Saturday, November 22, 2008

Nov 22nd.




Forty five years ago and still this day remains with me. I was 18, in the U.S.Navy, working as a radio announcer for Armed Forces Radio in Spain. The news flashed over the radio waves to us from the U.S....President Kennedy has been assasinated. But it was only the beginning, next Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. It seems like another life time ago.

Here in Poznań we have the beginnings of our first snowfall. No big accumulation, just a dusting of snow.

Today was a surprise for me. An acquaintance, who knows my love of palaces and manor houses, presented me with a gift of a book that has all of them that are located in Wielkopolska. It has pictures of them all with their histories. What a great book!

On December 1st, the Global Climate conference begins in Poznań. Traffic will be heavy around the International Fair building and I imagine they will do some rerouting of bus schedules and traffic.

I still haven't received replies to the letters I wrote to Babice, the village of my paternal great grandfather.

I forgot to mention that last Thursday when we went shopping to the mall, Christmas decorations are already up. The commercilization of Christmas is in full swing in Poland.

Czterdzieści pięć lat temu i jeszcze ten dzień pozostaje ze mną. Byłem 18, w U.S.Navy, pracując jak spiker radiowy dla Sił Zbrojnych Radia w Hiszpanii. Wiadomości zaświecone ponad falami radiowymi do nas od U.S....President Kennedy były zamordowany. Ale to było tylko początek, następny Robert Kennedy i Martin Luther King. To wydaje się jak inny czas życia temu.
Tutaj w Poznań mamy początki naszego pierwszego opadu śnieżnego. Żadna duża akumulacja, właśnie kurzenie śniegu.

Dzisiaj była niespodzianka dla mnie. Znajomość, która zna mój miłość do pałace i dworki, podarowała mi dar książki, która ma wszystkie z nich, które są zlokalizowane w Wielkopolsce. To ma zdjęcia ich wszystkich z ich historiami. Jaka wielka książka!

W grudniu 1., Globalna Klimatu konferencja zaczyna się w Poznań. Ruch będzie ciężki dookoła Międzynarodówki Pięknej budujący i wyobrażam sobie, że oni zrobią trochę prowadzenia inną drogą planów autobusu i ruchu.

Jeszcze nie otrzymałem odpowiedzi do listów, które napisałem do Babice, wsi mojego ojcowskiego wielkiego dziadka.

Zapomniałem wspomnieć, że w zeszły czwartek kiedy robiliśmy zakupy do strefy dla pieszych, ozdoby Boże Narodzenie są już w górze. Komercjalizacja Bożego Narodzenia jest w pełnym ruchu w Polsce.

2 comments:

  1. Sometimes I'm astonished about how the weather in Minnesota is a mirror image of Poland. There is actually a scientific reason. We are both in an air mass that circulates around the North Pole. Found this out from a climatologist after I had kept records for about five years about the temperatures in Siedlce and Saint Paul, records that showed great similarity. This is a long way of saying that we had the same snow fall this morning.

    I was in nursing school when Kennedy was shot. I had just walked back from the grocery store when this news began to flash around the dorm. I didn't find this alarming at first because ICUs were already beginning to come into place. Figured any ICU could take care of this problem. But in no time at all we knew this was wrong.

    My second "I know where I was" exactly is the first time humans walked on the moon. And obviously the third, shared with most, is September 11.

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  2. Anonymous8:37 PM

    Hi....
    Another "where I was"...when the President was shot. I was teaching second grade at St. Michael's school in Muskegon---the principal came around to each classroom and asked us to tell our students. What a hard job...the biggest concern to the kids was that John-John no longer had a daddy. No one will ever forget that day and where they were.
    Hugs,
    Marilyn

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