Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” Matthew 2:13-15
From the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation: Please join in solidarity this holiday season, and help to replant olive trees in occupied Palestine.
Knowing that the common people in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem continue to suffer under occupation and displacement, we are reminded that Mary and Joseph, huddling in a nook, were refugees under Roman occupation, and that they had traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where Joseph’s family lived. Just as they lived in fear of a foreign occupying power two thousand years ago, sadly the Palestinians live in fear of the Israeli occupation, which imposes apartheid and takes their land. Often times, their olive trees are ripped out in an effort to displace them from their land.
Help to plant so that the children of many future generations might enjoy and be sustained by a gift of hope, a gift calling for a just and lasting peace.
Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” – Matthew 1:20-21
From the New York State Alliance for Arts Education (NYSAAE):
December 15 is the early registration deadline for the National Guild for Community Arts Education’s institute, Powerful Partnerships: Sustaining Arts Education Through Collaboration, to be presented January 18 and 19, 2011 at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City.
This two-day, highly engaging hands-on workshop will explore how nonprofit arts education providers can more deeply engage their communities; gain access to a broader array of resources including expertise, credibility and funding; and increase sustainability through internal and external collaboration. The Institute is supported by the NEA, New York Community Trust and New York State Council on the Arts.
John McCann, president of Partners in Performance, is designing and facilitating the workshop. He will be joined by a faculty of experts, including Beth Vogel, the director of the Guild’s Partners in Arts Education program.
Collaborating effectively may require the acquisition of new skills and a profound shift in perspective. To take maximum advantage of this opportunity, arts education organizations are therefore encouraged to register three person teams.
After completing the institute, each team will be better able to:
- Identify their organization’s core institutional and programmatic assets
- Identify potential partners (other organizations, funders, advocates, etc.) with whom they can work to ‘co-create’ sustainable programs
- Understand what is required (e.g., sharing authority, trusting others) to achieve sustainable collaborations
- Understand common challenges to collaboration and learn methods of overcoming them
- Capitalize on “lessons learned” through prior experiences, and
- Develop an action plan for execution upon return home.
Each team will receive a set of tools for assessing institutional and programmatic assets, identifying prospective partners and “lessons learned,” planning collaborations, and developing an action plan.
Institute Location:
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
The Joan Weill Center for Dance
405 W. 55th Street (at 9th Avenue)
New York, NY 10019
Register by December 15, 2010 and Save! You may download the Registration form [PDF]. Questions about the Institute may be directed to National Guild program manager, Jay Samios, at (212) 268-3337 ext. 12.
Articles on Polish and Polish-American history by Martin S. Nowak from the Polish Culture Newsletter, No. 121:
Poles Developed Early Television:
It has recently become fashionable to credit the invention of television to the American Philo T. Farnsworth. But the truth is, modern television was not so much a single invention by a single person, but a long process of interdependent discoveries. Many scientists from different countries and backgrounds contributed to its development. Among them were Poles…
John Quincy Adams, future US President, visiting Silesia:
In the year 1800, John Quincy Adams, the U.S. Minister to Prussia, undertook a two month tour of Silesia, then part of Prussia. He detailed his experiences in a series of letters to his brother. It was a thoroughly German area in that time (Western Silesia) that Adams visited, yet it is interesting to note the observations of a distinguished American, later President of the United States, of this region. Silesia, during its complicated history, was in centuries past a part of Poland and is currently a part of that nation, comprising its southwestern region.
Starting by horse-drawn coach from his residence in Berlin, Adams’ first stop in what is now Polish territory was at Gruenberg, today the city of Zielona Gora. Noting its cloth mills and vineyards, Adams and his party, which included his wife and two servants, continued on their carriage ride deeper to Silesia. Their first stop in the province was at Bunzlau. There, Adams observed the main industry of the town. Even today it is famous, for the Polish name of this place is Boleslawiec, home of the world renowned Boleslawiec pottery…
Littlepage: American Citizen, Polish Statesman:
Lewis Littlepage was a young American who was a figure in the final years of the Kingdom of Poland. He was born in Virginia in 1762 into a well-connected family and at seventeen was sent to Madrid to live in the household of John Jay, U.S. Minister to Spain. There, he furthered his education in politics and foreign diplomacy in a hands-on manner.
In 1781 he joined the Spanish army and served with distinction against the British in Gibraltar. Two years later the French General Lafayette accompanied him to Paris, and Littlepage was introduced to the French royal court where he made a favorable impression.
In 1784, Littlepage traveled across Europe with a French prince who was married to a Polish woman. In Poland, he became acquainted with the leading social and political families and was personally introduced to King Stanisław August Poniatowski. Littlepage made an immediate impression upon the king, for he was charming, witty and intelligent bordering on genius. They shared an interest in books and liberal ideas. King Stanisław admired all things American, and Littlepage’s friendship with Lafayette and knowledge of France and Spain appealed to him. The king offered Littlepage a position in his court…
Poetry and Memory from Dr. John Guzlowski:
The website Editions Bibliotekos features a short personal essay Dr. Guzlowski wrote about his changing attitudes toward his parents and their experiences as Polish slave laborers in Nazi Germany in Truth Teller – John Guzlowski.
For the last thirty years, I’ve been writing about my parents and their experiences during World War II. I’ve written about how my dad spent four years in Buchenwald, a concentration camp in Germany, and how my mother survived the day the Nazis raped and killed her mother and her sister but was taken to a slave labor camp in Germany. I’ve written about this and so many other things that happened to my mother and father first in Poland when the Nazis invaded, then in Germany where my parents were imprisoned, and finally in America after the war.
But growing up, I never thought I would…
…and a piece about the importance of patience in writing in Writing is an Incremental Art:
When you’re a writer, there are bad days and good days. Some days, you sit and write, and the words feel like they’re in someone else’s head; and some days, you write and the writing is fast and right, and you think that each word is a gift from some muse that really and completely loves and cares for you and what you have to say.
That’s the way it is for all of us, I think, but one of the things that I’ve come to feel about writing on bad days as well as good ones is that the progress, the movement forward, the work, is…