Poland Bound

Posted on September 11, 2012 by JoannK

I was 13 years old the first time I visited Poland. It was 1990 and Wilson Phillips played heavily on my yellow Sony Walkman. At my side was my moody older sister, moping because she’d rather have been on a high school France trip than dragged to some dusty village for a summer of family roots-tracing. (Life is so hard, you guys.)

I couldn’t understand the importance of that first trip at that age, at that time in history. Not only was it my mother’s first time back since she’d left in the 1960s, but just a year earlier the collapse of Communism had begun in Eastern Europe. At my middle school history teacher’s request, I kept a journal. She had wanted to see, through my eyes, the picture of a country in transition. Sadly, she mostly got entries like this:

Hairy underarms aside, Continue reading →

My Mom and the Devil: Eastern Europeans Don’t Do Coddling

Posted on June 21, 2012 by JoannK

My mother in her babushka. I'm probably sitting there thinking, "What? There's a Satan? Put me back in, put me back in!"

I don’t remember how old I was, but I figure it was somewhere in the early elementary school years when I learned the concepts of heaven and hell in CCD, which is the strangely cryptic way we Catholics refer to our religious classes. Kind of like KGB. Except not at all.

I remember our teacher, Mrs. Teller, scribbling on the blackboard in the dim church basement that doubled as our classroom. She was compiling a list of behaviors that would get us into heaven, and which into hell. Now, I was a pretty good kid by most standards. But scanning Mrs. Teller’s list, I began to have some serious concerns about that time I threw my sister across the dining room table. To say nothing about that time I purposely kicked her in the vagina. Continue reading →

A Maharaja in Warsaw?

Posted on June 4, 2012 by JoannK

The Maharaja of Nawanagar with Polish orphans, Jamnagar: photo - CSPA. Via Polskie Radio

Here’s a fascinating bit of Polish history I’d never known about before. During World War II, a Maharaja took in nearly 500 Polish orphans, giving them a safe haven and building a camp with schools, dormitories and medical facilities on the Kathiawar Peninsula in India. Now, Warsaw is honoring Jamsaheb Digvijay Singh, the former ruler of the princely state of Nawanagar, for his kindness and generosity. A plaza will be named in his memory, called simply “The Square of the Good Maharaja.” (Apparently, the Poles have a little trouble with the pronunciation of the prince’s name. Which is saying something, because the Polish are pretty good at navigating strings of letters that don’t seem like they should go together.)

This is begging for a screenplay, and I so badly want to write it. You know, after the 10 other projects I have floating around in my brain. Anyway, read more about the Maharaja here in the Cosmopolitan Review.

* A tip of the hat to Barbara Proko for sharing this on Facebook.

Did You Hear the One About the Polish Dentist?

Posted on May 15, 2012 by JoannK

We were sitting around the kitchen table at my parents’ house last weekend, scrolling through their iPad and chatting about the news and such, when I remembered a tidbit I’d recently come across. It was scraping the bottom of the news barrel, sure. But it was something my parents would get a kick out of. News of the weird + Polishness = totally their jam.

“Did you guys hear about that dentist in Poland who pulled out her ex-boyfriend’s teeth in a fit of rage?”

“Pfft,” my mom said, swatting her hand. My dad finished her non-sentence: “It came out that it was all a hoax.” And then they got back to the important business of googling out that cute video of the babies sharing a pacifier.

Hold up a second. A hoax? I hadn’t heard this development, and I’m pretty plugged in to the news.

Let’s set aside for now the sloppy journalism that led to the fake story being picked up by so many news outlets in the first place. Don’t those same outlets have a responsibility to disseminate, with equal weight, the news that they’d gotten it all wrong? (Turns out the answer for some is, yeah not really.)

The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple does a great job of looking at how some news sites did, and didn’t, handle their retraction of the piece. (Hint: Don’t call it an “update.”)

Like a Virgin

Posted on May 1, 2012 by JoannK

If you were asked to guess who lived in my apartment, based solely on the knick-knacks and baubles arranged on my shelves, you’d be forgiven if your answer was an elderly Polish woman of peasant origins.

Exhibit A:

Among the accidental collection, this wooden piece from my dad's village. Click the "read more" to see other images.

I’m not sure how or why it started, but I seem to collect Virgin Mary icons the way some people collect ceramic roosters or wine corks or creepy dolls. This was not intentional. I didn’t sit up one morning, say, “Virgin Mary – that’s totally my thing,” and make haste to the flea market. I would not even call myself religious. (Neither would my parents. Kind of a sore subject.)

I guess there’s a comfort in it, a familiarity. Because when you grow up in a Polish family, there are three things certain to be hanging on the walls of your home: 1) a photo of Pope John Paul II 2) a wall calendar from a local Polish meat market and 3) an image of the Virgin Mary. I don’t make up the rules, I just follow ‘em. Continue reading →

I’m Not Saying Polish People Came Up With the Wet T-Shirt Contest, But…

Posted on April 9, 2012 by JoannK

Source: panoramio.com

Polish tradition has it that today, the day after Easter Sunday, is Śmigus-Dyngus. (Say it with me: SHMEE-goos DIN-goos.) Loosely translated to Wet Monday, it’s a sanctioned day of harassment that originated with the boys splashing the fairer sex with buckets of water early in the morning. And, Wikipedia tells me, “striking them about the legs with long, thin twigs or switches.” Ok, that’s kind of messed up.

Eventually, the girls caught on and realized the boys shouldn’t have all the fun. Today, it’s morphed into a free-for-all. Sort of the Polish man’s April Fool’s Day. I usually take silent note of my Śmigus-Dyngus obligations on Easter Sunday, but the notion evaporates with Monday morning’s post-holiday food haze. But for some reason, the prank snapped into my consciousness this morning. I scurried into the bathroom, wet my hands under the cold faucet, then ran to my husband, flicking my fingers in his direction. I was so pleased with myself for finally remembering. He was not. I should have done it before he put on his freshly pressed button-down.

In the spirit of this Polish day of punking, here’s a round-up of some (Totally Safe For Work) Wet Monday pictures. Continue reading →

Easter Egg Showdown: Paas vs. Pisanki

Posted on April 7, 2012 by JoannK

Our Easter basket.

For as long as I can remember, Good Friday meant two things in my family:

1) Abstaining from such pleasures as animal meat, sugary treats and music (truth: in 1985, while all my friends took part in the global sing-along of ”We Are the World,” my mother enforced Good Friday law and forbade us from all broadcast devices).

2) Coloring Easter eggs, Polish-style.

Years later my mother’s Good Friday rules have relaxed some, and music plays in the house freely and without consequence. But the ritual egg decorating remains a house mandate. Last night we gathered around the kitchen table once again, three generations of the family, to do our wax-painting duties and make Polish pisanki.

My husband was suspect. Why all the fuss over our Polish egg-painting techniques? Wouldn’t it be less of a hassle to dunk a few eggs in some drug-store dye and call it a night?

“This is my family’s tradition!” I protested.

“Well, Paas is my family tradition,” he said.

The man was in luck. We had a fresh package of the stuff, and from the bottom of our egg-decorating supply basket, I fished out an old Paas wax crayon. We would pit his tradition versus ours. You be the judge: Continue reading →

Paczki!

Posted on February 20, 2012 by JoannK

This post comes a little late for the Polish Tłusty Czwartek (Fat Thursday), but just in time for Fat Tuesday. Zlati Meyer, a former Philly Inquirer colleague, does a great job reporting about Paczki Day for the Detroit Free Press. A-plus for her pronunciation of paczki (punch-key). A fun piece that’ll have you choking on your Polish doughnuts.