From Goat Street

Why worry?

pozorblog — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:22:14 +0000

Shadow Children

pozorblog — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:44:55 +0000

Light and dark, courtesy of the Cite Sciences in Paris

shadowgirl

shadowboy

The Name Game

pozorblog — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:54:21 +0000

I just stumbled upon a fantastic post at the new (and equally fantastic) blog “Red State Blue State” that manages to mention both Sarah Palin and a member of my own family (who shall remain nameless but is listed prominently among the “Blue State names” specified below. Wattenberg has my number:

“Blue parents who name with red values”

September 25th, 2008, by Andrew

Laura Wattenberg has a fascinating discussion of the one topic you think you’ve already heard enough about . . . Sarah Palin’s kids’ names. You really have to read the whole thing, but here’s the gist:

No naming event has ever filled my [Wattenberg's] inbox with as many reader queries as the unveiling of Sarah Palin–mom to Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig–as John McCain’s running mate. “Any comment?” “I’ve never heard Trig as a name for anything but a math class.” “Is this ‘an Alaska thing’?’”

In a way, yes, it is “an Alaska thing.” If you had nothing to go on but the baby names and had to guess about who the parents were, you’d guess that that they lived in an idiosyncratic, sparsely populated region of the country…and that they were conservative Republicans. . . .

For the past two decades, a core set of “cultural conservative” opinions has served as a theoretical dividing line between “red” (Republican/conservative) and “blue” (Democratic/liberal) America. These incude attitudes toward sex roles, the centrality of Christianity in culture, and a social traditionalism focused on patriotism and the family. If you were to translate that divide into baby names it might place a name like Peter—classic, Christian, masculine—on one side, staring down an androgynous pagan newcomer like Dakota on the other. In fact, that does describe the political baby name divide quite accurately. But it describes it backwards.

Characteristic blue state names: Angela, Catherine, Henry, Margaret, Mark, Patrick, Peter and Sophie.

Characteristic red state names: Addison, Ashlyn, Dakota, Gage, Peyton, Reagan, Rylee and Tanner. . . .

Why is it the blue parents who name with red values? Because in baby naming as in so many parts of life, style, not values, is the guiding light. . . .

You can read the rest of the post here: http://redbluerichpoor.com/blog/?p=85

Green and green (and greenbacks)

pozorblog — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:20:53 +0000

St Patrick’s day is no big deal around here, obviously, but I got the kids to do a green project and to identify Ireland on the big Europe map in our living room.

We continue to have a wonderful time. We are 1/3 through this adventure and regret that time seems to be going so fast. And yet we are doing a good job savoring it. This includes a steady business for a couple of great babysitters, allowing Kevin and me to eat lots of good halusky (the Slovak national dish — potato gnochi/dumplings and sheep cheese) and big, cold, cheaper-than-water pivo (beer).

We have blossoming trees and green grass — thanks to the warmer overall climate and unusually warm winter. And because we are much further north than Ferndale, after today’s equinox it will be lighter earlier and darker later than it would be in Michigan. Peter is serving as our rooster.

The kids have been a delight. They are very happy here, though they also talk about their grandparents and cousins frequently as well as Grandma’s beach and Iowa (more than their own home). Elena is a purist with her pronunciation. She is now into math big time — the soon to disappear (per the euro) and dreadfully powerful Slovak crowns are fun for this.

Settling In

pozorblog — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:05:43 +0000

We continue to do really, really well. Some days are a little overwhelming — and surprisingly (perhaps not so) it is the seemingly little stuff, like managing money and my fast moving kids on busy streets (hopefully not at the same time). The last week brought several opportunities to get connected with the English speaking women in the area. There is a well established network of women, many who have come with spouses for various reasons. The variety of these reasons is remarkable. Their backgrounds differ greatly, as do their socio-economic resources. Still they have many concerns in common, concerns that usually center around kids, schools, health and getting comfortable with new “stuff,” including food. Most of them are here for three or four year stints. Already it is becoming clear that I am not in their league as far as radical commitment to living overseas. I come closer to tourist status, given my mere 6 plus months here. I still have a house in the corner of the world that I come from; my friends will barely notice our absence; my stash of peanut butter and vanilla will likely last the trip. Perhaps most importantly, I chose to come here. Some of my new acquaintances did as well, of course, but I am certainly meeting those who did not choose this place and are struggling and feeling pretty isolated. Hence the networks like the International Women’s Group that I will check it out tomorrow. The stakes are pretty low for me, but not for others who are here for four years, and in many cases, are settled in neighborhoods out in the outskirts of the city (like home – bigger and more affordable spaces). Most of the ex-pats I am meeting have cars (which we do not) with the distance to the city and all. What we all have in common is we are trying to make the Bratislava/Slovakia/living in a foreign country thing work, no matter what we drive, or how many Euros we pull in a month (actually, lots of the Americans paid in dollars are really struggling all of a sudden – in the past year or so the dollar has plummeted); and there is something important about sharing a language and particular shared struggles, joys and concerns.

Our church has been a great place to meet interesting people and to make friends. It is also a remarkable faith community in and of itself. The “International Church” (or Maly Kostol — which means “little church”), led by two dynamic American Lutheran pastors (missionaries), includes all sorts of folks (including a large number of Catholics) who have English in common and appreciate being part of this kind of community. They have terrific kid programming which Elena is really liking a lot. The church provides lots of good opportunities to connect, including some serious outreach to a local refugee camp on the border, which I spent time at this past weekend. I have joined up with the Women’s Bible Study, which is a great group, led by a good group leader who is ecumenically minded. Someone from this group brought me a welcome bag of goodies last week, that included the much appreciated jar of peanut butter, bottle of vanilla, brown sugar and baby wipes (all either unavailable or too expensive). Upon previous visits we had attended a Catholic Church here which had an English mass. This mass still exists, but it is crowded, not quite so kid friendly and its liturgy is (strangely enough) is less familiar than the one at the (protestant) International Church. This venture into the protestant world especially in an Eastern European Church poses quite an interesting challenge. We are in the hotbed of early Lutheran influence, and tremendous counter-reformation oppression, not to mention Communist oppression of churches, and state tax-funding system for churches that gives church goers of all stripes little incentive to put money in the basket.
-Bridget

Why I Am Here (More or Less)

pozorblog — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 06:10:03 +0000

Last week I was fortunate to be the subject of an on-line interview by Michaela Stanková of The Slovak Spectator, who asked great questions and forced me to think about and put into words why I came to Slovakia and why I keep coming back. She has transformed our discussion into an article that appeared in this week’s edition of the paper. The article itself is still subject to the paper’s one-week lock, but I will post it as soon as it is publicly available. In the meantime, I post below a transcript of our conversation below.–Kevin

What was your dream job when you were a teenager? Why did you go into political science, what did you find interesting about it?

My early career choices followed the fairly predictable trajectory from firefighter to astronaut and from there, in my teens, to astrophysics and aerospace engineering. But once I joined the debate team in secondary school it was not long before I became incurably addicted to economics and politics. I still love to look at the sky—and I would be ecstatic if my daughter or son chose a career in astronomy—but I have become ever more fascinated by the way that people struggle with each other here on earth. In particular, I am fascinated to try and figure out who is on what side and what they are really fighting about. I’m also interested in how this can change over time, sometimes without conscious effort, and sometimes because politicians succeed in reorienting the political struggle to play to their own strengths.

Where does your interest in Central Europe in particular and post-communist countries in general come from?

As a university student in the late 1980’s I had a vague interest in Communist systems, and I remember watching their collapse with some curiosity in the fall of 1989, but I never expected that those changes would be central to my life. In the spring of 1990, however, somebody at my university had the good luck to arrange an address by Vaclav Havel just before his address to a joint session of the US Congress. Havel invited my fellow students—I had to work and couldn’t go—to come to Czechoslovakia and teach. Since I had no better plan for after graduation—I had not yet been to Europe—I signed on to teach English for a year in Plzen, starting in the late summer of 1990. The result was another incurable addiction: since then I’ve made 20 trips back to the region and I would not be surprised if the next 18 years bring 20 more (especially if I can figure out some way to offset my carbon footprint and deal with the sinking American dollar).

What kind of international experience have you had so far in your academic career? Did you do any exchange stays as a student or later as a teacher?

I lived for more than a year in the Czech Republic—Plzen and Prague—and for almost two years in Slovakia—mainly in Karlova Ves, Ruzinov and other Bratislava suburbs. This year for the first time I am here with my entire family and we are enjoying living near downtown in the middle of everything. But I’ve also felt the need to get out of the capital and spend time across the country. Toward that end, I’ve had the good fortune to visit every kraj and nearly every okres in the country and nearly all of the 50 biggest cities and towns.

Outside of Slovakia, my research has taken me to universities and parliaments and polling stations across Europe, but there are still a few countries that have eluded me: particularly Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Moldova, Albania. With the recent declaration of independence by Kosova, the number of new countries in Europe has this year expanded faster than my ability to visit them all. I hope for a variety of reasons that this expansion does not become a trend.

How do you like the Comenius University so far? What do you think are the crucial differences between the Slovak and the US system of university education?

The faculty members in the political science department at Comenius University are a remarkable group of people and ever since I first set foot in the department back in 1994 I have found them unfailingly generous with their time and encouragement. And I am absolutely delighted to find that in addition to the well-established and internationally-known scholars who have chaired the department since I first arrived—Miroslav Kusy, Sona Szomolanyi and Darina Malova—the department has a new generation—Marek Rybar, Vlado Bilcik, and many others—whose work has found a worldwide audience in scholarly journals. I am looking forward to having a chance to work with them and to join them in the classroom to work with students, something I have not been able to do in Slovakia for a long time.

I suppose teaching is just a small part of your work. Anyway, what do you like about teaching?

I have the great good fortune to do what I love. My chosen profession allows me to spend large parts of each week thinking about the most interesting questions ever asked and then discussing those questions with intelligent, energetic young people who want to find the answers as much as I do. That is what I like about teaching. To my delight, somebody is willing me to pay me to encourage students’ enthusiasm, to broaden their perspectives, to sharpen their abilities, and to call on their sense of responsibility.

International exchange became an important part of one’s university education worldwide and it’s growing more and more popular in Slovakia as well. From your point of view, what are the benefits of international exchange for students, teachers and universities in general?

Every year I bring a group of students to Europe and every year I am newly amazed at their amazement. If we are really going to call ourselves “universities” then it is up to us to make sure that our students have access to as much of the universe as we can currently reach. T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets says it much better: “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.”

Of course somebody has to pay for all the exploring and that is not something that is easy for students or faculty members to do. Universities and governments have to step in include foreign study among their myriad priorities. (I am here, for example, with the financial help of my employer, Wayne State University, and my government’s remarkable Fulbright Scholarship program.).

Your research is focused on Slovakia and the Czech Republic to a large extent, judging from the research projects you’ve worked on so far and the book you wrote. For sure there are still many challenges to democracy in Slovakia, even 18 years after the revolution. What do you think are the main problems of Slovakia, in terms of political situation and other things included in your research? Are you optimistic about the future of democracy in Slovakia? Why?

There was a time when Slovakia’s political problems were exceptional, even for postcommunist Europe. That time is over, and Slovakia’s problems are now much more normal, at least by European standards. But “normal” does not mean unimportant or painless. In the political realm, I worry that government in Slovakia, might lose the ability to be truly responsive to its people’s needs and become ever more focused on media-driven, symbolic politics rather than the hard work of making compromises and finding innovative solutions. This is a problem in all democracies, but the problem has the potential to be worse here because Slovakia’s political parties have become so centralized. Parties across the political spectrum need to cultivate their local organizations and become more open to changes within the top leadership.

Nevertheless, I am hopeful. Indeed, I have been hopeful about Slovakia ever since I first came here to study the language and politics. Even when things were at their worst, I encountered people of good will and energy who demonstrated great courage in trying to make life better for others. I am proud that my earliest writings on Slovakia offered good reasons for expecting that the citizens of Slovakia would be able to mobilize against the abuse of political power and produce a government that upheld values of accountability and tolerance. I have also seen a broad commitment among Slovaks to a just society without extremes of rich and poor. It is an open question whether the country can manage to pursue both sets of goals at the same time. But Slovakia is not the only country that faces this question; my own country falls short of those same ideals.

According to your CV you speak Slovak and Czech. Is it just because of your research interests? Where did you learn these languages?

I spent a year teaching English in the Czech Republic without learning much Czech. When I came back as a researcher, I spent months remedying that situation by learning Slovak here in Bratislava. I will be forever grateful to the teachers at the Ustav jazykovej a odbornej pripravy (UJOP) and especially to Eva Maierova, the most generous teacher I have ever had in any subject. I also owe a great debt to the many Slovaks and Czechs who have patiently endured my efforts to master their languages, giving me the benefit of the doubt when I explained to them that I really did have ideas more sensible and complicated than my childish vocabulary would permit.

What are your plans after your stay at Comenius University is finished? Do you have any particular long-term goals (perhaps connected with Slovakia)?
Slovakia has become a part of me and I will keep coming back as long as I am welcome. (If anything, I am more tied to this place than ever now that my two small children have learned to love eletricky and halusky.) Slovakia is also central to my research, and what I learn in Slovakia I take back to professional circles. Slovakia continues to yield insights about problems that face most countries in the world: the ways that political leaders can shape the terms of debate, the difficulty of building national identities that acknowledge a common sense of belonging and yet accommodate differences, and the reasons why people sometimes vote for the kinds of leaders who would be happy to get rid of voting altogether. About two years ago I decided (along with many of my colleagues) that the closed and cumbersome academic publishing system was not well-suited to sharing my work with others and so I have started to post occasional thoughts on such questions online at www.pozorblog.com. Most of the posts are about the dynamics of public opinion in Slovakia but I have started to address bigger questions as well. How do you like Slovakia and Slovak people in general? Is there anything you think you will miss after leaving the country?

Whenever I come back to Slovakia I feel like I am coming home. I have no right to say such a thing—neither my citizenship nor my ethnic heritage explain my affinity for this country—but the feeling persists nevertheless. I’m sure my feelings have a lot to do with the beauty of Slovakia’s landscape, the richness of its history and politics, the liveliness of a walkable city like Bratislava (which I prefer to all but a few of its American counterparts) and the warmth and generosity of the people I gotten to know here. And bryndzove halusky. Especially bryndzove halusky.

Gnocchin’ on Heaven’s Door

pozorblog — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 07:47:13 +0000

My son Peter today, discussing dinner, invented a new pronunciation for the Slovak national dish:

“Daddy, I want more ha-le-lu-shskah.”

Halleluj(shsk)ah. With apologies to George Friedric Handel, who in Slovakia hasn’t felt that way.

Walkable Cities

pozorblog — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:07:44 +0000

I love Ferndale.

Ferndale, my home in the United States, is a lovely inner-ring suburb of about 21,000 people with housing stock built primarily between 1910 and 1940, fantastic municipal services, and wonderful people. It even has a great wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferndale,_Michigan. It is also a Michigan-designated Cool City and has received considerable attention as a fine example of the “new urbanism” that makes for attractive, inviting and ecologically-conscious places to live.

One of Ferndale’s main advantages its its walkability. A quick check with the ruler tool on Google Earth shows that my house is 1061 feet from a playground and recreation center, 2390 feet from a grocery store, 3480 feet from a coffee shop, 4463 feet from a library.

And yet, how much better from this perspective is the old new urbanism of Bratislava. I know there are many reasons for the difference and that there are places in the United States that are similar (much of the island of Manhattan, for example) but all factors aside, I am simply delighted at my good fortune to live in a place like the one we do now. The same Google Earth ruler gives the following remarkable distances from our front door to places we like to go (yes I know I should do this in meters, but I am not going to): 43 feet from a coffee house, 127 feet from the vegetable market, flower shop and sandwich shop, 149 feet from a Czech pub, 306 feet from a pizza place, 161 feet from a coffee house, 201 feet from small grocery store, 156 feet from the best bookstore in Slovakia, 330 feet from a pharmacy, 503 feet from the EU information center, 489 feet from a church with English-language services, 615 feet from the library, 949 feet from Bratislava’s English language bookstore. We could, quite literally, live for months without ever going more than 1000 feet from our apartment. Not that we will, since beyond that 1000 foot limit is a beautiful and vibrant city that I am again coming to know.

I love Bratislava.

Kevin

A plug for Drayton Avenue Cooperative Preschool (DACP) in Ferndale

pozorblog — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:22:04 +0000

For whatever reason, we are having a difficult time getting google to give a good page rank to the homepage of Elena’s and (presumably) Peter’s school–Drayton Avenue Cooperative Preschool (DACP), so I figured it would not hurt to throw a link in here:

http://draytonpreschool.googlepages.com

And it probably wouldn’t hurt to throw in the alternate link:

http://www.la.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/stuff/draytonpreschool.htm

We’ve enjoyed the school a lot and the parental involvement is fantastic (as it must be for a school like ours that is a true co-op).

Kevin

Bigger City Neighbors

pozorblog — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:09:55 +0000

(from a January 22 letter to my beloved next door neighbor, back “home” in Ferndale)

. . . I really like city life, although the one kind of weird thing is (one of many for me) is lack of interaction with neighbors. People are very private and reserved here. Kevin suggests that it has to do with living in close quarters with some residual effects from the whole former pressure of Communist era life in which one never really wanted one’s neighbors to know what happened in private. People really kept to themselves, and for many this way of living has stuck, except for those in their inner circle. For those in the inner circle the hospitality is remarkable (sometimes almost overwhelming. ) It all makes me really grateful that I have you next door in Ferndale, and that we have so many other kindly neighbors who are eager to connect. I know I need to give it more time. And I suppose the fact that I don’t speak the language and I that have the two loudest kids in the entire city might not help matters. Still, the whole dynamic makes me a little sad and lonely. You know me: I smile at everyone and want to connect. Alas, I have adjusted my expectations.

Other than this, I really like having the wonderful public transport, the walkable markets (I wish Ferndale’s Wide-A-Wake had stayed open). We pay more for our food, but why the heck shouldn’t we? We in the US we pay far less of our overall income for food than do most people.

The other thing that I secretly love about this place is the laundry. I am big into line/air drying. And it is the way it is done here. We have this high efficiency washer right in the bathroom (so convenient), smart drying racks and line options — so the job gets done and so far for me it is really pleasant. Proximity is key, I suppose. Anyway, I will be bringing back some clothespins for the Rasma line. (Please don’t let your husband take it down!!!)