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Bush and the Pig

Sometimes our president just really makes our whole country look ridiculous: Bush in Germany.

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Learning Polish

From my journal, ten years ago.

I’ve been working with my host mother on the basic Polish sounds and I have hit a real break through in [the] pronunciation of sz and rz. It’s great!

Earlier in the evening I was trying to pronounce one of the many “sh” sounds and after several failures I finally threw out a last attempt accompanied by a significant amount of spittle, and she cried “Tak!” with great delight.

Learning Polish was unlike learning Spanish and French for me because it occurred in Poland out of necessity. Survival even. And so the result is that I know much more Polish than I ever did French or Spanish, and I have an understanding of linguistic subtitlies that escpaced me in high school and university.

And I can finally say “chrząszcz” without drowning my conversational companions.

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"The New Polish Potatoes"

Ah, those Kaczynski boys, they’re a crazy pair:

[Prime Minister] Marcinkiewicz resigned just days after President Kaczynski, 57, canceled a “Weimar Triangle” summit meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Jacques Chirac of France.

These summit meetings were first started 15 years ago, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union to forge closer political, economic and security ties between the three largest countries in the European Union but also to break down decades of suspicions and tension between Warsaw and Berlin.

Kaczynski’s office canceled the meeting with very short notice, officially because Kaczysnki had become ill. But senior Polish diplomats and opposition politicians said the real reason was a satirical article published in the German daily Taz newspaper that described the Kaczynski twins as “the Polish new potatoes.”

Anna Fotyga, Poland’s foreign minister, publicly complained to the German Foreign Ministry and demanded a formal apology. After Berlin said it would not comment since it supported freedom of the press, Fogyta said the lack of response was “shocking” and compared the article to the language used in Der Stürmer, a propaganda weekly during the Nazi era. Former foreign ministers accused the government of damaging Poland’s national interests. (IHT)

I think if this had happened during recess, the Leck or Jarek would have just smacked the editor.

Maybe that would have been less damaging for Polish foreign relations.

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God in the Aisle

I sometimes go to mass with Kinga for companionship, and today, I was certainly glad I did. Before I get into the reason why, some theology.

Catholics of course believe in something they call the “Real Presence,” which is the belief that the bread and wine are the actual body and blood of Jesus. It’s based on an Aristotelian concept of accident and essence—what a thing looks like and what it really is. So the Catholic explanation of why it still looks suspiciously like bread and wine is that the outward appearance has remained, but the essential reality has changed.

This is why there’s all the genuflection in churches and especially before monstrances, because if that really is God in the flesh flour, then it only makes sense to bow.

This also goes a long way in explaining the controversy about how a parishioner can take the host: standing, kneeling, on the tongue, on the palm of the hand. I think the variety is strictly American. In Poland, the issue is vastly simplified: stand or kneel. There’s no way a priest will give it to your hand in Poland. (Kinga’s highly religious aunt is completely shocked and offended that anyone could think of taking the host standing…)

“Real Presence” also explains why some might be a little uneasy with the idea of anyone other than a priest handing out the host. In the States, members of the congregation hand out the blood and wine (though the priest has consecrated it and all that). Again, this is probably a completely American thing.

All this is to explain the significance of why I’ve always wondered what would happen if someone tripped and—whoosh—there’s God, all over the floor.

At this morning’s mass, my question was answered.

An elderly woman, serving as Eucharistic minister, was heading back up to the altar (and so her chalices were probably almost empty) when suddenly there was a stumble, shuffle, and crash. I saw the whole thing out of the corner of my eye, and I immediately directed all my attention there—as did everyone else in the basilica.

The priest kept right on going, but not many people were giving him their undivided attention. Everyone was looking at the aisle, watching the lady pick up the hosts as another Eucharistic minister helped her. Then a deacon came with a cloth that had been dampened, I’m assuming with holy water, and wiped the spot.

The woman was obviously quite shaken. She said some words to the priest, and he sympathetically comforted her. Returning to her seat, she muttered something to her husband, and that was that.

It highlights how atypical Catholicism is in modern culture, where all sense of the scared has disappeared. “And so much the better” many of us would add, but sacredness fosters a certain respect that I’m not sure you can get any other way. It’s simplistic to explain it, “Well of course it’s respect—born out of fear, a terror that some deity will toast you.” There’s certainly an element of truth in that.

Communism tried to foster some sense of the sacred—the working masses were the vessels for salvation. The working man is the communist messiah. Marches, songs, flag waving, speeches—all these things to foster a sense of the sacred in the people. Yet it didn’t work. My wife grew up in that culture, and it was all a joke for everyone. Why?

It lacked mystery.

Without mystery, without an element of the unknown and inexplicable, nothing can be sacred. Indeed, sacredness could be defined as a sense of mystery about something thought to be of divine origin. If you see the little old man putting together the wizard show, hanging the curtains, preparing the control panel, it is only through an act of supreme wishful thinking that you can put your faith in the Wizard.

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"Come on, just once!"

“Come on, Larry. Just once! Let’s just see if she’ll notice. I swear I won’t do anything with her.” How many twins have uttered something like that to their identical sibling, trying to convince the sibling to let him go on a date with his brother’s girlfriend?

What if the twins both held public office, only one was much higher in rank? Say Jeb and W were twins—wouldn’t you think that Jeb would try, just once, to convince his brother to let him make some kind of address as the president? “Come on, Georgie! We ain’t talkin’ about a State of the Union address. It’s just a little chat out in the Rose Garden. They’ll never notice!”

We’re fortunate that Jeb and W aren’t twins, because they seem just, well, lacking-in-seriousness enough to try it.

Such a situation is not inconceivable in the near future in Poland, though. Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz has resigned and the ruling party, PiS (Law and Order Justice—Prawo i Sprawiedliwość), has indicated that they want Jarosław Kaczynski to take the position.

“Kaczynski. That sounds familiar,” some might think.

That’s because the president of Poland is Lech Kaczynski, Jarosław’s twin brother.

Oh, he’s so adorable, let’s just call him “Jarek.”

It’s not clear whether Jarek is going to take the position. He turned it down earlier on the reasonable grounds that it might give some people the willies to have twin brothers in the two highest positions in the nation, but I think this time he’ll just suffer through those discomforting thoughts and take the post.

But it’s no big change. Jarek’s been running the country for month’s. Marcinkiewicz’s just been a puppet, people say.

That sounds awfully familiar.

At any rate, the BBC report seems strangely enough to confirm this: BBC did not use the Polish character “ł,” pronounced like the English “w,” so it’s not a typo.

Over recent weeks, there had been frequent reports of a rift between Mr Marcinkiewicz and Jaroslaw Kaczynski over economic policy.

Wait a minute? I know Jarek is the PiS party leader, but his brother is president, is he not? Wouldn’t it be tensions between the president and the PM that would cause the PM to resign, rather than tensions between the party boss and the PM? Unless, of course, the party boss is the boss.

The good thing in all this? At least Jarek will admit—sort of—that he’s in charge.

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A Modest Proposal

I prefer the English “football” to the American “soccer.” “American football” barely even makes use of the feet—fat seems critical there. Perhaps one reason Americans don’t like football is because of the whining, says Jake Novak in Newsday. The Week writes that “European soccer players seem to spend most of the game writing in fake agony.”

Indeed, diving in football—intentionally falling to make it appear one has been fouled—is a growing concern in European football.

Germany World Cup-winning captain and coach Franz Beckenbauer has asked for there to be a crackdown on divers and cheaters.

“The players are looking for an advantage and they attempt to exploit the situation,” said the head of Germany’s 2006 organising committee.

“At the beginning of the tournament, I felt the referees were showing yellow cards too early for trivial offences but the players make it much harder by simulating, and by staying lying on the ground to interrupt play,” he said.

“Perhaps everyone – players, referees and administrators can get around a table after this to come up with a solution to put an end to this kind of unfortunate incidents. (BBC News)

Often, you see a player gnashing his teeth in pain, clutching a shin video replay shows to have been hardly tapped by an opponent’s leg. The paramedics and team physical trainer all come running out with a medical case and stretcher, only to find that—hey!—he can walk after all! In fact, after a few limps, he’s jogging, then running!

Miracle of miracles.

Aside from being immoral, this behavior simply slows a game of otherwise constant motion.

“How do we deal with it?” everyone moans.

And so I present my simple, three step process.

First, introduce the use of video replay into the game. Too often the ref is too far from the “foul” that takes place very quickly. To make a judgment that this was indeed a case of diving is difficult, at best.

Second, provide refs with a small, wireless video monitor. Simple. When a ref thinks there’s been a case of diving, he simply reviews the play on the monitor.

Third, implement a graduated penalty system for diving:

• The penalty for the first offense of the season: a fine of 1% of the player’s annual contract income.
• Second offense: 5%.
• Third offense: 10%.
• Fourth offense: suspension for the rest of the season, plus an additional 10% of the player’s annual contract income.

The proceeds of this go to a charity designed to provide football facilities in developing nations.

Diving would disappear very quickly.

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Myopic America: Thoughts on the Fourth of July

Kinga and I have now been back in the States a little over a year. That, combined with the date, makes it appropriate to share some of the thoughts I’ve been having about America lately.

If you were to ask Kinga, after a year here, “What do you think of America?” she’d answer unhesitatingly and unflinchingly, “I hate it.” No, this is not going to turn into an America-bashing diatribe, but I have to admit that, on some level, I do too. Not the people, or the culture, or the government, or even the geography.

I hate the paradox of America.

America in so many ways is an amazing nation. We have freedoms unimagined in other countries. Think of the David Irving conviction for Holocaust denial in Austria and the trial of Oriana Fallaci in Italy for insulting Islam. Such nonsense doesn’t happen here, and the fact that I grew up here explains why I call it “nonsense.” Freedom of speech is so engrained in my thinking that I hate to imagine the purgatorial existence life without it would constitute. Freedom of religion, freedom from religion, protection against unwarranted police action (though this could of late be qualified with “some degree of “), access to legal remediation of wrongs done to us — the list could continue for a few more lines. Additionally, we have attained a standard of living in one short year in America that we would not have in three years in Poland. The economy there is simply shot.

The wealth of this country is unbelievable as well, at least on the surface. The majority of us have a standard of living here that few in the world enjoy. We have a highway system on a scale that beats anything I’ve ever seen. Anything and everything is literally available at any time of day.

And yet…

That wealth is illusory. Who owns our houses, our cars, our computers and furniture — most anything that costs more than we’re able to pay in cash? Banks. We “common” folk have a medium income of roughly $42,000. The average CEO makes $11 million, more in one day than the average American makes in a year. So there is wealth, it’s just not evenly distributed.

The freedoms I speak of are, more often than not, abused. Lawsuits increase, insurance goes up, and in the end, it’s the same story — a few (the winning plaintiffs) getting rich off the toil of the many.

The amazing freedom of speech we have results in what? Thoughtful public debate about issues? Certainly not — talk shows!

America was once a leader in technology and development. We were the first to fly, the first to land on the moon (oops — not the first in space…), the first this, the first that. Americans used to dominate the world of computer programming. And now?

The most amazing thing about this country is also, at the moment, the most ridiculous: our government. We’re bogged down in Iraq; “democratic Afghanistan” is a joke, as the Taliban slowly reasserts itself and Christians almost get executed for being just that; our reliance of fossil fuels is beginning to cause real problems; we’ve lost world respect with the shameful holding facility at Guantanamo Bay; New Orleans has still not fully recovered from the trilateral fiasco of local, state, and national “leadership”; the Bush administration is taking unparalleled liberties with our liberties — and what does Congress do about it? Why, debate the pressing issues of gay marriage and flag burning, of course.

The paradox of America is that it is shortsighted. It’s a young country and it acts the part, especially of late — the blustering machismo of a sixteen-year-old. As a nation, as a populous, we don’t look beyond our own noses. The average American, I would wager, has no idea why gas prices have doubled before our eyes. The fact that SUV sales in the first quarter of 2006 were on par with 2005 growth expectations despite rocketing fuel costs shows the American mindset perfectly. It’s all about short-term material pleasure. In American Axle & Manufacturing’s first quarter fiscal report for 2006, we read, “We are encouraged by the initial market acceptance of GM’s new full-size SUVs and look forward to supporting the launch of GM’s new full-size pick-ups later this year.” (Source) Yes — be encouraged by this recklessly myopic market phenomenon! You’ll make money from it!

American Axle & Manufacturing’s good news is indeed good from a certain perspective: it will provide, in theory, jobs. But to Americans? I doubt it. Perhaps the most striking examples of myopic America are the education and health care systems. America lags so far behind the rest of the western world in providing education and universal health care for its citizens that it would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.

Not only do many citizens have to scrounge to afford a university education, but the education provided to the public for free (i.e., primary and secondary schools) is so far academically behind the rest of the world that we’re literally laughed at. Some months ago, when I told Kinga what I was working on with eleventh and twelfth graders in general math while substitute teaching, she laughed, “We did that in fourth and fifth grade.”

Yet nothing compares to the chasm between American and European health care. When Polish friends moved to Belgium, the total hospital cost for delivering their second baby was around two hundred euros. Two hundred euros. I doubt you can get much more than an aspirin in an American hospital for that.

Are any of these situations improving? If so, I’ve yet to see evidence of it. Yet, hope and cliches spring eternal…

What I feel most often on the Fourth of July now is mild sadness. I don’t expect America to fall in some spectacular way, but rather to dim slowly, like a candle in an oxygen-starved room. It will burn, but it won’t provide any light to speak of.

The Fourth of July, I’m afraid, will eventually not be a day of pride. It won’t be filled with fireworks and patriotic speeches about sacrifice and a noble cause. It will be a day of remembrance, a day to recall how powerful this nation used to be. A day to recall how we traded our independence for SUVs and iPods.

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Making Us Proud

Our local minor league team, the Asheville Tourists (?!?), made national news. Rather, the manager did. Check out this clip.

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Exceptions

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Blasphemous Rumors

I’m supposing we all know who Oriana Fallaci is:

The trial of Oriana Fallaci, a journalist and author accused of defaming Islam in a book, was opened and adjourned yesterday in an Italian court.

What is it with Europe and free speech? First of all there was David Irving’s trial in Austria for Holocaust denial. That makes a little sense (a very little sense) because Austria and Germany are still understandably, say, sensitive about the Holocaust. Very good—they should be. But putting people in jail for what they say is not the way to deal with it.

The Fallaci trial is even more ridiculous:

The charge stems from a recent book, The Strength of Reason, one of a trilogy she has published since the September 11 attacks on the US. In the book, Fallaci, 77, is alleged to have made 18 blasphemous statements, including referring to Islam as “a pool that never purifies”. (Guardian Unlimited)

What gets me is the choice of words: blasphemous. Since when is Italy under sharia law? Since when is it okay to insult Christianity (as some claim the Da Vinci Code does) but no other religion?

I’m an equal-opportunity offender. If a religion—or anything—does or promotes something harmful or stupid, I’ll comment on it, usually in the negative. If you’re offended by that, walk away. Don’t listen. Ignore me.

And it’s such an amazing juxtaposition with the whole Danish cartoon controversy. The swinging pendulum of European justice…

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Seven Months

Seven months’ work with seven autistic children came to an end last Friday, the last day of school. “I feel I’m a better person for the experience,” I said to a colleague. So many daily lessons — as Elie Wiesel often says of his students, I learned far more than I taught.

I learned how to separate the behavior from the child. The child and the behavior — and I’m talking of crises: spitting, hitting, screaming, kicking, crawling under a table, self-destructive behavior, etc. — are not equivalent. Indeed, it is very seldom the child actually behaving that way, but rather the condition taking over and running things for a few moments, or minutes. You can see it in the eyes, and hear it in the voice.

I learned that there are far more difficult things to deal with as a teacher than a belligerent teenager. Countless times during the last seven months I was at a complete loss as to what to do, what to say, how to behave. This was partially a function of my lack of education in the EC field. When a child is in crisis, it’s a natural reaction to try to discuss it, to try to “talk him down.” In the world of autism, that seldom works. I learned to do so many things in exact opposition to my every instinct.

I learned what true student progress can entail. A couple of the students finished the year as completely different children than when they started. Gains in reading ability, social interaction, verbal expression, math skills, and general life skills left me simply astounded, and understandably proud that I had something to do with it.

I learned that even many regular education teachers feel they wouldn’t be able to work with such “difficult” children. “You guys are the saints of the school,” someone once told me, and a couple of others expressed an inexplicable admiration of “what we do.” What we did was not very different from regular education: try to teach children and minimize the behavior issues that impede learning. It’s just in special ed, the behaviors can be more concentrated. It’s sometimes a triple espresso to regular education’s thin, pale diner coffee.

As something of a correlate of the previous two points, I learned how to recognize true appreciation in the eyes and voice of parents. When I began working there as a substitute teacher, I was told that most subs last one day and refuse ever to come back. Full-time aides must be relatively difficult to find as well. Almost to a parent, everyone told me, “We really hope you’ll be back next year, though given the pay, we’d all understand if you didn’t.”

Finally, I learned that I have a patience I never knew I had, and it also has its bounds.

I leave with a greater understanding of autism, a greater respect for the parents of autistic children who live with autism every day.

Most of all, I leave with greater sympathy and respect for children with autism. They are the ones caught in a trap with varying degrees of understanding what that trap is, let alone how to get out. And yet they so often show those of us working with them things we never would have noticed because of the unique perspective from which they see every little thing.

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Corpus Christi

From my journal ten years ago today—my first experience with Corpus Christi, though I had no idea what it was.

I am waiting for the bus, sitting in front of a church. I went in for a moment, but decided I should probably leave — I didn’t cross myself with holy water (It appears to be stagnant water with a greasy film.) and I was getting a few looks (though there were several others who did not cross themselves either).

Suddenly the bells began ringing and eventually I caught sight of a procession coming around from behind the church. Choir boys were dinging small bells and behind them was a procession of relics. A little behind that was the priest, walking under a canopy supported by six men, preceded by a young priest waving an incense burner. The head priest was holding a staff with a gold sun in front of his face — he was led by the arms, for he certainly couldn’t see where he was going. Behind the priest was a group of loosely organized lay-persons, singing a capella. The woman beside me knelt as the group went by. A strange thing, this Christianity.

Ten years ago. Ten years. Ten years…

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Lunch Rules

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Zep Kittens

Something mildly amusing one of our students found while looking for pictures of kittens on the internet.

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On Target

Brainshrub gets right to the heart of the matter: Ban gay married illegal Mexican immigrant flag burning.

I think I sense a conservative platform for the mid-term elections…

Let’s just hope that none of the Republican candidates made art films. (Via Susie Bright.)

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New Car, New Savings, New Pictures

We recently bought a Jetta turbo diesel, with the eventual aim of going bio-diesel. Until we get the filtration system set up, we’re just using regular diesel.

On our trip to the Outer Banks (pics coming soon), we averaged 41.09 MPG, with a high of 47.48 MPG. In other words, to travel 248.8 miles, we consumed 5.24 gallons of gas. At the price we paid (2.89, if memory serves), that’s $0.06 per mile!

Okay—I’m getting nerdy with all the numbers.

We filled up before leaving the Outer Banks and still have a quarter of a tank left…

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Traveling Not-So-Light

There was a time when Kinga and I regularly packed all the belongings we thought we’d need for an entire week or more into bike panniers and still be convinced we’d taken too much. For the trip to Budapest (picture at right—more here) we even took (I’m embarrassed to admit it) three cameras. Oh, and a tripod.

For this weekend’s trip to the Outer Banks, we’ve almost filled our new car’s trunk—Jetta turbo diesel (40 mpg average!)—and we haven’t even finished packing yet!

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Pressing Flesh For Effect

This Monday I participated in an education flesh fair: an education career fair. Hundreds of us unemployed teachers (or at least not employed teaching in one’s subject area) were queuing in front of tables where representatives from various school districts sat, taking resumes and asking assorted questions.

I’d checked all the websites of districts I knew to be participating and found very few jobs listed there. “Perhaps they’re just not listing them on the site, opting instead to wait until after the career fair to see what jobs remain open.” Wrong.

There were very few school systems looking for English teachers, and a couple of them that had posted vacancies just about two weeks ago had already filled the positions. That’s fast — two weeks to get resumes, conduct interviews, make the first selection, call back those who made the cut, interview a second time, make a decision, make an offer, and have the offer accepted. At some point in that process one would think that the district would update its vacancy page to reflect the filled position, but that’s a bit naïve I guess. Two of them are still there.

At any rate, I went from table to table (county to county essentially), flashed a smile, answered questions, and generally schmoozed. The outcome: one interview set for mid-June, with two more schools expressing interest. “We’ll call you,” they said.

I’d interviewed at this same school near the beginning of the school year when an unanticipated vacancy appeared literally days before the school year began. My first interview in years. It obviously didn’t go so well. It also didn’t go so badly, it seems, for the director of personnel remembered me and was willing — interested, might I even say? — in having me “come by to talk again.” The downside: the school is forty miles away.

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Not So Loose Change

Loose Change has been steadily moving up Google Video’s Ranking. It’s up to the number one position, after sitting at two for a couple of days.

Well, at least part of it appears to be proven wrong.

Flight 77 not a hoax .

Of course, they still haven’t released the video from the service station or the hotel, so Dylan and the boys still have part of their film intact.

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Are we so uneducated?!

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Higher Standards?

What do you make of a bank that offers auto loans only through an automated online process? What do you make of a bank that provides no customer support regarding auto loans? What do you make of a bank that denies you a loan of less than what you currently have in a savings account of that very bank when you have a credit rating in the top 10 percentile?

My answer: not much—at least, not much that’s not heavily laced with profanity.

The bank in question is Bank of America, which is currently the institution that provides us with our banking “services.” After yesterday’s experience, we will have absolutely nothing to do with Bank of America and their “higher standards”

The story: Kinga and I have decided to go bio-diesel, and the first step in that process is, obviously enough, buying a diesel car. We found a 2000 Jetta diesel sedan for a good price and made an accepted offer.

I called my local branch office of BOA to ask what documents I would need to bring to apply for an auto loan. The young man who answered the phone politely asked me to hold on while he checked with a banker. He returned to the line and told me that I would need two forms if ID—exactly what I’d suspected. I arrived at the location to be told that actually to apply for the loan I would have to use Bank of America’s online services. Essentially I’d driven all the way there to be told not that I could do it at home, but that I must do it at home. Why I wasn’t told this over the phone is a complete mystery that can only be explained as incompetence.

I returned home, filled in the necessary online forms, and almost immediate was told,

We are unable to approve your auto loan application at this time. […] You’ll receive a letter in the mail within 30 days. This letter will include more information about your decision.

Given the balance in our bank account and my credit rating, what could be the cause? Simple: I do not make enough money as a teacher’s aid to get such a loan on my own (which says as much about the nation’s education system as it does about the bank), and Kinga, as a Pole, has no credit history.

Now, I could understand this if we were applying at another bank, but at my own bank? An institution that has immediate access to my account and can confirm a steady, consistent stream of deposits and a large savings account?

To top it all off, I was not even asked for how much the loan would be. It would have been, in fact, around 70% of what we’ve already deposited in savings!

Needless to say, I was more than furious. I was even more enraged to learn that there is actually no human being I can talk to about a car loan from Bank of America. Everything refers me to BOA’s online “services.” This means that my loan application was processed entirely and rejected by a computer.

On the recommendation of a friend, I called the local SunTrust branch, talked to a human being, and was still receiving phone calls and help from her after business hours at seven in the evening! As an aside, the kind woman at SunTrust told me that I was the third person that day to contact her looking for a better banking experience than what they’d received at Bank of America.

SunTrust has won our trust and business, whereas Bank of America has lost it permanently.

What is most infuriating is the fact that my credit rating is now lower because of BOA’s unwillingness to pay people to talk to those of us wanting a small loan. The online bio of the president of BOA, Kenneth Lewis, web site bio brags that he runs “one of the world’s largest financial institutions, the fifth most profitable company in the world and the ninth most highly valued company in the world by market capitalization.” Reuter’s reports that BOA “posted a $4.99 billion profit last quarter” (Reuters), so they’re pretty good making money, not fairly dismal at helping people.

But there are more compelling reasons for changing institutions. According to Reuter’s,

In February 2005, Bank of America said it lost track of computer tapes containing account data for about 1.2 million federal government employees, including some U.S. senators.

Three months later, New Jersey authorities charged several people over the compromising of accounts at several banks, including some 60,000 Bank of America accounts.

Bank of America was also one of many credit card issuers affected by a breach affecting some 40 million cards and traced to CardSystems Solutions Inc., a third-party processor. (Reuter’s)

So they’re have significant security vulnerabilities and they’re worried only about their bottom line.

Cosa Loro

Really the only difference between a bank and a mafia loan shark is the amortization frequency and the penalty for default.

Both the mafia and the banking industry make it even more difficult for you to get a reasonable loan (i.e., one that you can repay in your lifetime) by putting unreasonable stipulations on the loan. If you’re a risk to a bank—in other words, if you have a bad credit rating—the bank offers you a loan at a higher interest rate, thereby making it more difficult to repay it.

“We don’t think you’ll be able to pay this back,” bankers say, “So we’re going to make it more difficult for you to pay it back.”

Where’s the logic in that? It doesn’t even make sense from a banker’s point of view. If a bank has to foreclose on a house financed with a high-interest loan, they’ll up auctioning it off for a substantial loss.

Still, they get their money no matter what. It’s a good gig, this money-lending scheme the banks have…

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Exodus

From The Observer:

So many young Poles are leaving to find jobs and a better life in Britain that bosses back home are desperate for them to return to keep the wheels of Polish industry turning, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Wroclaw. [...]

More than half a million Poles have moved to Britain to find jobs since Poland joined the European Union two years ago. They have fled a country with 18 per cent unemployment, the highest figure in the 25-nation bloc. But now the drain of talent has speeded up to such an extent that Poland is complaining of a drastically reduced population and the lack of a suitable workforce to help the country develop. (Source)

But why would an educated twenty-something want to return to this:

Poland is still anchored in its anti-Semitic past, says Gabriele Lasser in Berlin’s die tageszietung Consider the output of Radio Maryja, one of Poland’s main radio stations and virtual house organ of the governing Law and Justice Party. (Between the hymns and prayers, ministers use it to announce policy.) This Catholic station, which spews out right-wing propaganda for the benefit of its 3 million listeners, surpassed itself last month with an anti-Semitic diatribe from the pundit Stanislaw Michalkiewicz. Polish “kikes,” he bellowed, have manufactured a “Holocaust industry,” in order to “extort” compensation from the taxpayer for property expropriated during World War II. Poland’s telecom watchdog, which recently imposed a heavy fine on another radio station for satirizing Radio Maryja and “damaging the journalistic ethic,” didn’t utter a peep of protest. But the comments incensed Pope Benedict, and the Vatican fired off a furious letter to Poland’s bishops, demanding they stop turning a blind eye to this extremist claptrap. Benedict is due on an official visit next month. If the bishops want to avoid a spanking from the pope in person, they had better do something, and soon, about Radio’s Maryja’s hateful programming. (From The Week news magazine).

And now Andrzej Lepper is Agriculture Minister and Roman Giertych is Education Minister. There’s already talk about “cleaning” homosexuals out of the education field…

“It could be worse,” Kinga and I said when PiS (Law and Justice Party) got elected in Poland last year.

It is worse…

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Sign Language

I find it interesting that so many of the signs in yesterday’s anti-immigration-reform protest explicitly gave “proof” of the validity of the opposition’s argument. In other words, the cries, “They don’t assimilate! They don’t even learn the language!” were born out in so many of the signs that protesters carried.

Now, I’m not an advocate of creating legislation that makes English the official language of America, but one would think that this time, of all times, would be when immigrants use English. And I’m not even suggesting that it should be even close to correct English.

And that’s why I love the sign at right so much.

(Pictures swiped from NYT. Click on them for larger versions.)

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Joy

Recently found an Asian food market…and the sweating began!

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Effective R&D

Excerpts from an article from Bloomberg.com:

• crude supplies will stay tight through the end of the decade.
• The situation will persist until 2010.
• Oil prices have climbed 23 percent to more than $75 a barrel this year
• Persian Gulf states that don’t allow international companies to develop their oil reserves, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, should invest more to expand output themselves,
• The International Energy Agency’s Mandil told reporters today in Doha that OPEC would “just about’’ meet the expected 25 percent growth in global demand over the next three years. (Source)

The most amazing quote is the third:

Persian Gulf states that don’t allow international companies to develop their oil reserves, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, should invest more to expand output themselves

They’re making billions at these prices. Why the hell should they increase output? Eat up their resources for decreased revenue? There’s absolutely no incentive for them to do so.

Oh, this is all just cruel justice for America, which has grown fat and lazy on its cheap gas. Think about it — gas is just now getting to be more expensive than milk! We’ve brought it on ourselves with our short-sightedness. We’ve had almost thirty years to prepare for this oil crisis that is revving up, but what did we do instead?

Invent the SUV.

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Tyranny and Giggles

The funny thing about conspiracy theories is that their existence disproves them. World governments, fluoridated water, governmental control of drug trafficking, Illuminati plans for world domination—all are simply and easily disproved with one simple question: “How would I get this information?”

Take Alex Jones’ New World Order conspiracy: the global elite (which he calls the Illuminati, the Bilderberg group, the Bohemian Grove, and any number of other terms depending on who knows what) have been out since the turn of the century to take over the world. Highlights of the theory:

• Communism was a creation of international bankers at the turn of the 20th century to submit people to a police state.
• Hitler was simply playing his small role in the grand scheme of world domination.
• The Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11 were planned and executed by the U.S. government in order to justify a gradual implementation of a police state.
• The U.S. government has been systematically poisoning its citizens through chem trails, fluoridation of water, vaccinations, and other methods.
• Cartoons are systematically conditioning children to chip implementation and complete police-state control of citizens’ every move.

Look at that—everyone’s involved, even sworn enemies. Communists and Fascists are on the same team. Clinton and Bush are two sides of the same evil. Conspirators and secret police are everywhere, watching our every move and…

And clamping down on anyone who exposes them? Well, that would make sense. If someone has untangled the whole ugly scheme and presented it to the world, he should be shut up immediately, right? One word and it’s silence. After all, if the federal government can engineer 9/11 and coordinate it all in real time from World Trade Center 7 (as Jones asserts), then they can easily take out a radio host and make it look like a natural death.

And there’s the rub: the fact that people like Jones can carry on continually like he does shows the conspiracy doesn’t exist. Jones has made many “documentaries” and written books about the coming New World Order tyranny, detailing their plans and warning people about it, and yet this supposed world group, which has conspired to kill millions, hasn’t shut him up?

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Cold, Colder, Getting Colder

Noes from my journal after watching a little of TBN’s “Praise-A-Thon” (View online, if you dare.) before heading off to bed. If you throw enough vagueness out, some of it is going to stick. Those who claim to speak with the dead rely on this. It’s called a cold reading. Most people are worried about love, health, and money. Stick to those topics and say that something—the ghost of a loved one, the Holy Ghost, or anything really—is providing you with insights about a given individual’s love life or heart condition, and there’ll surely be someone listening who’s now convinced you’re talking to him.

Cold reading involves asking questions then repeating back the answers in a way that makes a subject think the reader—a psychic or faith healer—got that information from some third party—God, Uncle Marvin, whomever.

James Randi provides the following example:

Reader: Did your husband linger on in the hospital, or did he pass quickly?
Subject: Oh, he died almost immediately!
Reader: Yes, because he’s saying to me, “I didn’t suffer. I was spared any pain.” (Source)

Later, the subject will be convinced that the reader “knew” her husband passed quickly and without pain. Randi explains that readers’ success stems from their manipulation of your perception:

So, you see, it’s your perception of what’s actually being done, rather that the reality of the procedure, and your ignorance of other subtle clues and methods, that misleads you in your observations of these “psychics. (ibid)

Of course what on-air televangelists do is significantly different, because they’re just getting “the word” from “the Lord” as they’re preaching. They don’t get immediate feedback, so they stick to the ultra vague. “A heart condition has just been corrected,” a televangelist might say, and anyone with a diagnosed heart condition sitting at home will be convinced he’s talking about her. And all she has to do is show a little faith and that healing will come to fruition. And how is that faith shown?

Once the money is offered and the healing doesn’t come to pass, why not call back and ask for your money back? Simple—it’s your fault you weren’t healed because you really didn’t believe. Or your still living for the devil. Any number of clever explanations.

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Happy Easter

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Easter Eggs

Friends and family got together Friday evening and created these small masterpieces.
(View large version”)

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Babka

Kinga’s first babka. (Large version)

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New Yorker on Iran

In the newest New Yorker, there’s an article on the threat of Iran that’s well worth reading.

There is no way this will end with any positive resolution.

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Protection

Bird flu is coming! It’s just around the corner of the globe and soon we’ll be dropping like cliches.

Fortunately, you can protect yourself.

That kind of thinking is certainly already motivating marketing execs.

While looking for respirators for painting and staining, I found this.

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NPR Thoughts

A couple of thoughts for which NPR was a catalyst today:

We are financing both sides of the war on terror. Of course through our taxes we’re paying for the United States’ military operations. But through our consumption of oil, we’re financing the terrorists. We’re providing funds that eventually make their way back to terrorist organizations every time we fill up our gas-guzzling SUVs.

Is Iraq a country that can only be ruled by a strong-armed leader? In other words, is Iraq as it is today because Iraqis have various emotional and political scars due to almost decades of dictatorial rule, or has Iraq been ruled dictatorially for so long because of the national temperament? I’m not suggesting that Iraqis are somehow genetically prone to violence. Rather, think of how Iraq was formed—cobbled together by imperialist powers without regard for ethnic and religious differences. These differences—Sunni versus Shi’a, Arab versus Kurd—are now pushing the country toward civil war.

With both points, we have an almost appropriately ironic situation: the West creates its own problems.

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Confirmation about Babs

Babs is the Worst person in the world. Really. MS-NBC says so!

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Stepping Up to the Plate

I recently wrote about the disappearance of Federal funding for autism support programs.

To its credit, the Asheville city school system refused to let Bush’s tax cuts harm students under its care. They have hired several of the individuals who provided one-on-one support for more severely autistic children so that their education is not disrupted by Bush’s idiocy.

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How to Sell a Car

Welcome to the MTS Online, Interactive Automotive Sales Super Results course. By merely following the steps outlined below, you will increase your sales, raise your profit margin, sell more cars, and generally make more money at the very minimal expense of your customers.

Showroom Salesman

The first thing you must remember is never to allow the most fundamental truth of the situation enter into the minds of your prospective customers. Certainly, tell them you’re not into pressure sales; tell them you’re only interested in them getting the best car that for their needs; say all this with a smile — but never forget you’re there to sell them a car. Bottom line. Your boss’ bottom line, and therefore your bottom line. The customers’ bottom line is someone else’s problem.

Next, it’s good to try to give the customers a feeling that you actually have more power over the car’s price than you actually do. Never use “we,” as in, “We could take good bit more off the price.” That encourages the obvious question: “If the whole sales staff is in agreement about this, why not just lower the price in the window to begin with?” (The last thing you want is a cheeky customer, so choose your words carefully.) If, however, you say, “I can lower this price,” then it sounds like you’re more than just a cog in someone else’s economic machine, that you and you alone add the personal touches of chatting about your kid and asking about customers’ future family plans. Added all together, this will give the customer the feeling that you’re on his side and that you indeed have the power to looking for the little guy in the Big Bad Car Business.

Third, because we’re selling a large time, we can’t put it in the customer’s hand like a TV salesman can do with a remote, but we want to accomplish the same effect: the thought that this very TV (rather, in our case, ha, ha, ha, a car) could be his! To that end, it is essential that you herd your customers into a “test drive” as soon as possible. But don’t use the term “test drive.” Just tell them you’re going to back the car out for a little better view, then when you get back in the car, tell, sort of off-handedly, as if you’ve just thought of it, “Come on — we’ll go for a quick ride.” Viola — you’ve got them in the car, and they’ll start thinking, “Imagine this is our car!” Drive to some place you can turn around, then jump out and ask, “Who’s driving back?” And there’s your test drive, without even using the words.

The next step is a tricky one, and it’s something that separates the men from the clichés in our business. You have to get them in to see a finance officer who’s also skilled at subtle, sales-encouraging chit-chat. This gets them teetering on the legal brink of actually buying the car, and from here, your job is finished. But the real trick here is to get them into that office without ever asking them if they want to buy the car. Let the customers assume what they will, but if you can implant in their mind that you’re just taking them to get some fiscal ideas, to get some notion of how the payments might fit into their budget, then you never have to ask them if they actually want to buy a car. Why, they’re talking to a finance guy — it’s obvious they want to buy it!

Finance Officer

When the salesman delivers customers into your hands, it is a critical transition. It is imperative that you do or say something that will immediately take the customers’ minds from the fact that they’re now dealing with a different person (and more importantly, the significance of that). For this reason, it is absolutely critical that customers not wait in your office alone. They can sit at the showroom salesman’s desk all day long, but any time alone in your office will lead them to thinking thoughts you don’t want them to have.

It is also important to say something personal and reassuring to the customers that also distances yourself from the cruel realities of the automotive sales industry. An example might be:

Before we get started, I just want to make sure you folks understand what motivates me. Do you know why I got out of bed to come to work this morning, every morning? To make people happy by providing them with the perfect car to meet all their needs.

Improvise from there.

The importance of this fact arises from the simple reality that, when the salesman delivers customers into your hands, he may or may not have gotten a verbal agreement to buy. Never mind! Your role is the same, regardless.

If the customer is indeed going to buy the car, your set. Occasionally, though, you might get to this point and hear something like this:

We’re not actually going to buy this car. We didn’t even come here with the intention of buying a car. Rather, we’re just orienting ourselves to the market, because it’s been such a long time since either of us has looked at a car. We were interested in talking to you about the potential cost.

When you hear these words, savor them, because they represent the hardest challenge in your industry: the ten minute turn-around sale. Sure, these people are saying they’re not buying a car, but you can make it seem like there should be a battle raging in their minds as to whether or not to buy it. Some tips:

1. Make sure you boil it down for the customers to the real issue: money. Establish that the car they looked at meets their needs. In a perfect situation, you might be able to get them to admit that it’s almost perfect. Then it’s just a matter of highlighting the lower pricing options and you’re home free.
2. Once you get them to admit that the car would fit in their lives very well, make it sound like the difficulty is on your side of the table, that perhaps you don’t understand something. After all, you’ve established that they like the car, that it meets their needs, and you’ve shown, by highlighting the lower pricing options, that it fits into their budget (Don’t worry whether it actually does or doesn’t.). Once you’ve established all this, you might ask at this point, “What then is holding you back?”
3. Shame and embarrassment are always a good sales technique, and this point in the process it might be worthwhile to try to introduce a bit of both. Tell them that you were working under the assumption that they’d decided to buy, with an infection that makes it seem like you could have been doing more important things, like helping other people fulfill their automotive dreams. Make it seem like the earlier salesman could get in a bit of trouble for handing off someone who wasn’t really ready to buy. The shame can be torqued a little by very indirectly suggesting that it was a miscommunication on the customers’ part.

If you’re still meeting resistance at this point, it’s time to bring in the head man himself. He’s the only one than can save the sale now. When you head out the door, make sure you tell the customers something designed to make them think you’re handing the sale off to someone more knowledgeable. Since you’ll never be coming back into the room while these particular customers are there, it’s good to add in a pre-excuse at this point. Here’s an excellent opportunity to use the shame technique again by concluding with something like, “I’m going to go out to the shop and make sure they don’t have the car in detail.”

At this point, you’re likely to be furious. Go ahead — have a cigarette. You’ve just been through a very stressful experience. You deserve it!

Showroom Manager

When your financial officer comes in to get you, the hope of a sale is diminishing rapidly. It is important to remember this, and not press too hard, lest you cast a hue of desperation on your co-workers’ previous efforts.

Also realize that if you’ve been called in, it means that all possible excuses have been covered except one: the customers were never intending on buying a car that day to begin with. When you realize this, relax. It means your salesman and financial officer have done their jobs and either the customers realized the whole time they were being swindled and simply went with it out of curiosity, or the customers are slow and it just took them a little while to catch on. We know this, because if the customer had been an idiot, you’d already have a car sold.

Addendum: Final Contact

At this point, the customers are probably standing alone in the finance officer’s office, waiting for him or the showroom manager to come back. You of course know that both have exited the drama permanently, but there is still a small ray of hope. Make the most of it. Approach the customers in the office and accompany them to the door. Small chit-chat here constitutes your final chance to make a future sale.

If, however, your clients have half a brain, they will not be back again.

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The Blue Chair Crisis

Children, it seems, sometimes like to have things just so. Everything in its place—as they deem it—and everything arranged just so. Perhaps that’s why Rudyard Kipling named his book of children’s stories Just-So Stories.

What happens when things are not just so? If the child has autism, she might have difficulty explaining how things are not just so, and once that’s explained, might have further difficulties accepting the fact that things must remain as they are, just so or not.

Imagine a child—we’ll call him Samuel—is sitting in a blue chair at a table, working on an art project in his free time. Another child—we’ll call her Jen—is getting ready to do her math work with me. She starts heading over to the table where all the materials are laid out: the worksheet for answers, the manipulatives (in this case, plastic blocks) to help with counting, and a few horses because, well, Jen just likes horses.

But her blue chair is not there. Who knew she had a blue chair? I didn’t. When did she get an attachment to this particular chair? No idea.

Still, she needs her blue chair. The one Samuel is sitting in.

Who knew Samuel could so quickly develop an attachment to that very same chair? I didn’t know, but would have suspected it’s possible.

Who knew this would all to amount to crisis for Jen? Once I saw where things were heading, I did.

The thoughts running through my mind then: Whom do I upset? If I leave the chair under Samuel’s bottom, Jen is not going to do any work and will in fact only scream at me for trying to work out a compromise with her. If I try to get Samuel to relinquish the chair, he’ll go ballistic because he’s having a go-ballistic-at-everything day. Besides, it really isn’t fair. He was sitting in the chair long before Jen decided she had to have it. And it will be more difficult to work while he is in crisis than it will be to try to get Jen to compromise, so I left the chair there, got Jen to go to the quiet area for calming down, and waited.

“I’ll give you two minutes to calm down,” I said, then walked away, set the timer, and waited.

“Are you ready for some math, Jen?” I asked when the timer’s bell finished ringing.

“No!” came a shriek. “I hate math! Stupid math! I want blue chair!”

“The time is not ripe,” I thought.

Eventually, Samuel finished with his project and moved on to another part of the room to do more work. I grabbed the blue chair while I had the chance, put it at the table where I’d set everything up, and walked quickly over to the quiet area. Tapping Jen on the shoulder, I said quietly, “Look what I have for you over at the table.” She hopped up, virtually bounced to the table, sat down, and we had a truly delightful time working together on math.

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Protesting Protesters

Here in Asheville Saturday we had what one blogger called a “Hatefest.” It was, in short, a rally to support family values—in other words, condemn homosexuality.

With his Bible tucked under his arm like so many others around him, Jim Ballard stood in the middle of Pack Square to stand “for what the word of God stands for… not against anyone, but against sin.”

Ballard joined a crowed of more than 200 assembled downtown on Saturday to support Wolf Laurel Ski Resort and other businesses that defend their right to choose not to employ homosexuals.

Wolf Laurel fired a lesbian couple after they placed a wedding announcement in the local paper upon returning from Massachusetts. Apparently the proprietors of the resort a “good Christians” and fired the wretched, evil lesbians. Sparking a protest. Which in turn sparked a protest.

“They are trying to make a statement so we as Christians are trying to make a statement,” said Wendell Runion, president of International Baptist Outreach Missions Inc. and organizer of the event.

Runion, who also spoke at U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor’s prayer breakfast earlier the same day, said the rally was not meant to debate the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, but to make a declaration solidly against it.

Taylor, R-Brevard, said he was supportive of “Christian businessmen trying to be Christian in their work lives as well as in their personal lives” when asked about the rally. Taylor did not attend the rally. (_Citizen Times_)

That sort of talk—“We’re not here to debate it, but to oppose it!”—makes me think of, say, the Taliban.

Doubt that?

Combine it with the dominion theology of Rod Parsley and others, and it’s clear to see that a theocracy is their ultimate goal.

As the cliche goes, “God, save us from your followers.”

See Citizen Times article and BlogAsheville for more info.

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Exceptions

Susie Bright links to a video piece on South Dakota’s recent anti-abortion legistlation. In it, State Senator Bill Napoli makes the argument that there is an exception built in for rape. The interviewer asks him to give a possible scenario. It goes like this:

• The girl is a virgin.
• She was religious.
• She was planning on saving herself until marriage.
• She’s not just raped, but “brutally” and “savagely” raped.
• She’s sodomized.

He concludes by saying, “That girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”

But the girl he’s described would come from a conservative family that would probably not allow the abortion. The girl herself might choose, on pressure from her family, to take the chance.

Or is it that Napoli’s saying it would actually be so traumatic that it turned her into a raving psychotic? Then, depending on the education level of her family, the poor girl risks being “misdiagnosed” as demon possessed!

In any situation, the girl described is a property of men, as it was of old. The thing the rapist took that’s so offensive to Napoli is the girl’s virginity. It wasn’t his. It belonged to the girls future husband, and was entrusted in her father’s care until then.

“What do you do with a man like this?” Susie asks.

Hope he doesn’t have kids of his own?

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Autism

Here’s a story about an autistic teen—worth the read, and make sure you watch the embedded video to the right.

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Knockin' on Heaven's [Car Door Window]

Last night at two, Kinga and I were awoken by extremely loud music coming from the parking lot behind our building. Unable to go back to sleep, I went out to the car to ask them to turn the music down. I knocked on the driver’s window. No response, and no wonder — he had his tongue down his date’s throat. I checked the license plate and headed back in.

In the meantime, the music became not-quite-so-loud — don’t know what happened — and I decided not to make an issue of it.

I got back into the apartment, slid back into bed, and suddenly the volume jumped up again.

Putting my sweatpants back on, I mumbled a curse and picked up my cell phone. If this guy causes problems, I think, I’ll just call the police while I’m standing there.

I go back out to the car, and knock on the driver’s window. This time, it’s a girl in the driver’s seat. Facing the rear of the car. With her head pressed against the roof.

Wonder what was going on.

She looks over at me, and slides off the guy to the passenger seat as he powers down the window.

“We’re done,” he says softly.

“Doesn’t appear that way, but whatever you say,” I think, but instead, simply point out the time and the proximity of our bedroom window.

“We’re all done,” he repeats, with an embarrassed grin.

“Why are you telling me this?” I think.

I turn to go and he calls out an apology.

The music ceased, but I never heard a car engine start in the half hour or so it took me to fall back asleep.

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Un-spinnable Proof

Now that there exists video proof that W knew before Katrina that there was a serious risk to the levees, how is he going to try to spin his way out of this?

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”

That outright lie should make any thinking person sick.

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Daily Dose

We have a particular friend here in Asheville—a Polish friend we’ll call Franek—who can get caught in the such pessimistic moods about the nature of “the system,” about his own inability change that system, about the amount of suffering in the world—in short, about the “human condition”—that it’s made me say, “Damn, Franek! I thought I was a pessimist!”

And I did, and indeed I was. I was a half-glass-of-bile-a-day guy for a little while, though my episodes usually only lasted, say, the duration of a visit to a museum. In the National Gallery in Berlin, I felt sick to my stomach thinking of the money I’d paid to see idyllic paintings of Tahitians (Yes, it was a Gauguin exhibition.) when the majority of the people in the world had to scrounge for survival.

But I bounced out of it, probably because of my profession. Teaching is, at it’s core, simply the act of helping people understand and practice something—math, a foreign language, cosmetology—better. Right now, working with autistic primary school children, the skills I’m trying to help students master are much more basic than a second language or expository writing. As such, I see daily progress, and I often get my daily dose of hope many times over.

Talking to Franek, I said that I see miracles every day. I’d never thought of teaching like that, but that’s precisely what I mean by getting a daily dose of hope, corny as that sounds. In individual students I’ve seen enough improvements in behavior and impulse regulation, communication, social skills, and a host of other challenges unique to autistic children, that I can easily say to myself, “I have made a difference.” It has certainly been a team effort, and my part might have in fact been minimal. But minimal is better than nothing.

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The Alternative?

The battle lines are drawn again. South Dakota’s legislature has voted to make abortion illegal in all circumstances. No exceptions.

A direct attack on Roe v. Wade is coming from the South Dakota legislature. The new bill, which outlaws abortion, makes no exceptions, not for a pregnancy caused by incest or rape. It would only be legal—the only exception if it would save the pregnant woman’s life.

Doctors who perform abortions could face up to five years in prison. The bill passed the State Senate 23-12. It’s expected to pass the House again and then go to Governor Mike Rounds’ desk. The bill’s sponsor says he thinks the antiabortion movement has momentum on its side and a—quote—“change in national policy on abortion is going to come in the not-too-distant future.” (MSNBC)

With Alito and Roberts now on the Supreme Court, the intention couldn’t be any clearer: a full-scale assault on Roe v. Wade. There’s a good piece in the Village Voice about South Dakota’s strategy.

Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, just after I was born. As an adoptee, I have wondered many times about what would have happened had Roe been a year earlier. Knowing next to nothing about my birth mother, it’s a question that will never have an answer. If I had the opportunity to ask my birth mother, it might still go unanswered. Thirty-three years of introspection would produce a very different response, I’m sure.

This fact alone serves as the foundation for my very mixed feelings about legalized abortion. On the one hand, I walk lock-step with other bleeding-hearts in saying that a woman’s body is just that—not mine, but hers. And yet, thinking about the possible abortion of what became my body, I think, “Hey, wait—I have something to say in this too.”

“What became my body?” What was it before? Abortion opponents have a point that if the fetus is human, there is very little to talk about, and very few instances when abortion can be ethically defensible. Is it human? I don’t know. And the purpose of this post is not to ruminate over the slippery slope of when a fetus becomes a human.

All that being said, I remain pro-choice, but with a lump in my throat. I remain nervously pro-choice. Like many, I would like to live in a world in which abortion is a woman’s legal right, but never, ever necessary. A utopia, in other words.

Anti-abortion activists should be working to make that utopia a reality, but I don’t see much happening in that way. Indeed, this is what bothers me most about the various camps that make up the anti-abortion movement: their unwillingness to help provide a viable alternative, namely adoption. How many children has the average women’s health clinic picketer adopted? How many protest by example? It seems to me that if these individuals feel so strongly about the issue, they would literally put their money where their angry, raised voices are and adopt, adopt, adopt.

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Restrained Freedom Part II

I’m not sure what to make of this, except to say that, combined with the David Irving conviction earlier this week, freedom of speech in Europe is not all that it’s made out to be:

German court convicts man for insulting Islam

I wonder if he’d have been convicted—or even prosecuted—if he’d simply stated on a web site that he had made toilet paper with the word “Koran” printed on it, but in fact actually hadn’t.

But can you imagine what would have happened if he hadn’t been convicted?

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That's Our Boy

According to the Washington Post, emphasis added:

Faced with an unprecedented Republican revolt over national security, the White House disclosed yesterday that President Bush was unaware of a Middle Eastern company’s planned takeover of operations at six U.S. seaports until recent days and promised to brief members of Congress more fully on the pending deal.

Damn, it’s good to know W’s on top of things like that.

Here’s a good summary at Kos.

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Fun on the Phone

I’m looking for a second job to get a little extra money in the bank. We want to buy a house, and every little bit helps.

I was looking through the classifieds at Mountain Xpress when I found the perfect job scam. The nature of the company was pretty obvious from the advertisement:

Companies desperately need employees to assemble products at home. No selling; any hours. $500 weekly potential. Information: 1-985-646-1700, Department NC-6529. (Source)

Up to 2k a month, and you don’t even have to leave your house? Sounds too good to be true, so of course it is. But I like playing the sucker from time to time, so I called.

“Are you calling about the ad in the paper?” a woman asked when I called. No greeting, no pleasantries – straight to the chase.

“Yes,” I reply.

“Is this the first time you’ve called?” my inquisitor asks. If red flags hadn’t been up when I first read the ad, they would be up now.

“Yes,” I respond.

“Are you calling for yourself or for someone else?” Now comes a bit of a puzzle. If this weren’t such an obvious scam, I might in addition to myself be calling for my wife. Two people can put together twice as much cheap plastic crap as one person.

Thinking all this, I hesitate, the reply, “I’m not sure.” I was going to ask for clarification, but the pleasant lady didn’t give me a chance.

“Well, you call back when you are sure.” Click.

Being rude to me on the phone is not a good idea. I like to call back. And so I do. Unfortunately, another woman answers the phone.

I decide to go through the whole spiel.

It turns out there are simply dozens of companies out there who just need my help. “What will you be doing?” the operator asks rhetorically and almost breathlessly. I can put together wooden CD shelves, jewelry boxes, and so on. This fine company will put me in contact with all these other companies who need my help. All for just a small fee of forty-three dollars. “And you don’t even need to worry about that, because we have a money back guarantee, written—on page three of our brochure.” It’s just too bad I don’t have one of these sitting in front of me. Still talking reading on the same breath as she started the conversation monologue with, the kind lady tells me that I can put this small, insignificant fee on a credit card, or I can send a check—why, I can even do it C.O.D.

“Come to me baby! Come to me C.O.D.” I think. She probably wouldn’t get the allusion. (Do you? Quick, quick—name the song and artist. And no Googling!) Besides, I couldn’t get a word in even if I greased it up really well, so I just smile to myself and continue listening.

Finally, I sense the spiel is winding down, and I get ready to say, “I’m not really interested.” Here it comes… “And so do you have any questions, sir?”

“No, but I don’t think I’m interested.”

“Something-unintelligible-about-four-syllables-long” comes the staccato reply, then click!

I bemoan my poor memory: “Why, oh why can’t I remember this woman’s name?” I have to call back. There’s just no choice.

It’s a moral imperative. (Quick—what movie?)

I get to the “Is this the first time you’ve called” point, and say, “No—actually it’s the third time.”

“Oh?”

“I’m just calling to suggest you hire some operators with better people skills,” I continue.

“I know,” she sympathizes. She confesses that they’ve been getting a lot of complaints. I think, “Sounds like you should be monitoring your calls, with the little announcement at the beginning of the phone call that we’re all so used to hearing now.”

We chat for a couple of minutes. There’s no way for anyone to track down who it was that took my two calls, she explains. All the lines are directed to the one phone number, and there’s just a room full of people answering these phones.

“Well, then I suggest you get better telephone hardware, because tracking who answered a call like that is a pretty basic thing,” I explain. Whoosh—over her head.

Should I ask for a supervisor? She probably wouldn’t know what one is. “We just clock in, start answering the phones—we don’t even know who we’re working for.”

After I hung up, I thought about calling back again, but what for? These jerks have to deal with enough jerks like me, I’m sure.

They’re just tryin’ to make a buck…

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No Non-Autistic Child Left Behind

One thing that can cause massive amounts of problems for autistic children is lack of consistency. Our classroom is strewn with visual reminders of one sort or another to help the children stay calm by giving them a pattern to their day. At the basic level, it consists of schedules given to each student—rather, placed in “his/her” area—that outline what we’ll be doing the whole day.

Unexpected changes can send more profoundly autistic children into spirals of panic, which manifest themselves usually in a meltdown of screaming and other “typical” autistic behaviors.

Even with this, some children have trouble navigating through the day without having someone assist them exclusively throughout the day. These services are supplied by the Autism Society, which receives a great deal of federal funding.

Well, the Federal funding has been cut, and that means that all services in our area end 17 March. No tapering off; no warning—just BOOM!

“Sorry Joey, but your one-on-one had to leave. You won’t see him again. The entire structure of your school day will now be instantly and violently disrupted. Have fun!”

Thanks, W. Really—No Child (who isn’t autistic, and whose parents are middle or upper class and contribute to my campaign) will be Left Behind.

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In Denial

With all this talk of freedom of speech regarding the Muhammad cartoons, David Irving’s trial in Austria certainly adds a bit of irony to it.

Simply put, it is illegal in Austria to deny the Holocaust. I’m no supporter of such ludicrous, anti-Semitic speech, but I’m a little disturbed by the fact that one can be jailed for being a “falsifier of history.”

A couple of useful places to keep up with the developments:

• Google News (What else?)
• Deborah Lipstadt’s blog

Lipstadt is “Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University” and author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory

Denying deals with those who attempt to put an academic face on Holocaust denial. The main thrust of the book is that, while everyone is entitled to his or her own view, a view that goes against established historical facts does not constitute “the other side of the story.”

An allegory as explanation: those who try to mount a scientific defense that the tooth fairy exists are not engaging in an effort to uncover “the other side of the story.” One is entitled to believe that said fairy exists, but the evidence strongly suggests (for lack of a better term) otherwise.

The one problem I have with the book is the attention Lipstadt draws to Noam Chomsky’s assertion that, from a political point of view, it is possible for Holocaust figures to have been exaggerated to serve the end of establishing a secure Israeli state. His summary of this possibility is that to deny otherwise is to suggest that the Israeli state is the first state in history not to have lied to promote its own aims. I believe the fact that most states deceive and lie at some point in their history was the more important point for Chomsky, and not the possibility of inflated Holocaust figures.

That aside, the book is a good overview of revisionist history and the solid facts that show Holocaust denial to be a racist fantasy.

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Peter Piper Left a Peck of Peppers

What would you do if you were walking into your apartment building and dropped a jar of hot peppers on the sidewalk? You’d probably come back and clean it up. Most people would.

What would you do if someone at your apartment building did it late Sunday morning and it was still there Sunday evening? (Apparently “most people” don’t live in our building.)

In my “fury,” I made a sign…
Click on pics for more legible views

Immature? Sure, a little. “I’d have just cleaned it up,” a co-worker laughed. That’s sort of the point, though…

Oh well—it was amusing at the time.

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The Neighbors

Kinga and I are looking to buy a house—sort of. Kinga and I begun something we expected to start only after a year and a half in the States: we’re looking for a house. Our thinking was based on our likelihood of getting a loan, our lack of any kind of down payment, and initially, our lack of a job or any sense of security. But we’ve been pre-approved at a couple of different places; we have decent jobs, with the promise of it only getting better; and we’re sick and tired of paying several hundred dollars a month for nothing.

Granted, the rent is shockingly low compared to what I was paying in Boston. In 1999, I was paying $850 for a one bedroom with barely enough room to turn around in. That place is certainly over a grand a month now. We don’t even pay seven hundred for a two bedroom place. In the summer, when we were looking at the place, I laughed when told that the apartment is spacious but the rent “is a little high.”

The real estate market here is simply going through the roof. It’s tough to find anything under $150,000 that doesn’t need massive renovation. It’s easy to find massive homes:

Two decades ago, million-dollar homes were a rarity in these hills but not anymore. In 2002, Buncombe County had 38 homes with an assessed tax value of $1 million or more. In this year’s revaluation, the number will jump to 484. […]

“It’s just boomed,” Roberts said. “What we’ve noticed is there’s a lot of new construction of those type of homes, with those type of high-end materials: slate roofs, unique woods, specialty tile. The other side of that is that people will take some of the older homes and greatly remodel the entire home or add a whole new wing, and that pushes it over $1 million.”

The luxury housing boom is not news to Ron Olin and his wife, who moved here 12 years ago from Texas. According to the new revaluations, the Olins own the highest-assessed home in Buncombe County, a new, 15,449-square-foot French chateau style house in Biltmore Forest valued at just over $6 million.

Olin, a money manager who loves the Asheville area for its scenic beauty, climate and amenities, has no problem paying his fair share of property taxes to support local government. But one point sticks in his craw.

“Once we’re in the house, maybe it’s worth that much, but we haven’t even moved in yet,” Olin said. “They did an interim assessment in 2005, and we know they raised it a lot.”

The assessed value last year was about $4.6 million, but as the home nears completion it becomes more valuable. With amenities including an indoor swimming pool, an elevator, a hot tub, sauna and seven fireplaces, the price tag keeps rising. (Citizen-Times)

It’s because of people like the Olins that this area is soon going to become so expensive that no one can afford to live here unless they’ve got a six-figure income. Maybe not that bad, but it is fairly ridiculous.

And so instead of looking at actual single-family homes, we considered a townhouse or condo. What do you actually own in that? If it’s a townhouse, you might own the land directly under your portion of the building, but nothing else. With condos, you jointly own the land, along with everyone else in the same building. At least it was something like that. I can’t quite recall how our realtor explained it. I’m not really interested in the land, I guess, so I didn’t pay much attention. In the end, we decided that all we’d be doing is changing landlords. And so we’re looking for a moderate “fixer-upper.” Interest rates are yet another thorn in our side. We think enviously of those who bought homes a couple of years ago when the interest rate was not bearing down on seven percent. My brother-in-law took his home loan in Swiss francs, and pays some ridiculously low percentage — under four, I think. At today’s rate of 6.38, a loan of $130,000 would generate monthly payments of $808.06. At 4.00%, it would be $620.65, with about 40% of that going to the principal.%

One thing we’ve learned quickly is the sometimes-tragic effect of neighbors on property value. We found a very warm, two-bedroom place with hardwood floors and a nice floor plan that was completely ruined by the neighbor’s lack of any sense of responsibility for the appearance of his house. The yard filled with junk; Christmas lights still hanging; a balding lawn — it was awful.

“These people will never get their asking price because of that,” our realtor said. So you lose money because your neighbor’s a complete slob.

We went to the south of the city where we found a rather nice home just about a mile from Biltmore Forest — Ron Olin’s neighborhood. If there’s somewhere in you don’t have to worry about the neighborhood, you’d think it’s the area less than a mile from the most expensive neighborhood in the whole city.

Wrong.

We pulled into the driveway and new immediately that there was no way we’d even consider the house. The view from the back-bedroom window explains it.

Comment [1]

Kinga's Cousin Gets 16th in Olympics

Comment [2]

Snow Storm!

We’ve finally gotten a bit of snow here, and the reaction has been comical.

Thursday there was a bit of powered sugar on the ground — nothing serious, but enough to make it kind of white-ish outside. I didn’t think anything of it until I was about to head out to school. “Maybe there’s a delay,” I thought. As staff I’d still have to be there at regular time, but still — I’d allow myself maybe fifteen minutes. I pulled up the Asheville City School’s site (after loading IE — the site doesn’t render properly in a standards-compliant browser) and suddenly realized I had a lot more than fifteen minutes. “School closed.”

Friday it was similar. At three in the afternoon, the principal came over the intercom saying that she knew people were eager to get out and stock up for the weekend. What? Well, there’s a storm coming, don’t you know?

It hit Saturday night, while we were at friends’ house just north of Asheville. It was snowing enough there that we drove home on I-26 at about thirty-five to forty miles an hour. In town, there was significantly less accumulation. Still, had it been a day later, I’d have another free day — and another day tacked onto the end of the year.

The point of all this? People here simply overreact to snow. Thursday there was maybe an inch and a half on the ground and people were panicking. Right now there’s about the same, and all the kids in the area are probably convinced that there’ll be no school tomorrow.

If northern Europe were run in a similar manner, there’d be no school from November to April!

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One of the best things about being a teacher

is an unexpected snow day—when you’re fully dressed, ready to head off to work, and you look outside and notice it’s snowy and icy…

I loved them until I got to college, when I realized, “Hey, I pay for this day whether I get an education or not—not good.” (To be fair, only one or two days were classes canceled due to weather as an undergrad.) Now it’s come full circle.

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A Page from Whose Book?

Several times it’s been pointed out that journalists in Muslim countries who offend the wrong person can find themselves in jail.

But why be so hard on them about that? They’re just taking a page from Poland’s book:

New York, January 17, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists today called the jailing of a Polish journalist for criminal libel an affront to Polish democracy and called on the Polish president to pardon him.

“Poland is now part of democratic Europe and democracies do not jail journalists for criticizing officials,” CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. “We condemn the jailing of Andrzej Marek and call on President Kaczynski to pardon him immediately. We also call on the Polish authorities to decriminalize libel and leave redress for defamation to the civil courts as in established democracies.”

Marek, editor-in-chief of the weekly Wiesci Polickie in the northwestern town of Police, began a three-month jail term Monday in Szczecin for libeling a Police city official in 2001.

An aide to Kazcynski said the president, who is a lawyer, would examine Marek’s case, The Associated Press said.

Marek said on entering prison that he was innocent “because I told the truth,” and added that he would “wait for clemency until my last day in this prison,” AP and Agence France- Presse reported. (Source)

And it’s not just an isolated incident, if the current administration has its way. Recently, President Kaczynski’s administration stated that journalists who walked out on a multi-party press conference should be punished for showing disrespect.

The whole story makes it even more ridiculous. Recent elections in Poland have left no clear majority, and so there’s still not a coalition government formed. Recently, three of the right wing parties (League of Polish Families, Law and Justice, and Self-Defense—if I hadn’t told you they’re right wing, you’d know it from their names, wouldn’t you?) put their squabbling behind them and decided to work together to create a strong, fascist Poland. (One report in English)

They told no one of their talks, and when they signed their little pact, invited journalists only from one television station: TV Trwam. This is the television version of Radio Maria, an ultra-right-wing, nationalistic, anti-Semitic radio station owned by Jan Rydzyk, a millionaire priest (yes, there’s more than one of those in Poland, if you can believe it). They then invited other, secular journalists in to disclose the information to the public.

Angered that they were left out of the loop, all non-Trwam journalists walked out.

Kaczynski and the others were furious, and threatened to punish the journalists, though they were not clear how they wanted to do that.

Perhaps beheading?

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Malkin Reconsidered

Thud pointed out an interesting piece via email by August Pollak regarding Malkin’s “selective memory.” Several points taken.

But…there’s always one of those…

Pollak writes,

Are the cartoons freedom of speech? Well, yeah. Of course you have the right to print shitty, racist cartoons that serve no purpose but to inflame Arab sentiment and make racist right-wingers feel good about themselves.

“Inflame Arab sentiment?” It’s done a great deal more than that.

Yet I can be extremely angry and yet keep my urge for violence in check.

If I piss someone off and get hit, even if I deliberately tried to piss the person off, he’s still responsible for his actions. No matter what I said.

Self-control.

Same applies here.

Pollak accuses Malkin of being a racist. I don’t really follow Malkin’s commentary—scratch that. I don’t follow it at all. Maybe she is a racist. Maybe she isn’t. The “right-wing” part of the epithet is true enough.

Still, does that somehow disqualify what the pictures (which she’s simply assembled from various web sites) tell us about the reaction of a fairly significant portion of Muslims? Sure, the tag, “No, you go to hell,” is a little silly—but I do think the pictures speak for themselves. Am I saying all Muslims are reacting irrationally violently? No—I am only privy to what the media presents to me.

Still, while purposely insulting someone is immoral, wanting to behead someone because of it is on quite another level.

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A First?

I’m not one who usually quotes Michelle Malkin, but there is something worth seeing on her site: In Their Own Words.

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Conversion

From Capitalism agazine:

Implied in the claim that images of Mohammed constitute blasphemy, is that anyone who creates such an image is guilty of blasphemy. What the Muslims are demanding is that non-Muslims accept that religious tenet. Thus, “respect” by non-Muslims of the tenet, at the price of surrendering the right to criticize Islam, means virtual conversion to Islam, a major step in the direction of actual conversion.

No emphasis added.

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Any surprise

why such a large percentage of Americans are overweight?

Here are the facts: 11.2 million pounds of potato chips; 8.2 million pounds of tortilla chips; 4.3 million pounds of pretzels; 3.8 million pounds of popcorn, and 2.5 million pounds of nuts.

That adds up to 30 million pounds of snacks that Americans will wolf down Super Bowl Sunday, according to research by the Calorie Control Council and the Snack Food Association.

That means the average armchair quarterback will consume 1,200 calories and 50 grams of fat just from snacking—not counting any meals. (Source)

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Recommendation

Perhaps the best album I’ve heard in a long, long time is Gillian Welch’s Revival. Simple arrangements, a stunningly beautiful voice, turn-of-the-century lyrics, all add up to one thing:

After looking at the cover of Gillian Welch’s debut album, Revival, and listening to the first two cuts, “Orphan Girl” and “Annabelle,” you’d be tempted to imagine that Welch somehow stumbled into a time machine after cutting some tunes at the 1927 Bristol, TN, sessions and was transported to a recording studio in Los Angeles in 1996, where T-Bone Burnett was on hand and had the presence of mind to roll tape. (All Music)

Welch is probably more widely know for her work on the Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. If you liked that film and the music—and the film was primarily about the music—then this will be a welcome addition to your collection.

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Stereotyping in Stereo

Something has been nagging at the back of my mind since this whole debacle began, but it was only this morning that I teased it all out.

The publication of the cartoons was provocative, to be sure. But they were cartoons drawn by an European artist, for an European-language newspaper, serving an European readership. These were not Arabic-language cartoons airdropped in some Islamic nation. Most of the non-European Muslims would have never heard about the cartoons had they not been so heavily publicized. Not only that, but they wouldn’t have understood them, because they’re in Danish. So why should they really care what is being published about them in a foreign country?

Ah—that’s the rub if it all. That’s where the double standard comes in, because Muslim publications routinely defame and insult Jews and Judaism. Where is the stink about that? If the freedom of press does not give license to insult people’s beliefs, as many Muslims are saying, why aren’t the imams condemning the anti-Semitism that’s so rampant in the Muslim world? Indeed, they are often promoting it.

Of course there are a significant number of European Muslims, and they—especially Danish Muslims—have every right to be upset. And to voice a complaint. And to justly point out that such cartoons unfairly stereotype Muslims as being terrorists. For not all Muslims are terrorists. In fact, the vast majority hate violence. So why should we judge all Muslims by the examples of the extremists who make the nightly news? Why judge so many Muslims by the actions of so few? Why judge so many Danes by the actions of so few?

They can’t have it both ways. Either there is such a thing as collective guilt and all Danes are responsible for the behavior of all other Danes and all Muslims are responsible for the behavior of all other Muslims, or…

And so that’s what gets me most about this—the double standards at every level.

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It would be appropriate

if the end of our civilization were brought about by blasphemous cartoons. I’m a struggling idealist most of the time, thinking education and knowledge can save the world. But everyone’s misanthropic skepticism would be justified if this silliness spiraled out of control and ended in war — the kind of war we’ve been able to wage now for fifty years.

No, Chicken Little. The sky is not falling. It’s just a pessimistic morning.

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Deadly Doodling II

So the Arab world is upset at “offensive” cartoons published in a Danish daily. They’ve been boycotting Danish products, burning Danish flags, and threatening to kill Danes abroad as well as bomb the offices of the newspaper in Denmark. It seems that instead of typing “PBUH—Peace Be Upon Him” every time after mentioning Muhammad, the newspaper made fun of the guy. In September.

Now other newspapers have come out in support of the Danish paper’s right to print anything, no matter how blasphemous, by reprinting the cartoons themselves. Provocative, to be sure, but not without reason, and making an excellent point. I’d like to see more newspapers do the same.

I understand the offense. Mixing sacred and profane, obliterating taboo—that’s nasty business for believers. Officially registering offense is an appropriate measure; boycotting is an appropriate measure—but threatening violence?

Most strikingly this shows that there is a real disconnect in the Muslim world about what democracy and freedom of speech is. This is highlighted by the calls from Islamic nations for the Danish president to punish the newspaper.

Government ministers from 17 Arab nations have asked the Danish government to punish the Jyllands-Posten newspaper for what they called an “offense to Islam.” (Washington Post)

It’s what they would do, and so it’s a logical request. But it’s not a request—it’s a demand, backed up with threats of death and mayhem.

What is really pathetically ironic about the situation is that the protests that “Islam is not a violent religion and this cartoon presents stereotypes that it _is_” are shown to be so empty by the behavior of so many Muslims around the world: bounties placed on the head of the cartoonists, calls for targeting Danish soldiers in Iraq. We are painting the Muslim world with broad strokes, they say, then express their desire to kill Danes who had nothing to do with the cartoons themselves, for clearly all Danes hate Islam.

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Deadly Doodling

The uproar in the Arab world over the drawing of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper shows how little understood freedom of speech is in the Arab world. The New York Times reports,

The Foreign Ministries of Iran and Iraq both summoned Danish diplomats there today to protest the publication last September of the cartoons, which included one depicting Mohammad wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb. Islam strictly forbids depictions of the prophet. (Source)

Iran and Iraq are not the first, as the Washington Post reported this morning:

Saudi Arabia has recalled its ambassador from Denmark and Libya has closed its embassy in Copenhagen, the Danish capital. Kuwait called the cartoons “despicable racism.” Iran’s foreign minister termed them “ridiculous and revolting.” (Source)

To begin with, to call it “racism” is ridiculous. Ethnically insensitive? Perhaps. Religiously intolerant? Maybe. But “racist?” The cartoons do not depict the whole Arab world, just the founder of their religion. It’s hard to qualify that with “just” in their eyes, and I realize in using that term I am pressing my own view on them and then expressing surprise when it doesn’t fit. All the same, it seems to indicate a massive misunderstanding on the part of the Arab world of the relationship between the press and the government in the Western world. The Post, again:

As Islamic protests continued over cartoons of the prophet Mohammad in a Danish newspaper, the Danish prime minister defended press freedom in his country today while distancing himself from the newspaper’s decision to publish the drawings.

The remarks of Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen fell far short of the official apology demanded by an array of Islamic groups and countries that have imposed a remarkable boycott on Danish products.

So because of one newspaper’s decision—indeed, the decision of one editor of one newspaper—the Arab world is waging a “remarkable boycott” against the whole country and demanding an official apology. And what for? A picture, in a newspaper, in a country where the majority of them don’t even live, in a language most of them can’t understand. They can certainly call for the complete extermination of Jews, but don’t let anyone draw a picture of Muhammad.

What would the Arab world have the Danes do? Kill the editor? Execute the cartoonist? Have the president step down and imprisoned?

But what’s this all about? What do the cartoons look like? The Guardian explains,

One drawing depicted the Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse, while in another he wielded a sword. (Source)

Okay, the implication of the bomb-shaped turban are over the top. But are there not passages in the Koran about wielding a sword—positive passages, even? Are not the majority of suicide bombers Muslim?

Maybe it’s not how Muhammad was depicted, but just that he was depicted. That’s taboo in Islam. So is pork. Why not boycotts about Denmark’s pork consumption?

Idiotic questions, each and every one—but about an idiotic situation.

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One Thing I Miss About Europe

about living in a small village is the sound of bells. Bells for Mass. Bells for funerals. Bells for weddings.

Far from being annoying, it was always a calming, peaceful sound for me.

And like the 9:00 bus from Jablonka, a good way to set your watch.

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I znowu brakuje mi czasu.

Zaniedbuje bloga, wiem ale bezgranicznie oddalam sie urzadzaniu naszego mieszkania. Szyje zaslony, poduszki, w grudniu malowalismy ragaly a prucz tego zwyczajny rytm – praca, dom I nasze coraz ciekawsze zycie towarzyskie. Czas tak strasznie szybko mi biegnie I ciagle mi go na cos brakuje.

A wszystko rozpedzilo sie listopadzie, kiedy lokalna galeria przyznala nam miejsce na scianie I postanowilismy sprobowac sprzedawac nasze zdjecia. Przygotowanie wystawy zajelo nam pol listopada I pierwszy tydzien grudnia. Wszystkie wieczory I weekendy spedzalismy tnac paspartu, oprawiajac zdjecia I przygotowujac skromna dekoracje naszej sciany – Koliba. Koliba ruszyla pierwszego grudnia I niestety nie prosperuje zbyt dobrze, do tej pory sprzedalismy tylk jedno zdjecie. Wiec jak na razie zainwestowalimsy w Kolibe troche pieniedzy i mnostwo czasu a w zamian pozostaje nam jedynie satysfakcja, ze nasze zdjecia wisza w jednej z bardziej znanych galerii w centrum miasta.

Pozniej ruszylismy ostro z przygotowaniami swiatecznymi. Ja jak to moja mama mowi umiem sobie narobic roboty. Wymyslilismy sobie regal na ksiazki I dwa male regaly na plyty kompaktowe. A ze nasze potrzeby ciagle sa wieksze niz dostepne fundusze kupilismy meble z surowego drewna I sami postanowilismy je pomalowac. Gary niestety bardzo szybko odpadl z calej imprezy bo po kazdym malowaniu dostawal strasznych bolow glowy. Zostalam wiec sama z trzema regalami, ktore malowalam w lazience, bo niestety bylo juz za zimno zeby malowac na balkonie. W lazience miescil sie tylko jeden, wiec malowalam je kolejno, warstwa po warstwie (2 do czterech warstw koloru i po trzy warstwy lakieru bezbarwnego), dzien po dniu, bo farba musiala schnac przynajmniej 4 godziny. Wracalismy wiec z pracy, Gary zabieral sie za gotowanie a ja za malowanie i tak w kolko przez trzy tygodnie a w miedzyczasie przygotowalismy swieta z gruntownym sprzataniem, pieczeniem i gotowaniem – dokladnie tak jak w domu.

Teraz zabralam sie za okna. Szukalam karniszy, wieszlam polskie firanki, ktore mama przyslala nam na gwiazdke. Szyje zaslony i poszewki na poduszki pod kolor – generalnie znowu narobilam sobie roboty.

Faktycznie to wszystko pochlania mi mnustwo czasu i wieczorami przewaznie padam zmeczona do lozka. Ale warto, po pierwsze swieta byly bardzo udane, i my, i nasi goscie milo spedzilismy czas, po drugie to wszystko bardzo mnie cieszy i pochlania, planuje, kombinuje, szukam okazji po miescie no i przede wszystkim nasze mieszkanko wyglada coraz przytulniej. Obydwje stwierdzilimy, ze powoli zaczynamy myslec o tym mieszkaniu jak o naszym domu.

No a dzisiaj przychodzi do nas Kuba z rodzina. Kube poznalam w lokalnym rosyjskim sklepie, jest Polakiem, mieszka w Asheville juz kilka lat. Dzisiaj przychodzi ze swoja rodzina na kolacje. Jestesmy bardzo ciekawi i zony, ktora jest Blugarka i dzieciakow, ktore wychowuja sie w trzyjezycznej rodzinie.

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Sysadmin

The Sysadmin Song

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Value Monkeys

Why is it people with a strong belief in the literal six-day creation of the world seem to take the notion of evolution so personally?

“I didn’t evolve from slime, from monkeys!”

A friend gets a little perturbed when she’s watching something on Animal Planet and evolution is mentioned—as if that completely falsifies anything the particular individual who mentioned the “e word” might have to say.

Of course being offended by it doesn’t make it not true, but that’s beside the point. The point is this: why does where you came from millions of years ago have any affect on your personal value now?

There’s this underlying fear, “If we’re evolved from monkeys, then we can do whatever we want to each other! There is no such thing as rape, murder, etc—it’s all just animal cruelty!”

In this view, humans cannot make values, cannot make meaningful laws. And forgetting the pragmatic side of most laws, these folks promptly jump in their cars and drive to work on the right side (or left, in some countries) of the road…

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Pattern of Mate

Chess, from beginning to end, is a game of patterns. Steven Pinker, in The Blank Slate, writes that chess grandmasters are no better than non-players at remembering randomly arranged chess pieces. They rather remember the patterns of threats, attacks, defenses.

Patterns are the stock and trade of autism. Arranging, rearranging, obsessing with shapes.

At school I’ve been finding that chess is in fact an excellent activity for children the higher functioning spectrum of autism. During their choice time, several kids have taken to playing chess, taught primarily by yours truly. Elementary chess; chess without much “strategy”; with some kids, chess without all the pieces (minimizing input and thereby confusion)—still, chess all the same.

Today, much to my surprise, one of the children with more intrusive autism (read: closer to low-functioning than most of the other children) decided he wanted play with the chess pieces during his choice time. He knew that they go one to a square, and he’d even picked up from watching the other kids play during the last few weeks that all the pawns go in front of all the major pieces. Once he’d got them all situated, I asked him if he’d like me to show him how the back pieces were to be arranged. He readily agreed, and I showed him: castles (using “rook,” “knight,” etc. was a level of abstraction that I decided was unnecessary) go on the outside; the horses go next, because they’re riding out of the castles; next we have these tall, funny, pointy looking pieces; and then the king and queen. I tried to get him to turn the board around and set up the white pieces, using the black pieces as a model. Nothing going there, and I simply backed off. I returned in a few minutes to find that he’d done it himself.

Impressive.

But more was to come.

Another young lad decided to join in the fun, and the two were soon having a blast simply moving the pieces around randomly, taking with rooks by jumping three pieces at a diagonal, but still obviously grasping the object of the game. And then the real shock — the first boy put all the pieces back perfectly and they played again.

Once choice was over, I used the chess pieces and board with the first boy to segue into math, working on which numbers are bigger. Instead of using the workbook and coloring in blocks of a chart to give a visual for the young lad, we used the chess board. Once de’d arranged the correct number of pieces on the board, he then colored in the squares in his workbook, and we had a short little quiz.

“Which number is bigger: six or eight?” A quick to the chess board or the workbook gave him the necessary help when he wasn’t sure.

By the time we got to ten (I added two squares on a piece of paper, since a chess board is only eight by eight), he was carefully arranging the pieces by alternating color and size.

And we continued working, without a glitch, even when the rest of the class left for the library.

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Mow po polsku!

“Have you ever noticed how few of these children of Polish families actually speak Polish?”

Kinga asked—in Polish, of course—the other evening. She was speaking mainly of the children of a Polish couple who have been in America for more than twenty years, and who rarely if ever go back to Poland as a family. The children of these very nice folk usually speak to their parents in English, even though their parents often simply speak Polish to them.

Kinga and I both want our children to grow up bilingual, but that’s difficult enough when both parents are foreigners. When only one is a foreigner, it might be all but impossible. The language of society dictates what is Language One for the child, and not the language at home.

Where there is a community to support the use of the foreign language, it’s much easier. But North Carolina is no Chicago, and the opportunities to use Polish will be rare.

“We’ll just have to send the kids to Poland every summer,” I replied to Kinga. There’ll be Polish music in the house; we’ll eat Polish cuisine; I’ll try to speak more and more Polish at home; we’ll have Polish books in our library; we’ll just cram Polish culture down their throats! (That is a joke—in reality, there’d be no better way to turn them off of all things Polski.)

Will all that even be feasible, though?

One would think that instilling in them a sense of pride in and love for their heritage would suffice. But at a certain points in their lives, the “un-coolness” of being different would stifle any urge to speak Polish.

Perhaps I’m wrong? Hopefully I’m wrong. We shall just have to read a few books about raising bi-lingual children.

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One Thing I Miss About Europe

is seeing views like this:

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Adoption and Culture

The other evening, discussion turned to adoption and the supposed population shortage in Europe. The Polish government recently passed a bill that would give families a monetary reward (“aid” was probably the preferred choice of words) for having kids. Kinga answered my protests about unnecessarily adding to the world’s population by saying that she wasn’t sure whether it was a reward for giving birth to a child, or merely having another child (i.e., adoption).

It seems though, that given the number of homeless, neglected children in the world, that there would be a massive effort—in the name of relief at the very least—to get these children adopted.

But what a thorny issue that is, for both the adopter and adoptee.

Most of these kids are in Asia, raising cultural concerns. It’s not just that there don’t seem to be many people willing to adopt kids who don’t look like them. There’s also a question of the child’s culture. If I were to adopt an Indian child, I would want him to have some sense of his heritage — language, food, customs.

There are plenty of studies underway regarding some of the issues raised by adoption.

The Transracial Adoption Study “attempts to examine the types of cultural socialization strategies used by parents and to evaluate these as factors in the psychological adjustment of the child.”

In recent years, an increasing number of families have adopted children from other countries. However, there is currently limited research on transracial adoption. As such, this study aims to understand the adoptee experience. The Transracial Adoption Study attempts to examine the types of cultural socialization strategies used by parents and to evaluate these as factors in the psychological adjustment of the child. (Source)

Harvard University’s “Study of Language Development in Internationally Adopted Children” is “looking for families who have recently adopted or will soon be adopting 2.5-6 year old children.”

The complexity of language has bewildered scientists for decades. When adults are trying to learn a new language, they struggle for years to become fluent. Yet young children rapidly acquire language with little apparent effort. At the Laboratory for Developmental Studies at Harvard University, we want to find out how children manage to solve this puzzle and why our abilities change as we grow older. (Source)

But the reality is, most people don’t go this route. Adopting.org writes, for example, that it is possible to adopt a Caucasian baby through a public agency:

Public agencies occasionally have some healthy Caucasian infants. It is worthwhile to inquire about them, but there will probably be a long waiting list. (Source)

To adopt a Caucasian baby, agencies look for “couples married at least 1 to 3 years, between the ages of 25 and 40, and with stable employment income.”

And yet if you’re willing to adopt non-white children, the situation is a little different:

For children with special needs, some African-American children, and some intercountry adoptions, agencies are willing to consider single applicants, those over age 40, and those with other children. The adoption of American Indian children by non-lndians is strictly limited by the Federal Indian Child Welfare Act.

Why all this talk of adoption? Kinga and I are hoping, at some point, to adopt at least one child. Being adopted myself, I feel that it would border on immorality for me not to return the gift given to me.

But it’s disheartening to see so few people in the world looking at this as a viable option. European governments worried about population and demographics could help solve this problem simply by encouraging families to adopt—say, make the supplement for adopted children higher than for birth children.

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Flickr

Kinga and I finally bought a Flickr account—I’ve been uploading like mad, mostly from our time in Poland.

Friends from Poland, take a look.

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Illegal Words

Lyrics and tab sites are now illegal? (From Thud) In light of this, I think Thud had better be careful with publishing lyrics on his website as he does. After all, he does also have a film review site which has ads, and he does link to said site from his blog, and I’m sure his “Guess Ten” posts drive a lot of visitors to his site, so in a round-about way, he’s making money from his illegal publication of lyrics.

MPA president Lauren Keiser said he wanted site owners to be jailed.

He said unlicensed guitar tabs and song scores were widely available on the internet but were “completely illegal”.

Mr Keiser said he did not just want to shut websites and impose fines, saying if authorities can “throw in some jail time I think we’ll be a little more effective”.

I’ve heard of exaggeration, but this is damn ridiculous. Jail time for typing up lyrics—generally with mistakes—and putting them on the internet? Is it illegal to recite these lyrics—you know, as a clever retort in a conversation? What about singing the song in the shower? If I have a dream in which the song plays some role, was that an illegal dream until I pay royalties?

Is the song writer the only person who can legally express those lyrics in an oral or written form?

Excuse me
while I kiss this guy

If not for lyrics sites, a whole generation might think that this is what Hendrix is singing!

As for the guitar tabs, that’s even worse.

The Xerox machine was the big usurper of our potential income,” he said. “But now the internet is taking more of a bite out of sheet music and printed music sales so we’re taking a more proactive stance.”

David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers’ Association, added his concerns.

“Unauthorised use of lyrics and tablature deprives the songwriter of the ability to make a living, and is no different than stealing,” he said.

In what way? Has this guy ever actually looked at the tabs available on the internet? They’re generally so off as to be perverse.

Now, if it’s a question of someone scanning pages from a published tablature book, that’s a different story. But if it’s some schmuck, sitting in his bedroom, listening to the same portion of a song 1×10^173^ times to figure it out, then publishing what he thinks is the proper way to play the song—and again, these tab sheets are usually so far off that one can only use them as a rough guide—then kudos to the guy.

There are wider implications, though. Does this mean that I can’t then play any of the music I’ve figured out on guitar by myself in the privacy of my own home? I’m not a performer. I’m not making any money off this. Usually, I’m not even providing anyone but myself with any enjoyment.

The music industry is saying, “You vill enjoy dis music, und you vill enjoy it how ve say to enjoy it!” Once again, it is showing itself in fine, pimpin’ colors.

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A Christmas Gift

Last year I posted several Polish Christmas carols for visitors. Stylistically, they were a mix.

This year, I thought I’d put up a few Christmas carols in a more “formal” style. I’m not sure about my translations of some of the titles. Some of them just don’t sound right…

Suggestions?

• Ah Ubogi Zlobie (“Oh, Poor Manger”)
• Do Szopy Hej Pasterze (“To the Stable, Shepherds!”)
• Dzisiaj w Betlejem (“Today in Bethlehem”)
• Hej Koleda Koleda (“Hey, Carol!”)
• Mendrcy Swiata (“The Three Wise Men”)
• Pojdzmy Wszyscy do Stajenki (“Let Us All Go to the Stable”)
• Polnoc Juz Byla (“Midnight Has Already Passed”)
• Tryumfy Krola Niebieskiego (“Triumphs of the King of Heaven”)
• Wsrod Nocnej Ciszy (“In the Silence of the Night”)

If you want, you can get them all in one go .

From last year:

• Przybieżeli Do Betlejem (“They Came to Bethlehem”)
• Wśród Nocnej Ciszy (“In the Silence of the Night”)
• Dzisiaj w Betlejem (“Today in Bethlehem”)
• Oj, Malućki (“Oh, Little One”)
• Pójdźmy Wszyscy Do Stajenki (“Let Us All Go to the Stable”)
• Przybieżeli Do Betlejem (“They Came to Bethlehem”)

Kinga and I wish you the best this Christmas season.

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The Great

If you rearrange the letters of “Santa,” you can make the word “Satan.”

Coincidence?

Another term for “Satan” is “Old Nick.” Another term for Santa Claus is “Saint Nick.”

Coincidence?

Santa Claus descends into fire—just like the Devil. Coincidence?

Santa is dressed in red. The traditional images of the devil have him dressed in red. Coincidence?

In most people’s world, yes, all these things are coincidence. But in the tilted universe of Blow the Trumpet, it’s most decidedly not coincidence, but rather part one of the greatest deceptions ever pulled over mankind’s eyes.

It leaves you shaking your head and very pessimistic about the general intelligence of our species, but it’s worth the it.

And so, I now present The Great Deception.

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The Ageless Tradition

New instructions from Bennie XVI about gay priests.

“The criteria of the Instruction are also entirely consistent with the teaching of the church for the past 2,000 years. To portray the Instruction as ‘gay bashing’ or ‘gay banning’ is to misrepresent it,” [Cardinal Francis George] said at the conclusion of his statement. (Chicago Tribune)

Read: the Church has been homophobic for 2,000 years, so this is nothing new.

Is the Catholic Church trying to make itself a sociological relic, or does it come naturally?

And what about claims that the Church is doing this to try to head off the kind of bad publicity it suffered from the sexual abuse scandals or recent years?

“At best, it’s a distraction; at worst, it’s damaging,” said David Clohessy, national director of the advocacy and support group Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests. “It will feed the mistaken notion that [the abuse scandal] is about the behavior of priests and not the behavior of bishops. Gay seminarians didn’t hire and transfer and cover for child-molesting priests. It was bishops who did that.” (ibid)

Cardinals’ archbishops’ blindness to this simple fact is a sure guarantee that this “solution” will not work.

I wonder if left-handed seminarians are beginning to feel the heat…

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Jabs don't work on fat-bottomed girls

Headline at The Daily Mail

via Google News.

Wonder what would happen if the NYT ran such a story…

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Pots and Kettles and Dark Hues

The recent brouhaha over the war in Iraq has drawn Bush and his gang out of its shell of silence. Cheney has recently stepped into the fight:

Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday lashed out at Democrats who accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, saying such critics were spreading “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired” in Washington.

Cheney also suggested that the Democratic attacks could undermine troop morale.

“The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out,” Cheney said in a speech in Washington to a conservative think tank.

“American soldiers and Marines are out there every day in dangerous conditions and desert temperatures . . . and back home a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie,” Cheney said. (L.A. Times)

In a sense, he has a point. If the administration did indeed admit to “selectively choosing” intelligence so as to make the war a little more attractive, would the average soldier be inclined to go back out, day after day risking his/her life? Probably not. In other words, troop morale would be affected were the charges admitted (and I’m not even saying here they’re true).

But Cheney’s claim that merely suggesting it, his claim that asking tough questions about the origins of the war affects troop morale, is absurd. It amounts to using the soldiers’ daily risks for political gain — a way of stifling the critics. Not the race card, but
the soldier card.

And then he calls Democrats “opportunists.”

But what choice do they have?

After all, a little honesty can go a long way. So it’s better, in the end, I suppose, to shut up and die for a lie, knowing that its for the greater good, because now that we’re involved we can’t withdraw, even though our involvement was finagled by intelligence massaging…

It’s all more convoluted than that attempt at a grammatically based illustration.

If the Bush administration has nothing to hide in this matter, why is it historically tight-lipped about everything? Why is it swinging away with such panic blows?

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Yesterday's Mail

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Stack

Recently, I went through old things my parents had been storing for ages, and threw out most of what I found. Last night, it was time to tackle the big sorting/trashing issue: pictures.

Nine and a half years ago (almost) when I heading off to Poland for the very first time, I knew I’d be seeing things so novel that a strange urge to photograph said things would arise in my otherwise photographically indifferent soul. “I’ll buy a decent camera before I go,” I reasoned, plunking down probably about $200 for a point and shoot. I’ve since lost that camera, but my interest in photography has only grown.

As has my collection of pictures. Until last night, it took up a significant portion 15×21x15 tub. Stack upon stack of pictures: Lipnica, Gdansk, Prague, Vienna, Strasbourg, Boston, and points in between.

I went through them with a merciless eye, and ended up throwing out at least half of them—probably more. A twelve-inch stack of pictures, all told.

It wasn’t gut-wrenchingly hard, but there was a moment, just before tossing it all in the trash, than I thought, “Maybe I should go through these one more time.” After all, what if I’d thrown away the only pictures I’d had of some part of my life?

Some insignificant part of my life, for I realized that in ten short years I’d gone from photographic indifference to photographic hoarding.

Why would throwing away. Several times I thought I had at least two dozen of the same picture, taken at different times during my initial three years in Poland. I took pictures of everything and then did it again. In the tub I found pictures so almost-ineffably useless (badly conceptualized, badly printed) that it was depressing.

On the other hand, I found it reassuring. At least now these images are clearly bad. There’s no debating it. Which means, in theory, my eye has sharpened and perhaps I’ve become a better photographer.

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Random Memory

Seven years ago almost to the day, I took the GRE. Living in rural Poland, I had to get up at five in the morning to take a bus to Krakow in order to take the blasted test. Arriving, I had to wait about two hours to take the test.

Not the best start.

I scored decently—over 1800—but found my analytical score to be about 100 points below what I’d been making in practice tests at home.

One of those silly dress rehearsals I had a perfect score in the analytical section. With a catch: I ignored the time limit and simply worked the problem.

I’ve never understood the point of putting a time limit on a test like the GRE. It means that the exam measures how well you do on silly riddles, geometry problems, and the like under severe time pressure.

And given all the courses and books designed to “help performance,” the whole test is a ridiculous joke.

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Not So Hallow...

I’ve never gone trick-or-treating in my entire life. Never once. I grew up in a church that declared it pagan, satanic, and completely off-limits for any “true Christian.” As a result of living most of my adult life in Poland, I’ve never been at home when trick-or-treaters came round. I lived in Boston for two years, but I think I was out with friends when the kids were making their rounds. And so last night was to be the first night I handed out candy.

Kinga and I weren’t terribly thrilled about it, but it was a novelty for both of us, and we both like novelty. We went to Sam’s Club and bought three bags of candy, sure that we’d be mobbed. There are quite a few kids that live in our apartment complex, and it seemed to be prime hunting ground for kids of parents who prefer a somewhat controlled environment for their wee ones.

Not a single knock. Nothing.

Kinga mocked sadness, but I think it was more the realization that we’d already opened one of the bags of candy and would not be able to return it for a refund.

And we never did carve the pumpkin my parents brought the last time the came for a visit.

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The Question

Recently, at an interview for a teaching position, I had the most curious feeling that I was missing the completely obvious. The principal asked, as the interview was winding down, if I had any questions.

I didn’t have any questions, and said as much.

I was asked again, a few moments later, if I was sure I didn’t have any questions.

At this point, I started thinking, “Should I be asking something? What could I possibly ask about? Is this a way of seeing how interested I am in the job?”

It’s a teaching position: the salary, working hours, curriculum—already set. I’d already asked about enrollment, student demographics, various policy issues, etc.

“What can I ask about?” I think. Finally I answered, “No—I’m sure once I leave here, as always happens, I’ll think of some question about minutiae, but for now…”

And it came again…

The interviewer had that expression that says, “I know you know how to respond!” I’ve used the expression countless times in the classroom.

What was going on? What didn’t I ask about?

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Incomplete thoughts about Autism and Society

Homosexuality used to be considered a mental illness. The placing of heated glass bulbs on a bare back and the resulting bruises were once considered treatment for all kinds of ills. Medical science has shown both these medical assumptions to be false. Despite that, many still claim that homosexuality is an illness of some sort, and cupping is still performed in many places in the world.

Such interpretations of autism are possible as well.

“Autism is not a disease but social construct.” Such is one position on the causes of autism. Wikipedia explains it thusly:

This is the belief that autism is not really a disorder, but instead is a social construct. That is, supporters of this theory do not believe autism exists at all; they believe (partly supported by recent reference to the rising cases of diagnosed autism) that autism is just the way some people are—that is, a part of the person’s personality, which might explain the apparent difficulty in finding a model and a cure. This is further supported by the fact that autistic people have normal lifespans and their condition often comes with advantages, not just disadvantages.

I can imagine another, even more radical explanation for the tantrums and screaming of autism: “overly-permissive parenting.” When working with autistic children, I see from time to time a glint in their eyes that make such a thought pass through my mind. “They’re faking it, just throwing a tantrum to get their way, and taking it to a higher level than most children.” That’s the easy answer, and I realize that that “glint” I think I see is simply my interpretation plastered over the incident.

The most radical explanation would probably come from the church I grew up in: they’re demon possessed. What person in their right mind would suggest such a thing is beyond me, but I can think of groups whose members would probably easily jump to that conclusion.

But all three explanations (though quote-unquote is probably needed there) deal with our perception of the condition and our notion of what is acceptable in society. Our society considers, in most cases, kicking and screaming as an inadequate adult response to disappointment or coercion. Yet if that were the appropriate reaction, autism would not suddenly disappear. Linguistic difficulties, lagging social skills, an inability to see things from another’s perspective, repetitive behavior, and exaggerated or depressed sensory systems would all remain.

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The Scream

If you’ve never heard the scream of an autistic child, count your blessings. It’s inconceivable how a single, shrill sound could convey so much pain, confusion, and anger. The scream comes from so deep inside them it sounds more animal than human. And yet, it’s so shrill and hollow that it’s ethereal.

Often words are woven into the scream—“I hate you!” or “Get away from me!”—to produce a genderless voice. Add the repetitive nature of what they’re screaming and it’s not difficult to see how this could have once been labeled “demon possession.”

Autism, in the time of a rage, wipes away all differences between afflicted children—gender, intelligence, everything—and replaces it with a screech. The rage contorts the face, flails the limbs, and lashes out at anything in the vicinity. The scream fills whatever space you’re in, seeming at times almost like another entity, hovering around the child as you try to isolate her so that so can calm herself.

If it happens around children who are not accustomed to it, the bewilderment and pity in their eyes is striking. And it’s impossible to deny the spark of fear as well.

Often the screaming subsides as quickly as it comes on. A raging child might notice there’s an echo in the room where he is, and that will be enough to derail the rage and pacify the child.

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On Working with Autistic Children

Working with these kids takes so much out of you. It’s a constant struggle—physical but espcially mental—to keep the kids on-task, to keep them calm, to maintain a semblance of order and progress in the room. One day they can be going off like popcorn. The slightest thing can set them off.

This one runs around the room, evading all efforts to stop her, gradually getting more and more angry until the rage hits, and the screaming, kicking, biting. That one sits at his seat, sarcastically chanting his mantra of defiance. Leave him alone and he’ll continue ad infinitum; try verbally or even physically to get him back on task and he’ll be running around the room too. Another sits, watching, cheering the eruption on. “Kick him! Kick him!” is the cry. I’m trying to calm one and the other’s cat-calling us both.

Sometimes you feel as if you’ve been thrown into a lake with bound hands and wearing jeans—it’s a struggle just to survive.

Take nothing personally. That’s critical in all teaching, but especially when working with children cursed with autism. The biter might be a hugger in fifteen minutes. No, scratch that. In fifteen seconds. “I hate you! Get away from me, stupid teacher,” from the mouth of a nine-year-old who later says, “I really love you. You’re awesome.”

All your angry adult reactions sometimes build up, though, and in a flash, you see yourself screaming back at the child yelling at you, giving them exactly, word for word, what they give you. But not only does the cruel unreasonableness of this idea force the image out of your mind, but you also really don’t have time to indulge in such perverse pressure-releasing fantasies, for you see that as soon as you get this situation under control, there’s bound to be another explosion. You see it coming. He’s reaching for her pencil. She’s forcing an apology on an irritated student. They’re arguing over the finer details of an episode of Star Wars. And even if all’s calm except for the child you’re struggling with, you know that in a flash it can all disappear.

And yet. And yet there’s the hope that you can make the cliché difference. “If I’m just this much more patient, this much more ingenious, this much more educated about the condition,” you think.

The trick is to see the child and not the condition. The autism perverts the child’s real personality, adding hatred where there is none, confusion where clarity is simple, and fear where there should be none. When you see the real child, not the child whose face is smeared into a scream by a condition he has no control over, all the frustration and anger disappear and your heart is both soothed and broken.

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Bad Moon Rising

It’s a full moon, and I’m starting to wonder just what effects that can have on a person’s psyche.

For the past week, I’ve been working elementary school children, the majority of whom have various degrees of high-functioning autism. Today was an especially difficult day, with rages set off every few minutes. Almost to a child they had a breakdown of some sort or another.

“It’s a full moon,” one of the assistants said.

There was a time I would have been skeptical of such a claim. However, with a week of experience under my built, I know how these children usually behave. I saw today that there were quantifiably more eruptions than usual.

While I’m more than a little skeptical about the effects of stars on humans, moon and wind can certainly have demonstrable effects on people. In southern Poland, there’s a warm wind that blows during autumn and spring that brings with it sleeplessness (Once, during one of these periods, I couldn’t sleep for four nights) and an increase in irritability with everyone from students to office workers. Could I have been seeing the effects of the moon today?

It seems so medieval. “Beware the full moon!” Our issues today are attributable to most everything but phases of the moon, but perhaps the ancients got it right.

Yet, it’s not the cause. This article discusses the impact of environmental issues on autistic children.

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Substandards

Yesterday evening Kinga and I watched Człowiek z Marmuru (“Man of Marble”), something of a 70’s Polish Citizen Kane, directed by Andrzej Wajda. I decided to watch it with the subtitles on, with the thought of possibly reviewing it for Anvil and Sprocket, a friend’s film review site.

I was horrified, though, at the pathetic translation for the subtitles. I would say no more than sixty-five to seventy percent of what was said was actually translated. The subtitles were more a summary of the dialogue than the dialogue itself. So many subtleties were completely dropped as a result that some of the more interesting characters in the film were simply flat, boring characters. If I didn’t know Polish, I would have said, “Oh, it’s okay.” But it’s not just “okay.” It’s a brilliant film, which does lose a bit of momentum at the end and Krystyna Janda does over-act a bit here and there. Still, the idea is solid — a Polish Citizen Kane that tracks the rise and fall of master mason Mateusz Birkut, a humble man who becomes a symbol of Polish Communist labor through propaganda films. It is one of the most accessible films for non-Poles, for there is a lot that depends on an intimate knowledge of Polish culture. But if you don’t know the language and rely on the subtitles, it is significantly diminished.

It got me to thinking about the art of subtitles. You certainly can’t write everything the characters say, for no one could read that fast and keep up with what the visual aspect of the film — which is, after all, somewhat important in film! And yet, you have to leave enough in to round out characters, else you get a film with flat characters.

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Good reading

Want to read an account of the coronation of Jan III Sobieski, King of Poland, published in London in 1676?

I didn’t think so. Those f-y looking seventeenth-century s’s get on my nerves, too.

(From Textism”)

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Golden Slippers

Not quite as distant as it sounds, Mars Hill is a small community about fifteen miles north of Asheville. Last weekend, Kinga and I went up for a country fair. Bluegrass music, quilting stalls, homemade cheese—the whole deal.

We bought some great goat cheese, and of course there was a bit of live music everywhere.

That’s one of the greatest things about bluegrass: it’s community music. The more, the merrier. In that sense, it’s very similar to Polish Goralski (Highlander) music. Songs that everyone knows, half the people wandering around have instruments themselves—it always becomes a big sing-along.

More than that, though, bluegrass and Goralski both run the cliche gamut as far as talent goes. In a group of players, there’ll be one or two who just astound, and one or two who clearly have just begun playing.

Another, critical similarity: both sound much better live, and too much recorded music of either can be tiresome.

I captured this bit of video at a stand selling CDs, tapes, and music instruction books. That was like a magnet, and soon after I put the camera away, there was a whole group of folks playing there.

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Has an

The Times of India reports,

An appalled, only marginally amused Britain and much of Europe has reacted with shock to an extraordinary revelation by the BBC, which claims President Bush confessed to senior Palestinian leaders that God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq (Source).

God help us—the man is dumber than we think…

Update: It’s not literal.

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Good morning

I’m shocked at how many times I’ve said “Good morning” to students coming into class where I’m subbing, and been ignored.

Completely ignored.

What happened to politeness? What happened to basic social skills?

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NYT on Bush Nomination

The New York Times says the following of Harriet Miers, Bush’s nomination for Supreme Court:

In choosing Ms. Miers as his nominee, Mr. Bush once again signaled the importance he places on personal loyalty and familiarity. Ms. Miers has served in a number of posts for the president, and at one point was his personal lawyer.

That’s a nice way of saying, “Bush’s primary method of chosing nominees depends heavily exclusively on cronyism to the point of ignoring a complete lack of experience.”

Unfortunately, we’d have to live with Miers’ lack of experience a bit longer that we lived (and people in New Orleans died) with other appointees’ lack of experience, should she be confirmed.

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Shakin' the Rolls

The entrance to our apartment complex is situated between two fast food restaurants: an Arby’s and a McDonalds. When Kinga and I first came to look at the apartment, we were given directions which included those two restaurants as landmarks. Whenever we give directions, we in turn do the same.

We’ve never really eaten at either restaurant. Kinga has never been a fan of fast food, having grown up in a country more or less devoid of it (at least in the time she was growing up). I ate less than my fair share growing up. I was never crazy about any of those places, but they were convenient and so I did eat there from time to time, though almost never at McDonalds.

About once a month, Kinga and I like to walk the quarter of a mile down the long driveway and get shakes (she, vanilla, I, chocolate) at McDonalds. No burgers, no fries, just shakes. And smalls, at that.

All the same, I feel embarrassed walking in. Looking around the room at the patrons, I want to say, “We’re just here for shakes! We’re not going to eat this filthy, greasy food, just a bit of ice cream mixed with milk!” And it must be much greasier than I remember, for you walk in and smell it—you can almost feel it hanging in the air.

The cliché is that America is fat because of such restaurants, that McDonald’s and Wendy’s play a disproportionate role in the fattening of America. While not a staunch defender of freedom of grease, I used to look at that argument in the past with skepticism. “It’s more a lack of exercise,” I thought. But on seeing the average McDonald’s customer for the first time in years, I’ve come to the conclusion that it must be more the food than the lack of exercise.

Every time—and I mean every single time—Kinga and I have gone for a shake, there is always a family or two sitting in McDonald’s who probably have between them enough weight for one or two additional people. Last night, there was a family to the right of us as we ordered our monthly shakes and a family coming through the drive in, and they were all, parents and children, huge.

The question is, who’s to blame? Fast food is undeniably that—fast, and convenient. I suppose when the majority of what you sell is simply taken out of a freezer and fried, it can’t help but be fast. Don’t these fast food places have any sense of guilt in what they’re feeding people? An interesting article ran this morning in the IHT about this: Processed foods? Read this, France says. Then there’s this at Yahoo!

But food can be fast and healthy. The only place Kinga and I eat at with any regularity is Subway, and for ten years I’ve always gotten the same thing: a veggie sub and water. But it seems the vast majority of people doesn’t want vegetables, but meat. Fatty, greasy meat.

In the end, though, it’s like cigarettes: smokers and McDonald’s patrons are ultimately responsible for their own decisions. We can argue that there has been misleading advertising and so on, but let’s be reasonable—something dripping with fat or glistening with grease is so obviously unhealthy that it’s hard to imagine who could be fooled by any kind of advertising spin whatsoever.

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Yesterday's Visitor

We had a shiny black visitor last night. There was a cat wandering around the parking lot when Kinga came home from shopping — for clothes, which is why it wasn’t “we” coming home from shopping — and the scrawny little thing followed her right up to the door of our apartment. Then into our apartment.

Fairly obviously not a wild cat.

She was small enough that she looked to be just a still-growing kitten. When I petted her, I was shocked at how thin she was. We decided to give a bit of food: some cheese and turkey. She devoured it, then drank from the dish of water we put down for a good five minutes non-stop.

“What is this cat?” we asked each other. Wild cat? Behavior ruled that out immediately. Homeless? No, too clean, and no odor at all. And yet, if its home is near, we reasoned, why did it drink so much water and eat everything in sight?

We tossed her out when she began scratching around on the carpet as if to make a mess there, then went for a walk to see if she’d follow. She did her business, then followed us a little way, stopping under a car and watching us walk away. When we returned, she was nowhere to be seen.

After a movie and “Telexpress” (a news show from Poland), we started getting ready for bed. For some reason, I was moved to go check if the cat was still around. I opened the door and there she was — walked right on in as if she were at home.

So we wondered what to do. Letting her sleep in the apartment was out of the question, having nothing for her to use as a litter box. We decided to open the storage room off the balcony and put make her a little bed there, with the door closed partially. I put some water in there and made a bed of some towels on a shelf in the storeroom. Setting her down on the bed, I partially closed the door and darted back into the apartment. She stayed in for some time, but then left, only to return to our balcony door and begin meowing. We let her back in for a moment, then put her back out, this time waiting to see if she went to her little bed on her own. She did — we were elated. Then she left again.

This morning, there’s no sign of her. Still, there’s a can of tuna waiting for her if she shows up again, and a dilemma waiting for us if she shows up regularly and we can’t determine who, if anyone, owns her…

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First Impressions II

Back straight, chest out, shoulders square, hands folded behind the back. Greetings, warm but firm, as everyone comes in.

The Speech, highlights:

I will treat you as an adult, which means that I will respect you and speak respectfully to you. When I speak to you, I will not simply bark an order, but I will speak politely. I use “please” and “thank you.” Most importantly, it means when you speak to me, I give you my full attention. I expect the same. Is that clear? Does everyone understand?

A quick survey shows that some indeed are not listening. Time for the sergeant act.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I asked you a question, and when I ask you a question, you will answer it. When I speak to you, you will listen.”

It’s the best drill sergeant voice I can muster, and I deliver the words in a loud and firm voice.

Silence.

“Do you understand?”

Heads nod, a few “Yes sirs.”

A hand up. “Were you in the military, sir?”

Sometimes it’s amazing how well I can act the role.

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Help II

It can be a look—eyebrows furrowed and mouth slightly askew, or the opposite: eyebrows raised with eyes opened Bambi wide.

It can be a sound—smacking licks, a gasp of exasperation.

It can be body language—a staunch refusal to look someone in the eyes, shoulders turned perpendicular to another’s body, a tapping pencil.

It can probably be even a smell—pheromones released, but undetected by the blunt human nose.

There must be a thousand ways of telling someone, “I don’t want your help, and I think you’re a fool for offering it” without uttering a single word.

At some point we all need help, so the theory goes. But there are a few stalwart individuals who would rather drown than take a proffered hand. There are a few who will refuse swimming lessons even as they stand on the ever-vertical deck of a sinking ship, not take a parachute in a spiraling plane.

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Help

“We give help to everyone in the world! When do they help us!? We help bail out this and that country, send aid here and there, notably saved and re-built Europe in WWII. What do we get for our effors? Hatred.”

Thus complained someone once about how hated America—saintly, in this person’s view—is in the world.

Poor us.

What do we do when we do get that help?

Hundreds of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned

US red tape is stopping it from reaching hungry evacuees. (commondreams.org)

That’s right—we burn it. (Thanks to Chhavi for this.)

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Français sans filet

Je ne parle pas français bien. Je me rappelle très peu de ce que j’ai appris dans l’université. En fait, j’ai écrit ceci en anglais et je l’ai traduit aux poissons de Babel. Cela explique la bêtise de ce texte.

I don’t speak French well. I remember very little of what I learned in college. In fact, I wrote that in English and I translated it at Babel Fish. That explains the silliness of this text.

Not speaking French didn’t stop me from being a French teacher for the day today. Fortunately, I had two bocks of first year French and only one block of third year. Even more fortunately, the planning period fell between the third year and first year blocks, so I had plenty of time to do a bit of cramming.

Oh, for a real Babel Fish, though. Think of the problems that might solve—instant intelligibility. Think of all the translators and comparative literature scholars out of work.

Teaching something while not being entirely sure that you’re teaching it correctly is a little like the Engine that Could—I think this is right, I think this is right.

A few tips for those embarking on teaching a foreign language you barely remember:

• When in doubt about translation, be honest—“I don’t know.”
• When in doubt about grammar, be honest—“I don’t know.”
• When in doubt about spelling, be honest—“I don’t know.”
• When in doubt about pronunciation, mumble.

And thank the maker for an assembly that cuts half an hour off your last lesson.

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Treasure

“I’ve been sifting through the layers” since this weekend. I’ve thrown away large chunks of my past that I never thought I’d part with. I’ve seen a Gary I had forgotten about, whom I almost didn’t recognize.

Kinga and I spent the weekend at my folks’ place, and I spent some time Sunday going through things that have been packed up for ten years, things I’d saved throughout my adolescence and my parents dragged from house to house as they were house-hopping the last few years. It was all stored in the giant blue plastic storage boxes you see towering above the isles in K-Mart and Wal-Mart—all the Marts, I guess.

Amazing how treasure can turn to trash with the passage of time. In the end, I emptied almost three whole boxes, throwing out everything from old letters to college papers and most everything in between.

Most of what remained was toys from my childhood, things that my mother had saved long after I’d wanted to toss them out. “Fine,” I laughed Sunday. “You’re responsible for storing them, then!”

What was shocking was the number of letters I’d saved. When I was growing up, I had a friend who, after answer a letter, would throw it away. Me, I’d stash it in a box especially for that.

“Why? You’re not going to read it again,” my friend exclaimed.

“I might!” I never did, but it always seemed sacrilegious to throw out something as personal and intimate as a letter. A private, lasting conversation with me, and no one else—how could anyone toss that out?

Very easily, I discovered Sunday.

Also among the treasure and trash was an old notebook that I carried about during college, scribbling random thoughts here and there—a sort of portable journal, for I’ve always kept that on the computer. To flip through it for the first time in probably nine years was to look at myself more directly than I’ve done in a long time. Random thoughts inspired by bumper stickers and books, quotes, silly attempts at being witty, sillier attempts at being deep—it’s all in there:

• I blow moisture from my mouth and nose at 200+ mph and receive a benediction for my efforts.
• Ollie North lost his bid for Virginia Senator, restoring some of my hopes that we are an intelligent species.
• “God is my co-pilot.” Bonhoeffer would hate that. God should be the pilot, not co-pilot. “Co-“ means shared control.
• Perhaps we should spay and neuter some humans.
• If reality bites, can I get rabies from it?
• A poorly organized protest is more likely to appear as a temper-tantrum than a legitimate protest.
• All new cars are beginning to look the same.

One entry in particular was striking, for it took up a few lines and a few moments to write it, but ended up affecting nine years of my life. Indeed, the rest of my life:

I am sending away for information about the Peace Corps. It would be a huge commitment, but I think it would teach me a lot, more than could be learned around here… (Wednesday 20 July 1994)

I ended up staying three and a half times as long as the two year minimum. I met my wife there. I found a second home.

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ESubL

Being bilingual can really be a troublesome affair when trying to teach English — if your student’s L1^1^ is different than your L2.

Today, while subbing, I worked with a student of Latin origins who spoke very limited English. I speak even more limited Spanish, though I’ve decided I must learn that language. At any rate, I found that while working with her it was a constant and very conscious struggle not to lapse into Polish. “She doesn’t understand what you’re saying,” a voice was screaming in my head, “So use another language.”

Unfortunately, Polish was not terribly helpful.

The world of ESL is frightful in some ways. The responsibility is enormous.

As an EFL teacher, I was teaching a foreign language, which means it’s not going to be used that often. It’s not often going to be the basis of all other learning. And teaching English as a foreign language also affects the skills stressed. My primary goal for my students was verbal communication. Writing is important, but not nearly as important as speaking.

I confess, then, that I probably didn’t spend enough time with my students working on writing, until the national testing standards changed and forced my hand.

ESL is an entirely different animal. The goal is simple: get students’ English up to a level where they use it as their primary language for instruction. Think about it: it’s re-wiring a house, re-pouring a foundation. No, wrong analogy. It’s adding a second set of wires to a house, putting a foundation within a foundation.

And what do students do in the meantime? If they have limited English, how do they learn science? The idea solution is bilingual education, with L1 gradually being phased out. But the ideal is often just that.

¹ “L1” means “Language 1”—the first language we learn. In my case, English. “L2” means—well, you can figure it out.

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Emigranci

Zawsze bede tutaj tylko emigrantem. Nie wazne czy legalnym czy nielegalnym zawsze bede sie czula emigrantem i bede sie identyfikowac ze wszystkimi Polakami, Meksykanami i wszystkimi, ktorzy przyjezdzaja tutaj w poszukiwaniu lepszego zycia. Coraz czesciej slysze jak Amerykanie traktuja i co sadza o nielegalnych emigrantach i przykre to jest ale jak na razie widze, ze opinia o nich jest jak o Cyganach w Polsce. Tutaj gdzie mieszkamy jest bardzo duzo Meksykanow, na pewno w duzej mierze sa tutaj nielegalnie a wszystko co zle w miescie to nielegalni emigranci z Meksyku. Wszelkie utrudnienia w biurach, kradzieze i rozboje to na pewno Meksykanie, taka panuje powszechna opinia (to tak jak w Nowym Targu Cyganie – wszystko co zle to oni).

Amerykanie z duzym lekcewazeniem wypowiadaja sie na temat nielegalnych emigrantow tutaj ale nie zdaja sobie sprawy, ze to oni wykonuja tutaj najgorsze roboty. Albo zdaja sobie sprawe ale wydaje im sie, ze taki jest porzadek rzeczy i dalej narzekaja na nielegalnych. Jak mijamy jakies roboty drogowe tutaj to 90% robotnikow to Meksykanie. Ale to jeszcze nic, w ostatnim “Przekroju” jest wstrzasajacy artykol o Polakach, ktorzy pracowali przy oczyszczaniu “strefy zero” w Nowym Jorku po 11 wrzesnia 2001 r. Okazuje sie ze ogromne ilosci azbestu, ktore tam unosily sie w powietrzu i ktore ci robotnicy wdychali teraz daja o sobie znac i ludzie ci umieraja jeden za drugim doprowadzajac wczesniej siebie i swoje rodziny do bankructwa, gdyz bezlitosny system zdrowia w Stanach blyskawicznie oproznia ich kieszenie. I Mozna sie teraz pytac kto pozwolil im tam pracowac bez odpowiednich zabezpieczen i dlaczego teraz nikt im nie pomoze ale jakie to ma znaczenie oni juz poswiecili swoje zycie dla Ameryki z bardzo praktycznych pobudek. Teraz nikt tego nie bedzie nawet pamietal bo o takich rzeczach sie tutaj nie mowi, nie brzmia zbyt dobrze i zle swiadcza o tym “wspanialym” kraju. www.przekroj.pl Z drugiej strony sa jednak ludzie, ktorzy znajduja tutaj swoj raj. Wczoraj poznalismy kobiete, ktora przyjechala tutaj z Izraea. Ona stwierdzila, ze pan Bog sie pomylil, ze kraj mlekiem i miodem plynacy to wlasnie Ameryka i ze ona sama jeszcze w zyciu nie czula sie tak bezpiecznie. Tutaj odnalazla swoje szczescie.

Trudno sie dziwic, ze ktos kto przyjezdza z Izraela ma wlasnie takie odczucia. Prawda jest jednak taka, ze te kobiete sprowadzil tutaj pewin amerykanski, dobrze sytuowany biznesmen i on ja tutaj utzymuje. Przez ostani rok nie musiala pracowac, przyzwyczajala sie do nowego srodowiska, teraz zaczyna myslec o powrocie do pracy. To na razie pierwszy tego typu przypadek emigranta w Stanach jaki znam. Przwaznie ich poczatki sa nieco trudniejsze, i momo, ze jest duzo latwiej niz w miejscu z ktorego przyjezdzaja to tez jest im ciezko.

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No Luck

Why is it that whenever I’m playing bridge and everyone says, “This is my last hand,” and runs off right after the cards are dealt, I get a hand like this one?

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In Your

What do you say to a student when he says to you aggressively, “You don’t have to get up in my face like that!”? How do you respond when in fact all you were doing was trying to be “reasonable” and explain why you were calling him down in the first place, and doing it by squatting down to be at eye-level with him, talking to him like a man? Is this blatant disrespect, or something else?

I’m not even sure I know what it means to be “in someone’s face about something.” I’m assuming that it means the chest to chest, strutting peacock type of testosterone-laden behavior I saw myself as a student many times. Of course I wasn’t doing that when students said those lovely words to me, so what’s going on?

An invasion of someone’s personal space is the only explanation I can come up with. In trying to be respectful—and I do believe teachers should be as respectful to their students as they expect their students to be to them—it seems I crossed an unknown, unseen boundary and caused offense. Or perhaps he was just testing me, seeing what he could get by with?

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Bluegrass Festival

Z polskich gor, z polskiej Orawy gdzie bylismy w centrum orawskiej i goralskiej kultury i muzyki przenieslismy sie w Apalacze gdzie kroluje “Bluegrass.” English is available here

Dla mnie brzmi to jak muzyka kantry ale Gary twierdzi, ze to jest odlam kantry. Moze kiedys bede to odrozniac. W Asheville przez cale lato w kazdy weekend odbywaja sie koncerty w samym sercu miasta na malym skwerze tuz pod Urzedem Miasta. Bylismy w ubiegla sobote po raz pierwszy i pewnie pojawimy sie jeszcze nie raz, bo Gary uwielbia bluegrass a ja musze przyznac, ze dobrze sie bawilam. No wiec byly gitary, kontrabasy, bandza, mandoliny, skrzypce, pojawila sie nawet harmonia – wszystko akustycznie, byly spiewy, rowniez na glosy, byly tance (do tego tanczy sie tzw “step dance” – stepuja az dudni) i byly tance dla wszystkich przed scena.

Oczywiscie ja mialam ochote sie przylaczyc, niestety Gary wolal robic zdjecia. Caly koncert trawl 2.5 godziny i zaden zespol nie zagral wiecej niz 2 kawalki, bylam zaskoczona iloscia wykonawcow. Nie byly to duze zestpoly, trzyosobowe czasami wieksze szescioosobowe. Nie byly to oficjalne zespoly istniejace przy jakichs instytucjach w 95% byla to grupka znajomych, pasjonatow, ktorzy po prostu spotykaja sie i razem graja bluegrass. Dlatego musze przyznac, ze zaskoczyl mnie wysoki poziom wszystkich wykonawcow. Ladnie graja, wszystko pod buta a wiele tekstow jest bardzo humorystycznych. Przez caly koncert zastanawialismy sie jakby to bylo i jak zareagowalaby widownia gdyby mozna pokazac im tutaj kawalek goralskiej muzyki i tanca??? Jeszcze raz szkoda, ze to jest tak strasznie daleko ta Ameryka…

Nakrecilismy krociutki film z naszym zdaniem najlepszego wystepu. Jest to duzy plik, wiec trzeba uzbroic sie w cierpliwosc.
Film.

I grew up in bluegrass country, but it took moving to Poland to make me really appreciate it. I wouldn’t call myself a “fan”—I have a couple of CDs and I enjoy it, but I’m not crazy about it. Moderation, as in everything.

In Asheville every year, there’s a several-week-long bluegrass festival held every Saturday night in the center of town. Kinga and I went last week and, long story short, “a good time was had by all.”

Particularly entertaining was a grandmother who could yoddle like nobody’s business (trying to get in the mood here) and who also sang a most curious song about a mule, complete with the braying.

We recorded a few snippets of video and pieced them together for the amusement of all. It’s a large file, though, so patience.

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More on ID

Thud mentioned “the kind of ID that also rejects short-history ‘the world is 5000 years old’ creationism.” It’s been my sense lately that “ID” is an effort by more moderate believers to distance themselves from the more literal, fundamentalist reading of a six-thousand-year-old universe. Look at the Catholic church’s official position: the Vatican holds that God created the universe, but it makes no claim as to how he did it. Very sensible, but too sensible for fundamentalists — who often are rabidly anti-Catholic as well.

The problem lies with the fact that creationists — and I mean the hard-core, 6k variety — take the issue very personally. I once stumbled onto a teen message board of a fundamentalist sect and jumped in on the question, “Do you believe in evolution?” I found that the kids’ initial reaction was always an emotional one. “I’m not descended from primal sludge!” was a common theme. While I fail to see how the origins of my species affect my personal worth and self-confidence, the thought of being able to trace the human race back to amoebas somehow offended their sense of personal dignity.

“Something that used to be sludge can’t possibly be a child of God,” they reason. “I am a child of God,” they continue, concluding with, “Therefore, I did not evolve from primordial soup.”

Not the most well-founded syllogism I’ve ever encountered, but these are emotions we’re dealing with, not reasonable, rational responses.

Accepting evolution is rejecting God. For them, it means rejecting the very bedrock of their lives: the Bible. It makes the Bible a liar, because the use of figurative language has largely escaped them as a possible interpretation. If “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1.5) can be interpreted figuratively, so can “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3.16). If the Bible got it wrong about biology, then what confidence can we have in it regarding salvation.

This black-and-white, either-or thinking permeates the fundamentalist world. All we had to do was elect an evangelical president to see that.

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Looting II: What Everyone's Thinking

Who’s really doing the most looting? Who’s doing the most immoral looting? Who is truly using Katrina to their advantage?

Bush’s buddies Big Oil.

Dang good profits to go along with the sweet alliteration:

The time has come for Congress to take a look at oil company profits, especially in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. If you drive a car—or ride a bus, a train or a plane—you’re being gouged. [...]

Since January 2002, Big Oil profits have tripled to $125 billion on sales of $1.5 trillion, according to Oppenheiomer & Co. analyst Fadel Gheit.

But that money is needed for searching out oil fields, digging wells and laying pipeline, isn’t it? Sure it is, but most of that work has been done—when oil was selling, profitably, in the range of $20 per barrel, and that was not recently.

Big Oil prices rose 35 percent during the first three quarters of 2004, and increases continue. Big-Oil shareholders, of course, are making a buck as profits soar. And since many oil companies are buying back their shares, that’s pushing up the price.  

Details are here

Question: How much is Big Oil going to donate to the relief effort?

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The Poll

More creationism nonsense in the news. This time, yet another poll:

In a finding that is likely to intensify the debate over what to teach students about the origins of life, a poll released Tuesday found that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools.

The poll found that 42 percent of respondents hold strict creationist views, agreeing that “living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.”

In contrast, 48 percent said they believed that humans had evolved over time; but of those, 18 percent said that evolution was “guided by a supreme being,” and 26 percent said that evolution occurred through natural selection. In all, 64 percent said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution, while 38 percent favored replacing evolution with creationism.

The poll was conducted July 7-17 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The questions about evolution were asked of 2,000 people, and the margin of error is 2.5 percentage points. (Source)

Creationists will never get through their head that creationism is, at best, a philosophical theory, not a scientific one.

In the end, though, I have no problem with teachers mentioning the idea of ID and asking students what they think of it, as long as it’s not called science. What will it be called then? I don’t know. I don’t care, as long as it doesn’t take too much time from the already overburdened curriculum.

What was most striking about the poll was the data dealing with a simple question: Who should decide what’s taught?

The poll showed 41 percent of Americans want parents to have the primary say over how evolution is taught, compared with 28 percent who say teachers and scientists should decide and 21 percent who say school boards should. Asked whether they believed creationism should be taught instead of evolution, 38 percent were in favor, and 49 percent were opposed.

Parents decide? In the end, I guess they do — they’re going to elect the officials who will force this nonsense down the public’s throat. But should they have an active hand in deciding what’s taught?

What would a nice response be for a science teacher? Mine would be along these lines:

Great! Saves me some time. You’re going to do this pro bono, right? And while you’re at it, since I didn’t study any of this in college and am completely unqualified to teach it, why don’t you make out my lesson plans for me? And write and grade the tests? Shoot, just come in and teach, and I’ll simply serve as a pedagogical consultant. You do the work, I get the pay. Sounds great.

Maybe parents want to come in and decide the entire curriculum and teach it as well? Teachers will just wander about the internet…

Comment [3]

Support from Your Principal

Erin O’Connor at Critical Mass has a fascinating and yet disturbing post about a way of dealing with student profanity…by allowing it.

An English high school has decided to cope with the problem of student profanity by tolerating it. Beginning this fall, students will be allowed to curse at their teachers, just so long as they don’t say “f—k” more than five times during a lesson. Part of the new policy involves keeping a running tally on the blackboard of how many times the word “f—k” has been uttered during a given lesson—a practice that promises to distract students.

I for one would feel this as a complete abandonment on the part of the principal of any acknowledgement even of my authority as teacher.

The post is here.

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Are you our sub?

A first-time experience and I keep quiet—that can’t have happened too very often. But the details about the events of yesterday, fascinating though they were, will remain distanced from any comments I might make here about it. The experience: I was a sub. First time.

In an effort to gain a face in the local school system, I am trying substitute teaching, and I got my first call yesterday morning.

“Substitute teaching.” That in itself seems to be an oxymoron. Teaching is a profession requiring such intimate knowledge—not the least of which, the kids’ names—that “substitute teacher” has all the ring of “substitute shrink.”

“Yes, I know you’d rather be talking to Dr. White, but he’s away on urgent business and his office asked me to come down and fill in for him. Now then, what seems to be the problem?”

It just doesn’t seem like it would work.

Yet at an orientation session for new substitute teachers last week, I and other new subs learned that “subbing isn’t the glorified babysitting it used to be” and that subs are expected to continue on instruction. In other words, be a substitute teacher and not just a substitute authority figure. I’m not sure it was ever anything else, but I do think that there was less expectation of what subs would accomplish in the classroom, say, twenty years ago.

The Day

I survived. Not only that, but I enjoyed it. It felt good to be in a classroom again. With the beginning of the school year here (and approaching in Poland—1 September), it was difficult to keep from feeling a tinge of sadness at the thought of not teaching this year. The call Friday morning helped alleviate that. Seven years of teaching has taught me one invaluable thing about the profession—take nothing they do personally. Any silly, probing, “let’s-see-what- he-does-now” behavior is directed at my role, not my person. That realization will be key to being an effective sub.

I spent the afternoon with a group of seventh graders, the first time I’ve worked with that age group in many years. Six weeks of my student teaching was in a seventh grade classroom, and those kids, according to my reckoning, have just finished college, so it’s been a while.

Seventh grade—an interesting age group, for they’re right on that border between “child” and “young adult,” beginning to realize that they’re not kids anymore but not quite sure how to handle that.

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Earthquake

Twice now I’ve experience an earthquake in some area of the world that is not especially associated with quakes. From the AP:

ASHEVILLE—The National Weather Service in Greer, S.C., has reported that an earthquake has hit the Asheville area, shaking homes across the mountains.

The earthquake measured a 3.8 on the Richter Scale, NWS forecaster John Tomko said.

“It was widely felt across Western North Carolina and northeast Georgia.”

“There have been no reports of damage so far,” Tomko said.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center an earthquake occurred at 11:09. The earthquake’s center was located 2 miles southeast from Hot Springs.

Kinga and I were just finishing up a movie when it felt suddenly as if a truck had rammed the apartment building. A loud and sustained crash, with a touch of shaking.

At least this time I felt it. The last time I was in an earthquake was in Poland, walking down the street from a private lesson.

“Did you feel that,” Kinga’d asked when I’d walked in the door.

After all, what’s the point of a minor quake that does no damage if you don’t feel it?

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Impersonal

In the spirit of St. Bernard’s via negativa, there are few things to make you more appreciative of your spouse than perusing on-line personals. “Tell me I’ll never be back out there,” Carrie Fisher’s character says to Bruno Kirby in When Harry Met Sally, and after looking through a few on-line personals, the “dating scene” shows itself to be most definitely “out there.”

A good personal ad is an art. Just try describing yourself and what you’re looking for in less than 200 words. Less is more difficult. Piling words on top of each other is much easier than constructing well-written sentences. But despite the fact that this is the first impression they’re making, no one—neither men nor women—takes it so seriously.

Instead, we read things like, “Hmmm about me. I guess you can say I’m a pretty funny broad.” Already we’re smiling at how much her word choice has said about her. Scroll down and we find, “Ok, where to start… like many people, I feel that I am just not meeting the ‘right people’ out at bars” To begin with, start without the “where to start.”

In advertising themselves, people tend to fall into cliché with alarming frequency — then wallow about in it. And it starts with the ad’s header:

• I’m a nice girl looking for her shining knight.
• Looking For Mr. Right
• Don’t judge a book by its cover
• Is Miss Right out there?
• Looking for the right one.
• Looking for Adventure
• No DRAMA!
• lookn 4 u!!

Some communicate on so many levels (many of them distressful) that they seemed to be masterpieces of Freudian innuendo:

• Animal lover seeking non-puppy kicker
• Gotta pay the cost to be the boss

Yahoo! personals washed up more than its share of clichés and freaks, but there were some thoughtful openings as well. Well, one: “carpal tunnel love.”

It just makes me all the more thankful that I’m married, that I no longer have such worries as “Will I still be alone when I’m sixty-four?”

She’ll still need me; she’ll still feed me.

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Post Mortem

The worst thing about an interview is the endless playback afterwards—twenty-twenty hindsight and all that. The one question that initially stumped you rattles around in your head until you work out an appropriate, non-stammering answer. Then, you hit yourself repeatedly with the question and the “I should have said this but was an idiot and didn’t see the obvious” answer that you’ve come up with in the car on the way home or pacing in the apartment once you get there.

An individual could get a complete transcript of the interview a week before it actually happens, a la Back to the Future, and still have a head filled with “I should have saids.”

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More on the Soul

Thud challenged that my comment “The belief in a soul becomes increasingly more difficult to maintain in the light of evolutionary psychology and advances in cognitive science” is “an unfounded assertion”:

How does it become increasingly difficult to believe in a soul? It may be increasingly difficult to believe that one’s sense of self is entirely separable from the physical form, but that doesn’t mean there’s no soul. There’s an enormous chasm between saying “who we are is changed by what we are”—I think that’s a safe statement—and saying “we are nothing but meat.” (The Comment)

It’s increasingly difficult because there are increasingly fewer things we can attribute to “the soul.” Thud himself admits “who we are is changed by what we are,” but how is that logically possible if who we are intrinsically is spiritual? How can the physical affect the spiritual? The supposed miracles of the Bible show the reverse is generally the accepted view, but the belief in the soul requires the opposite to be true. A few questions then:

First, how could the soul be affected by the body? Simple— memory. Memory and memory alone is what makes human identities possible, and if the soul is in any way equated with our “identity” (and if it’s not, what’s the point?), the memory will be a necessary component. So neurons firing a certain way in the hippocampus, the amygdala, or the mammillary somehow deposit a copy of activity in the soul? The soul is a all-in-one card reader? How does it work without stepping outside the boundaries of logical and basic scientific principle?

Second: we’re talking about the soul without even considering where it came from. If we believe in a God, then we’re his creation; if we believe the theory of evolution is a better explanation than the Book of Genesis, then we’re the products of millions of years of cosmic chance; if we want to hold both beliefs at once, we call ourselves proponents of intelligent design. I hold to option two. It’s the option that has the most scientific evidence. Now, if I hold to that option and assert that there’s a soul, then where the hell did it come from? How did millions and millions of years of cosmic bumper ball create something spiritual?

Third: What affect do sudden changes in a person’s identity have on the soul — indeed, how is that even possible? What sort of “sudden changes” do I have in mind?

Phineas Gage, with his famous three-foot-seven-inch railroad spike through his head.

Some months after the accident, probably in about the middle of 1849, Phineas felt strong enough to resume work. But because his personality had changed so much, the contractors who had employed him would not give him his place again. Before the accident he had been their most capable and efficient foreman, one with a well-balanced mind, and who was looked on as a shrewd smart business man. He was now fitful, irreverent, and grossly profane, showing little deference for his fellows. He was also impatient and obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, unable to settle on any of the plans he devised for future action. His friends said he was “No longer Gage.” (Source)

But we don’t have to look to 19th-century tragedies. Think lithium, anti-depressants, Prozac. I recall meeting with my grad school advisor and discussing this. “How many Kierkegaards have we destroyed with Prozac?” Indeed—Kierkegaard, Mahler, and how many other manic-depressives would never have created their classics if they’d been born in the late twentieth century. All the way back in 1979 there was an article about this. The abstract:

Twenty-four manic-depressive artists, in whom prophylactic lithium treatment had attenuated or prevented recurrences to a significant degree, were questioned about their creative power during the treatment. Twelve artists reported increased artistic productivity, six unaltered productivity, and six lowered productivity. The effect of lithium treatment on artistic productivity may depend on the severity and type of the illness, on individual sensitivity, and on habits of utilizing manic episodes productively. (Source)

But we don’t even have to look at medication for drastic changes. Watch some of your friends when they’re drunk.

So it’s not that I’m suggesting that there isn’t a soul. I’m simply saying that logic and science combine to show that there are, as Steven Pinker expressed it, fewer and fewer hooks on which to hang the soul.

Comment [6]

Prayer Warriors

I’ve never understood that phrase, though I’ve read it from time to time. It’s a good enough term for members of the Presidental Prayer Team.

They’re stated goal:

The goal of The Presidential Prayer Team was to enlist 1% of the American population or 2.8 million people, to pray for the President, both this administration and future administrations. This goal was reached on May 1, 2003, just 600 days after The Presidential Prayer Team was launched. Plans are in the works to establish new goals and objectives of the Prayer Team. It is our sincere belief that this effort could radically alter the future of our country as our President and our nation are prayed for on a daily basis.

Further, regarding the issue of whether the effort is “affiliated with any political party, elected official or governmental agency,” we read,

The Presidential Prayer Team is a spiritual movement of the American people which is not affiliated with any political party or official. It gains no direction or support, official or unofficial, from the current administration, from any agency of the government or from any political party, so that it may be free and unencumbered to equally serve the prayer needs of all current and future leaders of our great nation.

But really, will they still be around when there’s a Democrat in the White House? And if they are, will the issues on their pray list be apolitical (i.e., not decidedly pro-life)?

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Preventive Questioning II

Not passing something so simple as a driving test is enough to drive you to, well, study. Passing no longer was an option.

“I must have satisfaction,” I declared, tossing gallantly my cape behind the hilt of my sword and raising my eyebrows menacingly.

Only a perfect score would right the wrong the State of North Carolina inflicted upon me.

25/25—nothing less.

So now I know how many points you get for, say, not properly restraining a child in a safety seat (2 pts—a strangely lenient punishment for risking the life of a child) or “driving aggressively” (5 pts), and I know quite a bit about NC’s DUI DWI laws, and assorted nonsense that will not help me be a better driver in any way.

I got one question about DWI and none about points.

Satisfaction evades me, though, as the test automatically shut down after I got the first twenty silly questions correct…

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Belief

There’s something fascinating about the character of Barabbas in the Bible. He is the ultimate Christian type for all humanity, for Jesus literally dies for him according to the Gospels. Though the tradition is recorded nowhere outside the Bible, the Gospels tell us that it was the custom to release one prisoner around Passover time, and the crowds (who through the centuries become simply “Jews”) demand Barabbas be released and Jesus crucified.

Par Lagerkvist wrote a novella in the 1950’s about Barabbas after the crucifixion, about his desire to believe, to convert to Christianity, but his inability to go through with it. He sees Jesus crucified; he’s at the tomb at Easter (though of course he doesn’t see the resurrection, simply the empty tomb afterwards), and yet he still doesn’t believe.

It’s the curse of modern times — a will to believe and yet an inability to do so. Winifred Galligher writes of this in Working on God. The modern solution, Rabbi Burton Visotzky tells Galligher, is a fight:

[Belief] may be the battle of your life, but emotionally and intellectually, it could also be the most exhilarating one you’ve ever engaged in. Whether you experience God’s reality or are just intellectually intrigued by the idea, God can be a very real force in peoples’ lives — spiritual, emotional, supportive — that almost no other system can offer. But you must gird yourself for a fight and know that you’re going to have to try to reconcile very difficult things. Or at least hold them in suspension and bounce them back and forth and get tired. There’s no quick fix, but we have the benefit of drawing on thousands of years of religious thinking. You can’t learn it over a weekend. It’s an engagement for the rest of your life. (261)

More so than during Kierkegaard’s live, it boils down, for some, to a Kierkegaardian leap of faith. Evolutionary theory and the general advances of some sciences make belief unbelievable, but for some there’s always an intellectual draw toward the idea of a great Something More.

Barabbas probably believed in a Something More. He was, after all, a first-century Jew and by many accounts, a Zealot, hoping an overthrow of Roman control over Jerusalem would hasten the Messiah’s return. What Langerkvist’s Barabbas is struggling for is not a believe in God, but a belief that he himself saw God in the flesh, however oxymoronically that might have seemed then, or still seem now. Langerkvist’s Barabbas then is a parable of someone who is having trouble trusting a first hand experience of what others called the divine. If it was that difficult for him, think how much more so it must be for us, separated 20 centuries from the historical object of faith.

“I want to believe.” That seems to be the cry of many in the twenty-first century. William James argued that that very will to believe was sufficient in some situations, namely those like religion which cannot be concluded on purely rational grounds.

Why believe, though? There are those of us who are torn, who sometimes think it would be wonderful to fall on their knees in thankful prayer but mostly think religion is an antiquated relic that will pass with time. It’s the experiential factor that is most unnerving for such folk:

Let’s not get too hard on the Holy Roman Church here. The Church has its problems, but the older I get, the more comfort I find there. The physical experience of being in a crowd of largely humble people, heads bowed, murmuring prayers, stories told in stained-glass windows … (Interview with Bono, from U2)

Seeing others people’s faith used to make me shake my head in disbelief. “How can people be so gullible, so naïve?” I used to think. But the older I get, the more fascinating it is, especially hearing the echo of five hundred people reciting the creed that’s been the backbone of Christian belief for centuries. Mindless repetition for some, but looking at some folks’ faces, it’s easy to see the depth of belief there.

Comment [4]

Preventive Questioning

Coming right out with it, I failed the North Carolina written driving test today.

Twenty-five questions, and I could make only five mistakes. I made it through twenty-two questions before racking up my sixth and final wrong answer, which resulted in the screen going blank and informing me tersely that I’d failed. I went back to the examiner and she seemed surprised.

Indeed, I was surprised. I’d gone through the manual and remembered all sorts of fun facts.

• It takes 211 feet to come from 55 MPH to a full stop.
• You can’t park within 15 feet of an intersection when the road is not curbed; when it’s curbed, it’s 25 feet.
• A person has to be visible at a distance of 200 feet with high beams and 70 feet with low beams for your lights to be “valid.”
• Your horn must be audible at a distance of 50 feet.
• You must stay two seconds behind the car in front of you (i.e., not the # of car-lengths, as I’d learned so many years ago).

All sorts of fun facts.

What did about 20% of my randomly prepared test involve? DUI.

For the first DUI offense, how long can the DMV revoke your license?

Any amount of time would make my life infinitely more complicated. But that is not the reason I don’t drink and drive. I know I can kill myself and others doing it—that’s why I don’t do it. Simple.

What is the punishment for refusing to take a Breathalyzer test?

What does it matter? I know it can only be something unpleasant, something that will make the situation—and my life in general—more difficult, so even if I knew I’d fail it, I’d take the stupid test.

What should the punishment be? The officer should give you a quick bullet to the head—you’re obviously too stupid to be making a positive contribution to society.

What is the first step to getting back your license after having it revoked for DUI?

I didn’t know. (It turns out that you have to take a driving course.) If I were so stupid as to get in the car after drinking, I don’t know that I deserve to get my license back. But if it were revoked, I guess I’d start worrying about how to get it back then, not before my license has even been issued.

The good news: Kinga’s test had no questions about driving drunk and had studied her butt off—though she didn’t know the answer to those questions either—so she passed her test, successfully drove the examiner around the neighborhood, and got her NC driving license.

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Pierwsza Rocznica i pierwsze sushi!

Teraz jestesmy tutaj, tak strasznie daleko od tych wszystkich ludzi i od tych wszystkich miejsc…

Pierwszy rok malzenstwa mamy za soba. Oboje zgodnie stwierdzilismy, ze byl to bardzo dobry rok i postanowilismy to uczcic. Gary nalegal, zebym wreszcie sprobowala sushi. Nie protestowalam, nie mialam na tym punkcie zadnych uprzedzen, sama bylam ciekawa jak tez smakuje surowa ryba. Musze przyzanc, ze smakuje wysmienicie. Sprobowalismy roznych rodzajow i wlasciwie tylko jeden zdecydowanie mi nie smakowal, to byla osmiornica, mieso jakies takie gumowe jak dla mnie. Cala reszta byla bardzo dobra. Nie zapamietalam wszystkich rodzajow ryb, ktore probowalismy ale zakodowalam sobie te ktore najbardziej mi smakowaly. Zdecydowanie najlepszy dla mnie byl wegorz ale wydaje mi sie, ze to nie bylo do konca surowe mieso, przynajmniej bylo czyms przyprawione. Dalej losos i krewetki. Bardzo specyficznie serwuje sie to sushi, na takich szesciokatnych kawalkach zlepionego ryzu, czasami wszystko przewiazane jest kawalkiem trawy morskiej. Trawa morska niestety tez mi nie smakowala. Usilowalam jesc paleczkami, Garemu calkiem niezle to wychodzi, niestety w moim przypadku skonczylo sie na jedzeniu palcami ale to chba nie byl az taki wielki obciach. I tak oto w nasza pierwsza rocznice slubu stalam sie fanem sushi—wysmienite—polecam.

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Gas, the Obligatory Complaining

I know—we’re all suffering from gas prices. But it’s been ridiculous around here since we moved.

At one station here in Asheville it was $2.11 about three weeks ago. This station sells gas mixed with ethanol, and so it was about ten cents cheaper than every other place around.

Then it jumped up to $2.23. A few days later: $2.32. A week after that, last Friday: $2:44.

As of yesterday: $2:52.

That’s an 18% increase in about three weeks. How is that possible? Has the price of a barrel of gas increased proportionately in the last three weeks? No. It’s finally broken the $60 a barrel mark, and seems to be bearing down on $70 a barrel, but it hasn’t gone up that much.

It’s a good thing there’s not a milk cartel to go along with the oil and drug cartels. Can you imagine if the prices of everything fluctuated this badly?

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Keeping Busy with Great Books

Keeping busy is the key. Idle hands, idle minds—conventional wisdom.

We’ve moved in, and as I don’t have a job, the last week has been busy with straightening and organizing. I’m a house-dad, without the “dad” part. Too bad I can’t just get pregnant and make use of the down time. Indeed – if that could happen, we’d never have to work again, either of us. Medical miracle. Religious miracle, and it wouldn’t even have to be a virgin birth.

Keep busy. Our computer crashed and we had to buy a new one a few months ahead of schedule. Best Buy almost ripped us off, due to a pricing mistake. I went in ready for a fight. At last I can get out all the frustration building in the last year of Polish bureaucracy and tangle in my native language. No tangling there, though. They gave it to us for the advertised price. As if they wouldn’t. Well, in my recent experience abroad, worse things have happened.

Keep busy – else you end up writing things like this.

Two years in a place is enough to make it home. Three years cements it further, and moving after three years somewhere can be overwhelmingly traumatic. Four years could kill a person if she didn’t some kind of support. Seven years, ten years, twenty-six years — the transition period itself could last years. Family and friends constitute “mitigating factors” but most importantly in my experience is a concrete goal, a reason behind it all that motivates and justifies uprooting yourself.

Kinga and I are now settled in, hoping to take root in America. Because I spent seven of the last nine years in Poland, it’s as much a foreign country for me as for her. How long before we think of this place as “home”? I no longer associate our cozy apartment in Lipnica with that word, but also, I don’t imagine our new place when I think of “home,” either. It’s a word that hangs in my imagination, not even suspended by anything tangible. Maybe it will settle with the dust that will accumulate in our new apartment, and gradually pick up the warm associations it needs.

In the meantime, there’s the inevitable sadness that edges everyday life. I see it sometimes in Kinga’s eyes and remember what it was like when I first moved to Lipnica. The stimulation of all that’s new and different in a foreign country can grow tiring, and it’s then that thoughts turn back to the places and faces that usually come to mind alongside the word “home.”

I feel it like a fog in my own thoughts, when I realize anew how distant all I knew and loved in Lipnica is at this moment — friends, students, and now family. I look at pictures taken during our last weeks in Poland and I feel I’m looking at snapshots of another’s life. Seeing myself in some of the shots reassures me that I was there, that I didn’t just dream it all.

This tint of gloom is nothing compared to the wretchedness I felt when I first returned from Poland in 1999. Struggling at first just to scrounge up enough for Boston’s exurbanite cost of living, feeling intense doubt about graduate school, knowing next to no one, thinking it could be over a year — maybe two — before I’d be teaching again, and being so far from everything and everyone I knew in America made the first months dismal. It’s not that every moment was hellish. Far from it. But the transition from my rural Polish world of certainty was emotionally exhausting.

It was a bad day.

One good way to keep busy is looking for work, combing CareerBuilder.com and Hotjobs and Monster daily. Hourly is the temptation – after all, you can search by the hour. Still once a day should suffice.

Reading is another way to keep busy. God knows we’ve got enough books to read now. Dad gave me his “Great Books” collection. An odd thing, those Great Books. Everything from Freud to Euclid, from Shakespeare to Darwin. They’re big, hardback books, with a sixties binding. I thought about digging into Faraday or Adam Smith, but I still haven’t finished Kapuscinski’s Imperium. For now, Faraday waits on his side, stacked on the floor by the bookcase, with the other Great and Heavy Books of Western History beside anthologies and lesser books.

My father said he had decided in the late sixties when he bought that Bundle of Books that he would, through his life, read them all. There are fifty-four volumes, beginning with the Iliad and ending significantly with Freud. I’m not sure how many he read, but I’m fairly sure he never made it out of the ancient Greeks.

The Great Books series gives we intellectual mortals a feeling that we’re somehow greater than we are. After all, we have in our library Gibbon and Ptolemy, Chaucer and Galen. But really, what’s the point? Those who would read them probably already have them. They’re useful for libraries and sect’s bookshelves.

No, I’m not so unoccupied that I’ve taken to reading Tacitus, important though he may be.

Keeping busy – for example, physicals for registering as a substitute teacher, getting a North Carolina driving license (I have to take the test – can’t just turn in the valid VA license.), getting tags, and so on.

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Moje pierwsze amerykanskie urodziny.

W tym tygodniu skonczylam 27 lat. Ostatnio nie mialam zbyt wielu powodow, zeby czuc sie staro. Tutaj mam kontakt z ludzmi starszymi ode mnie, wrecz emerytami. To osiedle gdzie mieszkaja rodzice Garego to osiedle emerytow, wiec gdziekolwiek sie pojawiamy wszyscy witaja nas slowami – o, mlodziez przyszla. Milo byc najmlodszym, no ale to 27 to juz niestety blizej trzydziestki niz osiemnastki…

Rodzice Garego postanowili uczcic moje pierwsze urodziny w Stanach w sposob, na ktory godza sie tutaj tylko dzieci i emeryci. Ja zupelnie nieswiadoma tego co mialo sie wydazyc nie musialam udawac zaskoczenia i znioslam wszystko z usmiechem na twarzy. Po pierwsze dostalam od nich suszarke do wlosow – uwielbiam te wszystkie praktyczne prezenty, ktore ostatnio zdaza nam sie dostawac. Tak sie ciesze, ze wszyscy na sile nie staraja sie dekorowac naszego mieszkania. Po drugie, postanowili mnie zabrac na kolacje do Cracker Barrel. To jest taka amerykanska restauracja, ktora serwuje „wiejskie” i „swojskie” jedzenie (wiejski i swojski umiescilam w cudzyslowiu tylko dlatego, ze nie maja wiele wspolnego z polskim znaczeniam tych slow, poza tym jedzenie bylo bardzo dobre) i cieszy sie ogromna popularnoscia wsrod amerykanow. Kiedys probowalismy sie tam wybrac w czasie weekendu, ale kolejka oczekujacych na stolik byla tak dluga, ze zrezygnowalismy. W kazdym razie na moja urodzinowa kolacje Gary zasugerowal danie, ktore skladalo sie z trzech najbardziej polularnych tam potraw – pierogi maczne, ktorych tutaj nie nadziewa sie niczym, smazona szynka i mieso mielone z warzywami (papryka, cebula i przyprawy). To mielone mieso najbardziej mi smakowalo. Obslugiwala nas bardzo mila kelnerka. Od razu wyczula, ze nie jestem tutejsza, moj akcent rozpoznala jako francuski – cieplo ale jeszcze nie goraco. Kiedy konczylismy posilek a ona jeszcze raz przyszla zapytac, czy niczego nam nie brakuje, mama Garego powiedziala, ze wlasnie dzisiaj mam urodziny i zapytala czy firma nadal serwuje dla jubilatow torciki. Kelnerka powiedziala, ze teraz serwuja cos innego i ze zaraz przyniesie mi moj urodzinowy deserek. Po chwili widze, ze z kuchni wychodzi caly szereg kelnerow i kelnerek (bylo ich czterech albo pieciu) i kieruje sie w strone naszego stolika. Otoczyli nasz stolik i klaszczac zaczeli spiewac specjalna firmowa piosenke urodzinowa. Bylam w totalnym szoku, zupelnie oszolomiona nawet nie czulam sie zaklopotana ale zdecydowanie nie chcialabym przezywac tego jeszcze raz. Zupelnie sie nie dziwie, ze Gary jako nastolatek podobno grozil rodzicom, ze ich zabije, jezeli zrobia mu taka niespodzianke. Wszyscy mieli ze mnie nie maly ubaw, Gary, rodzice no i polowa gosci w restauracji. Jak wychodzilismy ludzie mnie zaczepiali i skladali mi zyczenia – niezly obciach. No coz, ciekawe jakie jeszcze amerykanskie niespodzianki przede mna…

Comment [3]

Plus GSM

You’re a loyal wireless customer. You always pay your bills on time, and you’ve never harped on or bitched about anything.

What happens when someone steals your cell phone and your contract is with a reputable company that is vaguely interested in keeping its customers satisfied? The answer is irrelevant, because there are a number of solutions to the problem that involve keeping the customer happy (so that, naturally, she will continue giving money to the company).

What happens when someone steals your cell phone and your contract is with a company that has no idea what “customer satisfaction” means and is more interested in covering its butt than providing a service? You’re charged a penalty.

I had a cell phone with Plus GSM, a sorry excuse for a wireless provider that has such generous packages as twenty free minutes for a forty-zloty monthly charge.

“Choose us and you get three short but entire conversations for free!”

Such are the sorry offers you get in Poland, where an adolescent free market is still virtually competition free. You swallow hard and take what they give you, if you want a cell phone.

I had no choice. I signed a contract, used my twenty minutes, sent a ton of text messages instead of talking to people, and despite the ridiculously small number of minutes I had, was relatively satisfied.

When Kinga and I moved to the States, I left my cell phone with my father-in-law. This was because Plus GSM would not cancel my contract even under such extenuating circumstances. I was told I would have to pay an early-termination fee. Nothing new there – wireless providers in the States do the same thing (although Verizon told me that I could cancel without a penalty if I were moving to a location that didn’t have Verizon service. What is ridiculous about it is Plus GSM’s early termination penalty fee is 800 zloty, which represented 73% of my monthly salary!

Seventy-three percent!

I decided instead to leave money for my monthly payments with my parents-in-law and let them use the free minutes (My wonderful package included a whole twenty free minutes!) until the end of the contract.

Last week, my mobile phone was stolen. I informed Plus GSM via fax and asked them to discontinue service to that particular cell phone. The plan was simply to continue paying the monthly fee until the contract is completed in November and be done with it. To do this, we’d have to buy a new SIM card for the cell phone, even though we wouldn’t have a phone to put it in.

We wrote a fax to Plus GSM about this. For those who can read Polish:

Zwracam sie z prosba o calkowite wylaczenie karty SIM mojeg telefonu nr 695-635-967. Prosbe swa uzasadniam tym, ze telefon moj zostal skradziony. Poniewarz w tym momencie przebywam w USA chcialbym upowaznic do wszystkich zmian na moim koncie pana Jana Jedrusia [...]. Zwracam sie rowniez z prosba o udostepnienie Janowi Jedrus adresu e-mail oraz nr, ktore umozliwia znalezienie telefonu.

Wiem, ze dane te powinny znajdowac sie na mojej umowie ale niestety umowa ta zaginela podczas mojej ostatniej przeprowadzki.

For those who can’t read Polish, the fax basically informed them of the situation and authorized my father-in-law to make any changes necessary in my account to resolve the matter.

Plus GSM did as requested. Sort of. They interpreted that fax as a cancellation of the contract and informed my father-in-law that the penalty bill had been sent.

Infuriated, I sent the following fax, in English:

I have been informed by Jan Jedrus, my father-in-law, that despite the fact that my telephone was stolen, you intend on forcing me to pay the penalty for early termination of contract.

My phone was stolen and you want to penalize me further? I’m a victim, and you’re treating me like I’m the thief!

That is the singularly most immoral business practice I have ever encountered.

I know your argument: “Well, sir, if we just canceled contracts whenever someone reported their cell phones stolen, we would lose a fortune because so many people would lie and then sell the phone!”

I’m sorry, but that is not my problem. You are the ones operating a business, and that means you are by default taking a risk. Customers should not be taking a risk in signing a phone contract.

What you’re doing doesn’t even make good business sense. You want to make money, not lose it. When I come back to Poland, I will need a cell phone. If you treat me well, I will chose your company, which would result in me paying much more than 800 zloty. However, you want me to pay 800 zloty now and thereby guarantee that I will never use your services again. Are you really that short-sighted?

You’re just showing that in Poland, it’s better to steal than be honest. It’s better to be a thief than to be an honest customer. If there were any justice in Poland, and there is not, you would be shut down for your fraudulent business practices.

I refuse to pay this penalty

Kinga’s Dad talked to these folks several times, and they told him that if we didn’t pay, they’d take me to court. But when we got to thinking about the details of this situation, and we realized something startlingly simple: we never canceled the contract. If they take us to court, we simply and honestly deny that we canceled the contract, and they have no proof that we did.

Still, we wanted to finish this in a respectable, honorable manner, so we sent yet another fax, explaining explicitly that my father-in-law had my authorization to do anything necessary to resolve this, including buying a new SIM card. We wrote yet another fax, expressly saying that my father-in-law had “permission” to buy a SIM card for the phone. Again, for those who know Polish:

W zwiazku z tym ze aktualnie mieszkam w USA a moj telefon, na ktory nie wygasla jeszcze umowa zostal skradziony upowazniam pana Jana Jedrusia zamieszkalego w Jablonce [...] do zakupu zastepczej karty sim na rzecz mojego konta. Pragne wyrazic moje oburzenie jak malym zaufaniem traktujecie swoich stalych i uczciwych klientow. Bylem waszym klientem ponad poltorej roku, zawsze w terminie placilem rachunki. W sytuacji kiedy przeprowadzam sie do USA a kilka tygodni pozniej, telefon zostaje skradziony z kuchni mojego tescia firma naraza mnie jedynie na kolejne koszty i traktuje mnie jak zwyklego oszusta. Pragne tutaj zaznaczyc, ze w USA w kazdej firmie telefonii komorkowych w przypadku przeprowadzki mozna bez zadnych kosztow wycofac sie z umowy. W Polsce nie jest to jeszcze mozliwe, to ciagle jeszcze mlody kapitalizm i niestety nie umiecie jeszcze szanowac swoich klientow. Przyznam, ze najwygodniejsze dla mnie byloby zaplacenie abonamentu do konca waznosci umowy, niestety jak poinformowal mnie tesc po rozmowie z biurem obslugi klienta, firma nie wyrazila na to zgody.

Bardzo prosze rowniez o przyslanie na moj adres internetowy adresu e-mail do dalszej korespondencji. Musze przyznac, ze forma komunikowania narzucona przez PLUS GSM naraza mnie i pana Jana Jedrusia na znaczne koszty. Bardzo prosze o wyrozumialosc i odstepstwo od Waszych nieprzyjaznych zasad.

Highlights, for non-Polish readers, include, registering “offense at how you treat your honest clients with such little trust,” and a comment about “young capitalism” in Poland, which means that unfortunately “you don’t know how to respect your clients.”

After we sent this, my parents-in-law went back to the nearest Plus GSM in Nowy Targ to buy the card. The sales rep asked for a copy of the contract. My parents-in-law didn’t have it; I have no idea where it is. Plus GSM does have a copy in Warsaw, but they refuse to send it. My father-in-law, angered beyond belief, suggested that he just pay the rest of the contract monthly payments then and there.

“No,” was the reply.

And so we’re just forgetting about it. Let them take us to court – for a little over $200 dollars. Let them do whatever. I, for one, will never have anything to do with Plus GSM, and if you’re in Poland, I suggest you do the same.

Comment [5]

Geodezja w Stanach

Pierwszy tydzien pracy mam za soba. Pierwszy projekt juz prawie zakonczony, w piatek zaczelam juz drugi. To czego dowiedzialam sie w tym tygodniu to zapewne tylko namiastka tego czego jeszcze musze sie tutaj nauczyc ale juz dostrzegam mnustwo roznic pomiedzy geodezja w Polsce a geodezja w Stanach.

1. Nie maja Osrodkow Dokumentacji Geodezyjno-Kartograficznej. To znaczy ze nie musz uzupelniac zadnych materialow ale z drugiej strony nie maja zadnych materialow wyjsciowych, wiec kazdy pomiar jest pomiarem od zera.
2. Nie kompletuja operatow. Zleceniodawca otrzymuje tylko mape, na ktorej sa wszystkie wymagane informacje. Nie ma zadnej instytucji, ktora odpowiadalaby naszym PODGiK gdzie nalezaloby skladac jakiekowiek dokumenty zwiazane z wykonywanym projektem. Instytucje odpowiedzialne za infrastrukture techniczna w miescie same prowadza swoje archiwa i zlecaja inwentaryzacje. Swoje mapy udostepniaja na stronach internetowych.
3. Ilosc informacji zawarta na mapie zalezy od zleceniodawcy. W tym tygodniu opracowywalam mape do celow projektowych. Przedmiotem bylo skrzyzowanie, ktore w tym momencie nie jest zbyt bezpieczne i maja tam wprowadzic pewne poprawki. Poniewaz teren jest mniej wiecej plaski w tamtym miejscu, zleceniodawca uznal, ze nie potrzebuje topografii, na mapie nie bedzie wiec ani jednej wysokosci. Nie do pomyslenia u nas.
4. Nie maja zadnego odpowiednika naszej instrukcji K-1. Dobor symboli i ich wielkosc jest zupelnie dowolna, za to na kazdej mapie musi sie znajdowac legenda. Na tych mapach, ktore widzialam wiekszosc symboli jest opisana bezposrednio na mapie. Poniewaz jednak stosuja wieksze skale niz my, nie zaciemnia to rysunku.
5. Slala rowniez zalezy od zlecenia ale uwielbiaja duze skale. Wiekszosc map rysuja w odpowiednikach naszych 1:200 do 1:300, my zaczynamy podklady projektowe od 1:500.
6. Mapy eidencyjne sa ogolnie dla wszystkich dostepne na stronach internetowych odpowiednika naszego Urzedu Powiatowego. Sa to tylko pogladowe mapy, mozna je ogladac na podkladzie zdjec lotniczych lub na podkladzie planu miasta i dowolnie dodawac rozne informacje. Wiekszosc miast ma tego typu bazy GIS. Dokladne informacje o granicach dzialek znajduja sie w odpowiednikach naszych ksiag wieczystych. Jeszcze do konca nie wiem jak oni tutaj sie tym posluguja, wiem ze maja z granicami nie mniejsze problemy niz my.
7. Ksiegi wieczyste – sa dostepne dla wszystkich na stronach internetowych. Tak jak i u nas archiwum prowadza sady.
8. Szkice terenowe – Boze jak ja teskie za szkicami Grzeska i Michala. To co dostaje to sterta smieci. Nie uzywaja symbloli, posluguja sie tylka kodami a i tutaj panuje pelna dowolnosc. Kazda ekipa terenowa stosuje dowolnie przez siebie ustalone kody. Szkice sa bardzo szczatkowe, dostaje przewaznie jedynie wykaz numerow pikiet z kodami – masakra.
9. Zleceniodawca nie placi za projekt ustalonej na poczatku kwoty, placi za robotogodziny poszczegolnych pracownikow. Kazdy z nas wypelnia codziennie formularz, gdzie wpisuje ile godzin pracowal nad danym projektem i co konkretnie danego dnia zrobil.

Comment [4]

By Hand

Kinga bought a new notebook for taking notes at her job. New vocabulary, new measures, new everything.

It’s a sturdy notebook, with a rough plastic cover and a cloth-covered binding. Very nice.

It makes me wish I could write something by hand, in a hard-bound notebook, with one of my fountain pens. But I keep a journal by computer, remain in contact with friends via email, and blogging by hand? Well, I guess I could write it on a page, take a picture of it, the post the image.

Such are the costs of an electronic age.

When I first moved to Poland, I didn’t have a computer, so I kept my journal by hand, in flimsy notebooks with pictures of unknown teenage girls on them in semi-provocative poses. They were the only ones I could find.

When I got my laptop in Poland, I started transcribing all the entries, but got through only a few months.

I recently found them, going through boxes packed away years ago. For a brief moment I considered getting started again on the transcribing, in some misguided attempt to make them “permanent.”

Still, my journal documents on the computer are password protected, keeping out any casual snooper. These obviously enough are not.

Do I care if anyone reads them? Not really. They read about like this entry…

Comment

Swimming in Culture

How many cultural issues can you spot in the image of an American man going to buy swimming trunks? More than you’d expect.

Sunday Kinga and I went out with friends of the family on their houseboat. Those who can read Polish got more details form Kinga, but suffice it to say that water skiing was one of the afternoon activities and Kinga got up on her first try.
Before going, though, I needed a pair of swimming trunks. I have a pair that I bought in Poland, but I’d not be seen in public wearing those in the States. They are, in a word, Speedos. I bought the longest pair the store had, but they’re still skin tight and extremely skimpy. What is it about European men wearing Speedos all the time?

I have nothing against Speedos in the proper context. In fact, I’ve worn them many times – in competitive swimming events. But walking around the beach? Swimming around in a lake? It seems like taking a Ferrari to the corner store for a pack of cigarettes – completely unwarranted and a more-than-slight exaggeration.

So, not wanting to parade around in Speedos yet wanting to save as much money as possible, Kinga and I did the logical thing: we went to Wal-Mart to buy swimming trunks.

It was a mistake.

Wal-Mart is, arguably, one of the cheaper stores in the States, which means it attracts a certain clientèle from a certain socio-economic group of people. I don’t know if in fact that has anything to do with the fact that literally 95% of the trunks we found were size XXL, but I have my suspicions. And the colors and designs: Lord, I left with a headache.

I ended up leaving with a pair of violently bright green shorts because they were the only pair I could find that were size large. They’re too big for me, but I feared one of the three “Mediums” we found would be too small.

Comment [4]

Wodne

Nie mamy jeszcze rowerow ale probujemy utrzymac forme. Staramy sie codziennie plywac. W niewilkim kompleksie kondominiow, gdzie mieszkaja rodzice Garego jest niewielki basen do dyspozycji mieszkancow. Nie jest duzy, ok. 10 m dlugosci. Dla mnie wystarczy, plywam dookola az do utraty tchu. Gary mowi na niego duza wanna, ale on to troche inna klasa plywania. Te jego motylki, „flipy” i „flapy” faktycznie maja tam troche ciasno.

W ostatnia niedziele mielismy prawdziwa uczte wodna. Przyjaciele rodzicow maja ogromna lodz, wlasciwie takie male mieszkanie na wodzie. Procz tego motorowke i mnostwo roznych zabawek do uprawianie sportow wodnych. W trzy rodziny zapakowalismy sie na lodz w niedziele po obiedzie. Znalezlismy spokojna zatoke, gdzie nie bylo ludzi i „zarzucilismy kotwice” (czyt. przywiazalismy lodz do drzewa). To bylo istne szalensto. Gary wreszcie mial tyle wody ile lubi, ja odwazylam sie zjezdzac z gornego pokladu na glowke do wody, no i najwazniejsze po raz pierwszy w zyciu jezdzilam na nartach wodnych. Niesamowite przezycie ale bardzo wyczerpujace, dzis jeszcze czuje bole miesni a nie jezdzilam dluzej jak 10-15 minut. Najpierw mialam okazje ogladac wyczyny Aleksandra, syna wlascicieli. On jezdzi na desce i robi rozmaite akrobacje, juz prawie wychodzi mu obrot o 180 st. Pozniej Gary zalozyl narty, podobno latwiej sie na nich jezdzi niz na desce.

Bacznie obserwowalam jak wyglada start na dwoch deskach, to poderwanie sie z wody wydawalo mi sie najtrudniejsze. Ellen, ktora byla wczesniej instruktorka, udzielila mi krotkich wskazowek jak nalezy zachowywac sie w wodzie. Wskoczylam do wody, wrzucili mi narty, krotka szamotanina, zeby je zalozyc, lina juz lezala obok mnie i wszyscy czekali az przyjme wlasciwa pozycje. Siedzialam skulona w wodzie, kolana pod broda, rece wyprostowane, czubki nart wystaja z przodu z wody. Jak juz bylam gotowa to lekko drzacym glosem cicho powiedzialam „hit it” – uslyszeli i motorowka ruszyla. Wstalam za pierszym razem. Podobno udaje sie to 10 % poczatkujacych, czyli nie jest z moja forma i koordynacja tak zle. Najtrudniejsze dla mnie byly jednak zakrtety. Jak lodka zaczynala skrecac moja naturajna obrona bylo podciagniecie sie na linie, wtedy od razu ladowalam w wodzie i caly start zaczynal sie od poczatku. Niesamowity sport ale tak jak mowilam, niewyobrazalnie wyczerpujacy. Po kilkunastu minutach mialam rece i nogi jak z waty a miesnie bola mnie do dzisiaj. Nie mam niestety zdjec, Gary robil zdjecia analogowym, wiec musimy poczekac az skonczymy film.

Comment [2]

I ustacould

“I ustacould, but I cayn’t no mo.”

“Me and Mama, we was there yesterday.”

“I ain’t never said such a thang.”

Kinga had her first encounter with southern accent, virtually unintelligible southern accents over the Fourth of July weekend. Visiting my family in South Carolina, poor Kinga probably said “Excuse me?” more times in those few days than she’s said in the last few years combined.

It’s not just the accent that’s difficult. There are so many quirks of a southern, South Carolinian accent that cause problems.

• Present perfect usually is created with a form of “have” plus the past particle (i.e., “done”). Southern present perfect is created with “done” plus either the past simple form (“ate”) or the past participle – usually the former. So instead of “I’ve already eaten,” we get “I done ate.”
• “Be” in the past simple is always “was.” “Were” is virtually non-existent. “We was gonna try, but…”

Now she has an idea how difficult the local dialect in Poland was for me.

Comment [5]

4 lipca

Bardzo szybko to wszystko sie toczy. Trzy dni w Poludniowej Karolinie, w okolicach Charlotte, powrot, poszukiwanie mieszkania zakonczone sukcesem i ciag dalszy poszukiwan pracy dla Garego. Ciesze sie, ze nie zaczelismy od Charlotte, nie podoba mi sie tam. W Asheville jest o wiele ladniej.

4 lipca spedzilismy w Rockhill u siostr taty Garego. Na swiatecznego grila przyjechalo okolo 30 czlonkow rodziny ale jak pozniej sie okazalo, ciagle brakowalo kolejnych 40 osob. To bardzo duza i nieco zwariowana rodzinka, jak zreszta kazdy tam powtarza. Mistrzem ceremonii byl tata Garego. Upiekl na grilu kilkadziesiat hamburgerow i hot-dogow. Musze przyznac, ze te hamburgery nie byly zle. Przygotowanie wszystkiego zajelo czterem siostrom okolo godziny. Pokrojenie warzyw i uformowanie hamburgerow z mielonego miesa, to jest ten sekret domowych hamburgerow. Pozniej tzw. szwedzki stol. Hamburgery oczywiscie z duza iloscia salaty, pomidorow, papryki i sosow. Bardzo smakuje mi tutaj salatka ziemniaczana (prawie zupelnie zmiazdzone ziemniaki z gotowanym jajkiem, cebula, majonezem i przyprawami). Wszedzie pojawia sie ta papka z czerwonej fasoli, ktora nie zawsze mi smakuje, makarony z pomidorami i topionym serem zoltym, „diabelskie” jajka i kilka rodzajow ciast – zadne domowej roboty (w przyszlym tygodniu rodzice organizuja dla nas mala impreze, na pewno upieke cos swojskiego). Oczywiscie wszysko przegryza sie tutaj ogromna iloscia chipsow i przepija sie coca-cola, ewentualnie piwem ale to ktore bylo na grilu nie powinno nawet nazywac sie piwem, bo do piwa mu daleko. Ale to nie znaczy ze nie ma tutaj dobrego piwa – oczywiscie Corona, ktora juz wczesniej odkrylysmy z Ewa no i Samuel Adams, tez niezly. Ale i tak teskimy juz za polskim piwem.

Cala imreza trwala od 16:00 do 20:00. Na parkingu wokol grila utworzylismy bardzo zabawny krag i zaczely sie plotki i ploteczki. Ze wszystkimi staralismy zamienilismy kilka zdan. Wszyscy jak jeden maz mieli przy sobie zdjecia swoich dzieci, to chyba tez taka amerykanska tradycja i opowiadali o dzieciach bardzo duzo. Slyszelismy wiec o roznych osiagnieciach sportowych, szkolnych ale i o pierwszych randkach, to tez tutaj dosc popularny temat. Rozmawialam ze wszystkimi na ile tylko bylam w stanie sie z nimi dogadac. Wierzcie mi poludniowy akcent zwala z nog i po kilku godzinach wysilania sie w rozumieniu co tez oni chca mi powiedziec, mialam serdecznie dosc.

Comment [3]

Temporary Post

Two out of three are accomplished:

1. Kinga has a job.
2. We have an apartment.

I’m still looking, and that means the obvious. The dreadful – temping. Oh, how I hated temping in Boston.

That’s what I’m supposed to say, right? But bottom line is, it doesn’t really bother me. It’s obviously not a long-term career choice. “Our third contestant is Gary, a professional temper, with thousands of assignments under his belt.” No, not something I want to keep until I perfect it, but there is a, well, charm about it for a little while. Walking into an office and not knowing what you’ll be doing, who you’ll be working for, what your coworkers will be like, or even where your place of work is located.

Okay, it does suck.

Even the title – a temp – is demeaning. “Oh, you’re the new temp.” An outsider in every sense of the word.

Comment

Survey America

Dostalam prace. To co wydarzylo sie tutaj w ciagu ostatniego tygodnia przekroczylo moje najsmielsze oczekiwania. Zastanawialam sie czy wogole bede miala szanse dostac prace w geodezji w tym roku.

Asheville, NC (Polnocna Karolina) – bardzo ladne, stare miasteczko z takim angielskim klimatem polozone w gorach – tam uderzylismy. Miasto bardzo nam sie podoba, jeszcze na pewno do tego wroce, poza tym znalazlam tam 26 firm geodezyjnych. Zaczelismy w poniedzialek, we wtorek po poludniu mialam juz pierwsza propozycje pracy, przyjelam ja w piatek rano. Nie spodziewalam sie, ze to wszystko tak szybko sie potoczy. Zaczynam 18 lipca, oczywiscie moga mnie jeszcze wyrzucic, jezeli im sie nie sprawdze…

Ten tydzien przyniosl wiele nowych doswiadczen, musze przyznac, ze niektore byly dosyc zaskakujace:

1. Otwartosc i zyczliwosc geodetow – jestem dla nich zupelnie obca osoba, ktora do tego przyjechala z jakiegos odleglego, obcego dla nich kraju, bardzo czesto padalo pytanie, czy Polska jest juz krajem demokratycznym. Mimo to, wielu z nich nie tylko poswiecilo mi swoj czas ale rowniez udzielalo wielu rad, gdzie co znalesc, od czego mam zaczac zeby zdobyc tutaj uprawnienia, jak wygladaja egzaminy i jak wazne tutaj jest to, zeby te uprawnienia zdobyc. Bylam zaskoczona, w Polsce nie spotkalam sie, zeby tak powszechnie wszyscy na wstepie sprzedawali Ci cenne informacje, raczej samemu trzeba bylo szukac.
2. Zainteresowanie firm – to na pewno przede wszystkim swiadczy o tym, ze na rynku duzo sie dzieje i jest ogromne potrzebowanie. Ale ja mialam tutaj obawy – kto chcialby rozmawiac z baba geodeta a do tego z Polski, gdzie to jest i czy oni maja tam juz komputery? A tu wrecz przeciwnie. Jezeli pojawialam sie w firmie i akurat nie bylo geodety, z ktorym moglabym porozmawiac to przewaznie do kilku doslownie godzin otrzymywalam telefon i umawiali sie ze mna na rozmowe. Ku mojemu zdziwieniu odzywaly sie raczej te wieksze firmy, ktore zajmuja sie rowniez inzynieria ladowa, projektami, GIS-em, fotogrametria …
3. Rozmowy kwalifikacyjne – nigdy wczesniej nie bylam na rozmowie kwalifikacyjne, wiec za bardzo nie mam porownania ale dosc profesjonalnie to dla mnie wygladalo. Rozmowa trwala od 1 do 1,5 godziny. Przychodzil geodeta, lub geodeta z szefem calego biura. Wypytywali sie o wszystko, poczawszy od tego czym sie wczesniej zajmowalam, co lubilam robic, w czym bylam dobra, w czym slaba, co cenilam a czego nie lubilam u swojego poprzedniego szefa a skonczywszy na bardzij osobistych pytaniach dotyczacych mojej osobowosci, np. jak znosze porazki itd. Czesto pokazywali mi sprzet na jakim pracuja, oprowadzali mnie po biurze. Wiele pytan mnie zaskakiwalo np no dobrze na poczatek opowiedz nam cos o sobie… Kurcze nie wiadomo o czym mowic, mowilam o sprawach zawodowych ale nie bylam przekonana o co im chodzi, ale przeciez nie zaczne: urodzilam sie w 1978 r. w niewielkiej wiosce Jablonka, tuz pod Babia Gora… Wiele pytan bylo bardzo scisle zwiazanych z problemami, z jakimi mozna sie spotkac w pracy i musze przyznac, ze te trzy lata doswiadczenia zrobily swoje i nie musialam tam siedziec z otwarta buzia tylko wiedzialam o czym mowia albo wydawalo mi sie, ze wiedzialam o czym mowia…
4. Jak wypadlam? – trudno do konca powiedziec na ile oni byli ze mna szczerzy a na ile byli po prostu uprzejmi. Raczej wykazywali zainteresowanie, mowili, ze spelniam ich wymagania i ze maja nadzieje ze wkrotce znowu sie ze mna skontaktuja. Ale ja nie ufam im w tej kwestii. Zaskoczylam sama siebie, ze potrafilam sie opanowac na tych rozmowach i juz po pierwszych mitutach zupelnie nie odczuwalam zdenerwowania i moglam na luzie z nimi rozmawiac.

Tylko jedna firma odpowiedziala natychmiast bardzo konkretna propozycja. Jest to sredniej wielkosci firma na rynku geodezyjnym w Asheville, NC, mniej wiecej taka jak nasza w Ludzmierzu – zatrudniaja wydaje mi sie ok 8 osob – zajmuja sie podobnymi projetkami jak my w Ludzmierzu. Zmiany jakie mnie czekaja – musze sie przestawic na Autocada i bede miala sanse popracowac na GPS-ach. Wydaje mi sie, ze takie cisnienie wystarczy mi na poczatek. Ale mam nadzieje, ze jeszcze w przyszlosci zapukam do Vaughn & Melton. A moze oni jeszcze sie do mnie odezwa.

W przyszlym tygodniu szukamy mieszkania – nie bedzie z tym problemow, jest mnostwo mieszkan, ktore mozemy wziasc od zaraz. No I teraz Gary zaczyna szukac intensywnie czegos dla siebie, bo do tej pory wozil mnie wszedzie. Jedziemy zatem do Asheville, to bardzo ladne miasto, w kazdym razie ja juz go polubilam.

Tymczasem jedziemy do rodziny taty Garego do Poludniowej Kroliny na swieto 4 lipca, wiec czeka mnie kolejna dawka wrazen.

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Limited Posting Again

After a brief flurry of activity, things are dead at MTS because real life is too lively.

Summary:

1. Looking for jobs.
2. Looking for employment.
3. Looking for gainful employment.
4. Looking for jobs.

That’s that.

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In the Mirror: Church and Culture

Even if you never looked at any other cultural aspect, you could learn a lot about the differences between America and Poland simply by attending one Mass in each country.

American society is more egalitarian and open, and the Mass in an American Catholic church reflects this. Boys and girls both serve as altar – what? Children? The division between priest and layperson dissolves as laypeople—including women—hand out the host for communion.

Polish society is much more patriarchal and hierarchical. Girls serving as altar helpers would be scandalous, and the priest really is seen as, spiritually speaking if not otherwise, a notch above the average layperson. He, and only he, can hand out the host.

Other striking differences:

• In giving the sign of peace, husbands and wives gave each other a friendly kiss. In Poland, you just don’t kiss in the church. It’s not the place for affection.
• Immediately after services, congregants began mingling and chatting. You don’t chat in church in Poland. Kinga once gave me a poke in the ribs for trying out to some small talk with an ex-student sitting beside me in Mass.
• In Poland, the formality of the occasion is reflected in the priest’s chanting voice. Here, the priest simply spoke the liturgy.
• In Poland, you might get to partake of the communion wine twice in your life. Here, one could conceivably have a sip every day.

What was most striking for me occurred early on in the sermon. The first reading of the Mass dealt with Elijah being given a place to stay and promising his hostess that in a year, she would be pregnant. The priest summarized this as “hospitality.” He talked about different forms of hospitality, then mentioned “passive” hospitality. It included, and this is no exaggeration, not complaining about higher taxes used to support a war which gives Iraqi people their first chance at freedom. In one, short sentence, the priest showed

1. He’s a Republican.
2. American priests have no problem mixing politics and religion.
3. He so desperately wanted to mention and support the war that he mentioned it in a most inappropriate way, basically calling it an act of hospitality.

Kinga was a bit disappointed by it. It was not much of a surprise for me, though.

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Bristol

Bristol – miasto w ktorym wychowal sie Gary. Mniej wiecej tak duze jak Kingsport ale o nieco innym charakterze. Spedzilismy tam pol dnia w piatek. Gary pokazywal mi dom w ktorym sie wychowal, szkoly do ktorych chodzil, miejsca ktore odwiedzal. W piatek odbylismy podroz do przeszlosci. Domek, niestety nie zrobilam zdjecia, bardzo ladny, w bardzo spokojnej okolicy. Osiedle domkow zupelnie odciete od glownych drog—bardzo bezpiecznie, zeby tam wychowywac dzieci. Okolica na prawde ladna. Teren pagorkowaty, dookola ladne domy, duzo zieleni, sporadycznie ogrodki z kwiatami—idelalne osiedle dla rodziny. Jedna rzecz jednak mnie zasmucila aczkolwiek nie zaskoczyla. Osiedle sprawia wrazenie opuszczonego – po prostu zywej duszy nie widac. Jedynie fakt, ze wszystko jest tak zadbane uswiadamia, ze jednak ktos tam mieszka. Dziwni sa ci Amerykanie, wszedzie widzi sie piekne domy, wszedzie mnustwo samochodow, smilam sie wczoraj, ze Ameryka to jeden wielki parking ale ludzi nigdzie nie widac…

Bylismy w starej podstawowce Garego, w szkole sredniej i na uniwersytecie. Oczywiscie ogrom, przestrzen, funkconalnosc, wyposazenie robia wrazenie jak wszystko tutaj. Przechadzalismy sie po placu zabaw szkoly podstawowej, Gary przypominal sobie wszystkie sztuczki jakie robili z kolegami w malpim gaju.

I was surprised by the playground on the school grounds. This is supposedly for high school students’ children. It’s not that I was thinking that the morality in American schools is lower than that in Polish schools because they’re certainly comparable. I was thinking, though, of Mrs. Stopkowa, the director of our high school. Even thinking about such a thing would, for her, be “demoralization of children.” I remember that she once didn’t allow a student to take the matura [high school exit exam] because she was pregnant. Liceum—no coz, my nie mielismy hali sportowej, ani auli o basenie nawet nie bylo co marzyc. Ale to sa standardy do ktorych mozna przywyknac ogladajac amerykanskie filmy. Zaskoczyl mnie plac zabaw na terenie szkoly. Podobno to przedszkole dla dzieci uczniow szkoly sredniej. Nie chodzi o to ze pomyslalam sobie, ze morale w szkole amerykanskiej jest mniejsze niz w polskiej, pewnie to sie wyrownuje. Pomyslalam sobie o pani Stopkowej, dyrektorce naszego liceum. Ona, sama mysl uznalaby za demoralizujaca mlodziez. Pamietam przeciez przypadki, ze dziewczyna nie zostala dopuszczona do matury tylko dlatego, ze byla w ciazy…

Uniwersytet – wydal mi sie bardziej angielski, w bardzo pozytywnym tego slowa znaczeniu. To niesamowite jak wszystko co wydaje sie bardziej europejskie niz amerykanskie przykuwa moja uwage. To zabawne ale ogladam sie w sklepie za kobietami w sukienkach – zaloze sie ze plynie w nich europejska krew.

Bylismy w pieknym parku. Wlasciwie w centrum miasta ogromne hektary ziemi to park, tylko amerykanie moga sobie na to pozwolic. Park podzielony na rozne sekcje, czy czesci. W jednej czescie roznego rodzaju boiska sportowe, w nastepnej miejsca na piknik, dalej place zabaw dla dzieci, dalej sciezki spacerowe a wreszcie bardzo ladny rezerwat przyrody. Tam tez pojechalismy. Zaparkowalismy nasza toyote zaraz przed wejsciem i poszlismy na spacer. To byl rezerwat na terenie mokradel. Szlismy lasem pomiedzy bagiennymi plytkimi stawami. Sciezki spacerowe to swietnie przygotowane drewniane pomosty (nasz stopa nie postala na lesniej sciezce) spotkalismy toche dzikich kaczek i gesi. Miejsce na prawde bardzo ladne—i co ?—oczywiscie nie spotkalismy zadnych innych spacerujacych…—czy to jest taki stary europejski, wymierajacy zwyczaj.

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Flags but No Bikes

There are simply flags everywhere around my parents’ neighborhood. Kinga and I went for a walk yesterday and found a house that had seven flags hanging – and that’s not counting the Americana ribbons decorating the split-rail fence in the front yard, or the Americana pinwheels in flower pots.

And then there’s the “We support our troops” real-estate-style signs in the front yards. Unlike during Gulf War I, there are no “We support our troops – bring them home” signs. Somewhat depressing.

What is it about patriotism that makes me so nervous? Why have I never considered myself a patriotic individual? “And I’m proud to be an American,” we hear from huge speakers during Independence Day fireworks shows around here, but I just can’t identify with that. How can I be proud of something I had no part in? How can I be proud of an accident of fate? Am I fortunate to be an American? Certainly. Am I glad I’m an

American? Yes.

But proud?

I’m not ashamed of it in that sense. Well, not usually. Kinga tells me that I am much more European than American now, though when pressed for an explanation, she couldn’t explain it more than to say, “Well, you don’t sit around on the couch all the time.”

Is that the view she has of Americans? If so, then I’m a little embarrassed to be an American. We need to clean up our image if that’s how the world views us.

Trouble is, Americans haven’t ever really worried about how the world views us. In fact, I don’t think the average American knows how the world views us. Perhaps we see all the Mexicans trying to cross the border and think of Ellis Island immigration and assume that all these people are struggling to get into the country to be with us in our great American adventure and eventually take part in that cliché.

That’s why criticism of American policy is often met in middle-America with the simplistic explanation, “Well, they’re just jealous, that’s all.”

“America is just one big parking lot,” Kinga said the other day.

There’s a lot in that simple sentence: the consumer mentality, the urge for independence even in transportation, the wide-openness of America, and often the emptiness of America. Taking a walk yesterday evening, Kinga and I were shocked at how the whole neighborhood is deserted. “Not a single kid out playing,” she said. As we were driving around Bristol Friday, the same thing. “If it weren’t for the fact that everything is perfect down to the last detail,” Kinga said, “I’d think the whole place was deserted.”

It didn’t use to be that way. When I was growing up, our neighborhood was filled with kids riding bikes, playing baseball.

Well, from my perspective anyway.

America has changed a lot in the last three years.

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Pierwsze wrazenia

Przepraszam za brak polskich liter ale na razie nie udalo nam sie zainstalowac polskiej klawiatury na komputerze rodzicow. Dotarlismy. Nasza podroz trwala 25 godzin. Dlugo, bardzo dlugo, to mi uswiadomilo jak jestesmy daleko od domu. Pozegnanie z rodzina – mame caly czas widze zaplakana a tate widze na tarasie widokowym lotniska w Balicach jak trzyma w gorze zacisnieta piesc jakby chcial powiedziec “trzymajcie sie”. Bedziemy sie trzymac, chociaz wiem ze bedzie to trudne, bo ja juz okrutnie tesknie, ciazy mi strasznie ta mysl, ze bedziemy tu najprawdopodobniej tak dlugo I ze jestesmy tak daleko od rodziny I przyjaciol.

Rodzice Garego mieszkaja w bardzo ladnej okolicy. Wszystko bardzo przestronnie urzadzone, duze dzialki, ladne domy, wszedzie bardzo czysciutko I duzo, duzo zieleni – przeyjemnie. Mieszkanko bardzo przytulnie urzadzone, wszystko bardzo funkconalne I wygodne, maksimum udogodnien na kazdym kroku, szczegolnie w kuchni. Rozsmieszyly mnie amerykanskie lozka, ktore przez dwa lata z rzedu scielilysmy z Ewa w Wisconsin Dells. No I prosze, znowu spie w amerykanskiej poscieli.

Kingsport – maja tutaj ogromna fabryke chemikalow, dluga na 2 mile (3,2 km), nie pytalam jak szeroka. Jak na fabryke nadzwyczaj czysto tam wszedzie. Przejechalismy wczoraj przez miasto, oczywiscie szerokie przestronne amerykanskie ulice, w centrum troche murowanych, prostokatnych budynkow – mam wrazenie ze wszyskie te miasteczka wygladaja tutaj tak samo. Centrum miasta jest zupelnie plaskie a wokol wyrasaja takie smieszne pojedyncze stozkowate gorki. Wyrastaja ponad
miasto ok 200 m, nie sa zamieszkane ani w zaden sposob zagospodarowane cale porosniete lasem lisciastym.

Zabawnie wygladaja, takie zielone kopki.

Bylismy wczoraj w parku wypoczynku i rekreacji. Usytulowany w lesie pomiedzy tymi stozkowatymi gorkami, wokol sztucznego jeziorka. Maja tam takie male zoo w tym lesie. Wybieg dla wilkow, saren, basen dla wydr itd. Ladnie tam ale wszystko tak zaplanowane i obwarowane zakazami i nakazami jak mowil Stachu o Holandii. Wszedzie sciezki asfaltowe, tu wolno, tam juz nie wolno, nie pozostwiaja wiele swobody. Mozna tam pojezdzic na rowerach ale oczywiscie tylko scisle oznaczonymi sciezkami, no i nie mozna przyjechac do parku na rowerze, trzeba go sobie tam przywiezc. Oj czuje, ze nasza turystyka rowerowa bedzie tutaj troche inaczej wygladala. Coz to za przyjemnosc wywiezc gdzies rower zeby przejechac sie kawalek po parku.

Pocieszyla mnie jednak rozmowa ze spotkanym rowerzysta. Opowiadal nam o klubie rowerowym jaki maja w Kingsport i o trasach rowerych w okolicznych lasach. Pomyslalam sobie ze moze jednak nie wszysko stracone i moze jednak mozna tutaj powaznie pojezdzic na rowerze.

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First Impressions

English, English, English—English everywhere. That’s the most shocking thing for me of late. I can eavesdrop without effort. In fact, I found myself eavesdropping in the airports even when I didn’t want to. I ducked into a newsagents at Newark airport and almost lost control of my bladder, so many English books I saw. Flipping through stations on the TV (strange enough to have a television), I didn’t have to decide, “Okay, is the English underneath the monotone dubbing loud and clear enough that I can understand it, or should I not even try.” (An old habit I never quite lost. In Poland, there’s one man reading the translated text with the original language in the background. When I first arrived, I tried desperately to hear the English underneath, and I never lost the habit once I could understand the Polish monotone.) English, English, everywhere. Except when I hear Spanish.

I’m in food heaven too. So much food I haven’t eaten in so long, and so much food that Kinga has never eaten.

• Humus—Ripped the tub open in the parking lot and took two fingers-full there.
• Shrimp—I cooked shrimp with garlic and cilantro our first evening here. When we bought the cilantro, I just buried my face in its greeny goodness and inhaled deeply, walking around supermarket afterwards with a chlorophyll buzz and a grin.
• Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia – Unable to eat the whole tub, but we made a dent.
• French roast coffee from freshly ground beans, with the leftovers chilled in the afternoon for iced coffee
• Select, highly processed junk food, which I rarely eat, but from time to time is amazing (read: Pringles).

And there’s so much waiting…we’re going to be positively zepplinish if we’re not careful.

The trip back was relatively painless, though long. We left Krakow somewhat late because of the chaotic situation in the immigration area. Three officers checking passports for two international flights. Really smart.

Our connecting flight out of Newark got canceled, so our mad dash from one end of the airport to the other (slight exaggeration, but…) was for naught. But in the process, we encountered a very nice immigration officer who, hearing that we were trying to make a connecting flight that was due to leave within the hour, made sure Kinga was the first of many to hand in her visa papers and getting fingerprinted (thank you Patriot Act). As I waited outside, he came back several times to tell me how things were progressing, for at the beginning, no one was processing them – they were all sitting in a room, staring at each other. “I’m going to try to see if I can’t get her first in line,” he explained, “Though I can’t promise anything.” I can’t imagine, honestly, a Polish immigration officer doing that.

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Back in the States

Kinga and I arrived safely at Newark at 4:45 Monday afternoon—ten minutes early, much to our shock. Our first flight to Charlotte was cancelled, so we we didn’t arrive home until after two in the morning, with the trip from Charlotte and everything.

Yesterday was spent unpacking. Today, the first installment of the family arrives.

No rest for the weary…

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Hell

AuschwitzKinga and I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau yesterday. It’s only now that I can appreciate the scale of the Holocaust. Reading Hitler’s Willing Executioners, seeing Schindler’s List, thumbing through albums — it’s not the same. Walking under the sign, “Arbeit Macht Frei,” standing in a gas chamber, walking along the barbed wire, standing by the railroad tracks where selection was made — only then did the number of Holocaust victims (up to ten million) begin to take on any personal, tangible significance for me.

Auschwitz (the main camp—Auschwitz I) is surprisingly small. A former Polish army base, it doesn’t have such an immediately ominous feel if you ignore the barbed wire and guard towers. Single and double story buildings laid out in a grid, with grass growing in between and birds singing. It could easily be mistaken for an old prison. In fact, that’s really what Auschwitz was.

Despite it’s being associated with genocide, it wasn’t an extermination camp, per se. It was a prison and work camp. That’s not to say that death wasn’t everywhere. Indeed, it was. But it was not a death factory on an imagination-defying scale.

Birkenau was.

Birkenau is three kilometers from Auschwitz, and is actually one of several sub-camps. It was know as Auschwitz II, and it served one purpose: destroying humans.

Birkenau is Auschwitz, for Auschwitz is the synonym of death in the Holocaust, and Birkenau, with its stark and lethal geometry, is the machinery we always imagine when we think “concentration camp.” If one can use the words “stereotypical concentration camp,” then that’s the perfect description of Birkenau.

At Birkenau, Nazis had two gas chambers and (as I recall) six crematoriums. Nazis processed humans like animals — herded out of the cattle cars, stripped naked, gassed, shaved and checked for gold teeth, then burned.

It’s the monotony of Birkenau that is sickening. A mile and a quarter by a mile and a half, its an enormous camp that had three hundred barracks and housed up to 100,000 people. About sixty of the barracks remain intact: forty-some brick and twenty-some wooden structures stand in the camp, with countless chimneys marking the ruins of the rest.

Most all of the barracks are open, and most all look the same. It’s that monotony — after a few barracks, you don’t even go into them anymore — that made me realize the true horrific scale and monstrosity of the Holocaust. Nazis lulled themselves into a rhythm of killing that resulted in literally mountains of corpses.

Something had to be done, so they started burning bodies. But this was not efficient — shooting people, then making huge bonfires. No — much more efficient to make an assembly line of death. And that’s what they did at Sobibor, Triblinka, Birkenau, and many extermination camps. Day in and day out, trains arrived, people were slaughtered, and the Nazis went back to their warm barracks and listened to Bach and wrote letters to their wives. Assembly line — everything at Birkenau screams it. Lines of barracks, dissected by a railroad track, surrounded by a fence. It’s geometrical, exact death.

Death times one point five million, to be precise. That’s the death toll of Auschwitz, and it means as you walk along the grounds, you’re walking on literally blood-soaked earth. It’s one of the few places in the world, I would say, where you can throw a stone and know it will probably land within a foot of where someone died. Within inches. Rather, at the very spot.

You walk in the barracks, running your hand along the bunks, realizing that every single morning, the inmates awoke to find someone else had died in the night. And as you’re running your hand along the bunks, you realize that they died in this bunk. And in this one. And in this one. In all of them, chances are.

There is not an inch of that ground that has not seen death, and it seems to root the buildings to the place, and make it difficult to lift your legs as you walk.

Tourists crawl over Auschwitz. They’re literally everywhere. Tour groups weave in and out of the barracks and through the streets, making it impossible to be alone. And the languages you hear — Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, French, English, Hebrew, everything.

And you hear German. We bumped into at least two German tour groups, and it somehow seemed eerily appropriate to hear German in that place.

Birkenau, in contrast, has much fewer tourists. It’s sheer size, compared to Auschwitz, means more privacy, less competition with other visitors. The parking outside is probably one tenth, if even that, of what’s outside Auschwitz, and yet it makes such a bigger impression.

My stomach churned the entire time, and for one brief moment, I was sure I was going to vomit. It was in one of the exhibits in Auschwitz, housed in the barracks. Hair — a literal mountain of hair, shaved from victims heads after being gassed. The hair provides proof to anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers, because there remain traces of Zyklon-B in the matted, filthy hair. There’s over fifteen-hundred pounds of hair in the exhibit, and at the near wall, just as you enter, is the spot I grew so nauseated that I had to go to the window to get air.

Fabric, woven from human hair, intended for clothes. An entire bolt of cloth — who knows how many were produced in total — with bits of hair placed on top.

There are hideous mountains throughout the exhibits: of shoes, of combs, of suitcases, of pots and pans and other kitchen utensils, of twisted eye-glasses, of artifical limbs. There are piles of shoe-polish tins, face-cream tins, forks, spoons, baby-shoes.

It’s too much. You just want to scream.

“The most tragic part for us, in the twenty-first century,” I said to Kinga as we walked along the train tracks in Birkenau. “Is that there are thousands, even millions, of people who would gladly see this camp open and operational again.” I wasn’t just referring to the anti-Semitism that still haunts our world, the young Neo-Nazis who deny that the camps were death camps — Hitler didn’t know; Hitler got a bum rap; and other absurdities — and yet know what the camps were used for and would like to see them killing again. I was referring to the guards and others responsible who are still living, some of whom no doubt regret that Hitler didn’t finish what he started.

What would have happened if Hitler had won the war? Birkenau leaves little doubt. The Jews would be non-existent, as would Slavs, Roma (Gypsy), blacks, Asians, and anyone else who offended Nazi sensibilities.

What’s most astounding about the concentration camps is that they, to some degree, cost Hitler the war. Hitler could have fought to a stalemate, then resumed again when his forces were strengthened. But what did he do? When supplies were needed at the front, instead of decreasing the shipments of victims to camps and using those trains to get supplies to the army, he increased the number of shipments. The pace stepped up as the inevitable loss approached. The Nazis’ hatred literally consumed them in the end. Its irrationality overwhelmed the cooler heads needed for military strategy, and reduced Nazi leadership to foaming-at-the-mouth, obsessive maniacs.

It’s not just the scale of victims that comes into sharp focus at Birkenau. The number of perpetrators — mostly German, but with help from other collaborators — required to murder that many people becomes obvious. It was not a handful of Nazis that did this. A significant percentage of the European population (again, the vastly overwhelming majority Germans) was mobilized to slaughter ten million people like household pests. And yet, at the Nuremberg trials, Allies brought forward only 24 indictments, resulting in 10 death sentences.

What about the others? If there are surviving victims sixty years later, there are surviving perpetrators. How do they live with that? How can they sleep knowing what they did and what they saw?

It’s another aspect of the Holocaust that defies all sense of reason and decency.

Last night, looking at pictures I took, it seemed like a nightmare.

Even when I was living the experience, it seemed dream-like and intangible. Walking around the camp, seeing the barbed wire and barracks and train tracks, imagining what it was like to be interned there, thinking about what happened — it all seemed unreal.

Such is the scale of the Holocaust that even when you’re in the center of the hell it created, it seems impossible. How can people do this to one another? You stand there in the incontrovertible proof of the Holocaust’s reality, and yet it seems insanely unimaginable. “What kind of an individual would think of such a thing, let alone put it into practice?”

I’ve seen it, but I’m even further from understanding it.

Comment [9]

Oświęcim

Tomorrow Kinga and I are hoping to go to Oświęcim, known of course to most of the world as Auschwitz. I’ve lived within sixty miles of it for seven years now, but I’ve never gotten the nerve to go visit. Though it seems a most depressing thing to do in our last week in Poland, Kinga and I decided that for precisely that reason — that we only have a few more days here — we should go while we have the chance.

It’s a bad time to go. Visiting Auschwitz always seemed more appropriate in the winter. Perhaps in some childish attempt to empathize with the victims, I always imagined going in the coldest period of winter, and purposely not dressing properly, as if my few hours of numbness makes up for anything. As if I should be making up for anything. Going in the late spring makes it somehow seem more frivolous, as if I’d feel compelled to stand in front of the famous “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign in my sandals and shorts and pose for a tasteless picture.

The whole issue of pictures itself is troubling. Should I? I don’t want to be a tourist, but what choice do I have? I don’t want to cheapen the experience by taking snapshots, but I also realize that it’s an opportunity of sorts. In then end, I’ll probably take a roll of black and white film and try to take some “artsy” shots.

It also seems like something one should experience alone. Discussion could too easily fall into idle chit-chat, I fear, but the reality is, the weight of the sense of tragedy there will silence us.

Comment [2]

Tele-Guru

American Protestantism has lead the way in using modern technology to spread its gospel. Radio and television have long been the preferred method of evanglism for small Protestant groups (usually “fundamentalist” or “evangelical,” however you want to construe those labels historically) that have the money, and when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Protestantism, though it claims to be a unified body of believers—a great invisible, church, “unified in Christ”—is really the biggest religious market in the world. Sure, they all believe in Jesus, but each group wants you to support its version of Jesus. So, much like Pepsi and Coke battling for your soft drink dollar, Rod Parsley is going head-to-head with Benny Hinn, trying to get you to send your “seed offering” (and you just know what some pervert has done…) to his group.

It seems that America no longer holds a monopoly on commercial religion. Indian Gurus are catching on to the fact that not all spiritual teaching has to be done in an ashram.

As the [Indian] national economy blossoms, the role of the guru as someone who helps his followers find enlightenment is evolving: Many spiritual guides are now smooth marketers with, often enough, a considerable knowledge of how to maximize their commercial appeal.

Many gurus have been forced to revolutionize their practices—packaging and aggressively marketing their religious services to cater to the changing desires of the consumer. Some have adopted the style of Western televangelists to promote their message.

Maybe a Hindu version of TBN is in the offing?

What’s amazing is that these gurus are not only copying the televangelist style, but also the content, offering their own health-and-wealth gospel, it seems:

Personnel departments in big firms are calling on spiritual gurus to help new recruits handle the tensions of modern working life.

Spirituality shops offering “health and wealth kits” are doing good business, and newly created religious channels on domestic television are expanding their reach into millions of homes.

Herb, Rod, Benny, Robert (as in Tilton, as in “The Farting Preacher”), and myrad other American “entrepreneurs” would be proud, I’m sure.

Read the whole IHT article

Comment [1]

Rainy Homophobia

I’m sitting in our virtually empty apartment, which won’t be appended with “our” from Monday, I guess. I left the computer here so I’d have something to do during the long break. I’ve got an hour and a half now, it’s raining like crazy, with temperatures below 15 Celsius, and I’m not sure what to write about.

I could write about the attention homosexuality is getting in Poland these days, thanks to a canceled gay pride parade in Warsaw. Parade organizers didn’t fulfill all the obligations for a march, said Warsaw mayor Lech Kaczyński’s office. For example, they didn’t submit a plan for how to re-route traffic in the march area, and they didn’t pay to compensate for the money busses would lose by avoiding the parade route. Now if this had been a march for Polish veterans, I’m sure Kczyński’s office would have been over backwards to help parade organizers. But concerning gay pride, there’ll be no bending in this country — sexual innuendo very much intended.

Last night, on a Cross-Fire type show, they were discussing the march. Some of the homophobes there were just amazing — they take this whole thing very personally. If you don’t want to see a gay pride parade, don’t watch. But of course the priest on the panel was talking about how “statistically” the “gay lifestyle” is harmful. Seventy percent of people with AIDs are gay; most pedophiles are gay pedophiles (or some ridiculous generalization like that); and so on. The priest actually said, “The homosexual lifestyle is a road to death.”

The parade organizer criticized the church, saying “Catholic” and “Fascist” in the same sentence. He now faces a lawsuit for saying that. In public, no less.

Of the people on the discussion panel, guess which ones were virtually foaming at the mouth at times? The homophobes, of course.

During the course of the show, there was a survey: Is there a problem with homophobia in Poland? Fifty-one percent said yes. Tomasz Lis, the host, commented on the station’s web site, though, the results were opposite: fifty-one percent said no.

Yes, I could write about homophobic Poland, but I don’t want to.

I could write about the weather. But what for? How much can I write about rain? It’s ridiculously cold, too. The temperature the last few days has topped out in the low 50’s. About ten days, it was literally forty degrees warmer. So the weather is not a good topic either.

Moving — there’s something. Packing so many boxes for shipping has made Kinga and me experts with tape. But who wants to read about taping?

Enough…

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Customer Satisfaction

Poll: Bush Job Approval Dips to New Low announces the Associated Press.

About one-third of adults, 35 percent, said they think the country is headed in the right direction, while 43 percent said they approve of the job being done by Bush. Just 41 percent say they support his handling of the war, also a low-water mark.

This just a matter of months after the election. The obvious question to the mythical “American public”—why then did you elect him?

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A Letter

My name is Gary Scott and I have an account with Plus GSM. In order to prove my identity, I offer the following information:

• My telephone number is [deleted].
• My account number is [deleted].
• The account address is [deleted].
• My parents’ first names are [deleted].
• Lastly, I’m including a photocopy of my passport, which you have on file as well.

I am writing about two things. First, I would like the billing address changed for the remainder of my contract to: [deleted]

I called customer service and was informed that I can do this through the mail. I trust this is sufficient.

Second, I am declaring that I have no intention of renewing the contract. Do not renew it automatically. I realize that you want this done thirty days before the expiration of the contract, but I will be in America at that time and will be in no position to contact you. Not only that, but it is unreasonable to expect me to keep track of a cell phone contract that I will not even be using personally. Therefore, I am making the request now. Please bear in mind that if you do renew the contract against my wishes, as expressed here, the bills will go unpaid.

I must confess, though, that I’m very disappointed with your customer service and the ridiculous inability to perform such simple tasks by phone or internet. In addition, the 30-day-before time requirement for canceling the account is outrageous, and is nothing but an immoral attempt to trick unwitting customers into another contract, leaving them with the choice of continuing in an unwanted contract or paying an unjustifiably high cancellation penalty. As a company in an EU nation, you really should bring your customer service up to an appropriate level.

I appreciate your attention in this matter. Please send the appropriate confirmation to the above address.

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Last Tango

Kinga mentioned as we were getting ready for bed that this is “one of the last nights” we’d be sleeping in the apartment. “The next to last, actually,” I said, for we’re moving out tomorrow.

One of the most haunting and yet most disconcerting aspects of moving is the consciousness we have of being in a stream of “lasts.” The last time we’ll sleep in this apartment. The last time we’ll lug stuff up these steps.

The last morning coffee here.

Generally we have no idea a “last” is approaching, though. They take us by surprise, and can leave us reeling if it’s a significant last — the last time she talked to her father, for example. You’d think that foreknowledge is a good thing, then. But it tempers everything, and makes every moment both indefinitely long and breathtakingly short.

Lying in bed last night, thinking these things, I recalled a poem by W. S. Merwin:

For the Anniversary of My Death
Every year without
knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in
life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

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Coffee

Heading back home—I had a break between lessons—I stopped at the shop across the street where I’ve done all my shopping for seven years to buy coffee. I picked up the big half kilo package from habit and headed to the cashier.

“When will you be leaving?” she asked as she rung up my puchases.

“About two weeks. A little less,” I replied. “But Kinga and I will be moving out of the apartment this Thursday,” I continued.

So what are you buying this huge coffee for, you dolt, I thought.

Indeed, I should have saved money—a few groszy (Polish cents, really), but money is money—and bought the smaller coffee.

The weird things one has to take into consideration when moving…

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New Additions at kingary.net

Two new-ish additions:

• Chochołowska Valley
• Vlkolinec

One a bike trip, one in—gasp!—a car.

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I Wanna Fly Away

I knew it was going to be an interesting evening when, browsing the hosts’ bookselves, I saw the title Astral Projection.

“I’m a pagan,” explained the hostess, and suddenly I wished I had a hidden camera. Learn how to leave your body—walk through walls—fly around your neighborhood—meet your deceased loved ones and astral spirits—communicate with your guides and teachers—experience other dimensions—and even travel through time to witness past or future events! And Much Much More! 100 percent Guaranteed…

Later in the evening, I overheard the hostess saying, “When I mention love spells, people ask me, ‘Oh, you can cast spells?! Can you make that cute guy fall in love with me?!’ I just laugh and say, ‘It doesnt work that way.’”

It works, just not that way. How, pray tell, would a “love spell” work, then?

Of course, I wandered around the ‘net for a while the next day. I found this:

Hi. My name is Bob. I’m slowly becoming more and more interested in astral travel but have a few questions. Would you please help me with these?? I included all of you after reading the testimony you gave on machoneaudio.com. Serious responces only please.

1. Are you ever in any danger when you are having an OBE? (i.e. demons, evil spirits, danger of not being able to come back, ...)
2. Can you use these OBE for the purposes of becoming a person more loving??
3. Do you meet angels/gardian spirits??? If so, what do they say to you??
4. Have you ever attempted to draw near to the heavenly realms, and what happened if you did??

Again, please bare with me. I always was under the impression that this kinda thing was either dangerous or unhealthy.

I simply have some questions that I want to ask people who have done this theirselves, instead of simply reading a book.

I would appreciate your time and advice, whatever you think I should hear!

I knew that he didn’t want a smart-ass response, and I realized as I typed away, giggling, that I was being very childish…but I couldn’t resist:

Some tips about astral project/travel:

1. It’s the 21st century, so don’t get caught up in silly gimmicks. Stick to the basics when it comes to obe.
2. Because it’s only something that exists in your mind, you need to bear in mind that everything you see is not what it seems but only an illusion produced by your gullibility.
3. It’s the 21st century, so remember that most people have replaced superstition for scientific knowledge. Keep that in mind during your travels.
4. If you encounter a fellow traveler or a demon, it’s probably just an acid flashback.
5. It’s perfectly safe to leave your body — nothing will hurt it — as long as you leave a shotgun by your body’s side so it can protect itself.
6. The body has a mind of it’s own, so always lock the door before leaving your body.
7. If you’re tempted to take this all as a joke, you’re probably too intelligent to be messing with astral projection.
8. It’s the 21st century. Remember that.
9. If you’ve had as much fun reading this as I have writing it, you’re probably too intelligent to be messing with astral projection.
10. It’s the 21st century. Remember that all religious hoaxes have been cleared by the bright dawn of scientific literacy. If you’re tempted to believe this, you’re probably not firmly in the 21st century.

Hope this helps.

In the exchange that followed, I got called “sagaciously stupid,” “sophmoric” (_sic_), “childish,” and he referred to my thoughts as “the luminous pearls of wisdom you so enlightened me with.”

Guilty on most counts, I guess.

Astral projection makes objective claims that should, in theory, be testable: your spirit can leave your body. As a non-believer, I have a great problem with the whole notion of a ghost in the machine, but that aside, it’s still problematic. If astral projection is possible, where’s the proof? If it’s this great feat that anyone, with a bit of training and practice, can master, why not prove it?

How could we do this? Easily. Early in the NASA program, before any probes had made it to a foreign planet, an astral projectionist (I don’t know the correct term.) could have “gone” to Venus, for example, an given a detailed account of what we’d find there. Then, when we send a probe ourselves, we check it. If astral projection is true, bingo: we have the evidence.

Funny thing is, something like this was indeed done, only not with Venus but with Jupiter. Of the claims made, something like 15-20% were true, but obvious from current knowledge (i.e., it’s gaseous, there are storms on the surface). A small proportion were unverifiable because either the claim was ambiguous or the data received was ambiguous. The vast majority of the astral projectionist’s claims were dead wrong. Proof that it doesn’t work? Not really. But it certainly makes it extremely suspect. (You can read more about this in James Randi’s Flim-Flam.)

Comment [15]

Fathers' Computer

This week Kinga and I finished getting DSL installed for my her dad’s computer, as well as a general overhaul of the whole thing—re-installing Windows (that basic computer admin hell known only to Microsoft victims), cleaning out old files, etc.

And teaching him how to use a webcam. Actually, much to his credit, he figured that out for himself. We’d shown him how to use Skype for voice chatting, but it doesn’t include video chatting at the moment. For that, I reluctantly installed MS Messenger, and he figured out the rest while Kinga and I were at home Saturday morning.

He does catch on fairly quickly, I must admit—once you show him something, he remembers it.

But like many people new to computers, he’s not comfortable learning as I did: clicking around, thinking, “Hum, wonder what this does.”

It has, once again, shown me how relatively “ahead of his times” my father is. Our first computer was a TRS-80, with, I think, a staggering 8kb of memory. Those were the days—plugging your computer into the television as a monitor, and connecting it to a cassette recorder in order to load a program.

Next we had an IBM PC Jr. It was a waste of time, I think, and Dad quickly upgraded to “the last computer we’ll ever need.” It had a mind-blowing 40 MB hard drive.

Jan, Kinga’s father, didn’t touch a computer until Kinga bought one for university. But in his typical, admirable fashion, he bought books and magazines and read up on the world of computers, even if he didn’t understand it all.

Now that he’s got DSL, he doesn’t feel guilty sitting for hours at the computer, just wandering around the internet.

Comment

Three Random June Thoughts

One

June is finally here — the month of our return. After four years in Poland, I’m moving back to America. After twenty-some years in Poland, Kinga is moving to America. Big transitions for both of us.

“You’re more European now,” she said last night, not commenting though on what I’m more European than. I suppose than I was. She mentioned the almost cliché change some Muslim men exhibit when, after marriage and returning home with their new wife, they suddenly revert to ultra Islam and become a new person — much to the bride’s dismay. I suppose that’s what she meant — more European than American, and her concern was about me becoming a fast-food bubba.

Two

In the process of packing, I found the old photos I’d taken before coming to Poland the first time, almost ten years ago now.

They were intended to be spare identification photos, though I doubt they’d suffice. Looking at them, I’m shocked at how much I’ve changed and how little I’ve realized that. I look in the mirror every day, after all, and so the changes — receding hairline, more mature eyes, lack of the scars of adolescence — slipped by me. I imagine that’s how it’ll be with Kinga as time passes. “What will she look like when she’s forty?” I ask myself, knowing the answer will still be “beautiful.” But it’s hard to imagine the marks time will make, and now I see it’s doubtful I’ll even notice until I look at our wedding album.

Three

Back to America. I haven’t been to the States in three years — too busy summers and a lack of money will do that to you. “Reverse culture shock” is something you hear about from time to time, and I’m wondering if it’s hovering there, a few weeks in the future. When I went back for the first time in 1998, after two years in Poland, the difference was profound. The quality of roads was something I’d totally forgotten about, so used to bumping along I’d become. The ability to understand almost everyone around me without trying felt almost like a dirty secret. “Do they realize I understand everything they’re saying?”

But most shocking was the choice — fifty-seven varieties of everything. The entire row of paper products (paper towels, napkins, etc.) at Super Wal-Mart literally stopped me mid-stride. Channel after channel on the television, all in English. Restaurants for every conceivable palate and wallet.

And so I know the feeling of “My oh my” that awaits Kinga.

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Complain

It seems all I do is complain about Poland lately. But the truth is, I’m not the only one.

Many people here feel that the country is in bad shape, due primarily to corruption, and only getting worse.

There are so many wonderful things about this country—it’s a shame that the most visible thing for me and many is the negative

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Health Care in Poland

is a joke.

To begin with, there’s no private insurance to speak of because its’ too expensive. Insurance in general is expensive here. Almost no one here has his car insured against theft. Considering the fact that an inexpensive new car would cost me twenty months’ of my salary, that’s ridiculous.

There is free public healthcare for everyone, but that’s only in theory. In practice, a lack of physicians and a lack of motivation (i.e., low salary) on the part of practicing physicians mean long waits for appointments (a matter of months sometimes) and ineffective services.

When you visit a doctor in a public clinic in Poland, you probably won’t be asked many questions. The doctor will get his pittance no matter how well he serves you, so he’d just as soon send you on your way so he can get through the multitude of patients he has for the day. A cursory glance, a question or two, and then whip out the prescription pad.

Not only that, but supplies are non-existent. You have to go buy your own anti-toxin, for example, if you step on a nail. If you’re coming in for an extended stay in the hospital (i.e., to give birth), you have bring your own toilet paper. And so on.

So public health care is dismal. If you want to get better, you go to a private clinic—and pay.

Personal case in point: I had throat problems a couple of years ago. Several visits to laryngologist working at the public hospital produced few results. One visit to a private laryngologist all but solved the problem. The difference: she didn’t just jot down a perscription after a cursory glance at my throat. She performed a detailed examination, with lots of questions, then provided not just a perscription, but a regimine for throat care.

The problem is pay—or lack thereof. Doctors are flooding out of Poland, mainly to Scandinavia.

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The Shot

Kinga stepped on a rusty nail Saturday. Never mind how—that’s a story in and of itself.

This is not the story of the rusty nail, but of getting the tetanus shot.

We went to the local health clinic, only to find that they didn’t have any anti-toxin for tetanus shots. “You’ll have to go to Nowy Targ,” which is about thirty minutes away.

We got to the hospital in Nowy Targ, got Kinga registered, and waited. Within a few moments, someone took Kinga back to some room. In the meantime, I wandered about the waiting room, reading this and that. There was an article in the local paper, enlarged to the point of exaggeration, which reported that the Nowy Targ hospital had been ranked in the top 100 in Poland—number 69 to be exact. I scanned the article—boring—and then sat back down.

Kinga emerged a few minutes later rubbing her arm and holding a slip of paper.

“That was fast,” I thought. “Kudos to the NT hospital for fast service.”

“We have to go to the pharmacy,” she said.

“What for?” I asked.

“They don’t have anti-toxin either. I have to buy it myself.”

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Babia Gora

Another weekend bike trip, this time around Babia Góra.

Comment [1]

-ation

I did a lesson on word formation with a group of juniors today. We worked on turning nouns to adjectives (i.e., beauty to beautify) verbs to nouns (i.e., improve to improvement), and then I stunned them with the news that they were going to learn more than a thousand new words during the lesson.

It’s an easy lingustic trick, really. Words that end in ”-ation” in English usually are virtually identical in Polish, only with an ”-acja” (pronounced “aat-see-ya”) suffix, or a variation.

• “revolution” is “rewolucja”
• “inflation” is “inflacja”
• “distribution” is “dystrybucja”

I don’t think I need to elaborate on what word young Rafał blurted out in class…

Comment [1]

The Balance?

At Google’s news site, the top two headlines currently:

• Newsweek Retracts Koran Desecration Story
• Soldier Is Found Guilty in Abu Ghraib Abuse

Nice balance.

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Tatical Nuclear Theater Ticket Stike

In Moscow, Putin pissed off Poland. How? By failing to mention Poland’s tragic victimhood in the Second World War. Poles were infuriated. But the president of the republic said nothing — he was a perfect politician.

In cafes and bars, plans for a strategic nuclear strike were drawn up and then abandoned with the realization that Poland doesn’t have nukes. The thought of using the forty-eight F-16 fighters in a mass attack was also abandoned because, well, they haven’t been delivered yet, and the fighter is rather ill-suited for bombing runs.

In the end, Poles did what they could — the one voice of protest and ill-will Poles could manage: they gave back their theater tickets. In Warsaw, a Russian dance troupe was scheduled to perform. Virtually all the tickets were returned.

Counter-strike, thought Putin. Now, instead of coming to Poland for a ceremony celebrating the end of the Second World War, he’s sending the a henchman.

Russia’s actions are widely seen here as a gigantic, Slavic middle finger extended in Poland’s general direction. I’ve wondered what the Russian interpretation of all this is, but since I don’t know Russian, I’m left imagining. The old master-and-servant mentality? Colony and colonizer? I don’t know.

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Covering

I’ve been working on my cover letter for my teaching resume. I haven’t written a cover letter in five years or so—it’s rusty, to say the least.

In a cover letter, you’re selling yourself. Hire me! Here’s why!

I’ve felt comfortable being a salesman. I once spent a summer trying to sell cutlery door-to-door. Vacuum cleaners would probably be an easier sale, but certainly knives are easier to sell than encyclopedias or religion.

Selling anything door-to-door is a hassle. It’s an intrusion.

I was a waiter for a few months in 1996. A customer offered me a job selling mobile homes because I’d convinced him to buy a dessert. I twisted his arm and shoved his face into a pile of whipped cream—that’s how I did it. I’m not sure such a tactic would work with mobile homes.

Never did find out if I’d have had to sell the tires to go on the roof as well.

Still, being a waiter is easier than selling religion or vacuums door-to-door. The customer comes to you. The customer says, “Sell me something! Take my money!” Door-to-door means, “Excuse me. I’d like to take up your time now—I know you’re probably busy, but screw that—and sell you something. Why, you’ve probably already got knives, a vacuum, and a faith, but mine’s better.”

Two girls once came to my door to sell me religion. It was in Boston, July 2002, when I’d gone back to spend the summer in the States. I’d been trying unsuccessfully to sell myself, but I couldn’t do it—I was still unemployed. It was hot and humid, and I just didn’t feel like dealing with Mormons at that hour in that heat (the apartment didn’t have air conditioning) and without a second cup of coffee. And really—who could have more coffee when it’s so hot? Sweat dripping off your nose into the French roast isn’t appealing. So I told the girls I wasn’t interested, even though I was. No, I didn’t want to convert, but a game of dogma-chess is always fun. Well, they were Mormons—dogma-tic-tac-toe.

So here I am, trying to sell myself without making it look like I’m trying to sell myself, even though every administrator who reads my cover letter is shopping for a teacher and knows that I’m trying to sell myself.

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Slovakian

Kinga and I recently took a three-day bike trip to Slovakia. Details at kingary.net, half in English, half in Polish.

Comment [1]

Movin'

In less than fifty days, Kinga and I are moving.

It’s not a cross-town move, probably the worst, because you are reasonably sure you can do it all yourself with a little help from a few friends. And so you rent a truck and put all your possessions in it and drive across town and unload it and then do it again.

And again. The what-to-ditch filter is not so incredibly fine, and you end up ditching precious little, and regretting it when it’s ten at night and you started before seven and you’re still not done.

It’s not a cross-country move. I’ve done that too. Well, sort of. My parents did half the work, because I was moving back from Poland to Boston. They brought most of my stuff up from Virginia, and so I guess they did the hard part.

No, Kinga and I are doing a trans-oceanic move. A continental move, which is both easier and more difficult than a cross-town move. What gets left behind is a much larger pile than what comes along.

Of course all the furniture stays.

Of course all the artwork should go, but — and here’s where it’s more difficult than a cross-town move — the possibility of damage necessitates tough decisions. We have two amazing glass paintings, one of which will stay due to its size of about thirty-six by twenty-four inches.

Of course most of the clothes go. But trans-oceanic moves also force you to clean out your closet. I’ve already

ditched one pair of shoes. It was on a recent three-day bike trip to Slovakia. Instead of hauling the old, worn-out things back to Poland, I left them in the hostel, much to Kinga’s delight. Like many wives, she doesn’t appreciate old, comfortable shoes

Books occupy a curious place in the move — they’ll be packed up, but not all sent. Once we get a decent place to live, we’ll have them sent. Until then, most of them are staying in Poland.

Then there’s the question of computers, cameras, and other fragile electronics. And bikes — we have three.

Decisions, decisions.

Perhaps the most difficult part of it is the fact that a cross-state move awaits. My folks have been collecting furniture for us the last few months, so we’ll have to rent a truck, pack it up, and…

Comment [3]

Matura

Here in Poland, the bane of high school students’ existence has just begun: the matura. This year is exceptional because it’s the first time in many years that the matura has been significantly revised.

The old matura was hell. The new matura—well, we’ll see.

This year the order is reversed: first the oral exams (in both Polish and a foreign language), then written exams (in Polish, a foreign language, and a third, student-chosen subject).

It is also, in my opinion, much easier. The foreign language exams, at least the basic level exam (there’s also a possibility to take an “extended” exam), depends more on students’ ability to communicate than on grammatical knowledge.

The English Matura

The English exam has four parts: three situations/dialogues, and a picture. The situations have three sub-points that students have to complete in order to get the full credit. Usually the situations are something like, “You are on vacation in England and you read an advertisement about excursions to Scotland. Call the given number and find out,” with the three sub-points being something like:

• cost of the trip;
• what’s included in the price;
• when and where the departure will be.

Pretty basic stuff, and most of the kids who’d put forth any effort whatsoever during the last three years will have no problem with it at all.

The picture is always of one or more people, doing some obvious, clear activity. Students have to describe the picture, than answer two questions about it.

Again, pretty basic stuff.

Still, a lot of the students are scared silly. Many of them have no cause to be frightened—they’ll pass despite their jitters. But a few have reason to be nervous.

I too am a little worried about it. It’s at least a partial reflection of my teaching ability. It shows, I think, students’ communicative skills (or lack thereof) much more so than my teaching, but still…

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Crocus

I’ve put some pictures of the croci in bloom here in southern Poland at our other, slowly dying website, kingary.net.

A couple have also been put on our Flickr account.

All images are enlarge-able, and hopefully more will be posted when I get back the pictures I took with my film camera.

It’s a beautiful time to be in Poland…

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Teaching

The end of the school year for seniors — today was the last time they’ll all be together, and as of this afternoon, they are officially graduates, with only the matura (exit exam) awaiting them. There was of course something like a graduation ceremony, complete with a series of skits and songs performed by juniors, as per tradition. Naturally, among the songs was that school classic, “Ale to już było / I nie wróci więcej”

(“But that has already been, and won’t return again”).

I sat there, facing the seniors, watching some of the girls get teary-eyed and sing along, and I couldn’t help but smile. I wasn’t happy because of their obvious sadness, but because of the privilege I was experiencing — to be that close to so many young people that are of no relation to me at all. I see their joys and troubles, and sometimes have to put up with their troubles jointly when they come pouting to class. When I’m extremely fortunate, I’m even part of the cause some of their joy; and unfortunately, I’m certainly the cause of their troubles too often. But young skin, hearts, and bones mend quickly, I tell myself.

I’ve taught these seniors for three years — their entire high school career. I’ve seen some of them go from being complete beginners to relatively eloquent English speakers.

I’ve seen some of them come in and leave with the same level. Most have improved, as evidenced by letters that I had them write to themselves at the end of their first year in high school and then gave back this week. What a feeling, watching them read and hearing them laugh at their own silly mistakes, and what a sense of accomplishment for them that they can now see those mistakes.

But it’s not only been their English that has improved. Girls have become young ladies, in appearance and behavior. Little boys in teenagers’ bodies have become responsible young men. Nerdy outcasts have improved their social skills and have even become semi-popular. Boys learned how to comb their hair and became young men, and awkward young girls became attractive young women.

That’s the best thing about having taught in the same place for a while — you see the kids grow up. It’s like parenting, without as many of the worries.

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Stamp!

I recently got pulled over by the border guard. He asked me for my driver’s license and registration, and I duly handed over my American license and the international drivers permit I got a couple of years ago in the States.

“What is this?” the border guard asked.

“It’s an international driving permit,” I replied.

“Who issued it?” he asked.

“I got it in America.”

He thumbs through it, then asked, “Yes, but by what authority.”

“It was an agreement by the United Nations, in the late 40’s I believe. Participating countries agreed to recognize each others’ driving license.”

“Hold on.” He goes back to his truck, where another border officer is sitting. He comes back and tells me what I’d been expecting all along: “This is not valid. It doesn’t have a stamp from the United Nations or anything.”

If something in Poland does not have a stamp, it’s not valid. End of story.

The international driving permit has all this information explained…in English, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and a handful of other languages, but no Polish. And this guy speaks no foreign languages.

What to do?

Kinga was sitting with me, and he suggested that she drive home, because I’m clearly driving illegally.

Which goes to show, that if the officer is ignorant and monolingual, “legal” is a completely relative term.

Comment [3]

A Funny Letter in Polish

W związku z otrzymaniem wezwania z dnia 31.03.2005 zwracam się z prośbą o wyjaśnienie następujących wątpliwości dotyczących wymaganego pełnomocnictwa:

1. Kogo mogę/mam upoważnić?
2. Do czego mam upoważnić daną osobę/instytucję?
3. Przez kogo takie pełnomocnictwo ma być potwierdzone?

Jestem cudzoziemcem i zawarty w wezwaniu wymóg przesłania pełnomocnictwa jest dla mnie niejasny. Również nikt z najbliższego otoczenia nie umiał wyjaśnić mi specyfikacji owego pełnomocnictwa.

Niezrozumiałym dla mnie jest również fakt, że ponownie muszę potwierdzać miejsce mojego zameldowania w Polsce i po raz kolejny wypełniać formularze moich danych osobowych. Wszystkie wyżej wymienione dane posiada już Urząd Skarbowy w Nowym Targu oraz Małopolski Urząd Wojewódzki w Krakowie, Wydział Spraw Obywatelskich i Migracji, który to wydał mi kartę pobytu na terytorium RP.

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Vigil and Patience

A ride through the village yesterday afternoon revealed that almost all houses have a picture of John Paul II hanging in a window, often with a black ribbon across the lower right corner.

School has been called off for Friday so students can watch the funeral.

Students Tuesday began coming to school in suits and dresses. On Wednesday most of the students were wearing semi-formal wear.

Meetings are being held every night in town squares.

In Lipnica, there’s a daily eight o’clock mass for the pope. It’s followed by “Apel Jasnogorski,” which a special meeting where participants sing the song sung every evening at nine at Częstochowa, home of the Black Madonna—the most revered holy object in Poland.

In nearby Nowy Targ, there are daily outdoor masses at the airport as well as nightly vigils in the rynek (town square).

Crime and accident rates have fallen, police report.

Rival soccer hooligans have been holding common masses.

John Paul, even in death, is bringing out the best in everyone, even people waiting in line to see his body.

Police made a few exceptions.

A Mexican family with two weeping teenagers and a small child was allowed to cross through the barricade and over the bridge to join the end of the line. Rather than protest, the crowd applauded (CBC)

And it’s not just the “little people” who are getting caught up in it.

Back at the Vatican, workers have set up hundreds of seats in St. Peter’s Square for the crowd of expected kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers and religious leaders — many of them political foes united in a funeral (Reuters)

I read yesterday that Bush is going to have to sit very close to Mohammad Khatami, the president of Iran — one third of his “axis of evil.” Perhaps that would do them good. Better would be for the two of them to have to wait in line together for twenty-four hours like the rest of the people did — perhaps in sub-zero weather, with one blanket.

Comment [2]

JP2's

Everyone is so sad now, as if they’ve literally lost their father. But what kind of respect are you showing that father if you don’t follow his example, if you don’t live up to his one single requirement (rather, expectation/hope) of everyone — respect each other? Poles go on and on about how John Paul will be “John Paul the Great,” only the third such pope to get that posthumous title, but so many of them don’t do what this great man said.

There’s so much corruption in Poland that it’s not even funny any more. The evening news could easily be turned into a game show: “Guess The Today’s Scandal!” Priests are rich, the poor are getting poorer, and the unemployment level is not improving. They build beautiful new churches, but there aren’t quality roads in the country, not to mention a complete lack of highways.

I sometimes wonder if Poland is so sad simply because they’ve lost a hero, not because they’ve lost a spiritual leader. Sure, some of them are truly saddened by the spiritual aspect of it, but judging from the number of people who actually follow JP2’s example, it’s a minority.

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Commercial Free

Since Sunday, most of the radio stations as well as television stations have been broadcasting commercial free. Radio stations have been playing mainly classical music, my wife tells me. I don’t know—I don’t listen much to the radio, so…

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John Paul

Poland produces a revolution every five hundred years, and it’s always the same revolution: a man comes along and challenges the way we all look at the universe, challenges us to stop thinking we’re the center of the universe and that all things circle around us.

Copernicus was the first, at least in the western world, to suggest that the Earth was not the center of the universe. He dethroned the heady notion that literally everything revolved around us, and modern science has pushed us to the point of virtual cosmic insignificance.

Karol Wojtyła, with his famous words, “Do not be afraid,” challenged us to stop thinking of ourselves as the center of our own worlds. Love is the greatest of all these, said Saint Paul, and John Paul, in his insistence on the universal recognition of human dignity and freedom, showed how to put that into practice.

“Nie lękajcie się!”

Don’t be afraid.

Fear not.

How can we not fear? Look at the world, and the injustice that hounds it, and it seems the only thing we can do is be afraid. How can that possibly work? Perhaps when we start following John Paul’s example and love others more than ourselves, we will stop fear. After all, what is fear? It’s fear of what will happen to me. When I start loving others more, I stop thinking of my self so much, and I stop fearing.

John Paul in that sense was a Copernicus for the soul.

Smoke and Mozart

We were in Adam’s bar with Johnny, Kucek, and Marta. I was playing chess with Rafał, and I heard Mozart’s Requiem and though I didn’t consciously think it, I knew what had happened. After a few moments, Kinga called my name (they were sitting behind me) and told me. I turned to Rafał and told him, then suggested we put the chess away.

I went back to the table where everyone else was sitting, and we just sat there quietly for about ten minutes. No one was saying a word. I can’t remember who initiated it, but someone said, “Idziemy?” and we all got up and left the table covered with full beer glasses and extinguished, half-smoked cigarettes.

Without saying, we all began walking up to the church. No one said, “Let’s go to the church,” we all just headed there. As we were walking, the fire station’s siren began wailing. It was strangely and peacefully quiet other than that.

We got to the church and it was locked. It had been open all day, and the night before, for prayers, but it was closed. “They’ll come open it,” I told everyone confidently.

“There’ll be a mass going within half an hour,” I said. But we stood waiting, and nothing.

After some time a nun walked into the church, and the bells began ringing, but the front door never opened. We walked around to the door to the sacristy to ask the nun if they were going to open the church. We stood there waiting, and just as she was coming out, another group of three young people — two girls and a young man of about nineteen — came up.

“Is the church going to be opened?” he asked.

The nun’s reply was somewhat surprising, and completely disappointing: “It was open all day. It was open all night last night. It was open until nine this evening, and no one was here,” she said in the tone of voice that’s so known to me know — it was the tone of a bureaucrat annoyed that you’ve come to require services of him. It was the tone of voice I encountered every time I went to the regional court offices while getting the official permission to marry a Pole. It was the tone of voice that I’ve heard in post offices, shops, busses — everywhere.

The young man would not be put off, though. “I know, I know. But not to open the church now?! At this moment?!”

The nun again: “The proboszcz said to ring the bells. He didn’t say anything about opening the church,” she said, locking the lower of three locks on the sacristy door.

“Let’s go,” said Johnny, starting to walk away.

“No, no! Don’t go!” said the young man. And he just repeated to the nun again, and again, “Not to open the church?! At this moment? At this moment?”

Reluctantly, she opened up the sacristy and we filed into the church quietly.

We knelt in the first row, with our three companions simply falling on their knees once they were in front of the tabernacle. All heads bowed, not a sound — I even prayed. “If you’re up there, God, I sure hope you’re welcoming such a great man into your presence now, because if a man like that isn’t with you now, no one else has a chance.”

The five of us had just come from a bar, so we reeked of cigarettes, and probably the smell of alcohol was noticeable, but none of us were even buzzed (we’d drunk perhaps two beers each), but Kinga felt very awkward about it the more she considered it. We left after only about ten minutes.

Kinga and I went back home and made some tea and listened to the radio.

They’ve been playing nothing but classical music on several of the stations. Last night they played Górecki’s “Amen,” interspersed with quotes from the pope.

A Country of Orphans

“Poor country,” Kinga said. We sat up late talking about John Paul’s life, and his philosophy, and his love of fellow humans.

“If Poles lived by his words, I’d never want to leave this place,” I said. “It would be a paradise.”

Poor Poland—wracked now with increasing corruption in every part of the government. A country with more than 18% unemployment, a country that must be the richest country in the world, as my father-in-law says, because everyone steals and there still remains something for others to pilfer.

And now, broken-hearted Poland. Kinga’s grandmother spent Sunday crying. Masses are pouring into churches and staying. It is a country of orphans.

Lech Wałęsa said that it was like losing a mother, “for the pope looked after Poland like a mother over her children.”

Comment [3]

Papież

Since the pope first went into the hospital last month, his health has dominated the Polish press. He is Poland’s first son and a very unifying force here in Poland.

Over the weekend, vigils have been kept nonstop in most of the churches across the country. I just heard a radio report from Zakopane, the tourist town in the Tatra Mountains in the south of the country, and the reporter said that the town is empty — the ski lifts deserted, all the streets empty. Everyone’s in church or at home, hovering around the television and radio for the latest news, said the reporter.

The man is a giant. Poland today can be called free in large measure to the actions and support John Paul gave to the anti-communist underground in Poland. Despite Reagan’s minion’s claims, John Paul’s constant opposition to communism in the 1980s was not part of some dual-prong, economic spiritual/philosophical attack. It was born out of a passionate belief in the dignity of all people and a deep spiritual belief.

The man is a giant. Who else could have, lying on his deathbed, been the subject such a worldwide outpouring of sympathy and prayer? About whom else could we say, “All religions are praying for him at his time of death?”

That’s the irony of John Paul II. Even though he is profoundly Catholic, he somehow seems to represent some spiritual thing much larger. And not his only paradox: while he was an unceasing critic of communism, he equally hated Reagan/Bush style, unchecked capitalism.

Reigning now twenty-six years, beatifying more saints than any other pope, uniting people of all religions with a sense of hope that things can be better — it’s doubtful we’ll see anyone else like him in our lifetime.

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Easter

Easter “vacation” is over. It was pleasant enough, but I was a little sad at the end, knowing it was the last major holiday that Kinga will be in her native country for some time. All things come to an end, I suppose, but that particular end is creeping ever closer.

The surprise of the weekend for me was how Wiktor, Kinga’s two-and-a-half-year-old nephew, was virtually obsessed with me. Every time he saw me, he was asking, “Wujek, co robisz?” (“Uncle, what are you doing?”) I enjoyed spending time with him, and I actually looked after him for quite a while Friday — or was it Saturday? Can’t recall. At any rate, I enjoyed it, but it was difficult understanding him sometimes. Understanding “baby talk” that’s in a foreign language — it’s a nightmare. I felt, once again, like I was new in the country, fresh off the plane.

The second surprise: an evening of bridge with everyone. Jan (my father-in-law) taught Daniel (my brother-in-law) how to play bridge, and we played until after midnight Sunday. Kinga and I were partners, and it turned out that she’s an excellent bridge player — better than I am, for sure. We cleaned up, that’s for sure.

This was the first year I didn’t go to the resurrection service. We changed to summer time that Saturday evening/Sunday morning, and the thought of getting up at four (body time) to be at the church at five (again, body time) just did nothing for me. I went for the blessing of the food — a Polish tradition that involves going to the church Saturday morning to have a basket of food for Easter breakfast blessed by the priest — and I went for the night watch, but I just decided to pass on the early morning mass.

Comment [1]

Sympathy for the Devil

Can we forgive someone who hasn’t asked for forgiveness? There seems to be a lot of people who feel that we can’t assume any mercy for Ratzmann because of the enormity of his crime. Not only that, but some are implying that it would be wrong to suggest that mercy would be the right response. It would be the equivalent of sympathy for the devil.

Or would it?

Despite the havoc the 44-year-old Ratzmann wreaked on his congregation, [LCG member Thomas] Geiger said, church members heard a mostly upbeat message of forgiveness and hope.

“We hugged and cried over this, even Terry’s family,” said Geiger. “We’ve made our peace with them.”

Geiger, like some of the others in attendance, had family members killed or wounded in the rampage at the Brookfield Sheraton hotel.

Among them was Bart Oliver, Geiger’s nephew. After attending Ratzmann’s funeral and getting a quick bite for lunch, Geiger and his family moved on to the 15-year-old’s funeral, held at the Country Springs Hotel in Waukesha.

Glenn Diekmeier, who survived last weekend’s shootings and whose father, Harold, was killed, attended the Ratzmann funeral (JS Online).

I’m strangely moved by the fact that victims’ families were in attendance at Ratzmann’s funeral. I doubt there were many, if any, families of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims at his funeral. I doubt very much that there would be victims’ families at the funeral of Atlanta gunman Brian Nichols had he killed himself. Thinking about the nature of these three different crimes clarifies for me why it’s possible to speak of mercy in Ratzmann’s case.

This was not an extended killing spree, as in the Dahmer case. Nor was it the act of a desperate man trying to escape from the police. This was an otherwise “normal” individual that inexplicably went berserk. Recall that when a member addressed Ratzmann by name and asked him, “Why are you doing this?” Ratzmann stopped. Whatever clicked in the first place clicked again, and I would imagine that in that moment he possibly realized what he had done and realized the simplest way out would be to take his own life.

Was it premeditated? It seems so – he did buy the gun in the summer. Was it planned, as a terrorist attack is planned? I doubt it. He came to church with his Bible, and then returned home to exchange it for a gun.

It all revolves around whether Terry Ratzmann was a victim in this too, and I believe he was. It now appears unlikely that this would have happened if he’d sought professional psychiatric help; if he hadn’t been a member of a legalistic sect that prescribed whom he could date and actively forbade people from dating whomever they chose; if he’d had a better relationship with his father; if his parents hadn’t divorced; if the WCG hadn’t split apart – all these have been bantered about as causes, which lumped together with whatever other demons that haunted him, pushed an instable man to a point of vicious violence.

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Spring

Spring is arriving on time with the calendar here.

The snow is finally beginning to melt. I saw the ground for the first time in months yesterday. Of course there’s still about three feet of snow in most places, so it’ll be a couple of weeks before there’s more green than white, but it’s a start.

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Slow Time

I haven’t been writing much here. Events in Wisconsin has been commanding my attention and writing time.

But judging from the lack of comments in the last few weeks, doesn’t seem to be missed…

No Book of Questions this week either—sorry M.

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Behind the Scenes: The Wisconsin Shooting Tragedy

This is not the first time that someone associated with the ideology behind the Living Church of God committed such a vile act.

The Living Church of God (LCG) split from the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) in the mid-90’s over doctrinal differences. The founder of the WCG, Herbert Armstrong, died in 1986, and his successor, Joseph Tkach, began dismantling the doctrinal distinctives of the WCG. Those who wanted to remain faithful to Armstrong’s teachings left in droves in 1995, and one of the organizations formed was the Global Church of God (GCG), which
eventually transmuted into the LCG, both led by Roderick Meredith.

Before Tkach made the drastic doctrinal changes, the WCG was a cult, pure and simple. Distinctive theological elements included

• Rejection of the Trinity
• Observance of Jewish, Old Testament holy days
• Rejection of “worldly holidays,” including Christmas and Easter
• The teaching that the WCG alone was the true and undeceived church of God, and that all other Christians were merely “professing” Christians, deceived by (and ultimately worshipping) the devil
• The belief that the United States and England are peopled by the descendents of the original Ten Tribes of Israel.
• The belief that Germany will rise again and defeat America in a nuclear World War Three.

The Living Church of God still holds to all these doctrines.

Precedent

Herbert Armstrong wrote his heretical theology up in many books and smaller booklets.

One of them was 1975 in Prophecy, written in the 1950’s and predicting Jesus’ return in 1975.

The book had the a violent affect on one Michael Dennis Rohan.

In an effort hasten the building of the temple and resumption of Jewish cultic sacrifices in Jerusalem, Rohan set fire to the Al Aksa mosque in 1969. No one was killed, but there was significant material damage. The ripples of the attack continued through the years: fourteen years later, Hamas began a series of terrorist attacks scheduled to coincide with the Al Aksa attack.

Trying desperately to distance himself from the bad publicity the act generated, Herbert Armstrong responded by denying any connection between Rohan and his church:

Every effort, it seems, is being made to link us with it in a way to discredit the Work of God. The man, Rohan being held as the arsonist, the dispatches say, claims to be identified with us. This claim is TOTALLY FALSE. The first any of us at Pasadena ever heard of this man was when the press dispatches began coming over the Teletypes in our News Bureau. Checkups revealed that this man had sent in for and received a number of our Correspondence Course lessons. Last December he had sent in a subscription to The PLAIN TRUTH. But any claim to any further connection or association with us is an absolute lie.

Rohan claims he’d been in contact with a WCG minister, and that, combined with the fact that Rohan not only had subscription to the Plain Truth but also had received church literature, makes Rohan a “P.M.” — prospective member.

According to a Wikipedia article, Armstrong stopped claiming that a physical temple would have to be built

because at the time he was trying to establish a relationship with the government of Israel. He had previously developed a relationship with King Hussein of Jordan prior to the Six Day War and had actually signed a contract to go on the AM and shortwave sic Jordanian transmitters located in the West Bank with his daily radio program called The World Tomorrow. When Israel gained control of the West Bank it also voided Armstrong’s contract and as a result he then courted the favors of the government of Israel by becoming involved with such projects as the archeological digs in the area of the Temple Mount.

Practicalities won out over “God’s truth!”

Armstrong had a choice, it would seem, and in this case, continuing to preach “God’s truth!” as it had been “cried aloud” before would have been tantamount to Armstrong shooting himself in the theological/fiscal foot.

Unfortunately, Armstrong was not an idiot. He chose to tone it down.

Funny how “God’s truth” can be so self-defeating in some contexts.

Comment [1]

Living Church of God Tragedy

I’m in a bit of shock. I just found out about the shooting in Wisconsin, and I’m in even more shock about the church in which it happened.

The Living Church of God.

A splinter group of the Worldwide Church of God. The sect I grew up in.

I know many people in this group, though none in the area this deplorable tragedy took place.

A comment at a website about this:

Considering the fact that cults tend to become a magnet for the unstable and knowing the large number of unstable people that I’ve seen come through and still attending church, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened much sooner.

True. David Koresh, Jim Jones—many others. Fringe groups lead to fringe behavior.

To put it lightly.

Comment [2]

Answer 165

Tall, slim, metallic — my filing cabinet was one of my prized possessions in the States. I had a drawer for my current semester: materials, handouts, tests, syllabi. I had a draw for all the previous semesters. I had a drawer for financial documents: receipts, bills, bank information. And of course I had a miscellaneous drawer. I could go straight to anything.

Now I dream of having a filing cabinet to organize myself. I think since I’ve been I Poland, I’ve seen a couple, but they don’t seem to be popular. At school, I keep all my papers and documents in a little cubby-hole — literally. At home, I have tons of little binders and folders that I keep tax info in, visa documents, etc. But no filing cabinet.

I used to think of myself as highly organized, but sloth and lack of storage space (not to mention a lack of filing cabinets — I like filing cabinets) has led me to a state of semi-chaos. I don’t lose my keys often, but I often temporarily misplace materials from school, simply because I don’t have a place to store it all neatly and systematically. Which drives me bananas.

Pens are a story in themselves. I have a very nice Cross Townsend black lacquer fountain pen that I bought, by some fluke of mis-pricing or something, for only sixty buck. I’ve had it for ten years now, and never once have I thought I’d lost it. I have a beautiful stainless steel Parker Sonnet fountain pen that Kinga bought for me for Christmas, which, because of its weight (that Cross is heavy) goes with me to school every day. Never lost it. I have another Parker filled with red ink for grading papers — never misplaced it. All told, I have four fountain pens, and I’ve never lost one. Ballpoint pens, though, are a different story. Three. I’ve lost three. Most recently, I lost one that Kinga gave me last Christmas. Yes, it is only March, but the horrid thing is, I lost it before the end of January! How?! I’ve no clue.

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Absalomie, Absalomie...

I borrowed the Polish version of Absalom, Absalom! for Kinga, and I was thumbing through the edition and noticed a couple of things immediately.

First of all, none of the extended passages italicized in the original are italicized in the Polish, which is strange, given how Faulkner uses italics.

Second, the famous final line, “I don’t hate the South!” was translated a little differently: “I don’t feel hatred for the South.” I’m not certain, but I think this was for fluid reading.

“Nie czuję nienawiści do Południa!” ends this version, whereas a more literal translation would have read, “Nie nienawidzę…” and that double “nie” would have indeed read awkwardly.

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In Defense of English Tenses

Nina, at The Other Side of the Ocean, recently complained about necessary tenses in English.

Writing about learning English, she says, “As a new kid on the English-speaking block, I had to come to terms with the fact that English has sixteen verb tenses. You truly are insane.”

Indeed, most Poles when they learn that there are more than three tenses in English have a similar reaction.

The actual number of tenses is a somewhat fluid issue. Nina maintains sixteen. I would argue that there are only three tenses: past, present, and future. Within each of those, though, there are four types:

• simple
• progressive/continuous
• perfect, and
• perfect progressive/continuous.

A total of twelve, for I don’t count conditionals as tenses.

This does seem somewhat excessive, but think of the versatility of the English tense system.

With a single verb tense you can:

• Show whether it happened before or after another action;
• Indicate whether or not it is a temporary action;
• Show whether or not it was a completed action; and,
• Indicate whether it was habitual or not.

Think of the enormous difference between these sentences:

1. When you called I was eating.
2. When you called, I had eaten.

In situation one, you’d better apologize; in situation two, you’re fine.

But some of the tenses do indeed cause problems with Polish learners, none more so than present perfect (i.e., “I have eaten sushi.”). It’s problematic because it sometimes refers to the past (“I’ve been to China. I went last year.”) and sometimes to the present (“I’ve lived in Poland for seven years.”). The first example would be translated to past tense in Polish, while the second would be present tense. Then there’s the difference between “I’ve eaten sushi” and “I ate sushi.”

It’s a nightmare that some students never fully work out.

I, on the other hand, have problems fitting all those possibilities into tense-deprived Polish. Polish does have something sort of like a continuous tense, but instead of being a different tense, it’s a different verb! “Obejrzełem” is “I watched” whereas “oglądałem” is more like “I was watching.”

How’s that for difficulty?!

Comment [5]

It's not often

that I get to make a student’s day, but I think I did just that this morning.

I handed back tests to a class of first year students, by far my favorites. I love teaching beginners because it’s really a kick to end a year talking to a group of kids in English that didn’t know a single word a few months earlier. This group in particular is wonderful. There’s a very positive dynamic in the class: they’re very enthusiastic, but easily controlled.

Grażyna (not her real name) has been having problems since the beginning of the school year, and has to struggle to pass. I think she’s one of those of us who have little talent for languages.

Today, I gave her back her test. She made a “three” on it, the equivalent of a “C” in the States.

It was her highest grade ever for a major test in English.

She literally screamed, and her face glowed with the loveliest smile I’ve seen in a long time.

Those are the moments that make teaching my dream job.

Comment

Answer 200

In conversations, do you tend to listen or talk more?

“There’s a reason the good Lord gave us two ears and only one mouth,” the saying goes. You learn more from listening than from talking, but that’s not the reason I often find myself sitting silent in groups, listening and not participating. Kinga says I should make more of an effort, but the problem is, I’ve found that many times people are talking about something I know nothing about, or (worse) care nothing about. And so I sit and let them do the work of keeping the conversation going.

One-on-one is a different story, though, and Kinga will tell you I can talk up a storm when I’m inspired (read: irritated).

Group conversation, though, just baffles me. When I first returned to Poland, I thought it was a language issue, that I just wasn’t following everything. I went back to the States the summer of 2002 and one evening, found myself at a bar with a few friends and their friends and other friends of friends—mostly strangers, in other words. My attention drifted from one conversation to another, and I realized that it wasn’t the language in Poland that was messing me up. I’m just not good at “small talk.” I listened intently to what pairs and trios were talking about, and even then I’d have been hard pressed to nail down a sort of thesis statement for the conversation. I simply had no idea what the hell they were talking about. Question 165

Are you well organized? How often do you have to look for your keys?

Small talk is an oxymoron.

I’m not saying that all conversation needs to be about something “deep” (whatever that might mean), but it does need a grounding for me. What that means in practical terms is that I’m very quiet when I’m with a group of people I don’t know. Once I know that someone shares the same interest as I, I begin opening up a bit.

When I do begin talking, I guess I like talking about something meaningful. I once had a very long conversation with a friend of a friend of Kinga’s about forgiveness, what it means, and whether we can truly forgive another person. It was a Highlanders’ party, and Polish Highlanders are like me, squared: very distant and silent (cautious, even) until they get to know you. In that sense, the two of us had a bit of an impetus to our conversation.

Comment

Robbed! Robbed, I say!

I once worked at an internet start-up. A “dot-bomb” as the cliche goes, for it eventually fell flat on its face.

I worked in IT the last six or so months I was there, and so I got email from folks I’d never heard from while working as an editor—including the marketing director.

Almost four years ago, I wrote the following in my journal (names changed):

Nothing particularly interesting happened at work this week. In other words, no one got fired. We were induced with ice cream Friday afternoon to be a focus group for “[TheCompany]’s vision” and mission statement and all that jazz. It was David Gordon’s doing — he’s the new director of marketing (or marketing director — I forget which term he prefers and made me correct all references on the web site to). Even if I didn’t know what he does for a living, if I read a couple of his emails I think I’d fairly quickly guess that he’s in marketing. Everything he writes smacks of it — every other word seems to be from some book that might be called Power Words for Marketing Professionals or Words to Make People Remember You, both of which in fact would be filled with cliché and ridiculous writing. Concerning the “About Us” page on our web site, he forwarded me an email exchange he had with Susan in which she said something about the existing text not achieving the desired effect, to which he responded, “I’ll wordsmith something better.” As I told Eric, it takes a hell of a writer to use "wordsmith " as a noun (which of course it is) and not sound ridiculous. To use it as a verb is absolutely ridiculous. “I’ll wordsmith something”? I can just hear some guy with a comb-over in a marketing class saying, “Don’t ‘write’ anything — wordsmith.” Perhaps he also added, “Don’t ever ‘shit’ — poopsmith.” He also had me put the following punctuation in the email that professors get after getting a free trial:

Username :: WE3F3KJD
Password :: YIRJ3L2N

The double colons are something, as he put it, he picked up recently. You don’t “pick up” punctuation. You pick up gimmicks; you pick up a gallon of milk on your way home for work; you try to pick up women — but you don’t “pick up” new forms of punctuation. He would probably argue that it makes you stand out. “Wordsmith” also makes you stand out, but certainly not in a positive way. And I don’t think profs are going to be sucked in with “clever” (ab)uses of punctuation. Maybe we could end all our sentences with a dash- That would make us stand out- aND THEN WE COULD REVERSE CASE IN EVERYTHING WE WRITE- lASTLY. WE COULD PUT PERIODS WHERE WE NORMALLY PUT COMAS. AND INTENTINALLY MISS-PELL WERDSS TU HELP PEOPLE REMEMBER US-

To be fair, the double-colon thing is fairly common now. I have even used it—gulp. Guess he was vindicated.

But there’s no vindication for me. The Brothers Chaps stole my idea of poopsmith and are making millions with it. Well, at least a living.

Homestar Runnner, I hate you…

Comment

It's the End of the World as We Know It

In Trinity Broadcast Network’s take on the end of the world, we see at the climax of the film the great battle known as Armageddon. Satan is there in full gargoyle attire, directing the Forces of Evil to destroy all that stands in their way. The bright light of Jesus comes and in a montage we see, among other things, Jews praying at the Wailing Wall. The Real Video version of the video is available here.

If you like B-movies, this one is for you.

It’s worth it at least to watch the final minutes, so cue it to 1:29 and make sure you don’t have to urinate…

Huh? A great battle within a few miles and they’re praying instead of running for cover?!

This “oversight” is symptomatic of the general Fundamentalist view of the Book of Revelation and the end of the world. The whole scenario is laughable: the Satan unites the duped world into an alliance with him. Those who resist meet on the plains of Megiddo and fight the greatest battle the world has ever seen, cut short by Jesus’ second coming and the banishing of Satan to a bottomless pit.

It’s Lord of the Rings. But to some people, it’s a sure thing. In fact, you can see the rumblings of it already, with the United Nations or the European Union, depending on which breed of Fundamentalist you’re talking to. Soon, a powerful leader will rise and start working miracles and uniting the world with his…

Wait. Let’s think about it for a moment. It’s the twenty-first century. What’s going to happen if someone starts working “miracles?” Anyone hear of James Randi? What’s going to happen if some world leader starts calling on people to worship him?

As for the apocalyptic battle that rages in the Middle East, the notion that all the armies are going to gather on the plains—when was the last time you saw modern warfare conducted like that?

But that basic logic clashes with what the Bible “clearly” says, and so the True Believers stumble on saying that the end is just around the corner. Yet even Jesus seemed to get his timing wrong. Speaking of the end of the world in Matthew’s gospel, he says,

Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. (23.34-36)

Later, he utters the same thing: “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled” (24.34). So for almost two thousand years folks have been saying, “This generation won’t die without seeing the end of the world!”

But that’s neither here nor there. No man knows the hour and all that, but we do know the signs: rebuilding the temple; resurrected Roman Empire; 666; miracle-working world leader who calls himself a god. Or do we? There’s so much hopeless confusion and contradiction in the various end of the world scenarios that it’s difficult to keep a straight face hearing such nonsense.

No one seems to wonder, “Well, if all the pieces of the puzzle can be put together in such different ways, maybe the puzzle itself is broken. Or our understanding of it.”

I’d say it’s a little of both.

Comment

Brain Leak

It was bound to happen, I suppose. I’d heard of it, but never thought I’d experience it myself.

I’m forgetting English. Not the whole language of course, but isolated words here and there.

For instance, the other day a student asked me what “zniżka” is in English. I stood there thinking, “What is that? ‘Lowered price?’ ‘Rebate?’ What the hell do they call that, a lowered price. Student’s price?!” I couldn’t remember “discount” to save my life.

Exhibit two: I was making a test key for a first-year class’s test, and I came upon the word “pralka.” “That thing for washing clothes,” I mumbled to myself. I closed my eyes and I could see my in-laws’ sitting there. Clothes washer? Washing machine.

Now this is not to say that my Polish is so dang good that I’m more comfortable speaking it than English. No—quite the opposite. I am to Polish what clear-cutters are to bonsai. But as the saying goes, if you don’t use it, you lose it. Despite my constant reading and writing, words manage to get wedged in my head and I can’t shake the jumble out.

Of course, I have the same problem in Polish. To an exponential degree.

Comment

You know you're in Poland

when discussion in a bar turns to the question of the next pope’s nationality.

And it includes names.

Comment [1]

There are lessons that go so badly

that I stand there with the awful truth rattling around in my head—that which I only admit even to myself only rarely. Sometimes the class dynamic is such that I could teach the class drunk or sober, I could teach new material or review material that I know is problematic, I could be a hard-ass or totally relaxed, and the result in each case would be the same: a complete waste of time.

Really, I walk out of some lessons thinking I wasted my time and their time together. A class of twenty—that’s fifteen man-hours down the tube.

And I wish I could put all the blame at students’ feet. After all, it’s only human not to want to fess up to your own failings. But truth is, I waste as much time as they do sometimes. The trouble is, I only realize that after the time has been wasted. (Nice passive attempt to avoid responsibility.)

The upshot is that there’s always tomorrow’s lesson to make up for it. But sometimes tomorrow’s schedule looms instead of sitting there passively.

Comment

Numa Numa III

An idiosyncrasy of turning relatively high in Google searches for a “hot query” is that you receive this kind of email:

Dear Publisher,

Hello! I came across your site while browsing google for sites with content related to “Numa Numa”. My name is Henri Duong and I am the Sr. Media Buyer for the (ASN) Ad Serving Network and we are looking for an elite group of publishers that can deliver quality US traffic.

Out of curiosity we are currently looking for these minimum requirements and would like to know if your site qualifies to be a part of our network opportunity in remainding Quarter of 2005 and ongoing.

1. Alexa rankings under 100K or can maintain a minimum of over 30K US impressions a day with at least 5K unique visitor traffic.
2. Current creative ad sizes that we are buying include: 720×300 pops/ 300×250 cubes/ 728×90 banners other banners can be served on a case by case basis.
3. We pay a CPM basis for creatives with net 30 payment terms.

Please contact me for further details if you are interested and fall in these categories. We look forward to serving you with the Ad Serving Network.

Best regards,
Henri Duong

With an average lately of about 1,500 hits a month, I certainly don’t qualify. But since I was sent a generic “Dear Publisher” letter, I didn’t write back to tell Mr. Duong how flattered I was.

Comment

Answer 35

Would you give up half of what you own now for a pill that would permanently change you so that one hour of sleep each day would fully refresh you?

The older I get, the more inclined I am to answer this question in the affirmative. Sleep is only truly pleasant when you’re not forced to put a premature end to it with an obnoxious screech from the alarm clock. Otherwise, I’m fairly neutral about sleep (especially since I almost never remember my dreams) and am positively annoyed by it when I can’t shake the initial grogginess of waking up — those days you’re sure you would pay to be able to stay in bed. Question 200
In conversations, do you tend to listen or talk more? (Additional questions: What are you looking for when you converse with people? What kinds of things do you normally discuss? Are there other things that would be more interesting to you?

I’m not sure that I feel I don’t have enough time; it’s simply that I think it would always be a good thing to have more time. Right now, I have a great deal more free time than Kinga because of the nature of my teaching job (not to mention all the damn breaks we get) and fairly hefty project Kinga’s been working on. No kids, either.

The idea of having an additional five to seven hours a day brings all kinds of wonderful thoughts to mind: think of all the books I could read, all exercise I could do, all the time I could spend with friends.

As far as sacrificing half my belongings, the only qualm I would have is that I would be very hesitant to agree if someone else chose which of my things to take in payment. Take all my CDs, (almost) all my books, my clothes, furniture — neutral objects that can be fairly easily replaced. Yes, I know books are hardly “neutral” objects, but I have very little sentimental attachment to them when compared to the glass paintings Kinga and I received for wedding presents or selected old letters from my naïve youth or the cast-iron skillet that my mother gave me which was her mother’s and so on.

My motivation for saying “Yes” also derives from the simple fact that as we age, time seems to move faster. That’s probably because each year represents a smaller percent of our lives. When I was ten, a year was ten percent of my life; when I was twenty, it was five percent of my life; how that I’m over thirty, it’s only a little over three percent. By the time I’m a grandfather, a year will be a mere one and a half percent. That explains why summer seemed endless when I was in grade school, while now the entire school year passes in a flash.

Lastly, considering my non-theistic views, I’m not inclined to believe there’s any sort of life after death, so the more time I get here, the better.

Comment [1]

Tough breaks

I never thought I’d complain about too many breaks, but I always find myself doing just that during the second semester of a Polish school year.

Basically, the beefy part of the Polish school calendar ends with Christmas break. Because the two-week Christmas break does not coincide with the completion of the semester, it marks the beginning of the on-again, off-again season of the school year.

This is how it’s playing out this year:

• After three weeks back at school after Christmas break, the semester ended and the students got a much deserved two week break.
• At the end of the first week back, seniors got two days off to go to Częstochowa to spend all night praying for their exit exams. (I wish I was making that up, but I’m not. More later.)
• This year, we get an entire week back at school for everyone after the senior prayer session before “rekolekcja” begins. After the first three lessons on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, students head to the church for something like a revival—an effort to get everyone spiritually prepared for Easter
• Which provides about another week off in late March.
• Three weeks back and it’s time for the matura—exit exams.
• After the matura, there are no seniors—not exactly the same as a break, but my hours this year will be cut almost in half.

Put all that together and it’s clear why the last day of school is 24 June.

Comment

Something to Gain

Regarding the fact that more atheists tend to read Christian apology than vice versa, Nina commented,

There is no reward in keeping an open mind to atheism, whereas we atheists (I’m not including you here, I noted your rejection of that concept as well, though I don’t understand where that places you) are given plenty of incentives to open up to the possibility of a God. I would be curious whether you have talked about this with Poles? And if so, how have they reacted?

I’m not so sure that there isn’t a “reward in keeping an open mind to atheism.” I recall a sort of relief I felt when I finally admitted to myself that I didn’t believe in much of anything, perhaps something like the peace Christian converts say they feel when the “accept the Lord.”

Could it be that others might feel the same if they “let go” without the “and let God” addendum? Perhaps.

But I guess Nina is right—if someone really believes something, what does she stand to gain in doubting it, especially when it’s something beyond proof, like religious faith.

In rural southern Poland, the notion of being a non-believer seems to be virtually unimaginable. If the subject of religious belief comes up, I general start broad and wind my way down, from “I’m not a Catholic” eventually, if pressed, to “I don’t have any positive belief about any diety.” “I can’t imagine my life without God,” is a common reaction, and that is probably more ontologically true than the speaker imagines. It’s like imagining life without, say, breathing.

Religion—rather, Catholicism—is so deeply infused in the Polish highlander’s culture and worldview that it is as natural as a blue sky.

Sure—you can imagine the sky’s red, but what for?

Comment [1]

Numa Numa II

America, it seems, is lagging behind Europe in the Numa Numa video craze.

The song it’s based on, O-Zone’s “Dragostea Din Tei,” was the hit of the summer in Europe, but largely unknown in the States, I think.

I wrote about playing the Numa video at a party and as the comment invitation asked, “Who in the States has heard this nonsense?” It turns out that a friend had heard the song because she’s dating…a Frenchman.

My friend Gruby (Polish for “fat,” though he’s not) in Warsaw sent me the link to a Hungarian site that had the video in early January. My first reaction: “Gruby’s brother!” Indeed, they do look similar, but Gruby assured me that it wasn’t.

Since the song had been popular here in Europe, I didn’t need to make any assumptions about the music. The boy in the video, though, I assumed to be Hungarian.

I wasn’t the only one to make such a connection: Bob at I Am A Christian Too thought it was Hungarian techno.

The upshot of all this is that because the lad in the video is in fact not Hungarian but a Jersey boy named Gary, I’m getting hundreds of hits from Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

So—a Romanian pop group makes a song that a Jersey boy named Gary lip-syncs to, which a Warsaw-Pole sends to an American living in southern Poland, who in turn ends up getting tons of hits from the States because America has finally discovered the Numa video…because his name too is Gary.

Comment [1]

Answer 4: Memory and Happiness

And waste an entire year of my life? How can anything be called “perfect happiness” if we don’t remember it later? “Without memory, our existence would be barren and opaque, like a prison cell into which no light penetrates, like a tomb which rejects the living,” wrote Elie Wiese inl his Nobel Lecture. Question 35
Would you give up half of what you own now for a pill that would permanently change you so that one hour of sleep each day would fully refresh you? (Additional questions: Do you feel you have enough time? If not, what would give you that feeling? How much has your attitude about time changed as you’ve aged?)

Answers due 25 February
Class dismissed

I am, admittedly, in love with memory. Obsessed, at one point. Willa Cather wrote in My Antonia, “Some memories are realities and better than anything that can ever happen to one again.” It could have been a summary of my general view on life at that time, many years ago, when I was unsure of the future and only certain that the past had often been wondrous.

I was so worried about forgetting something, and I soon found that in fact I remembered insignificant details about things that my friends perhaps didn’t even notice.

Once I sat in horror as a friend told me that not only could she not remember what we’d talked about in a conversation six months earlier, but she couldn’t even remember having the conversation. It was not a lighthearted talk about who’s going to make it to the World Series — it was a discussion of our entire friendship up to that point. “And she can’t remember it?!” I lay in bed thinking that night, unable to understand how it was possible.

What would be the good of a year’s experiences that would leave no mark upon us? In many ways, we are our memories:

How much of what we are, what we know about ourselves, is really true? We are merely the sum of viewpoints, and human memory is treacherous and inconsistent.
Ilan Stavans, On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language

Learning is memory, especially learning from mistakes. But we don’t just learn from our unhappy memories, and so the notion of a year spent that leaves no memory is absolutely horrifying to me.

It’s a year spent completely drunk. When drunk, we’re often perfectly happy; the next day, we often don’t remember our antics. Take that and multiply it by 365 and you get Question 4’s “one year in perfect happiness.”

But what is meant by “perfect happiness?” I’ve always tried to act as if happiness depending on me, not on other people. “How I choose to react” and similar notions. In other words, for a middle class guy like me, happiness is around every corner. I really lack nothing materially—food, clothing warmth—and so what is there to be unhappy about? That statement reveals quite a bit about my experiences, I realize.

Happiness has also included the thought that, when I look back on a given moment, I’ll still be happy — no regret, in other words.

Second, what is meant by “remember nothing?” Does it mean I would immediately forget every moment as soon as it passed? Or does it mean that I would accumulate a year of memories, then suddenly they would vanish? Either option seems horrible to me.

This question is somewhat shallow, I must admit, because I can’t think that anyone would answer in the affirmative. Even without the extreme view that the present moment doesn’t really exist and instead is something trapped between what was and what will be, the present moment is so brief that it represents an atomically small percent of our lives. Much more of our lives are spent remembering the past or planning the future than living the moment.

Perhaps that’s the trick, having your Book of Questions cake and eating it too: make the most of the moment. It’s easier said than done.

Comment [3]

Polish Jumping Bean

My mother-in-law says that when he was young, Kamil, her brother’s son, used to run everywhere and jump off of everything.

His jumping in particular paid off. Now he’s on the first squad of the Polish national ski-jumping team, and he recently participated in his first World Cup event.

He finished in seventh place. That was two places higher than Polish hero Adam Małysz, three-time world cup winner.

Of the surprising win over Małysz, Kamil’s father said,

In all this happiness, we mustn’t forget that beating Małysz was an accident. Adam is a great competitor who had a little weaker day yesterday, and Kamil made the most of it.

According to his trainer, Kamil has the best technique of the entire squad. “A real pearl,” summarized nation team trainer Heinz Kuttin (Source: Onet.pl).

At our August wedding, it was Kamil who casually reached down to grab my thrown tie.

Comment

Androgynous Mittens

The bumping, swaying motion of the bus was, as usual, rocking me to sleep. I was returning from Nowy Targ, the nearest Polish town, fighting sleep as I usually do on busses in Poland. Ironically, a town in Slovakia is about fifteen kilometers closer, but not as accessible by bus.

In front of me sat a mother and her child, who looked to be two years old. About halfway home, I glanced down to notice one of the child’s mittens had fallen on the floor. I reached down to pick it up, then leaned a little over the seat and was going to address the child. “You lost something, didn’t you?” And then the mild panic struck: is this a boy or a girl? Wrapped up tight for winter, the child was androgynous, with only a face visible. So I said nothing, and simply gave the mitten back to the mother. Rather, she noticed I was holding it and literally jerked it out of my hand. Odd experience.

I didn’t say anything to the child because I didn’t know the child’s gender, and that is essential if you’re speaking to someone in Polish in the past tense. Polish verbs are curious because their past tense forms are gender specific. “I took” for a man (wziałem) is different than “I took” for a woman (wziałam). Not terribly different, but different nonetheless.

If I were to say to a little boy, “You lost something, didn’t you?” the “lost” would be “straciłeś,” whereas for a little girl it would be “straciłaś.”

The verb endings for males are:
< /table>

For females, however, they are:

-łem	-liśmy
-łeś	-liście
-ł	-li

-łam	-łyśmy
-łaś	-łyście
-ła	-ły

My father-in-law always does this when he asked Kinga and I where we went, if we’d disappeared for a few hours one Sunday afternoon. “Gdzieście byli?” he’d ask, taking the “ście” ending from the verb and throwing it on “gdzie,” or “where.” Update:
Vivi asked “So, when you are talking about mixed company (ie a man and a woman), does it default to masculine, like French?” Short answer: yes.

Will the madness never end?!

Returning to the androgynous mittens’ story, my wife informs me that people make such mistakes all the time, with the mother usually correcting them. So I could have just chosen a gender and let fly.

Comment [3]

Answer 120

Question 120: Would you accept $10,000 to shave your head and continue your normal activities sans hat or wig without explaining the reason for your haircut?

Admittedly, I sort of cheated with this question, because for years I’ve been all but shaving my head. The reason I give is pragmatic: it’s less work.

For a while, I was in fact shaving my head daily with a razor, which took about fifteen minutes a day, so the “pragmatic” excuse doesn’t hold. I suspect my male pattern baldness plays some subconscious role. The less hair I have, the less visible my growing circle of skin at the crown of my head. Participating bloggers:
Vivi
ChickeePoo (Appears to be having technical problems)
Karma
Michele
Willful Exposé
Nina
barrie

I did have a friend once who, when I suggested he cut his hair similar to mine, reacted with such revulsion that one would think I’d suggested something more drastic and permanent — say, tongue splitting or something. In my youthful naivety, I kept contending that it was a vanity issue, but I see now that it is much more than that.

Our hairstyles speak before we open our mouths.

Along with clothes, they often construct entire personas before the individual even begins speaking. Rather, we do the persona-constructing on the basis of the hair and clothes.

• Greasy hair brings to mind poverty and a lack of hygiene. Their personality must be somehow defective.
• A mullet leads to expectations of a Southern accent and a lack of cognitive abilities.
• A poof — no, a bush — of hair precariously balanced above a girl’s forehead and wings of hair sprouting out above her ears screams, “This girl does not get out often.”
• Perfectly styled, stylish hair is the mark of someone who spends a lot of time in front of the mirror in the morning.

Fight it though I may, such are the stereotypes and

clichés I unconsciously create, and I suspect it’s not just me.

But it’s not just bad assumptions we make based on hair. That’s why the fashion industry exists — to help people make the assumption about us that we want them to make.

Hair and fashion are non-verbal communication. The question is, do we want it to be intentional or unintentional? After all, that’s the primary difference between being a slob and not.

It’s the communication aspect that gives the dimension of “Let me think about it” to the question. If it didn’t include “without explaining the reason for your haircut,” it’s a simple question: most everyone would agree.

“What? The do? Oh, some idiot agreed to pay me ten grand just to shave my head.” For those interested in continuing and posting in a week on another question:

Question 4:
If you could spend one year in perfect happiness but afterwards would remember nothing of the experience, would you do so? If not, why not? (Further question: Which is more important: actual experiences, or the memories that remain when the experiences are over?)

Thoughts posted 18 Feb

Then we can counter the visual communication of our shinny head with the verbal explanation. The “without explaining” means that our bald heads alone are the explanation.

For the sake of fairness, then, I’ll change the question to make it more applicable to me: “Would I shave the fashionable, boy-band-type verticle stripes into my eyebrows for $10,000 without any sort of explanation?”

The answer: most definitely not.

As a teacher, I unfortunately have to worry to some degree about my image. A slob does not garner respect, and so I wear a tie every day. Similarly, a balding man in his early thirties trying to look fifteen years younger would bring about, I suspect, unwanted effects, to say the least.

On the other hand, I’ll be leaving this school in a matter of months, so in the long run, it’s a moot point.

Any serious offers out there? Comments? [1]

The Will to Believe

The will to believe. Choosing to believe. Avoiding error. Seeking truth.

It all seems so simple from the outside.

I once chose to believe. At a point in my life, I went through the motions, hoping unconsciously that I could cultivate a belief (like a gay friend I had who was vaguely attracted to a girl, a feeling he hoped to “cultivate” into bisexuality) and knowing that I was fooling myself (much like my gay friend eventually admitted to himself).

And I did try. I wrote in my journal about belief and faith and the wonder of God’s love. I talked to friends at university about the marvel of forgiveness and what God did for us through Jesus. I prayed.

In early 1995, I began acknowledging in my personal journal the doubts I was having.

What is this thing, Christianity? It is the worship of a Jewish carpenter who lived two millennia ago. It is a religion based on a book, allegedly written by God’s inspiration. Was Christ more than a radical social reformer? Were his miracles more than a fictional construction of the gospel writers?

No matter how much I want to believe, to feel the fervor that others experience, I cannot.

Could Christ be the creation of a codependent society? The ultimate father-figure who provides the love a fleshly father should give?

The lingering adolescence in my writing style aside, I was filled with clichés. Perhaps that was the problem.

Another few weeks passed and a faculty member of the college I was attending died from cancer. During the memorial chapel, I scribbled the following in my journal:

Death — and my thoughts are again turned to religion. God is such an abstraction that I read about him and never feel him; not even death brings any real, any substantial emotion of which God is the source. The only feeling I get is doubt. Is that from God?

Doubt from God? It doesn’t seem possible, but from a liberal theology, it makes some sense. After all, if we can have Harvey Cox in The Secular City saying that God wants us to outgrow him and the whole “Death of God” theology of the sixties, why not divine doubt? Descartes, turned on his head.

Still later, again from my journal:

I find myself thinking of the whole God issue still. I am frustrated by the whole thing. I sit now in the library and just a moment ago I looked up at Rev. [Smith] and peered at his forehead, wondering what was in his mind, what books, what learning, what lectures. But mainly what beliefs. He firmly believes in God. He would stake his life on it, I would imagine. Yet that means nothing to me. No matter how important God is to him, God is still a mere abstraction to me. He’s a blurred, hazy idea, and little more than that. I can read Barth and Schleiermacher until I’m sick of them and yet it makes God no less concrete. I don’t believe in God. Not in a personal, substantial way. I read theology, talk about Christian ethics and doctrine, yet I don’t really believe in the basis of it all. It’s not that I am an atheist. It’s not that I choose not to believe in God — I just can’t believe in God.

Many Christians would read that and respond, “You read only theology? What about reading the Bible?” Indeed — what about reading the Bible? The more I read, the less I found that I liked. &(insetL)I learned in graduate school that “Schleiermacher” means “veil maker” in German. Appropriate, most seem to think.%

Doing produces believing? Yes, and no. From my personal experience, I see that for me it was impossible. But I was “playing” (for lack of a better term) in the Protestant tradition, and there’s not much “doing” there. The “smells and bells” for the Catholic tradition bring all the senses into ritual. Indeed — who can really talk of Protestant “ritual” or “liturgy?” Perhaps that’s why charismatic churches are so attractive to some — full body contact.

Yet the ritual can be without meaning — empty repetitions. Jesus, according to the Gospels, found that in first century Judea.

It does seem to reduce down to the will. People choose to believe often by choosing not to challenge those beliefs. I’ve always found it odd that it seems more non-believers read theistic apologetics than believers read The Case for Atheism. It’s tempting to be smug about that, to say that, “Well, that just shows we non-believers are more open, more willing to challenge our worldviews.”

I’m not sure how I’d explain it, though.

Comment [1]

Pascal, Kreeft, and the Will

Most everyone knows Pascal’s Wager, drawn from a single paragraph in Pensées: belief in God is, in short, the safest bet. (Read more on the Wager.) It’s interesting that people still apply it in earnest.

Most recently, I’ve heard Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft use it in his 1995 Texas A&M Veritas Forum lecture.

One of the objections is the supposed inability to chose one’s beliefs. Pascal foresaw such an argument:

You would like to attain faith, and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you, and who now stake all their possessions. These are people who know the way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc… But to show you that this leads you there, it is this which will lessen the passions, which are your stumbling-blocks.

Action precedes faith. Praying, meditating, going to Mass, all lead to faith. Crazy as that might sound, Pascal might indeed have a point. Polish writer Czesław Miłosz made the same point in The Captive Mind:

The Catholic Church wisely recognized that faith is more a matter of collective suggestion than of individual conviction. Collective religious ceremonies induce a state of belief. Folding one’s hands in prayer, kneeling, singing hymns precede faith, for faith is a psycho-physical and not simply a psychological phenomenon.

Every Mass Catholics cite the Apostles’ Creed in one voice:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth:

I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended into hell; on the third day He arose from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and life everlasting. Amen.

“I believe; I hear my neighbor beside me state that he believes; I am aware that my neighbor in front of me believes — we all believe. We all support each other in these beliefs.” That’s what I hear behind the words.

In that believing environment, which must be at least similar to Pascal’s environment, willing yourself to believe seems not only possible, but almost inescapable. Even as a “staunch” non-believer, I feel sometimes that tug toward belief, that desire not simply to fit in for the sake of fitting in, but to have what the parishioners around me seem to have.

There are two kinds of views on religion, wrote William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience:

1. Seek truth
2. Avoid error

For those who seek truth, the choice is obvious — bet on God. I’ve always been more the type to avoid error.

Which kind are you? [2]

Book of Questions :: An Invitation to All Visitors

One of the most popular websites – judging by the number of comments – is Michele. It doesn’t take long to figure out why: her blog is not about herself exclusively, but also asks engaging questions, like a good host.

Gregory Stock beat her to it, though. I first discovered his Book of Questions (Amazon) when I was in high school. As one Amazon reviewer’s son said, “This book doesn’t have any answers, but it sure does make you think.”

The Book of Questions is just that: a book of engaging, sometimes provocative questions. From the introduction:

This is not a book of trivia questions, so don’t bother to look here for the name of either Tonto’s horse or the shortstop for the 1923 Yankees. These are questions of a different sort — questions about you. They are about your values, your beliefs, and your life; love, money, sex, integrity, generosity, pride, and death are all here. Some of the questions are indeed “heavy,” and some of them are almost jocular, but they are all mentally stimulating.

Rediscovering it on my bookshelf a few days ago, I realized that this is basically a blogger’s idea book written before the advent of the Internet, let alone blogging. It includes questions that, when honestly answered, could improve any blog, especially one like MTS that is growing staler by the day.

What I propose, then, is this: simul-blogging (the term, from my perspective, started at Ocean) to answer selected questions from Stock’s book. This would be different than merely commenting, as participants would not be initially influenced by others’ thoughts. Instead, we all write about the same question at roughly the same time, with a given date for publishing it—something along the lines of Marginal And Fallible do, but on larger scale.

Any takers? To begin with, perhaps something on the lighter side, banal even:

Question 120: Would you accept $10,000 to shave your head and continue your normal activities sans hat or wig without explaining the reason for your haircut?

My own answer will be posted on Friday 11 February. If you join in, paste the question at the top of your post, then leave a comment for Monday’s entry with a link to your answer.

How about it? Joining in? [9]

"Spit flyin' everywhere," Take Two

A wise woman once wrote,

I, too, am saddened by so much of what I read in blogs, and comment threads are even worse. It’s as if writers are grabbing the mike and running to the stage without having once practiced the song they are about to force onto the audience. At first it seems funny and then it just seems sad, desperate, irresponsible.

Raging, inarticulate personal attacks in comments and posts are becoming all too common.

There are blogs that are devoted just to criticizing other blogs. And it’s not just attacks because of political views, but attacks based on, well, anything that doesn’t suit the “reviewer.”

There are also bloggers who go around biting ankles in comments.

Regrettably I’ve done both. This post is what’s left after all the spittle has been wiped away and people began talking civilly.

“It’s easy to tear down than to build up,” said my mother (though I suspect not just mine), and the truth of that is becoming more and more evident in blogs and comments. A few examples show the childish creativity we employ (and I’ve included my own comments in this list):

• don’t feel bad because you’re dumb
• as obviously immature as you are
• It’s called symbolism—does that elude you? I know the topic of my post did.
• lots of passion here and lots of anger but not much reason
• the world may not miss you
• These people are cowards
• So as to be clear—we wish there to be no misundertandings—you are an in idiot. While I’m sure you have plenty of self esteem and the trophies to prove it, you remain an idiot.
• Have fun in Poland, hope you aren’t Jewish.
• a mean spirited, self-centered liar, spreading small-minded insults
• I cannot believe there are people like you out there, but then again, you are from [location deleted]
• Damn! In the above post, some idiot forgot to edit before he sent [...]
• She is articulate; you are not. She is thoughtful; you are not.
• When you grow up and enter the real world you’ll realize that common sense and rational judgement [sic] will take you a lot farther than anger, bitterness and sarcasm

There is a full range of personal attacks and libel here. There are subtle jibes:

• “Does that elude you? I know the topic of my post did.” naturally implies, “You’re a dolt because you didn’t understand my post.”
• “When you grow up and enter the real world” implies, “You’re childish now.”

There are not so subtle jabs:

• a mean spirited, self-centered liar, spreading small-minded insults
• I cannot believe there are people like you out there, but then again, you are from [location deleted]

There are nuclear strikes:

• don’t feel bad because you’re dumb
• as obviously immature as you are

And at least one hinted at something much bigger than a personal attack: “Have fun in Poland, hope you aren’t Jewish.”

Some of these comments were catalysts for others in the list, so it’s easy to see how things can spin out of control.

We attack; we get attacked; we retaliate more viciously than we were attacked; one of our friends sees the tangle and jumps in to help — soon it’s a playground brawl.

The problem is that the blogosphere is messy. It’s part of the aptly called “the web,” so it’s inherently difficult to track everything down and find out who indeed did start. By jumping in, as I have foolishly done, we may end up attacking the attacked when we should have turned our backs on the whole mess and gone to hang out at the swings.

“If you can’t say anything nice…”

Another problem is that the internet is essentially anonymous, and thus emotionally free:

People have no hesitation at being ugly over the internet simply because there is no cost to them. There is no personal investment to online discourse. The lack of personal interaction allows people to be as ugly as they want to be…which is often pretty ugly (Robert Fenton)

It’s like the crank calls my friends and I used to make back in the eighties when there was no caller ID and we were simply voices on the other end of the line. We can create whole personas on the internet, complete with false pictures, names, stats — everything. And in that liberated, new “us,” some of us show the darker, more immature sides of ourselves more often than we do in person. We’re all split personalities, as role theory points out, but the online personality can have a bit uglier voice than the others.

“I always think it is a shame when people stoop to personal attacks on other people, no matter what the medium” (Renee). My crank calls were never not so vitriolic as some of the things I’ve seen in comments.

In the end, it’s obviously better to sit back and watch the cat fights than to get involved. Sound advice for myself, a bit too late.

Comment [4]

Numa Numa

Last week we had a small party. It was typical in most every way – lots of chatting, laughing, eating, a bit of drinking, some dancing. Nothing crazy.

It was actually an unplanned birthday party for Johnny. We decided to have as a theme a multicultural culinary war: Johnny fixed kwaśnica; I cooked chili—the guests refused to pick a winner. It was confirmed once again, however, that due to the mildness of Polish cuisine, things which are not even remotely spicy for someone like me simply set the average Pole’s mouth ablaze.

Naturally there was a cake—Kinga’s contribution. Damn, can that woman bake!

The surprising hit of the party was a little Flash video that a friend in Warsaw showed me. It was an amateur video for a pop song that was a sensation this summer throughout Europe: “Dragostea Din Tei” (meaning “Love Among the Linden Trees” in Romanian). Read the Wikipedia article about the song

The song is by O-zone, a group of three Romanians who’d grown up in the Republic of Moldova, and it is perhaps the worst song I’ve ever heard. Plastic, false, and simplistic, it’s everything I hate in contemporary European music.

It was bad enough that this summer you could hear it everywhere. Perhaps the worst thing about it is how devilishly catchy the melody is. I’ve even caught myself humming the damn thing in the shower.

But the Flash video – devastatingly funny.

Who in the States has heard this nonsense? [5]

Elections

Relatively high voter turn-out; deaths held to double digits; dancing Iraqis.

Do they read this blog?

I stand humbly corrected.

Comment [3]

All W's Horses

So the Iraqi people are going to be voting in their first election. Many have pointed out the absurdity of the elections in which:

• no one knows the candidates;
• no one knows what the parties stand for;
• insurgent violence will keep many away;
• voter safety is an issue, and cannot be assured;
• a significant portion of eligible voters has already declared, “We won’t vote”;
• many Iraqis are arguing shouldn’t even take place.

Bush is ramming this election down their throats in an attempt to legitimate his decision to invade Iraq.

No one in Baghdad is calling the shots in Iraq’s surreal experiment with electoral politics.

The marching orders are coming from Washington. And after all the tragedies that Iraq has so far experienced, this continued direction from a distance promises even more tragedy and farce in the days to come (The Capital Times)

The elections don’t seem to differ that much from Saddam’s elections. Then, Iraqis went to the polling station to avoid retaliation from Saddam; now, Iraqis avoid the polling stations to avoid execution by the insurgents. Sunday’s election will be only slightly more legitimate than those during Saddam’s reign only in so far as the candidates don’t all represent the same agenda. In theory. But since no one really knows who the candidates are or what the parties represent (except there’s probably not any who express the slightest amount of anti-US sentiment), for all the Iraqis know, they could all be voting for the same agenda, no matter whom they vote for.

Well, those that do get out and vote.

Was Bush really so blinded by his own idiocy? Did none of his advisers say, “Hey, maybe it’s not such a straightforward thing as going into the country and receiving the warm thanks of the newly-liberated Iraqis.” Did he really expect the Iraqis to start jumping up and down, clapping their hands like little girls, all saying in a unified voice, “We want elections!! We want elections!!”?

If Iraq were a chess game (and oh, that it were), Bush would play in the following method:

1. Make an attack plan (He’d probably try the old worn out Scholar’s Mate), without giving thought to the opponent’s defense.
2. Execute the attack plan.
3. Ignore what the opponent is doing throughout the game and go ahead with the attack plan.
4. When clear mistakes are made, continue with the attack plan.

The Bush administration seems to be incapable of such analytical thinking required by chess, much less required by war. Unfortunately, the pieces Bush is shuffling around live and breathe, as in Vonnegut’s short story “All the King’s Horses.”

Bush doesn’t seem to know he’s gotten the US in a no-win situation:

• Postpone the election = cries of plans for on-going occupation
• Let the elections contine = the mess we currently see

And the post-election reality doesn’t seem so bright either:

• Withdraw troops = civil war in a matter of weeks days
• Postpone the election = cries of plans for on-going occupation and increased “resistance”

Of course, it’s not as if people weren’t foreseeing this before the invasion. But Bush already had his mind up about

• finding and destroying weapons of mass distruction
• bringing freedom and liberty to the oppressed Iraqi people
• shutting down Saddam’s terrorist support infastructure
• avenging the assination attempt on Daddy
• getting business for his buddies at Halliburton

and so no amount of reason could talk him out of it.

But you can’t reason with someone who has the mental ability of a turnip.

Comment [5]

Nagging, er, Encouraging Kinga to Blog

The original motivation behind this whole blog was the joke domain name, “matchingtracksuits.com.” The “matching” part implies not one author, but two.

That was the idea.

But my wife has been reticent to join me on this blogging adventure, and instead reads what I write behind my back. The original motivation behind this post was to get readers to direct some encouraging words Kinga’s way.

That was the idea.

I’ve been encouraging her to write a bit, if only to practice her written English. She seems hesitant to put her thoughts out for all to see (as if the Vast Hordes visit MTS).

Perhaps there’s a blogging gene and she’s missing it?

I have to admit—I do like this whole blogging thing. It’s a natural extension of my journal, which I’ve been keeping for years and years now. It just includes the added element of “audience.”

Yet, while I like it, it is getting a bit tiresome. The initial thrill must be wearing off. Unlike with various other addictions, I don’t foresee this resulting in heavier doses.

Perhaps some help would, well, help.

Perhaps that’s the real motivation behind nagging my wife about this.

But maybe, perhaps, conceivably … there are those out there curious about the other tracksuit.

Encouragement for Kinga to start writing? [6]

Classification

At the end of each semester, all teachers meet in order to “discuss” the students’ results. Grades, in other words. After opening business, each homeroom teacher reads a summary of his/her students’ results.

A model, using English names, would look something like this: “Number of students: 24. Number of students classified: 22. Two students, Jones Samuel and Nab Susan were not classified in mathematics due to [somewhat in-depth explanation]. Three students have been excused from participation in P.E., for medical reasons. All students names are read last name first. I get the feeling I’m in the military.

“There were twenty students with no failing marks. There were three students with one failing mark. There was one student failing two subjets, and no students with three or more failing marks.

“The students with the best results were Baker Joshua, with an average of 4.87; Anderson Tabitha, with an average of 4.68; Jackson Samuel, with an average of 4.66; Cole Brenda and Jones David, both with 4.45. Grades in Polish are from 5 points, not 4.

“Students with failing marks and/or the lowest average: Woolsey Katherine, 2.21, failing Polish and mathematics; Smith John, 2.33, failing mathematics; Kline Gregory, 2.35, failing mathematics; and Williams Derek, 2.44, failing German.

“The class average with all obligatory courses is 3.24, and without the optional courses, 3.31.

“Behavior grades are as follows: Three students received a grade of “model beahvior”: Baker Joshua, Anderson Tabitha, and Cole Brenda. There are five students with behavior graded “very good.” Fifteen students received a grade of “good.” One student received a mark of “correct,” Williams Derek.”

And there you have it. For each of the thirteen classes, all this information was rattled off. Of the thirteen classes, I teach seven of them, but I was required to sit and listen about the six that I don’t teach. Nonsense.

Most amazing is the behavior grade. Each student gets a mark between “model” and “rebuked” (literal translation). All the other possibilities are mentioned above, with the exception of the next-to-worst grade, “inappropriate.” This behavior grade is put on students transcripts, to what ends, who knows?

Comment

Johnny

Johnny is only his latest alias. When I met him, he went by Abdul. For a while, our mutual friend insisted on calling him Albert. But Johnny is Janusz’s choice now.

My best friend in Poland, Johnny’s fate represents to me all that’s wrong with Poland today. Armed with a Master’s Degree in political science from Poland’s oldest and most respected university, he should have no problem getting a job in Poland’s EU-transitional reality.

He’s currently a concrete finisher in Liverpool. Johnny is going to start a Polish blog soon, so bilingual readers might want to pop over to janowiak.biz

“The pay’s better than anything here,” he says with a smile, “And I sleep well at night.”

With the opening of job market in Ireland and England (among a handful of other EU countries), Poles have been virtually stampeding out of the country. Ireland is an especially attrative country for Poles today, as an employment source and a model for how to integerate successfully into the EU. Literally whole families are picking up and moving to Ireland, running from 19+% unemployment and a political system so filled with corruption that it ranks first among EU countries in that regard.

Johnny’s returning to England in a few weeks. His plans are uncertain, other than squirreling a bit a way and working on his English. Admission time: it was Johnny who came up with the slicing bread metaphor at his birthday party this weekend. I’d made chili and was slicing some bread to go with it…

It’s a shame, though, for Poland needs smart and honest young people now. During the small party after my and Kinga’s civil wedding, Kinga’s aunt was talking to Johnny and by the end of the evening was convinced that Johnny had to stay in Poland, get active in politics, and save the country.

Still, despite it all, Johnny’s optimistic about his country’s future. He recently bet a mutual friend a one-liter bottle of Jack Daniel’s that in four years, everything would have normalized noticably. “Normalized” was not really defined, but who cares—as I told Johnny, “If I happen to be in Poland then, I’ll be drinking with somebody!”

Comment

ACLU and Limbaugh

Read the ACLU’s press release
Found via NPR Apparently, the ACLU has sided with Rush Limbaugh and filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Florida regarding an attempt to seize the conservative commentator’s medical records.

Would Limbaugh stand up for the ACLU?

Comment [1]

Comfort Food No. 1

Quaker Instant Oatmeal, Apples and Cinnamon

Taste: artifically close to oatmeal.

Brings to mind:

• Snow days
• Picture day in junior high and worrying for the first time about your hair
• Grocery shopping with Mom
• Doing homework while eating breakfast
• Heating water in a microwave oven

When removed from the box, the individual packets are also good as padding for Christmas packages sent from home.

Comment

I don't know much about electricity and wiring

but I’m pretty sure that strange things as were happening around here last night should not be happening.

I’d literally just finished complaining about the techno hell I was scheduled to endure and had gone over to C-Span to watch some more of the Rice confirmation hearings when suddenly the light on my desk went out and the icon indicating that my laptop had switched to battery power. Frank made the comment that it could be due to the age of the building, speculating that it could have been pre-WW2 and originally unwired, then wired and re-wired. I’m not quite sure of the age of the original building itself, but it could very well have been pre-WW2. In 1999-2001, though, it was completely rebuilt. I don’t mean renovated, I mean rebuilt—all that’s left of the original building is the foundation and the outer walls. The floor Kinga and I live on was actually non-existent then, so everything here is about four years old.

Short-term power outages happen around here (super-rural Poland) semi-regularly, so I thought nothing of it. In fact, for the first time in my life, I was happy about the apparent blackout. “Peace!” I thought.

But the thum-thum-thum-th-th-thum-thum-thum was still going on downstairs.

And Senator Bidden (bless his compromising heart) was still making me smile via Real Player and the LAN router across the hall.

Intrigued, I tried the kitchen light. Nothing. Still further intrigued, I went out into the hall and tried the light switch there. “Ba-ba-ba-PING!” and the incandescent lights were on.

Odd. As a side note, I will very irritatedly report that most of the students were not hooting and hollering but just sitting at the edge of the room—a typical dance. Why the music has to be so loud for that, I’ll never know.

I put on my coat and descended into Techno Hell. The teachers’ room there was without electricity, but the adjacent areas had power. In fact, as I left, I noticed that there were lights on almost throughout the school. Talking to the teachers there, I learned that they were just as confused about it as I was. No one knew what was going on.

Returning home, I decided to start cooking dinner by candlelight—a minor irritation, compounded by the bit of back luck that had given Techno Hell a different electrical fate than me. “Why oh why didn’t they lose power?” I muttered.

Then the fridge switched on and I thought I was saved.

I reached over to turn on the light—nothing. Fridge running, no light. I checked the lights in the living room. They worked. I went to the bedroom—nothing going. So then I did the only logical thing: I systematically went through the apartment switching on all the lights to see which power outlets were live and which were not.

The bizarre results:

• The bedroom and bathroom were completely without power.
• The living room was fine, even though one of the outlets was in the same wall as one of the dead outlets in the bedroom—directly opposite it, in fact. In theory, on the same line.
• The main light in the kitchen didn’t work, but the small light above the sink did.

Now, as I said, I don’t know much about electrical wiring, but this seems pretty damn odd to me. And it seems to indicate some pretty weird construction practices. When the maintenance man came, I stood talking to him for a moment with my neighbor, and I found out some even more bizarre info:

• Most of the wiring for the upper floor where we live goes through a fuse box on that floor—which makes since.
• Some of the lines run through another fuse box two floors below us.
• My neighbor had power everywhere except where his fridge was plugged in.

“Who the hell thought up such a wiring plan?!” I wanted to scream/laugh, but I bit my tongue and thanked the maintenance man for his help.

An hour or so later, the power all came back on, but I’m still scratching my head over it.

That’s not the only example of weird wiring in Poland. The switches for most bathroom lights are outside the bathroom. You flip it on as you enter. In the first apartment I lived in, though, the lights were on the hinge side of the door, so if you forgot to turn on the light (which happened when I first arrived), it wasn’t just a matter of sticking your hand out the door. You had to go back out into the hall, close the bathroom door, and turn the light on…

Comment [1]

Hootin' 'n' Hollerin' in Polish Schools

We have an apartment above an elementary school. That’s living hell when they have school dances. They usually last from two in the afternoon until eight at night: the first two hours for the younger kids and the last four hours for the older elementary school students.

I remember the after-school dance I chaperoned while student teaching in a junior high school. It was an hour and a half.

Four hours seems a bit of an exaggeration.

Our apartment is one floor above the area where they dance, though not directly above it. The junior high kids who come in and serve as DJs turn the music up so loud that the floor of our apartment literally vibrates, and the you can hear the super-low-frequency bass tones reverberating throughout the whole apartment—walls, glasses, ceiling, everything shaking. You never truly notice how repetitive techno music is until you can only hear the bass and drums. Then, “variation on a theme” seems to be too generous a description.

For an elementary school dance.

I asked one of the teachers if she didn’t think that was perhaps a bit too loud for such young ears.

“It could do serious, lasting damage,” I said.

“Yes, but if we didn’t play it so loud, they couldn’t hoot and holler as they like to do during dances,” was the response.

I’ll pause for a moment to let that one sink in.

All sorts of things were swirling in my mind, and the delicacy of the moment was highlighted by my lack of Polish fluency.

First reaction: “Hum, I always thought it was the teachers who ran a school.” Tactless no matter the level of fluency.

I settled for something along the lines of, “Well, why not simply tell the kids, ‘Look, it’s too loud. You’ll have to be quiet or you won’t hear the music,’ or, ‘This is as loud as we’ll play it. So if you don’t like it, you don’t have to come.’”

“We should,” she laughed.

But they won’t.

So here I sit, thirty-six minutes into a four-hour marathon of “thum-thum-thum-th-th-thum-thum-thum” techno hell.

Comment [2]

Honest

I recently told of an unexpected admission from students. “What to do!?” I ruminated.

“Why do you have to do anything at all?” my wife asked.

Because a teacher can’t just give some assignment, take it up, reprimand the students on it, then let it float of into oblivion. In the end, I’ll probably take the easy way out for myself: say, “I understand it this time, and won’t make you redo it, nor will I give you failing grades for the work turned in.” After all, less work for me.

But the desire for blood did rise again, the next lesson.

It’s a tough class, in other words.

I’ve always had a strange relationship with “tough” classes. At some point, I usually storm back to the teachers’ room saying, “I hate that class,” and then a few days later say, “That’s not just a bad class after all. I kind of like them, in fact.” By their final year, I often find myself liking those classes, usually because we’ve fought our way to a sort of equilibrium.

But it’s important to point out that the class does not represent the students. In a weird way that I never would have understood before being a teacher, a class is without a doubt much more than the sum of the students in it.

Some of the students in the class that so angered me are among my favorite students. (Yes, yes, teachers shouldn’t have favorites, but we’re only human.) Understand: they’re not my favorite students because they’re such hardworking angels. Indeed, often some of these favorites even contribute to the problem.

Classes simply have their own dynamic, independent of any given student in it. It’s frustrating, precisely because it’s somewhat uncontrollable.

There are checks and balances, but it remains out of the control of any one teacher.

It’s not mob psychology, in other words.

Comment [1]

The End of [Herbert Armstrong's] World

The end of the world came for Herbert Armstrong nineteen years ago today.

He’d been predicting the end of the world for some time, starting back in the thirties. World War Two, he declared, would end with “the Second Coming of Christ!” It ended with the Iron Curtain, but never mind.

He then updated his prediction: 1975. He even wrote a “book,” for lack of a better term, called 1975 in Prophecy. Once again, Jesus was late for his own party.

Armstrong, founder of the now-evangelical, then-cultic Worldwide Church of God, had a fondness for the number nineteen. It was somehow of some Biblical significance. “Nineteen-year time cycles” and such. So here it is, nineteen years after the end of his world, and we’re still bumbling along.

The fact that Armstrong never got it right, and in fact failed in two predictions of Jesus’ return (not to mention a host of other failed predictions), hasn’t killed the hydra of Armstrongism. There are still true believers out there, waiting eagerly for the end of the world that’s supposed to come any day now. Men like Roderick Meredith, Gerald Flurry, and David Pack make the most of them, convincing their followers (“sheep,” as they like to call them) to donate thousands of dollars to their sects in return for a guarantee of personal safety when “the Tribulation” begins in “five to fifteen years.” The Philadelphia Church of God published a year ago its own thoughts about the legacy of Herbert Armstrong.

It’s been “five to fifteen years” for forty years. Armstrong’s been dead an entire “19-year time cycle.” But cultic thinking and the need for security create a seeming perpetual motion machine out of Herbert Armstrong’s teachings. The world is a better place without Armstrong, but his ignorance continue to haunt.

The question of just who Armstrong was used to haunt me a great deal. The question of identity was the question of sincerity. In other words, did he really believe his own heresy? In still other words, was he consciously fleecing his believers? This simple question—was he a True Believer—affects all other aspects of how we view him. It’s makes it a question of either being an uneducated but sincere man who got caught up in his own growing power and wealth, or being callously manipulative and evil.

Everyone who’s ever been affected by Armstrong and come to reject his heresy has to answer that question. I’m not sure I’ve worked out my own answer. I probably never will. Unfortunately, I’ll probably never stop trying to work it out—the obsession factor.

The legacy, if it can even be called that, of Armstrong is dying outside the circles of people who were directly affected by his heresy. Before he died, Armstrong managed to visit with all sorts of kings and dignitaries. Supporters say it’s because he was such a great, noble man; critics charge that he bought these audiences.

At his death, letters of condolence from leaders around the world:

Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem at the time, wrote, “One could only be deeply impressed by his vast efforts to promote understanding and peace among peoples. His good deeds were felt in many corners of the world.” The mayor of Pasadena called him “a giant of a man.” The Israeli ambassador to the U.S. called him “an inspiring religious and public and educational personality.” The king of Thailand considered him a “close and valuable friend.” The king of Nepal said he was “dedicated to the cause of serving humanity.” (Philadelphia Trumpet)

“He was a great man,” everyone in his church thought when he died, “And the whole world shares in our grief.” The letters from leaders (even Reagan sent a letter) were proof of Armstrong’s worldwide impact. They knew him; they met with him; they sought his advice—the world reeled from the loss.

And now? How many know of him? If I were to stand at a street corner and take a poll in downtown Manhattan, who would know whom I’m talking about?

Virtually none, I would imagine.

Comment [2]

The day before

The trouble with the day before is that no one knows he’s experiencing a “day before” until it becomes the day after.

Nineteen years ago it was a “day before” for about 100,000 people.

It was the day before the end of one man’s world. Visitors from AW, remember to check back tomorrow for the full version excerpted on AW.

Tomorrow, life starts again for thousands, but they don’t know it. Tomorrow, everything changes for the select few, but no one knows it. The changes are so sudden that it’s only in sum that they make any sense, make any difference.

Thoughts before the storm breaks?

God Holding His Breath on Borrowed Time

Until I noticed the reference to God being “blue.”

Thus I left things hanging.

Many words in Polish have dual meanings. Nothing new there—English is loaded with them, my students like to point out.

“Niebieski” in Polish is derived from the word “niebo,” which is “sky” or “heaven.” Immediately we get into trouble, because the sky is a physical, observable phenomenon, while heaven is, at best, theological conjecture.

With such a start, meanings can only slide into more silliness.

The ontological status of the meaning of “niebo” aside, it gets more confusing when we throw the adjectival form into the mix. As expected, “niebieski” means “heavenly.”

However, “niebieski,” as you first learn it in a Polish course, would be “blue.”

Hence, whenever I’m in Mass and hear that we should now direct our prayers “do niebieskiego ojca,” I can’t help but conjure up images of blue deities even though I know the priest is just telling us to direct our prayers to our “heavenly father.”

There are other slippery words in Polish.

“Pożyczyć” is undoubtedly my favorite. It means, “lend.”

And “borrow.”

[Short pause.]

Exactly.

At first, that seems like saying “xidhb” in some language means “black” and “white.” “Lend” and “borrow” have such intrinsically different, though related, meanings that it’s difficult to comprehend that a language exists that represents both ideas with the same word. But it’s really not that different: lending and borrowing both involve a temporary transaction of a given object, with the implicit understanding of said article’s eventual return.

What English throws into the mix is the ownership information. By using the word “borrow,” I make it clear, without any context, that I am lacking something. By using the word “lend,” though, I make it clear that I am the owner.

Ownership in “pożyczyć” is, of course, differentiated; only it’s done grammatically.

• “pożyczyć komuś” is lend. “Komuś” is the dative case for “ktoś,” which means “someone.” And dative case, for those who don’t know, is the case used in inflected languages to indicate the indirect article.
• “pożyczyż od kogoś” is borrow. “Od kogoś” means “from someone,” which makes the direction of the transaction (and hence ownership) clear.

Beginning students (and, to my dismay, students with some experience with English) often confuse these two English words, and come up with, “Can you borrow me your pen for a moment?” or

“I can borrow you this or that.”

More linguistic ambiguity:

• The words for “lock,” “zipper,” and “castle” are all the same: zamek.
• The words for “pigeon” and “dove” are the same, resulting in students coming up with an interesting construction: Pigeons of Peace.

But linguistic ambiguity is a two-way street, and soon I’ll delve into the wild world of “things that mess with Polish students’ heads.”

Comment [2]

Honesty

Sometimes students stop me dead in my lesson, and I stand there, unable to think what to do next. I’m not talking about “stupid” questions, or even behavior problems. Rather, I’m referring to that tendency all students have to say or ask something that just makes you reflect.

The other day I was fed up with a class and its behavior—not even putting forth the slightest effort in a group speaking activity.

All names have been changed. Now, I know it’s artificial. I realize when I give them a task to do in English, they could accomplish it immediately in Polish. But as I ask them, “What for?” Usually they cooperate. Sometimes they don’t.

They other day, they didn’t.

In retaliation (and that’s really the right word, I think), I assigned them a lot of homework. Basically, they were to translate the entire text we were reading into Polish.

I got the expected response: a chorus of “Proszę pana!” (“Please, sir!”) I stood firm, though, and refused to relent. “The whole thing,” I told them.

As they were filing into the classroom the next day, I could sense something was up. Then one lad stomped in, flopped down in his chair, and gave me a glare. He violently opened his book bag, jerked his materials out, and slammed them on the desk.

He’s a theatrical boy, this lad (we’ll call him Maciej), and so I regularly would have paid no heed. But the general atmosphere in the class was, as I said, strange, so I had my guard up.

Roll checked, then my usual line: “Show me the homework,” in the silly way that Cuba Gooding, Jr. did, sort of, in Jerry Maguire. And so they start pulling out a typed translation—a first, to be honest.

They started handing it in, and it hit: it’s the same paper, photocopied twenty times.

“Michał, do you have your homework?” I ask one boy.

“No,” he said. Another in the back piped up, “He didn’t have the twenty groszy for copying.”

Shock—here they are, admitting it.

“What?”

“Yes, we copied it all, sir,” replied Boy in the Back Row.

Then Agata began to explain, “See, sir, we had a big test in math today, and we didn’t have any time to do the English homework. So Maciej typed it into the computer, ran it through a translator, and we all photocopied it.”

I glanced down at the work. “It’s the product of a computer translation, that’s for sure,” I thought

“We have homework in English every day,” Agata continued. “We don’t have many grades in math, and this was very important.”

“Maciej, how long did it take you to do this?” I asked.

“Two hours,” he grumbled.

“And the math test?”

“Pała,” he replied. I probably don’t need to translate that.

So where did it leave me?

The facts were simple:

1. It was an unreasonable assignment, given in wrath, so to speak, rather than from some pedagical motivation.
2. They were honest about it.
3. Their reason for not doing the assignment was fairly compelling.
4. It didn’t seem fair to punish them, or even get angry.

I simply stood there, thinking, “What to do? What to do?” I wanted to be fair, but I also had to save face. With some classes, face and authority are equivocal for a high school teacher, so I had to strike a balance.

Suggestions? [2]

Frying Mr. Teddy

Recently I mentioned the absurdity of the “Freedom Fries” wave sweeping across Patriotic Probably-Mostly-Republican America. Language is a living thing, and we can’t read current politics into a word’s etymology, I argued.

An amusing example of this in Polish: the word “pan.”

In modern usage, it has the meaning of “mister,” as in, “Mr. Scott” being “Pan Scott.” “Mrs.” is “Pani,” and on a side not, I know from an Indian friend that “pani” is Hindi for “water.”

Linguistic webs aside, “pan” would also be translated to French as “vous,” or to German as “Sie.” So when speaking to a stranger in Polish, you speak to them in third person singular out of respect. (Unless you live in the mountains down south and are speaking a dialect, and then it’s like French: second person plural.)

Armed with only this knowledge and some elementary Polish, you’ll be in for an amusing surprise when you go to Mass, because you’ll hear God referred to as “Pan Bóg.”

“Mr. God?” was my first surprised reaction.

More digging.

“Pan” also, and originally, means something like “master,” in the sort of 18th-century, English manor sense. So the patriotic Mickiewicz poem Pan Tadeusz wouldn’t be translated, as a Pole joked with me, “Mr. Teddy,” but rather, “Master Tad” (Source).

And so now “Pan Bóg” makes since: it’s simply “Lord,” or even “the Lord God.” When I learned all this, I stopped snickering under my breath whenever I rarely attended Mass with a friend.

Until I noticed the reference to God being “blue.”

Comment [2]

Bubba Jones University

Willful Expose mentioned recently that bastion of liberal education, Bob Jones University.

Ah, Bob Jones, where interracial dating was only recently permitted.

Well, Willful pointed out a lot of the absurdities of the regulations there. Some of my favorites: I’m most curious about the internet filtering. Of course HotLesbianSexInTheGreenRoom.com is blocked, as is, say, Catholic.com. But I’m curious about non-theological, non-porn sites.

• Residence hall students may not watch videos above a G rating when visiting homes in town and may not attend movie theaters.
• Contemporary Christian music is not permitted (e.g., Michael W. Smith, Stephen Curtis Chapman, WOW Worship, and so forth).
• [Men’s] Sideburns should not extend past the middle of the ear. Men are expected to remain clean-shaven.
• All wireless access to the Internet is forbidden since all Internet use must go through the University’s filtered access.

Basically, as Willful pointed out, a barbed-wire fence.

In her original post, she failed to mention one regulation that best shows BJU’s southern mentality:

All weapons must be turned in for storage. Trigger locks are required for pistols. Fireworks are not permitted on campus. (Source)

Guns are as intregal to the southern mentality as grits. While it’s completely “rational” to forbid dates without chaperones, trampling on Second Amendment rights is just out of the question. Why, there’s no amendment regardin’ the holdin’ a hands, but son, we gotta God given right—right, I say—to keep an’ bear arms. The south is, after all, where you’re most likely to see gun racks and to have students miss school on the opening day of some given hunting season. So while parents are not likely to raise hell—Godly, Christian hell, but hell nonetheless—about little Jamie not being allowed to access the internet with his wireless modem, they just might when Bubba Jones says, “Now, ya’ll gotta leave them there Colts and Winchesters at home, y’hear?”

Comment [2]

Dziennik

Each class has one. All teachers are responsible for keeping it up to date. Students have a right to look at it at just about any time. And the Ministry of Education can cause a lot of headaches if it doesn’t like what it sees in it.

So what is this mysterious thing called a dziennik?

I’m tempted to say it’s a direct consequence of The Fall, God’s punishment for all evil on earth, or other such silliness, but I’ll simply say that it’s one of the most annoying things about teaching in Poland.

“Dziennik” is Polish for “journal,” and The Dziennik (imagine a Charlton Heston-esque booming voice saying that) is the grade book for each class. It is the record of the entire class for the entire year, and keeping it up to date is the biggest headache I know of. All grades for all classes (biology, English, physics) are in this marvel of modern stupidity as well as the personal information of each student, and in addition, attendance is marked in one portion.

The most irritating and annoying part of it is the slots for lesson topics. For each lesson, I must write the topic in a special little slot. Now this doesn’t seem like much, but it can be an incredible pain in the ass. Teachers take the dziennik to class, and it is always bouncing through the school—one never really knows where it is. So you forget to write your topics one day.

Then that one day becomes two. Then three. Four. A week.

Then comes the fun.

The Polish equivalent of the homeroom teacher comes and points out all the slots where you forgot to write the topic, and you’re supposed to get out your notebook, look up that day, and write the appropriate topic.

Of course I write all my topics in English, so the obvious struck me long ago: “Only [Basia] (the other English teacher) knows enough English to understand what I’m writing in here. I can write anything I want.” So that’s what I started doing.

After that, topics included, “General Chaos and an Attempt to Keep Them Interested Forty-Five Minutes” and “Stuff.” Song lyrics can provide good topics: “Looking for someone, I guess . . .” or “Looking Over that Silly Four-Leaf Clove.” I suppose it’s immature, but we’re all allowed to be childish every now and then, right?

Mind, I didn’t do this regularly—just when I’d forgotten to write the topic or (more likely) the dziennik wasn’t available at the time.

Some years ago, when I did this more often, the other English teacher finally saw me doing it, and she asked me to stop. “I’ll be the one who gets in trouble,” she protested. At that time I didn’t speak much Polish, really, and she was the go-between.

Reasonably enough, she didn’t want to get yelled at.

I toned it down a bit, something like “Present Continuous in Questions and Cow Tipping.”—a combination of the two.

In theory, she explained, someone from the Ministry of Education might know enough English to understand what I wrote, and then the stuff would hit the fan.

I thought to myself, “If the Ministry of Education doesn’t have anything better to do than to sit and read every single topic in some little village’s school’s dziennik, then I think whoever was reading it might appreciate the humor.” But I said nothing. And wrote for my topic that day, “Telephone Vocabulary and Other Silliness.”

Comment

Metablogging

CW Fisher wrote about the proliferation of “I” in blogs, then amended those thoughts with one of the best pieces I’ve read about blogging. In a comment,
Isaac wrote,

Fascinating stuff… this whole blog phenom just hasn’t straightened itself out yet, so who knows what kind of writing to call it? And remember — rules for writing should increase accessibility and help convey messages; not serve as prescriptive left-over remnants of the past.

Isaac is right — this is an entirely new form of writing. It’s certainly spawned its fair share of vocabulary. Blog, blogger, blogging, blogosphere, blog rolling and many others have in a short period of time gone from oblivion to cliché. I hate all those words — they sound almost obscene, but I’m too lazy to go about re-inventing vocabulary.

I’m new to the web log scene, and before then, I’d never even really read that many of them. I started writing online because a friend bought me the domain name and, already having a web site, I had to so something with it. I’m not new to daily writing, though, as I’ve kept a journal for over twelve years, amassing close to two million words in that time.

Yet blogging is not journaling.

Nor, as Isaac implied, is it like any other form of writing.

Privacy issues and instant, world-wide accessibility aside, there is one thing about blogging that makes it different from almost all other forms of writing. It’s the activity I’m engaged in right now — metablogging. Blogging about blogging.

Since I’ve been exploring the blog world, I’ve found that we tend to write an amazing amount about what we and others are doing to the blogosphere. Of course it is a world of pundits musing, rambling, ranting, and a host of other blog-clichés about anything from seeing Star Wars trailers online to grieving the loss of a wife, but what I see more often than anything else is blogging about blogging.

The blogging world is a giant printer cable swallowing its own tail, very often publishing about publishing.

How boring.

He says in self-indictement.

So why do we all do it? We’re all enamored with this new technology we’re creating—writing about blogging is standing before a mirror. It’s preening. And it’s the one thing all bloggers have in common. That’s why the post I’ve written on blog-related topics have gotten the most comments. Not everyone cares about Poland or religion (my two favorite topics, truth be told), but most people who bump through care about blogging.

Yet this is somewhat logical, this metablogging, because blogs cannot exist in a vacuum. How many blogs, after all, are there which have no links to other blogs? Before the advent of Blog Explosion and similar sites, blogging was a more organic activity. Manually inserting links, then blog rolling was how everyone kept track of blogs, and how everyone else discovered new ones. Blog Explosion tends to make it a bit more commercial, especially given the fact that we can buy credits. This explains why we see “Pro-Life Blogs” appear time and time again on Blog Explosion. Throw together a banner and we all can have our cyber billboards.

Yet despite Blog Explosion and similar tools, checking out your favorite blogs’ links is still the best way to find interesting reading, and so we’re all still dependent on each other, which goes some way in explaining why we love to blog about blogging.

The question of why we blog about blogging is overshadowed by the larger, more blog-existential question: Why do we even keep a blog at all? If you’re reading this, chances are you keep a blog. Why? Most people blog like they live: without thinking.

I’m not well-read on blogs (probably never will be—there’s too much crap out there), but among all those I’ve ready, only once have I found an expression of the philosophy behind the blogging, an answer to the question, “Why am I doing this?”

Fr. Thomas Dowd, keeper of the blog Waiting in Joyful Hope writes that the philosophy behind his blog is simple:

One item, once per day, inspired by something that happened that day. [. . .] Sometimes my blog will have a direct reflection on my day, other times it will seem to be a more “theoretical” reflection, but I can guarantee that it is (almost) always inspired by something from that day.

A philosophy — why I’m doing this. It’s a great idea. When I ask myself, I’ve no answer.

Because I got the domain name? Hardly a reason.

I must come up with some better reason to continue.

Comment [1]

Pour Marketing

The front of the shirt reads, “ghotic,” written in a font befitting the dust jacket of an Anne Rice novel. Down the sleeves and on the back there is a stupefying message, intended, I’m sure, to be mystifying or even dreadful and chilling:

This shirt, found at outdoor markets around southern Poland, is all the rage at the moment. It seems that at least thirty percent of the girls at school have one.

It seems strange that manufacturers want to incorporate “cool” foreign languages into their design, but “cool” text with such idiotic mistakes defeats the purpose. Why not just put gibberish on shirts if comprehensible meaning has no value? Why not put some squiggles and dots and call it Arabic? Or go to a Chinese language website and pick some of the characters at random?

This is the story of our times, when style consistently trumps content. Image is everything. First impressions are almost always visible, and pop culture is always dictating in which form the initial impressions should be in order to be considered “good.” Or even “cool.” That explains why so many of my female students wear clothes that bare their midriffs even when there’s a half meter of snow on the ground, and pluck their eyebrows within a millimeter of extinction. Chinese culture crippled its women with foot binding; Polish culture freezes them and has them running around with nonsense written on their clothes.

Comment [2]

Do you

Despite the stereotypical relationship prevelant in Western culture, I get on very well with my mother-in-law. She’s a retired Russian teacher who gardens during the summer and crochettes through winter—fresh veggies, beautiful flowers, and handmade Christmas tree ornaments.

I like her a lot.

She’s not very technologically savvy, though. We all love her, but—bless her sweet Polish heart—she just doesn’t feel comfortable with much of anything electronic.

My in-laws got their first microwave oven a couple of years ago (?!). It’s a little, basic job, with a manual timer egg-timer type mechanism and limited settings.

I could sense disaster in the offing.

One evening, my not-yet-then-wife and I were sitting upstairs when I caught a whiff of something burning. “Something happened down in the kitchen,” I thought, expecting the faint odor to disappear rather quickly. Instead, it grew stronger. We headed downstairs to see what was going on.

In the kitchen, on a stool in front of the microwave, sat my dear not-yet-then-mother-in-law, fretting and wringing her hands.

“Oh dear! Oh no!” she was muttering.

Seems she’d wanted to warm up some ginger-snaps for a snack and, not knowing how long it would take, set the egg-timer microwave to something like three minutes.

She didn’t know she could just turn it back to zero to turn it off.

She didn’t know she could just open the door to turn it off.

She didn’t know she could, in a worst-case scenario, unplug the microwave.

So she sat there, watching the ginger-snaps slowly carbonize, worrying herself silly about how much smoke was in the kitchen and promising herself never again to use the microwave.

Comment [4]

New Year's Break

I’m in Hel now. That’s not a comment on my current state, but my geographical reality.

Back in a few days.

Oh, all the best for the new year.

Comment [1]

Names

My name is Gary. My parents told me that when they first saw me, they just knew I was “Gary.”

There are lots of Garys out there.

• Gary Kasparov
• Gary Sinise
• Gary Moore
• Gary Oldman
• Gary Cherone
• Gary Glitter
• Gary Busey
• Gary, Indiana
• Gary, West Virginia
• Gary, Minnesota
• Gary, South Dakota

So apparently it’s a popular name.

Nonetheless, I used to hate that name, particularly in junior high. I also hated my hair cut then, as well. Not man-ish enough. I wanted a Ted Danson do.

What was I thinking?

Changing my hair turned out to be easier than changing my name, which didn’t happen until college. Fresh start, new faces—I can be anyone I want. Armed with that knowledge, I tried going by my middle name: Lawrence.

It lasted a couple of weeks. I’ve often wondered at stage names. Do Sting’s close friends call him “Sting” or “Gordon?” Is Bono “Bono” to his wife, or just plain Paul? Does Adam Ant’s mother still call him “Stuart?” When Eric Clapton was working with Babyface, did they call each other “Clapp” and “Kenneth?” Would Lauren Bacall be as famous as “Betty Joan Perske?” If you call Erykah Badu “Erica Wright,” does she answer? Full list of stage names

The trouble was, I could never remember who I was. Someone would call my name and I would continue walking, oblivious to the fact that someone was trying to get my attention.

Names seem to merge with your self, and it’s difficult to separate “you” from your name. The only reason I could start going by “Lawrence” was because no one knew me at college as “Gary.” It would have been difficult to convince everyone in high school to call me “Lawrence,” for I’d always been “Gary” to them.

Imagine calling the color white “blue” for the some arbitrary reason—it wouldn’t work, because white’s, well, “white.”

When I gave up on the “Lawrence” nonsense, a few people persisted in calling me “Lawrence” for a little while. That in turn made for a stupid situation, because I had to explain:

1. that I’d always been called Gary;
2. that I only switched to “Lawrence” at college;
3. that I’d not been able to get used to it; and,
4. that I’d decided to go back to my “original” name.

“Why’d you want to change in the first place?”

If I’d known what my name sounds like in Polish, and that I’d end up spending years here, I probably would have stuck to the Lawrence. “Garnek” is Polish for “pot” (the kind you cook in, not the kind you smoke), and so when you say, “I’ll wash the dishes,” you of course use the plural form: garnki. Or you can use the diminutive form, which sounds like…

When my wife introduced me to her grandmother, granny’s reaction to my name is, “No, really—what’s his name.”

After all, what how would you react to being told your granddaughter is dating “Pots?”

Still, I’m glad I stuck with “Gary.” It at least lets me make jokes after lunch.

Comment [2]

Freedom-frying-over-high-heat and stupid European surrender monkeys

Old news: the Congress (and many Americans) are opting for “Freedom Fries” instead of “French fries.” (Read BBC article.) Americans are still calling “French toast” “Freedom Toast” and other nonsense.

I’m sure the French have been getting a good chuckle out of this, because it reveals striking ignorance about the English language itself. In a xenophobic attempt to purge “French” from the language and protest France’s lack of support for the American war effort, our leaders headed straight for the fast food.

Are these idiots even aware of the enormous amount of English words are French in origin, thanks to Willie the Conquerer, 1066 and all that? (A short article about it.) Besides, what does anyone hope to accomplish in calling a chunk of deep-fried potato a “Freedom fry” rather than a “French fry?”

I’m sure Chirac, when he heard about this, called an emergency damage control planning session with all his advisors.

If Americans are still obsessed with “French” cooking terms (after all, “French fries” is short for “French fried potatoes”), then they need to come up with new terms for:

• blanch (Freedom remove skin?)
• sauté (Freedom fry over high heat?)
• fondue (Freedom melt?)
• purée (Freedom crush?)
• flambée (Freedom burn?)

The whole list of Arabic words in English is available here And while these idiots are at it, why not purge all the Arabic words from English? After all the terrorists that started all this are mostly Arabic, so let’s chuck:

• admiral (Freedom big Navy leader man?)
• checkmate (Freedom inability to move your king?)
• coffee (Freedom Java—oh wait, do they support us?)
• spinach (Freedom Popeye veggie?)
• zenith (Freedom point in the sky which appears directly above the observer (definition from Wikipedia)?)

This dumbfounding nonsense reveals a basic ignorance of how language works and develops. There are very few words in English language that were “planned” in any way. Language generally just “happens,” like shit. (A list of how words “happen” can be found at wordorigins.org.)

It reminds me of a young man who was spooked by the fact that rearranging the letters in “Santa” produces “Satan”—clear proof of the evil of Christmas. Still, we’re not alone. The French are just as worried about borrowed words creeping into French, as evidenced by the Académie Française. And Céline at Naked Translations has an amusing post about this.

Of course what sparked all this is the feeling in America of not being appreciated.

The ingratitude of the governments of Belgium, France and Germany boggles the mind. If it were not for the heroism of American soldiers during the Second World War, Hitler’s Third Reich would be in its eighth decade.

Poor us—we won World War Two for those spineless surrender monkeys and they should still be bowing to our wishes sixty years later. How dare they think for themselves now! Why, we’ve earned unquestioned support!

Comment [3]

The Dirty Stairs II

“Okay—you can check now,” I called out to my wife after I thought the steps had had enough time to dry. I’d looked at all three of the un-wiped-down steps carefully, feeling to make sure there was no dampness, looking at it from this angle and that, trying to make sure it wasn’t obvious. Part One of the dirty stairs wager is here.

Up the stairs she marched. Straight to the first step. “She’s a cleaning hound,” I thought. “I haven’t got a chance.”

“This one,” she proclaimed, and marched on.

My sporting-chance had now turned into insurance. “She can’t possibly find all three.”

She didn’t—she only found the one, which was in the most brightly lit portion of the staircase. My ego therefore took a beating, but it could have been worse—I was saved by poor lighting, I suppose.

Stunned, I sat wondering what had gone wrong.

Now, I’m not a slob. When I lived alone, I didn’t have the cleanest apartment in the world, but it was regularly given a good shakedown. Still, I don’t like to carry things to extremes, and wiping down the staircase after vacuuming seemed like just that. I was sure that she would not detect a single step.

I went back and looked again. There was no difference in the carpets. At the scene of the crime, there was nothing obviously out of place.

It would be easy to chalk this up to gender differences, to come up with a carefully worded generalization that didn’t make all straight men seem like slobs and yet didn’t insult homosexual men, who are stereotypically cleaner than straight men but not always, hence the adverb “stereotypically,” that at the same time acknowledged the high slob-factor of some women without selling the ocasional male clean-freak short, that tip-toed the touchy area of gender/orientation distictions with a nod to a possible cultural influence without seeming overly PC…

All I ended up with was a run-on sentence and the affirmation that I am, despite all my protests, a lazy slob.

Comment

Christmas break

If I had a window, and a sign to hang it in, the sign might read, “Out for Christmas.”

But I don’t, on either count.

Here’s wishing everyone a merry, safe Christmas.

Comment [2]

The Dirty Stairs

Part of getting ready for Christmas here is cleaning. Massive cleaning. Some people clean all the windows as well as every single rug.

But let’s not exaggerate.

My in-laws are reasonable people, and my wife is equally reasonable. But they’re still Polish, so that means a lot of cleaning. From a masculine point of view.

Today I was helping clean and was asked to do the staircase.

“Vacuum everything,” instructed my wife, as if I didn’t know how to clean stairs. “And then go back with a rag and clean all the carpets.”

Apparently, I didn’t know how to clean stairs.

“Clean all the carpets with a rag? After they’ve been vacuumed?” I asked incredulously. “What for? It’s not like it’ll make a difference!”

Long story short: we made a bet that I could skip cleaning one of the steps and she wouldn’t be able to tell which one.

Off I go, a lean-mean-clean machine.

I am a fair guy. More than fair. Hell, I even let folks do take-backs while playing chess online. So I thought, “If I’m such a sporty, fair-player sort with other people, how much more so should I be with my wife?” So, to give her a sporting chance, I didn’t clean three of the stairs.

And one of them in the most brightly lit portion of the staircase.

It could be more the effect of my testosterone level than any cultural difference, but I was sure she wouldn’t be able to find one.

The question is:

How many, if any, did she find? [3]

Singing in Class

One of the best things about being an EFL teacher is the fact that I can do “stupid” lessons and get by with it.

Like singing Christmas carols.

Imagine going to math (or “maths” for those who prefer British English) class and the teacher says, “Today, we’re going to sing Christmas carols.” Even in, say, literature class it doesn’t really float.

But in English class, it does. So I teach the kids a few songs. This year:

• We Wish You a Merry Christmas
• Jingle Bells
• Silent Night

Nothing special. I’ve always wanted to do “Jingle Bell Rock,” but they don’t know the melody, and that’s key. It’s a language lesson, after all, not a music class.

I can’t really recall learning Spanish Christmas carols in high school. Perhaps we did, but I have no memory of it…

Which foreign language carols do you know? [2]

Polish Christmas Carols II -- Choral Versions

Kinga recently found some old CDs of choral renditions of many Polish carols. Several of them are simply different versions of the carols posted earlier.

• Wśród Nocnej Ciszy
• Pójdźmy Wszyscy Do Stajenki
• Dzisiaj w Betlejem

Most of them, though, should be entirely new to non-Polish ears:

• Do Szopy Hej Pasterze (“To the Stable, Hey Shepherds”)
• Ah Ubogi Żłobie (“Ah, Poor Manger”)
• Hej, Kolęda, Kolęda (“Hey, Carol, Carol”)
• Li Li Li Li Laj (As it appears. It’s a lullaby for Jesus.)
• Mędrcy Świata Monarchowie (“Wisemen and Kings”)
• Północ Już Była (“It’s Past Midnight,” though a literal translation is “It’s Already Been Midnight”)
• Tryumfy Króla Niebieskiego (“Triumph of the Heavenly King”)

Unforutnately, I don’t have the time now to provide information about all the songs.

If you want to download the whole bunch at once (24 MB), this is the link for you.

Comment

Beethoven's <em>Pastorale</em> Symphony

The first piece of classical music I really fell in love with was Beethoven’s Pastorale symphany. It’s his sixth symphony, which means it is right after his famous Fifth, and squarely between his his revolutionary Third and Nineth symphonies. I’ll readily admit now that I do, in many ways, prefer other Beethoven symphonies to his Sixth, but listening to it brings out the child in me.

I discovered the Sixth from a friend of my mothers, who, learning that I was showing interest at the age of eleven in classical music, brought me a couple of cassettes. At this German site you can pick up the openings of each movement. One was a Shostakovich piece, and the other was Beethoven’s Symphony No. Six.

Shostakovich didn’t grab my young years, but Beethoven had my full attention. I’ve since tried to find the Shostakovich again. I was convinced it was an odd-numbered symphony, but after having bought so many Shostakovich odd-numbered symphonies, I’m now not sure. It began with a roaming, lonely bassoon solo. Any ideas? And no, I’m not confusing it with the opening of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Once, while living in Poland the first time, I had a sleepless few nights thanks to a strange atmospheric phenomenon of the area (perhaps more on that later) and general stress. It was the final, peaceful movement of Beethoven’s Sixth that finally put me to sleep.

Since falling in love with Ludwig’s Sixth, I found others that I ultimately preferred. The first movement of his Third is one of the most dynamic openings I know for a symphony, and of course his entire Nineth is, well, Beethoven’s Nineth.

But his Sixth always ensures a smile and a peaceful evening.

What's your favorite Beethoven symphony? [1]

untitled Me

It’s a strange thing to get used to at first, seeing those three little letters everywhere before every name. Well, almost every name — the names that deserve it. The names that have earned it:

mgr

It’s an abbreviation for “magister,” and it appears before the names of all people who have completed the basic, five-year Polish university education. What it would be translated to in English is a little tricky, though.

Technically, it’s a Master’s Degree. But in many ways, it’s more like a Bachelor’s Degree. The main differences are the time-frame (five years as opposed to four), the course work (i.e., the total number of hours, though I’m not convinced a mgr equals a BA + MA as far as total course hours goes), and a required thesis. Of course most universities in the States don’t require a thesis for a BA and don’t require five years of study; on the other hand, the a lot of the fifth year is more or less spent writing the thesis, so a Polish university education is four years of course work, just as an American degree.

The major difference, I would say, comes after completion of the degree. That annoying title, “mgr,” prefaces names in every conceivable context. And when you think about it, it’s a little ludicrous, at least for an egalitarian American like me.

Imagine the American equivalent: Gary Scott, MA. Or worse: Gary Scott, BA. I tell myself that even if I had a doctorate, I wouldn’t want “Ph.D.” appended to my name all over the place. But at least I concede that a doctorate is deserving of that recognition and honor. But a Master’s Degree?

It’s especially annoying when one considers the fact that a “magister” degree here is the basic university level education. So in that way, it’s most decidedly not like the American MA, which is a step above the basic university education. I want to scream sometimes when I see a line of “mgr’s” in a list of personnel, “Jeez people, you completed your country’s basic university education! Stop bragging about it!”

xyz pzc hba Gary Scott

If you do complete graduate studies in Poland, you get to include even more initials before your name! Below are a sampling of possibilities:

• mgr inz.—After seven semesters, you get an “engineering” degree. Three more semesters and successful defense of your thesis gets you the magic three letters: “mgr”
• dr—A doctorate degree — eight more semesters
• dr hab—A bit of a mystery, it seems. You have to defend additional research and you become “habilitated.”
• prof. dr hab —Tenured professorship.
• prof. dr hab inz—Tenured professorship if you happened to get the “inz.” first.

RIP xyz pzc hba Gary Scott

Titles are one thing in life. At the very least, they show the relative qualifications of an individual to speak on a given topic.

In death, they’re certainly seem to be empty vanity. But, nonetheless, at least one grave I’ve seen includes the “mgr” nonsense.

Which initials do you have hovering about your name? [3]

Got Soul, Part II

Regarding my recent post on the soul, Isabella commented,

What loaded questions. That nobody can answer. I don’t know if you’re a reader of fiction (heck, I barely know you at all), but your entire post reminds me of an SF novel — Terminal Experiment, by Robert J Sawyer. I don’t think he’s a very good writer, but he grapples with some very interesting ideas, starting with the 21 grams that leave the body when you die.

Twenty-one grams that leave the body when you die? I’d never heard of this. Being a skeptic, I immediately thought, “Urban legend,” but I thought I’d poke around on the internet a while and see what turned up.

In an article entitled, Soul Man, I found that the the 21-gram idea can be traced back to an early-twentieth century physician, Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Massachusetts. He did a relatively crude experiment in which the beds of six terminally ill patients were put on scales to check for weight loss at the moment of death. He claimed to have accounted for evaporation of any sweat that might be on the patients skin, and reasoned that the effect of bowel movement or urine elimination would be negligable because it would remain on the bed. His results were far from uniform, but they indicated some weight loss at death. (The full text of the 1907 AMA paper is here.)

From this, it’s safe to say:

Urban Legend.

But were the questions I asked really “unanswerable?” That depends on what we mean by “unanswerable.” Science is not usually about “definitely” answered questions, and after all, it is science than can answers this question for us while we’re still alive.

All bets are off once we’re dead, though.

The saddest part about not believing in a soul, though, is that we’re right, we’ll never know.

Comment

Lingusitic Netherworld

My wife and I, for the first several years of our friendship, spoke nothing but English.

When I met her, I barely spoke Polish; as we became friends and spent more time together, though my Polish was improving, her English was still much better, so it just made sense to speak English. Part II of a series on learning Polish and developing “bilingualism.” Part I is here.

When we decided to try dating, after being friends for six years or so, I told her, “Okay, one thing that has to happen is a linguistic change. We can’t go speaking English all the time.” And so one early date, we spoke nothing but Polish.

It was awkward. The language felt heavy in my mouth as I occasionally stumbled to express something that I knew I could say in English and she would easily understand. And hearing her speak Polish to me — it was surprisingly odd.

Since then, we’ve reached an equilibrium. We speak a lot of English because we’re eventually going to be living in the States for some time, and she wants all the practice she can get. “You get so speak Polish all the time. I never get to speak English,” she reasoned. Fine by me, I thought — speaking my native language is still easier than speaking Polish, a sign that though my Polish is getting pretty good, fluency is a non-issue, and admittedly, an impossibility due to my inherent laziness.

When we’re with friends, we speak Polish of course. Guests leave and we sometimes continue speaking Polish, sometimes slip in to English, and most often, mix the two.

When she’s tired and I’m tired and neither of us wants to think about what how to say what we want to say, she speaks Polish and I speak English, leading to some undoubtedly strange sounding conversations. Most telephone conversations are mixed like this, though no one else knows it. (Or didn’t, until now.)

I’ve recently noticed that when she speaks Polish, she sounds like a different person in some ways. My wife speaks very good English, but she’s generally spoken it very deliberately. That’s why she makes so few grammar mistakes — she’s thinking carefully as she speaks. But when she speaks Polish, all those linguistic concerns disappear and she just talks.

Even her voice sounds a little different when she’s speaking Polish. It’s somehow a little deeper. It resonates a little more. The sounds in Polish (“szcz,” “prz,” “rz,” etc.) generally sound harder (not more difficult, more solid), so when she’s speaking Polish, she sounds older and less naive. Re: the “less naive” comment:
My wife and I are both idealists, though I’m a pessimistic idealist—I hope things will work out for the best, but I usually doubt they will. So in that sense, we’re both a bit naive.

I can only imagine what I sound like speaking Polish to her. Because Polish grammar is so difficult (it’s a heavily inflected language, as I’ve mentioned before), I still make tons of mistakes. But my Polish is now at a level that I usually know I’ve made a mistake, but I just don’t want to go back and correct it, or, more often, I don’t know exactly how to correct it.

The result must be somewhat horrific.

Because my wife speaks English so well, I sometiems feel a bit stupid speaking Polish with her. She uses grammatical constructions that, as a teacher, I know are difficult for Poles to master, and she does it without thought. I, on the other hand, must sounding little like this. Well, no—that’s a bad example. My problem is mainly with the endings, so “better example this would be.”

One of the advantages of this linguistic soup will obviously be bilingual children — as long as they don’t take their Polish cues from me, that is.

Comment [5]

Original Sin :: Salvation, Mercy, and Logic, Part III

The discussion of salvation leads naturally to the question of one of the most puzzling doctrines of Christianity: Original Sin.

Simply stated, the idea of Original Sin is that because Adam and Eve sinned by eating of the Tree of Knowledge (interesting that God commanded them to stay ignorant), they plunged the whole human race into a state of sinfulness. Recall that Matthew Henry wrote that “in a graceless soul, [. . . ] is empty of all good, for it is without God; [. . . and] this is our condition by nature, till Almighty grace works a change in us.” How could this have come about, though? By what mechanism could Original Sin enter the entire human race?

What exactly did Adam and Eve do? Two things: a physical act, and more seriously, a psychological act. They physical act, of course, was eating the fruit, whatever that might have been. The psychological act was going against the will of God — disobeying, in other words. Yet for something to affect the entire human race, it would have to be passed on genetically. How could either eating a piece of fruit or disobeying a command naturally affect a human’s genetic makeup? Of course, it can’t affect us at all naturally, but we’re dealing also with a supernatural element in the story of the Fall and Original Sin, so perhaps God somehow altered Adam and Eve’s genetic composition to pass on an Original Sin gene.

Yet this is starting to get ridiculous. “Sin” is a psychological and even spiritual condition. Despite various notions of “physical sin” and other twists, sin is not physical but spiritual and psychological. How then could it be passed on genetically? If it were, it would be discoverable. Imagine the headline:

Scientists Discover the Genetic-Theological Source of All Our Woes!

If it’s not passed on genetically, we are left with the unsettling conclusion that perhaps Original Sin doesn’t really affect us as much as it affects how God views us. Original Sin is a condition we’re placed in by God, thanks to Adam and Eve’s rebellion. Perhaps it could be explained by saying that God withdrew himself from Adam and Eve after the Fall, making it impossible for them to have access to the godliness they needed to live a life free from Original Sin, and that that gap is what Jesus’ sacrifice was intended to overcome.

Augustine and Aquinas Just Wandered In...

Polish Christmas Carols

Christmas in Poland is not the commercialized ugliness that it is in America (though it is changing). Since Poland is around 95% Catholic, Christmas has an enormous religious significance, second only to Easter. It stands to reason, then, that there are numerous Polish Christmas carols. In the interest of honesty and fairness, I’ve selected Christmas carols only from freely distributed CDs, in an effort to infringe on copyright privileges as little as possible.

So, as a gift to anyone who’s interested, here are six Polish Christmas carols.

Przybieżeli Do Betlejem (“They Came to Bethlehem”) (Listen)

This is an orchestral version of the song. I like the regality of this version a lot.

Wśród nocnej ciszy (“In the Silence of the Night”)

(Listen)

This is not the Polish version of “Silent Night,” but an entirely different carol. It is addressed to the shepherds in the fields who go to see the newly-born Jesus.

It begins with a shofar, and then the first voice you hear, somewhat off-key, with an ever-increasing tempo as it nears the chorus, is that of none other than Karol Wojtyła—John Paul II.

After the Pope’s verse, you hear Józek Broda (“Joseph Beard”) playing the “leaf”—I’m not sure from which tree, but he’s famous for it.

The other singers are Polish singers—pop stars, theater performers, folk singers, and every other kind of artist imaginable.

Dzisiaj w Betlejem (“Today in Bethlehem”) (Listen)

This is a fairly standard Polish carol, performed in the Goralski
(“Highlander”) style. Goralski folk live in the southern, mountainous region of Poland, in the Tatra Mountains, around Zakopane (“Buried”).

Typical of this style of music is the bass part. I’m not a musicologist, and I can’t really describe it—regular, repeating, simple, on the down beat. You really just have to hear it.

Oj, Malućki.mp3 (“Oh, Little One”) (Listen)

This is a traditional Goralski carol, which has become as known as “Silent Night” in Poland. The solo singing style is typical of the Goralski style—it sounds to my ears sometimes as if the singer is occasionally straining to be in pitch and just barely making it. It’s a horrid style when the singer is, well, less than perfect.

Otherwise, it’s intense but pleasant.

The lyrics here, according to Kinga, show a typical Goralski
attitude. One verse is,

Hey, what fer didja come down here?
Was it bad fer ya in heaven?
But daddy, your sweet, lovin’ daddy
Tossed ya out of heaven
There ya’d sit drinkin’
All kinds a sweet goodies
And here you’ll just be drinkin’
Yer bitter tears

My translation is horrid, and somewhat too direct, because it’s in the Goralski dialect, and I just can’t capture it in English. The best translated line, to get the spirit of the dialect, is the first line, “Hey, what fer didja come down here?” The original version contains the same awkward grammar when compared to “proper” Polish. I also chose to use a Southern, Twain-esque dialect (i.e., the “didja” and “fer”), in an effort to reproduce the feeling of Goralski in English, with its non-standard pronunciation of many Polish words. I think it works well because the Goralski accent here carries the same stigma as the Southern accent in the States.

Pójdźmy wszyscy do stajenki (“Let Us All Go to the Stable”) (Listen)

Another Goralski version of a standard Polish carol. I love this one—hard not to tap your feet as you listen.

Przybieżeli Do Betlejem (“They Came to Bethlehem”) (Listen)

This is a version by Igor Jaszczuk, a Polish singer-songwriter. It’s not typical of any Polish style, and in fact, with the dobro, sounds more American than anything. I like it, though.

I hope you all enjoy these carols, and please leave a bit of feedback about them. I’m eager to see what any and all think.

Kinga and I hope you all have a pleasant Christmas.

Which one was your [10]

Polishing my Polish

When I first met my wife, I spoke very little Polish. I could buy my groceries, order a beer, get a ticket to Warsaw, and that was about the extent of my Polish communication. When she introduced herself to me, my wife admitted that part of the reason she’d come over to where I was sitting was that she wanted to practice her English.

That was fine, but it began happening too frequently. Soon, everyone who knew any English was coming up to me to pull out their rusty linguistic skills for a good once-over. The result was that my Polish was somewhat slow in developing.

Eventually my Polish reached a communicative level and I could discuss at least rudimentary things. But still it continued — people wanted to speak English with me.

With many people I was more than happy to continue. My wife still speaks better English than I do Polish, and several friends spoke such good English that it just seemed stupid to try to switch to Polish once I could mutter a few phrases. The goal of communication was just that — exchanging ideas — and not to sit in a bar with my friends having a language lesson.

However, I fought the English-as-a-default-language tendency with acquaintances, often to no avail. “Damn it, I want to learn this crazy language!” I thought to myself, realizing the idiocy of the situation: in Poland, and still unable to speak decent Polish. So I fought it, and tried to speak Polish more and more.

It was a triumphant moment when, standing at a bar listening to someone trying to tell me something in English, I realized, “Hey, I speak Polish much better than this guy speaks English!” I was momentarily proud of myself, then annoyed. I wanted to say, “No, możemy po prosto mowić po polsku.” (You can probably guess what that means.)

It’s truly tedious to talk to someone who can barely communicate in English when you know you could switch to Polish and probably have an interesting conversation. But how terribly rude that is, for in making the switch, you’re essentially saying, “Great, great — you’re English sucks, so let’s speak Polish.” At least that’s how I always felt whenever the reverse happened to me. Part two is scheduled for Tuesday 14 December.

My linguistic reality now is mixed: I still have some people that I speak mainly English with. I have a few friends with whom I began by speaking English and now mainly converse in Polish. There is an ever-growing number of people that, though they know English, have never used it with me — an ego-patting thing. And of course there are plenty of friends and acquaintances now that I’ve only spoken Polish with.

Communication with my wife, though, is a topic deserving its own post.

Comment [3]

Middle Ages

Your Honor, the State would like to conclude its case with two exhibits:

Exhibit A:

My client and his recently spent a weekend in Krakow. With Advent coming, that Saturday night was the last big party night for a while, and they were supposed to go to a club opening with some friends.

It all fell through, and everyone ended up going back to my client’s friends’ apartment and having a small “impreza” there.

The aforementioned friend lives with five roommates; each of them has a girlfriend—throughout the evening, people were coming and going. The thought of living in such conditions was enough to make my client’s steadily-approaching-middle-age entire body queasy. No privacy; no silence; an apartment always full of strangers; never pausing, let alone stopping—my client got goosebumps just thinking about it.

Exhibit B:

When younger, my client swore to himself that he would never let these two sentences fall from his lips:

• “That’s not music!”
• The stuff I_ listened to growing up—now _that’s music.

And yet.

And yet my client has said those very sentences—thankfully not to anyone but my wife—about techno, which my client refers to as “that abomination, that assault to the ears.”

Your Honor, on the basis of the case presented, it’s clear that Middle Age is preparing a full attack on my client and I, as his counsel, am forced to respectfully request a restraining order be placed upon Middle Age.

Comment

Salvation, Mercy, and Logic, Part I

I would like this to be an interactive discussion, so Christians and apologists, please speak up! The paths to salvation in the Christian religion are almost as numerous as the denominations. Fundamentalists like to talk about “once saved, always saved,” and the moment they assured their salvation by “accepting Jesus” as their “Lord and Savior.” Catholics talk about their “hope” for salvation and the necessity of living a Godly life.

What all semi-traditional Christians agree on, is that salvation, whatever the form, is

• necessary (It’s often framed in terms of “Original Sin”—the notion that humans have inherited a blemished, sinful soul from Adam and Eve’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden.); and,
• available only through Jesus.

Coupled with the dual nature Jesus supposedly possessed—completely human and completely divine—this raises the question of whether Jesus was affected by Original Sin.

Quotation marks are not meant, in this piece, to indicate derision but rather semi-direct quotes of traditional Christian formulations. Catholics solve this problem with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception: the notion that Mary was born free of Original Sin, and therefore did not pass it on to Jesus’ human nature. Protestants, as far as I know, barely discuss it.

It highlights the one of the strangest aspects of Christian theology, namely the convoluted nature of God’s act of salvation. It’s a many-stepped process:

1. Jesus had to live a perfect life and therefore not “deserve” the penalty of death.
2. Jesus had to die in an excruciating manner.
3. Believers have to know of Jesus’ sacrificial death.
4. Believers have to do something about this knowledge (and at this point, Catholicism and Protestantism part ways significantly).

And all this for forgiveness?

It just seems an unnecessarily complicated method for an omnipotent God essentially to say, “That’s okay—I forgive you.” And not only that—it’s conditional. The condition is Jesus. Without Jesus, Christianity says, you’re unacceptable to God.

It seems an omnipotent God would just forgive—simple as that.

“Dad, I’m sorry—I screwed up.”

“That’s okay son.” Part two of “Salvation, Mercy, and Logic” will appear on Saturday 11 December.

The older I get, the more liberal I get in my theological outlook. Once a staunch atheist, I now admit that there are a great many things that are not explainable in a purely material framework, and I’ve reached a point that I can honestly say, “Who knows—there might be a God.” But one thing is for sure—if there is a God, and he/she/it is one tenth of what theists of any and all stripes say about their God, he won’t be doing any damning. He would be too wise, too patient, and too loving for that.

In other words, if there is a God, then there’s a heaven, and if there’s a heaven, we’re all going there

Apologists? [2]

Glenn Gould :: Goldberg Variations (1981)

This is the first of several posts inspired by Wallfahrtslied. It’s an effort to share with others some music that has changed my life for the better—music I couldn’t imagine living without. Desert Island Discs. Glenn Gould recorded Bach’s Goldberg Variations twice. The first time was in 1955, and those “in the know” refer to it as “revolutionary.”

He revisited the Variations in 1981, and this recording is the one I prefer.

The 1955 Variations is too showy. While it’s a masterful recording, it’s still a bit immature. Despite the light touch, the music seems to be music performed by young man. It’s excited, and passionate.

The 1981 Variations shows a more mature Gould. The tempi are more controlled, and not to mention slower. But the biggest difference is the more human feel to the 1981 Variations. While the 1955 recording is far from robotic, it somehow lacks a beating heart that the 1981 version provides. It’s more thoughtful, and with an occasional tragic whisper.

Both versions have been released under the title A State of Wonder, and include a “radio drama”/interview with Gould just after having re-recorded the Variations in 1981.

Resources
The Glenn Gould Official Site
NPR on Glenn Gould
goldbergvariations.com

Of course at the heart of both Gould’s recordings are the twenty-five variations themselves. The variations express as many emotions as you can imagine: flirty youthfulness, mature joy, deep, resounding sadness—it’s all here. It’s the human experience compressed into sixty some minutes of music.

You can hear excerpts from both recordings at NPR’s web site .

Which do you prefer?

Slip Sliddin' Away

In the small village where I live, they don’t really scrape the snow off the roads until enough cars have driven over it to turn it into ice. By the time it all begins melting in March, it can be six or so inches thick. The roads underneath are, by then, a pot hole mess.

They don’t really shovel the sidewalks either—even in the neighboring town. From late November to early March, then, we all slip through our days rather than walking. No matter what kind of soles you have, nothing really helps when you’re walking on ice.

If someone slips and falls, well, it’s just her bad luck and worse balance. It’s not the shopkeeper or home owner’s fault for not having cleared the snow in front of his property.

What is this lame nonsense? [2]

Tabulaphobia

is, I’m assuming, a newly-coined (passive voice alert—subtly tooting my own cliche) fear: fear of blackboards.

Rather, fear of cleaning blackboards.

The joys of Iraq never cease.

Imagine having a serious discussion over who would eventually wipe clean the blackboard?

Comment

Got Soul? (Or "Where do we hang the damn thing?")

I’ve been thinking about the idea of the soul lately, and I keep coming back to one question: what is the soul? Christian theology teaches us that the soul is the “real” us, the software, and that our bodies are just “temporary dwelling places” — the hardware. The “real” me is not something physical, but something spiritual.

But what is it? Where can we hang the soul in the body? The soul is synonymous with consciousness in many ways, but consciousness and all it entails (memories, emotions, personality, etc.) is merely a load of very complex chemical reactions going on in our brains. Brain imaging is mapping more and more of what we traditionally associated with the soul and showing these things are just that — physical things.

Furthermore, if the real “I” is a soul, how can things that seem to be so basic to the real “I” (personality, sense of humor, emotions, etc.) be affected by physical things? When someone gets drunk, their personality usually alters a bit; when one takes an anti-depressant, it changes an emotion; and of course there are plenty of other examples. If the real “I” is a soul, then how does this happen?

A related question would be when the soul enters the body. Catholicism says it’s at the moment of conception. Steven Pinker, in The Blank Slate, writes,

Sometimes several sperm penetrate the outer membrane of the egg, and it takes time for the egg to eject the extra chromosomes. Where is the soul during this interval? Even when a single sperm enters, its genes remain separate from those of the egg for a day or more, and it takes yet another day or so for the newly merged genome to control the cell. So the “moment” of conception is in fact a span of twenty-four to forty-eight hours (225).

And what about fertilized eggs that split and become twins? When does that extra soul enter into the picture? And what of the phenomenon when two fertilized eggs merge into one embryo which, as Pinker writes, “develops into a person who is a genetic chimera: some of her cells have one genome, others have another genome.”

I posed this question on Catholic.com’s discussion forums, but I didn’t get any satisfactory responses.

One individual responded quoting F. J. Sheed’s Theology for Beginners:

Our ideas are not material. They have no resemblance to our body. Their resemblance is to our spirit. They have no shape, no size, no color, no weight, no space. Neither has spirit, whose offspring they are. But no one can call it nothing, for it produces thought, and thought is the most powerful thing in the world—-unless love is, which spirit also produces.

The soul is like an idea — you can’t measure the color or size of an idea, so the argument goes, and so it’s immaterial. Not quite.

What is an idea if it’s not remembered, recorded somehow? If I have the idea, it’s recorded in my brain in a sequence of proteins and such; if I write it down, it’s recorded on paper; if I tell another person, it’s protein sequences in her brain. But it always depends on something physical. An idea must have a physical medium to survive, else it ceases to exist in a practical way.

This is the same analogy Chuck Missler uses when he talks about humans, hardware, and software. He asks, “How much does a piece of software weight?” He points out that you can load a floppy disk or CD with data, weigh it, and it still has the same weight as it did empty. This is intended to prove the non-material nature of software, which of course is the soul in humans, according to this analogy. But it suffers from the same problem as the “color of an idea” analogy. Software also depends on something physical — a magnetized plate of metal called a hard drive; radio waves as its transmitted from a wireless modem; the scrap of napkin on which the programmer scribbled a particular algorithm.

And so this is indeed not a proper analogy for the soul, for the soul is not supposed to be dependent on anything physical. Ideas and software are dependant on their storage mechanisms. The soul isn’t supposed to have a storage mechanism.

Blinded by science? Most likely not—probably just not interested in questioning a taken-for-granted belief.

Aquinas, where are you? [1]

Tom's Diner

English has twelve tenses; Polish has three. It’s a nightmare for beginning students to keep all that straight. We spend a lot of time drilling, doing “boring” written work, etc. but from time to time, I’m able to think of something completely original and—dare I think—even entertaining.

Pictures originally posted have been removed for technical reasons—in short, I was hacked. It happened one evening that I was planning lessons, thinking, “I need a good, fun lesson for present continuous,” and wondering what I would come up with. (Present continuous, for those of you who don’t know, is, for example, “I’m reading a book at the moment.”) I put some music on, sat down, and began planning. Gradually, I found my attention drawn to the music I’d begun planning, and I sat there, jaw open, as I listened to the perfect present continous lesson (not to be confused with the not-so-perfect persent perfect continuous lesson)—Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner.”

It had everything going for it: the whole thing is in present continuous; it’s very popular in Poland, especially the DNA mix; the vocabulary is relatively simple. Read the lyrics here

In the interveening years, it’s become one of my most successful lessons.

It goes like this:

1. Students get a worksheet that has the lyrics printed out, but without the verbs, and in the incorrect order. For each verb, they’re provided the necessary infinitive, the tense necessary, and any additional information/words (like “not” or “already”).
2. After students take fill in the verbs, we check them all, and make sure they have a basic understanding of the meaning.
3. Then, I just put the song on and watch—who is going to catch on? Eventually, I point out that it’s the worksheet we’ve been working on and tell them that the next task is to put the stanzas in the correct order. We talk about what the song means and make sure they understand it all, or, they translate it all for homework—depending on how much time we have.
4. The next day, they’re divided into groups and prepare to act out the song in time with the music—a live music video, I tell them. This takes only a few minutes, and then we do something else. The actual video is the next day.
5. Show time—and some classes take it very seriously and come in dressed up, with props and materials.

This was the most recent “performance” of the video. The day we were preparing the skits, several people were absent, who were then not absent when we were to perform it. What to do with them? Simple—they were a doo-wap chorus, and they even danced.

Most of the time, it’s very rewarding being a teacher. Sometimes, it’s simply fun, as well.

S. V. fans? [1]

The Magic of Zamfir

Yesterday at school there was an unexpected “surprise”—a concert. Zamfir came, and brought his whole music-lite ensemble: a keyboard player. They began with a few classical-esque selections, but once the keyboard player got the programmed drum beats and bass going, there was no stopping them.

Many of the students were having trouble sitting still to such stirring music and would half leapt into the aisle to go Polka mad but for the fact that everyone was crammed like “herrings in a jar.” So they just tapped there feet and smiled merrily.

Some, moved by the music’s depth and power, sat in awe—I think I saw a tear or two trickle.

A couple of students whispered to me, “This is great, sir, but I sure wish we were back in class!”

Of course, ninety percent of this is made up. Ninety-nine, more like it. There was no Zamfir, no Polka sparkle in the eyes, no longing to go back to lessons. There was a concert, and it did include a young man of about twenty-five playing the pan flute while a woman accompanied. And the music was as artificial as you have probably been imagining.

I’m all for broadening students’ cultural awareness, but not in this way. Introducing them to such music as a way to get them interested in styles of music other than techno or metal (the two dominant preferences among my students) is doomed from the start, mainly because the students agreed to go (each class had the option of going or not, but they had to go as an entire class) in order to get out of lessons. Of course I would have done the same thing at their age.

Also, just giving a concert is not going to engage a sixteen-year-old male in any meaningful way if it’s music he’s not used to, and he wrinkles his nose on first hearing it. Better to have a shorter concert, interspersed with explanations of the songs—their history, the period they come from, etc.—followed by perhaps short discussion afterwards of the music. “Yes, that particular song did have a bird song quality to the melody. It’s because…” And for Mahler’s sake, don’t let it be simply a way to get out of class. That accomplishes nothing.

I try to introduce my students to various types of music throughout the year. One lesson I like to do toward the end of the year involves at least five different songs. It’s for intermediate students, and I simply have them do some free-writing (that’s where you just write uncritically what comes to mind—like most blogs, I would imagine) while I put on various songs. “Imagine you’re at the cinema,” I tell them, “and as the movie begins, this is the song you hear. What’s the movie about? What do you see happening?” And then I put on an incredibly eclectic mix: Ben Folds Five, Mozart’s requiem, Albert King, Ella Fitzgerald, and Johnny Cash come to mind as I recall past lessons.

The reaction is generally bad.

But at least once I held them in rapt attention. While doing some quite writing work (not related to the lesson described above), I put on Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising and told them that much of this album was connected to 9/11. (Read the AMG Review) Students who were usually squirmy sat and wrote quietly, while others just listened to the music, hands on folded arms, eyes wide open, utterly still.

I’m still at a loss, though, as to how effectively to broaden students’ musical awareness.

Suggestions?

Shake and Freeze

The oddest thing for an inhabitant of Poland to be writing: we had an earthquake yesterday at around 6:20 in the evening. Completely unrelated, but I got hits from Google yesterday with someone looking for “bridal tracksuit” and “wedding tracksuit.” Looks like someone’s got class.

It was a slight little hiccup by most standards: 3.6 on the Richter scale. Kinga was at home and said she felt the building shaking for about five seconds. I, on the other hand, was walking home and felt nothing. Reportedly in the nearest town, some houses were shaken enough that books fell from the shelves, and on the other side of the Tatra Mountains, Slovakians reported having felt it.

No reports of damage, but of course everyone’s talking about it.

Earthquake and Poland—they go together about as well as . . .

Well, finish the simile [1]

#&@*

Ah #&@*, I did it again—trying to stop cursing and let another one loose unconsciously.

Without the redundant profanity (a sorry attempt at a joke), that’s what I thought last night when something irritating happened and, muttering to myself about it, I used “colorful” language.

Stopping cursing is about like stopping smoking, I’d imagine. Perhaps more difficult from a certain point of view—you don’t have to buy profanities. They’re there, piled up in our heads, for free! And you never run out of them, so you can’t really think to yourself, “As long as I don’t stop by a convenience store and see a wall of cigarettes, I’m fine.”

My parents tell the story of when my father was trying to stop cursing, he and my mother set up a system that each profanity cost some part of their weekly spending money. They were a young couple, and the purse strings were tight, so they allotted themselves only a few dollars a week as personal spending money. My father “spent” all his money and then some one afternoon waiting for, if I remember correctly, a “woman driver” to turn left.

What is it about profanity that has such a draw? It’s so difficult to stop, and yet so easy to begin. You can sit with an infant, patiently trying to teach her how to say something—anything—and she, with stubborn resoluteness, sits and says nothing. Then you hear the soup boil over, exclaim something you shouldn’t, and when you come back a second later, the infant is chanting your profanity.

It’s not that children have an ear for the vulgarities of their own language. An acquaintance told my wife and me that her daughter has recently begun using “the ‘f’ word” because—guess. It’s a word that has no meaning in Polish, though it does sound like “Kwak,” a somewhat common surname. Nonetheless, there she was, running around the apartment saying, well, the obvious.

When I moved to Boston after having spent three years in Poland, I began muttering Polish profanity—and it is a language rich in profanity—at work when something was trying my patience. Then a Pole started working there.

In Polska, cursing is strangely culturally accepted. That’s not to say that it’s universally practiced, for if everyone cursed, then it would cease to be profanity. Still, in the States someone out “in public” doesn’t usually let the four-letter words fly at will. A bus driver, for example, wouldn’t be sprinkling is conversation with a passenger with profanity, but here, it’s a common occurrence. I’ve heard fathers let loose while their four-year-old daughters stand beside them, grandfathers going crazy while their five-year-old grandsons run around at their feet—and then it’s no wonder that you hear a five year old say the Polish equivalent of, “Hey, *#@$-for-brains, where they *#@! are you going?” Why did I write *#@$ rather than “shit?” It’s always amused me to read quotes in something like Sports Illustrated where instead of quote the pitcher verbatim, puts words like s*$# in his mouth. As if we don’t know what it means, and, more importantly, as if we don’t sound the word in our heads as we read it. Is “shit” any worse than *#@$ for conveying the same idea? It’s even gotten to the point that without any context, we have a pretty good idea what *#@$ means, so what’s the point?

I’m not sure if it’s the rural environment, or Polish culture in general, but one does hear much more “in public” than one hears in the States.

In stores, in bus stops, on the streets—it’s everywhere.

In Polish, it’s not “the ‘f’ word” but rather “the ‘k’ word” and it’s shocking—almost impressive—to hear how many times a riled up Polish man of, say, twenty-five, can use “the ‘k’ word” in a sentence.

Perhaps it’s a question of American culture’s Puritan roots. After all, there are advertisements for soap in Europe that show women’s breasts—unthinkable in the States.

I’m curious about other cultures—how is cursing viewed wherever sit you reading this?

What the *$#@ you think about it? [2]

The See-Saw

I try to be tolerant. I try not to make blanket statements about an entire group of people. I try not to make crude comments about people’s religious beliefs, social customs, etc.

I try to be a bleeding heart, I guess.

Sometimes, I feel the little xenophobe in me (and there is one, buried deep inside) wiggling his way out and making me think things like, “Stupid barbarians.”

A fourteen year old being whipped to death because he broke the Ramadan fast is one of those incidents that is just fodder for my smoldering xenophobia.

“Barbarians,” some are calling them. “A ‘religion’ of hate,” others are saying. “A country ruled by terrorists,” still others are accusing. And the little conservative in me that I fight to keep down when I hear things like that mutters, “The judge, the executioner, and all who stood around cheering deserve the same.”

“The vast majority of Muslims are peaceful,” is the common refrain among us bleeding hearts.

“Explain the lack of outcry among other Muslims about this event,” says the Little Xenophobe I keep on a very short leash.

“Yes, but the townspeople were outraged by this,” says Bleeding Heart. “The article says so!”

“They were only outraged that he died, I’m sure. If he’d received a more ‘moderate’ punishment, like, say, five or ten lashes, they’d approve,” says LX.

“That’s just conjecture. You’re generalizing from one event,” replies BH.

“One event? Look at the Muslim ‘faith.’ It’s blatantly misogynistic; it rules by the sword; it converts by the sword; it’s brutal . . .” begins LX.

“Yes, but most Muslims . . .” interrupts BH.

It’s a never-ending cycle.

What sorts of LX/BH dialogues do you have rattling around your head?

Any closet xenophobes? [2]

In synagogue Saturday

My wife and I spent the weekend in Krakow. Saturday we went for a stroll in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter.

As I’ve mentioned before, Jews in Poland occupy a strange position. There are very few left in Poland today, and that’s why we were able to find ourselves in an old synagogue on a Saturday.

“We should be here,” I thought. “This should still be in use. We should feel as if we’re intruding, coming into the Jewish quarter on a Saturday as bumbling tourists.”

Comment

Politely Declining (Or "Why Polish is <em>really</em> a nightmare")

I recently wrote about Polish plurals and the strange fact that there are two forms#.

That was only the tip of the iceberg. The easy part of the language. Today—how to make a Polish sentence meaningful. Or “how to make sure you say ‘The dog bit John’ rather than ‘John bit the dog.’”

In English, word order is an essential grammatical element. We know in the sentence “The dog bit John” that the dog did the biting, and not John, from the position of “The dog” in the sentence.

Polish, however, is an inflected language and that means that word order has no effect on the meaning of the sentence. In Polish, you could just as easily order the words, “John bit the dog” without any change in meaning. For that matter, “Bit John the dog” and “The dog John bit” are possible as well.

So how are they differentiated? By their ending. In Polish (in all highly inflected languages) you indicate a word as a direct object, an indirect object, a subject, or whatever by adding a suffix according to a given pattern.

An example may help. Imagine in English that subjects ended in ”-doj” and direct objects ended in ”-aldi.” Our sentence would then look like this: “The dogdoj bit Johnaldi.” In that case, “Bit Johnaldi the dogdoj” would have the same meaning, as would the following:

• “Johnaldi bit the dogdoj.”
• “Johnaldi the dogdoj bit.”
• “The dogdoj Johnaldi bit.”

English does indeed have a bit of declension. Some examples:

• ”-ed” to a verb to make it past tense
• ”-s” to make a noun plural
• ”-ing” to make a verb a gerund (i.e., “Swimming is a healthy activity.”)
• ”-er” and “est” in the comparative and superlative forms
• “’s” to denote possession (i.e., “Samantha’s mother left for Switzerland.”)

By and large, though, English is not an inflected language. “The dog bit John” and “John bit the dog” are very different sentences as a result. Thanks to Oliver for the correction. Originally I’d mistakenly claimed that German has five cases.

An inflected language uses cases to differentiate functions and forms. Greek and German have four cases.

Polish has seven:

• Nominative case—The subject of a sentence
• Accusative case—The direct object of a positive sentence
• Genitive case—To denote possession (i.e., “That’s George’s bag.”)
  The direct object of a positive sentence for some verbs
  The direct object of a negative sentence
  For quantities of five and above.
• Locative case—To specify location after certain prepositions
• Instrumental case—To denote the method or tool used to do something
• Dative case—The indirect object of a sentence
• Vocative case—Used in addressing people (i.e., Did you take it, George?)

These changes even occur to names, providing a clear example of the complexities of Polish grammar. We’ll use “Bill Clinton” as a direct object, indirect object, object of a preposition, etc, and see just how insane Polish is:

Case	Example
Nominative case	To jest Bill Clinton. (This is Bill Clinton.)
Accusative case	Lubię Billa Clintona. (I like Bill Clinton.)
Genitive case	Szukam Billa Clintona. (I’m looking for Bill Clinton.)
Locative case	Myślę o Billu Clintonie. (I’m thinking about Bill Clinton.)
Instrumental case	Rozmawiam z Billem Clintonem. (I’m talking with Bill Clinton.)
Dative case	Dałem Billowi Clintonowi. (I gave Bill Clinton… s’thing.)
Vocative case	Wziąłeś, Billu? (Did you take it, Bill?)

Because of declension, the word order doesn’t make any difference. For example, if you want to stress that you gave it to Bill as opposed to George, you could say, with the proper vocal inflection to stress it, “Billowi dałem.”

But learning Polish grammar is not simply a matter of emembering some endings, for all nouns in Polish have a gender (as in German, French, Spanish, etc.), so you have to learn a hell of a lot of endings.

• Three genders
• Seven cases
• Singular and plural

So when you utter a Polish noun, there are *forty-two* possible endings, depending on whether it’s singular or plural, masculine, feminine or neuter, and whichever case is necessary.

And the exceptions, for some forms are exactly the same except in given cases.

• The accusitive plural and the nominative plural of neuter nouns are identical, but feminine and masculine nouns are different.
• The female genetive and locative cases are the same for singular nouns but not for plural nouns.

Aside from that nonsense, there are various considerations for exceptions. Is it a masculine alive noun? Does it end in “a”?

Comment [4]

Shopping in Rural Poland

is a little different than its American counterpart. We’re used to express lanes and in-and-out shopping. In some supermarkets now, you can theoretically do all your shopping without interacting with a single employee. Just swipe your ATM card at the self-check-out and off you go.

Not so in rural Poland.

Until recently, even the notion of a self-service shop was unknown. Shops were organized like the old general stores we see in westerns: a counter, with all the goods on one side behind the owner, with you on the other.

Such was the setup in Poland when I first arrived. I went to the store and instead of shopping, told the shopkeeper what I wanted, and she ran around behind the counter gathering my purchases. It was strange at first, but excellent for my early language acquisition.

There are more and more self-service shops in Poland these days, and virtually all the shops in larger towns and cities are self-service.

But the old mentality lingers:

• Some older women have a habit of doing their shopping as they check-out, so they bring a few items, then continually run through the store, getting this and that, while I stand, all my items in the basket, waiting.
• Some much older women ask the cashier to run around the shop doing their shopping for them. Old habits, I guess.

Despite its inconvenience, I miss the old shops. You had to interact while you were shopping, and as a foreigner, the more the better.

Any Blue Light Specials?

I'm not anti-Semitic but . . .

“I’m not anti-Semitic, but I just don’t trust Jews.”

I was sitting in a bar with an American friend and a Polish acquaintance when the Pole, in utmost seriousness, said that. He could not be made to see the inherent contradiction in what he’d said.

“I don’t really know many Jews, but I don’t like them.”

Thus said another Pole to me, explaining a situation he’d had earlier that week in Krakow with someone who was “obviously a Jew.”

He too maintained he’s not anti-Semitic.

Jews in Poland occupy a strange position. Before the Holocaust, “Poland’s Jewish community numbered 3.5 million, which represented 20 per cent of world Jewry and 10 per cent of the pre-war Polish population.” (Source) Today, Jews number less than twenty thousand in the whole country. Most people in modern Poland have never even met a Jew.

There were so many Jews in Poland thanks to Casimir the Great’s opening the borders and accepting Jews in the Middle Ages when they were being expelled from many other countries in Europe. When they began prospering, the Poles began resenting them and their success.

Contemporary anti-Semitism in Poland is fueled by far-right parties like “Liga Polskich Rodzin” (“The League of Polish Families”) and the populist party “Samoobrona” (“Self-Defense”), both of which overtly and covertly blame Poland’s present economic woes on Jews. They deny that there are only about sixteen or so thousand Jews in Poland, and with some on the fringes insisting that President Kwasniewski himself is of Jewish descent.

Others blame the Jews for the Second World War, saying that Hitler was particularly brutal to Poland because of the large number of Jews here. The “logic” there is baffling, but I’ve personally heard the argument at least once.

Anti-Semitism is not just a problem in Poland, though. Jean Marie Le Pen’s surprise success in the French elections some time ago showed that nationalism and rabid xenophobia find fertile ground even in supposedly liberal France.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe. A supposedly suppressed UN report that blamed “a new wave of anti-Semitism on Muslim youth and on anti-globalization activists” (Listen to the NPR Report) shows that it’s not just right-wing, neo-fascists who are spreading the ancient, illogical hate of Jews.

People talk of how to reduce anti-Semitism and other forms of xenophobia, but anti-Semitism seems like a hydra. It’s been around for so long and taken so many forms that it seems always to be changing.

• Anti-Semitism in Christianity has a long history. Jews are still “blamed” for having killed Jesus, as the recent outcries over Mel Gibson’s brutal Passion showed.
• Hitler magnified a “racial” dimension to anti-Semitism that had been brewing in Europe for at least a hundred and fifty years. Instead of being a religious-ethnic group, Jews became a different race. Indeed, a different species.
• Contemporary liberals sometimes blame Jewry as a whole for Israel’s sometimes-excessive dealings with Palestinians.
• Even the super-nutty fringes are not immune. Take a look at Freedom Press and it won’t take long to find a connection utimately between Jews and aliens (?!?) through the supposed conspiracies of the Illuminati.

Anti-Semitism is, indeed, everywhere, and has been for ages. And despite our “enlightened” times, it appears we might be heading toward another wave of increased anti-Semitism.

Thoughts? [1]

Double your pleasure

In Polish, there are two plural forms for every noun.

It works like this. For numbers 2 through 4, and anything number that includes those numbers (i.e., twenty-two, thirty-five, but not eleven, twelve), there is one plural form; for numbers 5-10, there is another plural form.

“Huh?”

Exactly.

An example might help. “Piwo” is “beer” in Polish. “Two beers” would be “dwa piwa.” “Four beers” would be “cztery piwa.” But “five beers” is “pięć piw.” But at “twenty-one” (yes, I know—who needs to know how to say “twenty-one beers” in Polish?), it would change back to “piwa.” Until you decided to get really wasted and go for twenty-five, at which point you would order “dwadzieścia pięć piw.”

Another example: “Roll” in Polish is “bułka.” “Two rolls” is “dwie bułki.” At five we get the switch again: “pięć bułek.” At twenty-one, it goes back to “bułki.”

Further, if you want to use a plural noun as a direct object in a positive sentence, you use the first plural form; if you want to use it as a direct object of a negative sentence, you use the second form. In other words, to say “I like rolls” you use “bułki,” but to say “I don’t like rolls,” you use “bułek.”

And Poles wonder why their language is so hard for non-Poles…

Any linguistic strangeness where you live?

Linguists? [2]

Underheard

What is it about the popularity lately of singing through one’s nose? This one is the absolute winner, but it seems to be the “in” thing now. I was at a bar here in Poland with a friend sometime when that atrocious Anastacia song “Paid My Dues” came on the radio. Read all the lyrics, sorry though they may be

As Anastacia sang, my friend got that lost-in-the-moment look, then asked me, “What is this song about?”

“I don’t really know,” I replied. “I’ve never really paid much attention to it.”

“But I don’t get it? ‘Paint my juice?’ What is that supposed to mean?”

Comment

Is <em>nothing</em> sacred?

In Poland, separation of church and state doesn’t exist, and priests teach religion courses in school. Today I caught a student writing cheat notes on his arm for a quiz he was having in religion class!

“You realize that when you take a test and you cheat, it’s the same as lying, right?” I asked him. Part of a series on cheating in Poland.
Part one: Forms?
Part two: Why

“How so?”

“Well, when you take a test, aren’t you implicitly saying that you’re taking the information only from your own knowledge?” I asked.

“I guess,” he muttered.

“Then cheating is a form of lying,” I concluded.

A thoughtful moment. “So?”

So, indeed.

Comment [1]

The Sky Was Falling

For most of my life, I’ve awoken not having the slightest idea what I dreamt the night before. I could probably count on my fingers the number of dreams I’ve ever vividly remembered. Perhaps that’s why I’ve ever been terribly interested in dreams or their interpretation.

I’ve only once had a recurring dream. I was in second grade. It was not a time of anxiety for me, as first grade had been, and I was fairly optimistic about my prospects in life. Then suddenly, it began, and continued for at least four nights that I can remember. The same dream, every night — little or no variation.

I’m a court attendant, and I’ve recently been placed in charge of organizing a grand ball for our queen. I was given such a budget that I even did major redecorating in the ballroom, and had an enormous mirror installed on the ceiling. The chandeliers had been removed, and all the light was provided by candles along the wall. I oversaw the menu; I hand-picked the orchestra; I had a multitude of designers working on the decorations.

Finally, the evening of the ball. The guests arrived and were milling about in the ballroom, waiting for the queen’s arrival. And then — the fanfare. The queen’s footmen enter, with her close behind, elegantly dressed. “She is surely impressed with all this,” I think to myself. “It’s going to be the greatest ball ever.” And then I hear a creaking, splintering sound above us all. I look up to see that the mirror has broken apart and is falling in hundreds of pieces. I look at the queen — she’s not aware of what’s going on. I look back up, then back to the queen, thinking “Someone has got to get her out of here!” I take a step in that direction

and I always woke up at that moment.

Four nights. Maybe more.

Sigmund, where are you? [1]

This is <strike>only</strike> a test

Three of the seven classes had a test today on passive voice. You all know what “passive” means, right? You remember getting those papers back from your high school teacher with “passive” scribbled in the margin and wondering, “What the hell does that mean?”

My handy-dandy, five-step, active-to-passive transformation guide.
1. What is the main verb?
2 .What tense is the main verb in?
3. What is the direct object?
4. What is the verb “be” in the tense from question two?
5. What is the past participle of the verb from question one?
And then—3+4+5=passive voice

If you’re a non-native English speaker reading this, I’m sure you don’t need this explained. And that’s the irony of it all. In many ways, non-native English speakers know grammar much better than those of us who grew up speaking the language.

There’s a whole side of our native language that we native speakers don’t naturally know. For example, if I were to challenge most Americans to construct a sentence in present perfect continuous tense in the subjunctive voice, there might be a bit of head scratching, even though they would understand the sentence, “I would have been writing this forever if you hadn’t helped.” (Yeah, that example is a bit awkward, but it works.)

When I first came to Poland to teach English, I had no idea about many such things. For instance, what’s wrong with the sentence, “I have done it yesterday”? Several years ago, though I was an English major in college, I would have had a hard time explaining. Now, it’s simple: “I have done it” is in present perfect tense, and present perfect tense is used for the indefinite past. “Yesterday” is fairly definite, I would say.

Back to the issue at hand: passive voice. A sentence is passive if the subject is not the “doer” of the verb. For example: A ball was thrown. They ball had nothing to do with the action—it indeed received the action. The active would be something like, “My mother threw the ball.”

Today’s test was designed to check students’ ability to change sentences from active to passive, as well as to decide when a sentence should be passive and when active.

Some samples from the test:

• (President / send / me / a letter of congratulations || Present Simple) A letter . . .
• (People / write / more books about computers / than about any other subject || Present perfect) More books . . .

Correct answers:

• A letter of congratulations was sent to me by the president.
• More books are written about computers than about any other subject.

Some involved just putting the verb in the correct tense. Sort of.

• This car __. It’s too old. (not/to steal – Future Simple)
• This street __ because of snow. (already/to close – Present Perfect)

Among the English-to-Polish translation (a rarity in my tests) were “tree sap” and “unleaded.”

Results, thus far, are less than spectacular.

Comment [2]

Shakes and Kisses

I’ve lived in Poland now for over six years, and there’s a custom I still haven’t come to terms with—the handshake.

In the States, we shake hands only when we first meet someone, or when we’re in some very formal environment. In Poland the handshake is much more common.

In short, you should shake hands with someone if:

1. You’re a man.
2. You encounter a man.
3. You know the man you’re encountering or
4. He’s with a man you do know.

You shake hands in bars, when you arrive at work, when you pass on the street. Kids shake hands; old men shake hands with young men; directors with teachers—everyone shakes hands.

Some examples:

• If you go to a bar and you see a friend sitting at a table, you go shake his hand, and you offer your hand to every other man who’s sitting at the table.
• If you’re walking down the street and an acquaintance is walking the other way, you shake hands, even if you just continue walking.
• If you’re a student, you shake hands with all your friends every day. Sometimes you see a boy just moving down the hall, shaking hands like a politician.

But it’s not so simple as that. You’re only supposed to shake hands when you first meet each other. Other encounters during the day don’t get the shake.

Traditionally, you’re not supposed to offer your hand to a woman. Indeed, in a really traditional, formal setting, men still kiss women’s hands in Poland.

I’m still not sure when I’m supposed to offer my hand and when I’m not. Rather, I forget. I walk by an acquaintance on the sidewalk and I realize three steps too late that I only said “Cześć” and didn’t offer my hand.

As far as kissing women’s hands go, well, I just keep away. It seems too cavalier (pun intended) for me to do it.

But I kiss men here. In fact, I’ve kissed every single male teacher with whom I work. The three peck, right-cheek, left-cheek, right-cheek-again mwa-mwa-mwa kiss. The triple peck is used in congratulatory situations: name days, weddings, etc. and it’s the most difficult for me, an American, to get used to. After all, while I really like my director, I don’t want to kiss him on a regular basis. But from time to time, at a teacher’s meeting, we give a birthday gift to one of the teachers and then we all line up and mwa-mwa-mwa.

At our wedding, Kinga and I kissed almost all our guests . . .

Hugs and kisses? [3]

Make You Squeal Like a Pig

This is going to be pretty disgusting. Fair warning.

Part of the preparation for my wedding to a Polish woman who grew up in a very rural area was a pig killing. My father-in-law bought a pig from a farmer some months before the wedding, and then about two weeks before, it was time to kill and dress the pig.

I shot some birds with a shotgun when I was little; I killed a mouse out of mercy because my cat was toturing it—I’ve never seen anything quite that big killed before.

My father said “pig” is the wrong word. “It was a hog,” he says.

I’ll spare the grusome details for now. What astounded me was the behavior of the butcher’s grandchildren. I was sick to my stomach a few times (but taking pictures nonetheless), and they were running around as if it were a Baptist picnic.

And they sat for a moment, and I was able to get the above picture.

Got the dry heaves? [1]

Irritation Squared

Today I went with Kinga (my wife, for the uninformed) and my father-in-law to Kinga’s brother’s house, which is being built just outside of Krakow. Kinga’s brother is now out of the country, so my father-in-law is taking care of the building process while he’s gone.

The house is “standing raw,” to translate directly from Polish. This means that the walls are done, the roof is done, and it’s ready for the interior finishing.
Houses here are built out of blocks and concrete, not the tooth-pick contracting familiar in America. My friend who spent some time in American working in construction said, “A house like that wouldn’t last a week here. The father would come home drunk one night and destroy the whole thing!”

Recently, the concrete for the floors was poured. There was to be five centimeters of concrete on each floor, poured over ten centimeters of Styrofoam insulation. We went to check that that was done.

“You can’t trust anyone here!” says my father-in-law. When he really gets ranting, he likes to say, “This country has no right to exist!” and “Poland must be the richest country in the world, because everybody’s stealing and cheating, and yet there’s still something left to steal.”

So Kinga and I measured the area of all the floors while her father drilled random holes in the concrete to check its thickness. The upstairs was fine, but the downstairs floors were one centimeter too thin.

“It’s ridiculous we have to do this,” I muttered as we went throughout the whole house and measured everything. I was talking to my father-in-law about this, and he said, “Oh, it’s surely the same thing happens all over the world.”

And suddenly, we litigation-happy Americans looked pretty good, because, as I said to him, “At least in the States, you could take this guy to court for not fulfilling the contract. What can you do here?” I asked.

“Not much. We’ve already paid.” The point of all the measuring was this: the same company is supposed to come and finish the walls as well, and the hope of negotiation is what motivated the day’s measuring.

But what struck me was the fact that no contractor here has a reputation for being honest.

As my father-in-law said, “You can’t trust anyone here.”

Comment

<em>Why</em> they do it

Michele asks in a comment if it’s “not MORE difficult to cheat in the field of English because of the essay style answers that are required?” Perhaps in theory, but remember: essays require vocabulary, which is conducive to cheating.

Explaining how students in Poland cheat leads naturally to explanations as to why they do it.

One of the reasons, I think, is the sheer number of courses they take every year. Here’s a list of courses for one third-year (senior) class:

1. Polish
2. History
3. Mathematics
4. Biology
5. Chemistry
6. Physics
7. English
8. German
9. Computer science
10. Geography
11. PE
12. Social studies
13. Religion

That’s not possible courses—that’s the required course work. As opposed to the American system, where you have physics only your final year, with chemistry your junior year and biology as a sophomore, they have all three sciences throughout high school. Of course they don’t have each course every day. For example, senior students have four hours of English a week, and so they meet Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday—like the university scheduling system in the States. Still, that’s an insane amount of studying every week.

A second cause, put forth by a teacher, was historical. “Teachers during communism were seen as the Establishment, and so it was a way to fight the establishment.” Sounds weak. I don’t buy it.

Option three: the rote memory required by many teachers necessitates it. This might have some merit. I know teachers here sometimes simply dictate from a book and the students just write down everything and vomit it back up the next lesson. Admittedly, I do something similar when I give vocabulary quizzes—and I give an obscene number of such quizzes. “Without words, all the grammar in the world won’t help you!” tell the kids.

Choice four, which is the most logical now: as a fellow English teacher put it, “We let them.” Pure and simple. I do my damnedest to stop them from cheating, and I sometimes fail them for even a glance to the side (and that’s no exaggeration—I do it early in the year with first year students, usually with a not-so-important grade, to set a precedent), and I take no excuses. And yet they still cheat.

The cheating won’t disappear soon, I’m afraid. I always use as an example the cultural attitude in the States towards cheating, but I know that that is slowing being eroded and that more and more students are cheating in the States.

Comment [2]

Dude, what's number three?!

I am a high school English teacher in a small village in southern Poland. One of the things that still amazes and annoys me, after more than six years of teaching here in Poland, is the culturally engrained habit of cheating. Simply put, the majority of students here will cheat in any and all perceived opportunities.

• They whisper to each other.
• They attempt to peak in their books.
• They write on desks before a test.
• They hide cheat-sheets in more places than you can possibly imagine.
• They write on their hands, arms, and legs.
• They copy their homework from each other.

And that’s just the stuff I’ve caught them doing.

It’s not that they’re morally degenerate, though. Rather, it’s a full-fledged, much-loved cultural difference. For us Americans, cheating is something of an embarrassment. I cheated once in sixth grade, and got caught doing it. My parents were called in for a conference, and I was quite ashamed of the whole situation. (I did cheat once in junior high, but that was merely because the teacher was on his own planet and my friends and I wanted to see how blatantly we could cheat.)

Poles don’t even see it as cheating, but more as “helping.” Intellectual honesty is, in my experience here, hard to come by. Cheating begins in elementary school and continues through university and into the workplace.

Two examples show the tolerance Poles seem to have for cheating:

• A friend was working on a development project in the north of Poland some years ago. Individual cities wishing to participate in the project had to submit budget proposals. One town copied another’s proposal.
• A high-ranking minister (I believe in the Ministry of Education, if memory serves) admitted to having plagiarized his doctoral dissertation some years earlier. It was deemed “excessive” punishment to revoke his doctoral degree, though I can’t remember what ultimate punishment was.

It’s no wonder, then, that students cheat. It seems to be in the blood.

But how do they do it?

To begin with, they talk. Literally, if I turn my back for one moment a murmur spreads across the classroom. But I usually watch them like a cliché hawk (no reading books while they’re taking a test here . . .), so they have to resort to written methods.

The most common method (aside from writing on hands) is to make cheat sheets that are then hidden in shirt sleeves, taped to the knee (if it’s a girl wearing a skirt), taped to the inside of clothing, or numerous other places.

All this cheating makes the instances of intellectual honesty all the more poignant. I once had a student—one of the hardest working in the school—copy entries for the journal that I was requiring her class to keep. She explained later that she simply didn’t know. She’d never cheated, and she was a model student, but I knew I had to fail her for the assignment. I told her I would think about it. She came to me the next day and said, “It’s not fair that I don’t get a failing mark. I should have known better. Please give me the ‘1’.” I did, but made sure it didn’t affect her overall grade.

Another place students like to use these little “aids” is in conjunction with a pen. There are two methods: the cruder form is simply to take the small, virtually illegible sheet on the outside of a pen. The more sophisticated way is to put it inside a pen with a clear casing.

Whenever I happen to find these, I keep them — so there’s at least a minimal consequence to cheating: loss of a złoty.

Despite my best efforts, I can’t seem to stop this. I might have better luck trying to get my friends to give up smoking and drinking. It doesn’t matter than I have a zero-toleration policy, that I remind students of before every test or quiz. Students know that there’s no questions asked, no arguing tolerated, and begging is ignored — they cheat in any form and I fail them for the assignment, regardless of the weight of the grade.

I even fail them if the appear to be cheating! I’ve told them, “If your lips move, you get a ‘1,’ because am I to know what you’re saying?” It’s excessive, in a sense, and even unfair, but I know if I’m not this strict, they’ll say, “I wasn’t cheating! I was asking for a pencil/tissue/eraser/whatever.”

And still they cheat. And some of them, after being caught, do it again!

Usually I’m remorseless about failing them. After all, I’ve warned them repeatedly. But sometimes a usually hard-working, generally honest student (in other words, someone I really like) cheats. And that’s when it’s difficult to fail them. But I do, explaining my desire not to show favoritism and be fair at all costs.

For any casual readers from the States, I have a question: Did you ever cheat in school? How did you feel? Did anyone every find out? What was their reaction?

Confessions? [3]

Vindictive Voting II

Quite a response I’ve gotten here. To be honest, I don’t put much stock in what people think of many anyway. Yeah, whatever.

It seems I’ve been VR’ed (trying to coin a new cyber term here) again by two more who I gave low scores. I’ll try to get some traffic their way now:

• dixieck23
• Mellow Yellow

I gave them “one’s” for design alone. But with one, I couldn’t leave a comment to explain why, because there’s a limit on the number of comments you can leave in the first place.

Not good.

My initial impression of BE is steadily going downhill. For now, BE has a lot of work to do, I think.

But as Sunshine put it,

Regardless of how it started, the intended result—reading another’s blog—was successful,no?

Who can argue with that?!

Comment [2]

Vindictive Voting

I joined Blogexplosion from sheer curiosity as to what this would do for this stupid site of mine. Thud mentioned it once and I though, “Why not give it a try.”

I got an account, looked through some blogs, and that’s about it. I don’t know if my traffic went up or not. To some degree I guess it did.

One of the things you can do with BE is you can rate other people’s work. And you can see who rated you, and more importantly (for some I guess), what rating they gave you.

Which gives rise to vindictive voting. For example, I gave this blog by one Lewis Moten a low rating. A one, in fact. Perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. It wasn’t that bad. But the content and the design annoyed me.

The first thing I saw was this entry about the Star Wars trailer, which includes nothing but a screen shot and the comment,

I just watched the trailer to Star Wars Episode III – Revent [sic] of the Sith. Pretty cool, and I didn’t have to buy a Hyperspace account to see it.

Fairly lame, I thought.

Worse, the design is a little annoying, with all those frames and scroll bars. As I commented (admittedly later):

The imbedded frames with the off-color scroll bars makes it visually unattractive. The floating link list on the right adds a distracting element, and partially obsures the site title.

So I gave it a low mark and moved on.

Well, it appears that Lewis, angered by my low rating, decided to give me a low rating.

Ah, the joys and pains of the cyber experience . . .

You out there anywhere, Lewis? [12]

Chewing Gum in Singapore

Everyone knows of the “notorious” ban on gum in Singapore. It seems that liberalization is coming. You can chew gum now! That is, if you’re registered to do so.

• The old-ish story is here
• BBC’s coverage adds a few details

I was doing a search on this because there’s a listening activity on the history of chewing gum in the intermediate English textbook I use. I was shocked and thrilled to find out that freedom of chew is slowly coming to Singapore.

And America is helping bring it!

The gum became a sticking point in the trade talks when Philip Crane, a US congressman from Illinois, called for Singapore to lift the ban on all gum. Mr Crane represents Chicago, the home of chewing gum giant Wrigley (BBC Article).

I guess Singapore better brace for an attack if these restrictions aren’t lifted . . .

Got gum, chum?

Calling the Kettle Black

Using The Cloak I can now look at W’s web site. He writes,

Kerry politicized the Osama bin Laden tape by using it to attack the President and now his campaign surrogates are taking those attacks to a new low.

I seem to recall a scene of Bush getting off of Air Force One and saying something about bin Laden and the need for a safe America . . .

Apparently what’s good for the goose is not good for the mule. (Wait, I think I got my metaphors mixed up a little.)

Further, one Steve Schmidt says

For John Kerry’s surrogates to suggest that Osama bin Laden supports President Bush’s reelection is disgusting. John Kerry politicized the tape by using it to attack the President and now his campaign surrogates are taking those attacks to a new low, even as Kerry hypocritically says it would be ‘wrong’ to politicize the tape. This just demonstrates once again that for John Kerry the War on Terror is about political opportunity, not victory.

But it’s okay for Bush’s surrogates to suggest that bin Laden would rather Kerry win because it’ll make U.S. security weaker?!

The article quotes Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA) as saying, “Bin Laden is trying to help George Bush because George Bush is the best recruiter that Al Qaeda has.” I’m not sure why this is so inflamatory, because in a sense, it’s true. It’s just that Bush and his handlers aren’t good at interpreting subtlities, as the uproar of Kerry’s “irritation” comment regarding terrorism.

Comment

John Paul II is a Liberal

Just when you think the Catholic Church is bad, along comes someone who proves that it really could be worse

According to Earl Pulvermacher, John Paul II is an Anti-Pope, which I suppose is almost as bad as being an anti-Christ. He in fact is the true pope.

After 40 years of the Holy See being vacant, the Catholic Church has, on October 24, 1998 elected Pope Pius XIII as the Vicar of Christ on Earth. The details of his election and papacy can be found on the Papal Homepage.

JPII is a heretic. Among JPII’s alleged heresies (our hero lists 101 of them — perhaps he was watching a Disney film as he typed them up?) are all the pronouncements that put a human, tolerant face on the Catholic faith.

There are two columns in list: JP2’s alleged heresies, and “Truth of Divine and Catholic Faith.” Under the latter heading of we find:

• Only Catholics have the right to religious liberty.
• Equal rights for all men is senseless.
• The State must forbid non-Catholic religions.
• False religions worship the Devil.
• Apostate Jews do not worship the One True God.
• No one can be saved who is not in the Church.
• John Paul II worshiped the Devil.
• Buddhism is a religion of damnation

When I look at the list and think of the possibilities, I am all the more thankful that Karol Wojtyla was elected pope and not some more “traditional” Catholic.

Comment

Us and Babia

Last Saturday, Kinga and I went for a bike ride through Slovakia, around to the back side of Babia Gora. It’ll probably turn out to be the last bike ride of the season, because the Indian Summer we’d been enjoying (called in Polish “lady’s summer”) came to an abrupt end recently. So no more pictures like the one at right . . .

Comment

Inexplicable stupidity

Sorry, but I had to bump this up to the top. Come on people—this is utterly ridiculous. I’m making a big deal out of a mole hill and nothing? I live outside the US—Poland, to be exact. Surfing the net, I found a claim that people outside the US couldn’t access Bush’s official web site.

So I tried it.

I get the “Permission to view this website is forbidden for this server” message.

Just what is Bush doing? There is no justification for this, and no logical reason for it either.

Here are some articles about it:

• Wired News
• BBC
• Expatia

According to the Expatia article,

Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, was reported by the BBC on Thursday as saying: “The measure was taken for secruity sic reasons.” He declined to elaborate.

Security reasons?! Does al Q have the capacity to strike through IE? First Homeland Security is raiding toy stores (thanks to Thud for this info), and now Bush is shutting down his website for non-Americans? What kind of “security” is this?

There is just no logical reason for this blockage. If Bush’s team can’t “defend” his web site, what makes people think Bush and his gang can defend the country? Setting up a firewall is a lot easier than keeping out terrorists, I would imagine.

There was, in the Expatia article, some speculation as to why this was done:

Mike Prettejohn, president of Netcraft, speculated to the BBC that the decision to block usage was made to cut traffic to the site in the run-up to the 2 November poll and make sure the site remains active.

Google doesn’t seem to have this problem, and I would wager they see a lot more traffic than Bush’s site. If this is really a concern, I would suggest to Bush’s technologically savvy web team that they look for a better host.

From the BBC article, further speculation, which puts the previous quote in context:

On 21 October, the George W Bush website began using the services of a company called Akamai to ensure that the pages, videos and other content on its site reaches visitors.

Mike Prettejohn, president of Netcraft, speculated that the blocking decision might have been taken to cut costs, and traffic, in the run-up to the election on 2 November.

This just doesn’t wash either. How much could this possibly cost? Besides, in addition to campaign funds, Bush has a sizable bank account himself—he could pay for this out of his own petty cash, I’m sure.

Is it a conspiracy to keep non-Americans from viewing the site? I doubt it. Expatica claims that there are ways to get to the site:

However, keen net users have shown that the site can be found at other addresses, including: https://georgewbush.com ; http://65.172.163.222 and http://origin.georgewbush.com.

However, none of them worked for me.

They all produced 404 errors.

Anyone wanna take a [4]

A Poll of Poles

Polish news agencies reported yesterday that according to a poll (no pun intended), 41% of Poles would vote for Bush and 31% for Kerry.

In the rest of the EU, the numbers were decidedly more, well, decided: 61% of respondents said they would vote for Kerry; 9.8% for Bush.

“Damn liberal Europeans! Kerry probably bought them with money from the oil for food program!”

Comment

Finally good news for the Sox

I’m not a big baseball fan, but I did root for the Sox while in Boston. And they finally pulled it off

The heading at the Boston Globe’s site (Boston.com) was:

Pigs can fly, hell is frozen, the slipper finally fits,
and Impossible Dreams really can come true.

The whole article is here.

Sports Illustrated described it thusly:

It was Boston’s sixth championship, but the first after 86 years of frustration and futility, after two world wars, the Great Depression, men on the moon, and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.

And what a way to do it: the first team ever to come back from a 0-3 series hole, three outs from being swept by the Yanks.

I’m not a big sports fan, but occasionally something like this happens and, well, I just get weepy.

Of course I no longer live in Boston, and so I missed out on what must have been one hell of a party.

Sox Fans?

Tolstoy and Tahiti

I’ve been reading Anna Karenina intermittently for a couple of weeks now, and I find it somewhat difficult to sympathize with such characters who are so clearly in an entirely different social world than I. They talk of Society (with the ever-important “S”) and take off abroad on a whim. Hard work for the men is listening to petitioners in their civil service job or riding around their estate to make sure all the peasants are working as directed (maybe occasionally working with them!); had work for the women is dealing with servants’ incompetence. It’s not difficult to see why Marxist ideology took root there as it did, and it’s strikingly evident already in Tolstoy’s mid–19th century Russia. One character even semi-accurately predicts that Marxism will be the new theology, sweeping Christianity off to one side.

And just when you think none of the characters is going to address any of this, Oblonsky, Levin, and Veslovsky head off into the marshes for a couple of days of shooting. Sitting in a peasant’s hut, enjoying his hospitality, they begin talking about the justness of social system when their host must step outside for a while.

“Why do we eat and drink, go shooting and do no work, while he is always, always working?” said Vasenka Veslovsky, evidently for the first time in his life thinking of this, and therefore speaking quite genuinely (582).

Why indeed? Because you can afford it.

The conversation ends with an exchange between Oblonsky and Levin, in which the former admits the inherent injustice in the system, but encourages Levin to accept them nonetheless.

“One of two things: either you confess that the existing order of Society is just, and then uphold your rights; or else own that you are enjoying unfair privileges, as I do, and take them with pleasure.”
“No! If it were unjust, you could not use such advantages with pleasure; at any rate I could not. The chief thing for me is, not to feel guilty” (583).

It reminds me of a similar emotion I experienced a few years ago in Berlin viewing an exhibition of Gauguin’s work:

While at the new National Gallery I was struck with a terrible sense of the stupid futility of all that I was seeing around me. Here we were, the privileged ten or fifteen percent of the world’s population, paying fifteen marks to look at some paintings (created by someone who was, by his own admission, trying to escape reality) while the remaining eighty-five percent of the world’s population is fighting for survival. We spend so much of our time trying to inject some kind of meaning in our lives while they simply try to live. The significance of the Expressionist movement or the impact of Bach’s music on his contemporaries seems pitifully insignificant when others go to bed hungry every night. Their suffering robbed me of any pleasure I might otherwise have experienced at the gallery. And then I turned this critical light on my own aspirations and once again felt that I would be wasting my life by devoting my time and energy to studying and teaching religion and philosophy. What does it matter whether Berkley is right or wrong about the relationship between perception and existence when people are starving and disease ridden? It’s a simply matter of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — most people don’t get the most basic needs fulfilled while we in the western world scurry about trying to find meaning in paintings and music.

Perhaps Gauguin just doesn’t appeal to me . . .

Comment [1]

Reading Ann Coulter

Why? Because I like to read what “the other side” has to say. I don’t know many conservatives who will sit down and read a liberal column, but that’s just my limited experience.

In her latest piece, Ms. Coulter writes,

Among his other pointless carping about the war in Iraq, Kerry keeps claiming the military is overextended. His supporters claim Bush has a secret plan to bring back the draft. Whatever happened to all those gays who wanted to join the military? We haven’t heard a peep out of them lately. How about rounding up a “Coalition of the Fabulous,” Sen. Kerry? And what does his good pal Mary Cheney tell him about that?

Is it just me, or does there seem to be some rather rabid homophobia in that? The implied benefits are:

1. “Those gays” will finally shut up about being able to join the military.
2. A lot of them will get killed in the war—dead gays are always a good thing.
3. All gays speak with a lisp and say everything is “fabulous.”

Perhaps I’m missing an insinuation.

See any insinuation I missed? [1]

Gombrowicz the Artist

I’m reading intermittently Witold Gombrowicz’s Diary, which was part of a wedding gift that consisted of several Polish classics. I’ve been wading through it for about two months now. I read a day here, a day there, an entry or two in a single day, then nothing for a couple of weeks.

It’s hard going because there’s only so much self-congratulatory discussion on Art (and that capital “A” is critical) that I can handle in one sitting. Gombrowicz was a self-exiled Polish writer who seemed constantly to be growling and grumbling against “timid Polish Art” and such. He’s an Artist with the Capital A because he regards Art (again, that “A” must be there) as something as critical as Air (an equally important “A”), and thinks Disastrous Art will lead to the Downfall of Civilization as surely as bad monetary policy. He does admit once that Art (or even lowly art) is a luxury, but only in a fever of humility that quickly passes.

It reminds me of what Lawrence Ferlinghetti writes in #15 from A Coney Island of the Mind of the adventures, difficulties, and responsibilities of a poet. It’s the ever-popular poem about poetry, in other words. It seems to be a bit of self-flattery, the knight looking at himself in a mirror, admiring his own armor and coming heroism. And taking himself entirely too seriously, the

super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step

As if the right words will save the world, and the wrong ones, destroy. The whole poem, for those interested (without F’s beat-poet line indentions):

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of day
performing entrechats
and slight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
all without mistaking
any thing
for what might not be.
For he’s the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charliechaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence

I don’t know why it annoys me so much for an Artist to think of himself so seriously. He spends quite a bit talking about how no one understands him, how no one can comprehend what he’s been doing in his various novels that might appear to be unreadable, but in fact are only difficult because we’re not accustomed to such radically different Art.

“What I’m trying to do . . .”

Tom Wolfe commented on this thirty years ago:

Then and there I experienced a flash known as the Aha! Phenomenon, and the buried life of contemporary art was revealed for me for the first time. All these years I, like so many others, had stood in front of a thousand, two thousand, God-knows-how-many-thousand Pollacks, de Koonings, Newmans, Nolands, Rothkos, Rauschenbergs, Judds, Johnses, Olitskis, Louises, Stills, Franz Klines, Frankenthalers, Kellys, and Frank Stellas, now squinting, now popping the eye sockets open, now drawing back, now moving closer — waiting, waiting, forever waiting for . . . it . . . for it to come into focus, namely, the visual reward (for so much effort) which must be there, which everyone (tout le monde) knew to be there — waiting for something to radiate directly from the paintings on these invariably pure white walls, in this room, in this moment, into my own optic chiasma. All these years, in short, I had assumed that in art, if nowhere else, seeing is believing. Well — how very shortsighted! Now, at last, on April 28, 1974, I could see. I had gotten it backward all along. Not “seeing is believing,” you ninny, but “believing is seeing,” for Modern Art has become completely literary: the paintings and other words exist only to illustrate the text (quoted in Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate).

We have to have it explained to us. And what exactly are they explaining? Back to Pinker:

The political messages of most postmodernist pieces are utterly banal, like “racism is bad.” But they are stated so obliquely that viewers are made to feel morally superior for being able to figure them out.

This is true not only by the artists, but by the critics as well. Try reading a college textbook on film criticism. You’ll find yourself wondering how someone could write something so contorted, so warped — how someone could use so many words to say so comparatively little.

And so where does it leave us in this blog-invested world, where now everyone is an artist and everyone is trying to say something?

He writes with a grin.

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Chester, Oscar, and the Problem of Evil

Last night I began reading Oskar i Pani Róza, which is originally Oscar et la dame rose (Amazon.com) and in English would be Oscar and Ms. Rose. It’s about a ten-year-old dying of cancer and a volunteer he makes friends with, named Ms. Rose. When Ms. Rose suggests that Oskar write to God, he replies that he doesn’t believe in God. She suggests that perhaps he should write anyway:

“Maybe you would feel less lonely?”
“Less lonely with someone who doesn’t exist?”
“Why not check if he exists?”
She bent down close to me and said, “Every time you believe in him, he’ll exist a little more” (15, my translation).

Believing in something makes it more real? Is that what she’s saying? Of course it is, and of course it’s true. Does that mean that God exists only in our heads, that we create him by believing in him? Not quite, I think, but strangely enough, taking a leap of faith and just believing seems to make it more believable.

Czeslaw Milosz wrote in The Captive Mind (Amazon.com),

The Catholic Church wisely recognized that faith is more a matter of collective suggestion than of individual conviction. Collective religious ceremonies induce a state of belief. Folding one’s hands in prayer, kneeling, singing hymns precede faith, for faith is a psycho-physical and not simply a psychological phenomenon.

Doing leads to believing. Believing is, in a sense, encapsulated in this “doing,” and so paradoxically, as Ms. Rose seems to be saying, believing leads to believing.

This is also the question in Life of Pi, though much more directly than in Oskar. I remember the quote, something like “If you stumble at believability, what is there left to live for?” Or something like that.

I was making a sandwich or something last night — perhaps pouring a brandy, I can’t remember — and I thought, “It would indeed be nice to believe in something out there, something bigger than us that we can count on to help us when we need it.”

The trouble with that is simply that I don’t see help where help is most needed — in the suffering of a child. If there’s a heaven, or an afterlife, then the death of a child, course though this may sound, is not that big of a deal.

What is a big deal is the painful and incomprehensible suffering that child might have to endure before dying, and that’s the “problem of evil” as I frame it. Not just any evil — incomprehensible evil.

All evil can be understood on some level by adults.

Incomprehensible evil is that which attacks children, like children in Rwanda who were hacked to death with a machete because of their ethnicity when the notion of “ethnicity” is so foreign to them that it would be difficult to explain it to them.

Apologists?

Get yourself registered

How long do you think it would take to register a new car? How much time off of work do you think you’d have to take? A couple of hours after work? If only.

A friend recently registered his new car here in Poland. He took two days off of work to do it. Two days.

Two days

He went to the office to get in line at 4:00 a.m. No, I’m not making this up — he went to stand in the line at four in the morning, and finally got into someone’s office at twelve! And here’s the kicker — when he arrived, there were already people waiting!!!

Once he got into an office to see someone, it took my friend forty minutes to fill in all the paper work.

The absurdity of this is astounding.

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Sunrise

I woke up the other morning and saw the most amazing sunrise. Such beautiful beginnings here are often omens for a horrid afternoon: it starts out lovely, then clouds over completely. On the other hand, waking up to a foggy morning means a cloudless afternoon.

“Don’t like the weather? Wait five minutes.” So goes the saying.

What do you think of the sunrise?

Bush can't even win his hometown!

A friend of mine sent me the “stunning information” that even Dubya’s hometown newspaper doesn’t want him in the White House.

Kerry Will Restore American Dignity

Honestly speaking, Kerry’s a bit of a slim too—the comment about the VP’s daughter was desparate and sick. But . . .

Show me what an idiot I am

Mother of God!

This was a wedding present to Kinga and me. It’s painted on glass, so that means it’s done in reverse: details first, then background.

It really loses something digitized, but what can you do?

Oh, nobody loves me.

In Triplicate + 1

I’ve recently begun the process of applying for a permanent residence status for Kinga. The amount of paperwork is about what you’d imagine. One form has to be filled out not in triplicate, but in quadruplicate — by Kinga and then again by me!

What’s amazing is that in the twenty-first century, these forms are still not available in an electronic format. Sure, you can get them in the PDF version from the INS (or whatever it’s called now) website, but you still have to print them out and fill them in by hand. A few of the forms use Adobe’s “Fill-in-able” (for lack of a better term) feature on its newest version of Acrobat Reader, but that saves very little time when you have to do four examples of the same form and you can’t cut and paste. It leaves you thinking, “What’s the point?”

The ideal, it seems, would be to write a small application that gets all that data (place of residence for the last five years, employment history, etc.) and then spits out the various forms in a printable format. Or make the INS website database driven, with accounts and such, so you can at least do it online. Such a web application in CFM, PHP, JSP, ASP, PPP, NOP, QRS, or whatever scripting language would not be that difficult to write.
Until the government catches up with the rest of the world, though, we’ll just have to get writers cramps filling in all that paperwork.

(Ultimate irony: it’s easier for Kinga to get permanent residence status in the States than it is for me to get the same in Poland.)

Complain along with me! (It's obligitory)

Twentieth Anniversary :: Jerzy Popieluszko

“If you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything at all.” So my Mom always told me, and I do try to put it in practice, hence today’s entry.

Jerzy Popieluszko (pronounced more or less “Je-she Po-peal-oosh-ko”) was a priest killed by the Polish communist internal security forces exactly twenty years ago for his outspoken support of freedom.

Popieluszko was an associate pastor in a parish of a working-class suburb of Warsaw. He began giving a “Mass for the fatherland” at the end of every month in which he encouraged his listeners to defend their rights through rejection of violence. As word of his dynamic sermons spread, attendance for his monthly “Mass for the fatherland” swelled, and included people from not just Warsaw but all of Poland.

One can imagine the affect this had on the Communist leadership.

In January of 1982, Popieluszko was asleep when, at one thirty in the morning, the buzzer for his door rang. Rather than getting out and checking the window to see who it was, Popieluszko lingered in bed a moment. It probably saved his life, for shortly after that, a brick crashed throw the window with a small explosive device attached. Part of his apartment was damaged, but Popieluszko remained unharmed.

Shortly after that, Popieluszko began receiving death threats by mail.

In 1984, as Popieluszko was returning to Warsaw from Gdansk (the city Hitler attacked, thus starting the Second World War), his car was attacked and bombarded with stones. Popieluszko again survived a potentially fatal accident thanks to a professional driver from the Solidarity movement.

Exactly twenty years today, on 19 October 1984, Popieluszko went to Bydgoszcz to preach. Through a student friend, he asked another priest to substitute for him in a student Bible meeting “if [he didn’t] make it back.”

Four security officials were convicted of Popieluszko’s murder in February 1985, with the lightest sentence being fourteen years.

And he never did make it back.

On 30 October, Popieluszko’s body was dragged from an icy reservoir. He had died from choking from his own blood and vomit while being gagged and a rope had been thrown around his neck to weight his body down with a bag of stones.

At his funeral, Lech Walesa said, “Solidarity lives because you gave your life for it, Father Jerzy.”

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Yelled at for a Week

A tent revival is something that is particularly American, and conjures up images of snake-handling believers and wheezing, beet-faced preachers who can stretch the name of Jesus into four syllables, who preach hell fire and damnation, the dangers of card playing, and the outright evil of dancing.

It doesn’t seem to go with the ordered liturgy of a Catholic Mass. And yet, for the week of 9–18 October, that’s exactly what the parishioners of Lipnica Wielka were getting. The techniques used in the construction of the church are among the best and most expensive. — Three Times Superlative.
Entitled “Misja Swietych” (“Mission of the Saints”), it featured multiple, daily Masses with a particular focus: the family, the mystery of the Stations of the Cross, the sick. It was a fairly big thing, as it happens only once every five years or so.

This year it was led by Wojciech Chocól, a rector of a parish some hundred and fifty kilometers northeast of here, near Tarnów.

Chochół is a short, somewhat paunchy man who appears to be in his mid-forties and who, it seems, stepped directly from the 1950s into the twenty-first century. He believes in what some American Southerners might call “old time preaching.” Translation: he yells at people about their sins. The Polish- and Italian-granite entry stairs to the new church cost so much that, says Father Wojciech, “for that kind of money, you could frame an entire, new church.” — Three Times Superlative

I suppose there’s nothing really wrong with that. Such “soul-pastoring” (a direct translation of the Polish term for the verb “pastor”) treats the parishioners as children and has a particularly humiliating feeling, but perhaps some feel at home being humiliated in church. They might refer to it as “being humbled.”

I heard him preach when I went to church Sunday afternoon (10 October) for the special “Men’s Mass.” Kinga didn’t want to go alone, and I was curious what the priest would say to a room full of men. "Everything here that glistens is gold plated," adds rector [Chochól] , taking the time to show all the internal marble [ . . . , ] the same marble that is in the walls and the entrance to the bathrooms. Marble also rules in the cemetery’s chapel. — Three Times Superlative

I wasn’t disappointed, though somewhat provoked. Some of the highlights:

• suggested people throw out television and unplug the “Satanic Internet;”
• castigated people who have only one or two children, saying that children are only “normal” when there are three of them (One child is a little god in the house; two kids are two hysterics; only when you have three can you expect to have normal kids in the house);
• said people should be worried about money with their kids (“They don’t have to have a gold watch right way. They don’t have to have a car or a mountain bike right away.”);
• advised fathers to look in their fifteen-year-old children’s pants pockets to look for narcotics or “swinska gumeczka” — “filthy condoms”;
• told of a little two-year kid who at Mass was lying in the floor, crying, waving his arms and such — being a fairly regular two-year-old. “And I thought, ‘You’ve got a little bin Laden!’” he told everyone. And they laughed — that’s the most disturbing part about it
• said a child’s salvation lay in the fathers taking a fence board and “lay on as much as fits” (A child’s salvation = beating the daylights out of him);
• recommended that fathers no let their daughter’s boyfriends sleep in the house;
• pondered what sons who came home late at night or early in the morning were doing (“And later, three of them come to the altar for a wedding,” he concluded.);
• told the story of a boy who came in to the parish house to use the phone, calling the police and life saving crew because his father had come home drunk again and began beating his mother. “I don’t know how much longer we can stand this hell,” he exclaimed, then left money on the priest’s desk for a Mass to be said the following day in their intention. And Chochól left the money hanging — didn’t say, “I gave the mone back to him and said, ‘You all need this more than I do.’”

  All in all, it was the usual, backward, uneducated tirade that, were it to take place in a clapboard building in Appalachia or in a mosque in Cairo, would be labeled fundamentalism: railing against the evils of modern society and the need to return to a Godly life, as defined by the priest, of course. Chochół showed that he knew nothing about children and even less about contemporary society. He showed his disrespect for parishioners by refusing to treat them as adults but screaming at them as if they were children "The church is being built slowly, but also as expensively and as beautifully as possble." — Wojciech Chochól quoted in Three Times Superlative.

  Covering the usual litany of religious anti-modernism, yelling at people about their sinful indulgence in modernism and their material mindset, is one thing.

  It’s an entirely different story when the priest is guilty of the very things himself.

  It turns out, there might have been a reason he referred to the Internet as “Satanic,” for a few keyboard clicks at Google, and I found “Trzy Razy ‘Naj,’” an interesting article from 2002 about a then–new church being built in Chochól’s parish, with some choice quotes (which appear in the side inserts).

  The picture we end up with by combining the sermon and the article is that of a hypocrite. In his sermon, Chochół anecdotally mentioned several times the churches “he’s built,” and so it is obviously a matter of pride to him, which he probably crows about whenever he can. Others derive their pride and self-esteem from what they own; still others from what they’ve built, I guess. When village priests come caroling and collecting money, they don’t schedule a particular time, but tell their parishioners simply they day they might come — and expect them to wait around all day. Kids miss school for this; parents miss work. If a priest suggested this in a city, such as Krakow or Warsaw, he would be laughed out of the church.

  Contrast that with a friend who lost her father when she was still a young girl. “Not once,” she said, “Did any priest come by to ask if everything were okay, to see if they needed anything.” They came about as is the Polish custom during the Christmas season for caroling, which is accompanied by (guess!) a collection. So they came to get money, and nothing else.

  As a non-Christian, I find this particularly offensive, and I can think of a few things I might like to say:

• Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world — James 1.27, New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
• Jesus said to [the young rich man], “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” — Matthew 19.21 (NRSV)
• All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. — Acts 2.44, 45 (NRSV)
• [Jesus said,] “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” — Matthew 19.24 (NRSV)

The second sermon I heard from this jerk was the next Sunday. Highlights from that one:

• Without priests, you will not go to heaven.
• Priests are a second Jesus.
• A wife of a communist official who’d refused permission to build a church came to Chochól when her husband died to ask him to anoint his body. Chochól’s response: “Well, now you can go anoint him with lard.” And this by his own admission.
• He criticized the church in Lipnica, saying it was old and dirty. He wondered how priests could work in such an environment “without granite, without marble.”
• He told a couple of stories of people who’d died shortly after criticizing priests.
• Priests are hated just as Jesus is hated — for their holy example.
• He whispered to the children in a sickeningly sweet voice, “Don’t say anything bad about priests.”
• He said that when people go on pilgrimages without a priest, “it’s just an outing.” (“Wycieczka” was the Polish he used.)
• He said that if you criticize a priest, then you’ll die without a priest (i.e., You’ll go to hell.).
• He told people don’t send money to other parishes but keep it here. But just earlier, he’d thanked everyone for the donations given to his parish.

The irony: it was labled a “children’s Mass!”

The general reaction of parishoners after this joker wen home: “What beautiful preaching!”

Well, I’m criticizing him, so let’s see how long I last before God kills me for my blatantly Satanic attitude.

(An interesting thread at Catholic.com’s form about this, started by yours truly.)

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