Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts

Ukrainian Rally June 10

It is difficult to write just about anything related to the war these days when all you think about is, “Please, let it be a success; let it be victory.” The news comes and goes, the situation is changing, and just three days ago, things were different.

I am glad that this rally attracted more people, I am glad it was visible, and I am thankful to everybody who participated. And I am sorry I am not doing enough.

Books

I have time to listen to audiobooks, and sometimes, I even have time to read books on Kindle, but I have no time to write reviews or at least to rate the books I read on Goodreads. Today (because I am extremely nervous for more than one reason), I finally recorded my last two-and-a-half months’ reading list.

Aquarium by Victor Suvorov – the only book I read in Russian for a long while. It was one on this “how could you possibly not have read it,” so I did, and it left me with a sort of “what was the point of this?” reaction. To be fair, recently, at least half of the books I read prompted this reaction. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

Attention Span: a very different book, but I had a similar reaction. I was listening to it and nodding: OK, OK, I get it, now what?… and then no conclusion, no new ideas…

I‘m Glad My Mom Died: I liked this book; it is very sincere and talks about situations and feelings which are not talked about that often. A couple of months ago, I listened to the last minutes of David Sedaris’s interview. Answering the question about his father and his relationships with him, Sedaris said: why can’t we say bad things about those who passed away? If he was a bad person, why I can’t say this? Well, maybe I will follow his lead sometime.

The next three books came from the Chicago Public Library list for Women’s Month.

Daughters of Victory: just a very bad book. I don’t know what else to say about it. I am surprised by how the author collected so much information about that period of Russian history and still did it all wrong! Like people didn’t talk this way, didn’t behave this way, didn’t think this way! The picture does not come together.

The Book Woman’s Daughter: not super-exciting, but good reading (and when I started reading, I thought that “blue people” are imaginary and just presented racial discrimination).

The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science: I really liked that one! I didn’t know about the women mentioned in the book. I didn’t know about the magnitude of gender discrimination in academia (and so recently!). A true eye-opener.

Clean Code: in case you saw this book in my Goodreads feed and wondered that in the world was that, it was given to the whole IT team with the intention of initiating discussion about the code quality. I am planning to review it in my professional blog.

The Night Ministry

Two weeks ago, a couple of days before my upcoming volunteering at the youth shelter, I emailed our volunteer coordinator to check what we were going to do. He replied to me that the shelter and the Night Ministry, in general, were so understaffed that he is working extra shifts at other places, and he couldn’t be there for my volunteering.

That was a very disturbing turn of events, and I started thinking about what I could do to help. I almost felt that donating money makes more sense now than trying to do any volunteering.

Then, last week, it was Lighting Up The Night, the most important fundraising event of the year:

For this event, I was not a sponsor – invited (plus a guest) as a volunteer, which, having all the unfolding situation, felt weird. However, I still wanted to go because I wanted to see people and talk to them. This event is the only opportunity for me to catch up with staff and volunteers from other locations.

I took my mom as my guest so that she would have a chance to see something different (she used to come to the volunteering events with me before the pandemic, and some Night Ministry staff still remembers her).

Overall, the outcome of the evening was positive: I had a chance to speak with many of the staff and the Night Ministry Vice President. The problem with the staff is not the lack of funds, but the lack of people, especially people who would be willing to work with the youth, do the night shifts, etc. And that’s indeed a huge problem, and I have no idea how to help. The staff from the youth shelter told me that I could come even when our coordinator is not there, that they know me, they miss my cooking, and they would help with buying the ingredients. So this should be counted as positive news, even if it does not improve the situation with the staff shortage.

I left the event with one of the flower arrangements from the tables (and I loved it :))

Yesterday, I saw a picture of me in the newsletter:

It almost made me sad, because I think I am doing so little now, and so-so-much-more is needed…

A Beautiful Day In a Beautiful City

Weather-wise, the day was perfect, and the whole city was outside again! There were at least ten events I wanted to attend, but It has been a month since the last time I was escorting, so making a shift before another long period of absence was a must.

Just to give an idea of how bad was the situation at the clinic:

Somehow, they always get police protecting them, not the other way around!

I had some time between escorting and the next thing on my list, so I decided to take the Riverwalk, to get at least a glimpse of this amazing day!

Continue reading “A Beautiful Day In a Beautiful City” →

Updates And How Is Life

By the end of the week, I went into another spiral of “everything goes wrong, and I am behind on everything!”

On Thursday, I decided to call my doctor and ask whether I should see her for my broken nail situation It turned out she just went on a long vacation, but her medical assistant suggested I see another doctor, just to make sure. I made an appointment for Friday afternoon since I was going to work from home because of another appointment.

Then the day went not as planned (and I already had a backlog of things, as it always happens by Friday.) My other appointment got canceled last minute, and when I went to the doctor, my appointment was delayed, and when the doctor finally came, she said she wanted to make sure there was no fracture (I still can’t bend the thumb). So she sent me for the x-rays, and it took me a long time to find where I needed to check in and where to get the xrays (people were sending me back and forth multiple times). Not worth going into the details, but I got increasingly frustrated that it took so long, and even though I took Uber both ways, I was at home only at 4-35, three hours after I left!

There is a high chance that I indeed have a fracture. In the beginning, I was focused on the nail and the pain around it and attributed all the discomfort to that problem. But now, when the wound is stabilized, I understand that the pain comes from the thumb itself and my attempt to use it.

Since the x-rays were taken at the very end of the day, I do not expect the result until the end of the day on Monday. I know that regardless, there is no specific treatment for the broken thumb if it’s indeed the case I am just extremely annoyed that everything takes twice longer than it should take.

No excuse for not finishing the next Red Gate article and not replying to a couple of emails asking for my professional advice.

The day is gorgeous; it should be a day at the beach, especially because Sunday will be cold and rainy. Oh, well…. Back to the tasks of the day!

Lifeline Theater

Igor and I continue to explore local theaters and continue to drag my mom along :). Tonight, it was Lifeline Theater with their ‘From the Mississippi Delta” production. I understood barely half of it, but the performance was brilliant!

Mom didn’t understand a word of it (or maybe just a couple of words :)), but she was also taken away by the performance. She loved the actors’ expressiveness and how they could transform themselves into another character by adding just one or two accessories to their costumes.

Nature In The City Center

Another lost and forgotten post. On Memorial Day, when all the wedding-related festivities were over, Boris and I went to the Art Institute – I wanted to show him both Dali and Van Gogh exhibits, and after that, we went to the Luiri Garden. It is not even close to the prairie, which I miss dearly but still stunningly beautiful.

CTA Accident

Just found out that I didn’t publish this post on Sunday when I wrote it (and was wondering why everybody reacted to my lost nail, and nobody reacted on this one). Anyway, publishing it now.

Today, we went to the matinee performance of West Side Story in the Lyric Opera. “Us” included me, my mom, and my neighbor. I chose a matinee performance for this show a long time ago because I thought that that was the show that my mom would enjoy.

She did; she liked it to the extent that she didn’t make any negative comments. But I wanted to share something else about this outing.

Most of the time, I try to take Uber when I take mom out; however, the last couple of days were impossible with all the road construction and Taylor Swift concerts, so after consulting with my neighbor, I decided that we would take the Red line and then a bus to Lyric opera. 

We started way in advance, and the train was on time. However, as it often happens on the Red line, a person asking for “some change” appeared. I give to people on the streets most time, but I never give on the CTA, because that’s a violation, and there are many other places where people can ask for money.

I ignored the requests. Requests turned into hysterical crying (Anybody! Anybody! Any change!!!) Since this is not an unusual scene, and since I had mom with me, I didn’t pay much attention to the development of the event, and the next thing I realized (after the fact) was that this woman tried to commit suicide and managed to almost completely open the doors while the train was running.

The CTA crew stopped the train, then they came and escorted this woman to the front of the train and called for police assistance. We were very close to Sheridan station, but we could not move until the train crew received confirmation that the police arrived and were ready to take this person into custody.

We sat there for 25 minutes with the train engine off (and consequently the A/C off). I was afraid that we would be late (my neighbor was waiting for us by the Lyric entrance), but also, this whole situation was so horrible and hopeless…

Save Ukrainian Children Rally

I could not make it to this rally because it was happening precisely at the same time as the West Side Story matinee, and it does not make me happy at all, especially because there was not so many people.

Igor made a lot of pictures, but I think that this short video says it better. We bothregret that despite of explicit request not to mix this event with Navalny meeting, some people still tried.

On the more optimistic note, I share Igor’s joy about a person who came to the rally because they saw Igor’s flyer, and about another person who shared that they were very “Crimea-is-ours/Great Russia/Pro-Putin” but when they started to explore the information on the Tlegram channell, it changed them entirely, and now they when out to support demands to stop atrocities.

I believe in math :), so “one person at a time” works for me.

What’s In The People’s Heads?!

Boris went to Saint Petersburg for a couple of days: one more attempt to fetch his money (unsuccessful), officially closing all relationships with all Russian academic institutions, and some other stuff. When he called me, I asked him sarcastically how it feels to be in the rear of the enemy; he replied very seriously: the worst thing is that they don’t understand that they are enemies!

I think he is getting this kind of shock each time he goes there, and each time I am shocked when I hear these reports from him: for the vast majority of Russian, “nothing is happening; life goes on.”

We both heard it many times, but it still feels too absurd to accept: people are crying about “unprovoked terrorist attacks on peaceful Russian citizens,” and they “do not know” about airstrikes in Kyiv. Because they do not want to know. Because they repeat the same propaganda cap that “Russia only strikes military structures.” They “do not know”; they do not want to know about children dying. Yes, there are no reports about that in the official Russian news, but everybody has VPN to do Instagram ad Facebook, so people choose not to check the alternative sources; they choose not to know… And not just the older generation (Igor sadly reports this state of mind after each conversation with his grandfather), but the younger one. Undergrads. PhD students. We should have accepted that a long time ago, but it still strikes…