it was, in some sense, a “getting my life back” weekend, although I guess one weekend is not enough at the moment. I had a chance to have breakfast outside, which didn’t happen much this summer.
I biked a lot, although since the sun is not out until 6-45AM, I could not do a really long bike ride.
I went to the CSO Symphony Ball for the first time in my life. It’s not like I do not go to fundraising events, but if I go, it’s for more socially-oriented events. I think there are enough well-off people who would be happy to fundraise for CSO and other cultural institutions.
This year, I received two free tickets to the Symphony Ball for participating in the CSO for Kids Ambassadors program. I didn’t expect it :), and I am not going to lie, it was nice! I took my mom there, and because of that, I skipped a pre-concert champagne toast: I knew that mom wouldn’t be comfortable there, and also, I also wanted to make sure she ate something before we went.
The concert was amazing, and also it was a spectacular view of women in evening gowns and men in tails and white ties.
Other than that, it was mostly finishing writing multiple things I had to write or promised to write and planning my cultural activities for the next two months. Also, I baked an experimental version of my favorite blueberry pie, using strained skyr on place of rahka, and this is much better than using ricotta)
Today, I went to the Budlong Woods branch of Chicago Public Library to listed to the talk about the history and mission of RefugeeOne – the charity which helps refugees to resettle.
A huge portion of this talk was about the definition of who are refugees and who are asylum seekers (and I have to admit, I didn’t know that these worlds have precise UN definitions).
I didn’t know how long people usually stay in the refugee camps until they are resettled – can you believe it’s seventeen years on average?! Also, I had no idea about how many displaced people are there in the world – the picture below provides 2021 numbers, before the war in Ukraine, and as of now, the estimates are over 100 million, including internal displacement.
Even when the refugees ae resettled, have an apartment to live in, and help to become independent and self-sufficient, it still takes a huge effort, and that’s what RefugeeOne is doing.
They are calling for volunteers who follow the newly arriving families for the first six months, “holding their hands.” That’s something I was already thinking about last year, and I have to say that, unfortunately, I can’t make that sort of commitment, at least for now. But I will keep it in mind for the future.
Tuesday: Work + hosting Chicago PostgreSQL User Group after work
Wednesday: Work + discussion on our book + recording a session for P99 conference + dinner with a co-worker visiting from Texas + three-and-a-half hours long show, not especially interesting, and a very cold venue, but it was a part of the subscription, and I was there with my neighbor, so no way out
Thursday: Work + volunteering in the youth shelter
Friday (projected): Work + dinner with the same co-worker.
And “work” this week is twice as intense as usual; not like I have it light any other week. But this week, we want to do as much as possible with my visiting co-worker, so we discuss things and work on documentation. Also, this week happens to be high on customer communications and explaining what I am doing :), and convincing them that I am not their enemy :). And our dinners are also full of work discussions because we do not have enough time at work to discuss everything we want to discuss.
…to take pictures at the Rogers Park Metra Station every morning, capturing an amazing group of beautiful people from all walks of life, ethnic origins, social backgrounds, and whatever other category you can name! Every morning is a celebration of diversity.
Our visit to DHS today ended with unexpected success: my mom got SNAP. We spent about an hour and a half there, and she got an emergency approval and the actual LINK card, and she will have money on the card by Wednesday. I set up a pin for her, and we are good to go.
The less exciting part is that we will need to go to the SSA office to apply for the SSI (which we did once – unsuccessfully, but there should not be any issues now). Just another time-consuming thing. And only after we apply for SSI she should be able to apply for subsidized housing. This being said, I do not know when this all will end, but I am really happy with today’s results.
Thinking about most of my schooling years, I am retrospectively surprised by how little of the cultural events were there. There was almost nothing going on after school. In the third grade, I started to take piano lessons, which our school music teacher was giving. There was one 15-minute lesson a week for the price of 5 rubles (I was giving the money to the teacher at the beginning of each lesson). I neither liked nor disliked it. I thought the girls who played piano were cool, and I wanted to do the same. Nobody forced me to do piano, so it sort of went on until the eighth grade when I didn’t have enough time to do this and stopped. I didn’t play any sports, and I didn’t have any other extracurricular activities until I started to attend theater classes at the nearby House of Culture when I was already in the fifth grade.
I liked reciting poetry, and I was good at it – I still had an excellent memory and didn’t have a problem memorizing long poems and stories, and I enjoyed reciting all these pieces “expressively.” Like many other girls, I wanted to be on stage, but the teacher in the theater class wanted me to do storytelling – he thought I was better at that. Recalling the details, I believe he was a very good teacher, and he took the kids seriously. The core of the class was several extremely talented boys, and it was apparent to me that I was no match, not even close. In contrast to most of the amateur theatrical groups, our’s was constantly looking for talented girls rather than boys, with very intermittent luck.
These classes were no joke. Our teacher spent time with me one-on-one, going through the text. The first time I would start a new story, I had to copy it into my notebook and highlight the most important word in each sentence (and to be ready to explain why this is the most important word). Then, we would go through the text countless times. He said that this stage was not a creative stage but “craftsmanship.” Only after I passed this stage and learned the whole text by heart was I allowed to start adding emotions and other creative elements. I still remember that my best reward was when I saw my teacher laughing after I finished a humorous story at one of the concerts.
All of this, however, was happening in middle school. All the classes were free, and I went to the House of Culture and signed myself up – no parent’s content was required. As for elementary school (from first to third grade), there was nothing for me except for reading after school. Activities like going to museums or theatrical performances were extremely rare. The only “children’s” theaters were two puppet theaters (and it was hard to get tickets for these performances). Museums didn’t have any children’s studios or any kid-centered activities, and things like “children’s museums” didn’t exist. That’s for all this “most cultural nation”…
Most of the weekends (actually, Sundays only, since we had school on Saturdays) included sleeping in, going for some city walks, and almost obligatory visits to my grandfather. As I mentioned earlier, the apartment where my grandfather lived was very far from the city center. It was hard to believe that it was considered to be “within city limits.” The were multiple ways to get there, none straightforward, and all taking about one and a half hours each way. I can’t believe how much time was wasted so reproductively; I didn’t even read on the tram.
My grandfather, with his niece Tamara, who came to visit him from Beslan.
My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.
I am just out of the screening of this movie. I really wanted to see it, and it was very difficult to fit it into my schedule (it’s three hours long!) The only way of doing it was to rush there directly from the train from Milauwakee, which I did. It’s not what I thought it would be, way more difficult to watch than I thought, and way more powerful.
I am not even sure what my takeaways are, except for “It’s hard to be a woman.” It’s almost unbearable to watch at some moments (I could not look at the screen for at least a quarter of the duration of the movie).
And another surprising fact: while following all these women at the most difficult moments of their lives and thinking about what I, as a woman, was through, I felt jealous: I was never treated with such respect by the doctors as these women were. I might have experienced only a small portion of all the physical suffering these women were through, but the humiliation and disrespect I had to live through were unimaginable. I am so glad that my daughter didn’t have to go through it, and my granddaughters won’t even know how bad it could be.
I spent a weekend in a very non-typical way for me: camping with Anna, the girls, and Anna’s friends in the Harrington Beach National Park. camping is not my kind of activity, but since this weekend was supposed to be girls’ weekend, and since I already cleared it out, and since after twelve days of complete and partial isolations, I was eager to do something outside the house and my comfort zone in general, I went for it.
It was great, although the heavy rain on Saturday night made it challenging, and at some point, we all were unsure whether it was a good idea. Then the rain stopped, and we had a great time by the campfire (and we had a really nice walk before the rain started). there was more rain during the night, but at about 8-30 AM, the sun went out, and life was beautiful again:).
I enjoyed the nature walk and being close to Lake Michigan at yet another point. 🙂
It was close to impossible to pass this apple tree and not to pick even one apple, not even the ones lying on the ground!Continue reading “Camping”→
Several small “fixes” in different parts of my life, nothing special, but feel nice.
Installed a new light fixture in the living room using the same electric company. That was the only one that I didn’t replace when I was replacing “everything.” The usual effect: OMG, how much better it feels now!
Renewed Siskel membership. I forgot to renew it almost a year ago, and they changed the system and everything, so I could not even renew online. I went there just before I got COVID, and now I have an online account and everything, and I can even put my tickets into my Apple wallet. Hurray! And I already started using this membership again!
Emailed OMD and told them I decided against participation this year. I told them I realized I did not have time, but the real reason was that I sat through the orientation and realized that nothing changed. All the issues I observed several years ago, the ones which prompted me to leave, are still there.
It looks like two other mentoring organizations that I applied for and was accepted to are going to do better and more meaningful jobs. I am giving it a try, and we’ll see.
It is going to be a very intense week. I was planning for Labor Day to be a fresh start, but the Universe decided differently. Well, I guess Rosh Hashanah is an even better start :).
Both Mom and I are negative, and since I had my second negative today, I am finally heading to the office (and now I need to pack two days in one for the observable future).
Hettie's Reflections 