As you walk into this mysterious place with high-brow decor and velvet sofas, you begin to wonder what exactly you are doing here.

You walk to the counter and you know that whatever money is in your wallet will not be there in just a few minutes. Unsettled, you give your hard-earned money to an ungrateful young lady behind the counter. This is not satisfying already, so how can this possibly help you relax? But you need more than relaxation; you have been craving eight hours of sleep for a long time.

Sure, a hot-oil massage sounds nice every once in awhile, but it is not always in the budget. You will find yourself spending more time on how much you spent at the spa then actually thinking about relaxation. That kind of stress does not make for a restful night, and may even add to your insomnia.

If you are feeling constant restlessness, certainly paying top dollar at a spa will not allay any sleeping problems that you are having. Almost all of the products that they use at these places can be purchased at a lower cost in other locations.

If you have ever been thinking about trying aroma therapy, there is quite a simple way to go about it. One way would be to head to your nearby spa, wait in a posh waiting room until someone decides they are ready to see you, and then be brought into a dark room that smells like a cheap perfume factory. There is nothing personal about this place, and furthermore, the snooty attitude is a bit too much to take.

There is nothing that quite compares to feeling relaxed in your own home. When the evening rolls around, you might want a nice hot cup of tea, light some candles, draw a bath. Finally, when you start to feel a little bit sleepy, but know that you have been having some trouble sleeping the past few nights, all you have to do is mist. Have a wonderful time spritzing your pillows and bed sheets with high quality sleeping mist, and breathe in the gentle scents they bring.

Ease into a deep slumber, simply by breathing in these pleasant aromas. Doesn’t it feel good to just drift off into rapid eye movement with such wonderful smells? Free from the crowds and the stuffy atmosphere, a calm and soothing place is truly in the comfort of your own home.

I think you would agree that two of the greatest smells that help in calming are lavender and green apple vanilla. Both of these fragrances bring a sense of peace, which then aid in the sleeping process. The more tranquil you feel while lying in your bed, the chances of you sleeping soundly vastly increase.

Leave the attitude back at the spa, and delve into a great deal of me time. The money you save can be used for that extra dessert, that sexy little dress, or an evening out with the girls. So, pull up the purse strings and relax!



By: Sherry Harris

About the Author:

How to Disappear… Alcatraz Style

Those of you who recognize my name know that I am a skip tracer, one who finds people; however, more interesting, I teach people how to disappear. About a year ago, I met up with some famed Hollywood Producers about creating a show about me finding people who have disappeared - titled Missing.

The producers were interested in doing cases where it was possible the missing people maybe alive. Like Whitey Bulger leader of the Winter Hill Gang, DB Cooper skyjacker and bank robber, Lord Lucan British high society and suspected murderer, Moana Pozzi Italian porn star. Out all the cases that were kicked around they were interested in brothers Clarence & JW Anglin the famed escape from Alcatraz, made popular by Clint Eastwood in his portrayal of Frank Lee Morris one of the escapees.

My attitude was negative I figured there is no way the Anglins or Morris made it out the dark waters with their makeshift rafts, boy was I wrong. Therefore, the journey of locating the Anglin brothers begins, I started my search by locating family.

The Anglin name is somewhat of a common southern name, most searches on line brought me to IMDB.com the movie site that linked the movie Escape from Alcatraz. I located an old book written titled Riddle of the Rock by Don Denevi, an interesting book that discusses the escape in detail - unlike the movie that simplified the break out.

The theory is that Bumpy Johnson a notorious Harlem mob boss assisted in the escape by having a boat out in the bay waiting for the escapees. However when I did my research on Bumpy Johnson he had no power left and no money to finance such a feat. In addition, the environment on the rock was hostile, amongst the different ethnic groups, though some believe that the escape plan united the groups and kept it a secret from the guards.

The vital hope amongst the prisoners was that if the escapees made it out alive, they perhaps would shine light on the horrible conditions in Alcatraz. The big house was filled with small cells, no exercise and high carbohydrate diets to keep the inmates lazy although the Warden allowed painting on canvas.

After days of spinning my skip tracing wheels, I was unsuccessful in locating any of the Anglin family members. Sometimes when one skip traces the simple things are forgotten. I finally hit www.ancestry.com and start posting that I am a writer searching for Anglin family members. A few days later, I get an email from a woman who knows the oldest brother and patriarch of the family. I will refer to him as Man a family nickname.

I dial Man’s cell phone number and an easy southern voice answers. I tell him my story that I am working with some producers who want to do a TV show about his brothers. Of course, I leave out the part that we are looking to capture them. Man agrees to meet me at a nearby Arby’s restaurant the following day.

The next day I arrive at the Arby’s restaurant about forty minutes early, checking out the scene. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Man or other family members. When you’re a skip tracer being paranoid at times is your best tool. The paranoia can keep you one-step ahead. After assessing that, all was cool I walk in a sit down, shortly after walks in the kindest looking person I ever met, Man brother to JW and Clarence.

As Man was sitting down, he asked if I was going to make him rich and famous, I laughed. Although Man was not joking, he told me how the media pretty much used him and spit him out. He told me everyone else made money off his brother’s infamy but the Anglin family never received a dime from books, TV shows and movies made. My answer was simple, how bout we start with a cup of coffee I am buying. Man smiled, he preferred bottle water.

I wanted to know about the brothers, how they found themselves in a place like Alcatraz. Clarence and JW robbed a bank in Alabama, what most people do not realize is a third brother was with them and the supposed ringleader Alfred Anglin. Man told me that Alfred was always in trouble and prior to the bank robbery in Alabama Alfred was on the lamb for several years living in the middle of Florida working a farm picking fruit and vegetables.

While hiding out in Florida Alfred fell in love with a sixteen-year-old beauty named Jeanette. Like Romeo and Juliet it was a forbidden love, the couple crossed the state line and married.

Not far from the Arby’s restaurant is a small graveyard with Alfred’s headstone and an old photo of Alfred and Jeanette announcing their marriage for all to see, quite brazen for a man on the run. That was just the way Alfred was, he feared nothing and wanted to give his new bride more in life so he devised a plan.

While Alfred was picking fruit under the hot Florida sun, Clarence was working a road gang somewhere around Ft. Meyers. Turns out Clarence’s mother Rachel and another of her sons’ went to visit Clarence in the jail. Clarence told them not to come next week that he would be visiting them at home. The mother and brother shrugged it off to Clarence’s usual banter.

The following week, Clarence true to his word escaped the road gang with two other prisoners. Clarence was barefoot and made his way up the Gulf Coast, wading and swimming for more than sixty miles.

Man told me that Clarence and JW were thick as thieves and since childhood, they had a unique way of communicating between each other, secret destination to meet up at, phone calls with certain amount of hang-ups determined locations. JW received such a message and met up with Clarence when he escaped the Florida road gang and took him to stay with Alfred on the farm. Farm life was no life for Clarence, he had a tough edge to him and preferred easy money for the day as opposed to a weekly paycheck also picking fruit never paid that much.

The plan, Man told me that originally, Clarence and Alfred were going to rob the bank in Alabama, and originally JW wanted no part of the crime. JW was a ladies man, sharp dressed and loved fast cars. A fast car was needed for the bank robbery, JW refused to lend his car and eventually decided that he would go along and drive the getaway car. What the brothers did not know was Alabama supposedly still had the death penalty for bank robbery.

My meetings with Man became weekly, more like a Tuesday with Morrie but in an Arby’s sipping bad coffee and him the usual water. Man was always cautious about how he answered my questions; in his late seventies, he was sharp. One time he was bold and told me he had to watch what he said, he didn’t want to get in any type of trouble. Not sure, what he meant I pushed on, but his big southern smile always brought the conversation to another topic.

In another meeting with Man, he implied that I might be a US Marshal trying to capture his brothers and wanted to know if I was wired. I told him I was not, he asked me to take off my shirt and prove it to him. That afternoon in the Arby’s I stood and took off my shirt as the patrons looked at me as if I was crazy. Man, pulled out a business card of a US Marshal, forty years after the escape the US Marshals actually approached Man and asked him to take a polygraph test. They picked him up from his small lot where several trailers housed Man and a few siblings. The Marshal drove him to an office asked him thirteen questions, drove him back home and never discussed the results of the test.

The bank robbery, JW drives his brother up to the bank door. Clarence and Alfred enter the bank a toy gun is used a woman near faints. The two brothers stop the robbery and give her a glass of water - about 19k is stolen. Eventually the brothers are apprehended in Ohio. Less than 600 were spent from the loot. All three brothers were found guilty. Alfred was sent back to Atlanta since he owed the state time for his prior escape. JW and Clarence went to Leavenworth and eventually Alcatraz because of a foiled escape.

Fast forward Alcatraz June 11, 1962 Allen West the mastermind behind the Alcatraz escape is unable to exit his cell, JW, Clarence and Frank Lee Morris escape into the dark waters supposedly never to be seen again.

After the escape, Man told me that he was visiting Alfred in the penitentiary and in the prison bathroom Alfred said he received a message from Clarence and that he knew where the brothers were holed up and he was going to break out and meet up with the pair. Alfred true to his words attempted to escape prison only to be killed by electrocution.

Long after the Alcatraz, escape there have been several sightings and assumed correspondence from JW and Clarence. The smoking gun by Hollywood standards would be a postcard that arrived one day from Brazil, written in Clarence’s writing. Every year on the mother’s birthday, she received two dozen red roses with unsigned cards. The roses stop upon her death.

At times Man would open up and bring me closer to a world he shared with no one, not even his own siblings. They joke about if anyone knew the whereabouts, Man would know. I asked to see the postcard from Brazil, however, a week later Man told me the card is gone no one can find it. I offered him twenty thousand dollars just to look at the mysterious correspondence. Man smiled and again in that polite southern voice - it was misplaced.

Some years ago, Unsolved Mysteries did a segment about the Anglin brothers; I had the good fortune of meeting the Director of that segment who was now one of the producers I was working with. We flew together to meet up with the US Marshal that worked the tips from Unsolved Mysteries.

1. A woman called in claiming to have met Clarence Anglin after the escape at a barbecue. She claimed he was with a teen girl named Rachel, strangely enough that was the name of the Anglins mothers. The woman claimed that she also visited the home of Clarence in Georgia and mentioned particular features about Clarence that only would have been recognized in person.

2. In the same area of Georgia, a bank was robbed and the MO was similar to the Anglin bank robbery in Alabama. What is so interesting is the Georgia bank robbery is in the same town where the Anglins hail from. Mike the producer told me when he was shooting the Unsolved Mysteries segment he had the wanted posters of Clarence and JW faxed to a hotel managers office, the manager remarked that the faces looked like the guy who robbed the bank a few years back in Georgia.

3. The US Marshal met with another woman who claimed she was on her father’s ranch in Texas when several men showed up who were assisting a man being smuggled into Mexico. Her father claimed it was one of the Anglin brothers.

4. We learned that only a few years back the US Marshals received a tip that one of the Anglin brothers was in Brazil. The US Marshals went down to Brazil and got a confirmation from a local bartender that one of the brothers was there. Eventually the trail went cold.

Mike and I eventually made our way to meet Man but first stopped in a local diner. We started talking with a few locals, one specifically who knew the family well. He told us what most people do not know is that one of the Anglin siblings was out in California during the escape and not far from the rock - information not in the FBI file.

The FBI file is an interesting piece of work, the attitude is summed up that most likely the trio drowned in the bay. Across the bay was a community of people known as the colony, these were family members of inmates locked up in Alcatraz. There is no record of the FBI ever speaking to members of the colony.

We picked Man up and he gave us a grand tour of where the Anglins grew up, from back woods swimming holes, to back roads where JW raced his Thunderbird. Man told stories of JW being a ladies man, dressing like a fancy preacher, Clarence being tough as nail and Alfred, well Alfred was just destined for trouble. Mike and I were hoping to get that smoking gun it never came.

Either way Hollywood passed on my show titled Missing, to them there was no smoking gun. The secret of Clarence and JW still hide behind the kind smile of a gentle man named Man. Through my search, I learned of things that are best left unsaid, things that imply or point to the strong possibilities of life after Alcatraz for JW and Clarence.

To me it was a great experience to dive so deep in the world of such a mystery - that will never be solved or at least not yet! That was the last time I saw Man and that’s how you disappear Alcatraz style.

Frank M. Ahearn

www.disappear.info



By: Frank M. Ahearn

About the Author:

Just fifty years ago, Sugar Land, Texas was a tiny hamlet that had grown up as a company owned town. Developed as a residential community to support the Imperial Sugar Company, it was not until 1959 that it became a city under law. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the city grew - but not in the haphazard way that many cities expanded during those years of growth.

Instead, the city’s government worked closely with developers to create master planned communities that offered amenities like golf courses, public parks and greenbelts, clubhouses and fitness centers. By the 1990s, the area had garnered a well-deserved reputation as one of the best places to live in Fort Bend County.

That’s when things really started happening for Sugar Land. In the last half of the 1990s, the population grew by 158%, making it the fastest growing county in Texas. As before, much of the growth was in master planned communities, offering lake front home sites, luxurious new custom homes and beautiful landscaping along with community amenities that created a quality of life that was hard to match in any other community. Swimming pools and tennis clubs, golf courses, hiking trails and community gardens contributed to the outdoor recreational lifestyle made possible by the wonderful climate.

By the year 2000, the rest of the country began to take notice of tiny Sugar Land, and year after year the affluent Houston suburb has been ranked among the best places to live in the US. Among the honors that have been heaped on Sugar Land are:

- Outstanding Achievement in the City Livability Awards, 2007

- Fittest City in Texas (22,000-99,000 population) Texas Round-up Governor’s Challenge 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007

- Award of Merit American Society of Landscapers and Architects (for achievement in Planning and Analysis) 2007

- Gold Certificate Award to the City of Sugar Land and Fort Bend Independent School District 2007

- #1 in 100 Best Communities for Young People from America’s Promise - The Alliance for Youth 2006

Business Week Top 25 Best and Most Affordable Suburbs in the US 2006

- CNN Money and Money Magazine’s Third Best Place to Live in America 2006

- Best of the Best in Standard of Living, Education, Health and Safety and Lifestyle by Best Places to Raise Your Family: The Top 100 Affordable Communities (Wylie 2006)

The list goes on and on, but the message is unmistakable. It is the kind of city, to quote Business Week, “that most families dream about but can rarely find - within their budget”.

The Place offers a lifestyle and way of living that is almost impossible to find in a community of its size. The crime rate is among the lowest in the nation; the job growth rate among the highest. The cost of living is low and the quality of life is high. The community continues to grow as industries take heed of awards from publications like Business Week naming it as one of the top cities in America for business relocation.

While many of the oldest homes here are still standing and occupied, handed down from generation to generation, new construction is keeping pace with the population growth. Most Sugar Land new homes are located in the master planned communities, including some of the oldest and most established subdivisions. Sugar Land new homes range in price from $230k to over $1 million, and your housing dollar stretches much further here than it does in many other parts of the country.

New home construction is an even mix of upscale townhomes and single family homes on beautifully landscaped home building sites. Buyers can choose from “production homes” created from established home plans by the best new home builders in Fort Bend County, or work with builders to create a custom build luxury home that is specifically designed with their own family in mind.

Sugar Land offers luxury living in a close-knit community, where diversity is valued and young people are vital, where the amenities that most would love but can’t afford are a part of everyday life and where family and community are an important part of life.

Those who choose to build new homes here enjoy all the benefits of living in a small town community that values culture, arts, recreation and education along with all the advantages of being within twenty miles of a major metropolitan city. World class dining, entertainment and shopping are just a stone’s throw from the serenity and beauty of a city that was planned for nature and man to live in harmony.



By: Tim Dillard

About the Author:

“Sixteen-hundred miles away and still strong” those words, that small group of seven, said not for a love poem or any romantic relationship, but used to describe my relationship with Kevin, my greatest comrade. Beginning with first grade, the year of our relationship’s establishment, Kevin had moved in from Providence, a place that I knew well having grownup there a little. Both new to the school that year, we conversed and found our personalities similar; today, roughly eleven years later, we spend every weekend at my house.

Never failing, this redhead boy, Kevin, spends another weekend at my house to just chill-out. “Dave,” me, “Have any more of those hydros lying around?” When he says “hydros”, he means the fireworks I possess with a little more kick than your average firecracker. Typically, we would gather up empty bottles to bring with us to a clear area, dropping the lit fireworks in, letting them detonate in-air. Occasionally, when we found some, we would bring a few old toys the children in the neighborhood didn’t want anymore, stick a hydro in its midpoint, watching the single unit materialize into several fragments. Once the party-favors died down, us laughing all the way, we would go to a local store for some Pepsi and, Kevin’s favorite, Salt ‘n Vinegar chips then make our way back to my house for ear-blasting entertainment via my computer’s sound system.

Feeling a need to stay indoors, our interaction and activities with the “nature,” summed in one word, would be minute. Spending our time instead on more mental challenges such as where did that backup copy of Apache’s httpd.conf go to? or Kevin’s favorite conundrum, Dude, want me to see if I can cook instead of your dad tonight? to which the answer always was a definite yes. Being a programmer, I always had tasks or studies to accomplish, along with the latest hardware and software to boot. I’d be on my main computer that I built from scratch only a couple of months prior, while Kevin would be messing around and learning with one of my other numerous computers I had lying around, waiting to be put back in commission.

Once night fell, our time had not ended; Kevin enjoyed this time the most, game time. Lights dead, volume blazing, hordes of enemies slashed through walls and obstacles, jetting across the virtual room causing us to jump at the sheer sound of their existence. Taking turns on every death, the both of us would choose a game and combat until our demise. Kevin originally loved Doom 3, especially around midnight; however, I eventually hooked him on my favorite game, Counter-Strike: Source.

Sense birth Kevin and I lived in Rhode Island; however, due to hard times in my family, my family moved into Kentucky. Though we are miles away, we still enjoy our friendship like any other day; we are just limited in activities. Sometimes Kevin calls up to play a game with me and we would connect our systems together while shooting each other and just talk about what has been happening in our lives. Sometime he would talk about how happy he has become now that he lives with his father or how much has changed in the year and a half it has been since I have been home. I always find myself talking about how much I wish I was back and how we would hang out as soon as we could or sometimes about my web-consulting job opportunity, I wish to teach him. One thing that always got me happy was the fact we always knew what the other was thinking. For instance, I’d start a sentence and he’d finish it; sometimes he do even better, if I asked for a screwdriver for a repair he’d have it in my hands before I could open my mouth.

We have already thought of a plan that rests on me getting into the college I wish for next year; if that goes through, Kevin and I are planning to share an apartment together. However, I would not need to pay rent unlike him; it would be an apartment in one of my family’s condominiums. Being the founder of a web-consulting firm, I have plans to personally train and hire Kevin for his assistance in the field and in return, he will get some nice money to help with his rent and hobbies.



By: David Branco

About the Author:

An Article by Paul A. Iacono June 22nd, 2007.

When I was in university in 1993-4, it was as a mature student to retrain in Technology/IT as I could see this was the way to go. I remember buying my first ever modem, an external 9,600bps dinosaur, that took me days to find the right settings for as the person who I’d bought it off had lost the driver floppy disk.

After days of messing around with modem baud rates, etc etc I got onto the internet and loaded my first ever page, it was My universities website. I was presented with a text only page black text on a white background, but my heart was beating fast and my palms were covered with the sweat of a young man beginning his initial journey into a new Love Affair.

It may sound ludicrous to you, but for me a self confessed bookworm from the age of 4-5 yrs old, this was heaven. No more would I have to go to the library looking through shelf after shelf, with my head tilted sideways reading the spines of musty old books, looking for one that caught my eye. This was an absolutely huge leap forward in the world of finding out specific, relevant, technical information necessary for a particular purpose.

The 9,600bps modem I used was so slow, that when I encountered a page that had more than 2-3 photographs, or complicated graphics, it took an age to download. I’m not talking of 10 seconds here, I’m talking of up to 1-2 minutes for some pages it was excruciating. So I learned to turn off the photographs from downloading automatically, and only loaded them when it was something I valued.

Within a period of 2 years so many sites had sprung up, both in the commerce, and the hobbyist/interest type of sites. It was so cool, I spent so much time just surfing the net, as there was always something new to blow your mind. Including my first real look at pornographic materials, as we in the UK had always been very much behind the rest of Europe/The World. Then all of a sudden, there were sites depicting any and all types of XXX rated materials some erotic, and some just plain nasty to the point it turned me off. But they were promoting that as the virtue of the internet, it provided EVERYONE with Something they were interested in.

Then came the 2nd revolution of the Net, as far as I’m concerned. By 1998-1999 the largest companies decided it was time for them to really enter the internet in a big way, not just the Amazon Books, IT companies etc. Now it was time for every Tom, Dick and Harry to stand up and be counted. Everywhere you looked the advertisments on TV, Newspapers etc., now had www.XXX at the end of them, it made me smile. Only a few years before friends and family had told me they would NEVER use the Net, that it was something for Tech Heads only. Now they ALL wanted a piece.

After the Millennium Bug never happened, Bob the Builder, the shifty Real Estate Agents and little Johnny at home doing his homework ALL wanted to be on the internet to expand their horizons. I loved it, though my hands no longer sweated and the heart beat stayed the same, my enjoyment of the internet grew day by day. My business designing websites had 20 staff, huge offices in the city centre, and people looked upon me as a GURU. It was amazing.

Then the internet bubble burst as always happens when the stock markets get their grubby hands on these things. They had decided that every company that had the words internet or www in the title were valued vastly over the bricks and mortar values as No One had ever had to put a price on Virtual Worlds before, so how much does a ZERO and a number 1 cost these days then (Sorry for the JOKE).

All the fly by nights flew away and buried their heads in shame and bankruptcy, we were lucky to go on as we still had some substance in our company and enough of our clients had been advised correctly to not put all the eggs in one basket. So we stepped carefully through the mire, and over the next 2 years things started to gain momentum again, with every business/individual wanting the Net again.

I skip ahead to now, where the internet is a grown up marketing, e-commerce and communications tool of vast value. We were vindicated because we were right; the IT guys from the 1990s weren’t dreaming “Pie in the Sky” fantasies. We were trying to revolutionise the way we all do business. So look back just 10 years No More, to where it began.

NOW Think ahead 10 or maybe 20 years where do we go from here, it’s so exciting, as every day something new is invented or released to market. The world has not gone mad, its just changed for the better if you ask me.

AS Now we can speak to a guy in Africa, a girl from China without the barriers of cost etc. restricting us. Soon they will put instant translation into our messaging software and the globe will really be a smaller place then.

I’ll finish up (for now) with nothing spiritual, except to say that the real reason the Internet has changed is because WE the USERS of the Net demanded it. Faster connections, simpler access and content that is both useful and entertaining. So PEOPLE please keep changing and asking, probing and communicating with each other.

This is the worlds Biggest change, we all talk with each other a lot more. My 65 year old Mum was quite lonely stuck in the house after retirement, now she is out and about travelling the globe seeing things and meeting friends she met on the Net. These are the real benefits; people who are disabled can have 100 friends in an online chat room party, before they wouldn’t see/speak to 100 people in a year.

Keep it up Guys n Gals, because the INTERNET Belongs to US ALL.

Paul Iacono



By: Paul Iacono

About the Author:

Some ballerina’s are so graceful that their movements are considered to be poetry in motion. The slight dip at the waist is a silent communiqu to another that they recognize their presence and are giving them a greeting. The passionate embraces that meld their bodies so tightly together give evidence to a passion that is bridled and unspoken. Ballet is poetry in perpetual motion that tells a story.

The poetic verses of a ballet might have been conveyed in a screenplay or taken from works of a master poet who created the poetic masterpiece centuries before. The words in the ballet are carefully choreographed movements instead of spoken word, where the tale emerges through the various acts. During each Act, the Director will use the motion of body and associated props to convey the message that was in the original poetry verses, screenplay, or novel.

Typically, many ballets are based on tragedies because people do not often find it necessary to express their joys in verses. The tragedies of lost loves or lost lives will typically lead to other people taking their own life. The poetry expressed on the stage will be far less poignant than the actual emotion that the writer felt when they comprised their words of love or emotion on paper so long ago.

Somebody must have been deeply touched by the poetry because they put the production of a screenplay into motion after they read it. They felt that the words were worthy enough to be expressed through the fluid movements of a ballet company up on stage. The coloring of the outfits and the dramatic stage props are clear evidence of the level of emotion that was derived from the poetic pieces of poetry that have probably been reread several times.

Every actor will place their own individual accent on the ballet performance. Their stance, their authentic appearance and the delivery of the poetic verses through bodily expressions will make a lasting impression on everyone in the audience. Some ballet performances are so breathtakingly beautiful and moving, that those women in the audience will have tears in their eyes before the last curtain drops.

This robust round of emotion is intensified by the orchestra throughout the performance of a ballet or play. Every poetic motion conveyed on stage is accented with the percussion instruments and most certainly the renderings of a sad violin or two. The dramas of the poetic illustrations on the stage are intensified by the resounding beat of drums and horns that cumulate into the background when a resounding round of applause is heard from the audience and everyone rises in a standing ovation.



By: Jim Brown

About the Author:

OFFICIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF AN AMERICAN ECONOMY

First of all I am not a psychologist but humor me and keep on reading. As I watched our economic demise unfold before my eyes, I got to thinking: Is there an unspoken pyschological aspect to this debt problem? And does anybody see it besides me?

Our country is in trillions of dollars in debt and I have yet to hear anybody address the deeper issue of this countries obsession with the all American pass time:purchasing. The underlining emotion cushioning the debt that we as a country has accumulated is the oldest emotion ever to rival jealousy:that feeling is insecurity.

Our society has been a leader in the evolvement of this emotion ever since psychologists have accused us of abusing it, and may I say with pity in their eyes. Keeping up with the Jones’ is a saying that was invented in the heart of America. When anyone mentions the Joneses, we don’t say; “Who are the Joneses?” We all know exactly who you’re talking about.

Who are these people really? Are they a concept or a reality? Are they really doing as well as we think?

Maybe in reality they are this sinister, evil reflection of our culture. Instead of looking up to them maybe we should be looking inward.

Let us take a closer look at who this family really is. Let’s call Mr. Jones, the cult, urban legend, upper middle class, version of Satan. Let’s look at Mrs. Jones as that consummate high school cheerleader who grew up in middle America and married her high school sweetheart, who just happened to be the class president, football star, and the leader of an unofficial evil society. Little Brady and Little Missy are the off spring of these concepts we have created , who walk around school campus’ with the newest , most expensive cell phones (with unlimited minutes of course), the cutest car and a covenant of followers who chant the newest lingo like ” Phat”, “Whatever!” “Omg!” and “For Real?”

It’s possible that they chastise your kids in school daily, stressing how much your kids aren’t as good as they are. Maybe over the dinner table the Jones’ gossip about how your kids’ shoes didn’t cost as much as their kids’ shoes or how your kid’s laptop only cost a measly $600.00. They give your kids night mares that embrace the ideas of humiliation and exile. They are the ones that make your kids feel like lepers in the midst of puberty. They are the ones that have told your children that tantrums are the new passages of teen life. They are the ones who have told your daughter that if she slams doors, pouts and screams loud enough and long enough, you’ll give in. They tell her to hang in there, you’ll come around. Their motto: don’t give up until your parents give in. (The Jones kids are truly diabolical).

They’ve told your son to collect as many girlfriends as humanly possible because it will make him cool. They’ve told him long greasy hair is actually attractive and tattoo’s are the greatest form of self expression. They have told your kids that you are blind, deaf and dumb to all of their antics and that you will never “get” them. Communication is fruitless because you are, of course, clueless. They’ve also told your kids that you didn’t exist until your kids were completely aware of you. Around the ages of 7 or 8.

Mrs. Jones shops at the finest department stores with valet. She is embraced by a group of pleasers with glasses of champagne and bottled water. Mrs. Jones knows that she is perfect, in every way. She has never had her girlfriends hold her hair out of her face as she hugs a toilet from a long girls night out. She’s never tasted red meat . Her nails are perfect, her hair is perfect, and her body is perfect. She feels that cellulite is a curse that is brought upon you for all the dinners you’ve burned and for all the times you forgot to take the clothes out of the dryer and fold them before they wrinkled. Although she’s never cooked or washed clothes a day in her life. And yes, although she can afford to place her kids in private schools, she has purposely placed her children in public schools just to show you that your children aren’t as good as hers. Mrs. Jones has never had mood swings, never had an eating disorder, and she certainly has never had bouts of depression or unmanicured toe nails. Oh yeah, she runs five miles every morning and drinks a gallon of water. Everyday.

Mr. Jones has never had love handles, a mid life crisis, hemorrhoids or even an in grown hair. He’s never even changed a tire. He doesn’t know how to cut wood and has never had back hair. He’s perfect. He’s got the best golf score in the city and has never held a golf club in his long life. He doesn’t have to. He is your competition even when he’s not on the green. Oh and he’s never had a butt pimple. Ever.

Mrs. Jones dresses little Missy in enough name brand clothes expensive enough to pay your mortgage at any given month. Little Missy goes to tanning salons every other day and will never get skin cancer. Bikini lines are forbidden. Little Missy has never had a bad hair day, a zit or her monthly visitor Flo. She’s never gotten anything less than an A although she does not know how to read. She only wears the most expensive make up and the most expensive shoes. She’s thin, smart and beautiful. Her motto is “looks aren’t everything, unless someone is watching.”

Little Brady has the prettiest girlfriend in school and never worries about acne, sweating or embarrassing muscle reactions. He’s perfect. He drives the coolest car. He’s known for being the best athlete in school but has never played a game. He’s never had athlete’s foot and he’s never scratched himself in public. He’s perfect.

Mr. and Mrs. Jones have never taught their kids the value of a dollar so little Missy and Brady have lived with their parents for over hundreds of years. They can’t survive on their own. They don’t know how.

They have endless amounts of money and fake smiles. They drive around in cars that cost more than our houses. This family has bounced from neighborhood to neighborhood over hundreds of years, causing havoc and envy to all that lay eyes on them. They never age, they never change.

They chuckle in private at how easy it is to influence an insecure society who watches every move they make. They smile with their overly whitened teeth that blind oncoming traffic as they turn into the nearest Starbucks to give themselves the caffeine high they need to continue their endless rule of the world.

When you pull up next to them on the street, they give you that “ahhh, you poor soul” look. They eye your clothes with a sad expression of pity . They give you that smile that has you questioning , are they laughing with you or at you? At the cocktail parties you both attend, they look you up and down and the first thing that comes to their mind is, are you the help or an invited guest? They look a bit confused then snap out of it and flash you a beautiful bright smile and welcome you into their circle. On the pretense of course, that by the end of the night you will be converted. They boldly let you know with a confident grin that you will never be a Jones. Although they do manage to convince you that you could come close, with a coy wink, thumbs up and a little bit of their direction.

They invite you to their five bedroom house with the white picket fence, a cute miniature dog that costs thousands and their flat screen televisions. All seven of them. They show you their pool tables, imported furniture, wine cellars and elaborate wet bars. They have two hundred bottles of alcohol from all over the world. They drink and drink all night but never get drunk. You on the other hand have to limit your usual binge drinking habit of downing six or seven glasses of rum and coke so you don’t let them see the real you. The drunk you and the honest you. The not so rich you and most visibly, the insecure you.

Because they are perfect, they have never had to talk to their children about the hazards of life. They have never struggled and learned survival skills. They will never feel pain, happiness, or enlightenment. They will never cry at a heartwarming scene in a movie. They have never laughed so hard that they’ve peed a little in their pants. They have never grasped the concept of hard work, had a callus, or tension headache. They have never felt the empathy or worth of another person because they have no feelings other than the undying need to make you feel less than who you are. That is their goal. They are perfect and you are not and they have not changed for years. Our society has created this family to torment the average person. We’ve made them bigger and stronger every year. We have manifested this family throughout history and we look up to them.

Delusion and self envy is their drug of choice. They are never hungry. Their diet consists of our self loathing, envy and dubiousness. That is how they have survived for so long. They are gorged and quite content. What does that say about us? Just a little something to think about.

So the next time you see the Jones’ in your neighborhood don’t be shy. Flash them that pretty yellow stained smile while in your crappy little car. You know the one with the horrible politically correct bumper stickers and rides on a bald spare tire? ( You know the one I’m talking about.The one that’s paid off.) Then you have to wave at them with unmanicured fingernails that are stained with the guacamole you had with your tacos for lunch and then thank God that you don’t have hundreds or thousands of dollars of credit card debt. That although you are living pay check to pay check, you feel good about yourself and only spend what you can afford. If you can’t afford it, save up. Credit has become a bad word in your world. Let them know that you are just fine with yourself and that you will survive. Butt pimples and all.



By: christine almaraz

About the Author:

She sits peacefully in the hospital chair with a look of hope and recovery in her eyes. She wears her light blue hospital gown as comfortably as a housedress and proudly shows me her arms freed from all the IVs. She boastfully tells me how she ate chicken soup that morning and how she spoke to Rosa on the phone, who called her directly in the hospital room. My grandmother is excited about going home tomorrow. We discuss how she needs to hurry up and get home to make my grandfather more chicken stew.

Liz, the clinical nurse comes in and we exchange polite greetings. She tells me my grandmother’s potassium levels are dangerously low; it’s not good for her heart. I translate for my grandmother. I tell her that she needs potassium to heal after the surgery. They need to inject this into her IV. She doesn’t understand why she needs this extra potassium. She says she eats a banana every day. Liz explains that she has not been eating regular food for a week and that now her levels are low; she needs the intravenous dosage for her heart.

Liz warns my grandmother that the medicine may burn or sting. “Some patients say that it hurts a lot,” she says as she pushes the drugs into the abandoned IV plug. My grandmother starts to wince and wiggle in her chair; she wretches her neck and shuts her eyes tightly like fists. She is moaning and then she is yelling and pleading for the pain to stop. My 78-year old grandmother, a strong-willed Russian woman, is sitting in this hospital chair begging Liz to stop the pain she is injecting directly into her body.

This one minute is standing still long after it has already passed. This one minute that starts a series of events that will stamp themselves onto my memory and loiter my dreams much longer than necessary.

Liz stops the medicine. I am telling my grandmother that she stopped it, but she cannot hear me, she is screaming that it hurts. I am telling her louder that she stopped it; I am walking towards her. My grandmother seems weakened and defeated by the whole incident. Like a shock treatment totally altering a person, she came out of the experience demanding to know “Why?”

“Why do I need this?” she keeps repeating. Like a confused child who will persist to ask a question until someone answers him, she keeps telling every nurse and doctor that just this morning she was feeling wonderful. She had just had some soup; she had walked around and done exercises. “Why are they doing this to me?” I continue to translate Liz’s medical jargon into Russian for my grandmother. I hold her hand and tell her to breathe through it. I try to give her my strength.

Liz comes in with a warm pack for my grandmother’s arm. It takes half an hour for the pain to go away and then my grandmother has to take four potassium chalky oversized pills. There’s not enough liquid to help my grandmother’s dry mouth get these pills down. They lodge themselves in the base of her diaphragms and time slowly and painfully digests them.

Within minutes there is a rapid beeping sound and Liz runs into the room. She is asking how my grandmother is feeling and quickly tells her that they need to get her into bed. They need to take a picture of her heart they are telling her. I tell her they need to do an EKG. Liz is asking me to ask my grandmother what hurts. My grandmother tells me that she is not feeling well. She was fine until that potassium. Liz explains that the pain was too strenuous on her heart.

Liz is anxious; she is rearranging the idling chairs and carts in the room, making room for the bulky metal EKG cart. My grandmother is ordered to lie down right away; this is an emergency. “It’s OK,” I tell her. “Your heart is just making them concerned.”

Back up arrives in three more with a cardiologist already on her way. “She needs to lie down right away!” they are echoing – one over the other. “A-Fib, D-Fib, Tacking,” a string of words that every medical drama has taught me to hate.

Three of us get her into bed, moving tubes aside, careful not to hurt her repairing stomach. Two nurses begin to pull down her gown to put the sticky pads on for the EKG. She is saying that it hurts. She is asking why this is happening. “It is not my fault,” she says. “I was fine before the potassium shot.”

I am holding her hand and brushing her hair off her face. I am fixing her gown so that her breasts are covered. I shove my way between the bed and the wall and stand there reassuring her in a way that makes me feel powerful and powerless all the same. She is getting angry and the pain is both intense and confusing. The faces hovering above her are exasperating her.

I watch the readings on the devices above her head. Her blood pressure goes from dangerously high to dangerously low. More medical staff enters the room; I move further and further against the wall and the bed is crushing me.

Everything starts to bother my grandmother – the oxygen tube, the heart monitor, all the IVs, her swollen legs, and all the blaring voices. She wants to know what each beep signals and what each medicine does. They order more blood work and another IV. She refuses; she tells them that they just put a new one in this morning. There is no more skin color left on her arm, just a swollen vessel in shades of magenta and navy. I see the color drain from her face as she gives up the fight a little. She feels defeated and stifled; an unexpected glitch in her healing path.

She says she wants them to stop everything. “No more!” she yells. She finally uses her English to yell out “I am dead.”

I take her hand and tell her that isn’t acceptable; there are many people working to get her better right now. I am trying to fill a role of a mother, a friend, a cheerleader, but I am a granddaughter – terrified and worried.

The new IV needs to be put in right away, they are demanding. My grandmother acquiesces. She recognizes the nurse who inserted her last IV and says that he did a good job. She lets him proceed. She praises his work again.

The new IV means more injections – many stinging and then cleaning out the IV. They are trying to control her heart rate. A normal heart rate is 75 beats per minute; hers is 180 right now. They use a stethoscope to try to listen but say that they cannot hear anything; it is too fast they are saying. They are paging the cardiologist again. More medicine is injected into the IV.

All the white coats are gathering around the bed. They are clearly nervous and confused. They compare numbers and charts and keep running the EKG machine. They scream at my grandmother. It’s loud in the room and since she doesn’t speak English they speak louder. They ask her where it hurts but she doesn’t know where. “It hurts everywhere,” she says.

Beepers keep going off and the intercom is paging more people – they wheel in a crash cart and attach her to that monitor. I cannot keep my eyes off this TV image of my grandmother’s erratically beating heart. I speak softer and calmer. I translate everything they are saying. I tell her to breathe.

My grandfather is a statuesque figure on the chair in the background. He has faith in medicine and tells her to calm down and let them do what they need to do. He seems unusually calm, but adrenaline and denial are an interesting force together. He starts to tell me that this is a good hospital. He says to give them space to work.

My grandfather loves my grandmother in the way that I imagine a man loves his wife after 58 years. A love that transcends a lifetime begun together in another continent half a century ago. In Kiev they got married. They had two children – a boy and a girl. They worked two jobs each and afforded a rare two-room apartment and a small VW bug. They immigrated to America in the first wave of Russian immigrants in 1976.

In America they built a second life filled with American grandchildren who they struggled to understand. My grandfather survived throat cancer and open-heart surgery. He speaks with an artificial voice box and has a permanent stoma in his neck. After his quadruple bypass, the blood thinner they gave him caused him to start bleeding out of the hole in his neck. But this man can build, reconstruct and fix anything – cars to 3D Jigsaw puzzles. He doesn’t drinks regular water – only coffee with milk and sugar during the day and sweet red wine out of the gallon jug with dinner.

Now this strong man of 5’7” is watching my grandmother in her bed surrounded with doctors and nurses pulling tubes, injecting medicines, and piling on more IV bags onto the pole. Just this morning she was IV-free. She was going home tomorrow. Now this mess. Her heart was beating too fast and there was no pattern. She wasn’t responding to the medicine. Her blood pressure was dangerously irregular. The cardiologist arrives and studies the scary EKG printouts. She prescribes another medicine – first one dosage for 6 hours and then another smaller dose for the next 6 hours.

For two hours they inject and measure. They take her blood pressure on the left arm and then the right. I help them Velcro and unvelcro the cuff. They use the machine to check the blood pressure and then they do it manually. My grandmother keeps asking me what the readings are. I answer her truthfully each time.

Finally her heart slows down and regulates. She lays in bed drained and sounds defeated and resentful with each word. She just can’t understand what just happened. She was fine this morning she keeps saying.

“Maybe it’s because your husband was in the room,” Liz jokes.

My grandfather gets up from the chair and fixes my grandmother’s blanket. She asks him to twist her socks into position and he does, careful not to touch her swollen legs. He walks over to her head and leans into her. He says he wants to see if she is warm. He gently puts his lips to her forehead and smoothes her hair into place. He kisses her forehead, the same skin he has known for 60 years.

His eyes water. “He’s my number one,” she says to whoever is still listening.



By: Galina Nemirovsky

About the Author:

Poetry is the mastery of words in all their variations and subtleies to express in an eloquent manner that which cannot be expressed in silence. Emotions of the heart, a looking glass into the soul, a way to make amends, and a way to build vistas exploring humanity and all it’s relationships. Poetry is all this an much more. Poetry is also much less, and in a more simplified manner, it is only words. Just words. But used in such a way, as to make us think and feel about others, events and things in a way we could never have imagined. Poetry cleanses, fortifies and inspiries the reader, while at the same time fuels the creative passions and allows for cathartic emotional release on the part of the writer. Poetry is powerful, poetry is petty, poetry is loving, and poetry is hateful. But above all, poetry is human, it is a reflection of of the human experience in all it’s glory and all it’s shame. But, it’s something else as well. It’s words.

It’s Only Words

Words are what define the internet. It’s not technology, it’s not servers, it’s not protocols, it’s not browser wars. The internet is made up of words. And words are poetry. So, is the internet poetry? In a sense yes. Sure it’s pictures to, but words were there long before there were pictures. An internet of pictures would be pretty, but it wouldn’t be poetry. It would be thousands of words yes, but what would it say? Words are a business now online. We bid on words, we sell words and information. We sell poetry. Entire industries have sprung up based solely on words. Google is in the word business, as is Yahoo, and MSN. But, these guys are no poets, and long before them their were others in the business of words.

Words Are All I Have

For generations, authors and poets have been in the business of words. For that matter musicians were to. Music is really just poetry with a beat. And these guys and girls have never really prospered from a financial perspective. Oh sure, a few like Shakespeare and Stephen King did pretty well. But just being the tip of the ice cube, there were countless thousands of creative literary genuises languashing in poverty. Starving artists include poets, writters, and musicians. But hey, it’s a new day, and all that can change. The internet has open the door for artists of all inkling to support themselves with their passions of calling. Few have taken up the guantlet though. Perhaps, for poets and the like, suffering for their art is core to their being. A cruel but inspiritional muse. Dosen’t have to be that way though. It’s time for the poets to embrace the world wide web, and voice their words to the masses. The internet is about words, and words are about poetry. Arise poets, your time has come. Write you poetic fools, write.



By: Chris Campbell

About the Author:

My experience with Poland started back in 1987 when I arrived in Warsaw to visit a friend of mine whom I had first met in New York while we were both students at Hunter College. There was something about that morning which I will never forget as I got of the train at Warsaw’s Central train station which was and is still called “Warszawa Centralna”. My friend, a girl from Warsaw whose name I do not disclose told me she would be there waiting for me at the station when my train arrived and true to her word there she was.

 

My first impressions of Warsaw were not particularly memorable or innumerable for that matter as this city seemed like any other though in many ways there was a mood about the city that reminded my of Budapest; another city behind the “iron curtain”. Warsaw upon stepping out of the train station I noticed also had streetcars, and very small cars with most of them being of a particular model which was the “Polski Fiat”, (Polish Fiat) which I would find out was by far Poland’s best selling at the time.

 

My friend took me to the apartment she and her parents inhabited in the center of Warsaw not far from the train station on a street which then was called “Marchalewskiego” (now a days “John Paul II”) where I was introduced to her mother though not her father who was still back in the States. As for their apartment it had one room which for Polish standards was not bad.

 

I naturally offered to invite my friend and her mother to have dinner with me in any restaurant they chose but was however refused as my friend’s mother had cooked up a simple but tasty chicken dinner which included wine which must have been quit expensive for what was these people’s budget. This being that my friend’s mother though a doctor only earned twenty dollars a month; naturally this taking in to account that the Polish Zloty (then the old one as opposed to today’s new one) had an official exchange rate of 100 to the dollar. However Polish people were not allowed to buy dollars at this price so when ever they did the exchange rate they got was a lot higher. So what Polish people would do when ever they wanted to get dollars was to get them on the black market at a rate of 400 Zloty to the dollar which of course was much higher then the official rate making this lady’s salary came out to 20 USD a month though at the official rate her monthly wages would have been 80 USD a month. Black market purchases of dollars however were illegal after all that is why it was called a “black market”; this meaning that Polish people could be arrested for attempting to buy or sell dollars on the black market while foreigners were simply deported.

 

As for myself I was required to exchange 7 USD for everyday that I spent in Poland (naturally at official rates) and this because I was a student for if I had not been one I would have had to exchange 15 a day. Many other things though were strange about Poland  back then. This being a communist country, for instance a one night stay in a hotel room for a Polish citizen cost about 3 USD a night while the same service for a foreigner cost 30 USD. One could imagine that even this 3 USD was a lot of money for most Polish people. 

 

As for the meal at my friend’s; it would be served in the early evening meaning that my friend and I had time to go do some shopping which we did in a store called “Pewex”. This being one of a chain of stores that sold imported items for “hard currency” (this meaning money that can be exchanged outside its country of origin) only and at surprisingly low prices. For instance I remember a pack of Marlboro cigarettes were half the price of what they were in America and many other things were also cheaper. My friend did inform me though that for many people in Poland even those prices were much too high.

 

Another thing that struck me as strange about Pewex stores was that they had coupons called “Bony” which one got back as change when ever they did not have it to give back in dollars. For instance if one paid with a ten dollar bill for something that cost nine one would get back a one dollar bill or a piece of paper that was called a “bony” which in reality was like a coupon for Pewex stores. Some people who bought dollars, which they could only buy from the government which sold them at a much higher price then that which they purchased them at, sometimes even bought bony which were slightly cheaper since they could only be used in Pewex stores.   

 

After getting some things for the meal which I paid for my friend and I went to her house where we watched a Latin American “telenovella”. What seemed strange to me was not so much that a soap opera from Latin America was being shown on Polish television but the way it was being dubbed. In most countries what happens is that subtitles are used or the voices are dubbed by other actors however here in Poland it was different. They used a narrator much in the way they do on CNN (when ever someone speaks in a language that is not English) to dub the whole program which at times made it confusing as to who was speaking and even hard to hear what was being said because one could still hear the original language which in this case was Spanish in the background. This by the way is a method still being used in Poland today with regards to television though one need not worry about this when one goes to the cinema, where subtitles are used.

 

During the meal I found out that my friend and I would be spending the night traveling to a far away town called “Zakopane” (Buried when translated in to English) which was right on the boarder between Poland and Czechoslovakia. It was at six in the morning that we arrived in Zakopane where we went to the house we would be staying in that till this day I am not sure if it was owned or just run by a priest who was a very good friend of my friend whom if I have not mentioned was a girl. It was in this house that her and eight friends of hers (one of them being her boyfriend) had rented two rooms, which had been divided by gender meaning one room for the six men (me now included) and another smaller room for the ladies who with my friend amongst them numbered four.

 

Upon my first day in Zakopane I recall going to do the shopping at a small grocery store and being amazed at how little there was on the shelves. Flour,(or what appeared to be), loaves of bread, sugar, butter, milk and very few other things were all that one could buy. I would later find out from one of the members in this group that one was required to have certain papers called “ration cards” in order to purchase certain products such as meat and many other items. I at that time thought that perhaps this was just a small town and that shopping in Warsaw would be different after all even in America, what one could find in a small town was never as much as what one could find in a big city; though later when in Warsaw the following year on another visit I would discover that there was as much or as little to be found in Warsaw as there was in that small town. 

 

On the lighter side of this issue I remember going back to America after my second stay in Warsaw and seeing for the first time how much American supermarkets had to offer. I had never really stopped to think about how many items and varieties of which were available in America as opposed to a communist country like Poland that barely offered the essentials. Observing this difference for the first time with the knowledge of how little other countries had in a way even confused me as to what to buy; making me even feel lost as there was so much that I did not know from where to begin shopping. It was as if a real life scene that was reminiscent of the film “Moscow On The Hudson” in which actor Robin Williams becomes hysteric when faced with all that an American supermarket has to offer. I must confess when I first saw this film; I was of the opinion that something of the sort was comic though not possible but after having experienced what I did that day I can full well imagine that something of the sort was feasible believing that if I felt like that. Me being someone who had grown up with so much abundance and still felt the difference; how would it be for someone who was seeing it for the first time.

 

During my time in Zakopane, the meals I had with my newly met acquaintances were simple; consisting almost exclusively of cold cuts of ham accompanied by bread, butter, some apples and very little else. I at the time thought that these people were eating like this because after all they were on vacation and perhaps this was not how they ate at home where they had more food which there parents would be cooking for them but this was not the case for even at home the meals these people ate were basically the same.

 

One thing however in all this could not have escaped anybody’s attention that to the girl who was my friend, though I would like to make clear that ours was not and had never been a relationship that include sexual intimacy of any kind though this mostly applied to her friends I was a novelty. Most of which had never been outside of Poland and I think I was the first American they had ever seen in person which made me the object of quit a few stares. Of course it was clear to many given my slightly darker complexion then the average Polish person that I was not Polish but once it was found out that I was from the United States it made those whom I encountered ever so eager to find out as much as they could about me from minor details to more intimate ones. What I did? What part of the states I was from? How much money I made? These were the most commonly asked questions; some of which I was not willing to answer but could tolerate. I even recall how some people, men and women a like who could not speak a word of English or any language I could, would come to the house were I was staying just to look at me, “The American”. In a way all this attention did make me feel like a circus attraction or perhaps a fish in a tank.

 

Naturally my Polish is now fluent but in those early days my knowledge of this language did not include more then the two words which I had picked up in a book about Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary which said that in Poland that most commonly uttered words were “nie ma” which roughly translated were “we don’t have any”. I at the time of reading this book did not pay much attention to what I read; thinking it all could be possible but after a few days in Poland I realized that the answer to everything was “nie ma”.

 

For instance with regards to what most people did not have apart from the items they could not readily purchase at stores was telephones. There was even a list on which some had to wait as long as 10 years. This however to me was nothing new as I knew from the time I had spent in South America that some people were required to wait just as long for a telephone, even those who had strong financial resources. In reference to the telephones in Poland I would later discover when I moved to Poland in October of 1989 and lived there till August of 1991 that the lines did not always work. For instance very often it would happen that I would pick up the phone and their was no signal or I would hear a conversation on the line and would have to ask those on the line to simply get off and call each other one more time. The quality of the service may have been low but so were prices as a call to the states was much cheaper in those days to make from Poland to the states then the other way around.

 

As for the people of Poland; they were relatively friendly and warm toward me perhaps because most of them had never seen an American and I could say that the women were attractive; more so then in the States though this in truth I did not mark till I moved to Poland in October of 1989. Women in Poland apart from being more attractive then in the States tended to put more of an effort in to looking their best despite having more limited means to do so not only with regards to money but the availability of cosmetics and clothes they could get. I even found it strange how most women wore clothes that in America tended to be worn by women of a more advanced age such as long skirts with mostly pantyhose or stockings and chiffon blouses that in an odd way did not look bad. Their was also something about their Slavic ethnic group that gave these women an old fashioned type of beauty like the kind I use to describe Gosia (the main character in New York’s Opera Society) that made their facial features softer and nicer then the Saxon women I had known in the States or in other countries such as the UK.

 

Restaurants during the time of communism though limited in the variety of food one could get as there were very few foreign ones were extremely cheap for those like myself who brought money from abroad. I specifically recall on one occasion in 1988 which unfortunately will not repeat itself that saw me take out five people (myself included) to a three course dinner at a rather elegant restaurant. As for the meal itself it was roast duck that was had by all along with a soup and desert and coffee. All which came to a grand total of 12 dollars (at black market rates though at the official one it would have been four times that amount) with a good tip included.

 

Hotels however were a different issue because hotels contrary to restaurants required me to pay in Dollars (or any other hard currency), this eliminating the chance that I could change my dollars on the black market and then pay for the hotel. There was even a system that allowed me to pay for hotels in local currency but I had to have a receipt that verified that the Zloty I was using to pay for the hotel had been purchased legally and not on the black market after which the receipt was marked that I had spent some of that money on a hotel so others would know how much money I had left from the money exchange I had made.

 

Hotels however as I have already stated were much cheaper for Polish people then they were for foreigners making this the case that some of the guests in the hotels were Polish who even kept permanent rooms there mostly for business purposes. By “business purposes” I have in mind mostly though not only prostitutes who lived in hotels rooms which they only paid three dollars the night for while they took about thirty dollars a night for their services. It is through word of mouth and not personal experience that I discovered this as one night a lady knocked on my door saying “sex, little money”. This being an offer which I did refuse to take advantage of though I did present her with a pack of cigarettes for her troubles.

 

In October of 1989 I would move to Warsaw for a stay that would last almost two years in which I would rent an apartment on a street called “Trebacka” which unlike many has not had its name changed since then. It was during this time in 1990 that I would enroll in Warsaw University where I took a course specially for foreigners in Polish which was at least to my budget as well as that of any other westerner what could be considered “dirt cheap”. Twenty USD was the price of this three month course in which lessons were held everyday from Monday through Thursday from 8 am till noon. This was specially cheap to me who had taken private Polish lessons in New York at a cost of the same 20 USD an hour with each hour lasting 60 minutes.

 

As for the course itself it was taught by a teacher whose name was Gosia (like the character in “New York’s Opera Society”) whose English was good enough to be understood by us; her pupils and whose teaching I must say was not bad as her lessons gave me the basis of what my Polish is till this day. I for my part twice enrolled in her lessons in a time period that stretched from January 3, 1990 till the first week of June.

 

Naturally with this being a course of very basic Polish, all the students were foreigners like myself in a classroom that included students from Ireland, Norway, France, Yugoslavia (this being before the breakup), Soviet Union (also before the breakup), Austria (for some reason unknown to me students from Germany had there own group), Japan, Italy, Mexico with me and another man who had spent 18 years in Spain being the only Americans in the group. There were many nationalities being represented in our class but none as large as the one from Libya which numbered nine with its four males all sharing the name Abdul. It was not that I had anything personal against people from Libya but this was in the days in which relationships between our two countries were not exactly at their best however all would turn out very nicely as those Libyans in my group were quit friendly; specially on one occasion in which a Libyan classmate of mine defended me from Gosia’s yelling because I could not pronounce the Polish g.

 

By the start 1990 many things had changed like I was no longer required to change money at official rates for everyday that that I was in the country as now the official rate of exchange had gone up to meet the black market one which by then had gone up to 10,000 Zloty to the USD. By then no longer was it illegal to sell USD or any other foreign currency for that matter in private, making it possible for money exchange places called “Kantors” to pop up all over Poland.

 

Life had definitely changed in Poland by the start of 1990 as more things were available in stores though to most people in Poland this made very little difference since they still could not afford them. I even remember a comment being made during the 1990 World Cup in Italy by a TV announcer that Adidas was sponsoring the World Cup and showing their commercials before the games but how many Polish people had enough money to get a pair of Adidas?

 

As for what was my time in Poland during the year 1989 which lasted from October to the end of the year; there was a shopping episode that I will never forget one day I went out and went to every store I knew looking for something and no matter where I went I heard the now famous at least to me line “nie ma”. At the end of the day after not having found the luxury item I was looking for I called a friend and asked her where I could find what I was in real need of which was “toilet paper” to which she told me that this was what in Warsaw could not be found. I of course said but “some people have it, I have seen it in people’s homes, there has to be a way to get it!”. My friend; Iwona (whom I had first met in New York) laughed at my despair and simply said that people just have it but nobody can buy it. The next day bearing this in mind I went to a hotel called “Victoria” (at one point the best hotel in the city and where Reagan stayed in 1991) and simply put stole two roles of this precious commodity. It was not that I did not have the financial means to get this item but that I could not find it that made me turn to crime though I did give the lady outside the toilet who one paid for the use of this facility a larger then standard tip.

 

I do not think that I would have had serious legal problems had I been caught stealing toilet paper but in those days in which what today is called policia (Police) was called milicia it was better not to have any dealings with them just the same. I however do recall an occasion on which I was taking photographs of trees next to a milicia station (unknowingly at the time) and was asked inside where my passport, documents and visa were check before I was allowed to go about my business with my film even being returned to me once I was asked to take it out of the camera. I must say in all this that the milicia were courteous toward me in their treatment.

 

During this almost two year stay of mine in Poland I must not forget to include the fact that I did make several trips outside of Poland. Two of them to the States and one of them to Italy but it was during a trip to the States that my mother told me that every time she met a Polish person she would tell them that I was living in Poland to which she would be asked if I was really living there or perhaps just visiting. It was when she confirmed to these Polish people that I was living in Poland that she was asked as politely as these people could manage if there was something “mentally not right with me?” even asking my mother if I knew that this was a country were most people wanted to get out of and not move to. It even occurred that when my sister who has been living in Rome since 1989 met in 1991 the then Polish Pope “John Paul II”; he too asked my sister a similar question when confronted by the fact that there was an American who wanted to live in Poland.

 

Life was much different in Poland in those days of communism; perhaps for me it was just a novelty of living in country where things were so different from what I had known all my life that made me want to move to Poland back in 1989 or perhaps it was the fact that one could really live almost a life of luxury with as little as 500 dollars a month which was what I had to spend back then. This being how much greater the purchasing power of my money was back then or perhaps it was the desire to live in Europe and use Poland as a base to travel around which I did often in those days that also included two trips to the Soviet Union and other eastern block countries along with several in the west but what ever it was it was an époque in my life which I will never forget and though the Poland my daughter is now growing up in is much different I will always in a strange way cherish those days way back when Poland was still communist. This being the case though I at heart am not only completely anticommunist but antisocialist in everyway possible and then some.

 



By: Gianni Truvianni

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