Category: reflections

A Book I Am Excited About

I am finishing the Berlin Dairy by Willian Shirer. What an amazing book! I can’t believe I knew nothing about it until I saw a recommendation from a friend. William Shirer was a CBS broadcaster who worked in Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1941. He wrote several books about the history of WWII and the history of Nazism, and now I want to read them all! 

I think that it is a combination of two factors that make this book so amazing: first, he was an outstanding journalist with an extraordinary analytical mind who knew both how to get access to information and how to interpret it. And second – that it is an actual diary, so the readers follow events in “real-time.” When he wrote something in his journal, he did not know what would happen next or the implications of the events he had just recorded. It’s something like: I can’t believe Molotov and Ribbentrop are meeting! How can they negotiate when Russia is the most fierce critic of Nazism. How is it possible that they could reach any agreement?! They did?! 

It turned out there were lots of historical facts I didn’t know. Take the Winter War – I thought I knew everything as much as I could, visiting Finland several times a year. Still, I had no idea that it started with the air raid shelling Helsinki – I thought that all the war events happened at the frontline. 

This book has way too many parallels with the current war in Ukraine, like when the author explains how Germans have “no morals.” A German is lamenting about “bad Finns who fight against Russians, and why they are doing such a horrible thing as resisting? When Shirer says that Finns are fighting for their independence and asks won’t the Germans do the same if they were invaded, the response it: but that’s different! Russians are our friends!

Or when he cites a conversation with a German waitress about the British air raids: why are they bombarding us? – Well, because you are bombarding London! – But we only shell military objects, and they through bombs on our civilian objects? – Why do you think that Germans only bombard military objects? – That’s what our newspapers say!

Sounds familiar, right?! Way too familiar!

I almost finished this book, and I have three other books in queue, but I am urged to drop them all and read all the rest of the books by Willian Shirer(which will definitely take a while!)

Closing The Holiday Season

It was another extremely productive week. Still, many people at work were on vacation, and although many questions and issues required my intervention, I had long periods when I could focus on my big projects or debus something complex. 

Also, I kept a list of my tiny “do-to” things that must be done at some point – everyone has such a list! I managed to cut it dramatically during the first week of the New Year. I dare to say I did everything I planned:).

I keep thinking about how fortunate I am with my job, where my knowledge and skills are so much needed, and people treat me with respect and appreciate my community work as well. It feels good every day, and I am counting my blessings.

My list for this weekend was modest because the workweek was productive, but I had three huge items on my agenda: to take off all Christmas decorations, take off all tree ornaments, pack everything, and put it back into storage. And it took pretty much the whole day (except for talking to Boris and visiting mom). It sounds right because decorating took many hours as well:). When I decorate house my house for Christmas, it is one of the most joyful things because it makes my place magical. And when I take the decorations down, it feels like: Ok, the holidays are over, and it’s time to dive into life, into the new year, into all new things I want to do. 

And once again, looking back at 2022, it was just an outstanding year for my professional development, although war dominates all aspects of life. And once again, I am not depressed because of the war. I am angry but also very active and productive.

The last glance at my holiday cards before I pack them, sign the year, and put away – Thirty-four this year!

Into The New Year

The last (long) weekend appeared to be remarkably productive, more than I could imagine. I had a to-do list so gigantic that I was sure I wouldn’t be able to complete more than two-thirds of it, and I ended up being done with almost everything. In fact, I have a good chance to cross off the remaining items before Friday :).

Most importantly, I talked to lots of people. Having several days in a row when I had time to talk, to email, and meet people, I seized this opportunity. And it feels amazingly good.

I remember how I was going to prioritize interactions with people last New Year, and then how all my plans were ruined together with so many other things and became so irrelevant that I didn’t want to recall them. I am not making any grand plans for 2023, and I am not putting together a list of New Year’s resolutions. There were things that I wanted to complete during the last weekend, and I did. Some of them could be considered New Year resolutions, but overall I’d say: I know what the right things to do are now, next month, and next year, and always, And I am trying to do as much as I can, every day and every week, and I keep to-do lists and roll them over.

I feel good about the new year. I feel angry and productive – that’s my new thing, my new state of mind and soul, which I acquired in 2022: angry and productive. And it really helps:)

Just A Day Left…

One day left of 2022… I had an extremely productive day today. Realized that I have almost nothing to do at work (sure, the work is never done, but there was nothing that had to be completed in 2022), and at the same time, a lot of community work and my personal stuff actually had to be completed in 2022, I took a half day off and focused on my todo list. I am pretty proud of the progress I made; at least, I do not feel horribly behind. I published a blog for community discussion which I promised back in October, submitted two talk proposals for spring conferences (need to sum=bmit two more), and replied to several emails.

Also, reviewed my finances, closed the month and the year, and drafted the next year’s budget – hopefully closer to reality than my last year’s was. At least, I budgeted for war-related expenses, although I hold my hope that I won’t need it for the whole of 2023.

My todo list for this long weekend is bigger than ever, and mostly it is not about the New Year celebration, but about analyzing and planning of everything: work, finances, volunteering, health, and people’s connections. I am going to look back at my last year’s plans and see whether there is anything that went as expected:)

“No plans can survive the collision with reality.” (c)

In The Shadow Of The War

I know that it’s wrong to have your phone on your nightstand and check what has happened while you are asleep the moment you wake up. It might be wrong, but that’s what I do. Before February 22, I first checked whether there was an email from Boris, and starting from February 22, it was the BBC notifications… Last morning, I almost cried when I saw the notification about yet another missile strike. And I said it out loud, although nobody could hear me: they will pay for it. We will make them pay.

As much as I liked the December 26 Time magazine issue, all the articles, and all the photos, and as much as Ukraine is in the news every day, it can’t change the fact that the situation at the front is horrific. Every morning, I wake up hoping for a miracle. And every morning, it’s another missile strike. A miracle can’t help, and I know it. And I know that anti-missile weapons won’t appear miraculously, and I know that the troops need to be trained. Still, every morning…

All I Want For Christmas…

I am getting more and more disappointed in Russian society. I can’t believe I am saying this. I always used to say that the country has potential and healthy forces. Whenever others told me that nothing good would ever come out of Russia, I would always argue and remind others how much society has changed in 1991/92. I still have a lot of newspaper clippings from that time. I remember how we were hungry but hopeful and open to new ideas. I remember how in 1996, none of us, recent arrivals to the US, planned to stay here forever. We talked about going back and bringing back with us all the knowledge, all the new ways of doing things that we learned. I thought … well, does it matter what I thought back then?! 

I am shocked to find an imperial mindset in many people I thought were completely normal, intelligent, and understanding. The most frustrating thing is that these people do not understand that they have this problem. The level of entitlement is skyrocketing. I am horrified that I never paid enough attention to that and never noticed the level of this ignorance in the people surrounding me. 

Last weekend, Anna and I talked a lot about that. (This recording of Chervona Kalina I posted a couple of days ago was made during our conversation – there was a lot of singing). For many years, I told Anna that most of the Russian political opposition is not that much better than Putin and that being against Putin is not enough to be a decent person. Now she said she realized that. The opposition is continuous frustration and disappointment. Why do they feel OK behaving like a Big Brother when they come to other countries? Why do they believe that opposing Putin entitles them to some special treatment? Anna told me that at the beginning of the war, she thought that although Ukrainians are wholly entitled to say as harsh words about Russians as they want, they are indeed too harsh. But now, she says, she has concluded that the Ukrainians were right from the beginning. And that’s how I feel, as well. 

I can’t believe that even now, many people who once again seemed to be completely normal complain about the inability to travel to Europe as if it’s the worst thing in the world. There are a few of my very long-time friends who are not like this, but so few!

As for us, we feel the weight of collective guilt, and it’s more than just a word for me. There were many facts that I chose to ignore, not pay attention to, and not analyze. I have already said multiple times that I am not sure where I would be if I didn’t immigrate. I was thinking about myself thirty years ago, and I can’t be certain I would be on the right side of history. That’s why the blame is on me, and I can’t imagine people going around with their holiday activities without Ukraine in the background. 

I know that all I want for Christmas is a victory for Ukraine. Not peace, but victory. 

Keep Ukraine Moving

Watch their stories here.

About Holiday Lights (And Those Who Don’t Have Them)

On Tuesday, when I walked from my office to the Orchestra Hall, the city was all illuminated. That’s one of my favorite things during the holiday season: I like to walk in the Loop and stare at the office and shop windows at all the Christmas trees and decorations. The weather was very nice, above freezing and no rain, and I had my red coat on and a new small black hat.

I took a couple of pictures, and then suddenly I thought: how lucky we are to have all these lights, and how horrible is it that cities in Ukraine are not only without holiday lights but lights in general, and also without heat and water. And when I thought about it once, I could not go back to blissful ignorance. That is one of the things I was trying to explain last week – the feeling is not precisely Christmas – like.

My journey from a flip phone to a smartphone, and back to a (smart) flip phone

My last three phones

As some of the people reading know, I had a flip phone (a Kyocera DuraXTP, to be precise) until late December 2021.

I was, and still am, on a family phone plan. When the rest of my family switched to smartphones, I went with a flip phone because smartphones were much more expensive and I was poor. But after a while, as cheap(er) smartphones became available, it became sort of a combination of wanting to see just how long I can survive with a flip phone in an increasingly smartphone-orientated world, being leery of just how easy it is to get drawn into social media/internet when you have a browser in your pocket. And, in recent years, I also grew leery of participating in the certain aspects of smartphone-centric world. For example, rideshare platforms like Uber and Lyft are built on labor exploitation and investor subsidies, and I could neatly avoid all the moral quandaries that come with using apps by having a phone that didn’t support them. I liked having my transit passes on physical cards and buying (or printing out) physical tickets. And, like I said, I just didn’t like the thought of being connected to the Internet all the time. It may seem counterintuitive, given that I’m a journalist, but I appreciated the fact that, when took the ‘L’ train, the lack of onboard wi-fi forced me to disconnect and gave me a respite from work concerns, even if for less than an hour.

Now, in a bit that’s going to be a recurring motif in this post, I should mention that my mom got less and less amused by my choice the longer this went on. She would never go so far as to tell me to get a smartphone already, in those exact words, but she made her displeasure known. In 2018, when my phone screen suddenly stopped working and I had to get a new phone, I was almost resigned to getting a smartphone. But my mom kept gloating how I would “finally be joining the 21st century,” and I ended up getting a flip phone out of sheer spite. Which is how I got the Kyocera.

Continue reading “My journey from a flip phone to a smartphone, and back to a (smart) flip phone” →

A Revelation

I came home after visiting my mom, deep in thought. I think I understood something about her that I didn’t realize before.

Many things have been going on with her in the past two months. It started with arthritis in her knees, which she rapidly developed. It was a hard hit on her because she used to be able to move around very fast, and she does not like and can’t adjust to the current situation. Then there was a wrist injury, and now I am not even sure what exactly happened with her hands. Still, for a couple of days, she could not do anything with her left hand, and I could not get a doctor’s appointment for her (I could only schedule for the end of November). I was very busy figuring out how to deal with this situation and didn’t even want to write anything about it. I was just trying to make sure she won’t fall inside her apartment or something like that.

At the same time, I had my own local “refugee crisis,” trying to help one family who fled from Russia. They were looking for somebody with whom they could talk in Russian, and I introduced them (actually, just the daughter) to my mom. She (the daughter) was very excited to meet somebody new, and she genuinely liked mom and wanted to help (again, it was in the midst of the disability crisis). When I came to see mom, she told me something like: why is N asking whether she can help me? I can manage. Besides, if she is helping me, I need to pay her something. I was shocked by this suggestion but asked N to stop suggesting help to let mom cool down.

Today, mom told me that “N stopped emailing her, and she knows why.” When I asked her why she thinks it is so, she said: her hours at work were reduced, so she makes less money. She was hoping I would give her some work and would pay her, but when she realized I was not going to, she decided to stop emailing me. I was so shocked that I started to yell at mom, asking why she always thinks badly about people. She replied that she was not implying that the person was bad. And that was it.

I know it sounds unbelievable that I have known my mom for almost sixty years, and only now am I realizing such a fundamental thing about her, but that’s true. It was the first time that I understood that when she says something like “I gave her a thing I didn’t need,” or “I didn’t pay attention to what she said,” or that the store cashier purposely cheated rather than made a genuine mistake – all these times she indeed didn’t think she was saying bad things about people. She truly believes that thinking about their profit is the most natural thing for any human, and everybody should watch up to ensure that nobody takes advantage at their expense.

One of these revelations made you go back and re-evaluate a lot of your past thoughts. Now so many things are making sense! I admit I was wrong in thinking she wanted to hurt people (including me) when she accused others of taking advantage of her. She does not. She indeed believes it’s in human nature and wants to look out for herself.
Remembering my paternal grandfather, I think she took it from him. He had a lot of what is called “the cunning peasant,” somebody who does not believe in charity, altruism, and free stuff.

Well, not like it is going to change anything in what we are doing, but it explains a lot!