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Christian Witness, Perspective, PNCC, Political, ,

Honor Immigrant Workers in Your Congregation this weekend

Every day, millions of immigrant workers in the U.S. are not only picking our vegetables and cleaning our office buildings, but are an integral part of the fabric of our congregations and communities. On May 1st, people of faith will join marches, prayer vigils and other events across the country to call on our Congressional leaders to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill that will bring millions of immigrant workers and their families out of the shadows, secure our borders and provide labor protections that will benefit all low-wage workers.

Interfaith Worker Justice is calling on people of faith to stand in support of all low-wage workers, regardless of immigration status. They have invited us to join with them and other national organizations, denominations and faith communities to participate in a National Weekend of Prayer and Action for Immigrant Rights on May 1st and 2nd.

Among the ways our congregations can lift up the voices of immigrant workers during this weekend:

  • Invite an immigrant worker to share his or her story during a worship service
  • Incorporate prayers and liturgies lifting up our immigrant brothers and sisters into your services
  • Provide bulletin inserts, informational materials and other action items for your congregation
  • Initiate a study group using IWJ’s resource For You Were Once A Stranger

IWJ has many resources available for congregations to educate, advocate, and mobilize for our immigrant brothers and sisters. You can find IWJ’s board of directors’ statement on immigration reform here and other materials on their website.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political, , , , , ,

Arizona’s Immigration Bill is a Social and Racial Sin

From Jim Wallis via Sojourners.

For the first time, all law enforcement officers in the state will be enlisted to hunt down undocumented people, which will clearly distract them from going after truly violent criminals, and will focus them on mostly harmless families whose work supports the economy and who contribute to their communities. And do you think undocumented parents will now go to the police if their daughter is raped or their family becomes a victim of violent crime? Maybe that’s why the state association of police chiefs is against SB 1070.

This proposed law is not only mean-spirited —” it will be ineffective and will only serve to further divide communities in Arizona, making everyone more fearful and less safe. This radical new measure, which crosses many moral and legal lines, is a clear demonstration of the fundamental mistake of separating enforcement from comprehensive immigration reform. We all want to live in a nation of laws, and the immigration system in the U.S. is so broken that it is serving no one well. But enforcement without reform of the system is merely cruel. Enforcement without compassion is immoral. Enforcement that breaks up families is unacceptable. And enforcement of this law would force us to violate our Christian conscience, which we simply will not do. It makes it illegal to love your neighbor in Arizona.

Before the rally and press event, I visited some immigrant families who work at Neighborhood Ministries, an impressive community organization affiliated with Sojourners’ friends at the Christian Community Development Association. I met a group of women who were frightened by the raids that have been occurring, in which armed men invade their homes and neighborhoods with guns and helicopters. When the rumors of massive raids spread, many of these people flee both their homes and their workplaces, and head for The Church at The Neighborhood Center as the only place they feel safe and secure. But will police invade the churches if they are suspected of —harboring— undocumented people, because it is the law? Will the nurse practitioner I met at their medical clinic serving only uninsured people be arrested for being —with— the children of families who are here illegally as she treats them?

At the rally, I started with the words of Jesus (which drew cheers from the crowd gathered at the state Capitol), who instructed his disciples to —welcome the stranger,— and said that whatever we do to —the least of these, who are members of my family— we do to him. I think that means that to obey Jesus and his gospel will mean to disobey SB 1070 in Arizona. I looked at the governor’s Executive Tower and promised that many Christians in Arizona won’t comply with this law because the people they will target will be members of our —family— in the body of Christ. And any attack against them is an attack against us, and the One we follow.

Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles just called this Arizona measure —the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless immigration law.— On CNN, I defended the Cardinal’s comments, which likened the requirement of people always carrying their —papers— to the most oppressive regimes of Nazism and Communism. I wonder whether the tea party movement that rails against government intrusion will rail against this law, or whether those who resist the forced government registration of their guns will resist the forced government requirement that immigrants must always carry their documentation. Will the true conservatives please stand up here? We are all waiting.

Arizona’s SB 1070 must be named as a social and racial sin, and should be denounced as such by people of faith and conscience across the nation. This is not just about Arizona, but about all of us, and about what kind of country we want to be. It’s time to stand up to this new strategy of —deportation by attrition,— which I heard for the first time today in Arizona. It is a policy of deliberate political cruelty, and it should be remembered that —attrition— is a term of war. Arizona is deciding whether to wage war on the body of Christ. We should say that if you come after one part of the body, you come after all of us.

Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street —” A Moral Compass for the New Economy, and is CEO of Sojourners.

I was also interested in the events over in Congress today. The people who run Facebook got a dressing down, with members of Congress telling them how they should run their company. You must use opt-in rather than opt-out or some such nonsense. The sorry truth is that government uses its legislative powers to do what appears to be good at the time (in their minds), and in the process wrecks everything. Facebook has a bad security/privacy model — the market will decide. I want to have a cervezas with José and Maria after church on Sunday, — do not associate with them or we will arrest you (Constitution, free association and free exercise be damned). Don’t pack your chips or pretzels with salt — because we assume Americans and the free market are too stupid, lazy, and overweight to know better. We need a nanny. Don’t eat Foie gras, don’t use trans fats, but go ahead corporate America, pour in as much high fructose corn syrup as possible… no problem there.

Actually, good on Arizona. When their restaurants have to pay fair, or at least minimum wages and overtime to white boys and girls for cutting vegetables and running the dishwasher, when uncle Henry and aunt Jane have to trim their own cactus, when Union carpenters move in to do the framing work on all those senior housing developments, then they’ll get it. Following laws will be a 100% full time job for Arizonans. Just follow the law, and your dinner out will double in price, and your buy-in for a place at Sun City (assessment fees, capital contribution costs, original housing cost) will double; all because José and Maria aren’t doing it for next to nothing anymore. You’ll be paying Brandy and Todd instead, and they won’t take your crap, they’ll walk out or strike. Oh, and don’t forget about the sales and property tax increases, because a big segment of your society isn’t earning or spending in Arizona anymore. At least you won’t have to look at those odd Catholic foreigners, those scary people and their scary brown children (they’re all the same aren’t they???).

But, you want it both ways don’t you?

Unfortunately, the worst laws are those quickly enacted to make a point. They create a country where we are free to be fat, lazy, cheap, and protected because someone had an idea and made a point. Whatever happened to building things with our ideas? Now we just write laws for the sake of laws. We use ideas as fodder for the word-processing programs that enshrine law over and above all else, and most particularly over the Law that tells us we are free.

Perspective, PNCC, , , ,

What’s wrong with this article?

PolishNews recently reprinted an article by Daniel Pogorzelski originally published in the July 2009 edition of the Northwest Chicago Historical Society’s Newsletter (see page 14). The article is quite interesting, and covers the history of Avondale and Chicago’s Polish Village.

Nestled between the stately Greystones of Logan Square and the weathered Victorians of Old Irving, Chicago’s Avondale community area, is filled with some of the Northwest Side’s most unique architecture with its characteristic mix of steeples, smokestacks and two-flats.

While today Avondale is chiefly associated with the famous “Polish Village” along Milwaukee Avenue centered around St. Hyacinth Basilica and St. Wenceslaus Church in the district’s western half, diverse ethnicities have contributed over time to the area’s rich narrative.

Avondale’s history begins as part of the quiet prairie area surrounding Chicago in what would be incorporated as Jefferson Township in 1850. Two of the old Native American trails through the area were planked, becoming the Upper and Lower Northwest Plank Roads, routes traversed largely by truck farmers en route to sell their goods at the Randolph Street Market. Known to us today as Milwaukee and Elston Avenues, these two diagonal thoroughfares break up the monotony of the city’s ever-present grid…

Well enough. Wondering what is wrong with the article? Here it is:

By 1894 St. Hyacinth’s Roman Catholic Parish was founded for Poles in an attempt to pre-empt the establishment of a schismatic parish by the Polish National Catholic Church.

While such a statement would be perfectly acceptable in a Roman Catholic publication, because it does represent the Roman Catholic point-of-view, it does not belong in a historical study or essay. What should a reader infer, especially in this day and age when fewer and fewer even understand the meaning of “schismatic?” This is, after all, supposed to be a history, not a discussion of Church politics, polity, or theology. Further, the article discusses other Parishes established in the area, including the Allen Church (an African-American congregation and the oldest church in the area) as well as German and Swedish Lutheran congregations. The article is conspicuous in not taking those congregations to task for the Reformation…

The article might have discussed the Kozlowski movement in Chicago, the fact that the Roman Catholic Church reacted to the PNCC by appointing the first native Pole as a Suffragen Bishop in Chicago in 1908, that in response to Bishop Hodur’s consecration in 1907, or any amount of historical data that might help a reader to understand the religious and political environment in the neighborhood.

From looking at the Historical Society’s mission statement, no where can I discern that this is a sectarian organization. As such, its newsletter and publications, if they are to reflect history, should be edited more carefully. In the alternative, articles should be labeled as personal opinion, or as biased sectarian histories.

The PNCC has had its role in the history of this neighborhood, and a proper historical exposition on the neighborhood should reflect balance while avoiding sectarian pejoratives.

Perspective, Political,

A fall, big and fast

From the Los Angeles Times by Niall Ferguson: America, the fragile empire: Here today, gone tomorrow — could the United States fall that fast?

For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public have tended to think about the political process in seasonal, cyclical terms. From Polybius to Paul Kennedy, from ancient Rome to imperial Britain, we discern a rhythm to history. Great powers, like great men, are born, rise, reign and then gradually wane. No matter whether civilizations decline culturally, economically or ecologically, their downfalls are protracted.

In the same way, the challenges that face the United States are often represented as slow-burning. It is the steady march of demographics — which is driving up the ratio of retirees to workers — not bad policy that condemns the public finances of the United States to sink deeper into the red. It is the inexorable growth of China’s economy, not American stagnation, that will make the gross domestic product of the People’s Republic larger than that of the United States by 2027.

As for climate change, the day of reckoning could be as much as a century away. These threats seem very remote compared with the time frame for the deployment of U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan, in which the unit of account is months, not years, much less decades.

But what if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arrhythmic — at times almost stationary but also capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car? What if collapse does not arrive over a number of centuries but comes suddenly, like a thief in the night?

Great powers are complex systems, made up of a very large number of interacting components that are asymmetrically organized, which means their construction more resembles a termite hill than an Egyptian pyramid. They operate somewhere between order and disorder. Such systems can appear to operate quite stably for some time; they seem to be in equilibrium but are, in fact, constantly adapting. But there comes a moment when complex systems “go critical.” A very small trigger can set off a “phase transition” from a benign equilibrium to a crisis — a single grain of sand causes a whole pile to collapse.

Not long after such crises happen, historians arrive on the scene. They are the scholars who specialize in the study of “fat tail” events — the low-frequency, high-impact historical moments, the ones that are by definition outside the norm and that therefore inhabit the “tails” of probability distributions — such as wars, revolutions, financial crashes and imperial collapses. But historians often misunderstand complexity in decoding these events. They are trained to explain calamity in terms of long-term causes, often dating back decades. This is what Nassim Taleb rightly condemned in “The Black Swan” as “the narrative fallacy.”

In reality, most of the fat-tail phenomena that historians study are not the climaxes of prolonged and deterministic story lines; instead, they represent perturbations, and sometimes the complete breakdowns, of complex systems…

…

If empires are complex systems that sooner or later succumb to sudden and catastrophic malfunctions, what are the implications for the United States today? First, debating the stages of decline may be a waste of time — it is a precipitous and unexpected fall that should most concern policymakers and citizens. Second, most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises. Alarm bells should therefore be ringing very loudly indeed as the United States contemplates a deficit for 2010 of more than $1.5 trillion — about 11% of GDP, the biggest since World War II.

These numbers are bad, but in the realm of political entities, the role of perception is just as crucial. In imperial crises, it is not the material underpinnings of power that really matter but expectations about future power. The fiscal numbers cited above cannot erode U.S. strength on their own, but they can work to weaken a long-assumed faith in the United States’ ability to weather any crisis.

One day, a seemingly random piece of bad news — perhaps a negative report by a rating agency — will make the headlines during an otherwise quiet news cycle. Suddenly, it will be not just a few policy wonks who worry about the sustainability of U.S. fiscal policy but the public at large, not to mention investors abroad. It is this shift that is crucial: A complex adaptive system is in big trouble when its component parts lose faith in its viability.

Over the last three years, the complex system of the global economy flipped from boom to bust — all because a bunch of Americans started to default on their subprime mortgages, thereby blowing huge holes in the business models of thousands of highly leveraged financial institutions. The next phase of the current crisis may begin when the public begins to reassess the credibility of the radical monetary and fiscal steps that were taken in response….

Christian Witness, Perspective,

A primer on Christianity understood

Nicholas Kristof writing in the NY Times: Learning From the Sin of Sodom

A pop quiz: What’s the largest U.S.-based international relief and development organization?

It’s not Save the Children, and it’s not CARE —” both terrific secular organizations. Rather, it’s World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian organization (with strong evangelical roots) whose budget has roughly tripled over the last decade.

World Vision now has 40,000 staff members in nearly 100 countries. That’s more staff members than CARE, Save the Children and the worldwide operations of the United States Agency for International Development —” combined.

A growing number of conservative Christians are explicitly and self-critically acknowledging that to be —pro-life— must mean more than opposing abortion. The head of World Vision in the United States, Richard Stearns, begins his fascinating book, —The Hole in Our Gospel,— with an account of a visit a decade ago to Uganda, where he met a 13-year-old AIDS orphan who was raising his younger brothers by himself.

—What sickened me most was this question: where was the Church?— he writes. —Where were the followers of Jesus Christ in the midst of perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time? Surely the Church should have been caring for these ‘orphans and widows in their distress.’ (James 1:27). Shouldn’t the pulpits across America have flamed with exhortations to rush to the front lines of compassion?

—How have we missed it so tragically, when even rock stars and Hollywood actors seem to understand?—

Mr. Stearns argues that evangelicals were often so focused on sexual morality and a personal relationship with God that they ignored the needy. He writes laceratingly about —a Church that had the wealth to build great sanctuaries but lacked the will to build schools, hospitals, and clinics.—

In one striking passage, Mr. Stearns quotes the prophet Ezekiel as saying that the great sin of the people of Sodom wasn’t so much that they were promiscuous or gay as that they were —arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.— (Ezekiel 16:49.)

Hmm. Imagine if sodomy laws could be used to punish the stingy, unconcerned rich!

…

One of the most inspiring figures I’ve met while covering Congo’s brutal civil war is a determined Polish nun in the terrifying hinterland, feeding orphans, standing up to drunken soldiers and comforting survivors —” all in a war zone. I came back and decided: I want to grow up and become a Polish nun.

Some Americans assume that religious groups offer aid to entice converts. That’s incorrect. Today, groups like World Vision ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversation.

Some liberals are pushing to end the longtime practice (it’s a myth that this started with President George W. Bush) of channeling American aid through faith-based organizations. That change would be a catastrophe. In Haiti, more than half of food distributions go through religious groups like World Vision that have indispensable networks on the ground. We mustn’t make Haitians the casualties in our cultural wars.

A root problem is a liberal snobbishness toward faith-based organizations. Those doing the sneering typically give away far less money than evangelicals. They’re also less likely to spend vacations volunteering at, say, a school or a clinic in Rwanda.

If secular liberals can give up some of their snootiness, and if evangelicals can retire some of their sanctimony, then we all might succeed together in making greater progress against common enemies of humanity, like illiteracy, human trafficking and maternal mortality.

The only aspect of the article I would say wasn’t covered well was the subtle shot at the Church’s defense of life. That’s part of a continuity rarely understood. That said, the subtle shot makes the point, Christians should not be single issue people. We should take heed of our very teachings on the continuity of life. As with the mite and the beam (Matthew 7:3), if we cannot care for our brothers and sisters, how can we criticize those who do not respect life.

Perspective,

Leading your family to God through art

The story of Akiane Kramarik. Of course, the sort of personal revelations she recounts are not matters of faith, but very individual. In addition, revelations which may occur, and which are left unguided, degenerate into a fragile human, very fallible “spiritual” construct with little basis in the truth of the Divine. Nonetheless, she paints beautifully.

Perspective, PNCC, Political, ,

PNCC Diocese of Canada, and others, get no info from the City of Hamilton

From TheSpec: City tries again for social housing funds

The city is pitching four social housing projects to the province in hopes of receiving a final slice of government stimulus cash.

The city’s previous applications — which included a proposal to turn the former Royal Connaught Hotel into mixed-use housing — were all turned down. This application is Hamilton’s last chance to receive funding from the joint federal-provincial program.

The proposals the city chose to submit were judged based on several criteria, including cost, the bidder’s background, site and construction readiness, and location, said Rick Male, the city’s director of financial services.

The four housing proposals, which were approved by council recently, were the highest-scoring submissions of the 13 compliant projects submitted.

The city’s top priority is a proposal from the Hellenic Community of Hamilton and District. It asks for $210,000 to turn an old fire hall on its property into four affordable housing units, which would add to the 39 units the non-profit organization already operates, said Nathan Hondronicols, president of the Hellenic Community.

The second priority on the list, submitted by Homestead Christian Care, is for 46 housing units at the site of a former bar on Main Street East. The two final proposals, which were also included in the last round of applications, are proposals for 27 units for families on Burton Street and 59 units for seniors on Upper Gage.

There’s about $120 million up for grabs this round, said Brent Whitty of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Successful projects will be announced by the end of March.

In the previous application, the controversial Connaught proposal was listed as the city’s top priority for funding. Tony Battaglia, spokesperson for the group that owns the Connaught, said he was surprised to learn the proposal was excluded from this round of applications after it was listed as the city’s first priority last time.

Anthony Jasinski, treasurer of the Canadian diocese of the Polish National Catholic Church of Canada, shares Battaglia’s concern. His church’s proposal for 83 units on Barton Street was included in the last round but nixed this time.

“We’re very upset,” he said. “We’re still fuming over this last result and we’d like to know what it is that invalidated us.”

Of course, governments reaching decisions in secret, or according to subjective criteria, is not the sole province of communist or authoritative regimes. It happens in Canada too. A good RFP process should result in scored rankings which are then open to all. After-all, it is the public’s money, and they should be able to judge whether the process was properly followed and whether the RFPs were equitably scored.

Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, ,

At the Mall (in Poland)

From the NY Times: Poland Looks Inward After Film Puts ‘Mall Girl’ Culture on View

WARSAW —” They loiter at the mall for hours, young teenage girls selling their bodies in return for designer jeans, Nokia cell phones, even a pair of socks.

Katarzyna Roslaniec, a former film student, first spotted a cluster of mall girls three years ago, decked out in thigh-high latex boots. She followed them and chatted them up over cigarettes. Over the next six months, the teens told her about their sex lives, about the men they called —sponsors,— about their lust for expensive labels, their absent parents, their premature pregnancies, their broken dreams.

Ms. Roslaniec, 29, scribbled their secrets in her notepad, memorizing the way they peppered their speech with words like —frajer— —” —loser— in English.

She gossiped with them on Grono.net, the Polish equivalent of Facebook. Soon, she had a large network of mall girls.

The result is the darkly devastating fictional film, —Galerianki,— or Mall Girls, which premiered in Poland in the autumn and has provoked an ongoing national debate about moral decadence in this conservative, predominantly Catholic country, 20 years after the fall of Communism.

The film tells the story of four teenage girls who turn tricks in the restrooms of shopping malls to support their clothing addiction. It has attained such cult status that parents across the country say they are confiscating DVDs of the film for fear it provides a lurid instruction manual.

The revelation that Catholic girls, some from middle-class families, are prostituting themselves for a Chanel scarf or an expensive sushi dinner is causing many here to question whether materialism is polluting the nation’s soul…

Adam Bogoryja-Zakrzewski, a journalist who made a documentary about mall girls, said the phenomenon had laid bare the extent to which the powerful Polish Catholic church —” anti abortion, anti-gay and anti-contraception —” was out of touch with the younger generation, for whom sex, alcohol and consumerism held more appeal. —The shopping mall has become the new cathedral in Poland,— he said…

In Communist times the Church offered a viable alternative to the status quo and the government agenda. What was lost in the transition is the sense of Catholic faith as a viable alternative.

People reacted quickly to the economic and political changes in Poland. The money came out of the mattresses and people began to take care of more than basic needs. One of the earliest rush purchases was of “Goldstar VCRs.” People bought them like candy. Generally, the public were very agile in redirecting according to the social condition – a more natural and normal situation.

Unfortunately, the Church did not adapt to the new status quo in Poland and left a gap between people’s expectations and the Church’s reality. The Roman Church in Poland threw itself headlong into politics and the reclamation of ‘lost property.’ While the older generations, already conditioned to Church as a part of their social identity, have remained in the Church, younger people have abandoned the Church.

The reasons start with the lack of adaptation and relevancy in the new socio-political order in Poland, the appearance of greed and political gamesmanship early on (including politically motivated homilies on Sundays). That was exacerbated by paedophilia/paederasty scandals, the discovery of a number of clergy, including high ranking bishops who were in league with the communist government, and the Church’s voice being overshadowed by religio-political movements such as the Rev. Tadeusz Rydzyk’s Radio Maryja (more-or-less the neo-cons of Poland).

For more on this see The Battle for Souls by Jan Puhl:

The Roman Catholic Church sees itself as the custodian of Polish culture. Even today, it still carries weight in the nation’s politics. But fewer and fewer people are obeying its commandments…

Those fewer and fewer are the young, the future. They are at the mall…

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political, , , ,

When defense is co-opted for offense

A Serbian-Canadian’s reflection of NATO’s involvement in the internal affairs of Serbia. Also recall that NATO bombed Serbia on Easter Sunday. From The Bloody Catholic Easter 1999 by Dr. Vladimir Ajdacic at Swans

Easter is the most sacred and the happiest day for Christians. However, the people of Yugoslavia will never forget Easter 1999. NATO, led by the Americans, carried out vicious bombing attacks on a variety of civilian targets in Yugoslavia. Despite a message and request from the Pope not to bomb during this important Christian holy day, NATO bloodied their hands. The patriarch of the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, Aleksej II, predicted their actions correctly. NATO’s message, written on the bombs and tomahawk missiles was, “Easter presents to the Serbs”…

Similarly, NATO working outside its bounds in Afghanistan, continues to ‘mis-target’ civilians.

Current Events, Media, Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , , , , ,

From the Cosmopolitan Review (and exciting news)

From the December 2009 issue of the Cosmopolitan Review, published by the alumni of Poland in the Rockies, a biennial symposium in Polish studies held at Canmore, Alberta.

Cosmopolitan Review Turns One

Work on this issue was in full swing before we suddenly realized that this is actually an anniversary issue. Cosmopolitan Review has turned one year old. Thanks for joining us on this adventure and stick around. It’s going to be a fun ride.

EXCITING NEWS: Poland in the Rockies Announces 2010 Symposium

Poland in the Rockies, the 10-day Polish studies symposium in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, is set for July 21-31, 2010. The slate of speakers is already posted on the website and it guarantees the liveliest exchange of ideas to be found anywhere between the Rockies and the Tatras.

FEATURE Americans in Warsaw

What can I say about Poland, after one month in Warsaw? That the Poles have become more American than the Americans? If not entirely accurate, like other facile observations, there’s a grain of truth here. Part of the reason is that Poles are doing well these days. By Wanda Urbanska.

REVIEWS The Polish Review

Someone once joked that the best thing about reading Reviews is that you can discuss the books at dinner parties without actually having to read them. Well, if you read the very best of the Reviews there is an element of truth in that, though do bear in mind that not all Reviews are created equal…

CONVERSATIONS A few questions for…Prof. Marek Suszko

As we reflect on the 20 years since the fall of communism in Europe and ponder what the future may hold, CR recently had a chance to ask a few questions of Professor Marek Suszko, who teaches at the Department of History at Loyola University in Chicago. He shared some insight about the positive developments that have taken place in Poland since 1989, the country’s role in the EU and its relationship with the United States.

HISTORY The Noble and Compassionate Heart of the Maharaja Jam Saheb Digvijay Sinhi

Between August 1942 and November 1946, close to 1,000 Polish children and their guardians lived in idyllic settlements on the Kathiawar Peninsula in India not far from the summer residence of the Maharaja Jam Saheb Digvijay Sinhi. They had come at the Maharaja’s invitation from orphanages in Ashkabad, the capital of Turkmenistan, and Samarkand … by Irene Tomaszewski.

FOOD for thought Google, Poland, cultural projections

Artist Ian Wojtowicz, a 2008 PitR alumnus, has put together an interactive animation inviting reflection about identity. TRY it (This is really cool!)

Op-Ed The Pole Position: be like Dexter and tap into your inner glee for success

Young professionals face a tough climb. They’re full of ambition, talent and determination, but the climb is often a tough one. The competition is plentiful and opportunities sparse. How than do you stand out from among the crowd? A hard work ethic and wisdom is important; but people also like working with those that they find interesting. By Filip Terlecki.

…and more.

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