Share the Best of Czech Culture

It would be a shame if all of these foreign reporters and diplomats came to Prague for President Obama's visit and left knowing no more about Czech culture than when they came.

If you are hosting foreign teammates this week at your organization, and those teammates love to read great books, it's my suggestion you tell them all about Bohumil Hrabal. Better yet, give them an English-language version of "I Served the King of England," or if you are feeling r-e-a-l-l-y expansive, the entire set of Bohumil Hrabal's works!

No one in America reads Hrabal, or knows about him. I couldn't help thinking when I read "I Served the King of England" how much Bill Clinton, who is known to be a great reader of fiction, would enjoy this book.

Spread the word about a great Czech author and let Prague visitors leave with a little Czech charm under their arm.

"The Restoration of Order: The Normalization of Czechoslovakia" by Milan Simecka

People read George Orwell's "1984" to imagine the kind of inhuman state where individuals don't matter and the state's right to control all is paramount. Orwell's "1984" is fiction. Milan Simecka, a Czechoslovak dissident writing in the early 1980's explains for history what happened in Czechoslovakia following the people's attempt to "put a human face" on socialism.

How was the totalitarian country able to reinstitute a Stalinist-style state without violence after the Prague Spring in 1968? How did the government eliminate dissent in less than two years? In chilling detail, Simecka shows how the State used it's power over people's income, jobs, friendships, even their children's future to control each citizen's every move.

Approximately 10-20% of the Czech population still votes for the Communist Party. My Czech friends tell me that the people still voting for the Communist party look back with nostalgia at getting a job from the state, getting a flat from the state, and cheap bread. With everything "provided" life had "no worries."

Today's young people, especially, may not know the horrors of that time, because the Czechs are so sick of that period there hasn't yet been a national curriculum developed to teach young people what happened. Czechs want to let it go and move on (hence, they think we Americans are obsessed with it all!)

I recommend this book for every reader of any country who wants to understand the communist totalitarian period. It would be a great book for any Czech/Slovak or political book club. I also think it would be especially useful for every Czech and Slovak high school student to understand the choices their parents and grandparents had to make to survive.

Like "The Diary of Ann Frank," which most American kids read sometime during their education, this book makes the choices presented by the times very personal and imaginable.


You may be interested in another book about governmental abuse of power:

Understanding Iran: The Power of One Graphic Novel called 'Persepolis'

"I Served the King of England"

This month I've been reading book after book in English written by Czechs. Among the pile of titles a friend lent me was a book called "I Served the King of England" by Bohumil Hrabal. I'd never heard of the author and the book looked like a light read.

Don't you love that feeling when you're in the midst of discovering a new artist, author, or visual show that is totally fantastic and you can't get enough of it? That's how this author was for me as I read this book. The details of ordinary life! The storytelling! The romantic nature of his mind! The entire story is utterly and completely charming.

Milan Kundera is the author probably best known outside of the Czech Republic. A Czech friend told me today that Hrabal is probably best known inside the country. And because so much of what he's written has been made into a movie, even the Czech non-readers know Hrabel's stuff through films. Bohumil Hrabal is considered a Czech national treasure.

I have to read everything he's written now and see all the movies. He deserves to be discovered and read more outside the Czech Republic. I loved this book called "I Served the King of England."

Was Living in Soviet Housing on my Bucket List?

Soviet-inspired housing, named panelaky in Czech,
because they're put up in a hurry with panels

Pretty grim, eh?
That's my balcony, third from the top,
underneath the satellite dish,
complete with dish towels on the line.

No sheets! No coffee pot! No mixing bowls! The carpet! Who knew they made carpet so thin? A mattress box that one could use to store clothes in underneath. A shower curtain held up by five working rings out of ten. Four out of five lights burnt out in my room with the last one going out the night I arrived. I half expected to find 'instant gulag gruel' packets in the cupboards. What is it exactly that Communist builders had against beauty?

But the view! Did I mention the view of the city yet? The windows in panelaky were the only kind one could buy in the Czech Republic under communism but they actually seem extravagant because of their giant size. They swing wide open too.

Then there's the convenience. There was one brand of grocery store called Billa across the street and two more at my metro stop. Grocery shopping took only fifteen minutes.

Plus, I remembered the last time I traded in a pretty cozy home for a two-bedroom concrete block apartment. And that apartment didn't even have thin carpeting - it had no carpeting. Those were two of the most incredible years of my life - graduate school, living in what Americans call 'married student housing' (whether one is married or not). It was fantastic. I wouldn't trade those years for anything.

And Daniel Glick, the author of "Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids and a Journey to the Ends of the Earth," one of my all-time favorite books about travel, talks about how if you are going to see the world, you are going to have to live in some, ahem, unexpected places." My friends told me when they helped me move out that this was actually an "upscale" panelak.

So I had an hour of freak-out when I arrived. Where was my imagined historic Prague walk-up? Then acceptance and happiness kicked in. I knew I was up for it. Women could make a home in a yurt if we had too. And the people I met over the course of my month here were just as nice as could be. Click on the title to read an interesting history of panelaky. I'll show my panelaky courtyard next.

The living room with the balcony attached

Kitchen

Dining room

Bedroom #1

Bedroom #2

You could fit a lot of Christmas presents in here

You might also enjoy:

My Communist Backyard

UNESCO names Iowa City, Iowa a "City of Literature"

My blog usually celebrates Prague. Today I want to celebrate a place I used to live because it just achieved a HUGE honor. I resided in Iowa City, Iowa for two years while I did my M.A. in library and information science. I loved every single minute of living there and regard my time there as two of the most enriching years of my life. Iowa City, Iowa shares a distinction with my hometown Ames, Iowa and another favorite town of Boulder, Colorado as having the most Ph.D.s per capita of any community in the U.S.

UNESCO has named Iowa City, Iowa, with a mere 63,000 people, as the world's third "City of Literature." What other cities have already achieved this distinction? Edinburgh, Scotland and Melbourne, Australia! Pretty good company, I'd say. UNESCO is creating a Creative Cities Network honoring and connecting centers for cinema, music, crafts and folk arts, design, media arts and gastronomy, as well as literature.

Iowa City is renowned for a culture that REVERES writing. It is no surprise to me that daughter #2 is on her way to becoming a journalist because in her kindergarten and first grade classes the Iowa City School System passionately passed on the joy of writing to students.

The whole town is obsessed with writing and book culture because the University of Iowa is home to the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Sooner or later, every famous writer in the world makes their way there to see what the mystique is all about. Lucky citizens are able to hear readings from great thinkers from all over the world, often in small intimate settings.

Like many of Iowa City residents who enjoyed the endless parade of writers through town, I attended more than my fair share of readings at Prairie Lights Bookstore. Prairie Lights' name was known throughout Iowa because each reading was broadcast to all farmers and small town folks across our rural state.

Iowa City took the job of creating new readers as a sacred task. Every child from all over the world in my married student housing courtyard had a wardrobe of three or four t-shirts celebrating the fact they had proudly finished the annual summer reading club. Kids who didn't participate had to ask themselves why they didn't get their free shirt because it sure seemed like everyone else had one for each year they had been in town. When thousands of kids go through the program, finding the funding for something like that takes support from the entire community. Do the math. It's expensive!

The Iowa City Public Library also mounted the first Banned Books Display I had ever seen. The one I remember that shocked me was "Little House on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder. An Indian reservation library had found the portrayal of American Indians in the book offensive and attempted to remove it. Very simple displays like that can help show people that a book they consider important offends somebody else. When we protect everyone's right to read, we protect our own.

To continue that commitment to Intellectual Freedom, the local library started an annual Intellectual Freedom lecture and named it after a staff member who constantly prodded her institution on this issue. It's that kind of reaching beyond the day-to-day mission and teaching the community why censorship hurts their marketplace of ideas that brings this kind of recognition.

Congratulations Iowa City, Iowa and all of the important institutions and their staff members for this huge honor. Y'all deserve it! Link to the title to read the press release.

SHED Your Books

“Once again, I have taken on something impossible:
water with grasses undulating on the bottom….
It is wonderful to look at, but maddening to want to render it.
But then, I am always tackling something like this.”

So wrote Claude Monet on 22 June 1890 to his friend and biographer Gustave Geffroy.

A friend gave me a coffee table book of Monet’s Water Lillies when I had expressed doubt to her that I could leave my hometown, plus my pretty home, and pack up everything to live in a two-bedroom concrete block apartment in student housing and go to graduate school as a single mom with two kids under five.

“Every time you think you can’t do it,” she said, “think of Monet working for ten years to do the impossible -- paint the beauty of water lillies as he saw it at a time when he was actually going blind.”

I did exactly as she asked. It works.

Now do you think I could part with that book? Nope, no way, no how. This is the real hard part of separating my treasures and heaving the rest. My books!

I struggle with parting with the titles that hold great memories but are no longer "necessary" or relevant to my life. Julie Morgenstern asks in her book "When Organizing Isn't Enough": "Do they move you forward toward your new theme?" No.

Out goes all the books I read in preparation for the Chicago Marathon.

Out goes all the books given to me and inscribed by a Pulitzer-prize winning author. I read them already. I am just keeping their energy from going to the next person if they sit on my shelf or in a storage box.

Out go all of my Colorado hiking titles.

Out go most of my children's picture and poetry books. Oooooh the pain of it! I saved three beloved dog-earred titles back. To look at them they should be the first to go.

Treasures I can't part with:

My Library of America titles. They are the collected works of America's greatest writers printed on acid-free paper. My children just roll their eyes when I suggest this is their heritage to be lovingly passed down. They would love nothing better than for me to sell them and free them of this expectation! The likelihood that they are going to read about Francis Parkman's history of life among the early Iroquois, or Grant and Sherman's memoirs of the Civil War complete with maps, or Thomas Jefferson's life writings is close to nil. But if I save them I can hope.

Anything written by or about Winston Churchill. He's the greatest statesman of Western Civilization - nobility pours out of every page.

But I did well. Thank you Julie. Four boxes saved - about six going out. That's pretty good for me when it comes to books. Do you have a favorite book you could never part with no matter what? Here...have a seat... and tell me about it.

SHED Your Music

When it came to purchasing music, the good ole days weren't better. In my tweens, we purchased "45s", records that contained an "A" side and a "B" side. If the artist merited it, we'd purchase a whole album, once we had a job and were earning money. It was amazing how many albums one person could amass without any overt effort due to 100% disposable teenage paychecks.

But then we needed portability -- we were in our cars, right? Cassette tapes could be popped in and listened to in vehicles and in portable players. So we purchased the same music that we already owned once, only this time on cassette.

The music industry then said, "no, you don't want cassettes, you need to get all of your own music on eight-track tapes." I can't remember what the selling point of eight-track tapes was, especially since they would change to another track right in the middle of a song. That format was really short-lived. But I had a few of those too.

Next came CDs. The music industry said, "oh the quality is better, you can find the exact song you want, and it won't skip or get stuck [not true and I"m not falling for that one again!]

By then, if you really liked a band, like the Beatles or the Stones, you were likely to have purchased it in four different formats! Oh how the musicians of today must envy the luck of those musicians who came before them. Carole King must still be dining out on album sales alone, before boomers purchased her Tapestry album (one of the largest selling albums ever) again on cassette...and again on 8-tracks....and again on CD.

So here I sit with this CD collection, not having digitized it previously because it wasn't a compelling use of my time. Since I'm moving, and I want the music, but don't want the physical 'stuff,' I'm finally digitizing it to take with me. Thank goodness, I started this project a month ago, it takes forever! I'm transferring each CD to a small storage device. I think it will actually increase my listening.

But that's it! My time is too precious to me to spend this much time messing around with metadata. I don't have any idea how to digitize sentimental homemade cassettes. Do you? This was the easy part of shedding the old and moving on to the new ala Julie Moregenstern's 'SHEDing' process. The harder stuff is coming up.

SHEDing a house and a full-time role

The number one search term that brings people to my blog are labels on Julie Morgenstern and her book “When Organizing Isn’t Enough.” A lot of people must be going through the same thing that I’m going through, the need to transition from one phase of life to another. Her book is fantastic and these are a few of her thoughts I find useful.

Julie says:

“There are three common characteristics that define people who are ready to SHED.

1) There is a specter of some better future in your mind [for me, sampling a life of rich culture in Prague].

2) You don’t know if you’ll be able to do “it" [pull up stakes and move overseas].

3) You’re feeling weighed down by something that’s preventing you from moving forward [a whole house of stuff useful to my full-time parenting life which I am now sorting through and hoping to SHED].

She says SHED can be used by anyone going through any sort of transition at any time in their lives, including those prompted by anticipated natural life transitions such as moving, retirement, graduating, marriage, promotion, new baby, empty nest, or a new business.”

What’s the difference between SHEDing and organizing?

Julie says:

“Think of it this way: if organizing is dropping anchor once you know what you want, SHEDing is lifting anchor so you can go someplace new.

1) Organizing is about identifying what’s important to you and giving yourself access to it. SHEDing is about getting rid of the old and obsolete so that you can have space to discover what’s important to you.

2) A perfectly organized closet filled with items you never use can be SHED.

3) It’s possible to get organized without every throwing anything away…it’s impossible, however, to SHED without letting things go.

4) SHED is an ongoing process that generates movement and fuels transformation, which means the finish line is harder to define. You measure success by the feeling of having completed a transition, as well as the subsequent energy, authenticity and excitement about your life which ensues.

I find her words so helpful because I do want to make this transition a happy celebration of what I have accomplished as a single parent and an exciting pivot to a new life. This book helps me make the most of this moment. 

What has helped your mindfulness during a life transition?

The wonderful world of Miroslav Sasek

Yesterday I came across a delightful set of children's books created in the late 1950s/early 1960s that could awaken wonder and resolve in any child to see the world. They were done by a Czech illustrator, a native of Prague, named Miroslav Sasek. The books are being reissued.

Besides the whimsical illustrations, the text introduces children to great figures from history such as Christopher Wren or Napoleon. The books celebrates people, architecture, and things as everyday as lamp posts or transport tickets. I appreciated how he communicated through his text that a child would want to know who all these people were and also, would want to observe and celebrate differences in cultures. These books talk "up" intellectually to a child in a way I'm not sure today's books always do.

I could not find a "This is Prague." Does anyone know if one exists?

My favorite freedom

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Still in a mood to celebrate July 4th, I wanted to take a moment to celebrate my favorite freedom guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States. The Bill of Rights is a list of 10 amendments to the constitution that specifically list rights that Americans citizens are guaranteed.

I have a friend who's Austrian who told me that every single Austrian paycheck has a deduction for the Catholic church and that citizens do not have a choice in the matter. This would be unthinkable in America. Christian culture predominates in America (not always graciously) simply because that's the majority, but I have met Agnostic, Atheist, Bahai, Buddhists, Confucian, Hindi, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, and Wiccan people about town. I don't know any Janists or Zoroastrians but, who knows, my circle of friends may be too narrow.

A fun way I experience other cultures is to visit and worship in other people's churches. My very favorite places to go are African-American churches because the music and the clothes and the joy are fantastic. Next would be Catholic Churches that are drop-dead gorgeous where passionate believers are engaging in all of their favorite rituals.

My own church is Congregationalist, which is very, very American, because it is governed from the bottom up. Barack Obama, until he parted ways with his minister, was a Congregationalist. Besides that grass-roots lack of hierarchy, what I fell in love with was the music (gorgeous, traditional hymns) and the strong sense of progressive social justice that runs throughout the history of my denomination.

But anyway, freedom from state religion is not my favorite American freedom. I got sidetracked. My favorite freedom is the freedom of speech and press. I think the healthiest measure of a democracy is the ability to say "the emperor has no clothes."

When bad ideas are allowed to hit the air, they can be quickly rejected. I was reading a book the other day about a culture that is known for people saying one thing and doing another. Why won't they say what they actually believe? Because political correctness is so powerful, that to say out loud what you actually believe, is unacceptable. There must be no correlation between speech and actions. Talk about a way for kids to become confused and believe lies. How does a culture move forward, grow, and be flexible if ideas can't be talked about?

A big part of free speech that is hard to live with is speech that is tasteless, irresponsible, and/or hateful. But hateful speech spoken out loud, in freedom, can be countered. Hateful speech, whispered, can not.

I've had a couple instances in my life where I had the opportunity to stand up and defend free speech. One time, when I was serving on my local library board, Madonna published her book "Sex." Fundamentalist Christians showed up at our board meeting demanding we remove the book from the public library. If we caved into their very emotional and vocal demands we would have been violating our own standards of selection. Our originally adopted selection policy required purchasing every single title that was on the New York Times bestsellers list. Madonna was #1 on that list. I made the motion to stick by our policy. I believe it passed unanimously.

Most of the time, I feel lonely in my appreciation of this freedom. Not very many Americans seem rabidly passionate about it. The erosion of civil liberties that is taking place in my country does seem, frankly, un-American.

For example, reading that our Guantanamo interrogation techniques had been borrowed from Chinese communist torture techniques seemed 100% plausible because it's so alien to our values. It all seems so insane. This isn't the way Americans do things! Which brings us back to the question: why then, ARE WE DOING IT? And I ask that with the greatest respect and appreciation for the mission of the people who keep us safe.

Until the present administration came into power, I never once thought about "does the Constitution apply to everyone who is physically present in the geographical boundaries of America or just the citizens? Does it still apply to American citizens when they go overseas? Does it apply to the way we expect our government to behave outside of our geographical boundaries to non-citizens?

Stateside Book Buzz

For all of you American expats who wonder what is going on back home, here's a nod to a popular book stateside. It's a title that took off out of nowhere and has been on the bestseller list for weeks based on word of mouth alone. "Three Cups of Tea" was written by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin in 2006.

Greg Mortenson, a mountaineer, got lost climbing K2. He wandered into a Pakistani mountain village so disoriented he kept thinking it was a completely different town. The people of Korphe, Pakistan took care of him and showed him kindness. He promised the people of the village he would come back and build them a school. And he actually followed through on that promise. The book is the incredibly uplifting story of his odyssey as he built first one school and then more.

I first heard of the book when a lady told me she had to read it because her daughter, whom she characterized as "the most frugal person on the face of the earth," had just finished the book and wanted to drain her bank accounts and send every single penny she had to the author so he could build more schools. "What is in this book that would make her say that?" she wondered.

A woman in my community read the book and urged the library to choose it as this year's title for the one book, one community program. Greg Mortenson, himself, is coming to speak in September. Her idea is not only should everyone enjoy the book, but wouldn't it be cool for our community to raise $50,000 to help him build a school. She's right. It would!

Daughter #2's university is asking every student to read the book this summer with book discussions to follow in the fall. I'm told many other universities are doing the same.

What Greg Mortenson has accomplished is to see the good in an area of the world few Americans even get too and far fewer of us understand. Long before 9/11, he began a mission to build schools in unserved Muslim rural areas. He not only was able to start educating young Muslim schoolgirls, he received blessings from Shia leadership in Iran to continue doing so. He built the schools using local labor and contacts and did it cheaply and effectively. And he's kept on doing it.

This is a wonderful story about a man who accepted people as they are, reached out without a demand that they change their faith, allegiances, or beliefs, and does what he can to help them help themselves. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Greg Mortenson is the director of the Central Asian Institute.

"Shed Your Stuff, Change Your Life"

There is a first-rate article in Oprah Magazine (yes, I'm an official member of the cult) this month by Julie Morgenstern excerpting her new book When Organizing Isn't Enough. I would link to the article but it hasn't been loaded onto the magazine web site.

Julie says, "Let's say you want to make a major change...but you're stalled. Here's the things: You can't be a new you without to some extent dismantling the old you."

I like my present "you." I don't want to transform my "you" as much as I want to transform my "life." This article spoke to me because the inertia of making an almost 180-degree turn in my life (paring it down, living alone again without my children, moving across the world, beginning new work in a new culture) can be overwhelming. I can see how people stall and don't go anywhere! It's a lot easier to stay put and not do the work or feel the feelings of loss. Because there are always feelings of loss.

She says:

I devised a four-step system to help people manage their own transitions with grace. I call it SHED, and though the process isn't always pleasant or easy, without it life gets stalled. Clinging to the old, the irrelevant, the stagnant holds you back. It can confine you to a space that no longer fits, denying you the opportunity to be your truest, best self. By releasing your attachment to obsolete items in your space and schedule, you gain the energy and clarity to make changes in your life, find your passion, or deal with the transition of divorce, an empty nest, or retirement. SHED is a transformative process for letting go of things that represent the past so you can grow and move forward. The SHED steps are:

Separate the treasures - Identify and unearth the items and obligations that energize you and have value for the next chapter of your life.

Heave the trash - Let go of any activity or object that depletes you; the result is a significant opening of time and energy.

Embrace your identity - never mind your stuff. This is your new opportunity to reconnect to your most authentic self.

Drive yourself forward - Begin to fill your space and schedule with activities, experiences, and items related to your future goals.

This blog is a big part of "embracing my identity so I can drive myself forward" to "separate my treasures and heave my trash." Frankly, shedding an old skin can be exhausting. But I find that change is ten times more exhilarating when I make it happen rather than let it happen to me.

What helped you make the transition from full nest to empty nest or from one country to another?