Gentle Readers, Please Keep This in Mind

 Dear Gentle Readers,  

 

I no longer have any home internet access.

 

I can access the internet only in public places. I am in a public place now.

 

My ability to accomplish anything in public places is limited.

 

I am a lifetime workaholic and I have spent much of my working years doing the kind of manual labor that a blue-collar child of Eastern European, peasant immigrants does. I have been a cleaning woman, a live-in domestic servant, a cashier, landscaper, carpenter, door-to-door canvasser, exam reader, tutor, zoo keeper, pet sitter …

 

But I've spent almost all of my life reading and writing. Certainly I spent my years as a graduate student and as an adjunct professor hunched over books, student papers, and computer screens.

 

I now am disabled when it comes to this work. I have a chronic pain condition and I need physical therapy, serious prescription medicine, and mechanical support to read a book, to write anything, and certainly to work at a computer, and I can't access what I need to function when using computers in a public place, so the amount of time I can spend computing in a public space is limited to perhaps thirty minutes on a good day. In any case, the nearest – safe – public library is miles away from where I live and I'm lucky if I can make it there once a week.

 

Paterson has a public library. It's a lovely, antique building constructed in better days. It's on Martin Luther King Way and near the intersection with Rosa Parks Boulevard. Lots of shootings there. I almost never go to that building. I hope and pray that the day comes when it is safer, and when Patersonians make different decisions about their lives.

 

Twenty years ago, I had, and could afford, an Earthlink dial-up home connection. If I remember correctly, it cost me about $20 monthly. I also had, and could afford, a landline phone. After Earthlink disappeared, I shared an internet connection with a near neighbor. She had the account, and I paid her a, to me, affordable portion of her bill. She moved, and I began sharing with another person. That deal has similarly ended, and I can't afford to pay for my own home account.

 

Yes, I go to public places to check on things, but that ability is limited by the above-mentioned factors.

 

For blog readers specifically, I say the following. I have wanted nothing more in my life than to do the work I've done in my publications and on this blog. I want to educate as many people as possible about Poland and Polonia, and about why the Brute Polak stereotype is wrong.

 

For the most part, I have done all this for free. I have gone several winters, in Indiana, of all places, without heat. I have gone without health care, which damaged my body. I was repeatedly told I was the wrong ethnicity, the wrong politics, the wrong social class, the wrong skin color, the wrong religion – yes – in these words exactly – to be considered for a tenure-track job. Polonia tsk tsked, but offered, again, for the most part, no support. I've lived my entire life well below the poverty line. Tsk, tsk.

 

I don't mention these facts for pity. Internet pity is worthless. And believe me Poles will just tell you to quit yer whinin'. I offer these facts because, Polonia, you ask why your story is so rarely told. Your story is rarely told, my dears, because you don't, for the most part, support those who do the telling.

 

And here I am, someone, who, in however small a way, tried to tell your story, and I can't, now, afford something as simple as a home internet connection to get even a word of that story out.

 

On a more practical level, please know the following:

 

I will, alas, be slower to respond to any messages you send me or your comments on posts here. I wish I could respond more quickly. Verbal communication, whether written or oral, in person or via international deep sea cables, means a great deal to me. When someone says something to me, it keeps me awake nights if I can't respond in a timely manner.

 

Please forgive me if I am slow to respond to you, or if I don't respond at all. Please keep all of the above in mind.

 

I very much do want to post others' work on this blog. A couple of people have written to me asking me to post their work. I want to do that!

 

Anyone reading this, if you have material appropriate for this blog, please send it to me.

 

Please do the following:

 

Send it in absolutely FINISHED format. Do not ask for editorial changes after it appears.

 

Send it in Times New Roman or Arial font. No added spaces between paragraphs. Don't use italics or bold. Use quotes around titles rather than italics. Double spaced. Send as a WORD or compatible attachment.

 

Thank you. Trzymaj sie.

 

Facebook darlings: I will post this on Facebook as well. Please read the above post before responding, and note that I have no home internet access. I will most probably not see your posts, or be able to respond to them. In the limited time I have in public internet-access places, I am handling emails from doctors, from insurance companies, etc. I would love to chat with you, as I have done for years, but those days are now gone. I apologize for not being able to engage in a back-and-forth conversation with you, or to read the private messages you have sent, or to read and respond to them slowly. Without an internet connection, we are no longer audible to each other. USPS still works. Be understanding. Thanks.

 

 

Muhammad: A Critical Biography by Robert Spencer. Book review.

 

Muhammad: A Critical Biography by Robert Spencer
Americans must read this book

 

Over a year ago, a political figure permitted me to participate in a private discussion site dedicated to the output of a group of prominent journalists, scholars, political operatives, and public servants. Some of the men and women in this group had written bestsellers, managed campaigns, worked in the White House for Republican presidents, or commanded troops. Some were practicing and others were lapsed Catholics; some were proud Jews, dedicated to Israel.

 

At the discussion site, I was just one commentor among thousands, but every now and then one of the celebrities whose work we were commenting on would respond to one of my posts. These "brushes with greatness" delighted me.

 

Over a year later, I received an email that sent a chill through me. The sender was a beautiful young white woman with a great head of hair. Her online bio ironically states, "My passion is helping humans understand one another — and the world around them." In her two-hundred-word reprimand, she quoted and analyzed my posts. She informed me that she had deleted my posts and would not allow me to speak for the next thirty days. If I sinned again, I would be permanently silenced. She accused me of posting thoughts that were not "kind" and not "true."  

 

You think I would have learned.

Desert Fathers; Tish Harrison Warren; Jen Hatmaker; Tony 2026 book and movie reviews

Desert Fathers; Tish Harrison Warren; Jen Hatmaker; Tony 2026 book and movie reviews 

What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience by Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren was published by Convergent, an imprint of Random House, on May 12, 2026. It is 192 pages long. Warren is 47 years old, married, and the mother of three. For her previous two books, Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night, Warren has won two Christianity Today awards, as well as an Intervarsity Press Readers' Choice award, and an Evangelical Christian Publishers Association Christian Book of the Year award.

 

What Grows in Weary Lands argues that the Desert Fathers and Mothers offer guidance to Christians today. These Fathers and Mothers retreated to monastic desert lives in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in the third century AD. Their wisdom is available to modern readers via a collection titled Sayings of the Desert Fathers. In spite of this title, the collection includes quotes by Desert Mothers as well.

Questions for Muslim Candidates

 

Questions for Muslim Candidates

No more softball

 

The essay, below, briefly discusses how the Judeo-Christian tradition affected American democracy. It summarizes how Protestant America reacted to Catholic candidates. It ends with questions that should be put to Muslim candidates.

 

Part One: A Brief Look at the Impact of America's Judeo-Christian Foundation.

Jakub Różalski – Warsaw Uprising

Jakub Różalski – Warsaw Uprising 2016. 

Today marks the 82nd anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. At exactly 5:00 PM—"W-Hour"—on August 1, 1944, the armed struggle to liberate the capital from German occupation began. The Uprising was part of Operation Tempest (*Akcja Burza*), conducted by the Home Army; its goal was to strike against the Germans before the Red Army arrived and to have the legitimate structures of the Polish Underground State assume authority in the liberated areas 

At this same time every year, Warsaw comes to a standstill for a minute to pay tribute to the insurgents and the city's civilian population. The sound of sirens serves as a reminder of their courage, suffering, and the tragic price paid in the fight for freedom 

Interestingly, the artwork by Kuba Różalski presented today was created a decade ago, yet it remains a powerful symbol of the dramatically unequal clash between the insurgents and the overwhelming war machine of the Nazi regime.

#PolishMastersofArt

The Chronicle of Lerna by Michal Karski

 The Trojan War has been over for many years and the glorious city of Troy is just a memory, but the anti-Trojan propagandists are still at work. There are people who fought with Agamemnon’s army who are intent on justifying Achaean aggression. The truth of what really happened at Troy is already being manipulated for political ends.

At his peaceful home overlooking the bay of Argos, the poet Linos of Lerna, who was with the Argives at Troy and served for a time as Agamemnon’s personal chronicler, decides to set the historical record straight.

Available at Amazon here

The excerpt, below, is interesting! Thank you to Michal for sharing it. 

Here is an excerpt from the ending of Chapter Two. The poet Linos is talking to his helper, Glaukos:

"As for the story of the Trojan campaign, you and I both know, my boy, that the spur for Agamemnon’s enterprise was primarily the lust for conquest and booty and an opportunistic land-grab at the expense of the isolated Trojans. Helen’s abduction may have been the motivation for Menelaus himself, but it only served as a convenient pretext for Agamemnon.

Of course, the entire thing is now being painted by Menelaus and his acolytes as some kind of mythical quest of divine origin, with the abduction of Helen coming to the fore and increasingly being proposed as the one and only legitimate cause for the Achaeans to make war on the wealthy city of Troy with its fertile lands and its world-famous horses.

But the Spartan propagandists and spinners of Menelaus are also engaged in something quite sinister. They are already doing their utmost to try to shift the blame for the war onto the Trojans. The perpetrator is beginning to blame the victim. The glaring example that springs immediately to mind is the expression ‘Trojan Horse’.

 

How so, sir?

 

Think about it, Glaukos. The famous Trojan Horse. The wooden horse was constructed by the Achaeans and was left on the Trojan shore. Should it not be called the Achaean Horse or the Argive Horse or the Danaan Horse? Or perhaps the Horse of Odysseus, after the man who thought of it, or the Horse of Epeius after the actual architect?

No, the revisionists at the court of Menelaus have successfully labelled it a ‘Trojan Horse’, supposedly on the grounds that it was built in Troyland of Trojan wood. What they are actually doing, of course, is subtly and deliberately trying to conflate victim and aggressor. Any surviving Trojans who hear the story of the ruin and burning of Troy will recall not only the horror of the desperate fighting and carnage and atrocities committed upon the civilians of Troy, not to mention the total devastation and destruction of the city, but they will also suffer the added indignity of having the engine of their destruction labelled as ‘Trojan’.

 And, judging by the frequency of the use of this phrase by now – I had to remonstrate with that minstrel fellow for using it – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this expression becomes the generally accepted shortcut in future ages.

 

I had never considered that, venerable sir.

 

Thersites was one of those who understood the value of propaganda quite early on. “In the long run, propaganda can be more effective than a sword-thrust,” was one of his maxims. We may be fighting a losing battle against the revisionists of Menelaus, but fight we must, Glaukos. We owe it to the inhabitants of Troy, who may not have had a perfect society, but who certainly did not start the war nor do they deserve the kind of denigration which is being heaped upon them by the victors.

There were certainly xenophobes among them, and far be it from me to defend the indefensible, but on the whole, they were no more and no less xenophobic than any other society of the region. Far be it from me to be an apologist for injustice and I did, after all, take part in the campaign against them, because we all believed they had transgressed against the gods by abducting Helen, and I was one of the many among us who believed that much more should have been done by way of diplomacy, but I am not biased either for them or against them.

I can understand that Menelaus might want to present some kind of justification for his own and his brother’s actions, but aggression must be called out for what it is and no amount of revision will disguise that and no amount of myth-making can convince posterity that the Trojans were the architects of their own downfall or somehow deserve to be collectively slandered, much less deserved to be obliterated in the first place."

The Odyssey of Christopher Nolan Movie Review

 

The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan

 

One movie lover's response