POLISH DELIGHT

20th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FALL OF COMMUNISM (JUNE 4th 1989)

The elections that broke communist power in Poland in 1989 also triggered political revolution across east-central Europe.

The political upheaval that began in Poland continued in Hungary, and then led to a surge of mostly peaceful revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. Romania was the only Eastern-bloc country to overthrow its communist regime violently and execute its head of state.

The Revolutions of 1989 greatly altered the in the world and marked (together with the subsequent balance of power and collapse of the Soviet Union) the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the Post Cold War era.

Maria Siemionow is a renowned Polish surgeon (Poznan Medical Academy, receiving her PhD in microsurgery there) at the Cleveland Clinic. She gained public notice in December, 2008, when she led a team of six surgeons in a 22-hour surgery, performing the first face transplant in the United States on patient Connie Culp.[1] She is currently Director of Plastic Surgery Research and Head of Microsurgery Training at the Cleveland Clinic. She is also Professor of Surgery in the Department of Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.

October 1978...

"May Jesus Christ be praised! Dearest brothers and sisters, we are still grieved after the death of our most beloved Pope John Paul I. and now the most eminent cardinals have called a new bishop of Rome. They have called him from a distant country, distant but always close through the communion in the Christian faith and tradition…"
"I do not know if I can explain myself well in you – in our Italian language. If I make a mistake you will correct me. And so I present myself to you all to confess our common faith, our hope, our confidence in the Mother of Christ and of the Church, and also to start anew this road of history and of the Church, with the help of God and with the help of men."

the greatest polish composer

The big year in Warsaw is going to be 2010, the 200th anniversary of composer Fryderyk Chopin's birth. FRYDERYK FRANCISZEK CHOPIN was born in Zelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw. In November 1830, at the age of twenty, he went abroad; following the suppression of the Polish November Uprising of 1830–1831, he became one of many expatriates of the Polish "Great Emigration."
He died in Paris (burial site: the Pere Lachaise Cemetery.) Although his heart is in Poland, brought by his sister Ludwika, at Chopin’s own request and in testament to the musician’s unwavering loyalty to his homeland, where it was placed inside a pillar of the Holy Cross Church at Krakowskie Przedmiescie Street...

THE END AND THE BEGINNING...

by Wislawa Szymborska

"After every war someone has to tidy up. Things won't pick themselves up, after all.

Someone has to shove the rubble to the roadsides so the carts loaded with corpses can get by.

Someone has to trudge through sludge and ashes, through the sofa springs, the shards of glass, the bloody rags.

Someone has to lug the post to prop the wall, someone has to glaze the window, set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunities, and it takes years. All the cameras have gone to other wars.

The bridges need to be rebuilt, the railroad stations, too. Shirtsleeves will be rolled to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand, still remembers how it was. Someone else listens, nodding his unshattered head.

But others are bound to be bustling nearby who'll find all that a little boring.

From time to time someone still mustdig up a rusted argument from underneath a bush and haul it off to the dump.

Those who knew what this was all about must make way for those who know little. And less than that. And at last nothing less than nothing.

Someone has to lie there in the grass that covers up the causes and effects with a cornstalk in his teeth, gawking at clouds."

VOLUME

"Poles like to be heard. Many foreigners visiting Poland for the first time wonder why people always seem to be arguing, but for Poles animated exchange is part of normal conversation. Don't feel offended therefore if a Polish friend or colleague disagrees with you in a very vocal and expressive manner. It actually means that you have been accepted as an active partner in the conversation. Nationally, politics and the economy are the topics you can expect Poles to be most vocal about although, depending on their interests, it could be any matter on which they have a strong opinion."

From "Customs & Etiquette"