Author: Hettie D.

My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996. I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future. I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life. As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.

Stories Of The Great Chicago Fire

On Wednesday, I attended the first live event organized by Chicago Architectural Foundation since before the pandemic. They told us that the last event happened on March 10, 2020). I purchased the tickets the first day I saw this announcement, which was when the infections numbers were still high, and it was hard to tell in which direction things would be evolving.

The event was dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire, and it was called “The Tales of the Night Chicago Burned.” The storyteller Scott Whitehair spent months researching the topic. In the Chicago History Museum archive, he searched for diaries, letters, and articles, which captured the lives of the ordinary people who lived in Chicago 150 years ago and witnessed that dramatic event.

The presentation was 75 minutes long. Whitehair chose the stories of five people and followed them through two days that two nights while the city was burning, and morning when the fire started to cease.


It was such a powerful and emotional presentation! Also, the author connected the Great Chicago Fire with the pandemic, and he talked about how the city will be rebuilt: not from the ashes as it was one-hundred-fifty years ago, but how it can come to life, and how we all can help.

The venue: Spertus Museum building

I am so glad that things are coming back :). Can’t have enough!

Halloween!!!

The Boy’s Town Halloween Parade happened! It didn’t happen last year, and it looks like it was almost a last-minute decision this year. It was way smaller and quieter than usual, but OMG, it’s so good that it happened!

Continue reading “Halloween!!!” →

The Color Of The Law: The Book Review

Just finished The Color Of Law by Richard Rothstein,

Each time I read something about Black History it strikes me how little I know. It seems like no matter how many books I read and in how many conversations I’ve participated in, it is still not enough.
I had no idea that so many discriminatory clauses in the housing regulations were actually spelled out like discriminatory. Like many other people, even those who like me are well aware of housing inequalities, I was still sure that the unjust economic positioning of Blacks resulted in unjust housing. I had no idea that many city zoning codes, state regulations, and even FHA guidelines had explicit segregation statements. It’s mind-blowing, and I can’t get over it. I didn’t know that Black veterans were effectively denied the benefits provided by GI Bill because you could not get mortgages in general.

It’s from that book that I learned about the contract sales of real estate (and I naively thought that the way people buy houses around me, that’s you get a mortgage and you own a home right away, is what everybody does. And the list of what I didn’t know before goes on and on.

I also find every important several comments which were made in the conclusion of the book. I often resent the opinions of some relatively new immigrants who are making statements to the effect of “why I should feel guilty for slavery, why I should sacrifice something to repay the past wrongdoings if my ancestors were not even here when all these things happen? The author cites an answer to a similar question: you were not there in 1776, but you still enjoy a hot dog n July 4. This means that when you come to this country in search of a better life, although you yourself work hard to achieve prosperity, you still benefit from the wealth, from the governmental institutions, from the quality of life in this country, from everything which was built by previous generations. And when you accept all the benefits of living in the US, you accept all the responsibilities for how that wealth was built.

I hear that sentiment (“My ancestors were not here”) frequently, and I know I have a good quote to answer.

November 8

I finally read the new guidelines for entering the USA for foreign tourists, which are going into effect the following Monday. I like that there are no more per country considerations, and the requirements are uniform across the globe. That is a huge plus. I am slightly upset that we still have to take a COVD test before returning to the US, but once again, that applies to both citizens and visitors, so I can’t complain. Besides, I completely understand the rationale behind this requirement.

The thing which I was upset about was the exclusion of Sputnik from the list of approved vaccines. Formally speaking, it is not targeted vaccine discrimination; it’s just that Sputnik is not approved by WHO yet. But the thing is that people in Russia who are doing the right thing and getting vaccinated still won’t be able to travel to the US.

And I am not talking about tourists. I am talking about people such as my mom’s friend whose daughter was working on her green card, and her interview in the embassy was scheduled for March 20, 2020… And I am not even talking about people from many other countries, including Mexico, that purchased Sputnik.

Biking Along The Lake.

I never had a bike ride as I had on Saturday! The weather was stormy for several days before that, and it was raining non-stop. Saturday was the first day when it finally stopped raining, and Boris and I went on a bike ride.

When we were close to the Navy Pier, we saw a police barricade across the bike path. Since we saw the bikers and runners passing it, we figured out it was not indicating any immediate danger (and we were right, it was removed on the other side of the stretch, and when we were heading back, this first one was removed as well).

On that stretch of the Like Frnt Trial, the water often comes very close to the bike path, but this time around, the waves were running over the bike path all the time!. We saw huge chunks of seaweed on the asphalt, so thick that we had to dismount and walk the bikes. Then one of the waves reached Boris, and he was wet up to his knees! His breaks lost traction, and so did his feet, so the next time we had to stop by the crossing, his bike ran into the rear of my bike, and he fell off (no injuries). Our final destination for this ride was the Field museum (I will blog about it separately), and he had to walk around in the wet shoes.

Sometimes, life is fair, and I was covered by another wave, with a similar effect on the way back. I thought that if somebody took a picture of bikers covered by the waves, it would be very impressive!!!

You can’t really see the waves here, but that’s the only picture I took, other times I was busy fighting the heavy wind

Black Cinema – It All Started In Chicago

I listened to this show on WBEZ when it was first aired (about ten days ago), and meant to go back and find the link on the WBEZ site. Then, Igor emailed me about the same show several days later, and I thought – I have to post it – and then life happened…

So, before I forget about it again – here is it! Like many other things, Black Cinema started in Chicago Southside. Like it happened to most of the silent movies – almost none survived. Still, we know something about the first producers and actors, and what these movies were about, and how they were received.

When you visit that link, please make sure not only to read the story but also listen to the recording of the episode – it has more interesting facts!

How The Week Goes

For several days, I had zero time to blog. I didn’t take a single day off, and Boris also worked all days except for Monday. We decided that we were trying to get “back to normal,” and our normal life means work.

On Saturday, there will be yet another early morning work for Boris. Actually, it sort of works for me because in normal life, I get up almost at the time he had to get up all this week to accommodate his European schedule.

On top of that, I took mom to the doctor on Monday, and we had a CSO concert on Thursday (an amazing one!), and also it was raining almost non-stop.

Also, I cooked a lot, and I baked a lot. And that’s more than “in normal life,” but these were the dishes I wanted to make and didn’t have either time or occasion. There was nothing extraordinary, but I would cook something fancy once a week, not twice a day in normal life.

We went grocery shopping together a couple of times. I do not feel safe biking in the rain, which means I didn’t go shopping on the bike and had less shopping capacity. Boris helped a lot; I think I am prepared for the cookie-baking time on the front of flour and sugar :).

We have Saturday and half-Sunday left, and too many things we want to do :).
Oh, and on Sunday, we were at a neighbor’s apartment, and Boris noticed how they had light strips in the dining room and ordered similar lights for us. And now the dining room looks amazing!

Disciplining Of Preschoolers In The USSR

During one of the recent online conversations, I’ve realized that many disciplining techniques applied to me when I was a small child are considered completely inappropriate nowadays. And I am not talking about spanking.

In fact, the only case of spanking I remember was when my father spanked me when I wet my pants when we were walking on the street. I remember it vividly precisely because it was something out of the ordinary. 

Mom never spanked me, but she was very creative with other disciplining techniques. For example, when I was between two and three, I was afraid of her umbrella. I do not remember the origin of this fear, but I remember that I was so afraid that I would cry when it started raining outside, and she wanted to open an umbrella while holding me. 

So when I didn’t want to take a midday nap, she would put that umbrella in the corner of the room and say that she would return and open this umbrella if I didn’t sleep. 

At about the same age, I was afraid of behemoths. And in this case, I remember why. The reason was one of the Korney Chukovskiy poems about “poor girl Lialechka”. Since my home name was Lialechka, I was sure that it was about me. Then there was a scene when the wild animals wandered around the city streets, and it mentioned the entrance to the courtyard (“podvorotnia”) where she saw a frightening behemoth!. And since our house had “podvorotnia”, it was in my eyes something that could happen to me! 

My mom knew about these fears, so she told me that if I didn’t do something she wanted me to do, she would call for a behemoth in red pants! (I have no idea about where the red pants were coming from, but that’s what she used to say).

Then in detskiy sad, I remember that I was always in trouble! I honestly felt like I was punished for something every day, and I thought that life would be much happier when I finally went to school. The most frequent punishment was putting us “in the corner,” but the worst one was sending to bed in the middle of the day. I remember how my best friend Nika and I got into trouble(I don’t remember what the crime was), and we were told to start undressing. And I thought it was OK, I could do it, but Nika started to cry, and we were forgiven. I remember how we played with the dolls, and we were disciplining them the same way the teaches were disciplining us, using the same words. Many teaches yelled at us regularly, and we called them “cruel teachers.” The teachers call some of us “bad children”, and some of us “good children,” and I still remember the names! And I am pretty sure that the parents were aware of what was going on, but it was considered nothing out of the ordinary. Moreover, they could additionally punish us at home if they thought that the “crime” was worth the punchment.

Maggie Daley Park

Last Saturday, we tried the idea that Anna and I had been talking about for a very long time. Namely, Anna and the girls visited just for a day to do some activities in the Loop without stopping at my place.

That day, the CSO had the very first children’s matinee since before the pandemic, and I bought tickets for Anna and Nadia. Originally, I thought that both parents would go, but that didn’t work with John’s schedule. At the very last minute, Anna arranged to take Nadia’s best friend with her.

Fortunately, the weather was great, so it was easy for me to babysit Kira while everybody else attended the concert.
Kira seemed to be intimidated by the crowd by the Bean and didn’t want to leave the stroller, but she was very fascinated with the chairs at the Pritzker Pavillion and spent good thirty minutes putting them up and down:).

After the concert was over and we all had lunch, we still had three and a half hours before their train back to Milwaukee. We went to Maggie Daley Park. That was such a delight! We never went there before, except for one time during the pandemic when most things there were closed.

OMG! Their playgrounds are so amazing!

This is a big ship with several boats attached
You can make if fell like a storm 🙂
A very detailed notice on the other playground
And that other playground is a steamship!
And yet another playground is a lighthouse with a slide!

I had to leave earlier to go to ORD to meet Boris, and the girls almost missed the train 🙂

Medicaid

Yesterday, mom had her first doctor appointment with Medicaid. It was just how I hoped it would go. I switched her to another doctor right away after we received an insurance card, and I looked up this doctor online. This doctor is relatively close (we walked there), and she is an actual MD, not NP. Not like it really matters, but you could tell she has way more experience with older patients. We didn’t have to wait. In fact, they took us even five minutes earlier than our appointment time, and we spent in total over one hour with the doctor and the nurse.

Mom really liked this doctor (and she told her so) because she listened and discussed all the options seriously and at length. Before mom’s appointment, she had to fill in a lot of paperwork, and I really liked one, which was a sort of doctor-patient contract. This contract said that the providers and other specialists will do their best to explain the treatment plan, prescription, and everything and always have the patient’s best interest in mind. In turn, a patient promises to be honest about their conditions, not hide anything from the doctor, and follow the treatment plan.

That worked great because when the nurse started to fill in mom’s information and asked whether she had any body pains at the moment, she started saying like “this is not important, all these bruises and such,” I told her that she had just signed the paper promising to disclose all her information.

Also, they gave her both a flu shot and a Moderna booster, which saved us a trip tp the pharmacy (here, it’s not exactly the next door, and I do not have a car). And, to her surprise, she didn’t have to pay anything for that.
Now, I think she started to realize what it means to have insurance :).