fun in threes, sometimes fours
Most folks don't need an excuse for a party. We had two: first, it was my father's-in-law name day recently. In Poland (as in many countries), that's more important than a birthday. Second, the Americanized daughter returned for a visit.
As is often the case, pictures are better suited for describing a party than words.
It wasn't supposed to rain. "Bedzie pogoda," everyone says, which is oddly appropriate when literally translated. A word-for-word translation is, "Will be weather"; a less literal reading: "There will be weather." It seems a little odd: there's always weather. Still, it's synonymous with "There will be good weather."
"Bedzie pogoda." Not quite. But at the very least, "Bedzie spacer..."
And there will be signs. With two little girls under the age of five, we had to turn it into a game. Easy enough: let's look for the path marks.
And so off we went. The sequence was simple.
Adult: "I see one."
Children: "Where?! Where!?"
There were plenty of places they didn't look but I did -- not for signs of course. For something less concrete, literally and figuratively.
In some ways, shooting in heavily overcast conditions is easy: it makes one look less at the sky and thus focus on the things at hand. On the other hand, the light can be, at best, tricky.
Given the wet, slippery conditions, I wasn't the only one looking down instead of looking up.
Yet the hunt for the signs continued. Through the forest, through the meadow, we looked for the elusive marks. When they became obvious (striped stakes driven into the ground beside the path), the girls become somewhat blind to them.
But the moment of discovery was as exciting for us as the girls.
But for a great deal of the time, it was just walking. As the lingering droplets on the grass made our pants increasingly wet, it started to become a question of plodding.
Finally, we got to the forest, and the "almost" plodding became pure plodding as we slogged our way through mud and up hills, the girls on shoulders or strapped to one's back.
Once we got back onto the paved path -- an oxymoron? -- the frustration lifted, as did the clouds.
By the time we returned home, the sun was breaking through the clouds.
It sort of figures.
With the Word Cup in full swing, it’s a great time to be in Poland: three matches a day during the qualifying round.
It was in Poland that I fell in love with football. Notice: I used the worldwide term (regardless of language), and I am not referring to that ridiculously named American version that employs foot-to-ball contact only in punts, kick-offs, and field goals/extra points.
What do I love about football? It’s very much like life:
Not only is it life like, but football is also athletic in the extreme. Unlike American “foot” ball, real football involves few if any breaks. The action is continuous. American FB games look like this: play for three to seven seconds; mill about for two minutes; repeat. Real football involves running. Continuously.
This is, incidentally, why sponsorship in the States is so hard to find, and thus why it’s not televised often: where does one put the commercials?
We’re reliving the past in more ways than one. The promised sun disappears; plans change.
We end up visiting the outdoor ethnographic museum in Zubrzyca Gorna — for probably the fifth time.
Certainly, it was a different age altogether. Survival was at stake; comfort was an after-thought. That was what Christmas and Easter were for: a few creature comforts.
We wind through the museum, seeing how Polish highlanders kept bees in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
how they made fences (theoretically without nails, but in this particular case, clearly with modern intervention),
and how they forced oil out of flax seeds long before electricity and hydraulics made the task simpler.
In many ways, such a life is enviable. Sure, no Facebook and cell phones, but the slower pace and rough, subsistence living created in everyone an appreciation for what was, and a realistic understanding of the difference between wants and needs.
A roof over one’s head, windows and doors to keep out the cold:
Things we take for granted as we reach for more and more were, at the time, the goal.
Visible headline: “Cook — after amputation of leg”
Leisure was a thing for the relatively rich. Even then, simple pleasures: reading a month-old newspaper by lamplight.
The same might be said of the soul: spirituality was not something to be squeezed in between recovering from a hang-over and watching the afternoon football game.
I used to be horribly offended at the reality of beautiful churches built in the midst of poverty. “Think how many mouths those resources could feed,” I’d say, as if the body is the only thing that needs nourishment. In the last few years, I’ve come to understand a couple of things: first, these churches were not built at the expense of the poor: usually, the rich subsidized the construction (probably with mixed motivation).
Second, these churches served to provide something of an aesthetic oasis for many. Finally, if one believes in the doctrine of the Real Presence, wouldn’t one want to create the most beautiful house possible?
Friends, family, and the World Cup
D has been K's best friend for as long as I've know K, and at least ten years longer. She was K's guardian angel during our wedding, always fixing K's veil, K's hair, K's dress -- always fixing.
Today, we went to the village D and her family now call home: Pyzowka. I could go on and on about this and that, about how it's such a beautiful village situated perfectly in hills that look on mountains. About how the girls loved the visit, especially the time wih D's daughter. About how the time with good friends always ends up with smiles and laughter.
I could go on and on about all that, but the pictures speak for themselves.
Pyzowka is a village that in a sense no longer exists in Poland. Villages that used to rely on farming and were powered by horses are no longer either. What has happened? A mass exodus? Demographics? Perhaps a little of both.
My own experiences in Lipnica -- itself a time machine -- many children paid special attention to English lessons because they promised the possibility of escape.
One former student told me, "One woman I clean for asked me, 'Where did you learn to speak English well?' I replied, 'I had a great English teacher.'" I was flattered, to say the least. And I saw for the first time how I sold the only ticket out of the village.
"It's better than working in the fields."
Often I saw my students working in the fields over the summer. For them, a summer break made sense, for they still lived the reality that inspired the summer break throughout the Western world. In the States, I'm not so sure it's necessary.
And so everyone wanted to escape. And I returned. And probably would return again if the stars aligned themselves.
After all, who could ever think of escaping views like this?
"If I lived in Pyzowka," I told K, "I would to for a walk every stinking day."
"I know," she replied.
"Today didn't stink!" proclaimed L from the back seat.
Point taken.
Still, if you had views like this, wouldn't you head out for a stroll as often as humanly possible?
And if you had friends like this, wouldn't you visit them as often as possible?
It felt like it had been raining forever. Perhaps it was just the unavoidable pessimism we were feeling about the weather: the forecast did not look pormising at all. Perhaps it was experience: after living in Poland seven years, I was familiar with the depression about the seemingly-continuously gray sky. So when we woke today and it wasn't raining, we knew we had to go out and do something special.
A trip to Slovakia was in order.
This year, however, it being so cold, we weren't able to take the boat out over flooded village. There was only one goal, in fact (other than taking the cousins out for an adventure): Bryndzove halusky.
If this Slovakian adventure looks similar to the Slovakian outing two years ago, that's because it is.
It's the known and the comfortable that we're seeking, with a touch of adventure. For example, we'll head south to the Tatra mountains again, but we'll try a walk in a valley new to us. After all, it's not vacation as much as a sort of homecoming.
And so we headed back to Slovakia, back to Namestovo, and it was, in a way, like we'd never left. We drove on the roads that we'd cycled on so many times, around the lake where we stayed during two New Years' vacations. Back to our old mini-vacation spots when we lived here.
In Namestovo, we discovered gypsy carnival. Except the operators were gypsies only in spirit, traveling from town to town, living in RVs improvised and standard.
But what was that to the cousins? They only cared about the few rides set up in the corner of the parking lot, all of them involving, in one form or another, going in circles.
Once back home, more of the familiar and the known: a walk to the river.
I recall very few visits to Jablonka that didn't include a walk to the river. Even in the depths of January snow, we took walks to the river, a round-trip journey of about four kilometers (roughly 2.5 miles).
In many ways, it was for the cousins as well. "Who wants to go for a walk?" Reaction: minimal. "And see cows and chickens?" Instant agreement.
Had we added, "And jump in puddles," we certainly would have gotten a better reaction. Indeed, the puddles and the mud were the hit. "Bloto!" one cried, the second echoed, and in moments, they were plodding through yet another puddle.
And so it continued throughout the entire walk: the cousins ran ahead, we called for them to wait, they waited. Repeat.
Once in the meadows, the mud disappeared, but flowers everywhere, as were the smiles.
.
In short, a fine second day in Polska.
One of the many things to love about the slight differences between Europe and America:
Along with prices, menus include the size of the portions.
Rain, ten degrees Celsius -- you might say that it's a perfect Polish summer, but that would be too pessimistic. Yet rain or shine, the cousins must swing.
And play in the small play house Dziadek built.
Yet there is a bit of frustration. L understands Polish perfectly; her willingness to speak it is a different situation entirely. As they're swinging, S asks, "Dlaczego ciagle mowisz po angielsku?" "Why are you constantly speaking English?" "Dobra pytania" I respond, yet L says nothing. Instead she begins the international language of three-year-olds: she begins making as many odd sounds as possible.
In the end, the swing was the hit of the day. With aunt Dominika, Kinga, and I, the girls must have swung for ten hours straight. Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but not by much.
In the meantime, Babcia chases the newest member of the family -- a little mixed puppy -- for digging up her flowers, for about the tenth time. "Ja cie dam!" cried babcia, half seriously, half in jest. "Ja cie dam!"
Poles would call such a day "dzien barowy" -- a bar day. But we're not here to sit in a bar. We're here to visit, and visit with determination. And so we head to the school where I taught for seven years.
I meet several colleagues with whom I worked even in 1996, but we're all a little older, a little more experienced. The exception is a young lady who was still in middle school when I arrived fourteen years ago (eighth grade) and now teaches high school. My replacement, one might say, but I guess one would be wrong. Time passes and replacement become irrelevant. All things being fluid in the twenty-first century, talk of replacements is useless.
As we wonder through the school, I begin thinking about how little has changed, which is the nature of teaching: one spends years in the same grade only to realize that, from a certain point of view, one has been running in place. I stay forever in eighth grade now; in Poland, I stayed forever in high school. The results are, more or less, the same.
There are some things, though, that can't be replaced, like a virtual Mama. After dropping by the school, we stop by to visit the family with whom I lived for some time after returning to Poland in 2001. I'm greeted with hugs and "Synku!" It's like a homecoming. It is a homecoming.
We meet the two chicks my Polish Mother (PM for future references) saved from certain death when they fell from the nest and made just enough noise for her to hear.
A constant, consistent attraction during our visit.
"I want to see the birds!"
And as a result really get no rest during our visit.
But panic builds instincts and reaction. Or so I'm told.
So I've heard, but what do I know? That an evening of football (aka soccer) and assorted liquids makes one less than perfectly willing to blog at eleven o'clock...
Twenty-four hours' door-to-door travel disappear the instant the family sits down together for mushroom soup, heavy Polish bread, and the satisfaction of being together again. And then to top it all off, drinks and homemade kielbasa with the father-in-law as we chat and watch Brazil and the Ivory Coast play.
The real joy are the cousins. The girls have met each other once, two years ago. Within a few moments, they were inseparable.
But in a sense, it's impossible to believe that I'm able to sit, have a drink, watch football (really: why would anyone call it anything else; and that pathetic excuse for a sport that we Americans call football -- punting and kicking off are the only times the foot comes in contact with the ball).
There was quite a lot of travel exhaustion to overcome in order to get to that moment. It began in Charlotte, where the stress level immediately rose as Nana and Papa saw us off. "Why aren't they coming with us?" L asked.
"Security clearance" and "rules" just didn't make sense to the Girl. "Why can't they come?" Such an auspisious start.
L started the long walk to the gate with heaviness. A fussy girl is not a pleasant traveling companion.
Things calmed down in the plane. A little coloring; a little princess play -- soon all else was moot.
The trip, though, was endless: a car ride, the first flight, a ridiculously long layover, a short flight, and a 100 kilometer car ride.
Bottom lines: we're all thrilled to be back in Poland; we're all tried; none of us can wait to see what tomorrow brings.
Watch especially for my favorite band at Bluff: Twilite Broadcasters. (2009 Bluff footage of the Broadcasters at goodmorningcapt1's YouTube channel.)
Part two is exclusively Betty Smith, one of the founders of the Bluff Mountain Festival and a living repository for folk music of the Appalachian mountains.
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.
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 transport the 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.
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).
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.