matching tracksuits

K’s last full evening in Jablonka — what else to do but go for a little party? This one is a little different. For one, we’re going out, not staying in: less clean up. Second, we have live entertainment, an amazing string band (video coming later). Third, it’s a smaller group: more intimate. Finally, I’ve agreed not to be such a prude and drink a little. Which means, with live music, that I might be induced into dancing. Or I might shock everyone and initiate it.

It’s rare that I’m among the first in the room that makes it to the dance floor. It’s even rarer when I initiate it. There are obvious exceptions. Fortunately, I know the required components, and I can stay well away from them if I don’t feel like making a fool of myself.

One component, which is honestly optional, is a little bit of alcohol. It lowers inhibitions, and that warm feeling after one or two shots of vodka makes my toes twitch. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Another component is having someone I really wish to dance with. K loves dancing, as does L, and they will dance with just about anyone, including solo dances. I take a more circumspect view of dancing. If I’ll be getting up in front of other people and wiggling my body in this or that odd, unnatural way, and perhaps enjoying it, it will have to be with someone who, at the very least, I like. Better yet, someone I love.

All that is to say I don’t love dancing.

K does.

K will dance with anyone. She’ll dance alone in our living room, tauntingly.

“You know you love this song,” she says with her bright eyes. “Why not dance?” I can give myriad excuses.

When she gets with someone else who’s equally crazy about dancing, the results are predictable and lovely:

Everyone is in a dancing mood. The only person who doesn’t get the dance he wants is Dziadek. He keeps asking L for a turn around the floor — and it would have literally been a turn for L — but she keeps denying him. Maybe she’s honing her skills; perhaps she’s just being a typical three-and-a-half-year-old.

At the heart of all the movement, and the number one component to getting me on the dance floor, is the live band. All trained in traditional styles, they have a flair for original touches of jazz, Gypsy, Jewish, and Eastern modes in their music. The result makes it difficult to sit still.

After filming several of their numbers (to be posted later, after I regain access to editing software), I take the bottle up to their table and pour a round or two for them.

“You guys are going to be on the Internet in a couple of weeks,” I laugh.

“On YouTube?” one asks.

“Of course.”

“What will be the title?” a second inquires.

“Really Good Music,” I tell him, but that is, as my father would say, a little tightened up from the original.

Just a few kilometers outside Krakow and couple of hundred meters higher lies a small group of homes on top of a small hill that have earned the name G. Is it a town? I’m not sure. When preparing the GPS, I asked my father-in-law, “What street does D [K's brother] live on?”

“There are no street names in G,” he laughs. “Only numbers.”

Such a small place that has no street names — sounds pleasant.

And a great place to spend the evening after a long day in Krakow. Family and a great view: what else could we want? Perhaps a little entertainment, and the sport of choice in Europe is soccer football.

The mutual opponent: W, who is K’s godson. He’s quite the footballer, and to be honest, both K and I have a hard time keeping up.

When I face off against him, I think in terms of basketball: every beginner has one or two moves he feels comfortable with and repeats. I watch W as we play, figure out his favorite moves (a fake to his right, my left, followed by a charge to his left). He makes the move again and again. I come to expect it. I charge him, hoping to force the move.

Sure enough, fake right, charge left. And every single time he fakes me out. I know it’s coming; I throw out a leg like I see the pros do on television, and he shoots right past me.

If I charge and unfairly use my size advantage, I occasionally catch up and manage to kick the ball out-of-bounds. It works a time or two, but I realize anew how footballers have to be in amazing condition: I’m tired within a few minutes, and panting shortly there after.

Finally, a new strategy: keep my distance and force him to shoot from afar. It works. Temporarily.

In the end, the views win: W goes in to play video games, and I give up panting, looking at the view from our improvised football pitch.

I go inside to find K reading classic English nursery rhymes to the kids. She translates them to Polish, but they just lose something — the rhyme, the rhythm just aren’t there. The same goes with translating nursery rhymes the other direction:

Once upon a time there lived a witch named Baba Jaga,
who lived in a house made of butter.

It just doesn’t sound as good as

Była sobie Baba Jaga
Miała chatkę z masła

Certainly part of it is cultural: in the original there’s no mention of “a witch named.” Everyone simply knows that Baba Jaga is a witch. Koniec. Kropka.

Before heading out, we gather everyone for a quick group family portrait,

and other with just the kids — something of a trick with the smallest.

In many ways, the visit to Ząb is the highlight of any trip back to Poland. As the most elevated village in Poland, Ząb (Polish for “tooth”) offers incredible views; as K’s mother’s home village, it offers wonderful visits with family.

The views are indeed spectacular. Form a field called Formanowa, the Tatra Mountains stretch out in their entirety just a few kilometers away.

It’s a beautiful spot, and it’s still — for now — only used as a hay field. Certainly it’s the most valuable hay field in the world: I’m sure there are many developers who would be more than happy to build on land with such a view.

For now now, it’s a spot for taking portraits

and picking flowers for great-grandmother.

“When you see great-grandmother, don’t be afraid,” K explains. L has had very little experience with the elderly, and we don’t know how she might react. It turns out our worries were for naught. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There were still more pictures to take and flowers to pick.

When we arrive K’s godmother’s home, we find Prababcia (great-grandmother). L immediately follows, holding the flowers out in front of her, offering them to Prababcia. For now, Prababcia is simply tired and wants to sit down.

As K and Prababcia sit in her room, Prababcia begins to tell stories about the Second World War. Stories about the Nazis demanding information about the number of Jews and Gypsies in Ząb and the leader of the village plainly lying: “There are no Jews here, nor Gyspies,” though there were a few of each. Stories of villagers being arrested, hung, tortured, and shot. Stories of survival.

L and Prababcia hit it off immediately. When the rest of the family arrives, and we go to the living room to sit and talk, Prababcia and L retreat back to Prababcia’s room. L prances and dances about the room, singing, “My kochamy ciebie.” “We love you.” Prababcia sits and smiles, then gets up to tickle L. Fortunately, I’m passing through the hallway, near the camera bag.

A visit with an uncle who still lives in the family home (“This is where grandma grew up,” K explains to L as we enter.) brings the day to a close. The only thing that could make it better is a perfect sunset.

When ethnologist Cecil Sharp came to America during the First World War, he was established as an expert on the British folksong. Unable to support himself during the war (there was not much need for lecturing on folk music during the war), he was drawn by the thought of researching traditional English and Scottish songs that still survived in the American folk tradition.

One of the places he stopped was Hot Springs, North Carolina. On August 26, 1919, Sharp wrote in his diary,

Last week I went to Hot Springs, where I got thirty beautiful songs from a single woman. The collecting goes on apace, and I have now noted 160 songs and ballads. Indeed, this field is a far more fertile one upon which to collect English folk songs than England itself. The cult of singing traditional songs is far more alive than it is in England or has been for fifty years or more. […] I must try and get up here by hook or crook next year again. It is work that for the sake of posterity must be done, and that without delay. (Source)

The lady who awed Sharp was Jane Gentry, and her songs live today in the memory of singers like Betty Smith, who is partially responsible for the Bluff Mountain Festival, a celebration of two of the strongest cultural binding agents: music and dance.

Betty Smith (website)

When I went to my first Polish wedding, I was shocked at the group singing that would spontaneously begin throughout the night. No instruments necessary, and actual singing talent is completely optional. All that’s required is the willingness, and after a few shots of vodka, everyone is willing. That’s how I used to look at it, but I’ve come to understand there’s something much deeper.

As blood moves the oxygen necessary to keep the body alive, so music and dance transportthe oxygen needed to keep a culture healthy. That oxygen is simply a strong sense of regional identity, and music is only one part of that identity. Food, language, and religion are other important elements. These elements, however, are “celebrated” regularly, however: we eat and talk daily, and most people in the rural areas of America attend religious services at least weekly (often more regularly). So music needs specific occasions to be celebrated with the broader culture.

It’s to that end that residents of Madison County organize the annual Bluff Mountain Festival. Practitioners of bluegrass and old-timey music play (and discuss) songs that have been in the Appalachian collective memory for years (in some cases, literally centuries, as Cecil Sharp discovered), reminding all of us who don’t have daily contact with this music of its beauty and importance.

Green Grass Cloggers

It’s getting more difficult to hold onto such traditions. The first difficulty arrived with the rise of mobility that characterized the twentieth century. Instead of staying in the same region as one’s parents, individuals began moving to cities where there were more economic possibilities. A second difficulty is the competition imported through mass media. Christina Aguilera is known outside of Appalachia; Betty Smith is not (at least on the same scale).

Cole Mountain Cloggers

The music and traditions survive, though, and young people continue to value the culture their parents and grandparents pass along.

They’ll be singing these songs twenty years from now, when Aguilera is a tired pop star desperately fighting obscurity by performing with up-and-coming divas, and maybe making out with them on awards shows in a pathetic effort to stay on the tabloid front page.

So many enjoyable things require so little effort or money. Thinking of what to do this afternoon, K suggested we go strawberry picking. The Girl was soon excited, then disappointed when it began raining, then thrilled when it stopped.

“Can we go? Can we go?”

Half an hour later, L had her first fruit.

Within less than fifteen minutes, we had two buckets of berries.

We probably would have filled the buckets even sooner if we weren’t snacking so frequently. L used the 1-2 method: pick one, eat two.

It is a favored method…