Tuesday shopping.

Food shopping day for the week. I set a new record for myself today: total shopping time was under 30 minutes. That was mainly because I only had to shop for 4 days. I had three menus from last week that I did not fulfill, so I was able to use them for this week, and I already had all of the ingredients. So, the total cost for the week was $38, which is the lowest it's been in the last 2 years.

Page came today to sit with John while I did the shopping, and it gave me a chance to sit in the park for about an hour and listen to an audiobook of Big Sur, written by Jack Kerouac. I read that book twice in recent years, and it was nice to listen to someone else read it. I don't know if one listens more intently and absorbs more by listening to an audiobook than they do by reading the book.

So, my next audiobook will be Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving. This book I have read at least three times since my love affair with the Alhambra began when I was 19 years old. At that time, it was not a popular tourist destination and went, and one could easily access it. The architecture of the Arabic inscriptions on the walls is really incredible. Just looking at it in pictures doesn't give it justice. You really have to see it. However, now that it is so popular, you have to make a reservation 3 months in advance. Times have changed!

On my project of making a digital archive of Our Last 19 years in Poland, I am about 3/4 of the way finished with chapter 6. Chapter 6 is entitled trips in Poland. When I finish that, my next chapter will be Travels in Europe.

AI

73 F today. The trees are exploding with green leaves, the forsythias are in their brightest yellow, the dandelions are blossoming everywhere and Spring is definitely here. At last! It was just too nice of a day to stay inside.

I put Joan into the car, took her to Cafe Lokum or a cinnamon bun and coffee, and then I went across town, going northeast toward Napachania. It's funny because I'm using this voice dictation method for writing this blog, and when I say the name of the village Napachania, the Voice picks it up and spells it like Napa Honda. I think the AI program doing this voice collection is not earned enough yet about foreign names or foreign city or villages. That's why you have to be careful with it and read everything it prints because sometimes there are mistakes.

Okay, I can see a new paragraph, and it did jump to start this paragraph.

AI. Now that's an interesting topic for discussion. Some people love it, some people hate it, some people know very little about it. For myself, I find it useful to some degree. For example, in giving myself the project of making a digital archive of Our Last 20 years in Poland, it can be helpful. Now there's evidence right here in the last sentence of its mistake. Look at the last sentence. There is no reason why our last wasn't cap, was capitalized the first time I said it, but now the second time it's in proper lowercase, our last.

What I've done in my project, first I gave it explicit guidelines on what to do with things like the font size, define style, when to start a paragraph. It usually follows my direction, however, at times it tries to rewrite what I wrote according to its own process. So, in that case, I have to go back and tell it again "follow the directions I gave you". Sometimes, it takes two or three tries to get it corrected. When it does correct it I tell it to lock that rule in place, so it doesn't happen again.

So, after we had our cinnamon bun and coffee the direction I was going to go was to the Village of napahanya. Okay, AI, you just made another mistake spelling The Village name.

Because I know now that there has been a new owner of the palace in that place, I was interested to see if any work had been done, any new work. I wasn't surprised when I saw there has been no change since the last time we looked at that Palace Maybe 8 or 9 months ago.

If you're reading this blog and see mistakes, they are all being made by AI, not by me.

Hello 11

I made the plunge today into Windows 11. Right now I am waiting for it to finish loading the system. Then I have to start adding the additional software programs that I use.  I'm not used to a 15.6 screen and keyboard so that will be another adjustment to make. I'm at 35% so far.

I received sad news from cousin Andrzej that another cousin here in Poland has died early this morning. His name was Krzysztof, and he was 74 years old. It's been a few years since I saw him last. He was from my Kazmierczak bloodline. 8 cousins have left since we first arrived. 

Project

I swear, this digital archive is taking a lot of time. I'm only half-way through chapter 5 with ten more chapters already structured. I hope it's worth the effort.

Missing Radek.

Unfortunately, although he is back from Nepal, our schedules just couldn't match up to have a meeting this week. It seems like months since we saw each other. Well, actually, it has been a little more than one month. We already talked about a meeting next week, so I hope it happens.

I know I’ve mentioned our friend Zbyszek. He helped us in many ways over the years we knew him. Unfortunately, he died four years ago.

In Poland, social circles are often defined by the level of emotional closeness and commitment involved. In English, the word “friend” is used very loosely, but in Polish culture there are clear distinctions between levels of relationships.

Znajomy (Acquaintance)
This is the broadest category. A znajomy is someone you know by name and interact with regularly, but without a deep emotional connection. This could be a colleague, a neighbor, or someone you see often. Conversations are usually polite and at the surface level. You would not normally share personal matters or invite them into your private family life.

Kolega / Koleżanka (Colleague or Peer)
This is the middle level. These are people connected through work, school, or shared activities. You may meet for coffee or a drink, and the relationship is friendly, but it is often tied to that shared environment. If the job or activity ends, the relationship may fade. Many people in Poland remain at this level for years.

Przyjaciel (Close Friend)
This is a much deeper and more meaningful relationship. A przyjaciel is someone you trust completely, almost like family. The word carries a strong sense of loyalty and long-term commitment. It is not used lightly. Most people have only one or two true przyjaciele in their lifetime. This is someone you can call in the middle of the night and know they will be there.

Zbyszek, Joanna, and Radek I consider to be przyjaciele.

Joanna was someone I helped practice English with. She was an ophthalmologist, and we met on Saturday mornings, usually for an hour or more, just to talk. She was the kind of doctor who truly cared about her patients. She loved her family and always greeted you with a smile.

When I needed cataract surgery, instead of waiting months, she called one of the best eye surgeons in Poznań and arranged for me to have the procedure the following week. When I had back problems, she and her husband, who was an orthopedic surgeon, came to our flat and helped solve the issue.

She and her husband were always invited to our New Year’s Eve parties, along with Zbyszek. It was Zbyszek who originally introduced me to her so I could help with her English. Later, when her son was old enough, I helped him as well. He has now completed his initial studies to become a doctor.

Like Zbyszek, she died suddenly three years ago. Of the three of them, only Radek remains.

---

Interesting

All of my wife's life, her mother told her that she had German ancestry. In the last few months, I have done some preliminary research into her family. What I found shocked Joan, Her grand parents and great-grandparents originally came from a small village northeast of Budapest, Hungary. So, her ancestry is really Hungarian.

Looking at this picture of her when she was 19 she looks Hungarian. 

 

Only Ukraine

 US Vice President JD Vance in an Apr. 8 public discussion at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) spoke on several subjects, among them the Russo-Ukrainian War, White House efforts to bring peace, and his view of Budapest’s role in that process. Almost all of what he said was misleading and factually inaccurate.

Specifically, Vance comments regarding Ukraine, Russia and Hungary in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War were:

 Vance: “Uh we have made significant progress…over time, their positions have gotten closer and closer together.”

In fact, progress has been close to nil and movement between the sides has been negligible, and by Russia not at all.

How much land is at stake in the Russo-Ukrainian War

Vance: “We’re talking about bargaining over a few square kilometers of territory one way or the other.”

In fact, the land space involved is very substantial and by most definitions massive.

Value of what is at stake in the Russo-Ukrainian War

Vance: “ Is that worth the loss of hundreds of thousands of additional Russian and Ukrainian young men?”

In fact, with the qualification that it is impossible to assign a real monetary value on a human life, Vance’s messaging that little of value is at stake in the Russo-Ukrainian War is obviously and by many measures spectacularly wrong.

 The best-known Vance comment on Ukraine dates back to Feb. 19 2022, five days before Russia invaded Ukraine a second time and started a war that has now killed more than a million people, in which Vance told US Republican pundit Steve Bannon:

 “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”

Russian drone and artillery strikes killed at least three civilians and wounded several others across the Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk regions on Saturday morning, April 11, local officials reported.

In the Kherson region, a 73-year-old woman was killed in the village of Fedorivka when a “Molniya” type drone struck the settlement around 9:30 a.m. Earlier that morning, the body of a 50-year-old man was discovered in Kherson’s Korabelny district, a victim of overnight shelling.

The morning also saw targeted attacks on civilian transport in Kherson. A 24-year-old nurse was hospitalized with a concussion and blast injuries after a drone hit a public bus at 7:20 a.m. Shortly after, a 61-year-old man was wounded when another drone targeted his car.

 The escalation in strikes on Saturday morning followed a massive overnight drone offensive that killed two people in Odesa and wounded 17 in Sumy. In total, the Ukrainian Air Force reported 160 drones launched across the country overnight.

These attacks occurred in the final hours before a unilateral ceasefire, decreed by Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Orthodox Easter holiday, was set to begin at 4 p.m. on Saturday. The persistent bombardment of residential areas and public transport has fueled deep skepticism in Kyiv, where President Zelensky’s earlier proposals for a holiday truce were dismissed by the Kremlin.

And on the war front, Russia launched over a hundre drones overnight just hours after its Easter ceasefire announcement, while the Ukrainian military took out an S-300V System on the southern Zaporizhzhia front and expanded the recent oil strikes to the Casian Sea..

There is also positive news on the sanctions front, as Zelensky’s envoy said  Dutch parts are no longer being found in Russian Shahed drones, though he cautioned that fresh chips, including US ones, are still showing up in new drones.

Digital Archive, chair covers.

Yeah, I didn't get back before midnight yesterday. I stayed up way too late last night working on this archive project. It's going to be a digital archive, kind of like a book, but it's not a book. It would be hard for me to get 1500 pages into one book. Therefore, the other alternative is just to do a digital archive and save it to a pen drive or an external drive. If any of my relatives should happen to want a copy of it, all they would have to do is send me a pin Drive. I could put everything on it and return it to them, and then it would have a history of our family. Who knows if any future generation would have any interest in such a thing, but if they do, at least there will be one. I know myself, personally, would love to have had a copy like that telling about ancestors, who they were, where they lived, where they were born, or where they died, whether they were married, did they have kids, all of that information would be very valuable.

Right now, I'm at the beginning of chapter 4, which is entitled coming a foreigner in total there will be 15 chapters, and " chapter " is used loosely; there's no set amount of pages I have to put into it in a digital format.

Carolina came today but could only stay long enough to give John a shower and wash your hair. So, next week she will make up for the half hour she missed this week. That's fine, that's okay. But it was a little irritating because I had several things I needed to get done today, and now I'll have to take John with me tomorrow to complete all of them. I just hope we have good weather, like sunny, warm, and no clouds. 

I have a smaller project going on, also. Something that actually started 4 years ago when I decided it was time to change the covers on our two recliner chairs. I ordered them from the internet, and received them 4 years ago. It's taken me this long to start putting them on. It is no easy project to remove the old ones.

Progress

 Well, I've done it now. I've taken on another project that's going to consume too much of my evening free time. I started it about a week ago, after thinking about it for 2 weeks before that. I looked at the reasons why I should do it, and I looked at the reasons why I shouldn't. These shouldn't reasons would have won the battle, but my conscience dominated.

Okay, you know I've written about completing my idea of putting all of my blogs in chronological order. Considering I have 6,747 blogs, that was a big order to fulfill. It took me about three and a half weeks to complete it, but now it's done, and I'm satisfied with the end result. I did use an AI to put them in order, check spelling, grammar, and punctuation, as well as separate the blogs into proper paragraphs. At times it was frustrating, but I managed to work through it, and complete it.

I wasn't about to try to make an actual book out of it because if it were printed out the way it is, I would have $1,557 pages. Nobody in their right mind would read a book that long. Besides, I didn't write the blogs to turn into a book; it was just a way to write about most daily events of our lives in Poland.

So, my new project is to turn all those blocks into a digital archive of Our Life in Poland, covering many different topics during her life here. I utilized AI to give me a structure for the archive and make it easy to navigate. Again, part of the purpose is to have documentation of our family history going back to 1771. It may be that no relative is interested in it, but maybe in the future generation, there will be one, and they will have access to all of the work I've done.

With all the different topics that I've covered, or will cover in this archive, AI told me I would need 15 chapters. The first thing I did was to set up 15 different chapters with names. Then I wrote the introduction, and I started to work on chapter one. As of this blog, I have just completed chapter number three. Now, I have 12 more to go.

Grodziec Palace.

This is a palace where my great-grandfather, Jozef, worked as a blacksmith for what were called a Noble family. My grandmother was born in this village.

 

About 30 kilometers from Konin, in Grodziec, there stands an abandoned palace and park complex that has been deserted for many years. The buildings catch the eye from the road, emerging from an overgrown park where some trees are several centuries old. See what this place looks like today and discover its sad yet fascinating history.

In Grodziec there is an abandoned palace and park complex covering an area of 16.12 hectares. The first palace, whose partial ruins have survived to this day, was built in 1639 for Abraham Ciświcki. Today, the term “palace” usually refers to the structure with characteristic columns, which was built in the second half of the 18th century.

Subsequent owners of the palace included the Jaskólski family, followed by Aleksander Kożuchowski and Franciszek Stadnicki.

A six-column portico was added at the beginning of the 19th century for the next owners, the Bieliński family. Piotr Bieliński was the voivode (provincial governor) at that time. Around 1810, an annex was also built — a second building referred to as a manor house or a new palace.

Later, in 1875, the palace was purchased by the Kwilecki family, who modernized the residence. This building is the first and one of three historic structures located within the complex.

The estate remained in the hands of the Kwilecki family until World War II. Just over a month after the war began, Stanisław Kwilecki was murdered by the Germans, shot in the back of the head. Many others were killed that same day, including Czesław Freudenreich, owner of the faience factory in Koło, and Józef Pechęrski, the headmaster of the school in Grodziec.

After the war, the entire estate was taken over by the state treasury. A primary school was established there, and the farm was managed by State Agricultural Farms. Later, the site also housed the Society of Friends of Children, evidence of which still remains today — a plaque by the main entrance indicates that the institution once operated there.

Beyond the man-made buildings, the Grodziec palace and park complex has much more to offer. A canal runs through the park, and in some places it can be crossed either directly or by walking across a thick plank stretched over the water.

However, the most fascinating elements of the area are the enormous trees, including oaks whose trunk circumference can reach up to seven meters. Some of them bear small plaques indicating that they are legally protected as natural monuments.

Since 2020, the Grodziec estate has had a new owner: Ede Cassia Segnini Brandão Sapieha. Previously, the issue of ownership rights had been tied up in court for many years, but it has now reached a successful conclusion. Legal matters and future plans have been agreed upon with the rightful and former heir, Anna Kwilecka-Krzyżanowska.

Easter.

Another quiet day at home. Breakfast was hard-boiled eggs, ham, sausage, white sausage, bread, butter, and coffee. It didn't take long to prepare which was a good thing because I didn't really feel like making breakfast. I considered smoothies but felt it was a bit inappropriate for today.

In the afternoon, we started watching a new series on Netflix called Ripple. It's a series about 5 different lives and how they all fit together in the story. I recommend it for it's lack of violence.

ViaYouTube, we also visited the country of Macedonia in the evening.

Meanwhile, Ukraine.

The head of the President’s Office, Kyrylo Budanov, confirmed that international partners have requested Ukraine suspend its airstrikes on Russian oil refineries due to rising global energy prices triggered by the war in the Middle East, Bloomberg reported on Sunday, April 5.

Budanov revealed that Kyiv has been approached regarding the regular drone attacks, though he did not disclose which specific allies issued the plea. “I will answer this diplomatically: we are receiving some signals regarding this,” he said.

The request comes as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran enters a critical phase, causing a major disruption in global oil supplies. These geopolitical factors have significantly bolstered the Kremlin’s war budget through increased oil revenues, a development President Volodymyr Zelensky previously identified as a key challenge to Ukraine’s strategy of weakening Moscow’s economic capacity to sustain the invasion.

 Despite the diplomatic pressure, Budanov expressed optimism that the conflict in the Middle East would conclude relatively soon. His comments follow a series of successful Ukrainian drone strikes on Saturday night and Sunday morning,  which targeted the Lukoil refinery in Kstovo and the Primorsk oil terminal on theBaltic Sea.

Neglectful.

Yes, I have been neglectful in writing this blog for too long. I will tell you why. Finishing my project of putting all of my blogs, all 6,747 of them, into chronological order, checking spelling, grammar, punctuation, and making paragraphs, I have come to realize I have a lot of material. Collaborating with another person, I thought it might be time to consider writing a book about our last 20 years living as expats in Poland. It may not be something I would actually try to publish, but rather a more condensed version for my relatives to have so that they would know their ancestry.

Each night, after I put John to bed, I've been spending my time trying to figure out how to structure a book. I confess I've consulted ChatGPT about that. The information it gives me has been very helpful. I don't want AI to actually write the book for me, I am only interested in how the structure and the chapters should lay out. I've sent about a Year's worth of blogs to Gemini so that it would know what my blog has been about. In return, it has given me much advice on how to structure the book, chapter by chapter. It tells me that I have so much information available that it could actually be an 11-volume set of books. Of course, I'm not interested in writing 11 books. I would be perfectly happy with one book.

I've also been neglectful in my study of Spanish which I regret. I just get so involved in this book project, I've been missing my deadlines to write my blog by midnight each night. Therefore, you see these lapses of two and three days in between my blocks. I have to get into a routine of writing my blog in the afternoon rather than waiting until evening. If I can do that, it should eliminate these lapses. Anyway, that's what I'm going to try to do.

Dog, shoping & Ukraine.

Paige came today and I headed to Carrefour to do the weekly shopping. About 20 minutes into shopping, she called and asked if I could come back. Her dog has been extremely ill this last month and her husband just called to tell her they were at the vet again. The dog's condition was deteriorating and Paige had to leave. I finished my shopping and arrived back home in about 30 minutes. Paige left immediately.

There were some things I still need from Auchan, so I put Joan's shoes, hat and coat on, and we went there to pick them up. It wasn't too much, so we could put it all into a bag I took with us.  

Between Carrefour and Auchan, I spent $54 for a week of food. I hesitate to think how much it will cost for gasoline for the car when I need it, thanks to that moron in the White House. 

Meanwhile: Ukraine

The European Union has received €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) in profits generated from immobilized Russian central bank assets, the European Commission said on Wednesday, April 1.

The funds, derived from interest accumulated on frozen assets held within the EU, will be directed to support Ukraine.

According to the European Commission, 95% of the proceeds will be used to support Ukraine through the Ukraine Loan Cooperation Mechanism, which helps Kyiv service loans provided by the EU and G7 partners.

The remaining 5% will be allocated via the European Peace Facility to address Ukraine’s military and defense needs.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the funds would help sustain public services and support Ukraine’s armed forces.

 ===================================================================

Russia launched a drone attack on western Ukraine on Tuesday, April 1, targeting multiple regions and damaging infrastructure, regional officials said.

Strikes and drone activity were reported in Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Zakarpattia regions, with emergency services deployed to assess the damage.

Lviv regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi said air defenses were engaged during the attack and debris from downed drones was found across the region.

No casualties or damage were reported in Lviv region, he said, urging residents to avoid approaching drone fragments due to the risk of explosion.

In Ternopil region, a drone strike hit an agricultural facility in Chortkiv district, sparking a fire, regional officials said. No injuries were reported. Source Kyiv Post