Smile or die

A provocative book from an American biologist whose experience with the breast cancer and the pressure to see it as a boon led her to formulate a subversive thesis that the culture of positive thinking is undermining the modern society, here reviewed in the Daily Telegraph and anticipated in the Prospect Magazine.

American train

An article by a traveller who crossed the US by train.

Polish dogs and other achievements

Recent months have seen a spate of good news about (and from) Poland and a number of enthusiastic reports in publications which are authoritative and have never been very mild about the country's record. Two such articles come from the Economist and, importantly, their content deserves as much attention as the comments left by their readers.

One reports the events that mark the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Nazi Germany concentration camp in south-east Poland, and the changing attitudes of average Poles towards the Jews and the complicated Polish-Jewish history. Against a lingering notion that the Polish population has continued to display undue anti-Semitism, the Economist brings up persuasive evidence that this hateful undercurrent has been drying up in recent years and efforts at normalising relations at all levels, from diplomatic to workaday, have started to bear fruit in the form of Jewish culture festivals, exchange programmes or even passport applications from the descendants of Polish Jews from all over the world. There are some incredibly insightful and lucid comments from international readers, some of them probably some intelligent expats living in Poland.

The other article, penned in a tone of nearly complete admiration, extolls Poland's economic performance and political stability that, even in the face of the global financial crisis, have been second to none in the European context. Skin-deep as this analysis may be, creating a wrong impression that Poles have been living in universal prosperity and unduly concentrated on abstract indicators, it nonetheless gives immense pleasure and some consolation to see your homeland portrayed in such an overwhelmingly bright light. Again, the comment section is worth paying a visit.

Vocab bit: sanctimonious is feigning piety (świętoszkowaty), like: I wonder what happened to all this sanctimonious talk of putting the family first.

On a lighter note, amidst unforgiving winter one story that warmed hearts around the globe originated in Poland's port city of Gdańsk. Baltic, the dog which had found himself drifting on an ice floe, first down the Vistula River and then miles off the Baltic coast, was spotted and daringly rescued by a group of Polish seamen. What struck me were the readers' reactions which, possibly for the first time ever on the Daily Mail site, contained no rude language and no mud slinging at any direction. Instead, they included: tears rolling down people's faces, warming hearts, making people's day/morning, taking inspiration for staying resilient (= wytrwały, prężny) and always looking ahead, admiration for the dog's endurance.

Another Polish dog made headlines in the UK when his family had to give it away to the animal shelter and its staff had a hard time trying to teach him English commands.

Vocab bit:
1) Baltic was plucked (= picked) to safety by the sailors. You can also pluck a chicken or pluck a child from school mid-term.
2) The dog got trapped on ice.
3) a mutt = a mongrel dog
4) His luck turned.
5) After we solved tha problem the rest was plain sailing.
6) a pontoon,
7) the dog didn't even yelp (= skamleć) or shriek (= piszczeć),
8) to float further and further out to the open sea,
9) I wonder how he got there to begin with (= in the first place),
10) give a dog treats to train it,
11) the kennel = the dog shelter,
12) bouncy = lively and energetic,
13) owning a dog is a lifelong commitment,
14) a dog breed = rasa,
15) a pedigree = rodowód,
16) Woof is how dogs bark,
17) You can't teach an old dog new tricks,
18) a sound/reward association,
19) the yoof = the youth,
20) to have the decency to

A Polish girl named Ania

She's from Wales (like Duffy) and her band is called Marina and the Diamonds, a name which is oddly similar to another pop hit of recent months Florence and the Machine. Marina's latest release Hollywood (Infected your brain) has attracted praise from music industry experts, critics and her listeners alike for its powerful sound, a hit quality and the lyrics which are deeply critical of America.

The lyrics have got me interested too, since they feature a character called Ania who is a Polish girl trying to marry rich in Hollywood. A classic eastern beauty, hot and blonde, she has her mind set on getting what she wants and sees America as a promised land that can save her from "living in a dive on vine", below her expectations and below what her looks predestine her to. Her ambitions of "kissing in the rain" are shared by hundreds of others possessed by the American promise who, more often than not, have "been living in a movie scene". This angry indictment, packaged in a glossy video and pop form, exposes - with a force of a three-minute tornado - the vices that American mass culture, exported and emulated throughout the world, is commonly accused of. Among others under criticism, there are desperate Hollywood wives, the celebrity craze, the expectations of the pampered "golden life", the glorification of money and, especially in the overblown video, plain idiocy. Here's a euphoric review of her gig at one British festival.

The only question is: how did the girl called Ania make it into the lyrics?

1: a dive is a cheap bar or hotel,
2: vine is cheaper, worse quality than wine, and drunk by losers,
3: Marina's image and voice are voluptuous (lubieżny).
4: When a building is ramshackle (rozklekotany) it's likely to disintegrate completely soon
5: Marina's voice is tremulous (drżący) and quirkily operatic.
6: to achive singalong status,
7: her two first singles were outshone by the new one,
8: to prove infectuous on repeated listening

Holden Caulfield's author dies

JD Salinger dies provoking a host of articles about his literary career and the reclusive lifestyle he led for the last four decades. Some articles here and here and here and here and here and a podcast here.

I have a hard time remembering how, at the age of 15 or so, I laid my hands on his "Catcher in the Rye", but Holden Caulfield's indignant narration of his adolescent anxieties sucked me in from his very first line. Little wonder, it has become one of the most recognizable openings in literature and an instant entry into the hilarious world of the angry teenage reject at pains to find his own place and direction in life. I read the Polish translation, even though it wasn't at any point a set text in Polish schools, and I remember being seduced by Holden's way of speaking, with his frequent use of "bubek", a term of abuse I hadn't known before, and his ease in articulating his disdain and disinterest for people he was at odds with. His boldness, not just in language but in his choices and adventures, may not have inspired me directly to follow suit, but certainly lightened an avenue I suspected existed but was too shy and inexperienced to visualize. I might consider re-reading his runaway antics, though many say the book loses its allure with the passage of adolescence, not just to see if it still works with me, which I'm sure it does, but to refresh my memory and see how the original version feels. Interestingly, when it came out in 1951, it captured an entire phenomenon that soon spread to popular culture and affected economy - being a teenager, as opposed to a child or an adult. And, indeed, for generations of teenagers, irrespective of their nationality or circumstances, Holden has cut a formative character and reading "Catcher in the Rye" counts, next to such books as "Tropic of Cancer", "On the Road", "The Rachel Papers" or, further into the past, "Huckleburry Finn", as a rite of passage that marks their coming of age. In fact, much later after my own contact with it, our form teacher at secondary school continued recommending Salinger to any crisis-stricken 17 and 18-year-olds, brought down by their acne faces or shameful virginity.

In a twist of serendipity, a few years ago, I happened to purchase Salinger's collection of short stories at a book sale in a library in Napa, California, when I spent one summer there doing a work-and-travel programme. Just before returning to Poland, me and a friend of mine stayed for two or three days in sunny Sun Diego where
on a beach towel I swallowed one of them. In lots of ways, it's stayed with me until today, in particular one line in which one woman ironically noted that to avoid hurting her lover's pride it's important for her to maintain and repeat as often as possible that looking at all other men, no matter how handsome and elegant, provokes nothing but her vomit.

JD Salinger, since the 1960s living in self-imposed isolation, died of natural causes. As a total recluse, he continued until his death to refuse to publish his newer works and admitted nobody to his walled hermitage in rural Hew Hampshire, except a handful of lucky admirers, who often ended up making him feel betrayed, and his kindred spirit, the ex-editor of the New Yorker William Shawn. He also famously insisted on turning down any trappings of the adulation that his books had earned him, fiercely protecting his privacy and his literary output, never stopping short of suing journalists and editors for copyright infringement or privacy violation. Compared to another American recluse, the millionaire aviator Howard Hughes, JD Salinger was often seen as a crackpot (= a nutter), a reputation that was strengthened by the revelations of his former wives and the rumours of his enthusiastic embrace of various religious and quasireligious practices, like orgone energy.

The sweetest thing

I know the wintry days are responsible for it, but I get carried away eating loads of sweet pastry and it shows no signs of stopping. Unsurprisingly, this has direct repercussions for my belly which probably has never been so flabby. As soon as I regain the willpower to limit my gluttony, I'll have to start working out to get ripped or just get rid of my love handles I'm not at all proud to sport.

Here're some examples of what I can't resist:
1) a cream puff,
2) all kinds of buns, including a cinammon bun,
3) doughnuts, including those with a dusting of powdered sugar,
4) choux pastry, also known as a profiterole,
5) puff pastry,
6) cheesecakes,
7) apple pies,
8) an eclair,
9) meringues,
10) sponge cake.

Generation Recession

The main thrust of the argument in the "Generation Recession", a feature article in Newsweek, saying that a generation coming of age in recent years is likely to remain forever haunted by the recession in their financial choices may be a bit overblown, considering the extent of the downturn hasn't been as devastating as it'd been previously anticipated, but there are some other inspiring ideas in it worth concentrating on.

For example, as an apt illustration for how the Great Depression shaped perceptions of the entire generation of American consumers, the author retells a story of one elderly lady brought up in the period of harsh economic conditions who has never lost her habit of reusing a teabag until there are last drops of intensity in it. As opposed to baby boomers, whose growing up in post-war prosperity let them embrace lifetime optimism and have no pangs of conscience about spending beyond their means, the post-depression generation has continued to hold a bleak outlook on their financial future. This resulted in much more principled consumer choices and a strong resistance to risky bank products which were promising bombastic returns but were too intricate to understand. Is the newest generation likely to downscale on their lifestyle in a bid to reallign it with their resources? I don't see it coming.

There's another side to the Newsweek article which kind of made me reminisce on how keen I was as a teenager to follow the gospel of American newsmagazines. As a dedicated reader, who actually used Time and Newsweek to learn English, first at extraordinary effort, speding a month or so to merticulouly translate each and every word in a single issue, I was seduced by their unrelenting spirit of enthusiasm and looking forward, rather than backwards. In lots of ways, these two magazines, on top of contributing to my language skills, managed to impart in me the kind of drive typical for Americans and I relied on it for most of my secondary school and beyond. Indeed, this regular dose of idealism and inspiration might well have played a role in saving me from the impact the dreary 1990s had on a generation of teenagers in Poland, with its dejected public discourse at the time, and in propelling me to major in English.

I detect plenty of this American spirit in Newsweek's article as it focuses on trying to set the US apart from the Old Continent, with its "European notion that success is more about luck than effort", so taking it easy in life or falling back on state support is as good as working hard towards your ambitions, and trying to bring home the collateral damage from social ills like unemployment or reliance on benefits. Even though the conclusions might sound alarming, in the end this is the sort of alarm and the sort of concern which runs an undercurrent of motivation, rather than resignation.

Waxing sentimental about the American newsmagazines in the 1990s, I shouldn't overlook, though, the fact that much of that energy has sapped from me in recent years, somehow. This random article I had a chance to browse through in passing in a bookshop near my workplace has revived bits of this feeling and nudged me towards rediscovering it. Where has it gone?

Menolippu Mombassau

What do you do when you know your prognosis is hopeless and you're told you aren't very likely to make it to your 18th birthday? Two Finnish teenagers, diagnosed with the malicious tumor, team up and escape from the hospital mere days after they had met to taste life before their inevitable death. That's how One-way ticket to Mombasa, another film I translated for AleKino! 2009, begins and it's what it revolves around.

The boys are driven by different motivations. Pete, an aspiring guitarist caught completely off guard by the illness, wants to travel north to see his neighbour he quietly fancies hoping that she harbours feelings for him too whereas black-humoured Jusa is desperate to travel to Mombasa, which - possibly due to the dreamy lyrics of one song by the Finnish disco band from the 1990s Movetron - is synonymous with fun, adventure and feeling good. Badly needing each other, they strike a deal and agree, first, to go to Lapland, have a try with Pete's date and then come back to Helsinki and, possibly three of them, fly to Kenya. Soon, caught dodging the fare, they're thrown out of the train in Kuopio, halfway between Finland's capital and their final destination. Thanks to their ingenuity and vivacity, they manage to raise funds for further travel by putting on a series of street shows, even though Jusa suffers from more and more frequent fits of the illness. In Lapland, Pete lets it off his chest and wins, not without resistance, Kata's heart, but the bad news is that Jusa continues to slide. In this race against time, they don't let chances to have fun slip and get involved in a series of absurd antics. In their course, Jusa - visibly losing steam - shamefully admits to never having had a girl in his life, despite his earlier boastful declarations of being an exceptional lover. To Pete's astonishment, Kata takes pity on the dying Jusa and initiates him in a roadside shed moments before he dies. Pete's cancer remits.

Again, it was a serious disease that grabbed the central stage for a Scandinavian film, after the Norwegian Through a Glass, Darkly, and it seems this is one avenue filmmakers from European welfare states are eager to explore, in absence of other ailments that afflict these abundant societies. But Ticket to Mombasa, in a large measure a road film, was more on a light-hearted side, with a good-natured and a bit idealised view of the final days of the disease. There was less of compelling, philosophical reflection that featured so strongly in Though a Glass, but it gave the film its separate, individual edge.

a lay = a lovemaker,
broads = girls who are hired to come to parties to please,
You two can join the circus for all I care,
to pay up front,
a weather vane,
lymphoma = lymphatic cancer

Applebaum's Gulag

There's a long queue of books patiently waiting for me to pick them up and typically I allow no jumping it, but this rule of thumb has been overwhelmed by Anne Applebaum's Gulag. Her detailed research into the Soviet system of forced labour, pieced together from survivors' memoirs, official documents and interviews, may not be eye-opening for readers in Eastern Europe, well aware of what had happened, but certainly broke ground as a major work on the camps by an American writer for English speakers. Told in a chronological order, it clearly charts the events that led to the rise of the gulag, with political and ideological motivations openly discussed, its mechanisms of exploitation and extermination, and - finally - its slow and convulsed demise after Stalin's death in 1952.

Step by step, Applebaum ushers her readers in the cruel and paradoxical world of the Soviet gulags. She goes over their gigantic engineering enterprises, like the White Sea Canal erected by the inmates of the Solovki camp on the Solovetsky islands, that claimed thousands of lives but contributed little in terms of functionality and efficacy of infrastructure. Similarly, forced labourers deported to the steppes of Kazakhsttan or Siberian wilderness were often driven to participate in wasteful, badly managed projects, out of touch with their powers or skills. Probing more deeply into the everyday reality of the camps, Applebaum strives to bring some systematicity to these inherently chaotic and underorganized complexes and lays out their daily routines, organization or hierarchies. Trying to retain the richness and variety of experiences, she quotes extensively from available sources, mostly memoirs, like Herling-Grudziński's A World Apart or Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. Throughout the book, she tries to keep her eyes on what had inspired decisions to incarcerate millions of Soviet citizens and foreigners, as multipe waves of variously, and often randomly, motivated arrests swept through the vast country.

For me, it was the two essays - one opening the book and one concluding it - that stood out as proof of Applebaum's expertise and insight that stretches from her historical knowledge to her acute understanding and analysis of, first, modern Russia and, second, the state of public awareness of the gulag. In the opening essay, she masterfully dissects the Western memory and the reasons why the Soviet camps haven't attained the same revered place as the Holocaust in it. In the closing remarks, Applebaum bravely casts the gulag's shadow over modern Russia, seeing its political elites as continuators and perpetuators of the same spirit of denial, disrespect for individual dignity and tyranny.

Some terms to remember:
1) ration cards,
2) an infirmary = a hospital,
3) a louse (lice) = wszy,
4) buckwheat = kasza gryczana, here buckwheat porridge,
5) crockery = tableware - dishware,
6) the heel of a loaf,
7) felt (filcowe) boots,
8) to put on a look of incomprehension,
9) to browbeat - to intimidate,
10) the roll-call is calling out names to verify attendance,
11) alacrity = eagerness,
12) to move one's bowels = to defecate,
13) parquet floors,
14) a smokestack = a chimney,
15) emaciated = wasted away physically,
16) to play up to the bosses,
17) Serves him right!
18) a spyhole = a peephole,
19) Lend-lease programme,
20) feel compunction (strong uneasiness caused by guilt)

Mitchell - Magdalene Laundries

I'm going to start musing on song lyrics on the blog. More often than not, they carry lots of meaning and cultural reference and seem a perfect subject for a mini analysis and a fun way of deepening the knowledge of languages and cultures. First in the series: Joni Mitchell - Magdalene Laundries.

Recorded in late 1990s, Magdalene Laundries gently tells a poignant story of an unnamed woman sent to a Magdalene asylum, a corrective institution operated by religious orders, under the auspices of the Catholic Church in Ireland, for about 150 years before they were closed down in the 1990s in the aftermath of a national scandal that revealed the extent of injustice and inhumanity meted out to its inmates. Outrageous practices were laid bare in a subsequent inquiry into systematic abuse of "fallen women" incarcerated in the asylums and "sentenced into dreamless drudgery", like laundry work, in an attempt to keep them away from the evil they were supposedly inclined to embrace. Depicted in the Magdalene Sisters, featuring stories of "prostitutes and destitutes, fallen women, jezabels and temptresses", the laundries have stained the reputation of the Church in Ireland and shaken the public out of unconditional trust towards Caholicism. Indeed, the song's wording is unrelenting in its assault on the nuns running the business:
"These bloodless brides of Jesus
If they had just once glimpsed their groom
Then they'd know, and they'd drop those stones
Concealed behind their rosaries
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room"

But it's not bile and social criticism that tears your heart out when you listen, it's the tragedy, individual here, multiplied by thousands if you know the thing was systemic, the girl had gone through at the hands of the "brides of Jesus". It reads like a page from a diary, really, penned late at night, in dim light so that no one can see, with the gloomy clarity of someone who knows her life has been wasted and doomed:
"One day I'm going to die here too
And they'll plant me in the dirt
Like some lame bulb
That never blooms come any spring
Not any spring"

Heart-wrenching. A powerful rendition of the song by Emmylou Harris can be found at the Tribute to Joni Mitchell album.

Ewa chce spać

Po serii poważnych, rozliczeniowych filmów Wajdy, Munka czy Kutza, tym razem w serii 50 lat Polskiej Szkoły Filmowej trafiłem na komedię, Ewa chce spać. Od pierwszych scen czuć rękę znakomitego autora dialogów, Jeremiego Przybory, które w ustach nastoletniego Romana Kłosowskiego, w roli nieopierzonego, rozkrzyczanego złodziejaszka, brzmią przezabawnie.

To on spotyka zagubioną na nocnych ulicach miasta (nieznanego z nazwy, znanego z rozpasanej przestępczości) Ewę i, licząc na pierwszą w karierze kradzież, wita wyuczonym:
"Kup pani cegłę.
Odpalasz pani stówkę,
ocalasz pani główkę."
Ewa, snująca się po mieście w poszukiwaniu noclegu nowoprzyjęta uczennica technikum, obezwładnia go swoim czarem i prostolinijnością. Siadają w parku, Lulek deklaruje się, że znajdzie jej kąt na noc, są o krok od zawarcia przyjaźni, kiedy Ewa wpada w ręce policjanta, któremu wydaje się, że dziewczyna chce popełnić samobójstwo skacząc z mostu. Jej przybycie na komendę rozpoczyna serię niespodziewanych wydarzeń, wywołanych chaosem, ślamazarnością i nieudolnością policji. Komendant, pod presją inspekcji z centrali, podejmuje decyzje, które prowadzą do jeszcze większego zamieszkania, ucieczki jednego z aresztantów (poczciwego kasiarza granego przez Ludwika Beniot) i obawiającej się posądzenia o prostytucję Ewy. Dalej już pomyłka goni pomyłkę, nikt nie wie, komu ufać, komu nie, a w środku tego wszystkiego jest niewinna, bezbronna Ewa, eskortowana przez nadgorliwego policjanta Piotra (Stanisław Mikulki), który się w niej zakochuje. Na kruzeli postaci tej komedii nieporozumień mamy na przykład Wacka Szparaga z Baru pod Ślimakiem ("I tak mamy manko"), który bierze Ewę za groźną terrorystkę (nic dziwnego, przez przypadek dziewczyna nosi ze sobą granat, który zresztą potem wpada do słoika z ogórkami kiszonymi, a w końcowej scenie wybucha) oraz dziesiątki drobnych i większych złodziejaszków, którzy odpowiadają na apel Lulka w sprawie "roboty: prucia banku".

Ewa chce spać to debiut Tadeusza Chmielewskiego, który potem nakręcił takie klasyki polskiej komedii jak "Nie lubię poniedziałku" czy "Jak rozpętałem II wojnę światową". W filmie uwagę zwraca baśniowość miasta, w którym się rozgrywa, opanowanego przez dobroduszny chaos, w którym policja (co ciekawe, nie milicja) ustępuje inteligencją sympatycznym przestępcom, a większość zasad, jak zakaz wstępu mężczyzn do hotelu robotniczego dla kobiet, jest pisana patykiem po wodzie, nie przestrzega ich nawet sama kierowniczka obiektu. Znawcy kina dopatrują się w tej surrealistycznej atmosferze subtelnej krytyki komunistycznego ustroju.

Ciekawa jest też rola Barbary Kwiatkowskiej, która zdobyła ją w olbrzymim otwartym konkursie tygodnika Film, prywatnie przez krótki okres żony Romana Polańskiego, później pracującej i mieszkającej głównie w Niemczech (jej córką jest aktorka Katharina Böhm).

Hungry for Avatar

It felt odd to watch Avatar and Hunger, two films that couldn't possibly be more different, within two days. One is a computer-generated, 3D blockbuster set on the imaginary planet of Pandora, replaying a spate of Hollywood cliches in spectacular, new technology, the other is a brutal, minimalist drama based on the true story of the hunger strikes in Northern Ireland in the 70s, teeming with emotion and beauty despite austere means of expression.

And, obviously, it's Steve McQueen's Hunger that came top in my private contest (one that probably doesn't make sense) which pitted the American Goliath against the British David. For the lion's share of its duration, the story's told without dialogue, only background sounds of the radio, distant conversations or natural noises, which keeps the attention tightly locked in the pictures. And what we see documents, in detail and to a stunning aesthetic effect, the police clampdown on Northern Irish nationalists, their brutal treatment by the authorities, their unrelenting resistance in prison and finally the hunger strike of Bobby Sands. When it needs to be, Hunger is extremely realistic, gritty, letting you smell the urine the detained spill in the Maze prison corridor, feel the disorienting burden put on the police operatives or even see Bobby Sands waste away day after day up close. Not all that is a pleasant sight, but it perfectly brings out what conflict is about - mutual confrontation, collective strains, individual determination, all driven to the furthest extremes. And when it needs to be, it's deeply metaphorical - the scene of Sands dying melts with the sight of a flock of flying birds and his childhood dream which in itself holds the key to his motivation in pursuing the hunger strike. In the single-take conversation scene with the priest when Bobby admits to wanting to die for the cause in the strike and the two engage in the moral dispute, he retells one day in his teenage years when, at a cross-country running competition for Irish children from both sides of the border, a group of boys stumbled across a dying beggar at the river and he was the only one brave enough to help him go, others scared stiff. And this time round too, with his unflinching spirit and conviction, Sands elects, against the priest's insistance to the contrary, not to bow on his intention to use his body as a weapon. His move, joined by 9 others after his slow demise, marks a breakthrough in the conflict and leads the British authorities (Margaret Thatcher) to meet the demands of the nationalists (recognition of the political status for prisoners).

In the cinama room packed with the audience, it was easy to feel the agitation Hunger caused, gripping the viewers right from the start and letting them stand up only after the information section at the end. A lot of them were stunned and so was I.

Some reviews: the Guardian, the Times, the Belfast Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph and the Irish Times, Rolling Stone and Belfast Today.

So who do you want to be?

The question grannies keep asking when you're 10 year old never stops to haunt you after you've made your choice of a career and now start doubting if this was indeed what you'd wanted and what're made for. Here's a hilarious look at the jobs a few journalists have always wanted to do, but ended up penning articles for the Guardian.

Подарок Сталину

For one reason or another, I've been oddly attracted to all things Russian recently. For Christmas, I asked my girlfriend to get me Anne Applebaum's Gulag and some Russian films on DVD as a present while I invested in some more myself. Possibly, my interest has been builing up for some time now, but it was certainly hiked by a Kazakh film The Gift to Stalin about the forced deportations to the steppes of Kazakhstan, among other destinations, Bolsheviks carried out on its enemies and imagined enemies in the 30s and 40s.

It's skillfully told through the eyes of a Jewish survivor who revisits his childhood memories when his family of Jewish descent was involuntarily transferred from Moscow to the steppe and he was miraculously spared by a good-hearted Kazakh railman, Kasym. Sashka, renamed Basyr to prevent the security services from identifying him, quickly recovers from the strains of the unbearable train journey and finds his second home in a caring community of deportees that, apart from Kasym and other locals, include a Russian widow (Wiera) and a Polish doctor (Jerzy Dąbrowski, played by an actor from Poznań I've seen live in the theatre - Waldemar Szczepaniak). Even though bullied by an overbearing militiaman Bagabai, who repeatedly rapes local women and manages to get away with it, they create a safe haven for the boy who forms an extraordinary friendship with his saviour Kasym, who takes on the role of a foster dad/granddad. The tale takes place against the backdrop of raging deportations, shady NKVD security operations and the Soviet military effort in the Great Patriotic War. As Sashka joins a gang of Soviet vagrant orphans and keeps committing petty crime with them, his fortunes turn and during one theft attempt he's caught in the act by the police. Kasym's position in the village and his material sacrifice manage to set him free, but the situation in the area is becoming more and more dangerous for the boy. When, out of evny, Bagabai kills the Polish doctor in a drunken rage at Jerzy and Wiera's wedding party, only to be assassinated a few days later by unknown culprits, the mood deteriorates to such low levels that Kasym elects to send his beloved foundling back to Moscow for fear of mass arrests of gang children. It soon transpires this move indeed saves Sasha's life, again, and with the war drawing to an end, he is able to find relatives and leave Russia for Isreal.

In all possible ways, screenwriting, acting, directing, the Gift to Stalin is a piece of art and I couldn't help being intrigued by its origin in Kazakhstan. After Baron Cohen's Borat, it's known for the outside world as a downtrodden backwater, but there are plentiful signals that at least its modern cinama industry is going through a period of prosperity and excellence. Tulpan, another Kazakh production, is a 2009 favourite for some critics and fans.

Here's what I learned:
1) This is beshbarmak, a Kazakh flagship dish, here are other things one could want to know,
2) muezzin, in Islam, is a man who calls others to prayer,
3) Kazakhstan is sometimes called a land of exhile,
4) Almaty is the capital of Kazakhstan, previously known as Alma-Ata,
5) Dungan people,
6) Gagra is a coast restort in Abkhazia,
7) Nomads might live in yurts,
8) Semey, or Semipałatyńsk, was known as an atomic programme testing area,
9) Armenians = Ormianie,
10) бляТь means either shit! or a bitch,
11) Abay Quananbayuli (Abaj Kunanbajew) is the Kazakh Adam Mickiewicz

Is that even possible in Poland?

The Guardian published an excerpt from Adventures on the Margins of a Wasteful Society, a refreshing chronicle of 12 months' worth of living as a squatter by a London journalist. Having lost her job and refusing to accept an increased rent on her flat in the wake of the financial crisis, Katharine Hibbert found herself on the streets and rather than try to recover from these blows she chose to carry on living without income. Before long, she was saved by a group of squatters who ushered her into the underworld of scavenging, skipping and living on the edge of society. After initial hardships, tears and discomforts, the ex-journalist managed to put down roots with a group of fellow tramps in one squat where no one lurked waiting to evict them. This way, she set out on a path to establishing a sustainable lifestyle, furnishing her room with discarded sofas and cupboards, eating food scavenged from rubbish bins by supermarkets and restraining her plentiful consumerist habits. Funnily, she even started monetizing on rubbish she found by reselling it on the internet.

It all might sound sobering and eye-opening to an ordinary Briton who lives by different standards, but the whole thing reads rather fake just a few hours east of wealthy London, or Britian. First, where in the world, except in a limited number of affluent countries, is anyone likely to come across egg slicers or mellon ballers thrown away as rubbish, kitchen instruments I haven't even seen with my own eyes in normal use living a decent lifestyle in Poland, to say nothing of poorer nations? And how silly does it sound to mention text services and help centres for squatters, who seem to have bought in the material and social comforts that lots of average families are denied in developing or third-world societies? It feels as if the margins of the British society are just so much better place to live at than central venues in half of the outside world. And obviously, they are much better, which puts Katharine's adventures, tears and frustrations in a laughable perspective. Second, I just can't shake this feeling that what she did after having been laid off was quite plainly motivated by boredom, possibly mixed with some calculated attempt at creating an account of living at the fringes of her affluent home country. But it's boredom that stands out and in the Guardian article only she mentions it twice - as a prevailing mood in her job as a journalist and as a realization that dawned on her a year after setting off on her journey as a squatter. Quite clearly, in a rather insured way, retaining sms contact with her boyfriend, keeping in touch with her well-to-do family, picking her birthday presents (yes, a squatter with an iPod), she went through a protected life on the margins, an experiment she was aware she could put an end to at any time to reestablish her link with the mainstream. I certainly honour her conclusions and calls for less waste and greater sense of sharing the abundance the UK has at its disposal, but her memoirs of a self-imposed tramp strike me as half-hearted and penned from a sheltered point of view.

to buy things on a whim,
a wash kit,
to be produced in sweatshops,
to scavenge for food,
to go to waste,
an eviction notice,
to take pity on someone,
to show someone the ropes,
to evict someone from a home,
the court papers arrived,
to catch the eye of the passerby and see contempt there,
theft by finding,
at my lowest ebb,
mobile phone contract,
a paper shredder,
to board up windows,
tax on landfill,
to treat someone as a pest,
slugging is a good term to know

The Guardian is well ahead of other papers in its coverage of environment. Here's one practical promise.

Binge Britain welcomes 2010

Daily Mail reports how Britain's rowdy youngsters celebrated the arrival of the new year, with young women slumping drunk on the streets and men erupting into violence or riding in a trolley. London was said to have been saved by its focus on fancy dress parties and a show of fireworks, while Edinburgh avoided chaos in the Scottish traditional Hogmanay celebrations that were very clean and friendly.

Drunkeness's become such a problem that a change of licencing laws seems imminent.

revellers + festive spirit + The New Year's Eve celebrations + cleaning staff + clean-up