Wind of Change.

I'm thinking back to the town of Lauchhammer, Germany in August of 1991.

Socio-politically speaking, the greatest hit by Scorpions was still on regular rotation in the former "East Bloc." As we know by now, the physical environment there took a beating, seldom as badly as in locales where strip farm-near-me/">mining for dirty brown coal forced ancient towns out of existence and denuded entire regions.

This is being rectified at considerable expense, and you can read about it here.

farm-near-me/">mining-vacation">From Mining Hellscape to Holiday Paradise, by Megan Gannon (Atlas Obscura)

How Germany’s Lusatian Lakes District is remaking an entire region through broad-scale landscape re-engineering.

Over two centuries, coal farm-near-me/">mining completely changed the face of Lusatia, which straddles the states of Brandenburg and Saxony southeast of Berlin. The region was once largely rural, dotted with villages dating back to the Middle Ages and known for its population of Slavic-speaking Sorbs, an ethnic minority in Germany. But then strip mines consumed about 60 percent of the land. As the region became a moonscape, it supplied 90 percent of East Germany’s electricity and heated the country’s homes. Now, more than 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lusatia is in the midst of another radical transformation. The coal-farm-near-me/">mining industry is on the path to extinction—not without controversy—and tourism is being touted as one of its hopeful economic replacements. Inside the biggest exhausted Lusatian strip mines, there are now more than 20 new artificial lakes like Großräschen Lake, many of them connected by canals, covering around 60 square miles. Surrounding those waterways are a variety of new biomes—wet heaths, sandy grasslands, pine forests—as well as new cycling trails, hotels, campsites, harbors, dive shops, and all the other trappings of a German holiday hotspot. The Lausitzer Seenland bears the weight of a lot of superlatives—Germany’s largest lakes district, Europe’s largest artificial waterscape, the biggest landscape-construction site in Europe.

It transpires that I saw these moonscapes up close and personal in 1991, the town of Lauchhammer being the home of my friend Suzanne's parents, whom we visited as I made my way toward Dresden, Prague and the beginning of my teaching assignment in Košice.

My 1991 trip files remain in a banker's box downstairs, but the Atlas Obscura essay tells the tale. Suzanne's dad drove us around, and we viewed farmland, wasteland and reclaimed land.

I was told at the time that the restored strip mine pictured below was the GDR's showpiece reclamation project. That's good, but unfortunately it also was about the only reclamation project.

I didn't take photos of the actual mine we viewed, although I recall being told that the railroads ran on specially-designed movable track, a reality aptly depicted in the photo below at the web site of World Coal, which explains the challenges of keeping a scraper like this one, built in GDR times, working 28 years after the country ceased to exist (the article was written in 2018).

When Suzanne's father drove us around the countryside near Lauchhammer, landscapes like this were painfully common. I'm elated to learn that Germany has prioritized the creation of the waterscape.

However, I do not recall seeing these.

If we did, it has been forgotten. Then again, the towers probably were still working in 1991.

designboom.com/architecture/bio-towers-in-lauchhammer-germany/">bio towers in lauchhammer, germany (designboom)

the bio towers in lauchhammer, germany were built around a central staircase in sets of four. originally the towers were used to purify wastewater from the town’s coking plant by way of internal trickling filters. the IBA and the country’s monument preservation authorities believed that demolishing the bio-towers would represent a huge and irreplaceable loss to lauchhammer’s identity and to the memory of the first lignite coking plant in germany.

Reading the Downtown Jeffersonville News and Tribune reminds me of a certain food.

The Downtown Jeffersonville News and Tribune is getting very good at covering news that occurs within walking distance of the newspaper's headquarters ... in downtown Jeffersonsville.

As for the rest of us, there are scraps, sports and the odd bit. Anyone feel like some head cheese?

After all, parts is parts.

What Is Head Cheese And How To Eat It (Melanie Cooks)

“Head cheese” is not a cheese. I don’t know why it’s called cheese, when it is, in fact, meat! Head cheese is a jellied meat made from the meat of the head of a pig or cow. That’s why it’s “head”, but who knows why it’s “cheese.”

Following is an excerpt from an old story of mine about eating and drinking in (soon to become independent) Slovakia when I was teaching in Kosice in 1991.

Why repeat it? Because the only way I can get the bad taste of the News and Tribune's seemingly inexorable decline out of my mouth is to imagine pleasant things like beer and snacks going into it.

Can someone pass the vinegar?

---

Jozef announced his unshakable preference for a dish called t'lachinka: "Do you like our food?" he asked. "T'lachinka is Slovak food of tradition. At this restaurant, it is very good. Okay?" He actually smacked his lips.

"Maybe it isn't so good for you," said Ludmila. "Maybe your stomach is not good for our Slovak food." Vladimir laughed. Jozef looked dismayed. "No, no," he said, "it is best food for beer. We eat t'lachinka and drink beer. Yes?"

Yes.

The beer arrived. One taste confirmed that it was Pilsner Urquell. Three tastes later, it was gone. So was Jozef's. Vladimir, good‑natured and quiet, abandoned his half‑full glass to find the waitress and order another round.

I told Ludmila that Slovak food was fine. The previous evening, I'd gone with another student to the Gazdovska wine cellar, an atmospheric, slightly scruffy restaurant where the specialty is bryndza hluska, which I'd heard much about but not sampled.

Every Slovak I'd spoken to considered it to be incompatible with American tastes, perhaps owing to its topping of melted sheep's cheese. Naturally, the Gazdovska's bryndza hluska was excellent: pea‑sized dumplings in a white gravy, topped with tangy cheese and real bacon bits, and accompanied by a glass of golden Tokaj wine.

Back at the Zlaty Dukat, Ludmila was impressed by my familiarity with Slovak cuisine. Moments later, two platters of t'lachinka arrived.

In the lunchmeat section of the typical American supermarket, you'll find t'lachinka. It's called head cheese.

With obvious relish, Jozef said "watch me, okay?" He shifted a stack of raw, chopped onions onto slices of the compressed, unidentifiable, gelatinous meat. He ladled vinegar from a small tureen, dousing the quivering stack of meat by‑product and onion.

After that, all was flashing forks and lengthy drinks of the world's finest pilsner beer. I didn't hesitate to follow suit, and the t'lachinka was good. Why waste time contemplating internal organs and slaughterhouse scrapings so long as they taste good with beer?

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Here's a little bit more about Phyllis Garmon's independent mayoral campaign in 1991.

Yesterday we glanced into the rearview mirror at the independent 1991 mayoral candidacy of Phyllis Garmon, asking if readers could fill in the details given that Garmon did quite well in a losing bid for office.

1991: Democrat Doug England (4,785) defeats Independent Phyllis Garmon (4,154) and Republican Kenny Keilman (2,344).
Total votes: 11,283
Percentage: 42 – 37 - 21

Last night the Green Mouse received this background information from a veteran of the political scene in New Albany.

Garmon was the founder and owner of Key Communication. Key was the most prolific company in the area at the time with 300 employees and $30 million in annual sales.

She was one of the first highly recognized, self-made women New Albany and a founding member of Northside Christian Church. Key Communications employees and church members worked for her 1991 campaign in huge numbers.

Garmon was a multi-millionaire, earning around $6.5 million per year, and she spent over $100,000 in 120 days in 1991 on her campaig, the largest amount ever spent at the time.

The Republican Party "owed" the mayor's nomination position to Kenny Keilman because he was a councilman and had "waited his turn" so to speak. Garmon did not like this fact, to put it mildly. She knew she was more qualified, so so she went independent, proving again that the two major parties seldom pick the most qualified person to run our community's most important business -- because Parties First!

In 2019 Mark Seabrook is not the most qualified, either. He has waited for his turn and his time. Mark is a safe choice. However, he is the most popular person in local politics and well known city- and county-wide because of his funeral home business. This year's race is all about PARTY, power and control, qualified or not, and so let the defense of the ALAMO begin.

Dezider Milly and that other Carpatho-Rusyn artist family from what is now Slovakia.

I purchased the art postcard booklet while visiting Slovakia.

Exactly which visit to Slovakia eludes me, although probably it was 1991-92, during my English teaching assignment in Košice, when the geopolitical designation still was Czechoslovakia.

Decades later, we often sift through the accumulated memorabilia, knickknacks and posters, and after one such expedition, Diana propped the booklet on her desk downstairs. I need my own museum for all this stuff.

After looking at the booklet every day for months, it finally occurred to me to find out who Dezider Milly was. Translating from the Slovak-language Wikipedia:

Dezider Milly

Professor Dezider Milly (* 7 August 1906, Kyjov - † 1 September 1971, Bratislava ) was a Slovak painter, graphic designer and pedagogue, a representative of the visual arts of the Rusyns in Slovakia.

Kyjov's just north of Košice.

Dezider Milly – a big artist from a tiny village, at RUSYN ART ("Meet Carpatho-Rusyn visual artists")

Dezider Milly was a Rusyn artist born in Kyjov, in the district of Stara Lubovna in eastern Slovakia. He achieved the status of a nationally recognized artist.

The most detailed on-line biography of Milly in English is here. Note the spelling of the artist's name.

Myllyi’s active participation in the political and cultural life of post-World War II Communist Czechoslovakia had a negative impact on his artistic creativity. His paintings became little more than highly politicized figurative illustrations. This applied as well to his series entitled Tokaik (1959), based on the tragic wartime shootings of the village of Tokajik’s Rusyn inhabitants, an event which had deeply moved the artist. In the 1960s Myllyi moved away from his narrow politicized vision and began to create large-scale decorative panoramic landscapes. As if making up for the creative time lost during the post-1948 Communist era, Myllyi began in the last years of his life to paint a series of landscapes in his unique prewar style. While he was influenced by the various new artistic currents of the twentieth century, Myllyi’s true artistic roots were embedded in the realities of his native Carpathian region. Since his death, a permanent exhibit of his work is on display at the Dezyderii Myllyi Art Gallery (est. 1983), which is part of the *Museum of Ukrainian-Rus’ Culture in Svidnik, Slovakia.

You're forgiven for being confused; we began this essay in Slovakia, and ever since it's been about Milly as a Rusyn.

So, what's a Rusyn?

Rusyns (sometimes spelled Rusins, or called Carpatho-Rusyns signifying their villages being in the Carpathian Mountains) are one of the many nationalities/ethnic groups of Slovakia, along with Slovaks, Hungarians, Germans, and Romanies (Gypsies). Rusyns are eastern Slavs, which means that their history, culture, and language are rooted in the medieval Kievan Rus' kingdom (Slovaks, by contrast, are western Slavs), although Slovaks and Rusyns have lived together on the same territory for nearly 1000 years (and share some cultural traits). Traditionally, almost all Rusyns belong to the Byzantine/Greek Catholic or Orthodox Christian churches. Rusyns have never had their own country, but their homeland today lies in 3 countries: Slovakia, Ukraine (the Transcarpathian Oblast, former Subcarpathian Rus/Ruthenia, part of Czecho-Slovakia from 1919 until 1939), and Poland (the Lemko Region, formerly part of Galicia). There are approximately 1.5 million Rusyns in Europe today, and about 120,000 of them are in Slovakia.

Three of Milly's late-period landscapes:

This brings me full circle, as there's a Carpatho-Rusyn artist far better known internationally than Milly. It's Andy Warhol, whose father came to the United States in 1914.

It boggles my mind that it's been just shy of seven years since Warhol's brother John died, prompting the most recent reference in NAC to Rusyns prior to today.

----

John Warhola's passing inspires a Medzilaborce remembrance.

John Warhola has died, and therein lies a story.

In the fall of 1991, having only recently assumed my duties teaching conversational English to staff members at Košice's university hospital, I was asked by Dr. Roland, the hospital's first non-Communust administrator, if I'd like to accompany him to a Saturday afternoon museum opening in Medzilaborce, Slovakia.

The trip involved a total of seven hours on the road, to and from Medzilaborce, a lengthy commute not fully suggested by maps which did not account for the fractured condition of rural Slovak roads and a handful of "touristic" stops along the way. Dr. Roland did not drive, and at the time, he still made use of the hospital's de facto chauffered limo service, with its fleet of Soviet-made gas guzzlers and uniformed personnel.

What a ride!

Medzilaborce is cradled within the northern terminus of the Carpathians, which then veer westward to end in exclamatory fashion at the compact Tatra mountain range. Small towns are nestled between rugged, forested ridge lines. Poland is only a few miles away. This isolated area of Slovakia (as yet Czechoslovakia in 1991) is inhabited by Slovaks, Poles and indigenous Rusyns, the latter of the Orthodox persuasion, accounting for the gorgeous church in the center of town, and explaining the road signs in the Cyrillic alphabet: Меджильабірці.

Two large Campbell's Tomato Soup cans guarding the doorway of an otherwise nondescript concrete building gave the game away, for Andy Warhol's family was Rusyn, the collection now known as the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art was an embryonic East-West cultural venture in the immediate aftermath of Communism, and Andy's brother John was on hand to speak for the foundation.

Andy Warhol's elder brother dies aged 85; John Warhola was one of three founding members of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (in the Guardian)

After Warhola's father, Andrij, died in 1942, Warhola raised his younger brother, Andy (born Andy Warhola), and made sure he attended college. Their father, who had emigrated to the US from what is now Slovakia in 1914, left enough to pay for Andy's first two years of college, but his brother took responsibility for the reminder of the artist's education.

And so, that's how I came to meet John Warhola, if only for a few seconds and a handshake in a receiving line.

"Surreal" doesn't really do it justice, but I'm happy to see that the museum has survived and apparently prospered during the two decades since my visit. In 1991, we capped the opening with early dinner at a restaurant down the street, which served delicious pork and knedlicky dumplings with roasted potatoes, all washed down with cool golden lager brewed down the road in Prešov.

With requisite condolences at John Warhola's passing, I dedicate these memories of that singular day to him.

---

As you might imagine, I'd like to go back.

A book and a travel story about the eastern German island of Hiddensee.

In 1991, I set out from Vienna on a late summer's meander, first to the west and my first-ever experience of Bamberg, then north, and finally in the southerly direction of Czechoslovakia, where in September I was slated to begin a temporary job teaching English in the city of Košice, far off to the east near what's now Ukraine.

Without going downstairs to find the records from this journey, it isn't clear to me exactly where I went and when, but it's clear that at some point, I washed up in the Baltic port city of Greifswald, Germany to visit my friend Suzanne.

Just two years before this, Greifswald was in East Germany. I'd gotten to know Suzanne during my time in East Berlin, working for three weeks alongside the Free German Youth brigades, and residing on a bunk in a Warsaw Pact-surplus tent camp in a threadbare forest near the Planterwald S-Bahn station (links to the four-part telling of this story can be found here).

If memory serves, by 1991 Suzanne was doing graduate work at the university in Greifswald. I've no idea how we arranged to meet in this primitive pre-cellular era. Perhaps I sent a actual letter (?) or phoned from a friend's land line in Copenhagen. At any event, once there it was amazing to witness the transition underway. Some day I'll get around to writing more about it.

One item on the agenda was to go to the island of Hiddensee. To do required catching a train to Stralsund, and then a ferry to the island itself. The university dorms were a good 20-minute hike from the train station, maybe more, and we had to rise early to achieve the schedule. This wouldn't have mattered, except that we'd walked only a hundred yards when the skies opened up.

The streets were deserted, and there was no way to hail a taxi. We kept walking, and arrived at the train station completely soaked on a very cool morning. I can recall hanging my jacket on the hook in the rail compartment and watching the water drip from it.

Inundated and miserable, we boarded the ferry for Hiddensee. As the boat docked, the sun came out and the day turned comfortably warm. The wind from the sea was stiff as we began walking through the narrow island's village, and into the fields and sand dunes. Within minutes (or so it seemed), we were bone dry, only to be badly burned by the wind and sun by the time the ferry returned.

I'm sure it made the beers in Greifswald taste even better. By the way, I fully intend to read this book.

Dreams and dreamers: The myths associated with the island of Hiddensee (The Economist)

A look at the prize-winning debut novel from a German poet

Kruso. By Lutz Seiler. Translated by Tess Lewis. Scribe; 462 pages; £16.99.

WITH its thin body and chunky head (“the seahorse with the sledgehammer muzzle”), the German island of Hiddensee faces northwest across the Baltic Sea towards the coast of Denmark. Part of East Germany during the cold war, Hiddensee became an “island of the blessed”: an enclave of freethinkers where dreamers and idealists sought to escape the oppressive conformity of state socialism. Crucially, in “Kruso”, an outstanding debut novel by Lutz Seiler which won the 2014 German Book prize, it became home to refugees—swimmers, or sailors in makeshift craft—who tried to flee the GDR. Many drowned. Most were intercepted; but hundreds succeeded.

R.I.P. Prince.

Someone else said it well.

It's true that we never personally knew the departed artists we mourn, but knowing them personally wasn't ever the point, because they helped us know ourselves.

While my respect for Prince's musical talent and artistic integrity is immense and everlasting, I'm not going to suggest that I was ever more than a casual fan of his music, if even that. Music speaks to you, or it doesn't. Prince's staggering musical output had a deep effect on millions of people, less so on me. So it goes.

Except for one song.

In 1991, I had the chance to fulfill a dream, leaving in August for a few weeks in Austria, Germany and Denmark before arriving in Prague. After a few days in the (then) Czechoslovak capital, which had escaped the Soviet orbit less than two years before, I took an overnight train to Kosice, a city of 300,000 in what is now independent Slovakia.

It was even further away from everything than simple geography might suggest. Hungary was 10 miles to the south, and the Ukraine -- in the process of detaching itself from a dissolving Soviet Union -- lay roughly 50 miles to the east. It was 15 hours by train from Munich, and light years from home.

I'd come to Kosice to teach English to doctors at the teaching hospital on the hill, overlooking the old city. It was September, winter was coming, and I set about organizing the perimeter in the room I'd been assigned within walking distance of the classroom.

Thinking ahead, I'd shipped a few books, and taken some music cassettes. The budget included money for a boom box, which I found at the downtown state-owned department store. It was a dirt cheap South Korean model that few locals could afford, but it would do well enough to play the music I brought, and maybe listen to the BBC from time to time.

What I didn't know was that in Bratislava, a new FM radio station had just begun operations, and was somehow relaying the signal to Kosice.

Cleverly, it was called ROCK FM, and in a strange new era, when no one knew the boilerplate "rules," this station was just fabulous. The play list was organized into hour-long blocks: Heavy metal followed by country, then punk, or classic rock, and after that Top Forty from the American charts,with doses of Czech and Slovak music -- and so on, and so forth.

I heard Nirvana's Nevermind and Achtung Baby by U2 for the first time on Rock FM, along with Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and numerous other groups I'd never heard of, or hadn't had time to search out back home.

Note the irony: The by-the-numbers radio stations in Louisville were playing 1970s-era Bad Company and Led Zeppelin. I traveled to a recently liberated Communist country, and heard grunge.

And this song by Prince and the New Power Generation, which probably won't ever be confused with his best work even if it reached #3 on the US chart: Diamonds and Pearls, from the album of the same name.

I've no idea why this song spoke to me when so many other of Prince's compositions didn't, although it is inextricably bound with those months in Kosice. There was no singular epiphany -- not a particular girl, or a special moment. It may have been the weight of distance, and the sort of loneliness that comes when you begin thinking about time and distance.

All I can do is offer you my love. 

In the aftermath of his death, it's taken me until today to dare listening to this song of Prince's. In fact, I'd never seen the 1991 video until moments ago, just a few months shy of a quarter century after my teaching gig in Kosice started.

Those months taught me far more than I managed to convey to my students. Diamonds and Pearls is but one song on a lengthy soundtrack, but hearing it again brought back memories in waves.

Know thyself.

Prince's music helped so very many people make sense of their worlds. Let's give thanks for that, and for him.

Evansville remembers the filming of "A League of Their Own."

It is pleasingly ironic that in the same year (2011) NABC began serving beer for Dubois County Bombers collegiate league baseball games held in Huntingburg's League Stadium, which was built as a set for the movie "A League of Their Own," the film's 20th anniversary is being marked.

Evansville extras, workers recall 'A League of Their Own', by Thomas B. Langhorne.

When Bombers management contacted us earlier this spring, I confess to having no recollection of Huntingburg's part in filming. What I remembered was the use of Bosse Field in Evansville, as Langhorne's news article describes.

My other memory of the time: Madonna's petulence at being stuck in Evansville, as recalled by the writer:

Not even Madonna's later criticisms of Evansville — she told TV Guide she “may as well have been in Prague” — could dim the afterglow.

It may be the only recorded instance of a comparison between Evansville and Prague, and if I were the Indiana city, I'd use it. Prague's reaction is unknown.

Today's Tribune column: "Pop art in one-party Hoosierstan."

It doesn't end the way it begins, and that's purely intentional.

BAYLOR: Pop art in one-party Hoosierstan

Once upon a time, I met John Warhola. He died on Christmas Eve.

In 1991, only recently arrived in Kosice, Czechoslovakia, to assume short-term duties teaching conversational English to staff members at the city’s University Hospital, I was asked by Dr. Robert Roland — the hospital’s first post-Communist administrator, who had hired me — if I’d like to accompany him to a Saturday afternoon museum opening in Medzilaborce.

John Warhola's passing inspires a Medzilaborce remembrance.

John Warhola has died, and therein lies a story.

In the fall of 1991, having only recently assumed my duties teaching conversational English to staff members at Kosice's university hospital, I was asked by Dr. Roland, the hospital's first non-Communust administrator, if I'd like to accompany him to a Saturday afternoon museum opening in Medzilaborce, Slovakia.

The trip involved a total of seven hours on the road, to and from Medzilaborce, a lengthy commute not fully suggested by maps which did not account for the fractured condition of rural Slovak roads and a handful of "touristic" stops along the way. Dr. Roland did not drive, and at the time, he still made use of the hospital's de facto chauffered limo service, with its fleet of Soviet-made gas guzzlers and uniformed personnel.

What a ride!

Medzilaborce is cradled within the northern terminus of the Carpathians, which then veer westward to end in exclamatory fashion at the compact Tatra mountain range. Small towns are nestled between rugged, forested ridgelines. Poland is only a few miles away. This isolated area of Slovakia (as yet Czechoslovakia in 1991) is inhabited by Slovaks, Poles and indigenous Rusyns, the latter of the Orthodox persuasion, accounting for the gorgeous church in the center of town, and explaining the road signs in the Cyrillic alphabet: Меджильабірці.

Two large Campbell's Tomato Soup cans guarding the doorway of an otherwise nondescript concrete building gave the game away, for Andy Warhol's family was Rusyn, the collection now known as the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art was an embryonic East-West cultural venture in the immediate aftermath of Communism, and Andy's brother John was on hand to speak for the foundation.

Andy Warhol's elder brother dies aged 85; John Warhola was one of three founding members of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (in the Guardian)

After Warhola's father, Andrij, died in 1942, Warhola raised his younger brother, Andy (born Andy Warhola), and made sure he attended college. Their father, who had emigrated to the US from what is now Slovakia in 1914, left enough to pay for Andy's first two years of college, but his brother took responsibility for the reminder of the artist's education.

And so, that's how I came to meet John Warhola, if only for a few seconds and a handshake in a receiving line.

"Surreal" doesn't really do it justice, but I'm happy to see that the museum has survived and apparently prospered during the two decades since my visit. In 1991, we capped the opening with early dinner at a restaurant down the street, which served delicious pork and knedlicky dumplings with roasted potatoes, all washed down with cool golden lager brewed down the road in Presov.

With requisite condolences at John Warhola's passing, I dedicate these memories of that singular day to him.