Thanksgiving in Warsaw

This was my first Thanksgiving spent overseas, and I would like to extend my complements to the Fulbright Commission and the staff of Restauracja Stary Dom, which is at ul. Puławska 104/106. While it was not exactly like a Thanksgiving at home (the stuffing was a little bit different, and the cranberry sauce had the consistency of salad dressing rather than the half-pudding relish that is more traditional), under the circumstances it was an excellent approximation. I felt very blessed to have a surrogate family for the holiday in the form of my fellow Fulbright scholars and their guests, some of whom were Poles experiencing their first taste of the great American ritual meal.

The Fulbrighters were asked to write a short summary of the holiday for the Commission, my piece was read by our director to the assembled guests before dinner. What I wrote appears below:

Thanksgiving is perhaps the most important holiday in the American calendar. Though it lacks the pomp of the Fourth of July, the religiosity of Easter and general cheer of Christmas, it has something that all those others lack, namely a ritual meal that is celebrated by Americans of every race, religion, ethic background and social class. Thanksgiving is a holiday that links all Americans in a culture where national identity has always been loosely defined and unclear.  The holiday has also lost little of its meaning over the years, in contrast to Christmas which many bemoan has become too commercial and Memorial Day, which has become more about barbeques and softball than honoring the war dead.

                The holiday itself revolves around dinner, which consists of a number of dishes that must be there. Grandpa may hate green beans, but will be very upset if they aren’t on the Thanksgiving table. More Americans can probably name the major courses of this dinner (turkey, stuffing, cranberries, green beans, white and sweet mashed potatoes, squash, corn, pumpkin pie) than can name the current Speaker of the House of Representatives or at least half of the Supreme Court justices. The other tradition is, of course, to watch American football. Who sits around the table is just as important as what is on it: there is an expectation that people will travel home for this holiday. Not being able to make it to Thanksgiving is very unusual, and one of the complicating factors in some families is who will be spending Thanksgiving with whom. This is only the second Thanksgiving I am spending away from my parents, and one of the very few I will be spending away from extended family. The analogy I would draw for those in Poland is Wigilia dinner, with considerably less religion involved.

                To speak plainly, Thanksgiving is about three things: food, family, and feeling thankful to have both. It can also function as a day of remembrance. We do not celebrate All Saint’s Day as is done in Poland, and there is no equivalent day in the U.S. As certain people are expected to be at dinner, when they die or get married and spend Thanksgiving with another family, this is noticeable, and an opportunity to reminisce. Thanksgiving is a holiday I always think of fondly. Now, please pass the stuffing.   

 

Review of Tragedia Makbeta (17 Nov. 2012)

The Teatr Słowackiego put on a performance of Tragedia Makbeta this last Saturday which made for an interesting cultural experience. The interpretation of the play was slightly loose and did not exactly follow the original Shakespeare. That much was evident from the performance itself, but I heard today that apparently the Shakespeare play is known only as "Makbet" or "Macbeth" in Polish, and the different title was a way of distinguishing the interpretation from the play itself.

Like many interpretations of Shakespeare I have seen over the years, this one suffered from an overdose of creativity. So many performances of The Bard's work have been put on that directors and theater companies strain to do something that hasn't been done before. This has reached such proportions that I think if a famous company were to put on a wholly straight version of Macbeth, in period dress, on a bare stage and with minimal changes to the script it would be hailed as something revolutionary.

What sorts of excessive creativity am I complaining about? The Weird Sisters (i.e. the witches) got transformed into the Andrews Sisters, with 30s and 40s-era costumes and songs to match. The play used videocameras extensively, projecting the recordings of said cameras onto a screen on top of the set. This was also used to enable conversations between a player on the stage and one waiting in the wings: significantly, we never see the murderers of Lady MacDuff and MacDuff Jr. on the stage itself. This videography was also used for asides. However, the cameras were also used for entirely unclear purposes, such as focusing on the chin of an actor giving a speech, focusing on the face of an actor whose back was turned to the house, use of cameras in low-light mode to enable the audience to see a grainy picture of action that was taking place when the stage lights were all off, or focusing on an ashtray that was simply sitting in the middle of a table during a dialogue. While some of this camera-work did have an interesting and desirable effect, that effect was overused. Furthermore, if the director intends to show the audience a view of the actor's chin, it helps if he has a good reason for doing so.

The interpretation was also notable for its surrealism. In the scene where the witches give him those two famous guarantees, Macbeth puts on a tuxedo yet continues to wear the paratrooper boots he has on throughout the play. My companion that evening astutely pointed out that costuming, staging, and other elements were an odd hodgepodge of a number of historical eras and styles. The setup of the dinner scene, at which Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo, was accompanied by an alto singing "Where have all the flowers gone?" in German. The porter gave a 10-15 minute standup routine, and led the house in a known Polish song before being essentially forced off the stage by Ross and Banquo. Fleance (Banquo's kid) has a much larger role in this play than I remember, and while the director clearly intended to show that Banquo loved his son very much, the fact that the actor playing Banquo looked to be in his 20s and Fleance a teenager made this interaction seem downright bizarre. MacDuff was presented as a half-comical character. Malcolm, however, was handled in an interesting manner, as it was implied that his reign would likely be little better than that of Macbeth.

The performance's central faults were ones of excess as well as dragging pace. The entire play took about 3 hours from start to finish, and Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's shorter plays. The excessive use of bells and whistles came at the expense of the text and dialogue itself. Lady Macbeth was particularly guilty of exaggeration: she seemed half-crazed throughout, which takes away from one of the central characteristics of the play, namely the humanization of a character initially presented as heartless, calculating, and entirely without redeeming features. The final breakdown of Lady Macbeth was similarly disappointing. The character came out on stage, struck matches, made some gurgling noises, and walked off in a manner that was almost funny. The death of Macbeth had a deliberately humorous treatment that just didn't seem quite appropriate and also made MacDuff's character seem entirely inconsistent. In this interpretation, MacDuff wanted Macbeth to surrender and killed the title character almost by accident. MacDuff then stumbled around the stage for a few minutes, the ghost of Lady MacDuff comes on stage, MacDuff hollers "sing! sing!" and the ghost does, the curtain falls....and MacDuff appears in the next scene carrying Macbeth's head? The character is made totally inconsistent in this way.

Lest I be accused of focusing too much on the negative, there were some aspects of this production that were excellent. The lighting of Lady Macbeth in her final scene was superb: it made it appear that she had blood on her face and body. The addition of a bit more humor into this play was welcome. Some of the bells and whistles and surrealism was wholly appropriate, considering that this is a play involving apparitions, changes in the natural order, witches etc. etc. I actually kind of like the idea of the ghost of Lady MacDuff appearing after Macbeth is killed, though doing so in a traditional staging is difficult as Macbeth dies off-stage. In a weird way, I could almost see playing MacDuff as a half-comical character who sobers up suddenly. And of course, Agnes, Ross and Caithness can easily be condensed into one character. The bottom line is, though there were some interesting innovations in this play, I only wish there were fewer of them.

Independence Day

"13. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant."

-Woodrow Wilson, Fourteen Points speech to a joint session of the 65th United States Congress, 8 January 1918

A German, an Englishman and a Pole are tasked with writing an essay about elephants. The German writes an essay about the anatomy and behavior of an elephant. The Englishman writes about hunting them. The Pole writes an essay that begins "the elephant is a Polish question."

- Joke circulating around the time of the Treaty of Versailles, as related by Richard M. Watt in Bitter Glory: Poland and its Fate 1918-1939.

November 11th is celebrated as Veteran's Day in the U.S. and Armistice Day in Western Europe, days of remembrance, thoughts of the war dead, occasions to wear paper poppies on the lapel if you're a Brit and so forth. It's a semi-solemn holiday. Here in Poland it is festive, celebrated as National Independence Day. This was the day that Polish militias and paramilitaries began disarming German troops, Jósef Piłsudski took control of the country, and of course the guns on the Western Front fell silent, leading eventually to a newly established, but very old, nation.

Unfortunately, I didn't see much in the way of festivities, and in some cases this was simply the result of not looking around the corner of St. Mary's Church. There was some singing of patriotic songs in the Rynek that I missed, but I didn't hear any fireworks. So it was a little anti-climactic.

What I did see was interesting. I thought Americans were nuts about displaying the flag, particularly as on an ordinary day you don't really see many Polish flags out. I know that not everybody reading this blog is an American so let me explain: we routinely fly the flag at gas stations, car dealerships, KFCs, private houses, government buildings, schools, in the middle of traffic circles and so forth. That's generally not the case in Europe, and in Poland even government buildings don't always (or even typically) fly a flag: there's typically a Polish white eagle on the building and that's how you know it's official. However, on Independence Day the Poles make us look like a bunch of pikers. All the buses had flags on their front fender. The trams were flying twin flags above their route and destination bars. Every other house had a flag on it. About a quarter to a half of people, possibly more, were carrying little Polish flags. The Rynek had these vertical flags of both the country and the city (blue and white bicolor), the Ratusz had a large flag about 30 meters in length draped on it, and St. Mary's Church had crossed city and national flags, as well as a bouquet between them made of red and white roses. Every stall in the Sukiennice had crossed national and city flags. The streets between the Florian Gate and Wawel Castle also had signs and flags hung over them. I suspect that politicians were wearing red and white undershorts.

Also notable was that there were much larger crowds out and about than on a normal Sunday, with more shops open to serve them than usual. Mostly, they were just kind of walking around. One thing I love about this city is that that's what a lot of people do, and there are a lot of places to do it. Krakow is one of the best cities I know to just take a walk in.

I understand there were some political protests as well. In general, from what I'm given to understand generally Polish politicians don't go harassing babies, but rather spend their time at rallies whipping up the multitudes. Piotrek (one of my labmates) was saying that there were two protests, one in the Mały Rynek (around the corner from St. Mary's), and the other at Wawel. I know there were also demonstrations in Warsaw against Fascism and some that were in favor of radicalism of some kind or another. The State Department issued a "be somewhat afraid" posting about the latter series of protests, but I haven't heard that any of our people up there had to spend the night in the hospital or the hoosegow, so I take it all is well.

So, what am I working on anyway?

At this point, you may be wondering what I'm doing over here other than intermittently updating this blog. My primary project looks like it's going to be about tribology, which is the study of how things behave when under friction.

Our basic goal is to reinforce polymers with nanomaterials (as well as some materials that are somewhat larger, on the order of microns), and increase the wear resistance of those polymers by doing so. We are also hoping to be able to exercise some kind of control over the coefficient of friction, which in effect determines how slippery or sticky the final material will be. There are some applications where you want as sticky a surface as possible, such as brake pads. Other applications, like in bearings or pistons, you want as little friction as possible. Polymers are already outperformed in these applications by metals and ceramics, and it is also important to note that polymers are not as temperature-stable as either of the other two types of materials. However, if polymer composites can be made good enough to replace metals and ceramics, such composites have three major advantages, namely, they are lighter, they are (potentially) cheaper and could (potentially) be used without additional lubrication.

To make the composites we first have to make the filler. Right now I'm working on doing so using a method known as high-energy ball milling. Envision a coffee can filled with ball-bearings. Now, put some powders in that coffee can, and in some way shake the can at high speed, letting the ball-bearings rattle around in there for 10 hours. That's basically what this process is, more or less. This is a solid-state method, meaning that chemical powders are being reacted as solids rather than dissolved in some kind of solvent.

Not using a solvent can be advantageous for a few reasons. First and foremost, a lot of solvents are dangerous for the environment as well as human health. Please don't misunderstand, this doesn't mean all solvents are equally dangerous or that you should be afraid of chemists and chemistry. Just that this is a consideration when doing chemical work that can be bothersome. Second, solvents can often have an effect on a reaction, from either participating directly in said reaction or by making some types of reagents more or less reactive. This is not always a bad thing: indeed, choosing the right solvent can make a world of difference. But sometimes it's nice to not have to worry about solvent effects. Finally, solvents can be expensive. Combining this with environmental concerns means that there are some reactions that we can easily accomplish on a small scale in a laboratory that simply do not work on the industrial scale. Solid-state is a way around some of these disadvantages.

However, solid-state chemistry has a few issues. First and foremost, when something is dissolved, molecules can diffuse easily, bump into each other, and react. When powders are used, this doesn't happen. Furthermore, a dissolved molecule is separated from other molecules of the same type a lot better than molecules that are stuck in a crystalline structure. So, your effective surface area is lower in the solid state than it is in solution. In short, fewer molecules can react at one time when powders are mixed than when they are dispersed in a solvent. Last, if your reaction is exothermic, meaning that it gives off heat, a solvent will help disperse some of that heat whereas solid-state doesn't have this kind of advantage. Generally, solid-state reactions need to be run at very high temperatures if they are to work, and that creates other problems.

Ball milling is a way of avoiding some of the problems of conventional solid-state reactions. The balls crashing into the chemical powders transfer some of their energy to those powders. This causes a distortion in the crystal structure of those reactants that in essence "stores" that energy. That stored energy can be used to initiate reactions with other materials present in the reaction vessel. The reactant powders are also being mixed at a high rate of speed. Further, when balls collide with each other or with the walls, because energy has to be conserved a lot of heat is generated locally. Therefore, it is possible to have locally-high temperatures exactly where the reactions will be taking place rather than having to heat the whole darn thing all the time. These factors combined means that a milled reaction can be carried out at room temperature over a span of time comparable or less than conventional methods.  Of course, there are some drawbacks to this method such as generally low-crystalline product and the need to cool the reaction vessel. But in general, it's a reasonably good method as far as I can tell.

Now that the reinforcing material has been made it has to be introduced to the polymer matrix in some way or another. We haven't gotten to this point quite yet, but when we do there are are number of ways of going about it. Most likely, since we will be using a thermoset, we will simply mix the polymer resin together with the reinforcing material, and then polymerize. The trick is going to be getting a good, even dispersion of the particles, particularly as those particles tend to stick together particularly if we are able to get particles on the nanoscale. The short explanation is that very small particles have a very high surface area relative to their volume, and that surfaces are energetic. So, high surface area means high surface energy. One of the most important concepts in chemistry is that whenever something is high-energy it tries to reduce that energy in some way or another. The easiest way to do that is to reduce the total surface area by forming larger agglomerations of particles, as larger particles have a lower surface-area to volume ratio. We don't want agglomerates! It defeats the whole purpose of having small particles in there to begin with, and empirical evidence indicates that composites with a lot of agglomerates have much worse properties than those where the reinforcing material is evenly dispersed.  

I think I'll hold off on a theoretical discussion of tribological mechanisms for another day, as those are a little complicated. But, I hope that this little discussion has at least made it clear what I more-or-less aim to do here in Poland, and generally how I aim to do it.

Politics in Poland

After the most political of days in the United States, I'd like to talk about some of the pressing issues here in Poland. If you thought the United States had a monopoly in political nastiness, think again. I've heard some things on Polish TV that are probably nastier, and some things that are considered mostly harmless fun in the States are blown into epic proportions over here.

Part of the reason politics is so nasty in Poland, as far as I can tell, is that the political parties really aren't all that different. The ruling party, Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform, henceforth PO) is described as a center-right party that favors a minimalist government. The opposition, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice, henceforth PiS), favors a strong but limited government. PO is generally Pro-EU, PiS is more Eurosceptic. PO is a bit more liberal on social issues, but as far as I can tell economically the parties are not that different. Generally, the main political players in this country represent roughly the two wings of the Republican Party. Granted, this covers a lot of ground, but as far as I can tell the major parties really aren't especially different. I've also heard that there is a tendency for the opposition to oppose something, and then once they are in government continue doing the same things they railed against.

Now, some of the smaller parties are a bit different. There's the Ruch Palikota (Palikot's Movement, henceforth RP), which is kind of like a more serious version of the Rent is Too Damn High Party, and is named after its leader Palikot, a comedian (that's not being used pejoratively, that's his real job). There's the Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (Polish People's Party or PSL), which I thought was a Communist party based on the name, but it isn't. They're a weird hybrid of social conservative and economical Social Democrats. Hence, centrists. There's the Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej (Union of the Democratic Left or SLD), which generally represents the left wing. Finally, there's Solidarna Polska (United Poland or SP), which is, in short, the Pat Buchanan Party. There are a bunch of other parties running around out there, but I think these six are the only ones with representation in Parliament.

I haven't been up on all the latest political issues, and I know that some of them are rather large like abortion. There's actually a movement on to pretty much ban it here unless the mother is going to die without it, and I understand that it is already only possible to obtain an abortion in Poland in cases of rape, incest, and when the health of the mother is in danger. Considering that 90+% of the country is Catholic, this is less surprising. However, I don't know a lot about this issue, so I'll move on to something I've been hearing a lot about recently, namely the tragedy in Smolensk.

On April 10th, 2010, a Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft carrying Polish president Lech Kacziński, his wife, the Chief of the General Staff, a bunch of other generals, the president of the national bank and other assorted dignitaries crashed en route to a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Katyn massacre in Smolensk. This was potentially a big deal diplomatically: the Russian president was also going to be at the commemoration, which served as an acknowledgement of the fact that the Soviet government committed the massacre. Unfortunately, what happened has seriously damaged Polish-Russian relations, which haven't been very good since, oh I don't know, about 1500 or so. There was a heavy fog in Smolensk that day, and the pilot probably should not have tried to land in it. The plane crashed, killing all 96 aboard and effectively decimating the Polish government. Since then there have been all kinds of unanswered questions, the one most important in my mind being: why the hell were all those important people on one plane? But there are all kinds of questions that are more pressing from a political standpoint.

First, a lot of Poles are convinced that this tragedy represented some kind of tricky business. I've firmly added the word "zamach" (which based on the contexts in which it's been used I translate as "conspiracy" but the dictionary says "assassination") to my vocabulary, as I'm hearing a lot of it. It didn't help that the Russians largely handled the investigation and didn't let the Poles oversee a lot of things. The Russians also didn't return the black boxes promptly, and when they were returned, chunks of the tape were blank. When the plane was returned, it had been cleaned by the Russians, and it didn't help that the initial Russian explanation for the accident was "uh, we don't know. Maybe the pilot was drunk. Or a Polish general was drunk and ordered the pilots to land stupidly." Finally, it doesn't help that Poles tend not to trust Russians in the first place, the same way, say, Koreans don't trust the Japanese.

The Polish government did not immediately demand an international commission to investigate the crash, which was probably a mistake as the issue remains unburied. There is thus an incentive for the opposition to politicize this tragedy as much as possible, as the governing party looks bad. PO looks bad whether there was foul play or not, as it turns out that some of the bodies were mixed up and buried in the wrong place. Does that mean we should disinter all of the bodies, including those buried in Wawel Cathedral?

The reason that this is such an issue right now is that a prominent Polish daily, Rzeczpospolita ("Republic") published an article that said that Polish investigators had tested components of the plane and found some residue that might, maybe, have been from explosives possibly. The language used was something along the lines of "we cannot eliminate the possibility that there may have been explosives" though even the article itself said that most likely, there were no explosives. The headline was a lot more inflammatory, but the article itself really didn't say much. This did not prevent the leader of the opposition from running out and immediately saying that this represented proof that 96 people including his twin brother had been murdered, and that the government should be ashamed for standing in the way of finding out the truth.

"Rz" backed down from its earlier article, and the journalist responsible for it has been fired. I think the editor-in-chief also went, as did some other important figure.

This touched off extremely contentious debate, and I saw several talk shows where PiS largely accused the government (PO) of covering things up and bending over backwards to not irritate the Russians. PO for its part has largely said that PiS is taking advantage of the fresh graves of the dead. The other parties, for their parts, mostly beat up on PiS with a few swipes at PO. "Rz" has also taken a beating, with some suggesting that it became merely a shill for the conservative opposition. Since the changes in personnel over at the newspaper, there is now another debate: did the government lean on the paper at all? Was there some kind of repression of freedom of speech and the press? Was it irresponsible to have published that article in the first place?  Is the country in danger of shaking itself apart, when one side believes that the others aided and abetted an assassination?

At any rate, about 33% of Poles are convinced that this crash represented a Russian plot. Basically, if 33% of America was convinced that 9/11 was an inside job done by the government, you can well imagine that our political discourse would be an awful lot nastier than it is today. Thatt might not be the best analogy as it was obvious that 9/11 was a plot by SOMEBODY at least. Here the official explanation is that this was just a tragic accident. 

There's an interesting dynamic in the panel discussions I've heard about the Smolensk tragedy. Generally, PO and PiS shoot it out, as is to be expected with something like this. But, the members of the minor parties generally snipe at both PO and PiS, PO for botching the investigation and PiS for making a big deal about it for political points. Occasionally, you'll see the PiS and PO panelists actually unite and try to slap down the members of the other parties. What's interesting is that since the fall of Communism the system of political parties has been extremely unstable. The SLD used to be the governing party, and is now a fairly minor one. Both PO and PiS are only about 8 years old. A lot of other parties such as Solidarity Electoral Action have enjoyed brief success, had schisms, and then fallen apart. So I sense that part of this defensiveness is an attempt by both parties to stay where they are, because parties on top don't tend to stay on top. That said, it is remarkable how many old politicians are in these "new" parties.

I have heard complaints from a number of Poles that despite the fact that 6 parties are in the Parliament, they don't feel like anybody really represents them. Some feel that the parties are just a way of personally aggrandizing particular politicians, and that politicians are ultimately all flip-floppers to the point where it seems like Orrin Hatch comes out in support of gay marriage and Charles Schumer comes out in favor of mandatory concealed carry, all in order to get elected. And the parties that act or think differently are dismissed as just doing so to distinguish themselves and gain votes. Granted, I have a limited sample, but I would say that this gives the lie to the "third parties would solve all our partisanship problems" ideas we hear floating around in the States from time to time. If anything, Poland could probably do with fewer parties with clearer ideological differences: the two largest parties are hard to distinguish, and the distinguishable parties are hardly influential.

Another common complaint I have heard is that politics is still very much dominated by the same old farts who were in charge when Poland was still communist. I don't know how true this is, except that I did see a Polish supreme court justice at the Ambassador's reception in Warsaw, and it was surprising to me how this high official in post-Communist Poland turned out to be an equally high official before 1989. Anecdotal evidence, of course, but it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch considering that Poland never passed something that disqualified Communist officials from holding political office. This does make me wonder if that was part of some deal that Solidarity and the PRL government worked out in 1989. If so, it does seem like a small price to pay.

I'm hoping to get a chance to talk with some people more about what Poland was like and how it has changed these last 20 years. The trick is, I need to find someone at least 40 years old to have this conversation with..... 

Nov. 1st: All-Saint's Day

Halloween is not really a big deal in Poland. Sure, you see some people walking around in costumes, but it seems to me that it is seen as a more American thing, and thus the purview of the "hip and with-it" crowd. The day after it? That's a different matter entirely.

Traditionally, Nov. 1st is the day that Poles go out to the cemetery to leave flowers and candles on the gravestones of their relatives. Prof. Kowal described what I was going to see at a cemetery as a "tłok", which translates as a press or throng of people, and he was absolutely right. I went to two separate cemeteries in three separate visits. In the early afternoon I went out to Rakowicki Cemetery, and in the evening first to a cemetery in Salwator and then a return to Rakowicki to see what the place looked like at night. What made this all very convenient is that these cemeteries are on the ends of a major tram line which runs literally below my apartment windows.

The crowds really were something to behold. Typically, trams are run with two cars, but on the 1st they were run with three. On the morning tram I didn't have space to turn around, though the latter car was actually only half-full. Polish trams operate on a ticket system: you buy a ticket from either a kiosk or an automatic ticket machine located on the tram itself. Increasingly, these "automats" are starting to be located at the stops themselves, but this is a relatively new thing. So, if you can't buy a ticket from a kiosk, you have to board the first car and get a ticket there. Normally this system works very well, except on days when all the kiosks are closed and few people (myself included) had the foresight to get a ticket beforehand. So it felt more crowded than it needed to be.

The atmosphere at the cemetery itself was kind of odd. There was a huge cluster of people all pressing to get into the gates, boy and girl scouts doing various things, candle and flower merchants doing land-office business, hawkers in the employ of the cemetery asking for donations, it all had the air of going to a football game. All it needed was somebody selling peanuts and....oh, there's a bagel vendor!  Yet standing in contrast to all of this was another, very solemn emotional current. I don't think I've ever seen such a carnival-like atmosphere surrounding death before.

At the gate, the crowd pressed down the central path towards a chapel located in the center of the cemetery, where prayers were said pretty much continuously all day. There were a number of monuments that everyone seemed to make a stop at, chief amongst these being a collective memorial to, as far as I could make out, all the Polish victims of Communism ever. When I talked to a couple of random Poles later, they said that in general, people leave candles at these kind of collective memorials, as well as candles at the tombs of famous people.

This last point was particularly interesting, because even in death we have a way of showing how important somebody was. In Poland, as in the States, the more elaborate the headstone the more elaborate the person was. The grave goods left behind showed that some of the dead were important in a particular way. A bouquet with a blue and white ribbon came from the President of Krakow, for instance. Others displayed the flag of either Cracovia or Wisła, the two soccer teams in town. And some graves had a hundred or more candles on them, which I don't think means that that person's family was that big.

What was very surprising was that the cemetery in Salwator had more modest headstones, but those headstones had more stuff on them. Whether this means that that particular parish is more tightly-knit, or whether there are just more recent burials there I don't know. Also striking was that early in the afternoon it seemed more solemn, and later, as the sun was setting, I got the sense that more people were just having a look around rather than discharging their duties to the dead.

Being in those cemeteries gave me an opportunity to reflect on how humans handle death, as well as think of contrasts between how it seems to be handled over here and how it is handled back at home. Just observing people at the cemetery, it was possible to see all kinds of emotions. Some were very, very upset. Others just went through the motions and left. Some seemed pensive. Some people just stood at the graves and didn't talk. Others chatted and smoked. Still others seemed strangely happy, which actually made sense considering that this was an occasion to see and be with family. Catharsis takes many different forms. It dawned on me that I had seen all of this before, just never quite in this context.

This change in context was interesting, too. The United States doesn't really have a day dedicated specifically to remembrance of the dead. Memorial Day is supposed to be like this in theory, and I think I may have gone out to the cemetery with my grandfather on All Saint's when I was little. But it's not like everybody takes a day off and travels 300 kilometers to remember their relatives. How, exactly, do we remember our dead in the U.S.? It is in a very informal manner, from time to time, rather than having a ritualized day every year. Which method is healthier? I can't say. All Saint's just seemed to dwell a bit too much on death for my taste, but it may be better to just have that one day of emotional release rather than have the inevitable memory of loved ones come creeping up at unexpected moments.

I wanted to talk with some people at the cemetery about what the day meant to them, but was not quite sure how to go about it. It just didn't seem right to walk up to someone at the grave of a relative and say "Hi! I'm from America! Will you talk to me?" I was able to chat a bit with three groups of two, with varying degrees of success. However, what they said about the holiday was surprisingly short on details. It is a day of memory and prayer. That's about it. What it was, and what it meant, was evident enough that they didn't need to say more.