Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts

Postcards to Wisconsin

Half of Illinois (at least half of its Democratic half) is participating in the “Postcards to Wisconsin” events. I was already invited to three, but could not participate because of the times/days of the week. So when I finally got an invite for an event, which took place on Saturday, and in the middle of the day, and not so far from us, I happily RSVP’ed. Also, I decided to take Mom with me, because her penmanship is outstanding, and she could be really useful, and what’s more important – she could feel useful. Also, she has never been to our Democratic office before, and I thought it would be interesting for her to come with me and see how it all works.

It all worked pretty well. Together, we wrote twenty-five postcards, and Mom did at least a third of them. On the way back, she was asking me (one more time) about all the details of how primaries are held, and what will be next, and how the Democratic convention will choose the candidate. And since she never got any negative propaganda about these things, she liked it.

Mom is working our list

“I wish I knew” – Documentary

Yesterday, I watched a documentary, “I wish I knew.”

Widely considered China’s most important contemporary filmmaker, Jia (STILL LIFE, ASH IS PUREST WHITE) focuses on the city of Shanghai in this ambitious documentary, never before released in the US The city’s present in captured in stunningly composed widescreen images that emphasize the juxtaposition of decay and progress, often incorporating the hazy expanse of the Yangtze River. The past is explored through interviews with the survivors of such upheavals as the Civil War and the Cultural Revolution, their stories often marked by violent death and exile (the latter subject occasioning side-trips to Taiwan and Hong Kong). As in his other major documentary 24 CITY, Jia blurs the line between fact and fiction, with his muse Zhao Tao serving as a recurrent presence wandering through the city. In its latter stages, much of the film concerns China’s cinematic past, with excerpts and interviews (including Hou Hsiao-hsien) evoking the often contentious relationship between art and politics. In Mandarin with English subtitles. New DCP digital widescreen restoration. (MR)

Siskel Center website

I found this documentary to be very depressing, although Igor disagrees with me. The filmmaker’s work is outstanding, but it shows China not how we are used to seeing it. In this “mixture of decay and progress,” we are not really used to the “decay” part.

For me, there were too many allusions to the history of the Soviet Union, both in the excerpts from the propaganda movies and the specific language, the way of saying things by survivors/witnesses.

Also, I was thinking about the Soviet documentaries from the time we were not friends with China. At that time, the Soviet correspondents would search for Chinese dissidents, and film interviews with them (half-face covered by black stripe). And these dissidents were saying, how things were horrible in China: hunger, shortage of everything, no freedom of speech… how ironic!
I’ve already mentioned some other Soviet documentaries when they would interview people in England or the US during the 1970s economic crisis. The funny thing – is was all true! The workers would emotionally tell how prices are up every day and how their salaries are not matching up… You do not need to photoshop the reality, you do not even need to cut and paste the pieces of film, it’s all in the commentary on the background…

Nostalgic Breakfast

I am not a nostalgic person at all, but buckwheat with cold milk for breakfast awake so many childhood memories! I do not make such a breakfast often, maybe just a couple of times a year, but each time it’s a time travel 🙂

More Eye Surgery Updates

You know how I said I was freaking out about a million things regarding the surgery – one of these things is happening. Today, I got a call from the surgeon who is going to operate me. I do not know why he only looked at my numbers now, not three months ago, but what he said was that they wouldn’t be able to fix my long-distance vision 100% unless I go mono-focal, which means no astigmatism correction, and no vision depth… I was leaning that way, but the doctor was positive that that would be the best for me.

I understand that he is right long-term, but short term I will be going the way that I won’t be able to see well enough to perform my daily functions AND for a while, there will be no way for me to have any corrective devices. He said he would do Lasic on me in about three months, but I can’t stand an idea of going to another surgery. I guess it is all not so bad; I was just not prepared… and there will be way more steps in between..

The Beginning of My Story

Eventually, I will tell here all the stories of the previous generations of our family, which I can remember. But in this post, I wanted to show some pictures from the very beginning of my own life.

I already wrote about my university years and a little bit about what happened after. Now that I look at all I’ve written, I feel like I can’t continue without writing about some personal things. And I am not ready for that yet. So I decided to go back to my beginnings.


These are the first pictures of me, or rather my mom with me. The films were dated March 1963; although I find it hard to believe, there could be so sunny and dry in March in Leningrad. But – I have to believe it. At least, I look pretty much like a two to three months old should look:))

babies were kept swaddled tight
… all the time 🙂
In the courtyard of our apartment building – I am wondering how much of “fresh air” this could get

The building was located in a very central part of Leningrad, but nevertheless, the courtyard looked lie you can see on these pictures above.
My father’s family occupied one of the apartments of this building since the late 20s (will try to check the details). The state owned the building, and the family was “assigned” to this apartment.

As I said, that is the first picture of me. At that time, there was still a belief that newborns and small babies should be kept away from the crowd and not be photographed until two or three months old. Also, visitations were limited to close family members. Not everybody owned cameras, and not everybody would take pictures of everyday life, so I am fortunate to have all these films in my possession.

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.

Eye Surgery Update

That’s for my real-life friends. I went to do the eye measurements today. Today there were no delays, and also, I was not dilated, but still, it took a lot of time.

I confirmed which type of lenses I want, signed tons of papers, and received tons of instructions. I already read them three times, including two pages of possible complications (which are always scary!)

The good part is that they told me that after my first surgery I could wear a contact lens on the second eye, except for the last three days before surgery. So I am going to be one-eyed for only three days. Also, I can’t get any water in the operated eye for a week (have to go with my hair unwashed?!), can’t do heavy exercises for a week after each surgery, and also I have to do eyedrops.

Let me tell you – this is something! There are three kinds of drops, and you need to put the into an operated eye before and after each surgery and somehow not to mess up! Once a day, twice a day, do not touch an operated eye, but make sure the drop stays in …

Ohm and also – not only the surgery is not covered by insurance, but even the eye drops are not covered either! The total cost of these three microscopic bottles will come to over $600.

The better part: they offer zero percent interest credit for 20 months. There will be some fees, but I am going to take it – just in case.

To summarize: I am still freaking out, and each and all of my children have told me I should not do it silently. And I will be freaking out until all is done. But I am more informed now:)

Today’sAdventures

Today, my day started in the middle of the night: there was a text message about suspicious activity on my Mastercard. And yes, they identified it correctly.

I use this card moderately and have very few scheduled payments on it, so I am surprised it got compromised. But I am getting more and more impress with how quickly any credit card fraud department can identify suspicious transactions.

I got a text at 2 AM, and email a couple of hours later. I promptly replied that these transactions are not mine, and they stopped the card immediately, issued me a new number immediately and shipped the new card.

Letting me know the new number is great, last time I had a compromised card, I had to wait for a new one to arrive physically. It took me just ten minutes to restore the normal order of events in my life. Just keeping telling everybody: online fraud is the best one, easiest to detect, and you won’t be charged anything extra

Prairie Restoration

Friday’s Tribune article talks about prairie restoration in the prairie state. It touches upon many problems which I became aware of since I started volunteering for the forest preserve.

The Deer Grove Forest Preserve is also situated on the land, which was used for agriculture for many years. As a result, we also have many invasive species, which we (Friends of Deer Grove) are trying to get rid of. Our work in the forest preserve includes two major components: exterminating invasive species and re-growing the native plants. Somehow it feels like 80% of our work is “negative,” aimed towards destruction, and only 20% is rebuilding something good :).

Last Saturday, I had an opportunity to do some planting: the weather was great, and since I was already in glasses for two weeks, I’ve somehow adjusted to them (although I still can’t see what’s under my feet:)). Anyway, the weather was great, there was a great turnout of volunteers, including aspiring scouts with their dads, and I was able to join a small group of old-time volunteers, who did the sowing in the prairie and in the woods.
We had separate buckets with the seed mixtures for different areas, and I can only imagine how we looked like for the passers-by. In fact, I know it precisely, since half of the people who saw us would stop by and ask what in the world we are doing?!

Buckets with seeds
Our work area – did you know it’s the best to sow in the snow?!
The process
I think it was a squirrel

Wanted to Share

The other day, I received a newsletter for the Silk Road Rising, one of the small theaters in Chicago, which I really like and frequent. In this newsletter, they were talking about the new building where they move some of their functions, and the newsletter ended like this:

I thought that was beautiful.

Psychology Studies and Women’s Issues in the Soviet Union

Last week, I was interviewed for a project, and one of the questions they asked me was whether I consider myself a feminist and whether I was always that way. And I had to admit that it was not always the case. I started to tell them how I thought about women’s issues when I was still in college, and then remembered that I wanted to write a post about it for quite a while. Here it comes.

During our eighth semester at the University, we had a psychology class. At that time, psychology was all but a forbidden subject in the Soviet Union. There were close to zero books on psychology and close to zero number of specialists. And for all of us, having a psychology class felt a little bit like taking a peek behind the Iron Curtain.

We adored our professor. In our often-not-heated department building, she always came to her lectures in a light-blue suit, somehow not getting frozen to death. She changed into dress shoes before coming to class, while everybody else was walking around in the winter boots. Her lectures were captivating. But the highlights of this class were two lectures on family psychology.

These lectures were not in the curriculum, but professor G. understood that all these young people, married at twenty, were desperate for any information about how to stay together and not to get divorced before graduation.

So she had these two lectures — one for boys and one for girls. I only heard rumors about what she was talking about at the “boys” lecture, but I know what she told the girls. In fact, I attended this lecture twice: the first time a year prematurely, skipping one of my classes, and sneaking in with my older friends.

That’s what she told us. All men say they want smart wives. But what they do not say is that it means “but not smarter than me, of cause!” Thereby, girls, she would continue, when your husband comes home, put your books away immediately, put on a pretty apron, and head to the kitchen!

You don’t believe she could say this? She could, and she did! And even more surprisingly, we all thought: oh, that’s so clever! She is so right! If we want to keep our husbands/boyfriends – that’s what we should do!

She also told us: if you want to have a strong man by you, you need to be a delicate woman! You should be unable to carry anything heavy so that he won’t have any choice but to help you. You should be afraid to enter a dark hallway. You should always show, how helpless you are without his support. There was no question that a wife should always be ready to answer her husband’s sexual needs, and should always say that that’s the best she ever had. And once again, we all thought that this is incredibly smart, and never thought that all she was saying was quite discriminatory toward women.

Why did I think it was alright, I do not know.

I was always taking pride in being able to compete professionally “at men’s level.” When I learned that people were saying I am the smartest female in our class, I thought it was OK. When I was officially ranked five in my class, and officially ranked “the second female,” I also thought it was OK. I knew that in order to compete with men for a position I have to be not just better, but ten times better than men with whom I was competing,

And why I thought it was perfectly fine, I do not know…

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.