The end of school year …
… is a hectic time, but somehow we are all able to make this last bit of extra effort and have some fun. This year it’s a school show by a bunch of Global Village students and teachers, for themselves, parents and friends. It’s all about summer (a countdown to holiday), water (The Enormous Crocodile, dramatised), and love (Romeo and Juliet, simplified).
They are staging the show at Teatr Szkolny, Akademia Teatralna, Sienkiewicza 14, on Thursday, 14 June, at 5 PM. Anybody can come and see, entrance is free, but arrive early to avoid disappointment, the space is limited.
How about this little gem from Roald Dahl’s story:
A bit further on, The Enormous Crocodile met Muggle-Wump, the Monkey. Muggle-Wump was sitting in a tree, eating nuts.
“Hello, Crocky,” said Muggle-Wump. “What are you up to now?”
“I have secret plans and clever tricks,” said the Crocodile.
“Would you like some nuts?” asked Muggle-Wump.
“I have better things to eat than nuts,” sniffed the Crocodile.
“I didn?t think there was anything better than nuts,” said Muggle-Wump.
“Ah-ha,” said the Enormous Crocodile,
“The sort of things that I’m going to eat have fingers, toe-nails, arms and legs and feet!”
Muggle-Wump went pale and began to shake all over. “You aren’t really going to gobble up a little child, are you?” he said.
“Of course I am,” said the Crocodile. “Clothes and all. They taste better with the clothes on.”
“Oh, you horrid hoggish croc!” cried Muggle-Wump. “You slimy creature! I hope the buttons and buckles all stick in your throat and choke you to death!”
The Crocodile grinned up at Muggle-Wump and said, “I eat monkeys, too.” And quick as a flash, with one bite of his huge jaws, he bit through the tree that Muggle-Wump was sitting in, and down it came. But just in time, Muggle-Wump jumped into the next tree and swung away through the branches.
Which typeface for facelift?
The Global Village logo is ten this summer. It has served us well for all those years and become an easily recognizable local graphical landmark, incorporating both the school’s idea and people behind it.
The origin of its present shape is anything but special. It all happened round the kitchen table and took two open minds, about two hours of brainstorming, two litres of Żywiec beer, and evidently just these two words ? global village.
The problem to solve was this ? how to go about a company logo whose core idea was a logo itself, one of the most cliched verbal logos of the 20th century, like Hollywood, Concorde, or Unix. No matter where they appear, they all drag the baggage of their extended, metaphorical meaning. An attempt to add a distinct, purely graphical element to ‘global village’ seemed like a vialotion of its essence. Hence, the final shape had to be simple, if not austere ? the white, densely packed lettering on the burgundy and dark navy strip.
But today, ten years later, when the global village around plays an ever important part at Global Village in Nowy Świat, the idea of re-adjusting them in the logo seems reasonable and tempting.
Let’s play then. If you were to choose a typeface to replace the original, condensed Haettenschweiler, and allow a 21st-century feel, which of the three numbered typefaces below would you go for?
In praise of BB
No, no, not the 60s French cinema icon Brigitte Bardot. Another ageing BB, Burt Bacharach The Composer, undisputed genius of American popular music. Sad to admit, but when we carried out a quick poll among random students and teachers, his name rang a bell to only one out of nine. And don’t tell us that media are to blame for it. Or perhaps. Ironically, these are rare occasions when any Polish station plays a song of his, or when you spot some odd record in a shop.
The fact that he’s a Jew is enough for another Jew, the obsessed John Zorn, to classify him under Great Jewish Music. After all, so many American songwriters have been Jewish ? Berlin, Weil, Gershwin, Bernstein, Dylan, Reed…. An epitome of the British yob, one of the Oasis men, summarized his music bluntly: “If you you can’t convince a girl to sleep with you after you’d played her a Bacharach song, you might as well forget it.”
No matter what perspective you take to listen, his songs always transcend what a popular song is expected to be. Hummable? Yes, but after a few bars you come to a halt. Simple as they are, they suddenly become deeply complex when he stacks unexpected, twisted harmonies, crams rich musical details, or adds orchestral arrangements topped with horns ? all within the space of a three-minute marvel. And if Bacharach turns his tunes into works of art, their other layer, lyrics by his long-time collaborator David Hal, seem to bring human emotions to their simplest (American) form. Perhaps that’s why the impact of their songs has been so great that few just shrug their shoulders and walk on by.
classic Bacharach (.mp3 file, 3MB, approx. 3 minutes)
Leon as a tour guide
Leon Tarasewicz has brought part of his international pack of friends to the region again. They are touring all those semi-hidden places in search of links between the past and present, so abruptly and painfully broken here around mid-twentieth century. Last Saturday evening at Willa Sokrates in Krynki, Polish was the least spoken language when the host and three of his visitors read in turn Janowicz’s ‘Miniatures’ in Belorusian, Italian and English.
The group’s densely packed week culminates with Leon’s new exhibition at Arsenal Gallery on Friday afternoon. This inevitably takes us back to May 1995, when a curator of his previous exhibition asked if we could give them a hand preparing it over a weekend. We hapilly agreed of course, not knowing yet what we were letting ourselves in for. When we entered the gallery’s first-floor rooms, we saw stark white walls randomly covered with splashes of primary colours. Then the artist gave us a supersonic course in the painting technique he adopted for his exhibition, and off we started. That weekend we covered hundreds square metres of walls, floor to ceiling, one room in dabs of sky-blue and daffodil-yellow, some other room in blood-red and grass-green, yet another one in horizintal stripes of all sunset colours. Soon, with our aching arms, we learned about some artists’ toil – Leon certainly is one of them. We also learned about the hallucinogenic effect of painting – vivid colours danced in front of us, even with the eyelids closed, for days on. And that’s how we met Leon.
Arsenal Gallery, 1995
Lost in Bachotek
An exceptionally long, five-day EuroBachoTeX 2007 conference closed yesterday, leaving some 60 participants with lots to remember, learn and get ready for. Typically, TeX developers had their prime time, but regular users couldn’t complain either, with 40 presentations focusing solely on TeX, a graphic design workshop, a crash course in paper making, a day trip to Toruń, and plenty of individual sessions with ‘TeX clinic’ doctors, whose job was to help solve problems.
The youngest speaker at the conference, eleven-year-old Sam Guravage from The Netherlands, not only lowered the statistical age of the conference gang, but also got the hottest applause after his presentation. Read below.
Confessions of a Teenage TeX User
Playing with a new toy
A couple of days after much hyped World Book Day, it’s interesting to listen to this fascinating talk about the future of the book ? more precisely, the effect of the digital world on the traditional book. Andrew Marr and his quests talk on BBC Radio 4 programme, Start the Week.
listen (.mp3 file, 3.4MB, approx. 3 minutes)
There are other worlds out there
What car make do you drive? Which bread do you like? What films do you watch? Any of these questions may spark off a conversation, often with a good deal of opinions and arguments.
Would it be equally so if we aksed: “Which tool do you use to write your letters, essays and reports?” The first response would probably be some genuine bafflement creeping into the face: “What do you mean?” In this world and at this time, everybody is expected to use the only right tool – the one spawned by Microsoft Corporation. Unless you are aware of the alternatives, which, of course, aren’t promoted by Word vendors. For good reason – they are available for free.
TeX is one of the other tools and we are happy to promote it. Below is our small contribution to the TeX community and a good starting point to find out about the system.
Sweetness to die for
However outrageous it may sound, all those Easter ‘babas’ and ‘mazurkas’ suck. Haven’t we all had enough of them, sickly sweet and predictable? This Easter we betrayed them to some simpler and more straightforward stuff – molasses, the by-product of crushed sugar cane. Pure molasses is, quite simply, inedible, yet during the refining process a molasses is produced that is palatable. Further refining produces treacle, a substance almost black in colour, gooey, sweet and flavoursome.
Treacle doesn’t wear an enormous price tag, but that doesn’t mean it should be taken for granted. It still holds a place in today’s British cuisine. Traditionally used for curing home-made hams and bacons, it is also a valuable ingredient in puddings, gives them that significant, unique, rich taste. The flavour of treacle is so pronounced that only a little need to be used.
If you feel like giving it a try – this tiny health food shop in Grochowa usually has a couple of different kinds of the stuff in question. Just make sure you don’t ask for a jar of treacle. ‘La mèlasse de sucre de canne’ will do.
Roman holiday continues
basia_t lost in Rome: ‘Everything has to be big there.’
Dobiegły już końca kursy języka angielskiego w ramach drugiej edycji projektu Europejskie Podlasie mówi po angielsku.
Zakończenie projektu to czas podsumować i refleksji. Słuchacze kursu z żalem rozstawali się z nami i podkreślali, że czas spędzony w Global Village przyniósł im wymierne korzyści. W ankiecie przeprowadzonej na zakończenie projektu na pytanie: „Czy jest Pani zadowolona/Pan zadowolony z otrzymanego wsparcia?” wszyscy bez wyjątku odpowiedzieli-tak. Nauczyciele bardzo wysoko ocenili entuzjazm słuchaczy, silną motywację i wzorową frekwencję i zgodnie stwierdzili, że praca w tych grupach dawała im wiele radości. A dla Global Village to satysfakcja, że wysiłek włożony w realizacje projektu spotkał się z tak entuzjastycznym przyjęciem. Dał nam nie tylko poczucie dobrze spełnionego zadania ale również motywację do dalszych wyzwań.
