I swear, it looked better on the phone…
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Kolejka
The reality of life in Poland in the 80s was the line. The queue. People stood in line for everything. People stood in line not knowing why they were standing in line. A friend once told me, that she often ended up standing in the line just because there was a line. “If there was a line there must be something she reasoned and no matter what that something was it was something that her family could use or trade with someone else.”
Kinga told us of a story about waiting in line for shoes. “We didn’t even know what kind of shoes they were,” she said, “but they were shoes and we needed shoes.”
I had my own experiences waiting in lines in Poland in the mid-90s, but they were not due to the lack of goods. I mostly waited in line for bureaucratic reasons. When I would go to Krakow training my Visa, I would arrive at the office in question an hour or more before it opened to find the line already stretched halfway down the block.
What better thing to do then some 30 years after communism ended in Poland than to play a game based on this reality. That’s exactly what the game Kolejka is all about: all the frustration of communist Poland in your living room.
Family Reunion
Papa and his three sisters with friends and other family.
Thanksgiving 2019
That Log
My neighbor came over today to help me wrestle that log out of our creek. The problem is simple: it’s sitting in the water, so there’s no way to cut it into manageable pieces. The real problem: the thing probably weighs well in excess of 1,000 pounds.
We got some of it cut, but the vast majority still lies in the creek. We’ll try again Saturday with some kind of improvised wench system.
Overheard
Student 1: “Scylla and Charybdis — aren’t those names of Sirens?”
Student 2: “No, no — that’s the six-headed monster and the garbage disposal.”
At my request, Student 2 later illustrated her summary of that portion of the Odyssey.
14 Years Ago
When I was a kid, we went to one of two places for Thanksgiving: South Carolina to visit my father's family or Tennessee to visit my mother's. As a little kid, I preferred Tennessee. Not because of personalities or anything so silly -- no, I preferred Tennessee because Uncle N and Aunt L had a farm, with a lot of land and a large barn.
It was fifteen years ago today that we last visited that space. K and I had just moved to the States, and it was our first Thanksgiving in America.
We'd already visited family in South Carolina in the summer, so we went to Tennessee to spend Thanksgiving.
It was shortly after this -- a year or two -- that Uncle N passed away, and Aunt L, unable to take care of that much property herself and unwilling to figure out a way to do so, sold the farm and moved. So this was the first and last time we were all together like this for Thanksgiving at their house.
Fourteen years ago. Everyone looks so young, so not-tired.
The Girl was over a year away. We were talking about starting a family, waiting for jobs and such to settle down. The Boy -- not even an idea.
Fourteen years later and they're here while Nana and Uncle N are not. It's inevitable and unstoppable, this passage of time, but every now and then, I bump into something that reminds me just how much has changed in how little time.
Sunny Sunday
After all the rain yesterday, it was really a relief to us all to see the sun this morning. It made the autumnal trees in the backyard shimmer and shine.
The Boy and I decided to wander down to the stream to see what it looked like after such a long, heavy rain. I thought the little island we’d built up earlier this year might well be gone with that volume of water rushing through.
What we saw instead was that the tree that had fallen into the creek had been washed downstream a significant distance — thirty or so feet.
And our island was completely gone — it couldn’t withstand the several-hundred-pound tree’s attack.
Rainy Saturday Chores
Boston Street, Night
