October; 2007
Issue
43
In This
Issue:
*Consul General's message
*American Astronaut
*Rawa Blues
*Media Forest
*Living On Exhibit
*Kenneth Katzman
*American Writers Exhibit
*Peter Brookes
*Mars Festival
*E-journalUSA
We’ve had the opportunity to travel all over southern Poland during September. This month started with the Krynica Economic Forum, where Dan Fried, former Ambassador to Poland and now Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, gave a presentation on the proposed missile defense system in Europe. If you’d like to read the full text of his remarks, they are available here. We also were privileged to have Judith McHale, the former CEO of Discovery Communications, join us at Krynica. Judith spoke in Krakow to new entrepreneurs at MISTIA (Małopolski Instytut Samorządu Terytorialnego i Administracji). The tale of Discovery’s rise from a company with $15,000 in equity to a $3 billion corporation was inspiring, and her adherence to diversity in hiring, developing family-friendly workplace policies and encouraging corporate community service are also noteworthy.
I was in the Dolnośląskie Region twice this month. On September 12, I celebrated the start of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, with the Jewish gmina in Wroclaw and toured PZL-Hydral, a company that manufactures aircraft parts. I returned to Wrocław for the opening of Oktoberfest September 20, which is an annual event sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce and other businesses. I also visited Wałbrzych, met the mayor, and toured the Toyota Factory. The beautiful Książ castle was the last stop on our trip. As always, the Dolnośląskie Region impressed me -- the pace of development there is just amazing.
Ambassador Ashe was in Zakopane on September 12 to witness the signing of a “Sister Parks” agreement between Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, and the Tatra National Parks of Poland and Slovakia. US Ambassador to Slovakia Rodolphe Vallee was also in Zakopane for the event, which is just the beginning of the cooperation between these parks. This agreement comes after a series US government-sponsored exchanges, and we were certainly thrilled to see the results!
Ambassador Ashe and I also attended the American Chamber of Commerce’s Governing Council meeting here in Krakow on September 18. The Deputy Minister of Labor, Kazimierz Kuberski joined us, and we had a very fruitful dialogue on business and development in the region.
Consulate officers visited Rzeszów twice this month to meet with border guards and representatives of the International Police Association. This association has done an outstanding job of uniting police, city government and regional government officials from both sides of the border. We were also honored to observe a 9/11 memorial event in Rzeszów hosted by the International Police Association.
I hosted several receptions at my home in September. We honored Linda Bergendahl-Pauling, the American founder of Make-a-Wish Foundation, along with the Polish branch of Make-a-Wish, Mam Marzenie, and other Polish groups that work with children and the disadvantaged. This was truly an inspiring evening. Teachers of English were at my home to learn about our consulate programs for English learners, including our monthly e-magazine Zoom in on America, available on our website. Finally, we hosted a reception for alumni of US government exchange programs, and we hope to have more regular contact with our alumni.
October promises to be exciting as well. The universities will be opening in our region, and we have many guests coming from the US. NASA Astronaut Shannon Lucid will be meeting young people at events in Wrocław and Chorzów on October 4 and 5. Please see below for details. The Rawa Blues festival in Katowice on October 6 will be featuring films from the United States on famous blues musicians. An exhibit from the Tennessee Holocaust Commission entitled “Living On” will open October 17 at the Auschwitz Jewish Center, Oświęcim, and a photo exhibit on American writers by photographer Nancy Crampton will be opening at the Dąbrowa Górnicza library in the Śląskie Region on October 24. For all of this and more, I invite you to check our website.
Anne Hall, Consul General
American Astronaut Visits Poland
American Astronaut Dr. Shannon W. Lucid will visit Poland to participate in an international conference devoted to fifty years of space exploration organized by the Polish Academy of Science and Warsaw University of Technology on October 2-3, 2007.
Dr. Lucid, America's most experienced and record-setting astronaut, will speak about her space flight experience during 223 days on five missions between 1985 and 1996. Dr. Lucid currently holds the United States single mission space flight endurance record on the Russian Space Station Mir. In completing this mission, Dr. Lucid traveled 75.2 million miles in 188 days.
She will have several speaking events in Wrocław, Chorzów and Kraków.
In Wrocław she will speak at the inauguration of the academic year at the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy of the Wrocław University on October 4. She will meet with high school students and the general public at the American Corner in Wrocław, Rynek 58 on October 4 at 3:30 p.m.
Chorzów Planeterium in Silesia will host Dr. Lucid's presentation for students and the general public who are interested in space exploration and astronomy on Friday October 5th at 10:30.
A meeting with Shannon Lucid in Kraków will be held at the Jagiellonian University Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Applied Computer Science on Friday, ul. Rejmonta 4 on October 5 at 3:15 p.m. It will be followed by the presentation of John Hall – Director of Export Control and Interagency Liaison of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He will be speaking about the United States’ vision for space exploration and past achievements and future plans of the U.S. government’s space exploration program.
The annual Rawa Blues Festival will take place Saturday, October 6 in Katowice. In addition to the live blues performances from international and Polish artists, there will be a series of film showings at the Movie Art Center in Katowice. The film series includes the American Folk Blues festival series, classic footage from American artists such as Muddy Waters, and the Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues series.
For more information, please see the Rawa Blues Festival web site http://www.rawablues.com/en/
Two groups of Ukrainian journalists and students of journalism will be coming to Poland on October 10-14 to discuss the upcoming Schengen zone enlargement at an international conference entitled “The Search for New Directions of Cooperation: Poland-Ukraine-European Union-United States” to be held in the Rzeszów Radio Studio on October 11th. The conference will be preceded by an exhibit presenting photos from twelve study tours organized by the Partnership for Democracy Foundation during the last year. On Friday October 12th both groups will participate in the annual “Media Forest” event at Lomna near Bircza where they will be planting trees as a sign of reconciliation between Poland and Ukraine. After the event, journalists will learn about the public-private environmental program for the San and Wiar rivers located on the Polish/Ukrainian border.
“Living On" Photographic Exhibit Opens in Auschwitz Jewish Center
A photographic exhibition featuring Holocaust survivors will open at Auschwitz Jewish Center in Pl Księdza J. Skarbka 5 on October 17 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 exhibition will run through November 30.
For exhibit hours and ticket information, please contact Auschwitz Jewish Center at: www.ajcf.pl
Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East expert from the Congressional Research Service will be visiting Poland. He will be meeting with scholars and students at the Krakow Institute for Strategic Studies on Friday, October 19 to discuss “Iraq and Its Future in the Region”. Also on October 19, he will meet with students of Transatlantic, American and European Studies at Jagiellonian University to talk about ”European and American Approaches to Iran”.
American Writers Exhibit
Consul for Press and Culture Susan Parker-Burns will give a lecture on American literature at the opening of the photographic exhibition “American Writers” on October 24 at 12:00 at the Public Library in Dąbrowa Górnicza, ul. Tadeusza Kosciuszki 25. The exhibit features 43 photographs of major American novelists, poets and playwrights by the prominent American photographer Nancy Crampton, who has been a photographer of literary artists for thirty-five years. Each photograph is paired with a text from the writer including his thoughts on the craft, recollections of the moments which influenced his writing or a discussion of the social importance of writing. Many of the subjects of the photographs are well-known, such as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison and John Cheever. Nancy Crampton collected more than a hundred of these portraits in the book, “Writers”, published in 2005. To celebrate the book, exhibitions of many of the photographs were held in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia.
The exhibit will be open until November 7.
Website of the Public Library in Dąbrowa Górnicza http://www.biblioteka-dg.pl/
Peter Brookes from the Heritage Foundation will be a panelist at an international conference on "Europe-NATO-America" in Krakow organized by the Institute of Strategic Studies on Saturday, October 27. Several top Polish and NATO officials will attend the conference. On October 29, he will travel to Wrocław to meet with students and faculty of the International Relations department at Wrocław University.
The Polish Branch of the Mars Society will hold a Mars Festival in Krakow on October 27- 28 in the Centrum Kongresowym w Elektrociepłowni, Krakow at ul. Ciepłowniczej. The festival will include documentary and feature films, meetings with specialists on cosmic research, presentations from publishing houses, exhibits on meteors and space equipment. The organizers also plan an educational program for children and youth.
The festival will include an exhibit, "Mars, Mission Possible" prepared by the U.S. Consulate General in Krakow. It presents both color and black-and-white photos sent to Earth by the Mars Rovers Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity as well as other images of Mars. The photos were taken mostly in the period of the Spirit and Opportunity's mission from January to April 2004, but more current photos will also be included.
More information about the festival is available on the Mars Society Polska's website http://chapters.marssociety.org/polska
Empty nest NASA/JPL/Cornell
It is estimated that some 850 million people around the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition. Through articles written by NGO representatives and U.S. government officials, this edition of eJournal USA describes some of the ways in which the United States government works through its agencies and in conjunction with international organizations and NGOs to provide food and assistance to save lives and to help hungry people feed themselves.
PDF version of the journal: http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/ites/0907/ijee/ijee0907.pdf
ejournalUSA
To unsubscribe return this message with "unsubscribe" in the Subject line
U.S. Consulate General, ul.
Stolarska 9, Krakow, tel.: 12 424-5100
PRIVACY