Sunday, May 29, 2011

CIM trashed?

Copies of this “trashed” sign have been posted in various places in Irvine Valley College’s BSITC building.

I don’t know who posted the signs.

Also posted were all of the certificate brochures on one of the vacated office windows marked up and crossed-out with Xs and text.

Obviously, this concerns the program in Computer Information Management—of the School of Business Sciences. Recently, the school has suffered an unusual faculty loss owing to retirement.

One hears also of an audit of CIM curriculum. Trouble? One senses that significant changes are occurring—under the radar and yet with the usual blunt approach.

Let us know what you know.

“You must not take pictures”

A magnificent old structure--and two chained watchdogs (click on graphic to enlarge)
     Anybody with half a brain can see that Pomerania—once the eastern extreme of Germany; since 1945 the northwestern section of Poland—is haunted.
     Today, we took an excursion from the seaside resort town of Kolobrzeg along the coast to Wolin, a small town at the south end of the island by that name.
     My mother’s mother was from Wolin. Little is known about her. She died tragically in 1934, when my mother was a year old, in Stettin, south of Wolin. Her husband, my mother’s father, himself died tragically five years later, also in Stettin.
     This morning, on our way west in our Opel, we came across a small town with a magnificent church. I walked clear around the enormous building, attempting to keep a low profile, for dozens of parishioners surrounded it, owing to some sort of ceremony. I walked about the town, too. It was beautiful; evidently, the buildings were untouched by the war and the notorious Russian advance/German retreat of 1945.

A path near the beach: Kolobrzeg, on the Baltic
My dad on the Baltic shore, earlier today
Spectacular countryside; beautiful roads
Small town, magnificent church

     Owing to an error on one of our maps, we at first went to a town way up on the Baltic coast. There, we met an old Pole near a graveyard who explained our error and directed us south to the real Wolin. We thanked him, and off we went. (He had family in Chicago, he said. But he had lost track of them.)
     On our way south, I happened upon a remarkable old building that seemed to serve as a farmhouse. (See top photo; click on it.) Oddly, it was guarded by two tied-up dogs, though only one of them barked. “Hello Pup,” I kept saying to the barking dog, who didn't seem angry. I took some pictures.
     After a few seconds, a young man of perhaps seventeen bolted from the nearby farmhouse (the building at left). He ran straight up to me. I said, “I was just admiring your beautiful building.”
     But he did not listen. In broken English, he said something like, “You must not take pictures.”
     “I mustn’t take pictures?”
     “No, you must not take pictures of this. You must stop now. Now go.”
     “OK,” I said.

* * *
Wolin's Catholic cemetery

     About a half hour later, we were in Wolin, which is a small town with a large church. We drove about. The town is situated next to some wonderful forested hills. I drove toward them. We were looking for the “old graveyard,” hoping to see gravestones of my grandmother or of any of her family, the Sternkes.
     I spoke with one man who spoke neither German nor English. I gestured, using a digging motion, and he seemed to grasp what we were looking for. He headed us toward a hill in the beautiful forested area, but that turned out to be an archeological dig for medieval tombs. No one was around.
     Eventually, I happened upon a marvelous cemetery surrounded by an old fence. It was open. Once inside, we looked for older gravestones, but, though some seemed very old, those were illegible. All of the others dated to burials after 1945. The names were all Polish, none German. It was, of course, a Catholic cemetery (virtually all Poles are Catholic; most of the earlier Germans were Lutheran).
     I tried to find someone who could answer my questions: were there any pre-45 gravestones? Was there an old Jewish cemetery? (It has been suggested—but perhaps it has also been debunked—that my grandmother was Jewish. Not sure.) But no one we met spoke good enough English or German to communicate with us, and time was running out.
     We headed back to Kolobrzeg.
     The countryside of old West Pomerania is spectacularly beautiful. It is very green, sparsely populated, and peppered with thick, beautiful forests. Spectacular forests, full of light and shadow.
     It is impossible to look at them and not think of spirits.

Endless tree-enshrouded roads: somehow eerie
A bleak Soviet-era structure amid the beauty of Pomeranian hills and farms
Pomeranian driftwood

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "who knows what the earth's in the mood to eat"



The semantics of flowers on Memorial Day
by Bob Hicok

Historians will tell you my uncle
wouldn't have called it World War II
or the Great War plus One or Tombstone

over My Head
. All of this language
came later. He and his buddies
knew it as get my ass outta here

or fucking trench foot and of course
sex please now. Petunias are an apology
for ignorance, my confidence

that saying high-density bombing
or chunks of brain in cold coffee
even suggests the athleticism

of his flinch or how casually
he picked the pieces out.
Geraniums symbolize secrets

life kept from him, the wonder of
variable-speed drill and how
the sky would have changed had he lived

to shout it’s a girl. My hands
enter dirt easily, a premonition.
I sit back on my uncle’s stomach

exactly like I never did, he was
a picture to me, was my father
looking across a field at wheat

laying down to wind. For a while,
Tyrants’ War and War of World Freedom
and Anti-Nazi War skirmished

for linguistic domination. If
my uncle called it anything
but too many holes in too many bodies

no flower can say. I plant marigolds
because they came cheap and who knows
what the earth’s in the mood to eat.

*

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...