” demanded of me. My accomplishment is that I was not a complete failure after all; we survived, and we are slowly growing.

The rest of the volunteering

I am not completely happy about it. Firstly, I now strongly believe I took on too many responsibilities, and I am glad I had the sense to drop the Howard-Evanston community board, not without hesitation. But I still have too much, and all my volunteer positions were because I wanted them, not because someone forced me to take them. That was the first year I had more than one professional volunteer responsibility, and they have all been very time-consuming from the start. I know that I do not fulfill my volunteer obligations at least for two organizations, and I need to figure out how to change it.

It’s still a mixed bag with the Night Ministry. I know that I am doing at least something good, and I know that at least some people are thankful, but it has been a very challenging environment during the last year. Several times I thought that I was doing so little there that it would be better to stop coming altogether, but each time, I feel that I would create a void in my heart.

I am happier with Clinic escort volunteering, because of the early morning shifts – I finally figured out how to be useful regularly!

To be continued

Christmas Decorations Removal

Why did I do it so early this year? Because otherwise, I would need to do it the next weekend, and next weekend, I will have the girls, and it will be my mom’s birthday, and I will also need to get ready for my next trip, and review the training I am giving at the end of the month.

I ordered the tree removal for today, so that I won’t even think of keeping it longer :). It is faster to take the decorations down than to put them up, but still, it was a lot!

That’s how many boxes I had to move downstairs to the storage! It took me six trips up and down! I go up and down, and you think – why in the world am I doing this? Bringing all these boxes up, and four weeks later, bringing everything back down?!

I know that many people feel sad when they remove a Christmas tree and decorations, but for me, it symbolizes a fresh start: the holidays are over, and the new year has officially begun, and I am ready to make it great!