Prayers for the Repose of the Soul of Julia's Babcia

A prayer request for long-term reader Julia's Babcia (grandmother), who died today in Australia.

Edwarda was 90 and a veteran of the Second World War. In fact, she was a member of the Polish Home Army and took part in the Warsaw Uprising. 

I have always enjoyed Julia's Babcia stories, and I hope she will share her memories with us in the future.

Please pray for Edwarda.  To her, O Lord, and to all who rest in Christ, grant, we beseech Thee, a place of refreshment, light and peace. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen. 

The Snow Is Sticking

I don't mean real snow. We do live in Scotland, but it's not as cold as that. I am talking about (guess) the Polish vocabulary that I shovel in great clouds into my brain, mostly through my eyeballs. The initial excitement of learning new Polish words, akin to that of a child perceiving the first snowflakes of winter, gives way to disappointment upon discovering that the words, like snowflakes on an as-yet-too-warm pavement, aren't sticking.

The way to make words stick, according to contemporary research, is through spaced self-testing, so I have been giving that a go. Meanwhile, five years of accumulated work--not that I was very systematic for the first two or three years, God wot--seem to have prepared the ground. Yesterday life handed me a pop quiz, and I passed it with honours.

In short, I was prevented from checking a Polish tourist guide out of the library by the Machine, which told me to see a human. I found a human, and she scanned the book into her computer. The computer said that the book was "in transit", but while looking over the librarian's shoulder, I saw that it was describing an entirely different book. Whereas the book we were investigating is called Polska by Roman Marcinek, the computer thought it was called  Lwów by Roman Marcinek. I pointed this out, so off we went to the Chief Wizard Librarian to see what was going on.

The CWL scanned the book into his computer, and I translated the description of the book the computer showed, which was clearly not about Poland but the beautiful city of Lviv which is no longer inside the Polish map. The CWL, dealing with barcodes, determined that that fault was with the ISBN number, and had nothing to do with the Machine's belief that the book was in transit. He cleared up the latter problem though some librarian magic, and now I have Polska  to hand, whatever the ISBN number thinks.

In case I have lost you, the point is that I could read a random text about a Polish tour guide. Okay, it muddified the fuzzification (as the great Allan Fotheringham would say). However, it showed that the snow is sticking, and once I am done memorizing all the vocabulary to Baltic, pies który płynał na krze", I will begin learning all unfamiliar words from the "Warszawa" section of Polska by Roman Marcinek.

In sad news, a Pole has actually been murdered--indeed, beaten to death--in Harlow, Essex, England by a gang of teenagers--boys and girls--just for speaking Polish on the street. Unfortunately, this is all too believable, not only because of anti-Polish sentiment to be found in the UK, but because of the moral degeneracy to be found among some British youngsters, both in history (one thinks of the razor gangs of the 1930s) and today.

P.S. I reshelved a Polish-language book whose title had obviously been mistaken for the name of the author. As much as librarians hate people doing this, I think in this circumstance it was a Good Deed.  The book is called Czarny Krab, and its author is Jerker Virdborg, so I do see the shelver's dilemma.

Robopet

I have heard it said that a house without a cat is not a home. The Historical House does not have a cat because cats can be absolutely ruinous to historical furnishings. The Last Aristocrat kept cats and they were very, very naughty to ye olde antique sofas. Therefore, I am not allowed to have a cat as long as I am the Lady of the Historical House.

Neither am I allowed dogs because there was once was someone living in the Historical Flat who... Well, the less said about that the better. At any rate, in my dreams a Siamese cat guards the Flat from invaders and a pug snores happily from the wing chair in my dressing room. Also I have my own garden and the houseplants flourish. It seems to me that it is much easier to keep a cat alive than a plant--but I digress.

I helped friends move house over the weekend, and it was terribly jolly. They have three children under six and now a back garden to keep them in. The garden has mint, lavender and dill. The children had grandparents, godparents, an uncle and a god-sibling in attendance. The men drove off to load boxes onto a van, and the women took turns tending to babies, humouring children and carrying the boxes (when they arrived) indoors and upstairs. The men informed each other of how Celtic was doing.  It was very lively. I enjoyed it all thoroughly.  I wished, not for the first time, that B.A. and I were 15 years younger and such family life joys weren't denied to us. Woe.

Thus, thoughts of such baby substitutes as pets, and as real pets are forbidden, robot pets. Another friend--very fond of cats--recently gave a robot cat to an elderly relation in a nursing home. The elderly relation has dementia, and so thinks it is a real cat. I'm afraid the cat wouldn't fool anyone else. It is definitely a robot--but a lovable robot.

I spent too much time last night searching the internet for a robot cat that really, really looked like a cat. The most lifelike robot pet currently in existence seems to be a baby seal ($8,000), which is used as therapy for the elderly.  It has been invented, of course, by the Japanese, and I wonder crossly why they haven't yet come up with a cat version just as good, and priced it at $100, so I can have one.  (Here's a link to what they have managed.)

Cat purists will no doubt say that there is no substitute for a real, living cat, and the litter box hassles plus the paw in the face at dawn are worth it. I am sure this is true. However, we can't have a cat and because I can't keep houseplants alive, the flat is devoid of life. What to do? (Please don't suggest cacti, for I have hated the prickly little things for as long as I can remember. Either my mother or my grandmother had some existing in a dish of silica pellets and the whole thing reminded me of death.)

Regional Differences

B.A. and I were watching the first episode of the new season of "The Great British Bake Off." The show is a national obsession, so it is not unusual viewing for men. In this episode the contestants were asked to make Jaffa cakes, a very British cookie. It's more of a flat cupcake than a cookie, though, and it's topped with orange jelly and a covering of thin chocolate.

Naturally the judges Paul--a leonine 49 year old Liverpudlian --and Mary--a patrician 81 year old from Bath--appear to wait out the challenge by eating perfectly executed Jaffa cakes of their own. I was paying them only half of my attention, so I was barely aware of Paul dunking one in his tea. 

"Ecccccccch," said B.A. in disgust and I looked up just as Mary said, "We don't do that in the South." This confused me. The South? Like, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee? But Mary is as English as my china pattern. She must have meant not-Lancashire. 

"What, did he double-dip?" I said brightly. 

"No, he just dipped it in his tea," said B.A.  

"It's wrong to dunk cookies in your tea?" 

"It's just Not Done."

"But in Canada everyone dunks their cookies in their tea." Or glasses of milk, I might have added, although come to think of it, I only did that because I saw it in ads. I don't actually like mushy cookies, or crumbs in my milk, or a wet sludge at the bottom of my tea cup. 

"I guess it's not just the South, then; it's Edinburgh, too," I concluded, but I could tell from B.A.'s unusually steely demeanor that he thinks it ought Not to be Done anywhere. 

"You could get away with it if you were an eccentric aristocrat," said B.A.--or something like that--which was a dead giveaway that cookie-dunking is not about region but about The Taxonomy That Must Not Be Named.  Meanwhile, I suppose that if you don't have any teeth--having had them all pulled out to save yourself the expenses of future dentistry--cookie-dunking makes complete sense.

However, Paul quite obviously has a tremendous set of choppers and, anyway, dunking a Jaffa cake must be ruinous to the chocolate. I suspect he did it to tease Mary and to create a minor scandal. 

Update: I must check with B.A. if he was talking about all cookies or Jaffa Cakes, which aren't really  cookies, at least for tax purposes and, of course, Cake Week on TGBB.

The Language Parent and the Spy

It's Polski Piątek, so I will return to complaining about my brain. "Brain" in Polish is "mózg"--pronounced moozk--by the way.  Boli mnie mózg means "My brain hurts", and it most definitely did yesterday. This was thanks to my Language Parent, who was determined to fix the way I pronounce trz.

"It's not ch," she scolded. "It's trz, which is more like sh!"

Having just searched fruitlessly through Success with Languages (ed. Hurd & Murphy) and How We Learn (Carey), I can't tell you where I got the term "Language Parent" from. However, I can tell you that a Language Parent is someone who is willing to help you learn to speak his/her language in the same way a parent is willing to help his/her infant learn to speak his/her language: with sincere attention, good humour, constant correction and constant encouragement. This is a lot to expect from anyone who is not actually your parent, so if God sends you a Language Parent you must not look him or her in the mouth---except literally, to see how they make the trz sound.

My Language Parent works in the Historical House café--a seven minute walk from here--and is a force of nature. She very much likes people---very useful for language-learning--and perfected her English working in a tourist-trade shop on the Royal Mile, which culturally would be the equivalent of me working in a Judaica shop in Białystok. Clearly Language Parent is much tougher and braver than me.

Fortunately, Language Parent is confident in my powers and predicts that after two weeks in Warsaw, I'll be, like, "Cześć [incomprehensive youth slang with a rhythm strangely like that of a rap song]." I am not so sure, so I creep down to the café to await Language Parent's lunch break.  According to everything I have read, the best way to learn a language is to speak it to a native and listen to the native speak back to you as often as possible.

Naturally this is not easy because nothing in learning Polish is easy. However, it is made easier by LP's interest in my current children's storybook, which she has me read to her. LP interrupts at every word I get wrong (many) and assesses what my personal pronunciation and reading problems are. This is absolutely brilliant. Before LP pointed it out, I had no idea that I read the preposition "z" as  the preposition"w", but sure enough, during last night's Polish club meeting, I caught myself doing it.  How bizarre. Someone from Warsaw University should come and do a study on me.

According to How We Learn interruptions help us learn, so it is good to be corrected in this way--as long as it doesn't make us lose heart, of course. Mistakes also help us learn because we tend to remember them--when they are pointed out and corrected. When I was 10, I had my whole Times Table down cold except 8 x 7 = 56. Notice that I remember that.

At any rate, our concentration for half an hour was so intense that I got a headache and begged a paracetamol from the first member of Polish club who arrived. In general, I try not to think in Polish on the same day as Polish club or Polish class because it tires out my brain, which accordingly gives up at 8 PM, if not sooner.

Another brain-tiring activity is watching Polish films without English subtitles, which I can assure you I would not have had the discipline to do before 2015 or whenever it was that I made myself watch Przysłuchanie (The Interrogation) while house-sitting.  Przysłuchanie was emotionally intense and much, much too hard. Currently it is a better idea to watch a film with the English subtitles first, and then watch it without the subtitles or with Polish subtitles.

This week I watched the spy thriller Jack Strong, first with B.A. (English subtitles for the Polish and Russian parts) and then alone (Polish subtitles for the Russian and English parts). The best parts of the film (besides all the guy stuff that made it husband-friendly) were the scenes of the Polish spy trying to write a letter in English and of the American spy speaking beautifully grammatical Polish with a strong American accent. I now have a clear language goal; I want to speak Polish at least as well as an American spy.

Is the Burqini Bad?

WHAT a MODEST pose! 

Oh dear. I have just written a post on how I feel about the burqini/burkini which I won't post because I have changed my mind again.  This article did it. 

Is the burqini useful, harmless beachwear, or is it a uniform expressing adherence to anti-western ideology?

I can't decide. As much as I fear the sun--being blue-eyed, red-haired and fair-skinned, fear of skin and eye cancer haunts me--I would not wear a burqini, let alone a burqa, because I don't want to be perceived as wearing an Islamist uniform. To completely block out the sun on the beach, I could wear a surfer's or long-distance swimmer's neoprene swimsuit and nobody would give me a second glance.

Should the burquini be banned? My best Catholic friends fight me on any kind of governmental bans on public dress because they fear this will come back to bite Catholics. I don't mind "hijab" aka foreign-looking headscarves because Christian and Jewish women in the west covered their hair day in, day out for centuries. Naturally, I think it is nicer and less ghettoizing when western Muslim women wear western headscarves instead of Saudi desertwear; I know a Muslim female theology student who tucks her hair into a big knitted cap. If you want to cover your hair, cover you hair. I don't mind. If you want to cover your hair with a silk square covered in swastikas, I wonder if covering your hair is actually your intent.

What I object to are uniforms, the uniforms of anti-western ideologies.  My father's mother's people were German-Americans, and my grandmother was a proud German-American, but neither she nor her family wore traditional German dress during the First and Second World Wars. I mean, it's not just that they didn't wear Nazi uniforms--which I am sure would have got them arrested for disturbing the peace, if for nothing else--it's that they didn't wear HIYA! I'M A PROUD GERMAN-AMERICAN NOT ALL GERMANS ARE NAZIS YOU KNOW clothing either. And France, as politicians solemnly tell us, is at war.

Well, sound off in the combox if you are moved to, but remember that as usual on my blogs, the tone of the combox is sternly restricted to good humour, wrinkly-foreheaded thought and mildly hurt feelings soon soothed by apologies and explanations.

UPDATE: This Spectator article explains the current social and cultural climate in France. I think one thing to be kept in mind is that the current fuss about the burkini is about the burkini in France. When we read about massacres in France, we feel sad and upset for a week or so. When the French read about (or see or survive) massacres in France, they stay mad. Understandably.  Especially in Nice.

Norcia Needs Our Help

Latest Update: Hilary White reports from Norcia. Absolutely harrowing.

***

Umbria has suffered a catastrophic earthquake. The epicentre was ten kilometres from St. Benedict's birthplace of Norcia (Nursia), and the nearby town of Amatrice was half-destroyed.  The Benedictines of Norcia didn't suffer any serious injuries, but their monastery and the church has taken damage.

Please consider donating to the Benedictines of Norcia here or to some agency assisting the devastated villagers of Umbria.  I will ask around and find out what those agencies are. Obviously Italy is not at the top of the list of worldwide disaster relief organizations. 

I am terribly, terribly, terribly cheap--ask any of my ex-boyfriends--no, actually, don't--but even I managed to whip out ye olde credit card and  give to the Benedictines of Norcia.  If you prefer the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, well, these are our Benedictine monks, if you know what I mean. Charity begins at home, and if you're a trad who's been to Norcia.... Well, I don't even have to finish that thought.

Update: A friend suggests Caritas Italia but also the Monks of Norcia. If you want your money to go directly to Umbrian quake survivors, it may be a good idea to donate to the monks but make a note on the donation form that the money is for devastated townsfolk. It is actually physically difficult for rescuers to get to the mountain towns of Umbria, so it looks like the locals themselves are digging through the ruins for survivors.

Update 2: If you donate to Caritas Italia, specify that the money is for the earthquake victims with the words “Colletta terremoto centro Italia” (central Italy earthquake collection)".  More information: 

The Church which is in Italy joins in prayer for all the victims, and expresses fraternal closeness to the populations involved in this tragic event. The dioceses, parish networks, religious institutions, and lay groups are invited to alleviate the difficult conditions in which the persons are forced to live. For this purpose, the president of the CEI announces a national collection, to be held in Italian Churches on 18 September 2016, coinciding with the 26th National Eucharistic Congress, as the fruit of charity which comes from it, and the participation in all the concrete needs of the affected population.

The donated collections will be promptly sent to Caritas Italiana, Via Aurelia 796 - 00165 Roma, using the current postal account # 347013, or by bank transfer of the Banca Popolare Etica, via Parigi 17, Roma – Iban: IT 29 U 05018 03200 000000011113, specifying the reason: “Colletta terremoto centro Italia” (central Italy earthquake collection).

 In addition, please pray for the dead and wounded.