I've mentioned Hania Rybka before. She's talented in many ways, but above all other talents, Hania Rybka has a voice more beautiful than most.
This is a song called "Modlitwa" ("Prayer").
polska
My always obsession...
Gardening
We've planted our garden. Actually, that should be plural, because we're planting all over the place: some veggies in the back, some in the front.
Nothing we do will compare with Pani Barnas's garden in Poland. I live rented from her for a couple of years and every summer, she had a garden that amazed me.
"One day," I tell K, "one day we'll have a garden like this."
Then I go out to prepare our two small patches for planting. The next day everything aches in a most splendid way, and I think, "Why rush?"
Trabant
Nothing says communist East Germany quite like the Trabant -- a plastic car with a two-stroke engine that was produced in East Germany for nearly thirty years.
A friend of mine in Poland had a Trabi for a few weeks and I had the privilege of riding in it. Winter in rural Poland is the worst time to be on the road, as snow is continually packed down into ice, making conditions less than ideal. To ride around rural Poland in the winter in a plastic car with a lawn mower motor for an engine was probably not wise.
Der Spiegel has a photo essay on East Germany, comprised of pictures taken just after the Wall fell, in 1990. It includes many pictures of Trabis, including this one:
It's well worth a look.
Warsaw Village Band
The Warsaw Village Band ("Kapela ze wsi Warszawa" in Polish) is a folk-ish band from Warsaw, Poland. Their music is more popular outside Poland, though, particularly with dance club DJs. Recently, the band released an album of remixed versions.
This is the opening track: "W Boru Kalinka."
This is one of the CDs recently-married Kuba and Maja gave us last summer during our homecoming visit.
The band has released a new album; a copy is on its way. Unfortunately, the package (which includes several CDs and a few DVDs) has been "on the way" for quite some time -- I suspect it's been "lost" in transit.
Easter Party
Yesterday was Easter: it was time for a party. What's a better way to celebrate anything than to be with family and friends?
Naturally, there's a lot of preparation before hand. My job (other than smoking the tenderloin): deviled eggs. I'll admit: it was the first time I'd made them, and I was an utter disaster when it came to peeling eggs.
Still, they turned out well.
K made at least a million sauces to go with the multitude of different eggs, meats, and veggies.
First to arrive were Nana and Papa -- always a good and helpful thing. It keeps L busy and out from underfoot.
By the time all the guests arrived, there was a tremendous amount of food. After every such party, I reaffirm my conviction that there should be a simple rule with parties: when you leave, take with you what remains of what you brought.
It wasn't as if there weren't enough people to eat it all. Guests in the kitchen;
guests out on the deck.
After all the food and libation, it's a shame we all have to go to work tomorrow: things were cut entirely too short.
Happy Easter
Blessing the Baskets
On Holy Saturday (called "Great [as in, big, important] Saturday"), Poles (and others in Eastern Europe) head to the village or neighborhood church to have baskets filled with food blessed.
Usually, the contents are some of the main ingredients of the Easter morning breakfast: eggs, sausage, etc.
In the States, we've always sought out churches that have this tradition. And it's almost exclusively Poles who attend.
Today was no different. We were different, though: K and L both put on their finest Polish Highlander outfits for the service.
She kept wanting to go dance on the manhole cover.
Before long, our friends had arrived, which meant the Girl's friends had arrived: everyone was thrilled.
A group picture followed, with everyone seeming to forget that we were using digital cameras: "Here, take one with mine!" "Get one with mine next!"
Before leaving, one of L's friends had some words of wisdom to share. We're not quite sure what he said, but it must not have been pleasant: the Girl was fussy and whiny for much of the afternoon.
She wasn't the only one getting advice.
On returning home, K took the basket out for some pictures,
and I, with a cigar, Guinness, and Drive By Truckers in my ears while smoking meat in our barrel/smoker, felt positively conflicted.
Foreigners in Poland
There are not many expats living in Poland. It's not a country that welcomes huddled masses and such. Immigration, comparatively speaking, is virtually nil. Still, there are a few; I even know a handful of them.
When I left, foreigners were all the rage. There was a Polish-speaking German actor who was very popular, playing a character on one of the popular soap operas, M Jak Milosc ("L for Love"). There was also a television talk show with an alternating crew of non-Polish Europeans who lived in Poland. An English fellow and our German friend were standards, and the rest came and went. They sat around, speaking Polish to each other, basically their countries to Poland.
Poles are fascinated, it seems to me, with foreigners. There are so few of them that they're truly alien. (Couldn't resist.) When I lived there, most often I heard from Poles I'd just met questions about how I view Poland. Everyone was thrilled to learn what an "outsider" saw.
Here's an interesting clip -- mostly in English -- that recently appeared on TV. It deals with, not surprisingly, how foreigners view Poles and Poland.
Via Polandian
Sto Lat
The Girl was unconsciously showing off her growing linguistic fluency the other day. Singing "Sto Lat," she pranced around the kitchen, giving us quite a performance.
Sto lat, sto lat, niech zyje zyje nam.
Sto lat, sto lat, niech zyje zyje nam.
Jeszcze raz, jeszcze raz, niech zyje, zyje nam.
Niech zyje nam!
One site gives the following translation:
Good luck, good cheer, may you live a hundred years.
Good luck, good cheer, may you live a hundred years.
Good luck, good cheer, may you live a hundred years.
One hundred years!
Even someone unfamiliar with the language realizes that there is only a repetition of two lines, not three. A more literal translation (i.e., word-for-word equivalent) would be:
One hundred years, one hundred years, may you live, live with us.
One hundred years, one hundred years, may you live, live with us.
Once again, once again, may you live, live with us.
May you live with us.
That "jeszcze raz" is the key. "Once again," or as L might say, "Try again."
And so the second time through the song, L mixed things up for us a bit and sang,
Sto lat, sto lat, niech zyje zyje nam.
Try again, try again, niech zyje, zyje nam.
Hail Obama, Hail Mary
The Rev. Jay Scott Newman, parish priest at St. Mary's Catholic Church here in Greenville, writes on his blog about being Catholic in a decidedly evangelical region:
St. Mary’s Catholic Church is located less than five miles from the campus of Bob Jones University in the Buckle of the Bible Belt, a part of the world in which many Protestants still regard Catholicism as a pagan cult pretending to be a Christian Church or, at best, a fatally compromised version of the true Gospel. In such an environment, those who are casual, cultural, and cafeteria Catholics quickly become either ex-Catholics or Evangelical Catholics, and that is paradoxically one of the reasons why our congregation and many other Southern parishes are flourishing: the unique challenge for Catholics seeking to live their Christian faith in the South leaves no room for spiritual mediocrity, doctrinal confusion, uncertain commitments, or a lukewarm interior life. (Unexpected Catholicism)
What he said to a Greenville News reporter was sure both to unite and to alienate Evangelicals and Catholics. Hitting upon that common conservative Christian motif of "abortion is the greatest evil on the planet today" and Democrats are evil because they support it, Newman suggested Catholics who voted for Obama might not be fit to receive communion:
The priest at St. Mary's Catholic Church in downtown Greenville has told parishioners that those who voted for Barack Obama placed themselves under divine judgment because of his stance on abortion and shouldn't receive Holy Communion until they've done penance. (GreenvilleOnline.com)
The Greenville Times is even putting it on the front page, so to speak:
This is reminiscent of the calls in 2004 not to give communion to pro-choice Catholic candidates (read: John Kerry). CBS News explained it thusly:
It is unclear if pressure from the Boston archbishop will prevent Sen. John Kerry from taking communion this Easter Sunday in his home city because of the Democratic nominee's support for abortion.
Amid questions of how Catholic leadership will respond to the pro-choice senator, Kerry's archbishop -- Boston's own Sean O'Malley -- has refused to clarify a statement last summer that pro-choice Catholics are in a state of grave sin and cannot take communion properly. (CBS)
Newman's letter itself is here.
What next? People who are friends of voters who voted for candidates who are pro-choice have to get aboslution? Parishoners who touch dogs of friends who have friends who have friends who heard about someone who voted for Obama must confess?
This kind of blatantly political crap should be just cause for revoking a church's tax exempt status.
Yet a few commenters put it in perfect perspective:
- I am confused. Rev. Newman forgives John McCain for his sin of adultery; he forgives Sarah Palin for her sin of fornication and for raising a child to be a fornicator. On the other hand, he opposes a family man.
- Maybe the priest should refrain from taking communion until the Roman Catholic Church does enough penance for it's willful coverup of well over 10,000 child sexual abuse cases for decades.
- This is the reason why the Catholic Church has no credibility what-so-ever.
- Sorry Father. I am a practicing Catholic who attends mass each week at your Church. This election was multi-dimensional. I abhor abortion, but there were so many more issues involving human lives at stake last Tuesday. By the way, the headline of this week's Catholic Miscellany, which you sent me reads "Pope Congratulates Obama on Election Win." In the article, Pope Benedict says an awful lot of nice things about President-Elect Obama. Did you clear your opinion with Rome?