The last three days were a non-stop sequence of events! I had an almost disastrous flight to London, then a very good conference in London, and another great day there, and now I am in Amsterdam, ready to give another talk tomorrow. I have a little bit of details on Instagram, and I hope I will fill in the blanks here in a couple of days!
Category: everyday life
Doing Things WIth My Mom
I tried to do a couple of things with my mom last weekend. I always try to take her to places because I believe it’s at least stimulating and, sometimes, gives her positive emotions. On Saturday, I took her to the Art Institutes – the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit will be closing soon, and I never took her there. I was hoping she would like it, even though she never heard about Georgia O’Keeffe.
This went really well. First, she didn’t want to listen to me, like literally tuning herself off, and when I asked her why, she said that “she won’t remember it all anyway.” I told her I just wanted to give her a perspective on time and place, and then she listened, and then she actually liked the paintings.
After we saw an exhibit, I took her to the members’ lounge, and we had coffee and sandwiches. It was the first time for me to get some food there rather than just free coffee. I loved the prosciutto and pear toast!
Then I walked my mom down by the Bridgeway, and we stopped at the Bean:
And then I walked her home. The total time for me was almost five hours, almost twice as much as I planned but I do not regret it: it was a positive experience.
On Sunday, I took her to the Glenwood Street Market. That was something I wanted to do it for a while since they give coupons for Link Cards, and they double the amount. So I was hoping that she will finally stop saying “everything is so expensive” and get something for herself.
We achieved a moderate success, because as it turned out, her assistive device can’t move on the cobblestone surface, and without it, she can’t take a lot with her. But at least I convinced her to exchange $100 in EDBT card for $200 coupons to be used at the market, and we were able to spend some of them! When I stopped by on Monday, she didn’t try any of the produce we bought, because “she had something she bough earlier.” I hope that it won’t go to waste at the end! Again, this whole outing took twice more time than I planned, but again, I thing it was worth it.
My Summer Recap
Summer is over. It was still very warm during the week: I spent some time at the beach on Thursday evening, and it was 82F, and the lake was warm. And today was the first fall-like day: it was only 55F in the morning and very windy. I still went for a semi-log bike ride, but even though I switched to the warmer biking jacket and put on the gloves, it was not exactly enjoyable.
The Labor Day weekend went great. I didn’t go on any trip; instead, everything I’ve done during these three and a half days was a good combination of picking up loose ends, finishing things I didn’t have time to finish before, and doing many things I love doing.
On Friday, I went to a Howard -Evanston CC End-of-Summer event (being on a Community Board there is a new thing I started in 2024 to make a difference close to home). It was a lunchtime event; I worked from home for a change and took a half-day off. Then I returned home and spent time with a friend who lives on the other side of the world in Oak Park. We planned her visit for months, and then had to reschedule because she was afraid to travel during the DNC.
On Saturday, I went escorting for the early morning shift, and I had a private yoga class with my teacher and made a plum cake
Sunday was Bike the Drive, and I had coffee with my mom, and on Monday, I went to Fort Sheridan.
I talked to Boris for about an hour every day of this long weekend. Every day, I visited my mom. Every day, I was at the beach. I watched three movies that required some concentration: Atlantis, Nuremberg, and Filmmakers for Prosecution. I finally changed the light bulbs in both bathrooms (it was not like I was sitting in the dark, in both cases, one of two bulbs was burned, but it is the whole project to change them). I won two battles on the phone with two customer services (more details to come – maybe!), and I finalized my conference presentation.
I feel like all these activities represent an accurate wrap-up of what I was doing this whole summer. Summer was very busy, but not like I was too busy to enjoy life. I had life and a lot of it!
It Was A Good Summer
Ninotchka
Siskel Center started a new lecture series, “Propaganda and Counterculture.” The program is incredibly interesting. However, I can hardly attend any because most of my Tuesdays are already scheduled. Because of that, I made a point to see “Nonotchka” last Tuesday.
The auditorium was packed with students who stayed for a class after the screening. I am curious to know their impressions! The movie is funny. Even with the obligatory dose of “cranberry trees,” it still captures some utterly funny details that are pretty close to reality.
Now that I think about it, maybe “funny” is exactly what feels slightly disturbing. One may say that we are not afraid of things we can laugh about, but at the same time, that exact feeling that “things are not too scary” prompts the viewers to believe that the communist regime was not so bad…
Fort Sheridan: Late Summer
Yesterday was Labor Day, the official end of the summer season. I spent this long weekend balancing matching up on one million in-flight projects, both personal and professional, and making sure this summer had a proper final accord. It was a very busy one, but I took as much of it as I could.
Since the beginning of summer, Igor and I have been planning to go to the Dunes on Labor Day, but then the weather forecast showed dropping temperatures. First, we decided to give up. Then, there were signs of hope, and we decided to go in the afternoon when it should have warmed up. And then, in the morning, it was so cold and windy that I texted Igor to call it off. Besides, I remembered that there was one more thing I hadn’t had time for since May, and I won’t have time till mid-October: going to Fort Sheridan. So I decided to go there in the afternoon.
Since I was going North and close to the Lake, I was sure it would be colder there (as it usually is), so I even put an extra layer in my backpack. Forgot about the lake effect :). To my surprise, it was much warmer than in Rogers Park, and it was even less windy.
Bike The Drive
For the second year in a row, I did a full course of Bike the Drive! The weather was perfect except for heavy winds after 8 AM, which slowed down the last portion of my ride. Other than that – just perfect. This time, I didn’t pay for breakfast because, for two years in a row, I found it expensive and not good. I much preferred the snacks at the rest stops: bananas, apples, dried fruits and nuts packs. Also, Urban Remedy was giving away small bottles of coffee and cookies.
Atlantis
I finally watched Atlantis – it is not the kind of movie you watch in parallel with cooking or cleaning. When I rented it for the first time, i was unable to allocate almost two hours of uninterrupted time.
It’s an amazing work of art. It might be strange to say “it’s beautiful” because it shows horrible things, but the cinematography is really stunning. The most horrific thing is that this movie was filmed in 2019, and yet, it is painfully close to what later happened in reality. Also, it is horrifying that 2025 is just around the corner, and the war is not nearly over.
“Almost Cezanne”
When I was in Ann Arbor, Lena and I visited the Artisan Market, and I put my eye on a fruit bowl.
I couldn’t tell what was so special about it except that the colors agreed with some of my tableware. Several bowls were made by the same artist. The colors of all of them were very similar, but I chose the one you can see in the photo below because of the combination of the size and the color.
The way it blended into my dining room exceeded my expectations. Wouldn’t you agree it’s “almost Cezanne”?!
More DNC Follow-up
Igor was at Union Park on the last day of the DNC and took lots of pictures. Usually, I post the link to his album and also post selected photos in my blog, but this time, I do not want to post any. Here is a link you can check out. And if you click it, you’ll probably realize why there are no pictures here.
I always strive to present an objective picture, and this time, an objective picture is not appealing: I do not want to multiply any Palestinian propaganda here. If you do not see these people and their posters, you might think there is some truth in what they say. But if you just take a look, there will be no mistake. That proves my point that these days, anybody who agitates people against Harris is an enemy of good. I do not know how else to put it – it literally means that this individual is on the dark side of things. And since I know that Igor captures such events with all possible objectivity, I can tell that there were way more supporters of the Palestinian extremists than anybody else. Ukrainians and their supporters, pro-choice activists and pro-life activists, communists, and socialists, all of them combined, made a lesser crowd than pro-Palestinian protesters. And I can’t get over it.
On a separate (but still DNC-related) topic, there were lots of comments about “CTA has done a great job keeping the stations clean.” I do not disagree with that; it was hard not to notice the unusual cleanliness. However, the immediate questions are: 1) why does it have to be a convention to make this change? 2) what did it cost in terms of time, labor, etc? I do not like shows like this, and I genuinely want these questions to be answered.
Hettie's Reflections 