Yesterday, I took my friends to see “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” at the Goodman Theater. Goodman rarely stages musicals, and when it does, they are priced way more reasonably than Broadway shows. I had four tickets left on my “Whenever Goodman” subscription, which gave me very good mezzanine seats – I do not think you can have the stage view as good as that in any of the Broadway theaters!
The show was spectacular! I always enjoy seeing the reaction of people experiencing an American musical live for the first time! I remember my own experience of feeling never-ending happiness following the perfect movements of the dances and enjoying every bit of music.
The pictures below are official photos of the show from the Goodman Theater website- enjoy!
On Wednesday, Igor and I attended one more WTTW event in the FIRSTHAND: Homeless series. This event was dedicated to the migrant crisis. I was extremely disappointed with it. I had to leave to return to my guests, but Igor stayed to talk to the participants., soI might have more updates from him when we talk. My disappointment was mostly because I do not think this event achieved its purpose.
The purpose, as I see it, was to make more people aware of migrants’ challenges: why things are so difficult for them, what obstacles they never thought about, and why they are fleeing their countries in the first place. None of these questions were answered. To be honest, I do not even think the documentary covered “homelessness” specifically. There are multiple (too many) challenges these people face, and my feeling was that the questions of getting work permits and enrolling kids in schools took preference, and the horrific housing crisis was sort of left on the back burner. (Waiting for Igor’s comments on that).
Today, we visited the Aquarium. I love this museum, and I reserved the tickets immediately after knowing my friends were coming. This was a great idea since the Aquarium was sold out for the day!
What I completely forgot (or ignored) was that this weekend is a NASCAR weekend. Although the races are happening during the weekend, the street closures started a week before (and would still be there the week after). Last night, I tried to figure out what exactly would be opened and closed, but without any luck.
That being said, getting there was quite an adventure, and Sonia (the youngest child and my goddaughter) was screaming that she couldn’t go anymore, but when we finally got to the Aquarium, all the hardships were forgotten! I love when people love the Aquarium and when they not just quickly browse the exhibits but actually pay attention to all of them, so it was a real joy!
We spent five hours in the Aquarium, and that’s only because we skipped the show and a big portion of it is closed for renovation. And a way back seemed not as bad!
My feelings towards Independence Day are now more complex than they used to be. i am not ready for the in-depth analysis yet, but let me just say that I can understand people who do not want to celebrate this day. It does not mean that I do not want to celebrate – I do, and this day means a lot to me.
We do not have any Independence Day parades in Rogers Park, and we do not have official fireworks (although I can hear the illegal ones right now, and very loud!). Instead, my guests and I went to Millennium Park’s Independence Day Salute concert. I got us close-up seats, and it was amazing! I have gone to this concert every year since I moved to Rogers Park, and I love how Christopher Bell conducts them! My guests liked it as well 🙂
I will try to add more pictures tomorrow when there will be something in the media
I didn’t go to the Pride Parade this year; instead, I went to Jarvis Square for Pride North. I thought I took a lot of pictures, but somehow, almost all of them ended up not-so-good-not-much-to-see. And in any case, the best thing I liked was an atmosphere, and people friendliness and a feeling of everybody celebrating diversity – – and this can’t be capture on film 🙂
Over the weekend, I watched the movie “Freedom Writers.” It’s a relatively old (or at least not so new) movie, and the events took place in the 1990s. For some reason, I had never heard about this movie, and even more interesting, the person who recommended it to me was not even American.
How I feel about this movie… It is very realistic in depicting the communications of troubled teens. I had never been to a class in a US high school, But I saw enough of these situations in the youth shelter. However, I have to sadly agree with the antagonist in the movie that this one unique experience is not a methodology that can be applied by any high school teacher. Another issue that the movie does not mention is the environment. No matter how good the teachers are, there is still the environment where these kids spend the rest of their time. Also, when they graduate from high school, that same environment won’t be necessarily supportive.
I know, and I always tell this to everyone who care to listen, that there is no universal solution for these problems, and that we can only do “one person at a time.” Still, it incredibly frustrating.
On Saturday, I saw the “Native Son” at the Lifeline theater. It was a very powerful performance; One-and-a half hours of breathtaking action. I really like this review from Evanston Round Table (and that’s where I found these pictures):
What does this play have in common with the Freedom Writers, is the sad fact the things didn’t change much since the events took place. I went to see this play with one of my Black friends, and when I told her how I felt she said:no, Black people have way more legal right now, they can defend themselves in the court. I said: but Black teens are still stopped for minor violations times more often than White teens – and she agreed.
Which is, circling back to the movie, the dead end : it’s not only about breaking the cycle of violence. It’s more about breaking the cycle in people’s heads.
Back to last week. On Wednesday, my neighbor and I went to see The Kite Runner at CIBS Theater. No, they didn’t make a musical out of this book. The same as with To Kill a Mockingbird, it is a drama, and it was pretty close to the book and very well done.
I know that many readers criticized this book for not being accurate in a number of aspects, but I still find it incredibly valuable in presenting an insider perspective on Afghan society through many years of history. It turned out that my neighbor never read this book, so after the first act she asked me whether it was going to be similarly depressing till the end.
Living through the events described in the book one more time, I have recalled how I felt during the first time reading. Not like I didn’t know at that time about the Soviet aggression in Afghanistan, but it made me feel how Afghans perceived this invasion. I was wondering whether my neighbor would comment on the scene where the refugees are stopped by a Soviet patrol, but she didn’t say a word about it. To be honest, I was relieved. Usually, when we go to concerts or shows together, and she finds from the program that some of the performers are Russian or studied in Russia, she makes a point to mention it to me with a clear intention to please me.
I do not know how to explain to her that these days, I do not feel especially proud of any Russian cultural achievements. And it’s not like I consciously cancel everyone, not like I force myself to dislike anything that comes from Russia. I just genuinely can’t enjoy it; it makes me uncomfortable. I do not think I would be able to attend any concert of any performer who currently resides in Russia, so if I look at the program notes, it’s just to make sure that an artist does not live in Russia at the moment.
That was the most challenging meetup I ever had, in a positive way, you may say, but still challenging. It was a joined meeup with Chicago Open Source Data Infrastructure Group. I came to their meetup several months ago and talked to their organizer, and we agreed to stay in touch. Later, he contacted me asking whether it would be possible to use our training center for their meetup. I said: unfortunately, not, and then he asked me whether I would be open to a joined meetup. we agreed on June 11 and announced it in our respective User Groups.
At first, the rate of RSVP was as usual: a couple of regulars responded right away, and then more and more responses were coming here and there. Usually, there is a spike of RSVPs in the last couple of days before the event. I was even a little bit worried that the response rate was slow in the beginning since Matty didn’t post the talk topic from “their” side. But then, all of a sudden, I saw more and more RSVPs, and when the total number on both meetups got to sixty-five, I started to panic. Usually, I have 40-45 RSVPs, and I expect 25-30 people to show up, and I have all the formulas how to calculate the right number of pizzas, and they won’t work for a bigger numbers.
By the end of the day on Monday, the total number of RSVPs (not counting those were people forgot to put their full names) was eighty-six! I was unsure whether the printing machine at the security desk was working (it didn’t work the last two times), so I decided to print the list and to ask security to prepare the bdges in advance.
It turned out that great minds think alike, and they already came up with that same idea (and the printer was working!). I ordered $800 worth of pizza and almost killed myself bringing the drinks from CVS all by myself (I was a complete idiot about that, there were people whom I could ask, and I didn’t!)
Fifty two people showed up! It was amazing! And everything worked fine with Zoom. We had great networking both before and after the talks, and several people approached me and asked whether they could help with future meetups. However, there is one thing I started to worry about. I was not presenting, I just said a couple f words in the beginning. Still, there was a line of people who wanted to talk to me after the meetup. You can usually see this line after a very successful conference presentation. A dozen people wanted to talk to me to know my opinion about some aspects of Postgres and their career and life in general :).
I find this concerning because the meetup should be about Postgres, not about me. If I won’t be there, things won’t happen, and that’s something I need to work on.
I didn’t want to repost my professional blog here, but I wanted to mention that it was a surprisingly positive experience. With all my reservations about online conferences, I really like how Microsoft is doing it! As with everything during the last several months, my participation was rushed, and I felt horrible about it. I thought that my recorded presentation was terrible, but it ended up not being as bad as I thought! OK, I believe they edited it a little bit, but still! I had to be present at Discord during and after my talk for Q&A, and then I realized that there was nothing so much ach
Thursday at CSO. A very French concert 🙂 The legendary Jean-Yves Thibaudet (not as young as in the pictures, but magnificent!). Conductor Stephane Deneve. All-French program: Boulanger (a woman composer who died young, I never heard of her!), Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Ravel. It appears to be my last concert of this CSO season: the Sunday concert was unfortunately postponed, and I exchanged all the rest of my tickets for the. next season since I will be out for the second half of June).
Friday: “English” in Goodman Theater. Full house. The audience laughed and cried. The program said that there would be a play discussion after the show, but there was no announcement, so we left. There was still enough to process, even without a discussion.
From the Goodman website:
“English Only.” Four adult students in Karaj, Iran are studying for the Test of English as a Foreign Language—the key to their green card, medical school admission or family reunification. Chasing fluency through a maze of word games, listening exercises and show-and-tell sessions, they hope that one day, English will make them whole. But it might be splitting them each in half.
Hettie's Reflections 