On family history, parenting, education, social issues and more
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.
If someone thinks I was relatively quiet in the past couple of days, that was true. The work was fine, but I had a sort of writer’s block with my tutorial, and I started to worry whether I would be able to finish it on time, with all my other responsibilities. One of the things that really bothered me was that I knew that for a workshop of that duration, I needed 100 slides. Also, I knew that even though some of the slides in my presentation were still placeholders, I had already put out there everything I wanted to cover. And when I mentally reviewed my tutorial, I felt strongly that I already had enough material.
I had several industrial slides that required a lot of time for research, but still, there was not enough, and I knew that I shouldn’t expand this part of my tutorial.
Tonight, I was finally able to overcome my writer’s block. I finished all the industrial slides, and when I moved to the next section of my presentation, I realized that there were several placeholders that should have been replaced with three slides each, not one! Finally, I had 94 slides, and I am sure that the remaining ones are somewhere there:).
Finally, I am producing the slides at a normal speed, and I should be able to (mostly) finish everything over the weekend.
And yes, about prioritization! With all being said
I covered an early morning escorting shift before work
I didn’t go to the Art Institute after work
I stopped at Osco for a couple of on-sale items
And I went to the beach at seven. The lifeguards were out, the air was cool, and the water was warmer than the air, and I knew that the swimming season was about to end!
And also, our conference website is live! But I will showcase it tomorrow 🙂
The Sun Times article – see below. Proud for the State of Illinois 🙂
Yesterday, Gov. JB Pritzker signed the “Safe Schools for All Act” into law, which advocates say will help protect families. The law prohibits public schools from denying access to a free education based on immigration status. It also requires schools to have procedures for law enforcement requests to enter a building.
Immigrants, advocates and elected officials gather in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood on the Northwest Side to celebrate the signing of the Safe Schools for All law protecting the right of undocumented children to attend public schools.
When immigration enforcement operations in Chicago ramped up in January, a woman named Maria saw the chilling effect it had on the Belmont Cragin community firsthand.
As a parent-mentor at Lloyd Elementary in the Northwest Side neighborhood, she said some students expressed fears that they or their family members would be detained and deported by federal agents, perhaps on their way to school. Families considered leaving, she said.
The thought crossed her mind, too. Maria, whose last name isn’t being published to protect her identity, is undocumented, though her three children, including a third grader at Lloyd, are American citizens.
“I had a lot of fear,” she said.
That’s why she joined immigrant rights groups and elected officials Tuesday to celebrate Gov. JB Pritzker signing the “Safe Schools for All Act” into law, which advocates say will help protect families. The law prohibits public schools from denying any student access to a free education based on their immigration status or that of their parents.
“Now many families across the state can feel safer in their children’s public school,” Maria said. “Thanks to this new law we have more peace of mind that ICE is not welcome in our schools.”
The law also prohibits schools from disclosing or threatening to disclose information related to the immigration status of the student or an “associated person.” And it requires schools to develop procedures for reviewing and authorizing requests from law enforcement trying to enter a school.
In January, the Trump administration rescinded a Biden-era policy that protected certain places, such as schools and churches, from immigration enforcement actions.
The new law comes as students in Chicago Public Schools and suburban districts return to classes for a new school year.
State Rep. Lilian Jimenez, D-Chicago, and State Sen. Karina Villa, D-West Chicago, were lead sponsors of the bill. It strengthens at the state level protections that already existed at the federal level but feel tenuous under the current administration, they said. In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that states cannot deny students a free public education on account of their immigration status.
But that hasn’t stopped some states. Earlier this year, Tennessee tried to pass a bill allowing public schools to refuse enrollment to children without legal immigration status. The effort failed after pushback from advocates and community members.
“All of these students, all of these teachers, all of our parents across the state of Illinois know that they have a safe school today, yesterday, tomorrow and we will stand up to this administration every single time,” Villa said.
Jimenez said her family of immigrants and many others see education as a path to success, which is why it’s important to make school buildings “sanctuaries” for them.
“Children need to be in school — and parents shouldn’t be afraid of going to school — because that’s a place where we can help children succeed so our community can succeed,” Jimenez said, noting Monday was the first day back for Chicago Public Schools.
CPS policy does not allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into school facilities unless they have a criminal judicial warrant signed by a federal judge. The district also does not share student records with ICE or any other federal representative without a court order or parental consent.
On Saturday, my houseguests went to Milwaukee to visit Anna and the girls. I thought I would work on my tutorial, but I ended up catching up on life: cooking and baking, talking with Boris for over an hour, home accounting, and Prairie Postgres business.
And then all of a sudden, it was their last full day in Chicago! It turned out that I didn’t have a chance to feed them an American breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, so I had to cover that, and then we went to the Loop to check out old skyscrapers, which we also somehow neglected to include in our prior excursions.
Then we headed North, stopping at the Bridgehouse Museum:
Then we went to the Starbucks Reserve, because I ike to change people’s opinion about the Starbucks. The only problem was that it was a weekend tourist crowd, so it took a long time to get everything we wanted to eat in separate lines, but we go everything, including the expresso martinies:
Finally, we went to the Glenwood Art Fest. I made a mistake taking a bus from the Starbucks Reserve. It was the Chicago Air and Water Show, and the traffic in the direction of Lake Shore Drive simply didn’t move! After an hour of staying on a barely moving bus, we got off and walked to the Fullerton station, and finally arrived at the Art Fare.
I know that my friends took more pictures, so I will post more when they share!
In a recent article in Time Magazine, Diana Frank discusses the increasing lifespan and how the healthspan is not keeping pace with it – a topic I have been thinking about frequently lately.
That was the last week of GPMF, and it was one of my favorite pieces (and to be honest, who doesn’t like Carmina Burana?!). I had two subscription tickets and an extra one, so my guests and I went. It was absolutely perfect, not to mention that I had a chance to showcase Chicago night lights! The photos are partially mine, partially my guests.
Hettie's Reflections 