Thanks for the memories…

It’s odd to be hearing these words repeatedly on one day, in two different contexts.

I woke up to news of the closing of JFW – the weblog that inspired Ocean. Thanks, Jeremy, for introducing yourself through your blog.

… And I turned on the news tonight to listen to Brokaw’s parting words on NBC Nightly News: It’s not the Qs that get us in trouble [he tells us], it’s the answers and no one person has all the answers.

At the same time, Ocean got a link moments ago from a blog titled “The Polish Immigrant” (it is not the first time). A sympathetic fellow blogger? Couldn’t be less so. He writes in his post:

(Knee) jerk [that would be me]
I've been ignoring this blogger [link to Ocean] for a while now but all good things come to an end. She is a somewhat influential [!?] Pole teaching in my graduate school. And she is wrong on all important issues.

The blog has a comments function where I responded thus:

I guess I find it somewhat reassuring that someone out there has all the correct answers and can definitively say that I am wrong on all [issues]. I myself do not think I am "right" or "wrong," I simply give one perspective -- my own.

I guess Brokaw and I agree.

As for Jeremy, let me say this: get going on your next writing adventure, a.s.a.p.

‘Tis the season to talk more about food

Think you can’t find pierniczki w czekoladzie in Madison for the holidays? Think you have to travel to Poland to stock up? Oh, then you don’t know about Clasen’s Bakery and their yearly baking rituals. The dark chocolate-covered gingerbread cookies are only available during the first weeks in December. I dragged myself “oh so reluctantly” there and bought a pack. Or two. Okay, many more than that.

Bags and bags of "pierniczki w czekoladzie."

The gingerbread is soft, yummy, the chocolate is dark... the perfect winter companion to coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. 

How to love a (Polish) Pope even if you basically disagree with much of what he says

The Italians have found a way. In the IHT today:

Italians routinely ignore the conservative Pope John Paul II in matters of private morality, like contraception, divorce or marriage (far fewer Italians are marrying, in the church or out), but admire him deeply for his stands on issues like caring for the poor or his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq.

The article points out that Italians are much less adversarial in their approach to secularism and Christianity. There may be a crucifix in every classroom, but few give it more than a passing glance, feeling neither devout about it nor repelled by it. Though I have read this about Italy before, I wonder sometimes if there isn’t a geographical divide there as well, with the South being less tolerant of secularism and the North, less preoccupied with Church matters in general, feeling perhaps culturally more aligned with its north-western neighbors than with its southern provinces.

Still, it’s ‘good’ to read that the Pope has some fans outside of Poland.