Family Legacy …

The Junior Classics – 1938

As a genealogist, and many of Stanczyk’s readers are genealogists, we are of course leaving a legacy in our research. As a Polish-American, I also leave cultural legacies related to Thanksgiving or 4th of July or Easter or Christmas.

But I wanted share yet another personal legacy that I am sharing. You see those colorful books at the top of the blog? They are a series of ten books by COLLIER — The Junior Classics. It was a series of hardback books filled with stories & poems across a spectrum of genres from 1938!

My parents bought me this set as a child. I was not a good bibliophile as a child and our books became gradually marred. I kept one book (orange) of poems. The picture is of a set I was able to locate via the Internet and purchase to share with the children from  Teréza & my marriage. I wanted to share my love of reading with our children as my mother & father had done for me. So a legacy of reading, learning, and exploring and also a love for bound books … as anachronistic as that may be today or in the future. Thank God that someone else had preserved such a cultural treasure from the past — these books are 75 years old! I hope my and Tereza’s kids can maintain this legacy and the act of reading stories & funny onomapoeiatic poems to their children too.

That is a legacy that connects our generations.

P.S. – kids,  my favorite volumes were #1 & #3 and because of my father and his readings, also #10 .

Auld Lang Syne – 2013 — #HappyNewYear, #Poem, #AnnualBlog

Stanczyk is republishing his annual blog post:  Auld Lang Syne

Count your blessings my dear readers and take heart in that inventory.

So as we draw to a close this elder year 2013 AD, I take but a moments pause to wish my friends and good readers well and much happiness and wishes for a healthy and prosperous New Year.—

Verily, this jester says, “All Is Well, That Ends Well“. And 2013 has indeed ended well.

Let me endebt myself further and borrow again from the great bard to close out this year. In Shakespeare’s play, “All’s Well That Ends Well”, in the first Act, the first Scene is a quote that suits me well to use though I steal it from a woman’s lips:

That I should love a bright particular star
And think to wed it, she who is so above me:
In her bright radiance and collateral light.

My bright star is my much beloved wife, Teréza !

I love her so and our growing family and our friends too. Those who love her cannot be faulted for she is such a force of a nature and a wonder to behold. And those who fault her, do not know love. Theirs is a terrible loss indeed. Pity those fools for their jealousy and praise this jester for his steadfastness in the face of such folly. Bless my wife for her devotion made stronger and more holy for her mettle that was tempered by the trifles of miscreants.

I would like to thank my readers for another fine year. Reads of the blog are up another 15%;  This month is a record month of reads and that would not be so, without you. You, my good readers, are a part of that inventory of blessings that I have counted. Interact with me on Facebook, Twitter (@Stanczyk_), and/or LinkedIn too.

Those are my closing thoughts for 2013. Better #Genealogy in the coming year to all genealogists!

Happy New Year 2014 !

–Stanczyk

‘Twas A Very Putin Christmas … #Poem, #Politics, #Putin

‘Twas the night before Sochi and all thru the Gulag not a prisoner was stirring … Then Putin was visited thrice in succession by Shades of Olympics Past, Present & the Latter.

Then there arose up on the Kremlin with such a clatter:

“Go Green Peace, Khordorkovsky, out Pussy Riot, begone miscreants all … I’ve turned a new leaf!  Now Dash away, dash away all.”

Let there be cheap gas for the Ukraine and all will be well. Let the Patriarch ring our Christmas Bell, I have an Olympics to sell.

I will greet the US delegation with great, gay cheer … “What, Lindsay Graham is not here?”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/20/pussy-riot-khodorkovsky-vladimir-putin-russia

What Was I Thinking ? 2013 A Look Back … — #2013, #Muse, #Review

Stanczyk is of the age when I remember reading Art Buchwald ‘s Pulitzer Prize winning commentary columns. I was particularly fond of his annual columns that repeated every year (like his Thanksgiving column where Miles Standish became the more French/metric Kilometres Deboutish) — so today’s blog is an attempt to start an annual tradition of a look back … 2013.

Now how to recall my life and thoughts in 2013? How do I elaborate upon my thoughts / muses ?

Should  I summarize my blog posts? Recall major events? Highlight genealogical news? No! I had a brainstorm. I would review my year through TWITTER tweets; To be precise — just those tweets that I FAVORITED. Kind of a highlight of my best 140 characters in my twitter stream in 2013.

Why? Because I now want to propose that you my gentle-readers, also embark on this social experiment right along with me in 2014. This year I had no forethought. But next year, I want to capture the most compelling news stories or fascinating thoughts in science, religion, books, genealogy, etc.

Why FAVORITES? To limit the volume by sifting through the twitter stream. So I propose we use Twitter’s Favorite (star) and/or the tag:  #2014Review  to isolate just those tweets that we deem most worthy of saving/repeating  at the end of the year.

Why you too? Because it will make a fascinating social study for some scientist somewhere to study Cloud-Think. Or possibly years from now some Historian plowing through the Library of Congress who collects all of our tweets will want to study the history of our thought, our collective brain power.  What were they thinking?  Well future historians … here is what was on our minds.

Back to my 2013 Year in Review. I was stunned by the volume of tweets that I “Favorited“. I guess I never thought about it before. I had been using my “Favorites” to be my twitter stream book-marks so I could recall something later on. Well a quick scan told me that I favorited responses from followers, or my wife. I also seemed to be obsessed with the University of Michigan (#GoBlue). I also had a slight penchant for clever humor (that being humor that struck my funny bone) too. Scan my two PDF documents, perhaps you will find an interesting tweet that you had missed in 2013. You may even find a new Twitter account that you want to follow ( Stanczyk assumes you already follow @Stanczyk_   … correct?  If not, then do not let 2013 end without following my twitter stream.

I  created two PDF documents of the Tweet Favorites:  JAN-AUG (1.8MB size),    SEP-DEC (448K size)

Summary:

JAN – 100 tiny swarming robots @ Harvard,   iPhone 5s leaked images (arrives in Fall), French Court orders Twitter to release racist / Anti-Semitic users
FEB – PopSci – software that unveils the evolution of words, Pope Benedykt resigns (and the other 4 popes who resigned),
MAR – Gender Bias in US Visas, Ancestry.com Tweet to fix a bug (and they did!), OpenStack – Cloud Scalability
APR – Boston Marathon Bombing (Tsarnaew Saga), Louisville vs Michigan in Mens Basketball Final,
MAY – Oldest Known Torah Found, Genealogy Roadshow & UM 2013 Football Schedule Annonced
JUN – Patent Trolls  &  Turnip Truck (must have been a slow month)
JUL – The Internet Minute Infographic, Maurice Sendak‘s 1971 Yale Course, Forbes tweeted best companies for #STEM workers
AUG – Irish Poet, Translator Seamus Heaney died.; Oxford added to English language (Selfie). @MrMrs_ES was conceived.
SEP – All Tolstoy‘s works online, DISRUPTION in Management Consulting?,   Diana Nyad swims Cuba to USA
OCT – Tea Party Shutdown of government [Carrot Tree Kitchen defies shutdown]; Amazon to create 6,000 jobs in Poland;   14th Amendment – Shutdown Solution? Lincoln Quote on coffee/tea [humor]
NOV – “Thanksgivukkah“, Pope Francis revives/revitalizes chief-alms giver, Kepler telescope found 833 exo-planets before it failed,
DEC – Ukraine unrest over EU treaty delay, Foxconn to build plant in Pennsylvania, UM vs Kansas in BWWB on Dec 25

It looks like I did not FAVORITE a few things:

1. Mandela died
2. Prince George was born and subsequently baptised [very big in this blog]
3. Pope Francis is inaugurated March 19th  [Argentinean Cardinal]
4. Edward Snowden -release NSA data [June 2013]
5. US Government restarted
6. US Stock Market Highs
7. Higgs Boson Discovery confirmed / Peter Higgs gets Nobel Prize

Most were in blogs or Facebook or in Twitter Tweets – just not favorited. So it is with this new found self assessment that I enter into 2014 and I resolve to record my FAVORITEs (and/or use #2014Review) to attempt to capture the most important events throughout 2014. Oh, I will undoubtably use it for bookmarks and humor or so I can find UM Football Schedule too.  But I want to make a concerted effort to record current events for future historians from my eyes. How about you? Who is with me in this, Cloud-Think meme and will FAVORITE their tweets (or tag them #2014Review)?

Happy Holidays and a Happy Healthy & Prosperous New Year to you,  my readers!

Thank you for making 2013 the most-read year so far for this blog — there were over 21,000 reads in 2013 alone!

Online Inventory of ŚwiętoKrzyskie Parish Books

Wordless Wednesday …