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Quote of the Day: A Sweet Tooth for Song and Music
“I have a sweet tooth for song and music. This is my Polish sin.”
OK, so this entire post is something of a Polish joke. I can see your lip starting to curl, and your eyes rolling back in your head. “Wait!” I hear you shout. “I am offended on behalf of Poles everywhere! How can you, a high-toned, (green) card-carrying British lady, make a Polish joke without implied overtones of bigotry, cultural superiority, and aggression? Tut-tut. Isn’t this the height of colonialist and imperialist privilege? How dare you?”
I’d probably do it anyway because, you know: free speech and the right to offend. But, in any event, I do dare, and also, here are some more reasons why:
Almost 40 years ago, I married into a wonderful family whose ancestors, on both sides, pass the Polish test with flying colors. (It’s true that some of them didn’t come from a place that was called “Poland” at the time, but the geography was spot on, even if the national boundaries weren’t quite the same.) They accepted me, and never made me feel foreign or inadequate. I’ve learned to enjoy, and even to make, most Polish meal staples, and I’m a wizard with pierogi, kielbasa, and sauerkraut. I love kiszka. I don’t speak very much Polish, it’s true, but I have reduced more than a few patriotic Poles to tears of joy with my delivery of the one phrase I can muster and pronounce with absolute authority and great feeling: “Rosyjski diabeł.” Unlike Mr. She’s “barrel-shaped Polish grandma” (his description of a woman he loved very much), I don’t usually spit before I say it, but the effect is still quite good. I’m very much at home with the hupaj siupaj at weddings and such, and I know the 1978 Steelers Polka by heart.
And, to cap things off, in all the years I’ve known them, I can’t remember any of my relatives by marriage being offended by anyone, of any sort, telling a Polish joke, of any sort. So, there you have it. I rest my case, and judge myself Worthy.
Anyway, there I was, a couple of weeks ago, scouring the internet (as one does) looking for a suitable topic and date for a quote of the day post for May. And I swear, as God is my witness, that I saw somewhere on a website that the author of the quote above was born on this day, May 2, Anno Domini 1920, meaning that today would have been his 98th birthday.
Unfortunately, I can’t prove that. It seems that either 1) I was dreaming the whole thing, 2) I was somewhat the worse for wear and I misread it, 3) the website (which I can’t find again) was misinformed, or 4) it’s like Brigadoon, and the truth has disappeared only to emerge again, for one day, in another hundred years.
It also appears (although I am sure this must be wrong) that the person responsible for today’s quote was actually born 16 days hence, on May 18, 1920 in Wadowice, Poland. (I subsequently picked May 18 for my entry in this month’s “group writing” series. Not that I’m superstitious or anything. Not at all.) He grew up a patriotic Pole himself, playing football with the town’s Jewish children (often on their side), and long mourned his older brother, a physician who died from scarlet fever when our hero was still quite a young man.
At some point, as young men do, he became fond of a girl or two, before enrolling at the Jagiellonian University to study philology. He wrote plays and performed on the stage, learning about 12 languages as he went, and becoming fluent in at least nine of them. During the war, he worked various menial jobs and was hurt several times, suffering a fractured skull, and a shoulder injury. When his father, an officer in the Polish Army, died of a heart attack in 1941, he was, at the age of 20, his immediate family’s only surviving member. He found solace in nature, in the Church, and in the priesthood, and his exploits in its service. His humanity towards his fellow men, no matter their circumstances or religion, became the stuff of legend.
In 1978, he emerged as the compromise candidate, and, on the eighth ballot, Karol Józef Wojtyła was elected the first non-Italian Pope in more than four-and-a-half centuries. And the first Polish Pope ever.
The rest, as they say, is History, with a capital “H.”
Happy anticipated birthday, Saint Pope John Paul II. Here’s some sweet Polish “song and music” from the Andrzej Jagodziński Trio and Grażyna Auguścik. (Can’t provide a full translation, but it’s about love and lovers). I don’t rouse myself to “do” many live performances, but I have seen both of these acts (not together), and they’re just wonderful.*
*In fact, the Jagodziński Trio performance was the source of another episode of what I’ll call (for fear of offending further at this point) Eastern European Humor. We went to see them perform at a tiny Pittsburgh venue, in an event sponsored by the Polish Cultural Council for the express purpose of introducing Pittsburgh’s own honorary Polish Consul. CDs were for sale in the lobby at intermission, and we were enjoying the jazz performances of Chopin’s music so much that we bought the group’s signature CD, titled simply “Chopin.” When we got it home and eagerly opened the case, we discovered that what was inside it was actually their Christmas music CD. It’s traditional Polish carols with a jazz flavor, and it’s one of my favorite Christmas albums. But it’s definitely not Chopin. Ha ha.
Published in General
Some of my favorite stories of Pope John Paul involve him singing with young people, often long and into the night, because it gave him so much joy.
Near the end of the video, the Pope, celebrating his birthday at a World Youth Day, says, “How old is the Pope? 83! An 83 year old youth!”
My grandmother was full on Polish, and if you think this whole sorting by racial bias thing is new, her Irish husband’s mother refused to go to their wedding. Because he chose to marry that Polish harlot. My 80 year old mom has memories of her paternal grandpa sneaking over to the house on Sundays just so he could see his grand children under the guise of “going to church”.
Some tribal instincts are hard to overcome. But I do love me some good Polish jokes. But is the Pope
ItalianPolish has a nice finish.I saw another silly in your comment. polish = finish (Polish not equal to Finnish, though)
Well, my grandfather would have been 125 today, but he wasn’t Polish.
That’s good.
But you could at least have provided the Polish text. It was worth looking for, though, and I found it here:
http://www.tekstowo.pl/piosenka,helena_majdaniec,zakochani_sa_wsrod_nas.html
These days you can find Polish grocery stores all over Ireland.
Thanks so much @she.
Your mention of the hupaj siupaj brought a smile to my face and a tear to my eye. I haven’t heard that since before my Mom passed away 10 years ago. She married a Rosyjski diabel and she would jokingly call my Dad and/or Grandad that. Fun memories.
Note. They both spoke Polish and Russian and Slovak and my Dad added German. And I (pig-headed) never learned a word though they tried to teach me.
I dated a girl of Polish descent once. She knew dozens of Polish jokes, all of them hysterical!
Thanks for this, @she. I remember crying like a baby when Saint JP II died. It was a dark, dark Lent that year (Terri Schiavo was going through her own suffering at the same time JP II was declining). I remember feeling deep despair waiting for the white smoke from the Vatican and just couldn’t believe my ears when I heard Benedict XVI was chosen. What a glorious day – out of the darkness, came light!
*Repeated edits trying to get my @ thing to work but I failed.
Terrific, @she. I didn’t know his story, and loved learning it today. What an amazing man. I think we were all blessed (Catholic or not) to have him on this earth. Thanks!
One of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies (Raising Arizona) is Glen telling a cop a string of Polish jokes after being pulled over and we the audience see the officer’s name tag with a very Polish name on it. We the audience never see what happens to Glen, but it is left to our imaginations – one of the best things a producer can ever do.
Growing up, the best source of Polish jokes were from my Polish-Ukrainian cousins. I now have 3 cousins living in Poland. And Poles tell Russian jokes. French tell Belgian jokes and make fun of French-speaking Swiss who use German idioms translated to French when they talk. Pink Panther movies has tons of Belgian jokes in them. Most people don’t know they are Belgian jokes.
This is a real Polish joke. A joke told by Poles in Poland back during the old Soviet day’s …
Stash is a welder in the shipyards in Gdańsk. It comes to the attention of the local Communist Party apparatchiks thst Stash never attends any of the Party meetings or events. So they send someone round his flat to see what’s up and to encourage him in his socialist duties.
The Party flack shows up and introduces himself and explains the issue. Really, the meetings are for Stash’s own good. They’ll educate him and education is good. He asks Stash if he knows who Marx is?
Nope.
Lenin?
Never heard of him.
Brezhnev?
Who?
The Party flack is incredulous.
“Stash…these are things everybody knows….you don’t know anything”
Stash replies. “Well, I know who Kondratowicz is. So does everybody else. Do you know Kondratowicz?”
”No. No idea”
”See, if you weren’t always at those stupid Party meetings you’d know Kondratowicz is the man who’s having an affair with your wife!”
Thanks for this lovely comment!
My in-laws, after the first generation, didn’t speak Polish “in front of the children,” because they wanted them to grow up to be American. How times change.
Although the family kept many Polish traditions and was extremely proud of their heritage, there was never any question where their loyalty lay.
Herewith, my grandfather-in-law’s naturalization certificate (click to embiggen). Note the number of children and their birthplaces, as he followed the mining work around the country before settling in Pittsburgh. Nothing was easy for, or was given to, this generation of immigrants other than an opportunity to make something of themselves and for their families. And they did.
Thanks for the story of Saint John Paul II. The trails of extraordinary people are fascinating because it is rarely clear how they lead to the destination.
I grew up north of Pittsburgh (hence my Ricochet moniker), and many Polish had found their way out into the countryside there. “Some of my best friends are Polish” was really true, and I didn’t understand why there were Polish jokes. Scientists using sophisticated instruments could not tell us apart. Nevertheless, we all found the jokes funny.
I wondered if your name was significant, even before I read your comment. My husband’s maternal grandfather was the proprietor of the “Knox Inn,”which would not be too far from where you grew up. I would tell you his last name, but I can’t remember how to spell it. It I remember correctly, it starts out something like “Szyczy” and only gets worse from there.
I often say that one of the reasons I write what I do is to re-create a world that is lost, and I really love when others tell stories of their own worlds. Thanks, all of you who are doing that.
Not even DNA tests?
Some of my ancestors on both my mother’s and father’s side are Germans who came from what is now Poland. Mrs R and I are planning a family trip this summer to some of the places in Germany where her ancestors came from and places in Poland where mine came from before coming to the United States. I have four specific villages to visit, and a fifth that I haven’t identified precisely except that it’s somewhere on the Vistula River near Plock.
I don’t expect to find any signs of my family there, but would like to see the places.
A great-grandmother on my mother’s side came to the United States when it was hard for her and a sister to get along with their new stepmother. They stayed in touch with their step-sisters, though, but none of them were heard from after World War II. Germans didn’t exactly make themselves welcome in Poland during the war, and most were forced out afterwards when borders were redrawn.
I recently got the results from one of those DNA tests, and was therefore mildly surprised to see that about 35 percent of my ancestry is said to be from Eastern Europe. A great-great-grandfather was born in Moscow, and there have been some signs of DNA from Russia among his descendants; possibly one of his grandparents was Russian. But I don’t think that accounts for any of the 35 percent of East European origin in mine. (Yes, I know Poland doesn’t like to be considered Eastern Europe, but that’s probably where it comes from.) There are several ways my results could come about. Some of my ancestral DNA perhaps didn’t leave Poland after WWII, and found its way into the databases that are used by the DNA testing services. Or perhaps, somewhere, there was some intermarriage between Poles and Germans that we haven’t been told about in our family. My grandmother, in telling about her elementary school days in Poland in the first decade of the 20th century, said that the Germans, Poles, Russians, and Jews didn’t mix much. But maybe they did mix a little more than we had thought.
The DNA testing services try to put you in touch with people who share some of your DNA, and thereby entice you to subscribe to more expensive plans so you can do this more readily. (I haven’t signed up yet, but I may.) One of the possible connections they found for me was a man who I had already known was a 3rd cousin; I’ve never met him but we have been in touch by e-mail now and then. The MyHeritage people said he was possibly a 3rd-5th cousin; so that suggests they may try to be conservative in making these connection suggestions.
The other day I got an e-mail from a German woman who said I had some DNA matches with her little daughter. I told Mrs R, and she said, “That sounds like a paternity suit!” We haven’t found any surnames in common among our ancestors, but we both have some ancestors who lived on the Polish side of the Oder river.
I know (or know of) a lot of my 2nd cousins, but I’ve recently been surprised while compiling genealogy information to find so many 3rd cousins I have that I had never heard of before. Well, that probably shouldn’t be so surprising, considering the number of generations and some of the big families involved. There are probably a lot more to be found.
(In preparation for our Poland trip I’m working my way through the Pimsleur Polish course and also spending a little time with other resources for learning Polish. It’s nice to know a few simple phrases, and how questions are formed, etc. Most of what little progress I’m making is aided by similarities here and there with Russian. But so far I find Polish a lot more difficult than Russian.)
In the late 1980s a wise-cracking cousin of mine was touring Poland with a friend.
They stopped off in a working man’s bar in Warsaw, and got pretty pickled. At some point late in the evening the friend takes to the front of the bar, and gets everyone’s attention: “Have I got a Polish Joke for YOU!”
My cousin tells of looking for the exit, realizing that in a full bar and with that crowd, his friend was already a dead man walking, and my cousin might as well save himself.
The friend looks around, totally sloshed, and waves a hand in the air. “Never Mind…. you wouldn’t get it anyway.”
The way it should be.
This conversation is an entry in our Quote of the Day Series. We have many openings on the May Schedule.
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The trick to enjoying Polish food is to come from a culture with even worse food. You lucked out in that regard. :)
BTW, I’m 1/4 Polish, as are my two brothers. Mom wanted to have a fourth kid (trying for a girl), but Dad refused. Said one more kid would make a whole Polack.
I’m more of a fan of cultural ancestry than DNA for tracing roots. For example, I am 1/2 Norwegian (thanks, Dad!), 1/4 French, 1/8 English, and 1/8 German. If I have any ancestral migrants from other parts of the world, they may be several generations back.
Brit, through and through. English and Scottish. Somewhere on the Scots side is a connection to Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat (fans of Outlander will recognize the name, as will history buffs of all sorts), the last man in Britain to be executed by beheading. By the British Crown, that is.
HaHa, everyone’s a commodian these days. Actually, some Polish food is absolutely delightful. I’ve been to the Ostatki celebration in Pittsburgh a few times (sort of a Polish Mardi Gras) and the food is wonderful (the drink’s not so bad, either). Nothing like the Polish “peasant” food that I also love so much.
Plus, And. Until you’ve had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding at my house, followed up with spotted dick, you may not comment in a disparaging manner on British cooking of any sort.
Who stole the kiszka?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCFBef0NhDY
Have to confess that my affection for “kiszka” predates my Polish affiliations, going all the way back to “black” or “blood” pudding in rural England. I have a recipe for same, which I’ve so far whiffed on trying, that starts out “kill the pig and catch the blood in a basin.”
One day . . . .
Fortunately, though, we live near Albert’s Meats, whose “kiszka” (with buckwheat groats, just like it’s supposed to have) is the closest to the black pudding of my youth that I’ve been able to find in the States. @phcheese
That is amusing – we Jews have “kishka” – which I suppose is the same thing. Several varieties are sold in kosher supermarkets, and funnily enough, the vegetarian one is quite good!
Thank you, @she, for the sweet words of Papa Karol; and all for the cheering conversation!
That video just made my day. Thank you for sharing it. Just beautiful – of a beautiful man.
Walter Solek’s recording is what I grew up hearing. My favorite line is “…you can take my blue suede shoes, bring back the keeshka!”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G2ed7Sn_XaI
Anyone visiting Poland who admires John Paul II should try to make a trip to his home in Wadowice, which is now a museum. You must purchase tickets for a guided tour (given in several languages).
His family had a tiny flat without running water (I could imagine the brothers racing across the square to the water pump on winter days…). One the first floor was a Jewish-owned shop, and the tour of the museum begins with a visit to a room that is a memorial to the small Jewish community of Wadowice. The town had a synagogue, but no Jewish school, so Karol and his brother had Jewish friends from school.
One of the things that has always stood out for me was his great love for young people, and I remember when he came to Israel the thousands of young people who thronged here to see him — at that point, he was quite bent and suffering from health problems, but he always generated such a power to draw young people — even though his message was so “conservative” and so much the opposite of what we usually think would attract the young.
Paddy has been writing recently about the wretched situation in the Irish Church, especially the problem of passing on the faith, not merely its cultural manifestations, to the next generation, and the dire need for good religious education. So I wonder, where have all those youthful Catholics who flocked to meet Pope John Paul got to? Will they emerge soon as effective leaders to draw people back to the authentic (and demanding) life of Christian believers?