Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts

Summer 1992

I know that I am jumping from one point of time in my life to another with no notice, but I promise it will all be straightened up on my Timeline. Chronologically, this post follows the story about kids and me getting settled in the University boarding house.

We had a great six weeks over there. As I’ve mentioned, we had a flat of two rooms and a kitchen, all for ourselves. That was way more space than I had in Saint Petersburg. The hot water was running only theoretically, so I had two big buckets, a basin, and a huge portable electric boiler. I would fill in a bucket with cold water, immerse a boiler into the water and plug it in. I would fill a basin to the half with cold water and then using a dipper; I would pour hot water in it, to make warm water of the desired temperature. That’s how Anna and Vlad had their baths before going to bed. Igor would stay his feet inside the basin, and I would combine cold and hot water in a dipper, and poured it over him, making it feel like a shower. He was almost seven then and felt utterly embarrassed to stay naked in front of me. When everybody went to bed, I would wash similarly.

There were cockroaches everywhere, so many I learned not to be afraid of them, and kill them by a dozen. Still – I did not have to cook and wash the dishes, and life was great. We would take a bus and go to the parks of Peterhoff to see the famous fountains. We were swimming in the ponds of the University Park (former Lichtenberg Manor). We would buy raw milk from the gypsies. One of Boris’s postgrad students named Irina would occasionally babysit for free, and then I would be able to do some work outside of the babies bedtime.

It was there that both Anna and Vlad started walking. As with many other skills, Anna would be the first to master, making her steps barely lifting her feet, but beaming with happiness. Vlad would successfully hide his attempts to walk (Irina asked me once, whether I knew that Vlad is trying to walk when nobody sees him). On public, he was only crawling, moving extremely fast on his butt, and only several weeks later, he had demonstrated perfect walking.

By the beginning of August, Anna, Vlad, and I returned to the city. My Mom was staying for some more time in the boarding house with Igor. Igor was not a baby and didn’t need constant attention, so this was a vacation for her.

Boris took these pictures by our building in the city. Anna and Vlad were approaching their first birthday. I was done with breastfeeding in extreme conditions and weighed 49 kg (about 109 lb). The clothes were hanging on me like on the hanger, but as you can see, it didn’t bother me much:)

Anna 11 months
Vlad 11 months

Getting Into College And Soviet Anti-Semitism

From Hettie:

Several years ago, one of my followers on the LJ platform asked me to write a post about anti-semitism in the Soviet Union, specifically in the college admission process. Many people didn’t believe her that these things had happened, even when they were living in the USSR at the same time.

I promised to write about it, and it took me a while – it was excruciating to recall these episodes. Later, my older son Igor translated my blog post into English. I think his translation is quite accurate, so now that I am collecting all my memories in this blog, I’ve asked him to repost his translation here.

First, I thought that I will make some edits, but turned out that even reading it again was way too emotional, so I decided not to make any changes. Maybe I will do it sometime later. But now – no edits, no comments, all “as is”. Here it comes:

A few weeks ago, in a friendly LJ, I promised to talk about entering college in the end of 1970s/beginning of 1980s in the last century, in USSR – particularly about state antisemitism. I will only talk about what I saw and heard personally, or about what people directly involved in the events told me. I promised to do it by New Year. I started writing this a few days ago, but it was very painful, so it came out slowly. And so, as a result, I am posting another very non-holiday post. Yulya – I couldn’t manage to write everything that I knew about it. It was very difficult to write any more.

I know that the situation I’m writing about lasted literally a few years. By 1983, the situation already changed. Most likely, it was different in other cities, and it was definitely different in other colleges.

Because vast majority of the people involved are still alive and I’m not Elena Chizhova :), I won’t give any names, and I ask all my readers who witnessed or were involved in the events to do the same. It’s not that I have any doubt in you :). I just want this to be a public post.

Continue reading “Getting Into College And Soviet Anti-Semitism” →

About Mornings, Breakfasts, And Getting Stuff Done

Today life was much better than the previous several days. When I was leaving my house at 8-10 AM, I looked around and thought that in most of the homes, people are just starting to get up. It is a weekend, after all!

As for me, by the time I was leaving the house, I have;

  • spoken to Boris for what originally planned to be a half-hour, and ended up being close to an hour
  • gone on a 40-minute bike ride
  • done 30 -min yoga session
  • showed and got ready for a day
  • got the breakfast ready and eaten it outside

I am obsessed with breakfast. I love making nice breakfasts and eating them outside. People find it hard to believe that my numerous breakfast pictures on Instagram are my real everyday breakfasts, not the sill life and that I am making them just for myself (if I do not have anybody staying with me, of cause).

But for me, this is an essential part of the day. I am a morning person, and to start the day with some physical activity followed by a yummy and beautifully arranged breakfast is the way to set me up in a good mood. Sometimes it can’t last through the day, but at least for some time.

Today I made myself a millet hot cereal. The original recipe is here

https://hettiecooking.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/millet-hot-cereal/, although now I make it with water and some nono-fat milk. Making it takes some time, but today I put it on LOW before going biking, and after I retured, I mixed in some defrosted pumpkin puree, and spices, and left it on LOW again. It all worked so probably I will be making it more often.

Finnish Blueberry Rye Cereal

Hettie D.'s avatarHealthy Cooking - Hettie's Way

They do not call it a cereal in Finland, and from what I understand the actual word means something liquid-ish, like a creamy soup, or a breakfast meal. But I can’t find a work in English with the meaning close enough, maybe my Finnish friends can advise.

I’ve got this recipe from one of my Finnish friends, and it is very Finnish since blueberry is a national berry of Finland :). I usually make it in the second half of summer, when the weather is still hot so that you would look for a clod breakfast, rather than for a warm meal. Also, this is the time, when Michigan blueberries start to arrive, and you do not feel guilty to consume the whole cup of them in one meal.

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On Time Management, And When It Can’t Help

I am usually doing great with time management, as all my friends attest. Most of the time I can squizz in three times more activities, that anybody can imagine. And this is not for the record – I love doing everything I am doing. Since I happen not to be Hermione Granger, and nobody gives me a Time-Turner, I have to be creative. But sometimes even my time-management skills are not enough.

And that’s how this week looked like. I feel like it was one long workday. Yes, I did a couple of activities after work. I cooked at the Youth homeless shelter on Monday, I went to the concert at Millennium Park on Wednesday, and I went on a casual bike ride with Palatine Bike Club on Thursday.

It might look enough – for anybody, except me :). Besides, I was so busy at work, that I couldn’t even get out for a short stroll or for an ice-cream. And I didn’t have time to email or chat with my friends. Ad I still have a little bit of work to do over the weekend.

So when my coworkers were asking today – any plans for a weekend? I would reply – to catch up with life! Hopefully, more blog post will follow 🙂

Postgres DEI Work Group

I am usually keeping my personal and professional life separately, but I wanted to share this one!

Hettie D.'s avatarThe World of Data

Last Friday, I participated in the first conference call of the DEI Work Group of PostgresConf. And if you are wondering what DEI means, it means Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion.

The whole conversation started at the PostgresConf  2019 in New York. There we had a diversity panel on the last day of the conference. I was mildly unhappy with both low attendance and somewhat too universal coverage of the issues of diversity. I think that the striking lack of diversity in the Postgres community is a bigger problem than in IT in general, and was expecting a more in-depth conversation.

And then a usual exchange happened. I am a person of action, and I can’t complain about anything without proposing a solution (even when nobody asks for one!). But this time I was actually asked whether I will be interested in doing something to improve the situation, and granted, I…

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The Trip To The East Germany (Part 3)

I have almost no pictures from our trip to East Germany. I know what I have some from Saxische Sweitzer – Saxon Switzerland, but I could not find them. Maybe they will emerge later, and then I will add them to this post. For now, I will continue without pictures.
When we arrived in Berlin, our hosts told us they would try to exchange our return train tickets, and they managed to get us an extra three days! We were overjoyed, and I will tell you in a little bit, what did I do with this additional time.

We liked East Germany. Now, when I read memoirs about the time the country was divided, people comment about the striking contrast between the East and West Germany, about East Berlin and West Berlin. We didn’t know anything about what’s going on behind the wall. We loved Berlin, and we loved Leipzig. We also loved all the other cities and towns our hosts would take us. We visited Weimar, Erfurt, and Eisenach. We had a three-day trip to Dresden, and one of these three days we visited Maison, and it’s famous factory. We roamed Saxische Sweitzer. We had an excursion to Potsdam.

We loved everything. The fact that the trams had schedules, which they were obeying to the minute. That the streets were clean and the university dorms were tidy. We loved the school cafeterias.

Continue reading “The Trip To The East Germany (Part 3)” →

Is Using Public Spaces A Privilege?

Yesterday, I read a comment on Instagram about the homeless people gathering in the Main Branch of the Chicago Public Library. The past several weeks had been extremely hot. During the most scorching days, I would walk out of the office with a big water bottle and a stack of paper cups, so that if I saw somebody on the street, I would be able to give them a drink of water before urging to go inside.

Thankfully, I barely saw anybody – people were smart to find refuge in multiple public spaces, and I am so glad they did. Fortunately, public libraries in the big cities have always been dubbed as day shelters, both in extreme cold and extreme heat. And after seeing a movie Cooked , I could not be more thankful for that.

I am struggling to write anything else on the subject. I can’t wrap my head around this cruel comment about homeless people “contaminating” the beautiful building. Why do some people think that if they are “more presentable”, or pay more taxes, they are “more valuable” for society and thus are entitled to access public spaces more than others? When I commented that I am glad that people are in the library, not outside, I’ve got a reply that there are shelters. This statement sounded for me no better than segregation, when some people “deserve” to be at certain places, while others don’t.

Later the same day I was at the Open Door Shelter of the Night Ministry, where I volunteer regularly cooking with the youth. And after the meal was washed away (everybody loved my baked salmon), we had a great conversation. There were some young people whom I met previously, and also one more young man with whom I never talked before. I was so impressed by his intelligence and the dignity he carried himself. It just happened that we got into discussing racial profiling and stereotypes. I do not start this type of conversation by myself when I am in the ODS, but funny enough he said something to which I’ve reacted – this is a generalization! He laughed, and we continued talking.

As an immigrant, I did have my share of prejudgements towards me, and I learned half – not to pay attention, half – to accept it as a fact of life. And I have tremendous respect for people who do not become upset or bitter when they are faced with prejudgement and maintain the sense of their worth and self-respect.

I was walking back to the CTA station with the sense that this day was worth living:)

My First Trip Abroad – Preparation And Other Details

I was about to start describing an actual trip, but then I’ve realized how many details surrounding this trip require a separate explanation. That’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to start this blog in the first place. I would never put into my journal back then all these details of our everyday lives because they were so “everybody knows it.” And the future generations will never ask about them because they won’t imagine that everyday things may be so different!

There were two essential things to take care of: passports and money. I know that for most of the world, a “passport” means a document that allows you to travel abroad. Not the case for the Soviet Union, and even for nowadays Russia.

All of us had an “internal passport,” which was issued to anybody when they reach sixteen years of age. This internal passport (which everybody would refer to as just “passport”) was used and is still used in the situations when Americans use their driver’s license or State ID. It was something you would need to carry with you most of the time if you want to avoid trouble with a militia.

And if you are lucky to be allowed to go to Zarganitsa, you will be issued a separate passport – a foreign passport, or as we now are aware of the terminology, “zagran-passport.” There were three different types of zagran-passport, and we were issues the “regular” ones.

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More Pictures From The Outdoor Gym

I’ve already posted some pictures of our new outdoor gym in this post; now I’ve decided to show more pictures to demonstrate all the equipment we have there.

I took these pictures last Friday morning between 5-40 and 6-10. At that time of the day there is nobody except me over there :). Now as the summer rolls into its second half, the sunrise is later and later every day, which affects the early raisers like myself.
I am up before 5 AM every day, and most of the year, I head to the Anytime Fitness facility right away. But during summer months I try to do as much outdoors, as possible, and this new gym equipment was exactly what I needed. Now and probably for another week or two, I will only go to ATF if there will be raining. Otherwise, I start at my home gym, and in about 30-40 minutes, I walk to this outdoor gym and exercise there for another 20 minutes. I love the fact that I can work out when the sun is rising.

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