Kino

It seems that some of my recent Polish education has come in different forms. I do a little work in the textbook and workbook I used in Poland, but I am also using literature and films. Not really a lot of Polish knowledge can be taken away from reading something translated into English, but, being in the middle of Dorota Maslowska's Snow White and Russian Red does give lessons through untranslated graphic comic strips interspersed throughout the novel. There is also cultural information in regards to the Polish characters and setting. Additionally, I have been renting Polish films from the local library. First, I watched The Promised Land (in Polish with English subtitles; I had already seen this in a Polish Literature class while abroad) and now I am in the middle of Dekalog - a film with ten separate one-hour parts, each one's subject related to one of the Ten Commandments (again in Polish with English subtitles) - after watching the first three parts (I had also watched one or two random later parts in Polish class while in Warsaw).

Other forms of Polish cultural education have come from trying Polish foods - usually different variations of surowki or salads or soups - and I will try to try out some recipes soon.

Greenpoint

Quick notes about weekend travels. Saw some of a Polish neighborhood of Brooklyn (Greenpoint area), which includes bookstores, delis, bakeries - even a ŻABKA (means "frog" and is a 7-Eleven-like store [http://www2.zabka.pl/]) - and Polish-speaking and signs, before going to a Yankees game. I hope to return to Brooklyn (especially the Polish areas with their well-supplied stores)/NYC-area soon to explore more (I know I will be back to visit the Polish consulate there in August). After a night near Scranton following the game and a drive to a hotel, my family stopped at a Polish deli in PA before coming back home.

On another note, I recently breezed through the first book of THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy, which I had checked out of the library a couple of days ago. (I had also checked out and watched for a second time "Ziemia Obiecana" (The Promised Land) about industrialism in Lodz, Poland around the turn of the Twentieth Century. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072446/]) Now I really feel anxious and want to keep going with the other two books of the trilogy. Lately, I have been reading a lot of books that will be released as films soon ("The Help," "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"), just before release instead of after (I also read a while ago - before made into film - "Water For Elephants," but will have to wait for DVD release to watch it). I really liked the Peeta Mellark character (and the protagonist Katniss Everdeen, of course).

Weekend Excursions

Updates...

The work-week tends to go by quickly and now most traveling takes place from Friday to Sunday, either for a few hours or sometimes overnight. Monday-Friday I just do daily activities (going online for various Internet surfing - email or blog reading or looking at articles, tweets, or Facebook - or reading whatever book I am on now - in this case, about to begin Snow White and Russian Red by Dorota Maslowska after enjoying The Help by Kathryn Stockett - or doing yoga and whatever else may come up), which sometimes includes working on lessons in Hurra!!! Po Polsku 2. In other Polish education news, I am also considering going to an adult enrichment world language class for Polish when I return to school for the fall (I assume it will be weekly on Monday evenings for a couple of hours over about six to eight weeks; I will have to drive away from campus to attend classes at a high school since this is community - not school - related). I feel that working on my Polish in these ways, plus doing work one-on-one with family or watching Polish programming online or on TV, will help me continue to work on the language now that I am not nearly as immersed as I once was only a few months ago.

Furthermore, connections to Poland are also tangible when my family does come upon a Polish good store somewhere here in the US, where we buy up and goodies we find. We've had some hours-long trips (Renaissance Fair, going to nearby lakes and flea markets, visiting nearby cities such as Rochester or Ithaca) that sometimes allow for bits of Polska: seeing a Polish food stand (or item) at a market or fair, stopping by a Polish deli for magazines, meat, and surowki.

This weekend, I went back to Albany for the first time in about a year or two. There was some seeing of familiar places (Wolf Road area, Crossgates Mall for the newest/final Harry Potter film in IMAX 3D, Colonie Center Mall, Central Ave, UAlbany area, etc.) and visiting Cooperstown (National Baseball Hall of Fame, some of town, a cider mill [http://flycreekcidermill.com/], and the Ommegang Brewery [http://www.ommegang.com/]) after stopping in Sharon Springs to see Beekman 1802 mansion/grounds and the Beekman Boys' mercantile in town (http://beekman1802.com/). Staying for more than a day meant eating out (seafood, diners, and Thai) and enjoying hotel amenities (fitness room and pool mostly since the Pay-Per-View had issues). There was a planned trip to stop at a Polish deli near Albany, but it was unfortunately closed for a few days when we had wanted to stop by (it was supposed to be open on Sundays and, for some reason, was not).

Coming up trips include seeing a Yankees game (maybe stopping by some Polish areas of NYC, such as Greenpoint in Brooklyn, or in the Poconos area at a Polish store [http://www.annapolishdeli.com/] before spending some time in the Scranton area), going to Vestal for a Spiedie Fest & Balloon Rally, maybe finally making it on the Tioga Central train [http://www.tiogacentral.com/], possibly going to New Jersey (Clifton and/or Atlantic City), and trying to make it to NYC for a few hours to see about begin the process of my dual citizenship with Poland at the consulate.

I'm Wishing

Snow White and Russian Red by Dorota Masłowska (translated from Wojna polsko-ruska pod flagą biało-czerwoną = Polish-Russian War Under White-Red Flag; UK edition = White and Red) (2002)

Synopsis:
A hit in 21-year-old Maslowska's native Poland and elsewhere in Europe, this punishing successor to first-person "lad" novels like Trainspotting serves up its nastiness spiked with pitch-black humor. Young, paranoid Polish speed fiend Andrzej "Nails" Robakoski presents himself, in hyperbolic stream-of-speech, as an ignoble chump morbidly obsessed with death whose trampy blonde girlfriend Magda has just dumped him. Living at home with a working but absent mother and felonious "bro," Nails adheres to a busy schedule of snorting lines, scarfing "Bird Milkies" (or chocolate-covered marshmallows), text-messaging and denouncing both American consumerism and Russian bootlegged goods. After Magda, Nails--mindlessly nationalist, misogynist, homophobic, racist and anti-Semitic--turns to anorexic virgin Angela, a Goth girl in black whom he feeds drugs and sexually assaults. Eventually, Nails is incarcerated for stealing a soda and walkie-talkie from a local McDonald's. In a hokey metafictional twist, he encounters "Dorota Maslowska," a teenage writer working as a typist at the jail, and then, after a collision with a prison wall, enters a hallucinatory state not much different from his waking life and from which the rest of the novel emerges. Paloff's translation is pitch-perfectly speedy, and with political ironies resounding throughout, it's clear that Maslowska is not exactly endorsing her blank generation, though the claustrophobic narrative presents few avenues of escape. 
http://www.amazon.com/Snow-White-Russian-Dorota-Maslowska/dp/0802170013/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1310221641&sr=8-1

I grew interested in reading more Polish literature recently and this is one of the books I was recommended. I wanted to read works by Polish authors since I had only read books set in Poland or mentioning Poland or about Poland, but usually by foreign authors and rarely translated from Polish (usually written in English only and not having been translated from Polish). I look forward to reading this more contemporary piece instead of running instantly to classics, along the lines of Pan Tadeusz and other Polish Romantic works.

Go Do

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
-Ferris Bueller

Go sing, too loud
Make your voice break - Sing it out
Go scream, do shout 
Make an earthquake...

You wish fire would die and turn colder
You wish young eyes could see you grow older
We should always know that we can do anything

Go drum, too proud
Make your hands ache - Play it out
Go march through crowds
Make your day break...

You wish silence released noisy drummers
You wish white noise surrendered to summers
We should always know that we can do everything

Go do, you'll know how to
Just let yourself, fall into landslide

Go do, you'll know how to
Just let yourself, give into flood tide

Go do!

Tie strings to clouds 
Make your own lake - Let it flow
Throw seeds to sprout
Make your own break - Let them grow

Let them grow (Endless summers)
Let them grow (Endless summers)

(Go do endless summers)

You wish surprise would never stop wonders
You wish sunrise would never fall under

You wish surprise would never stop wonders
You wish sunrise would never fall under
We should always know that we can do anything

Go do! 

Noc Kupały

Celebration of Ivan Kupaly Day (or Noc Kupały) in Poland falls on the Summer Solstice, the shortest night of the year on June 21st or 22nd. Here are photos of the release of 11,000 lanterns into the sky on June 21, 2011 in Poznan, Poland:

Maybe I will be able to see this in person one day.

Happy Fourth of July

Happy Independence Day / Fourth of July, USA. 

And a belated Happy Canada Day on July 1st!