Shotakovitch

Omigosh. We went to hear Shostakovitch’s 11th symphony yesterday. What a treat! Who knew that one could combine harps with percussion and make it all work. Brass, winds, drums, 2 harps, violas, violins, gongs, cymbals and actually some instruments that I did not even recognize came together to produce a symphonic performance that got the orchestra FOUR ovations. It was breathtaking. I have an attraction to some of the broodier (is that a word?) and more complex composers – Berlioz being my favorite followed probably by Shostakovitch. I suspect that complexity is in the eyes of the beholder in that Beethoven is very complex, but being an amateur and not a musician, I don’t have the musical sophistication to analyze. I just know what these composers do to my soul. Plus, I never grew up with classical music and did not even start developing that part of myself until I was well into my twenties. So – on to my impressions, amateurish though they may be. Dmitri Shostakovitch, much harassed by the Soviet state, manages to communicate a melancholic depth and profound sense of anguish in many of his symphonies, concertos, and quartets. He seems overly ambitious at times, but I suspect that what appears to be pretentiousness is actually a subtle satire of the Soviet state and its blustering bombastic swagger through history. Shostakovitch’s genius was that he could subtly thumb his nose at the Soviet censors and often (not always) they were too stupid to see it. The 11th symphony is a large-scale tribute to the "victory" of the Great October Revolution of 1917, composed on the 40th anniversary of the occasion. The mass demonstration of 1905 ended in the brutal slaughter of thousands of peaceful peasants and workers rising against the rule of Nicholas II. The minor key pervades. The first of the four movements is called "The Palace Square," setting the somber scene where the violent events of the day would occur. Shostakovitch includes two Russian prison songs in this movement. The second movement, "January 9th," pictures the workers' march through the streets and their slaughter. "Eternal Memory" is the title of the third movement, a pensive requiem, and in the last movement, "Alarm," the spirit of revolt returns, with militant songs and a triumphant, percussive finale. Bravo/brava Philadelphia Orchestra!

Self acceptance and self esteem - not an excuse to stop growing

I’ve been doing a lot of exploration into new activities as I approach my retirement. For certain I do not want to sit and rest on my laurels. I want to keep growing and keeping my brain and mind fresh and connect with others who both share similar and different interests. This is sometimes scary because it involves a certain risk. (What if people don’t like me?). It also means navigating between a the Scylla of self acceptance of who I am on the one hand, and the Charybdis of stagnation on the other. We hear so much about self-acceptance and the peace that comes with acceptance of oneself as a person. What is self-acceptance? Does it mean accepting your weaknesses or negative habits and doing nothing about them? Does this mean accepting your behavior, attitude and life style, and doing nothing to change and improve? This can be an easy way to give in to laziness, and to having good excuses for leaving everything as it is.
This kind of self-acceptance might make one feel a little better and alleviate feelings of inadequacy or anxieties about trying and learning new things, but it does not contribute to real progress and improvement. It is a recipe for stagnation.
The term self-acceptance seems not to be well explained and well understood. Accepting yourself as you are is only the first step. It helps you realize your good and not so good qualities, and can alleviate lack of self esteem, lack of satisfaction with life and the sense of unhappiness or the sense that things could have turned out differently “if only.” Reference, for example, Erik Erikson’s concepts of generativity v stagnation and integrity v despair.
Self-acceptance does not mean that you accept what you are and do nothing to change and improve. It does not mean accepting your fate and life as it is and it does not mean that others have to accept your behavior, no matter how annoying, offensive, rude or hurtful. For example, I overheard a colleague bemoaning a situation involving the students in his class who were beating a path to the dean’s office with complaints of his tardiness and curt, unhelpful responses to their oral and online communications. While I will be the first to admit that there are some really obnoxious students out there, this guy’s explanation that he “just can’t deal with all of these emails and online teaching and the dean shouldn’t assign these courses to me” and “That’s just the way I am. I am honest and will always be honest” seemed very much like excuses to me. There are ways to give students honest feedback without being offensive. I had to tell as student the other day that what he said to me was disrespectful, but I focused on the communication itself, not saying that HE was disrespectful – although he was and continued to be until he dropped my course. I wanted to say to my colleague: “So you are excusing your bad habits and the world should accept you for the jerk that you are? How self-absorbed of you.”
I believe that becoming aware and acknowledging your behavior, habits and your personality, and not being afraid to look at yourself as you are, is the first step to self-acceptance. Sometimes that means looking at yourself through the eyes of others and putting their feedback into the equation. Why? Not because your self-esteem depends on others, but because we humans receive information – of all kinds – from others. We are not islands unto ourselves. It is important to understand how a many different people see us and how they see different situations and compare their views to yours. It is the skill of reality testing and the basis of reality. Indeed the reason that ASD folks are so impaired socially is that they either are unable to process how others respond to them or situate themselves within a reciprocal relationship.
So, self acceptance is a good thing, because when you accept yourself as you are, you put yourself in a better position to begin improving yourself, opening yourself up to possibilities, and keeping life interesting.
Improvement requires that you understand and acknowledge your character and habits, stop comparing yourself and your achievements to others, and acknowledging your skills or the lack of them. This will bring some sort of inner peace, lightness and happiness, like getting rid if a burden. Acknowledging good and bad habits and traits of character can alleviate feelings of dissatisfaction, anger, resentment or unhappiness, but it is not an excuse for staying as you are, it is only the first step.

Mission working!

Well, I am really pleased at my project to avoid stagnation in retirement that I started recently. Even though retirement is a year and a few months away, it was good to start it early so that we know what is out there and to get into the groove of things. We have joined 2 book clubs and that has forced us to step out of the usual material that we read. Brian has gone beyond reading just history and economics/finance and has actually read TWO novels and is reading Water for Elephants right now. I have stepped out of my mystery comfort zone as well, although my reading habits were always more eclectic than his and included non-fiction. Goodreads has been a great way to track readings and check on people's reactions to books. One of the most amazing two I read were The Soloist and The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, among others.
The dining and wine and empty nesters groups have proved a new way of meeting like minded people. And I am really looking forward to the group run by Chef Drummond of the Continental and the culture groups.
The family membership at the museum is a fabulous source of new and exciting knowledge. We went to a tour of Japanese decorative arts and learned a great deal from the wonderderful docent who spoke and we came away with a whole new appreciation of Japanese art. Before, we would have looked at it and simply said it was pretty or interesting. We're doing the Raja exhibit this week followed by the orchestra which is always a joy.
The Polish lessons are paying off, although those are coming to an end soon. They have proved super in terms of corresponding coherently with my family in Poland.
We've been seeing a lot of performances that we wouldn't have seen without the push of the "project in progress". Walnut St. Theater's The Prince got terrible reviews, but it was actually a great little 2 man play about a Vince Fumo type of politician. Very entertaining and enlightening. We look forward to Travel's with my Aunt.
There's also a fine LGBTF place here called the Nevermore and the people are very inclusive and fun. The guy who owns my beauty parlor urged me to come to events there and we have been delighted with the reception. We've been to some super wine tasting meals and shows there. All in all, we just have to keep up the momentum. This is life beyond your job, kids and grandkids -- although I would never give up the latter two! Just got back from N.C. and will be watching Alina next weekend. Look forward to Shannon and Jon's visit in March when we plan to go to trivia night at Via Ponte among other fun events. Life is awfully good when you stretch.

Meetings ARRGGHH!

Another reason to be retiring: Meetings. Meetings are the bane of academic culture. Meetings, in academe, are inefficient, intrusive, ego-tripping power grabs. Political types love meetings. Lonely people love meetings. Get-a-Life types love meetings. Non tenured brownnosers love meetings. I qualify as none of the above. For every ten meetings I get sucked into, one is necessary. Meetings are usually initiated by people who have nothing better to do with their time – people who demand to be the bull’s-eye of attention. At work, I duck all the meetings I can because I am anal about getting work done, and for each minute or each hour I spend in a useless meeting, that's one minute or one hour where my very necessary work doesn't get done. I attend meetings – all the time – wherein people gab for the sake of gabbing, and demand center stage for the sake of attention and ego tripping. Most people who run meetings lose control of the meetings. Often people who babble in meetings do not engage their brains before speaking and talk about things that are not on task or on the agenda, and the person running the meeting has no idea how to redirect the person or simply say: “We can put that on the agenda for next week if you like.”
Then there are meetings that do not start on time and meetings to which the chronically tardy are consistently late. Such lateness may not be some kind of passive-aggressive statement, but it can be a pain for several reasons. Let’s take the meeting. First of all, I came to the meeting on time and had to sit through the introductory remarks which can often be a boring rehash of previous info. Then here comes the Late Great Meeting Attendee ten minutes late and we have to start all over and I have to hear the rehash rehashed. I have a very low threshold for boredom so this is excruciating for me. I’m also on a tight schedule scholarship wise as well and would like to get in and get out of the meeting as quickly as possible. Also, and maybe it’s just me, but isn’t there a measure of arrogance attached to someone who doesn’t seem to be bothered with the same time constraints everyone else in the room deigned to obey? Is anyone so important they can consistently waste the time of their co-workers?

Learning Polish

I have spoken fluent and fairly literate Polish all of my life. Funny that my brother’s Polish is awful, yet mine is clear and precise – although I will be the first to admit that I need an infusion of vocabulary and I do stumble sometimes in conversation. I have always wondered about the discrepancy as we were both raised in the same Polish household. I sent him a copy of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s trilogy to watch and he was unable to negotiate the formal Polish – an interesting state of affairs. I can only surmise that I have the head for languages and I like languages. One pays attention and places importance upon that which interests them. Recently my involvement in the Polish community in Philly and environs and watching Polish TV has probably helped my vocabulary as well. It has also given me a great appreciation for the formal language and its beauty – sort of like listening to formal English when correctly pronounced.
We are planning on a family reunion in Sandomierz and in preparing to join my extended family at this event I have started taking internet classes on reading and writing. After all, the onus will be on me to translate spoken and written. Although I suspect that my neices and nephews will be able to negotiate quite well in English with their cousins.
Needless to say, Shannon, who does EVERYTHING precisely and in-depth and who has an innate curiosity about the world and learning whatever she can, has started investigating all things Polish and even joined the local Polish American group. Tara is more laissez faire about life in general and makes fun of her sister’s seriousness – although she herself has many hobbies and interests.
Anyway, I digress. My self-improvement in this area has taught me more than just the fact that I need better vocabulary and to quit mixing up my “z-s.” It has reinforced a number of concepts. I post them here because I know my kids read my blog.
In the Polish language there is great complexity when dealing with forms of address. Polish IS a very formal language. And people may take offense when they’re not addressed properly. A few months ago I was out with a group of friends and strangers, foreigners and Poles. I chatted with one lady in English, turned out she was Polish, so I switched to Polish. Because in English, I addressed her as “you”, I didn’t even think twice about using the same form in Polish – “ty”. She was my age, yet her response was an icy stare and an even icier “Ja z tobą krów nie pasałam” (I didn’t tend cows with you) which is a nasty warning to a person talking to you (me in this case) that he/she has breached the Pan/Pani barrier. OOPS! Apparently, that means you’re only allowed to use “you/ty” to people with whom you were tending cows at some point in the past, or somesuch. So, how do you maneuver this minefield of Polish courtesy expressions? I asked several people and got several answers. This is more or less the general consensus:
• 1. If you don’t know someone, address them as Pan/Pani (Sir, Madam) until you know them well and have a mutual agreement that you will switch to the informal you/ty.
• 2. Within your family it is generally ok to use the you/ty except that the “intelligentsia” older generation Poles do not address their elder family members (father, mother, aunt, uncle etc.) in the familiar either. This is probably a generational thing. There are also some complex exceptions to the family as well. In some instances one uses the third person when addressing older relatives. OY!
• 3. If the person you’re addressing is much, much younger than you, then you’re safe using the familiar.

Diminutives are very popular in Polish (and are by no means reserved for children). The Polish language allows for a great deal of creativity. Most diminutives are formed by adding a suffix. Male names it may be -ek or the more affectionate -uś; for female names it may be -ka, or -nia / -dzia / -sia / cia respectively. For example, Maria has a particularly great number of possible diminutives, which include: Marysia, Maryśka, Marysieńka, Marychna, Mania, Mańka, Maniusia, , Maryna, Marianna.
The Polish language is also undergoing radical changes because of the sudden globalization movement and open boundaries. New areas of technology, new concepts, and continuous innovations bring into life new vocabulary, which gets quickly adopted in all kinds of languages around the world. This process, vigorously opposed to in some countries for the language impurity, is enthusiastically embraced in other counties. In case of Poland, there are probably as many supporters as there are critics of the new trends in Polish language. Sort of like the French and the battle in France and Quebec against the encroachment of English.
The formal literary Polish language (a beautiful thing when one knows what to listen for) is usually very carefully revised and approved by linguistic experts. They test new expressions for compliance with existing rules that regulate what is correct or incorrect in Polish native tongue. While up to a decade ago, the language was changing in a very slow motion; the last several years abounded with incredible invasion of new foreign phrases and terms to define the progress that has come from the West. There are words like shop, weekend, link, Internet, show business, gay, email, etc. that surround people everywhere and force a foreign language upon them. Now, the Polish language experts face a great challenge. How do those foreign words behave in Polish language? Should they be spelled as the original spelling calls for, or should they be spelled as the sounds are heard, which is commonly known by Poles? But if they are spelled in accordance to the sound rule, so "the show business" becomes "szoł biznes", or "weekend" becomes "łikend", there lurk other conflicts. In formal Polish language, some letters don't follow others. For instance, "ł" is never followed by "i", thus "łikend" is not an option. On the other hand, there are no easy ways to get a widely acceptable Polish translation for those new concepts. While weekend means the end of a week and as such could be translated word for word, the Polish translation is long and not as precise as weekend can be. Similar is a case with other words, such as email and business or even funnier – cell phone (cell as in the unit of biology is komura and Poles have literally translated cell phone into the word “komurka” or “telefon komurkowy.” Although, there are a couple of linguistic Polish versions of business to express the same concept, most of them are long and not as easy to say as biznes is. Some words, like email, are an ultimate challenge since there are substitutes for them in formal Polish language. Hence “imejl.” Holy cow! Or “gej” – double holy cow. And again there is the word for “HIV” which is “chif” -- pronounced "heef" (there is rarely a stand alone h and traditionally no “v.” Oh my!
Finally, the issue of rude or vulgar words is important. Polish curse words are very strange. Cholera – meaning just what it is – the disease of cholera would not be a rude word in English but it is in Polish – analogous to shit. Parenthetically, I learned the other day that in Italian curse words are frequently related to churchy issues – so in Italian a curse word might be the word for chalice. Odd, but it might reflect the Italians' view of the Catholic church. Who knows.
One of the very most rude and vulgar words is one that we don’t spend much time thinking about. It is the word for “whore” – kurwa. Even worse is “kurwa twoja macz.” So far as I can see both are summarily beeped out of even the raciest programs on Polish TV on the rare times they manages to come up. Admittedly they are ugly word to hear, sort of like f—k and its derivatives, but why the word for whore receives special censorship is odd to me, although I do remember neither my mother or father using the word in front of me. They did use a lot of cholera, occasionally prefaced by the adjective “jasny” meaning light or bright. Hence bright cholera.
So enough of my thoughts and back to my self-improvement efforts.

Anniversary of the Katyn Forest Murders

The Katyn Forest murders happened over fifty years ago and it is the anniversary of that brutal event. Several Polish groups are having discussions about Waja’s movie Katyn and about the books written about the topic over the years. It is still as moving, infuriating and shocking as the first time that I read about it. It is the story of 15,000 Polish army officers who were sent to concentration camps by the Soviet Russians in 1939 when they invaded the eastern half of Poland to 'help' fight the Nazis. It tells how the Soviets used the Nazi invasion as an excuse to invade and control Poland and to disband and arrest its army and send them to forced labor camps throughout the USSR. When the Nazis turned on the USSR and they began to retreat back into the Soviet heartland they evacuated many of the camps and sent the prisoners north. But in a number of cases the prisoners were slaughtered, either in the camps or elsewhere, including many of the Polish soldiers who had been arrested for simply defending their country.

Once the USSR switched sides following the Nazi invasion into Soviet held areas, the Polish government started trying to locate their missing men and so began over a year and half of lies and deceit by some within the USSR. It wasn't until the Nazis took over the area of Katyn Forest that the graves in which the soldiers had been buried were found and excavated and the truth began to come to light. However, even after this and the huge body of evidence showing that the bodies were some of those missing and that they had obviously been slaughtered en masse in the spring of 1940, the USSR continued to deny involvement and blame the Nazis. Even during the Nuremburg Trials where this case was heard it wasn't resolved. It wasn't until 1990 that the Russian authorities finally admitted that the massacre was committed by the Russian Secret Police (the NKVD) and that the locations of the remaining Polish soldiers murdered at the time came to light (at Mednoye and Piatykhatky)

There were two things that really surprised and angered me when reading various history books about this topic. The first is the even though it was obvious that the Nazis hadn't committed this crime (for a change) and that it could only have been committed by the USSR the Allied Governments did not push for justice as they should have done. Many have put this down to the fact that it was war time and the USSR was an important ally and they wanted to avoid the possibility of an alliance between Germany and the USSR, which is understandable. But when the war had been won, I don't understand why the Allies didn't push for a full independent inquiry and bring a proper full balanced case against the USSR during the Nuremburg Trials. In the end it was the USSR themselves that tried the case, how this was allowed is beyond me.

The second is that during the war, requests were put into the International Red Cross by both the Polish and German governments for them to conduct a full independent and unbiased investigation into what happened. It should be noted that it was actually the German government who requested one first. However these requests were denied on the basis that the USSR didn't want an investigation despite the fact that the two requests would normally be enough to start an investigation. This decision resulted in the Nazis trying to conduct an independent investigation in full view of many different people as possible, but this would never be accepted by the USSR. This attitude from the International Red Cross greatly surprised angered and sickened me as they are built on the promise of independent unbiased justice in situations such as these and yet they failed those soldiers at Katyn, Mednoye and Piatykhatky. Had they got involved how different would things have been? How much sooner would the families of those killed known what had happened?

Whether you read the history books, or you watch Andrzej Wajda’s award winning movie, this is a very emotive, moving and infuriating tale that shows how the might of the former USSR controlled and influenced many decisions and actions (or the lack thereof) during and after the Second World War. I find it incredibly sad that it was the Nazis who brought this massacre to light and worked with the Polish government to try and get it investigated and the guilty brought to justice, even if it was for their own propaganda.
This may be a harsh assessment about what happened post WW II and how Roosevelt sold Eastern Europe to the Soviets. Perhaps reading the new book on what happened at Yalta will soften my opinion to some degree. I have just reserved Plokhy’s Yalta: The Price of Peace in which he gives a blow by blow account of what happened. Here is the WSJ review: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704259304575043561664524730.html