Finally, a Penguin's-Eye View of Antarctica on Google Maps

Take me there.

For a summer at Arctowski. I'm not joking, I'm just getting back in touch with my seven-year-old self.

Congo and Conflict Minerals

Let me clarify that I have been aware of the wars in the Congo for a long time. But I think that if my ability to feel shocked and want to tear the hair from my skull were exhausted, it would mean that I'm either dead or cynical to the bone.

I'm neither of the above yet I am one of the millions of people who reap benefits of these wars: I do have appliances that contain minerals stolen from the Congo. And I do feel stupid, wrong, and at the same time cheated because of that.

And so what?

I think we're in a situation where none of this can carry any weight. It's hard to even make it sound genuine, since my outrage is only a drop in a sea of outrage and mere outrage can't do anything. And where does the exploitation stop if we're increasingly oblivious of the way our pretty toys are produced? It's "invisible hands" and "fairy material" and only if you really bother to ask yourself about the path each part of your laptop or cell phone has traveled will you--perhaps--realize that the trip began in one of those areas of the world that have rare natural resources: stuff necessary for your laptop to work, stuff necessary for your stupid cell phone to vibrate...

I hope some day (soon!) this will stop happening.

Miracles Happen

Our miraculous finding at the local co-op: ogórki kiszone. One of the foods I miss the most. How do I like them best? (No, not as something to bite on between shots of vodka, though that's one way to have them. And the salt water from the jar helps heal hangover.) I like them sliced, on a kanapka (open sandwich??? one slice of bread) with cheese.

What else?

Chruściki in an ultra-patriotic box -- that's how you know they're made in the USA and not imported. The white eagle tells you so. We haven't opened them yet. I hope they're at least as good as the ones my grandma used to make (she used too much oil and relied on pre-war cookbooks).

And finally:

Imported from Poland -- which means it doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup, it's smoked, and not ground to a pulp like the American "Polish kielbasa" products. And the package has delightful spelling mistakes -- final proof that it comes from Poland in its entirety.

We also found pierogi with mushrooms and dried forest mushrooms. There will be barszcz and bigos this Christmas, albeit experimental.

"the centre does not hold"

I'm very grateful for this post. It's really boring and sad to constantly reaffirm that the Cold War is indeed over (and has been for twenty years now) and that the fall of the Berlin Wall followed the collapse of Communism in Poland, not the other way around.

And there's a thousand years of national history--with the good, the bad, and the outrageous--right in that middle that the gracious Western world refuses to admit.

End of rant. Back to work.

Blunders and Duties

Reader (if anyone should stray here from their blogging path for whatever reason), I have married, I have become a teacher (sort of like a governess but I have to pay my rent myself).

I got sucked into the abyss of pedagogical duties just around that last post in June. The abyss is technically supposed to look back at you when you look into it, but mine just spat out student essays.

As luck would have it, the recession has hit the cheerful land of graduate study, where kiddies venture when they're too scared to face the job market. The sharply reduced number of free photocopies was, I think, just enough for me to copy the syllabus; my so-called office doesn't have a window (curious savings) but it does have one of those locks that let you lock yourself in easily; I get to teach on the American Labor Day, while all the cafeterias on campus are closed (because it's Labor Day). Oh joy! And the (censored) publishing house *forgot* to send me desk copies. Twice. Now I can only eat bread and water until the next paycheck comes.

On the whole it's fine, I guess. If only I didn't have a big fat exam hanging over my head...

Meanwhile, I still have my secret imaginary life in Berlin, where I have imaginary kids, say, in Prenzlauer Berg and am able to afford eating out, and where I take long walks like someone out of Baudelaire and I don't have to submit 25 pages about it by the end of the semester.


PS: I don't even know how to reference this gem.

Suddenly, We're in Nova Scotia

Why didn't anyone tell me Canada was so fabulous? We're in Halifax, it's raining, but it's still amazing.

The one dilemma is that due to time constraints we have to choose:

Peggy's Cove

Sunset Reflections - EXPLORED Feb 9/07, originally uploaded by Hadassah28 (For the love of a Rose!).

or

Lunenburg

Lunenburg, originally uploaded by Kim Naumann - Curiouser & Curiouser Designs.

Suggestions?

Everything's Overdue

Deadlines are called deadlines for a reason.

So far, my brief faux vacation has been spent on an essay I didn't manage to finish on time and on digging through piles of paperwork that both enables me and divides me from renewing my visa. Up next: preparing a reading list for an exam that awaits me at the end of "summer," preparing a syllabus for the class I'm teaching in the fall, preparing homework (sic!) for the class I'm taking this summer (whose start keeps shifting earlier and earlier for mysterious reasons), more paperwork, and visa trips. Although that last thing sounds vaguely holiday-like, it might end up happening on borrowed time, for which I'll have to beg profs, employers, etc.

I don't even know whom to send to hell.

We live in an evil, militarized world of deadlines and borders. And passport photos that make us all look like ugly criminals.

Made Up, Unmade Up

Last night we watched a few episodes of Kasia i Tomek and I realized that if I were living in Poland, I would be buying and wearing more make up.

As a friend of mine said (referring to academic projects, however): once one has such a realization, what does one do with it?