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Month: December 2009

Lights

Wednesday 30 December 2009

Lights are an integral part of Christmas. Certainly everyone breathed a Christmas sigh of relief with the proliferation of electricity: no more candles on dried firs. And outdoor displays enter the realm of possibility.

Add the invention of the airplane, digital cameras, powerful flashes, and unleaded fuel and you get the perfect Christmas image — post-Christmas, of course.

Most of the Christmas exhibition at Roper Mountain was open to cars only, though — how thoroughly American.

We walked through the small pedestrian portion,

took some pictures, and still more

before getting back in the car and continuing on the winding road through the lights. Stopping was prohibited, as was exiting the car, so the pictures end here.

What a shame we couldn’t have the option of exploring it all on foot. Then again, much of that would have entailed L in arms, so perhaps it’s for the best.

New Games

Tuesday 29 December 2009

I never really liked card games as a kid. I guess Uno was alright once in a while, but that doesn’t really count as a real card game. Since Windows hadn’t yet come out when I was a kid, I never learned to play Hearts. Spades was popular among some friends, as was — oddly enough — euchre, but I just didn’t get it. What was the point? (Bridge, of course, was out of the question then; now, it’s the only card game I truly enjoy.)

L learned a new game today — “learn” being used in a most generous way. She didn’t quite get the point; she couldn’t quite understand why Babcia took the upturned cards for herself sometimes and sometimes gave them to her.

I can’t remember what this particular game is called in English. In Polish, it’s “wojna” — war. Perhaps it’s the same in English. I can’t really recall. (Another one of those odd circumstances in which I know the Polish but am unsure of the English.)

Most importantly: the Girl enjoyed it (for a few minutes).

“Let’s play it again!” she chimed again and again.

Still in English, though…

A Walk Downtown

Sunday 27 December 2009

A cloudy day. We’d been in the house all weekend, with the sole exception being a trip to the church on Christmas day. So after L woke up, we headed downtown.

Cloudy days are good for photographing moving water: slow shutter speeds.

One step over-exposure combined with a closed down lens meant I was able to get the shutter speeds I’d always wanted.

But L wasn’t interested in shutter speeds or f-stop values: we’d promised her chocolate milk once we got downtown, and that was her only interest.

Latte for K and me; hot chocolate for Babcia; and fruit juice for the Girl (unfortunately, no chocolate milk to be found) — we were ready for a walk down main street.

There were a few of us out for a walk. Most everyone else seemed to be huddled in the bars and restaurants that line Main Street. I guess with the bowl games and the southern love affair with football it’s logical.

Still, there were a few families out. A grandmother and granddaughter posed for pictures against a backdrop of traffic as we crossed the street to head back to our car. Just a few blocks down the street the view is much more striking, with the waterfall and bridge and lights. As we walked by, I idly wondered about their choice of location.

Being downtown always makes me a little frustrated that we don’t head there more often.

The winter answer to that question is obvious. After a couple of shots in front of the large city Christmas tree, we headed back to the car.

We parked within view of some of the most expensive condos in the area. Location, location, location. Their owners probably don’t complain about not going downtown often enough.

Accidental Christmas Present

Saturday 26 December 2009

943075973_c6e14fb8cf_m — “Ouch” by rossneugeboren at Flickr
(Obviously not a photo of the car under discussion.)

We were leaving the church after a Christmas Mass in Polish when we noticed a group of men standing around the priest’s new Volvo. Apparently, someone had hit his car and driven off without anything. I saw a little scratch, but I couldn’t discern any significant damage.

The priest was angry.

He called the parish pastor to let him know it had happened, and he requested that the local priest announce it in Mass, asking for information.

“I guess this is my Christmas present,” said the Polish priest sarcastically.

Perhaps it was.

It seems to me that the material should not be terribly important to a priest. It seems to me he should have been more concerned with the individual who hit his car: what would cause someone to do this? Is this a lack of conscience or a fear of facing consequences? It would have been heartening to hear the priest say something like this.

So maybe it was a Christmas gift. Maybe it was an opportunity to show instead of tell the parishioners that the spiritual is more important and things like cars and iPods are of little value. Perhaps it was a chanceÂ to preach with actions rather than words, to show forgiveness and express concern about the mental state — the soul — of the individual who committed the act. Possibly it was an occasion to show selflessness, to show concern for others before showing concern for one’s own silly objects.

The homily had been about having Christ in one’s heart and how God doesn’t force himself on anyone — a fairly common sentiment among Catholics and Protestants alike. I suppose the gift of salvation isn’t the only gift God doesn’t force humans to accept.

Wigilia 2009, Redux

Friday 25 December 2009

More pictures from Christmas Eve dinner and festivities

Wigilia 2009

Thursday 24 December 2009

Everyone began preparing in the morning. Truth be told, K started weeks ago: making pierogi and uszki (two different types of dumplings) and freezing them. Still, with two soups, dumplings, kraut with wild mushrooms, and a main course (accompanying salads and such not counted) on the menu, we had to get a quick start.

There was a salad to make, beginning with boiling veggies and eggs — lots of this. And sauteing onions on a cosmic scale.

There was chopping galore: before and after the boiling; during this; before that. “Click, click, click,” was the soundtrack of the morning.

And there was ironing and setting of places.

In the end, it was the common lament: all the time spent cooking, and the food disappeared so relatively quickly. There’s the eternal entertaining conflict: one wants them to savor everything, yet while everything is warm and the fish is still moist, one wants everyone just to hurry up and get to the next course.

It was a special wigilia for us because it was a special Christmas Eve for L: the first one she knew what was going on, possibly the first one in her memory for some time. She ate the barszcz; she devoured the mushroom soup; and she sat calmly as the rest of us ate. Afterward, Nana and Papa successfully spoiled her with their generosity (not to mention us: as I write, I’m listening to Madeline Peyroux’s excellent new album, Bare Bones, on a new iPod — the woman is incapable of making a bad album). With guests, gifts, and attention, the Girl danced, sang, smiled, laughed, and was the center of the evening. It’s likely to be that way for, well, the foreseeable future.

Previous Years

Wigilia 2003

Wigilia 2004

Wigilia 2005

Wigilia 2006

Wigilia 2007

Merry Christmas

Wednesday 23 December 2009

You Have Five Minutes

Monday 21 December 2009

It’s amazing the number of confrontations and tantrums we’ve avoided by giving L a time frame. Simply establishing a temporal structure allows us all to avoid frustration. She knows what to expect and, more importantly, when; we know that we’ll have a much more compliant little girl.

It works for almost everything. When L is watching a movie, it’s referenced in terms of the film’s scenes: “When this scene is over, we’ll go for our bath.” The scene finishes; she toddles off to the bathroom when requested to do so. When L is reading a book before bedtime, a reminder that she’ll be going to be in five minutes elicits “Okay”; saying, out of the blue, “Okay, put the book up. It’s time for bed!” is likely to produce nothing but conflict.

It would if some parts of life had more pre-established time frames.

Photo: “Clock Top” by laffy4k

Relativity

Sunday 20 December 2009

Rereading Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (the greatest achievement in American literature), I’ve realized anew how relatively temporally close Quentin is the events Rosa Coldfield is relating. Coldfield relates the story of Sutpen to Quentin (though he knows it already — it’s in his blood from growing up in Jefferson) in 1910, and Coldfield makes it clear that Sutpen was the reason God saw fit to let the South lose the war. Coldfield wants Sutpen’s story told so that those

who have never heard her name nor seen her face will read [the story of Sutpen] and know at last why God let us lose the War: that only through the blood of our men and the tears of our women could He stay this demon and efface his name and lineage from the earth.

It is, in other words, a story of the Civil War. And while that seems so very distant to us now, it’s easy to understand the lingering resentment Southerners feel in the story. After all, it’s only been forty-some odd years since the war when Quentin sits in Coldfield’s house, listening to the story of the most mysterious man in the county.

For us today, that’s the nearness of the Vietnam War, something that’s still in most everyone’s cultural consciousness. Many are still upset about “Hanoi Jane,” and I suppose that resentment might be something akin to what Coldfield is feeling in the novel: a resentment of a defeat that seems due to so many non-military, non-combat reasons.

Yet it’s still difficult for me to understand the continuing resentment many white Southerners feel about a defeat that was almost a century and a half ago. “The South will rise again!” would have made sense in Quentin’s turn-of-the-century culture, but another century after that and so many are still boiling about it?

Then again, a century and a half is nothing compared to the length and depth of some of Europe’s ethnic and national resentments. Hatred and disappointment never die, I suppose.

Party

Saturday 19 December 2009

Though her birthday was three days ago, L’s birthday party was today. Her first birthday was a much more adult-centered party. Her second birthday party was still dominated by adults. This year, it was all about the kids.

There was pizza and ice cream and candy and juice, but most importantly, there were games.

I believe we were seeing a little bit of L’s school side, As mentioned earlier, L’s teachers always comment on her mellow, compliant nature, something we don’t see too often here.

Whenever we try to play a game with her, there can be tense moments of an attitude that can be described as a typical toddler egoism: “It’s mine; I’ll do with it as I please.”

Today, there was none of that. L exhibited a simple graciousness that never demanded to be first, never begged to have it all, never stated that it must be this way and not that. She was the perfect host. It was her party, and she didn’t cry because apparently she didn’t ever want to.

And who could blame her? L’s two best friends from school were there, and what’s more, there was dancing.

The three candles were out in a flash, and the party seemed to wrap up even faster. I glanced at the clock and saw it was, in fact, two hours since the first guests arrived.

In a word, a success. “See you next year,” said one parent as a best friend was leaving.

We’re looking forward to it — especially the Girl.

Three

Wednesday 16 December 2009

Today, you turn three. You hold up your fingers, struggling to hold down the thumb and pinkie, and tell me — show me — that you’re three.

In the morning, we celebrate your threeness with activities arranged into trinities: three hugs, three kisses, three tickles. As we head to the kitchen, you decide you want three jumps, so I stand at the base of our small staircase and catch you three times as you leap, in complete trust, three times into my arms. We go back to your room and you want three pushes: I sit on your rug and you gradually, with steady pressure, push me over, landing on me with giggles.

For three years now, we’ve been three. While it’s hard to accept that it was three years ago that you rushed into the world after only an hour of your mother’s labor, it’s equally difficult to accept that it’s only been three years. It seems like so much longer. This is undoubtedly due, in large measure, to the simple fact that you’ve developed more — cognitively and physically — in these three years than you’ll ever develop in your life. You’ve learned to talk, walk, run, dance, tickle, fix chocolate milk, sort things by color, chose your own clothes, put on your jacket, and a million other things that you will take for granted in the future but are in fact life changing advances. you have, in short, become more independent.

In the beginning, there was dependence. You could do nothing for yourself except burp and mess in your shockingly small diaper.

Each year, you’ve grown more independent, and more stubborn.

You’ve gone from having things done for you to insisting on doing everything for yourself. Insisting to the point of utter frustration at times.

And now, we celebrate your completion of three years. You’re starting your fourth year with us.

We bring you a small cake — Babcia’s work — and clap as you blow out the candle. Your first year, we did it for you.

Your first birthday’s presents were of a simple kind: they made noise, or flashed, or rattled. We unwrapped the presents for you and showed you how they work.

Now, you unwrap your own presents and excitedly examine them.

We still help you, though. It will be that way for a very long time. Hopefully, a very, very long time. You’ll understand that desire when you have children of your own.

Babcia’s Arrival

Sunday 13 December 2009

Going to the airport for an international arrival is a game of waiting.

We stood at the end of a long corridor and wait as the passengers trickle out, one by one, two by two, a group here and a group there. With three simultaneous international arrivals, it makes for a long process.

We saw several lovely reunions as we anticipate our own. An uncle arrived from Italy to a niece and nephew running to him full speed. A father returned to a mother and smiling baby. A sister came from German for a visit.

Finally, it was our turn. L ran to meet Babcia, who scooped her up and gave her a long hug.

K joined them for a three-generation, all-mother-daughter group hug. It caught the attention of others, just as earlier reunions brought smiles to our face,

More hugs followed.

Now L just has to start speaking Polish…

Balance

Saturday 12 December 2009

“Shhh! There’s a monster in there!” says L as we walk toward her room. She’s at that age where she sees monsters, tigers, and bears everywhere. A “smoky, smoky dragon” is a common visitor at night, and right after a bath, an alligator — simply named Alligator — comes looking for her as she hides under her big bath towel. Saturday mornings she likes to jump in our bed (even if it’s made up — she’ll willingly unmake it) and hide under the covers.

“Shhh, shhh, shhh!” she’ll proclaim. “Monster’s coming!”

I play along sometimes, but it creates a problem: she gets genuinely scared sometimes, and it’s because there’s an alligator under her bed or a dragon right over there, in the corner. I reassure here that there’s no such thing is monsters, but it’s difficult to do if I’ve just been playing along with her imagination earlier in the evening.

It’s difficult to balance her developing imagination with her developing fear.

Will she learn there’s no such thing as dragons before she learns Santa doesn’t exist? I’m helping create both illusions, feeling slight pangs of guilt about it, and wondering if it’s all avoidable.

Warsaw Winter

Friday 11 December 2009

Hungary had its 1956 uprising, when it appeared that the Soviet satellite might gain its independence. The USSR moved in and reasserted control by force.

Prague had its Spring: reforms and liberalizations in 1968 by the puppet Communist regime that eventually warranted a full scale invasion by the Soviets to settle things down.

Poland never experienced such a “corrective” invasion, though there was always the thought that the Soviets might have invaded had Jaruzelski not imposed martial law on December 13, 1981. Lech Wałęsa’s Solidarity party was gaining too much influence and there was concern that unrest might spread throughout the nation.

The conventional Polish wisdom (as I understood it) has been that Jaruzelski imposed martial law in a bid to preempt a Soviet invasion. Antoni Dudek, a Polish history professor, has published on his blog contents of a note Jaruzelski said to Viktor Kulikov, a Soviet general,

Będzie gorzej, jeżli wyjdÄ… z zakładów pracy i zacznÄ… dewastowaÄ‡ komitety partyjne, organizowaÄ‡ demonstracje uliczne itd. Gdyby to miało ogarnÄ…Ä‡ cały kraj, to wy (ZSRR) bÄ™dziecie nam musieli pomóc. Sami nie damy sobie rady”.
It will be worse if [the protests] spread from the workshops begin devastating the party committee, organizing street protests, etc. If it were to spread throughout the country, you (the USSR) would have to help us. We couldn’t manage it alone.

And so the possibility for a Polish Winter to match the Prague Spring was very real.

WałÄ™sa, in the meantime, has suggested that Jaruzelski might be brought up on charges of treason. Dudek admitted that while WałÄ™sa usually likes “strong words,” these words might indeed be “adequate.”

Jaruzelski of course denies all of this. Words were taken out of context. Shades of meaning have been applied that were not intended. It seems to be just the beginning, and given the generally closed nature of the Polish archives (compared to the open archives of the former East German government), it seems a resolution is distant, if not impossible.

Dudek’s blog is available here. The Onet story includes information about WałÄ™sa’s reaction. Hat tip to the beatroot.

14-year-old Poetry

Thursday 10 December 2009

People write about what they know. One of the prime motivations of confessional poetry was that we theoretically know more about ourselves than about anything else.

When you ask a group of thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds to write poetry, there is one guarantee: the boys will write about video games. In one portfolio of ten poems, one young man wrote two poems about games (including a haiku about “Call of Duty 5”), two poems about sports (one about playing, the other about watching), and one about hunting.

I mentioned this to a colleague this afternoon. She thought for a moment, then made a suggestion: “Next year you could tell them that each poem had to be about a different topic.”

“Then they’d simply say, ‘Well, they’re two different games, so that’s technically two different topics.'”

A Book and the News

Monday 7 December 2009

Protests in Iran and ironically enough, I’m reading Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran (Amazon).

Nafisi was forced out of her teaching position at the University of Tehran in the early eighties when she refused to comply with the required veiling. Perhaps that refusal was inevitable, and perhaps the personality that sparked the refusal also made the memoir inevitable.

Nafisi writes of living others’ dreams, and that the revolution of 1979 was just that: Ayatollah Khomeini was recreating the Iran of his youthful dreams. Dreams for some, nightmares for others.

We’re all wondering whether Iranians will force themselves to emerge from the nightmare. Reading Nafisi and today’s headlines gives me hope to believe that there are enough independently minded Iranians that a new revolution is possible, that armed conflict over Iran’s nuclear program is not inevitable.

Before and After

Sunday 6 December 2009

We still have pictures a hang, a television to buy, and a few final touches, but the living room, by and large, is done.

Memorex

Saturday 5 December 2009

L has an absolutely astounding memory. She can “read” many, many books — at least fifteen, I would say — from memory. She turns the page and quotes almost verbatim the text on the page.

And she corrects me.

“‘That’s what you said yesterday,’ shouted elephant,” I read from one of L’s favorite books, Goose Goofs Off.

“No, Tata! Elephant snorted!” comes the reply.

Fairy Tale

Thursday 3 December 2009

Emptiness

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Emptiness inspires dancing — the echo of footsteps is always impressive.

With the sofa and love seat sold and the remaining furniture stowed throughout the house, we now have a ballroom.

Conversely, the acoustics inspired music making, with L taking the lead.

← New Games Reflection →

Matching Tracksuits

Lights

New Games

A Walk Downtown

Accidental Christmas Present

Wigilia 2009, Redux

Wigilia 2009

Previous Years

Merry Christmas

You Have Five Minutes

Relativity

Party

Three

Babcia’s Arrival

Balance

Warsaw Winter

14-year-old Poetry

A Book and the News

Before and After

Memorex

Fairy Tale

Emptiness

Time Machine

Calendar

Trips to Poland

Random Posts

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