Why is it true that all brilliant ideas come to your mind when you take a shower? It’s something preverbial, but it is absolutely true! Yes, I might get that you need “to sleep on it,” but why not when you are brushing your teeth or when you are walking? It always happens in the shower!
Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts
A New Life Formular
I’ve changed the way I speak about time and the lack of it. For the longest time, I used to say: “God does not give me more than 24 hours a day, even though I absolutely deserve at least 30!!!” On Friday, when I was talking to one of my fellow escorts, I came up with the follow-up: “However, God does give me 24 hours, and I am determined to use every minute of it!”
The early morning Friday shift was unusually intense; five antis were out, and there were just three of us, so we didn’t have enough bodies to escort patients and shield them. And that was the first time I was the shift lead (why am I taking on more responsibilities – don’t ask!). But while there is a need in the morning shifts, and while it’s warm enough for me to survive these morning shifts, I will be there. That’s one of the meaningful ways to use these minutes :).
And summer in Chicago continues! It was the upper 80s today! I was finally able to meet with my friend Y; we had been trying to meet since June, and had to cancel for either her or my reasons. I was sad that she didn’t have a chance to visit me in the summer, but we got a summer day in October! We went to the beach, and sat there in the lounge chairs, and I swam in the lake (she didn’t). This time, it almost didn’t happen again because she was afraid to be out while the ICE agents were terrorising the city, but then she decided she would make it, and I am glad she did.
I do not know a single person who would be happy with what’s going on in the city these days. My hairstylist came to do my hair on Friday, and with all her being “neutral” and “not wanting to talk about politics,” she couldn’t keep it to herself.
And on the ICE/Trump topic, there was another shooting, although this time not lethal, and also, Trump quietly deployed 300 National Guards, and now the whole city is mad that police is not protecting the citizen from ICE, and they also mad at the Governor, although it’s hard to tell what he could do in the current situation (except for there are multiple lawsuits filed). Also, he froze the Red Line extension money, but to be honest, I had no doubts it would happen.
Keeping fighting, and keeping doing good whenever I can.
And A Very Different Dinner
The last time I was at ODS, I spoke with one of the staff, N, who always supports my efforts to make a difference and loves my cooking, especially baked salmon. We agreed to try to make a baked salmon dinner when I am back from the conference. Although I am “not supposed” to communicate with staff directly, with the absence of a coordinator, it was my only option.
Everything worked great, and it turned out that no matter how infrequently I come to the ODS these days, everyone remembers baked salmon :). All ingredients were purchased, except that I asked to buy eight lemons, and there were only two (although big ones :))
In addition to making baked salmon and mashed potatoes (which are also an all-time hit), I brought half of the apple cake, which I baked on Sunday, and the amount of praise and the number of “thank you”-s was way above average.
That’s all I need. I am happy that I made other people happy 🙂 and received so much good vibes!
Team Dinner
I it probably does not sound right when I post fancy dinner pictures immediately after the posts about arrests, but that’s my reality.
We had a team dinner yesterday at one of the Near North steak houses, and pretty much everything was “the first time ever” for me.
First, the waiters brought gigantic “seafood towers.” Everything was eadable, but I guess some people on our team were suspisious, and nobody ate the lobster from the to of one of the towers.
Then, everyone ordered steaks. I abslutely didn’t feel like eating 16 oz of meet, but there were some super-fancy super-small steaks with super-high price tags, and I go one of them.
For dessert, I chose a soft espresso isecream with rum. It ended up even better than I antisipated, with chocolate espresso beans on top. Much better than gigantic pieces of carrot cake!
From Sunday Millenium Park Raid
That’s a Tribune photo of the family arrested by the Crown Fountain on Sunday. I do not think any comments are necessary.
Our News From The Font
Copying from Sunday Tribune, because th world shoul now.
In show of force, dozens of armed federal immigration agents patrol downtown Chicago
Residents watch while Gregory Bovino, chief U.S. Border Patrol agent, second from left, and other federal officers finish their march along North Clark Street by the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Sept. 28, 2025, as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
By Adriana Pérez | adperez@chicagotribune.com | Chicago Tribune and Cam’ron Hardy | chardy@chicagotribune.com
UPDATED: September 29, 2025 at 10:34 AM CDT
Dozens of federal immigration agents were seen patrolling downtown Chicago Sunday afternoon.
Social media livestreams showed agents in front of Tribune Tower on North Michigan Avenue and in front of Millennium Park, detaining individuals. They also showed several U.S. Customs and Border Protection boats on the Chicago River.
The video of the agents walking in clusters downtown was recorded by lawyer Berto Aguayo, advising undocumented individuals to stay away and to be aware of their rights.
After sightings near Millennium Park and the Riverwalk downtown, the dozens of federal immigration agents — most of them wearing camouflage uniforms with U.S. Border Patrol patches — made their way up to the Gold Coast — a primarily white, affluent neighborhood — in the early afternoon, flanking the sidewalks of Clark Street.
Roughly 20 bystanders and passersby started following the officers, chanting “ICE, go home!” The agents stopped at the intersection with Oak Street. Several got in vans that drove away. For another 15 minutes, the crowd of protesters around them grew bigger, yelling “shame.”
A shrill whistle cut through the noise repeatedly.
Some of the civilians present confronted Gregory Bovino, the chief U.S. Border Patrol agent, who joined on the patrol.
When asked by the Tribune how many agents had been patrolling downtown Sunday, Bovino said, “a lot.”
Bovino declined to answer any additional questions from the Tribune. When he and the last of the agents drove away, protesters celebrated with applause and cheers. “The people, united, will never be defeated!” they intoned.
Present on Sunday was Enrique Espinoza, an attorney and member of the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois, who said the agents’ presence downtown was performative.
Espinoza is an immigrant himself, hailing from Veracruz, Mexico.“Let’s be clear: This was a show. They wanted to get attention, and they got it,” he gestured toward the last remaining protesters as the crowd dispersed.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, could not immediately be reached for comment.
‘A major escalation,’ immigration advocates say
The move comes in the midst of what President Donald Trump’s ICE is calling its “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has sown fear throughout immigrant communities in Chicago and its suburbs. Officials escalated a promised surge in immigration enforcement in the area over the last two weeks, with arrests reported and federal agents sighted near local schools, courthouses and workplaces. ICE claimed last week it had made 550 arrests during the first two weeks of the mission.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he was closely monitoring the situation in a post on X. “While Chicagoans and visitors are enjoying another gorgeous Sunday, they are being intimidated and threatened by masked federal agents flaunting automatic weapons for no apparent reason. This is another brazen provocation from the Trump administration that does nothing to make our city safer,” Johnson said.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also posted on X Sunday afternoon, “This is not making anybody safer — it’s a show of intimidation, instilling fear in our communities and hurting our businesses,” he said. “We cannot normalize militarizing American cities and suburbs.”
By mid-afternoon Sunday, the intersection was cleared, traffic was flowing and things went back to normal — much like in the Loop, where after earlier sightings and reports of a couple of arrests, tourists strolled under the sun and took photos of the city, most of them none the wiser.
After the downtown display, immigrant rights advocates held a news conference alongside local and state officials, including U.S. Reps. Jesús “Chuy” García and Delia Ramírez, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton and several aldermen. They did not have an exact number of arrests made.
Sunday’s downtown operation in broad daylight represented a “major escalation by the Trump administration,” said Veronica Castro, deputy director at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
Hers was a sentiment echoed by other speakers.
“Today, we witnessed the further militarization of ICE tactics in Chicago, as they showed up downtown to indiscriminately continue to profile against people just because of what they look like, their appearance,” García said. “This … is part of a nationwide effort by Trump and his administration to instill fear in people.” But, he said, “We want Trump and his aides to be clear: We will not take this lying down. You claim that you’re out to get the worst of the worst,” García said. “But we see time and time again that the people that you are apprehending and kidnapping and interrogating and terrorizing are hardworking people that make Chicago and Illinois a better place for everyone.”
Illinois state Sen. Graciela Guzmán said the administration is seeking to intimidate immigrants “by air, by water, by force, by any means possible” — alluding to the federal immigration agents, including Bovino, out in boats on the Chicago River on Sunday and Thursday, when they were first spotted.
“I want to remind folks at home that (at) every single level of government, here you have folks that deeply care about you,” Guzmán said. “We are doing everything in our power because you are our constituents. We love you, we will protect you.”
Chicago journalist arrested during Broadview protest released
Early Sunday, a journalist for Unraveled Press, who was detained by federal agents, was released after being detained at a Broadview protest Saturday night.
A social media post late Saturday showed Steve Held being detained by federal agents.
After he was released early Sunday morning, Held described his experience of being detained on the social media app Blue Sky.
His first words were, “I’m out, I’m sore.”
Held saw four holding rooms while being detailed, he said, two small rooms being used to hold protesters and two larger rooms to hold ICE and Border Protection detainees. He also said he saw a man sitting in a room with gauze wrapped around his head, appearing to have a serious head wound.
The room he was held in “stank of sweat & pepper ball powder after just a few hours,” the post said. Another room, he said, “appeared dirty, filled with men dressed for labor, trying to get comfortable to sleep in chairs or on the cold floor in the cinder block room.”
When getting processed, he said he saw the faces of men that looked “heartbreaking.”
“We have never witnessed anything like what ICE has unleashed on our communities this week,” Unraveled Press posted on social media Sunday morning.
CTA Vintage Car Ride
Yesterday, I received a surprise email from CTA, announcing the vintage L-train ride around the Loop (to celebrate the 78th anniversary of the CTA)
Today, when I spoke to the volunteers on the train, they told me that they purposely announced it at the last minute to avoid the crowds. There was still quite a crowd, as they kept saying, “pre-pandemic ridership level.”
And it was so much fun! The train was almost 100 years old, and it had been in service for fifty years!
Everything in the car was exactly like it looked in the 20s-30s, plus some later advertisements, and the conductor announced the stops using the hand-held radio.
All The Things I Worry About
I was very happy on Sunday, when I returned to Chicago: it was so warm! I went for a long bike ride, and then to the market, and then to the beach, and then we all gathered to celebrate Igor’s birthday.
And then, the reality hit. There were several unexpected things at work (I can’t go into details here, but I expected something to be done while I was away, and it was not, so I could not keep my promise to the customer to finish something else, and it was all extremely stressful).
Next, all things in Chicago that are going wrong: I learned about the exhibit of power in the Loop over the weekend, and about multiple horrible things that happened, and about the new threat from Trump to go to war with Chicago (and I am still paralyzed with uncertainty).
And then, another set of troubles with Prairie Postgres registration. As it turned out, the Charitable Bureau sent us a letter on September 11, and this letter got lost. I am glad I figured out that was the case, but now we need to pay the late registration fee and submit a whole bunch of new paperwork along with all the “old” ones.
I am very close to saying it’s too much for me to handle, which makes me feel even worse because other people around me have more serious problems to solve.
On the brighter side, my almost three-week-long case with Eventzilla tech support was finally resolved. Things are not working perfectly, but at least I figured out the workaround, and I am now able to send registration links to people, so I am grateful for that.
I hope to get at least some of these issues resolved, if not tomorrow, then by the end of the week.
Sunday Sunrise
Going Back
This time, my trip to Finland was “without extras”: I was traveling without checked luggage, and I didn’t have time for any shopping!
I wanted to get something for my girls from the Moomin Museum, and even this little bit barely fit into my carry-on. The conference closed on Friday at 1 PM, and we were home by 4-30. I immediately started re-packing: I will be back in three weeks, and I realized I could leave some of the things I won’t need at home, but will need when we go to Riga. Now that I am thinking about it, I realize I could leave a lot of warmer clothes there – it’s still summer in Chicago!
I had a business class ticket from Helsinki to London, and an Economy Premium ticket from London to Chicago. However, this one was upgraded to business class at the last moment, allowing me to enjoy a couple of hours of good sleep and very productive working time on both flights and in the lounges. I was really surprised with how much I was able to accomplish on the way back – usually it’s not the case.
I reworked my ADBIS tutorial to fit into a meetup presentation, which I will give at Northwestern next week, and I have started working on my Riga presentation. Additionally, I caught up on most of my non-personal emails and finally published a professional blog post, which I had planned to write for almost a month but never got to.
(There was no way for me to eat everywhere the food was offered on that trip, so I picked the best from each place :))
(And they forgot to give me coffee before arrival, but that was not a big deal – they were busy serving the First Class :))
Hettie's Reflections 