Looking for upbeat news from Poland in the New Year?

Here’s the headline today from the leading (liberal) Gazeta Wyborcza. The first paragraph (in bold) reads (in Polish, translation my own):

Warsaw – symbol of freedom and the promised land of free market in books and films of the new generation is changing into a hell of loneliness and unemployment. The city’s icon is no longer the Palace of Culture, but instead, the palace of capitalism.

Do I really want to identify with this? Call it my homeland? Maybe I should have been a product of…maybe Estonia? Let me read up on it:

TALLINN – Freedom House, a U.S.-based NGO that monitors freedom and democracy around the world, wrote in its latest annual survey that Estonia ranks among countries that provide maximum political rights and civil liberties to their citizens.

Jump ship now while the going’s good. Nina from Estonia. Sounds okay, doesn't it?

Birthday brunch

Is it blog-indulgent to invite people over to celebrate your blogg-iversary? No no, not at all. It is, after all, only an excuse. Just like blogging is an excuse to step back from your daily life and put forth something more spontaneous and even at times oddball-ish about yourself for the world to read.

I was greatly indulged this morning-afternoon. Of the original A B C & F blogging crowd, only one slipped off the planet into a sickroom and could not make it. My family patiently tolerated the event and we ate and drank -- they all think it was to the birthday of Ocean. But really it was to all our blogs in the New Year. May they shine. May they make us and the world about which we write just a little happier, wiser, saner.

P.S. I burned batch no. 1 of the bacon. I always burn crostini bread for dinners and bacon for brunch. It has become a pattern and Althouse refers to this curiosity in her blog. Let me say this: it will be a sad day when I do not burn the crostini or the bacon. It will mean that the company or I have become so boring that I keep track of baking minutes instead of our conversation.

Could it be that we are on the second day of January and I’m still posting about resolutions?

…It’s just that I received an email from a reader – someone whom I respect significantly (ergo a writer, because as I said earlier in the blog, few people give me goosebumps in the way that writers do) – who wrote that one New Year’s resolution he’s considering is not googling himself so much (there was a reason, but it would identify the person and so I’ll not state it here – but it was a funny reason, leading me to believe he was being somewhat waggish).

Why do I mention this? Well of course, it lead me right away to google myself – something that I haven’t remembered to do for a while. Since the better part of my legal career has been in the world of clinical legal education, I need not ever worry that I’ll bring up endless legal references. My down-and-out clients – mostly parents who allegedly abused or neglected their children – would not be writing about me nor I about them.

What I did bring up were obscure references to Ocean as well as notes and comments I made on the blogs of others. Comment, people, google brings up the comments function (occasionally)!

So it’s back to placing the post-it in front of my nose with a slight modification: I must remember not to write impulsive emails and post disgruntled comments on people’s blogs. Both will come back to haunt me.

Happy Birthday, dear Ocean…

A year ago today someone tapped me on the shoulder, as I sat reading my first small cache of blogs and said – you should write one… Someone else said sure, other side of the ocean sounds exactly you. Ocean was born.

Why is it that our blogs come to have their own personalities? Aren’t Ocean and NLC one and the same? (Hint: no, not entirely.)

Regardless, I want to say thank you, in a big way, for giving me the honor of your attention (sounds so stiff, but it is meant with such sincerity). And for writing to me. And for linking to me – in good ways and in colorful *other* ways.

I am deliriously happy to have had this chance to blog non-stop for an entire 365 days. It’s been a dream (sometimes a nightmare). Thank you, thank you for indulging me in this wild hobby. And a note toward the future: I’m hoping that with practice, things will grow and prosper (rather than shrink and deteriorate) here at Ocean. Not in the numbers it attracts, but in what it offers to those who do click on. Keep checking, and let me know when things rub you the right or wrong way.