Ken;

As you know I spent a year(on and off )in Warsaw Poland back in communist times; 
our residence while staying there was the  top floor of the Fordham Hotel ; which was nothing more than a revolving door of  arms salesmen , courtesans, tech spys and white shirt grifters working cons in antique crystal ,rugs and historic  beds with or without their  sister in it ....   in short anything for a dollar..... It was all for sale and everybody was on the take ...Heck even the PLO had training camps there in country
So it was one big happy family of gangsters
To keep order the commies had black leather jacketed secret police who in reality were  street thugs with a badge;  I do not think a week went by when coming or going from the embassy  I got put up against the wall and frisked in a shakedown while  I would entertain myself by cracking wise in Russian to piss em off  .
    
I used to bike over to Old town on a mountain bike ; the Poles had never seen one and so it was an object of curiosity so were my diamond saw blades and carbide chisels which I traded out for art work at the end of the job .
Yes old town is a work of art but it pales in comparison to the original; gone is the historic timberframe and the details of the original interiors so how did they do it ?
According to my Polish contacts there at the time 
Stalin and the Ruskies  faced a huge challenge in the rebuilding of eastern Europe  after ww2 ; there was no money and no manpower in the professional sense ;so what did they do ? 
They put everyone in the army; and built brick by brick using old photographs ... and while old town might be a sense of pride to locals  what the regime really built for the people was row upon row of  lifeless concrete blocks of Stalinist concrete apartment houses and equally horrible ministry buildings with heroic tasteless sculpture and a bleak future of useless or/ no  jobs run by a police state  ;;;;;;;;;;;
Much of my fondness for the socialist state changed that year as every morning starting at 5 am there  was the long lines outside the American embassy with people wanting visas and being harassed by police ; so that when I returned home to  America  the USA despite all its problems looked a little better  than when I  left. Py      


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Subject: BULLAMANKA-PINHEADS Digest - 9 Apr 2008 to 10 Apr 2008 (#2008-92)

There is 1 message totalling 193 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Poland vs USA on social culture of heritage conservation

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Date:    Wed, 9 Apr 2008 06:23:28 -0400
From:    Gabriel Orgrease <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Poland vs USA on social culture of heritage conservation

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[log in to unmask] wrote:
> My first inclination was to describe this as Communism At Work.  Then 
> it dawned on me that there are plenty of movies of Da Krauts removing 
> and sorting through bombed heaps of brick.
>
> In both cases, it seems to me that describing that process as direct 
> citizen participation in heritage conservation is romanticizing it, 
> more than a little.
Ralph,

I can relate to your sentiment in regard to romanticism though my sense 
is that within a more informed context as to what has gone on and what 
is currently going on with heritage conservation in Poland that it 
suddenly becomes a whole lot less romantic to suggest the intensity of 
voluntary citizen participation as a characteristic that may distinguish 
the preservation movement in Eastern Europe from that in the USA. I 
provided one quote that illustrates what I sense, I can provide more 
fragments that stand out to me at least starkly to represent what I see 
as a difference in the Polish perspective. I am not Polish, you know 
that, but I do go there with a curiosity as to just where did all of the 
Polish workforce that I have been involved with over the last twenty 
years in NYC come from? Let alone that our mutual friend Mr. Weiss, 
through his mother, is of Polish ancestry. There have not been quite so 
many Germans working on cutting out mortar joints in NYC, and I presume 
with the current workforce demographics that I will get to Peru if I 
live long enough, though Pakistan is a close second after the Ukraine or 
St. Petersburg. What I end with is not so much to accept my presumptions 
but more questions and for me the questions lead to a desire to go find 
answers that for me add up.

Geographic area of Poland in square miles is close to that of Arizona. 
Population of Poland is close to a combination of New York (including 
NYC), New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. We won't confuse 
ourselves with Chicago. Poland has roughly 1/8th the population of the 
USA. If we combine the population of USA with Canada the population of 
Poland is 1/10th.

I give the above for the reason that the APT Bulletin and the Polish 
Bulletyn are of near identical technical format (though the Bulletyn is 
in full color), peer reviewed, and of nearly equal distribution say at 
1,500 for rough consideration (we will not get into who sends what to 
libraries). This breaks down that in Poland one can almost say that 1 in 
26,000 people are interested in heritage conservation, whereas if we 
only look at the USA it is 1 in 200,000. If we add Canada, and as APT is 
a predominantly US-Canadian organization it makes sense to do that, we 
are then comparing it to 1 in 225,000. We can go on from there to argue 
comparisons of the full range of historic conservation related 
publications and a cursory look at the above data may become much more 
complicated say if we try to compare Traditional Building or 
Preservation in relationship of their format, market, and the general 
population at large. In Poland my perception, having looked at the shelf 
of periodicals on display in the cultural exchange center in Krakow, 
that there are something like at least 8 heritage conservation 
publications in Poland. They all seem to be in full color, some of them 
with advertising, most without. Regardless, the comparison between the 
APT Bulletin and the Polish Bulletyn opens to me a consideration of more 
weight to the thought that the Polish as a percentage of population are 
much more involved in and concerned over their built heritage than we 
are in the USA. At this time, with all of the economic stimulation that 
Poland is going through with their participation in the EU I do not 
presume that it is Communism at Work.

I thank you though for the opportunity to be challenged in my perceptions.

][<
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audio, writings, words, spoken word, dialogs, graphic collage and the 
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<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</a> 
wrote:
<blockquote
 cite="mid:[log in to unmask]"
 type="cite">My first inclination was to describe this as Communism At
Work.  Then it dawned on me that there are plenty of movies of Da
Krauts removing and sorting through bombed heaps of brick.<br>
  <br>
In both cases, it seems to me that describing that process as direct
citizen participation in heritage conservation is romanticizing it,
more than a little. <br>
</blockquote>
Ralph,<br>
<br>
I can relate to your sentiment in regard to romanticism though my sense
is that within a more informed context as to what has gone on and what
is currently going on with heritage conservation in Poland that it
suddenly becomes a whole lot less romantic to suggest the intensity of
voluntary citizen participation as a characteristic that may
distinguish the preservation movement in Eastern Europe from that in
the USA. I provided one quote that illustrates what I sense, I can
provide more fragments that stand out to me at least starkly to
represent what I see as a difference in the Polish perspective. I am
not Polish, you know that, but I do go there with a curiosity as to
just where did all of the Polish workforce that I have been involved
with over the last twenty years in NYC come from? Let alone that our
mutual friend Mr. Weiss, through his mother, is of Polish ancestry.
There have not been quite so many Germans working on cutting out mortar
joints in NYC, and I presume with the current workforce demographics
that I will get to Peru if I live long enough, though Pakistan is a
close second after the Ukraine or St. Petersburg. What I end with is
not so much to accept my presumptions but more questions and for me the
questions lead to a desire to go find answers that for me add up.<br>
<br>
Geographic area of Poland in square miles is close to that of Arizona.
Population of Poland is close to a combination of New York (including
NYC), New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. We won't confuse
ourselves with Chicago. Poland has roughly 1/8th the population of the
USA. If we combine the population of USA with Canada the population of
Poland is 1/10th.<br>
<br>
I give the above for the reason that the APT Bulletin and the Polish
Bulletyn are of near identical technical format (though the Bulletyn is
in full color), peer reviewed, and of nearly equal distribution say at
1,500 for rough consideration (we will not get into who sends what to
libraries). This breaks down that in Poland one can almost say that 1
in 26,000 people are interested in heritage conservation, whereas if we
only look at the USA it is 1 in 200,000. If we add Canada, and as APT
is a predominantly US-Canadian organization it makes sense to do that,
we are then comparing it to 1 in 225,000. We can go on from there to
argue comparisons of the full range of historic conservation related
publications and a cursory look at the above data may become much more
complicated say if we try to compare Traditional Building or
Preservation in relationship of their format, market, and the general
population at large. In Poland my perception, having looked at the
shelf of periodicals on display in the cultural exchange center in
Krakow, that there are something like at least 8 heritage conservation
publications in Poland. They all seem to be in full color, some of them
with advertising, most without. Regardless, the comparison between the
APT Bulletin and the Polish Bulletyn opens to me a consideration of
more weight to the thought that the Polish as a percentage of
population are much more involved in and concerned over their built
heritage than we are in the USA. At this time, with all of the economic
stimulation that Poland is going through with their participation in
the EU I do not presume that it is Communism at Work.<br>
<br>
I thank you though for the opportunity to be challenged in my
perceptions.<br>
<br>
][<<br>
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<a href="http://orgrease-crankbait.blogspot.com/">Orgrease-Crankbait</a>
Video, audio, writings, words, spoken word, dialogs, graphic collage
and the
art of fiction in language and literature.<br>
<div class="moz-signature">
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