Let's start thinking about putting up those garlands over city streets... 

And what is that above the old restaurant sign? 

Destination Poland: Wednesday (morning)

Overheard, a phone conversation (in Polish) between a hotel desk clerk and her friend:

No! And then what happened? …Well it’s a good thing you parted with him. Of course! And what did Henio say about all this?
(English speaking, presumably uncomprehending customer waiting at desk): Ummm…

I think that you’ll go by yourself then, don’t you think? You know I did buy it in the end. It’s normal to do that. No no, I wont be here then, I am about to go on vacation…
(English speaking, presumably uncomprehending customer waiting at desk): Ummm…

You know he’ll do that each time. Seriously. But I have to go soon. There’s a lady at the desk right now… Yes of course you should have. Did he hang up then? I don’t think it matters a bit. I would tell her all about it and see what she says…
(English speaking, presumably uncomprehending customer waiting at desk): Ummm…

I really do not think it matters. Listen, I will drop it off later and then you can take a look at it. Oh, I hug you tightly then. A big kiss for you and Asia. Oh, really? He said that when? Oh then definitely you did the right thing. It doesn’t matter, tomorrow you can go to the store and pick it up.
(English speaking, presumably uncomprehending customer makes like she is about to leave)

Well of course I will call. Yes yes yes yes yes. I really should go. The lady at the desk looks like she is leaving. Yes a big big hug, tight tight tight, for you then. Bye! (In English, to customer): Is there something I can do for you?

Some things are in our blood. Friends and family come first, the hell with market capitalism.


Sights to die for, or at least to see before you fade into the sunset

I mentioned that Krakow boasts two sights that are on the "must see" list for this planet. I am posting two quickly taken photos, done by a person whose fingers were frozen even inside a brand new spiffy pair of gloves (that would be me). But they give you an idea of what is worth looking at. I’d add a few things myself, but the Internet at the hotel is being fussy and so let’s try for the main two for the moment:

The Main Square is perhaps the largest medieval square in Europe. Even in December, the flower stalls stay open under their yellow umbrellas.  

Wawel Castle and Cathedral: each king added his own thing and so you have Medieval, Romanesque, Renaissance and Baroque styles, all rolled into one fantastic complex at the top of a hill overlooking Krakow 

Destination: Poland (Tuesday night)

Fine already, show your stuff, Krakow!

There is a travel book on the bestseller list in the States. It lists all the top sights in the world – the ones you should definitely see before you die. Three of them are in Poland -- two in Krakow alone (the castle and the main square). Okay, so the cynic will ask – what’s wrong with the rest of Poland? Wrong question obviously.

I am tired (and wired! My hotel room has a hook up!). But I go out to take a look at the holiday market on the main square (see photos below). I hear someone say in English “damn, that’s good!” They mean the hot red wine with spices that you can pick up at one of the stands. You can sip it while eating, what else – roasted meats, sausages and cooked cabbage stew. Now come on, stay open minded. Imagine: it’s cold, it’s dark, it’s late and you come across the smoky stand where someone is turning sausages. Better than brats, I’m sure.

But I pass on it. I’m aiming tonight for the Peasants' Kitchen, where they serve good old pierogi, stuffed with cabbage and mushrooms. What's this though? The old Peasant Kitchen isn’t full of Poles anymore. I hear German, or English with a German accent. Okay, okay, the Polish hosts were not ALL pandering to their western neighbors with disparaging comments about women , Warsaw and who knows what else. But I do hear one Pole tell his German guest: “Warsaw? There are lots of nice things about Warsaw, I just can’t think of what they might be.” Politeness forces me to keep quiet and concentrate on my peirogi.

Polish sausage: it's the real thing. 

Hey, do NOT neglect the cabbage and mushroom stew... 

Glass-blown ornaments from Poland. We're known for these. 

sheep's wool everything: slippers, sweaters, coats, toys 

smoked highland sheep's milk cheeses 

what else? ... pierogi. 

The Main Square at night 

Destination: Poland (Tuesday evening)

So do I introduce myself or stay quiet?

On the train to Krakow I sit compartment style. Everyone is shaking hands: they know each other. Enter me, the outlier, the one in the pink shirt and black pants amidst a sea of tweed. They are academics it seems, profs from the Academy of Agriculture. Slightly older than me. In Poland, everyone is lightly older or younger than me. What happened to my generation?

Everyone is reading, I’m writing. I’m “Polish” on this run, I already spoke it to them in Polish and so there’s no going back, I’m committed. But please don’t ask me about my work. I have been traveling all day, I am too tired to think lucidly about the law in Polish.

Central Station in Warsaw. All those people are waiting for the Krakow train. Popular run at a popular hour. 

My compartment-mates. Staid. Dignified. Bookish. 

Destination: Poland (Tuesday)

In flight from Paris to Warsaw: you can always spot a Pole…

It’s a skill, but we can do it. If I had to split the plane in two parts, one for the Poles and one for the French, I bet I could guess who would belong in which group with an error of no more than 1 or 2. My father, proud of his worldliness, used to say that he’d be indistinguishable, that is --within the error group. I humored him and answered-- yeah, sure.

It's in the mannerisms, the hairstyle, the movement... Poles. For sure. 

Ahhhh Warszawa!

I have to say this at the outset. I love Warsaw and I am fiercely protective of her. Krakow, the beauty queen, did not suffer in the way Warsaw did in the twentieth century. Warsaw has scars like the kid who once had a bad case of acne. Scars that are difficult for others to understand. Scars of destruction followed by poverty. Warsaw has grit and determination to make something of herself and I just love her to death for it.

Once when colleagues traveled here and later showed me photos they took – I remember vividly one of a decrepit park bench – I cried. Is this the way you see her? --I asked.

Loving her as much as I do allows me to look critically as well. Driving in from the airport is revealing. These are the streets I remember: blocks of apartments that westerners regard as quaintly decrepit in their ugliness. I think—oh how happy are the inhabitants! They have their own apartment in Warsaw and they have their neighborhood and I bet they feel at home there.

It is the new that appears to me more garish, more unsightly. Unregulated advertising. Big signs. Big towers of modern church spires. BIG, it has to be BIG. Aggh! Get me out of here! Thankfully, the city center is spared. It remains as I remember it.

Arrival in Warsaw, but then straight to Krakow

These days I do not initially stop in the capital for more than a few hours (I am in Warsaw now, unloading suitcases and presents). I head straight for Krakow (3 hours by train). My work connections are at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and it’s best to get work done first, before I forget that there is work to be done.

My sister acts as chauffeur. But for our childhood six years in NY and then a brief stint at an American grad school, she has always lived in Warsaw and she is street-smart, keeping up with the new ways that you have to pay attention to. I’m stuck in the old ways of safe streets and low crime rates. She is my protector. Don’t flash cash! Don’t drink tap water! Keep your purse to the front of you! Do not use unmarked cabs. Mafia!

Dilemma

Would you buy yourself some easy love and worship by speaking English in stores/restaurants/hotels even though you were fluent in Polish? I’m always torn on this and I cut it 50 – 50, depending on what I am after and how important it is that I get it.

[I do it for them too! If you are a Pole and the door opens to your store and the person says “dzien dobry” – ho hum, just another customer. But you hear a foreign sounding “hello” and you perk up. God, Americans have currency here. The dollar can plummet to negative numbers and it’ll still buy you a hero’s welcome.]

Off to the train station now.

Destination: Poland

If you’re attempting to make multiple connections in the course of a journey, the most crucial one is, of course, the first. Miss that and you miss the boat entirely. So why is it that I am found running up Park Street at 11:29 a.m. with a heavy suitcase (it’s the gifts) when the bus for O’Hare leaves promptly at 11:30?

It’s because of the Christmas treats. I had to mail a box of goodies to daughters who are far away and (I am thinking) in desperate need of chocolate-covered gingerbread. But oh, the line at the post office! When it became clear that waiting it out would cost me my bus and therefore flights and therefore Poland and all my meetings, I considered two alternatives: toss the box into the car and forget about it, or give it to someone in line with a $10 bill and the following plea: “mail it for me please; I am desperately late. If it’s more, forget it, throw it away, eat it, pocket the money, whatever. But I don’t think it’s more; I will appreciate it so much. And so will the little ones at the other end.”

So which would you have done? *

That I made the bus is nothing short of a miracle. Now, at the airport, I am finding innovative ways to blog. Of course. A day cannot pass…

* We live in troubled times. I took one look at the people in line, all over the age of 80, it seemed (who else has time to stand at the post office at 11:20 a.m.), and I thought – they’re going to have me arrested. Sigh. The goodies got tossed to the back seat.

Thanks for an inspired Sunday full of comfort and joy

We’re trying to keep the spirits high here, despite the bleak, wintry weather and the dark days, despite the crowded stores and the excessive shopping syndrome that characterizes this month, despite listening to stories about preparations for the inaugural ceremonies (it could have been so different), despite it all, we click on the Net and look to blogs to cheer us up and we come across yours and whammo! Right in our face. Pictures of atrocities that the imagination cannot even begin to comprehend. And then no posting all day. Nothing to pick us up. Thanks a lot!
I can’t help the news that I hear about every waking hour. Ocean is only as happy as the world around it.

So you could not find anything to balance the morning post? No one, including you, is doing anything happy-happy?
I ran around in the bleak wintry weather and dark days to crowded stores where people were excessively shopping. I am in a mad dash to Get It All Done before tomorrow’s departure.

Departure? So where are you going and why?
In this one month I am privileged to be spending time in four cities and two villages that have easily been the most important places in my life. I have work to do, yes, but I also have time to spend with my Polish family and pals, and then with my residing-on-the-East Coast family.

So you wont be blogging much?
Who are you kidding? I have already told my sister (who lives in Warsaw) that I will basically not leave her apartment because I have too much blogging to do and so she may as well not coax me into any other activities.
Seriously, ever since I started blogging in January, I have wanted to post from Poland. I am traveling with my computer and my camera and my tested trusty world Internet access (dial-up, but oh well), so I should be fine. Ocean is crossing the ocean and she and I can’t wait to plunge right into my homeland with vignettes of life as I know it, remember it, miss it. The next 24 hours may be thin on writing as I am on a bus, then in the air, then in the air again, then on a train. But after that, if you are curious about life Over There, tune in.

A blog that is not for the faint-at-heart depicting a war that is also not for the faint-at-heart

Departing for a moment from the light-and-airy posts, I want to signal a WashPost article from today discussing the emergent prominence of one part-time blogger. He lives in New York, apparently works for an Internet company and in his spare time, he posts photos of the human cost of war, photos that are deliberately left out of the presentations put forth by official government and news sources. [He has issued a statement saying that he is not intending to make an antiwar statement. He asserts that the American soldiers are also victims. He does feel anger at the American people for supporting the war without a hard look at the costs involved.]

His blog has generated enough attention to be of concern to the US government. In response to the disconcerting images, the US military has taken the time to put together a website with its own slide show, intended to generate support for the military intervention in Iraq.

Still, the authors of the news article interviewed a number of military experts who claimed that the blogger’s site is the more compelling of the two.

"As far as the blog site, this is information operations at its finest," said one Marine officer who has served in Iraq. … An Army soldier who fought in the Sunni Triangle last year and maintains a blog himself agreed. "The winner has to be the blog," he said. "There's something all too visceral about seeing the pictures of the dead and wounded, on both sides, which overwhelms static displays of weaponry" in the military presentation.

Juan Cole, a University of Michigan expert on Iraqi affairs … came to a similar but broader conclusion: "What the two presentations show us is that the U.S. military is full of brave and skilled warriors who can defeat their foes, but is still no good at counterinsurgency operations, and is wretched at winning hearts and minds."

I’ll list the two sites, with a note that the blogger’s site is indeed very graphic. Here’s what the WashPost says about it:

In the version of the Web site that was up last week, the first image on the site showed a malnourished Iraqi baby, wide-eyed and screaming in pain, under the sarcastic headline, "another grateful Iraqi civilian."

Many of the photographs are far more graphic than are usually carried in newspapers, showing headless bodies, bloodied troops, wounded women, and bandaged babies missing limbs. One added recently shows a U.S. soldier with part of his face blown away by a bomb.

The “Soldiers for the Truth” site, supported by the US military can be reached here: http://www.sftt.org

The private blogger’s site can be viewed at: http://www.fallujahinpictures.com

Accusations unwarranted

Some East Coast readers are suggesting that I am not attending to my holiday duties. Since I am going to be away from Madison for the next several weeks, they say that my attentions are elsewhere. How wrong, how wrong. And yes, I think for fewer than a handful of people, ten bags of chocolate-covered gingerbread stars moons and hearts, plus ten chocolate-covered gingerbread men and trees are enough. When Tommy Thompson said today that he worries nightly about the safety of American food supply (as well he might, for any number of reasons), he did not mean that I should buy out Clasen’s entire supply of Christmas cookies just in case.

This year it did not roll off onto the Beltline (as it did several years back); big enough for you? The thing weighs a ton. 

as of tonight: pine, balsam fir and juniper berries 

stockpiling? 

A sign of emotional fragility, or a sign that I am Poland-bound soon?

Three-thirty. Say good-bye to my man Jason (best hair person in town, hands down). Look at my list of errands. Sigh (I hate errands). Turn on “truck.” Turn on WERN public radio. Oh! It’s Tchaikovsky’s Violin concerto in D (download it if you haven’t listened to it. NOW!). Stop car. Eyes get moist. Listen. Dusk sets in. Winter sky has wisps of grey cloud and a touch of peach. Eyes get moister. Wait ‘til it’s over. Drive home, toss list of errands aside. Turn on Wieniawski violin concerto (no.2), followed by Bruch's (no.1). Write emails to Poland.

Is there any one book that helped you understand women (or yourself, if you are a woman)?

Again a poll, again from Britain. Again on the BBC website.

The top ten chosen titles will be announced in four days. In the meantime, there is a short list of thirty. Looking at it, I had this idea that some of the titles could indeed have been nominated by men, and some only by women. Here’s my guess as to who is responsible for the leap to the short list (question marks mean I don’t know the book, F/M means it’s a toss up; there are more Fs because I am sure many more women than men voted):

Angelique by Sergeanne Golon (?)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (F/M)
The Awakening by Kate Chopin (F, with maybe a couple of guys who had to read it in school or something)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (F)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (F)
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (bizarre choice for this list so I’ll have to say M!!)
Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding (sadly F)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (F)
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (F)
Game Of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett (F/M)
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (F)
Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (unfortunately F)
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (F/M)
I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith (?)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (F/M from school days)
The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks (?)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (a cruel hoax I hope, even if you like the book, wrong list!)
Middlemarch by George Eliot (F)
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (?)
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (F/M)
Precious Bane by Mary Webb (?)
Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen (F)
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (what woman would identify with Rebecca?? But then, what man would read Rebecca?)
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (?)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (F, with despair)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (I don’t get how this says anything about women so I’ll say M)
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (F)
Unless by Carol Shields (F)
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy (?)
The Women's Room by Marilyn French (F)

If you’re not part of the first year Torts small section 10 (Camic), skip this post: it’s too mushy for the innocent bystander.

An open letter to those who were indeed part of Torts Sec. 10:

Thanks guys. For the flowers and the card (I was not *that funny* but thanks for telling me I was). For the dinner and the numerous drinks tonight. For the reunion plans and the shared stories and the toasts. But mostly, thanks for this semester. I have vivid memories of each and every one of you and only my shyness (you’re laughing now, I can tell) held me back in telling you how much I respect and like you. You are unique. I loved every hour of class time together. I’m sure you could tell. Take that spirit of camaraderie and good will and make a difference in the legal profession. I am counting on each of you to do that. And then come back and tell me about it.

Thank you. So beautiful!  

She still loves him even though he is a 1L and forgot to get her a birthday present (because of Law School demands, so he says!) 

Lots of humor in the bunch. Lots. 

I worked without flash. She doesn't need flash anyway. She organized this evening, she shines! 

They sat in the front row and they kept me on my toes. Every day. 

Quiet? No. Not at all. And her family should be so proud. Oh, they are? well, deservedly so. 

They're friends. Really. Even though he sat on the left of the classroom and she sat on the right. 

Texas dudes - each so talanted it hurts; and the one in pink? She can deliver a line with a straight face and leave you convulsed with laughter. 

Does anyone else think that the British have a superior sense of humor – so much so that sometimes it’s hard for other mere mortals to laugh along?

There was a time when I looked forward to humorous British flicks. They were so…puzzling. Remember the one about the pig that made its way into the household? It was impossibly funny. I guess.

Today marks the day of the return of the Little Britain – a comedy series aired on the BBC. How funny is it? Consider this description and photo of one of the characters:


Bubbles
Repulsively obese Bubbles spends all her time at a health spa, being preened and pampered at the expense of her mysteriously-absent businessman husband. Whenever the manager tries to establish when her husband will be settling the balance, she fobs him off before offering him 'alternative' methods of payment...

To celebrate and promote the return of the show, BBC sponsored a contest for people to write in untrue facts about Britain. Here are some favorites. Unique, aren’t they?

In Britain, roundabouts were installed in 1904 at cliffs to stop people driving into the sea.

Scotland was supposed to be called Wales, but it was found that the name had already been taken.

In Britain, something funny happens every 13 years.

Cornwall was added onto Britain in 1923 to make it a more attractive shape.

Britain is actually pronounced 'Britain', which not many people know.

In Britain 86% of people are right handed, 13% use their left hand. The other 1% don't bother.

For health reasons, doughnuts contain no nuts.

City gents in Britain wear bowler hats as a tribute to Laurel and Hardy.

Britain's museums contain the largest number of bronze age pots in the world. Please feel free to take one.

The only qualification you need to work for the Royal family is, bizzarely, the abilty to spin plates.