Vanille Chicago Vote Count
Tag: politics
No Matter What Will Happen, Do Not Give Up!
Today, I went to the clinic escort; for several weeks, the shifts were filling fast, and I didn’t even have a chance to sign up. And later, I was traveling. Having that I do not tolerate the cold well, that shift could be my last opportunity for the year.
The shift was quiet; there were just a couple of antis out, and we wrapped up by 11-30. Before we left, our team leader gathered us together in a circle and said: Please remember that whatever happens, it is not the end of the world. Do not get discouraged, no matter what the outcome will be. We will find a way to help people, underground or up in the sky; I do not know. But we will find a way to do the right thing.
I think it was so well said that I want to pass these words along: we hope for the best, but whatever will happen, don’t get discouraged.
Early Voting Day
On October 12, my 77-old neighbor texted me: I didn’t see a ballot drop box where you said it should be. Is it inside?
I talked to her a couple of days before that. She was hesitant to send her envelope by mail, and I told her there would be a dropoff box. My very moderate, if not conservative neighbor talked like I never head her before: I filled in the ballot. I told my husband: turn the TV off; I do not want to listen to him anymore. I tried to find some logical explanations, but enough is enough! Another neighbor chimed in: my mom said she wants to vote in person. She said we could take folding chairs and wait, no matter how many hours!
From what I was told, the first several days of early voting were indeed hours. I went to check on the situation of Friday, resolving that if the line is long, I will return home and fill in my absentee ballot.
The line seemed OK. It took about fifteen minutes of waiting outside, and about ten minutes inside, and then voting itself. I surrender by absentee ballot to the election judge, cast my vote, and dropped the printed ballot into the box. This process with printing and then manually casting is still relatively new.
As it often happens this year, there were no “I voted” stickers toward the end of the day, but that is fine. I am glad that so many people are voting early.
We were writing the postcards to the Florida voters through September, and we were told not to mail them before October 21. I mailed mine immediately after I got back from Helsinki,’ but I think it was already too late :). Which honestly, I do not regret!
My Mailbox
FOr the past two weeks, from time to time I find Morrison’s campaign materials in my mailbox. I do not know whether his campaign decided to cut on data analyst or what, but my mail looks funny together:
Two days ago, my vote by mail package arrived. I am impressed by the number of languages:)
I am still undecided though whether I wan to vote by mail or vote early.
RGB
Last night, all my devices rang simultaneously, just like it was when Senator McCain died, and I looked at the closest of the devices, my Apple Watch, to read the news.
Today, there is no other topic on the news, except for the death of RBG, at least that how it feels now, that I am almost four hours in my day. To tell the truth, I would rather hear more of her, then memories about her, but there were just one or two excerpts from the old interviews played on the air.
I do not feel like I can write anything lengthy or anything new, which I didn’t say earlier about her. Like many people, I feel the void, which won’t be ever filled. Because even if/when other amazing people will come up, she will always be the one, unmatched, incomparable.
Its probably not worth saying here, but even Trump’s first reaction on the news of her death was: she was an amazing woman!
I am sorry that she didn’t live to see this presidency over. However, her impact on humanity is enormous and will never be undone,
All In: The Fight for Democracy – Documentary
By now, everybody knows that if I am not blogging for a couple of days, it means that I have a crisis at work. This is precisely what’s going on now, plus – the chapter deadline is only two days away, and I have a big chunk of it still not written, plus it needs a lot of formatting rework. Nevertheless, when the Amazon screening of the new documentary was announced, I signed up because I could not not to see it! And I was watching it, while fixing stuff in production and while editing our current chapter.
It is brilliant. It is timely. It is eye-opening. I have an urge to make people who dare to lament about BML being too violent, about “how much longer we should beg pardon and feel sorry,” to watch this documentary from start to finish. Because the answer is – forever. At least for the foreseeable future.
And I may be biased towards a certain population of zero-generation immigrants. Still, way too often, I feel that they do not know these parts of American history, which were not publicized in history textbooks. They were not here, and their parents were not here, and when they come, they are too busy to get settled in their new life. They do not want to look around, question, and step away from their stereotypes, from the presumption that they know everything.
I will stop now:), but I want to share the official trailer and a review from Tribune, which I really liked!
Continue reading for the full text of the review (the link to the article is here)
Continue reading “All In: The Fight for Democracy – Documentary”All You Need To Know About Kenosha
I have no idea whether the rest of the world know about the current events in Kenosha, but if you know, this post is for you.
Igor went to Kenosha five days after the shooting of Jacob Blake, on one of the few days when trains from Chicago were stopping at Kenosha.
As usual, he came back with a million photos. I am posting just a couple here, but please. spend ten minutes looking at all of them here, this is all you need to know about what’s going on in Kenosha.
Smolny in 1995, Part 2. How I Didn’t Meet Putin
Boris’ part in this Smolny project was installing the software Dr. Conrad was trying to sell. And my part was, as usual, writing the user’s manual. In this case, it was more like a persuasive essay. I had to present a use case and show how this software will make the life of the City clerks easier.
I remember how I was inventing the names and ages of people and their addresses. But the most memorable were the letters I was scanning. Scanning was a very new thing then, at least in Russia, even the copying machines were rare. And I was given a whole bunch of real people’s paper letters to Smolny. And I read them while scanning. I can’t recall any particular case or any particular problem from these letters, but the overall impression was desperate. You could hear people crying, searching for words that would be convincing enough, pleading for help, from necessary surgery to pensions being delayed, to broken heating pipes. I could not help but think how the City clerks can read such letters and put them aside. I knew that all these letters were not processed yet, and some of them were dated two-three months before the day I was reading them.
Continue reading “Smolny in 1995, Part 2. How I Didn’t Meet Putin”Smolny in 1995
The last gig I wrote about was the project in Bank Saint-Petersburg, which earned me money for our trip to Poland.
Later in 1995, my employment situation continued to be the same as I described in the above post. I was a full-time researcher at the university, working in the Operations Research Laboratory, and Boris was my boss, which was wrong on all possible accounts. The university jobs were still paying very little for both of us, but the way we thought about it back then, it was unimaginable to leave a university position. It was academia; we were researches, and even if we aren’t paid anything, we could not drop these badges of honor.
And still, we needed money. Maybe, some people can be happy being poor together with their loved ones, but it was never our case. We were on a hunting trail all the time.
The next gig came one more time from Dr. Conrad, and that was my last encounter with him. The gig was huge – working with the city government. Dr. Conrad, as usual, wanted to sell something to somebody. That time, this “something” was a document flow system that would allow all the city government departments to process the letters from the public more efficiently. My job would be to interview the city government employees from all departments, analyze their needs, the existing processes bottleneck, and produce a report explaining why the proposed system was the best possible solution. Then I had to make a presentation to the whole bunch of officials.
Continue reading “Smolny in 1995”About July 17 Events
Saving this video for a historical record: how the last weekend’s violence in Chicago was organized.
The first video is a recording of the briefing of Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown, where they show the footage and explain what’s going on. And the second video is just that 6 min footage.
Hettie's Reflections 