December; 2007
Issue
45
In This
Issue:
*Consul General's message
*Lectures on NATO
"Living on" Exhibit
*"Masters of American Cinema"
*Course for Teachers
*E-journalUSA
November seemed to pass by very quickly. The Christmas decorations in Krakow are up and it is hard to believe the holiday season is already upon us!
We enjoyed an active November at the US Consulate. The photographic exhibition, "American Writers", opened in Wroclaw at the Dolnoslaska Public Library on November 14. Our American Corner, which has circulating books, English discussion classes and more, is located there, and I would encourage those of you in Wroclaw to visit the American Corner if you haven’t already. Please click here for more information.
Ambassador Ashe visited our region November 20 and 21 and met with the mayors of Rzeszow, Tarnow, Dabrowa Tarnowska, Nowy Wisnicz and Bochnia. We also met with newly elected Krakow City Council Chairwoman Malgorzata Radwan-Ballada.
Also in November, we met with agencies that coordinate the State Department’s Work and Travel program. This program allows post secondary students to work legally in the US and visit. It is an excellent way to improve English, learn about US culture and see some of the wonderful national parks and sites in the United States. If you or someone you know is interested in the Work and Travel program, please click here for more information.
Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on November 23. It was a chance for all of us at the consulate to stop and appreciate the opportunity to work in such a special country like Poland!
For December we look forward to events like the opening of the exhibition "Living On" and the lectures of Lawrence Chalmer, NATO expert from the United States. Please see the rest of Spotlight for more details.
I wish you and your family a happy and safe holiday season.
Lawrence Chalmer, the Director of the NATO Education Center at the National Defense University in Washington D.C., will lecture on the future of NATO to the students of European Studies at Jagiellonian University on Thursday, December 6 at 10:00 at the European Studies Institute in Przegorzaly. He will speak on "Expectations and Challenges for NATO in the 21st Century". Professor Chalmer will also have a presentation for the Institute of Strategic Studies' audience on "NATO Anatomy and Physiology - the NATO of 2008" at the Institute of Strategic Studies, ul. Mikolajska 2. on Wednesday, December 5 at 3:30 p.m..
A retired U. S. Air Force officer, Mr. Chalmer served in operational flying and national and NATO policy assignments in both the United States and Europe. Mr. Chalmer has led delegations providing NATO orientation to numerous European nations. His public diplomacy and NATO educational outreach work have included substantive lectures and discussions in the nations of NATO and the Partnership for Peace and to numerous educational institutions, military and civilian audiences in the United States.
A photographic exhibition featuring Holocaust survivors will open at Galicia Museum in Krakow at ul. Dajwor 18 on December 10 at 6:00 p.m. “Living On” delivers an inspiring message of the victory of life over death by telling the stories of Holocaust survivors, liberators, prisoners of war, and witnesses who came from or moved to the state of Tennessee. Most of the photographs feature individuals born within the borders of pre-World War II Poland or whose major experience of the war was on Polish soil. Each photograph is accompanied by the person’s story in Polish and English. “Living On” shows how deeply this dark part in history continues to touch on all of us in ways that link us, Poles and Americans alike – even in just one of the fifty states of the United States of America. The exhibition is brought to Poland by the US Embassy in Warsaw and the US Consulate in Krakow in cooperation with the Tennessee Holocaust Commission.
The opening of the exhibit will be accompanied by the recital of American pianist Lee Sloan, who
will play songs of Jewish-American composers and improvisations on the themes of Jewish and Yiddish songs in folk and popular culture.
The exhibition will
be on display until January 15. For exhibit hours and other information, please contact Galicia Museum:
http://www.galiciajewishmuseum.org
Book Promotion: “Masters of American Cinema”
The Film Studies Department of Jagiellonian University is organizing a promotion of the "Masters of American Cinema" book series at Collegium Novum, Room 30 on December 19 at 3:00 p.m.
The book, prepared by the members of the Institute of Audiovisual Arts at Jagiellonian University and published with the support of the U.S. Consulate in Krakow, is the first Polish language publication about the history of American cinema and includes critical essays on leading American film directors. The authors discuss the input of prominent American film figures in the development of modern film art. The first volume of the series was published two years ago and includes the essays on classical Hollywood films. The second volume entitled “Bunt i Nostalgia” was published this year.
The promotion will be accompanied by the presentation on American film history prepared by vice-consul and former film critic John Surface.
In December and January, the Public Affairs Section of the US Consulate in Krakow will organize a two-day course on American Culture and Civilization for teachers of English as a foreign language. The course will include lectures, presentations and short film showings on US history, geography, culture and values prepared by consulate officers, the Educational Advisor and the Information Resource Center.
For more details, please contact the Consulate's Educational Advisor at tel: 012 424 5140
By the 21st century, combined annual foreign aid approached $70 billion (thousand million). By some measures, it has totaled $1.5 trillion since 1960. And yet poverty, hunger, and underdevelopment are still with us. The question, inevitably, is why? This issue of eJournal USA offers leading thinkers’ explanations of how the United States and other nations continue to wrestle with this question. In what ways has foreign assistance been structured, conditioned, distributed? What has been tried, and what works? How has the new "transformational diplomacy" shaped the U.S. aid model, and how does that model differ from others?
PDF version of the journal: http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/1107/ijpe/ijpe1107.pdf
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U.S. Consulate General, ul.
Stolarska 9, Krakow, tel.: 12 424-5100
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