"Throughout their existence as a separate culture, Ruthenians formed in most cases rural population, with the power held by local szlachta and boyars..."

"... often of Lithuanian, Polish or Russian descent. As in the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, the trade and commerce was mostly monopolized by Jews, who formed a significant part of the urban population."

Since the Union of Horodlo of 1413, local nobility was assimilated into the traditional clan system by means of the formal procedure of adoption by the szlacht... Initially mostly Ruthenian and Orthodox, with time most of them became polonized. This was especially true for major magnate families... whose personal fortunes and properties often surpassed those of the royal families and were huge enough to be called a state within a state. Many of them founded their own cities... with settlers from other parts of Europe. Indeed there were Scots, Germans and Dutch people inhabitating major towns of the area, as well as several Italian artists who had been "imported" to the lands of modern Belarus by the magnates.

Have you thought about Belarus, today's "History of" country?

"I'm switching to Polish now, in stores and elsewhere. But I find that I have that American softness to my speech. The Polish melodic inflection is gone too."

"I hear its absence, but I do nothing to force it back. I'm kind of enjoying the reaction. At several points, people think that I am an American who has learned Polish very very well. Nearly perfectly! The accent isn't perfect, but so what! Which brings me to this question that I come back to again and again: why do so many Poles love America so much? Even as that love is not at all reciprocated. I mean, America let them down. Again and again. Thinking back to the war (and I do, every time that I am here)...."

My colleague Nina, in Warsaw, with lots of photographs, including one of a snow-covered statue of Ronald Reagan.

"I came to live in the States as an adult (if you can call 18 adult) because of the goodness of a person who died today."

My colleague Nina Camic wrote yesterday, about Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the long-time publisher and CEO of the NYT.

I was an au pair to his little girl. I learned through him and his wife how to transition from Warsaw to New York again. I came with barely a flight bag full of clothes and possessions and joined a household that had a staff of helpers and an extended family of cousins, aunts, nephews -- all intensely close, bonded in ways that history sometimes bonds people because of unusual circumstances.... After dinner, he and I would clean up in the kitchen and if I learned how to wipe down every last inch of counterspace it was because he taught me well. He was too kind for words and his little girl was just like him, making my au pair duties about the easiest that could be.

"Officials in Poland are in an uproar over photos showing a group of young teens licking cream off a priest's knees."

"The school said the initiation ritual was a long-standing tradition at the school, and no one had ever complained about it before."

Racializing Romney.

The press is.

Obama's Poland gaffe — you know, it was a Poland gaffe that lost the election in 1976 for Gerald Ford.

What Obama said was "Polish death camps," a terrible misstatement, carelessly referring to the geographic location of the camps without noticing the implication that that the Polish people ran those camps.

What Gerald Ford said, in a crucial debate with Jimmy Carter, was: "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, an there never will be under a Ford administration." In a 1989 interview, Jim Lehrer asked "why did you say that?"

There's no question I did not adequately explain what I was thinking. I felt very strongly, and I, of course, do so today, that regardless of the number of Soviet armored divisions in Poland, the Russians would never dominate the Polish spirit. That's what I should have said. I simply left out the fact that at that time in 1976, the Russians had about 10 to 15 divisions in Poland. Well, of course the presence of those divisions indicates a domination physically of the Poles, but despite that military occupation of Poland by the Soviets, it never in any way ever destroyed the strong, nationalistic spirit of the Polish people. And I felt, and of course, I'm pleased now the Poles are going to throw the Russians out And the quicker they do it, the better. And I'm proud of what they're doing, and, of course, I get a little satisfaction that maybe I was right in 1976.

JIM LEHRER: Let's go back at the time you said that. I'm sure you've replayed this in your mind a million times. I don't have to remind you what happened. You gave that answer, and then there was a follow-up, and you repeated it, so my question is did you have any idea that you had said something wrong?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Not at the time. Not at the time, because as you may remember, I included Yugoslavia, and Hungary, I believe, and Poland in the initial answer, and I said the Soviet Union does not dominate these countries. They're autonomous, and of course, it related to an earlier comment I had made about the Helsinki accord, which had established the borderlines of all the Eastern and Western European countries. So at the time, I did not feel that I had made an error. In retrospect, obviously, the inclusion of a sentence or maybe a phrase would have made all the difference in the world.

JIM LEHRER: When did you realize that you had made a mistake, or at least or do you honestly believe you made a mistake, now, sitting here now?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Well, I can see that I made a mistake in not adequately explaining what I had in mind. I have never had any doubts, none whatsoever about the strength of the Policy people to throw the Soviet or the Russian forces out, and to reestablish an independent Poland. I felt after the debate was over that I had overall done well because we had pointed out that Mr. Carter had been calling for significant reductions in military expenditures, which, of course, was not the right policy, and I pointed out his lack o experience in foreign policy military decision making. So when I finished the debate, I felt very comfortable. But the press focused in on that one exchange, and I happen to think that most of the press distorted the facts, and overly emphasized something that was not the most substantive issue in the whole debate.

JIM LEHRER: Do you happen to remember that just as the debate was over, when you first talked to your aides, your family, or whatever, did anybody say to you, Mr. President you made a mistake, you did bad on this one statement.

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: The first comments by my staff were that we had done very, very well overall. But then when the press, in their own analysis --

JIM LEHRER: Immediately, you mean right after the debate.

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: The press that were making the post debate analysis focused in on that, and made very adverse comments about my comment. Well, when that press reaction became the dominant one, of course, the whole feeling that I had won this debate overall changed quite dramatically.

JIM LEHRER: How important do you think that was to the outcome of the election?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: It was a factor. As you also know, we ended up losing by only a point and a half, or maybe two points. So any one of a number of problem in the campaign could have made the difference. The second debate might have made a difference. The pardon of President Nixon might have made a difference. The timing of certain economic news that came out in October that indicated we were not doing as well in coming out of the recession if the news we got in because through mid-November on the economy had come in mid-October, I think we would have won, because through November, economic news was good. The October news just before the election was not very good. So any one of a number of three or four problems, difficulties could have made a difference. We only had to change 6,500 votes in Ohio out of 4 million, and about 20,000, as I recall, in Hawaii and we would have won the election.

JIM LEHRER: When you lost the election, did you ever fly back some night by yourself thinking if I just had not said that in that debate about Poland and Eastern Europe, it might have come out differently? Did it haunt you?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Not at all, Jim. I have always had the attitude, what's gone past you have to forget, and you have to look down the road and build for the future. Of course, Betty and I hated to lose. We did our best. But once the verdict was there by the voters we had no remorse. We didn't sit around and moan and groan. We had a new life to lead, and we started planning whatever our future would be.

By the way, I watched the debate at the time, and I understood what he meant as he said it. I heard how the spinners spun it immediately after the debate and saw how it played in the media and how much it hurt him. If only there had been bloggers back then to push back! 

The House of Fallen Timbers...

... a small log cabin that David Lottes built from the dead trees that were cluttering up his 4-acree wood.

The blog-saga begins here.

ADDED: 2 good quotes in that blog's sidebar:

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” — John Steinbeck

"The secret of being a bore is to tell everything." - Voltaire

The Steinbeck quote reminds me of this essay by Larry Kaufmann: "The Occupy movement has it all wrong: Income mobility proves that the American dream is still alive." ("No one can change the past, so it's pointless to worry about what others have earned (or saved and turned into wealth) in previous years.")

The Voltaire quote seems like the theory behind Nina Camic's blog. She's in Paris now, after her pilgrimage to Warsaw. ("I’ve stopped speaking Polish for good... I became an immigrant without at least initially intending to be that....")

AND: Thinking of tiny houses and OWS encampments and prompted by Sofa King in the comments — Does he have all the permits for building that? — I went looking for this:

However, if one designs to construct a dwelling-house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary.

I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night; and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting... 

Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber.... It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up....

I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones....

I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trap-doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house... $ 28.12 1/2.

Full moon in Warsaw.

The cab driver "does not like it when foreigners think of Poland as the 'former communist country.' It’s not that to him and I can tell that he dislikes my references to that communist past.... He does not know that I am, in fact, Polish. Or from Poland...."

Lech Walesa rejects meeting with Obama...

... as Obama arrives in Poland.

"This beatification is different because this pope is different."

"He’s a man with a role in history, not just in church history... The seal of sainthood doesn’t close the debate on history... In a certain sense, for many Catholics he’s already a saint, even without beatification and, let’s be honest, even without a miracle."

ADDED: Longer video here.

Anne Applebaum says: Roman Polanski "did commit a crime, but he has paid for the crime in many, many ways..."

"... In notoriety, in lawyers' fees, in professional stigma. He could not return to Los Angeles to receive his recent Oscar. He cannot visit Hollywood to direct or cast a film."

What she doesn't say:

Applebaum failed to mention that her husband is a Polish foreign minister who is lobbying for Polanski’s case to be dismissed....

Incredible! We're talking about a Washington Post columnist here, who used the corporate pages to write a piece decrying "The Outrageous Arrest of Roman Polanski."

But is that any more absurd than saying he's suffered enough because of all the burdens on his career? Think what this means, generalizing the opinion into an abstract rule. It means that those with high professional standing do not need the usual criminal punishments given to individuals who have very little in this world. Ordinary people must be punished in prison, but big shots are already punished heavily by the mere revelation of their crimes and therefore should be relieved of much or all of the usual prison sentence. Care to sign on to that rule? 

IN THE COMMENTS: Mortimer Brezny says:

I used to agree with Ann that punishment ought to be equal. But then I realized that sympathy is unequal. If you are poor, you are pitied. If you are rich, you are not. No matter if you were born poor and worked diligently over years to build a business that provides you with your present level of wealth. No matter if you were born rich and worked hard to sustain and grow the wealth with which you started. This imbalance, of course, leads to an unfair resentment and hatred of the rich. The poor can get away with all sorts of horrors against the rich and the successful, the talented and the intelligent, and when the favored sons strike back, they are chastened. That is wrong. Equal means equal. If the rich are to be despised and the poor are able to strike them on a daily basis in innumerable ways, then the rich ought to be able to strike back. And the punishments should reflect the toll of the daily indignities. I say punish the poor even worse. Make them suffer for their petty hatred of the rich, for their nasty, impish wrongful jabs at the rich on a everyday basis.

And let us not forget about contribution. Ayn Rand may have been a loon, but the truth of the matter is some create wealth and some do not. Those who create wealth -- of whatever kind; art, business, science, political wisdom -- are rare and deserve our protection and admiration. Those who destroy wealth, those who pilfer from the coffers of others, they deserve nothing but our contempt.

What are you supposed to think when you go to your local neighborhood grocery store in Madison, Wisconsin...

... and you just want some sparkling water — mineral water, club soda, seltzer, whatever — and the store has a choice of exactly one thing, and it's this...





...?

Possible thoughts:

1. Is this a crazy — possibly drug-induced — dream?

2. Oh, no, America is over!

3. Is this the Chocolate Factory?

4. Voluptuous women are pulchritudinous.

5. It has been determined: a. choice only makes people unhappy, b. best brand is Naleczowianka, and c. everyone must express delight with perfectly happy dance, like this:

"In Poland, kids are adored to death, but they are compliant."

"They know that they are small pegs on the planet. They know that parents rule. Moms whisper sweet, tender pet names, dads issue directives and little ones toddle along, waiting for that kind word, the kiss, the pat of praise."

"On the side streets, I come across the occasional small hut selling the basics that I knew from childhood: sorrel for soup, flowers, pickles..."

"... and sauerkraut with grated carrot. And young beet leaves for spring borstch."

Nina travels 20 hours to weekend in Warsaw — attending a wedding — and has lots of pictures and inside insights.

"Anyway, I wake up on this day and think – oh, this used to be Poland’s holiday."

How would you feel if the holiday you celebrated as an innocent child were now discredited?

Bush knows you know who he's talking about.

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

"I started getting translations of the phrase the president used as the image appeared... I thought, 'oh my God, what an insult' ... "

"Tom and I are just a couple, like any other couple around the world."

Irish-born New York resident Brendan Fay reacts to the discovery that Polish President Lech Kaczynski used pictures of his wedding in a national speech railing about gay marriage. Fay is suing. [ADDED: Fay has sent his complaint to the Polish Consulate in New York.] Kaczynski was warning Poles about the EU's new Charter of Fundamental Rights. He said

"An article of the charter, due to no clear definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman, may go against the universally accepted moral order in Poland and force our country to introduce an institution in conflict with the moral convictions of the decided majority of our country."

The rule against photographing the Prime Minister's profile.

Some high level vanity from Poland:

Polish press photographers were briefly barred from taking pictures of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, left, from the side. The rule was published by the Polish government’s press office, the newspaper Nowy Dziennik reported. There was simply no need to photograph Mr. Kaczynski’s profile, a government spokesman, Jan Dziedziczak, said, rejecting assumptions that full-face pictures might be better at hiding the prime minister’s double chin. Photographers at a news conference called by the prime minister on Thursday were forced to obey the pronouncement, and outrage quickly followed. The rule was rescinded yesterday, reportedly on the order of Mr. Kaczynski.

Don't comp dessert! Comp the wine!

Nina has the scoop on last night's dinner at the Macaroni Grill, where they screwed up seating us at different tables, leaving me to draw on the butcher paper with the crayons they put out for kids.

It's really hard to do links to Nina's blog when she has photos, because she uses a system that produces a new link at each photo, but here's the beginning of the post.

Nina writes:

The hostess is most apologetic. The waiter is most apologetic. The manager is most apologetic. They offers us free dessert. What, we will then be forced to eat something for free that we wouldn’t have otherwise ordered??? My companion will have none of it. You want to comp something, comp the extra wine we’ve had to drink waiting for each other.

They do. M.Grill rules!

Here's the photo I took while waiting for Nina. I'd already ordered a whole bottle of wine -- $30 -- and was wondering how much of it I'd drink if Nina never showed.



UPDATE: Oscar and I do an intervention and get Nina off Hello and onto Flickr, at which point she does a big post about Poland with lots of pictures.

That was hips.

I love the way this BBC article about how fat hips protect women from heart attacks is headlined "Curvier women 'will live longer'" and illustrated by an above-the-waist photo of Catherine Zeta-Jones. (Via Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: And what's with the euphemism "curvy"? This is an article about fat hips. Really, even "hips" is a euphemism. You know where that fat is when the measurement at hip level is 40+ inches. But this whole thing is pseudo-science-y! The chemistry cited in the article has to do with the fat tissue, so there shouldn't be any magic to the inches. Picture a very short, small-boned women. I'm sure she'd have the relevant fat tissue at well under 40 inches. And why would it be all or nothing? Get it up to 40 or there's no point at all in maintaining that fat ass!

ANOTHER UPDATE: And check out this picture Jeremy took in Poland. I think that poster says "Americans are fat."