Bulletin Board Summer 2015

IMAGE: Vitconan via wikimedia Commons

Are these colors, or colours?

There is a report in the March 2015 issue of The Atlantic that The Guardian, that venerable old English publication, launched a US online edition in September 2011 and they decreed that they would “defer to local spellings,” allowing American writers to use American English, British writers to use their English and – gasp – even Australians to use theirs.

CR congratulates The Guardian on their progressive attitude and is pleased that they are finally catching up with cosmopolitanreview.com. We at CR decided from the start that there is little point in imposing an imperial standard on our writers who, having at least a touch of Polish in them, would no doubt rebel anyway.

We can assure The Guardian that their readers should be able to handle the variant spellings they encounter. We know that CR readers have never had a problem but then, Cosmopoles are a very special people.

Tatra National Park
PHOTO: M. Cieszewski for POLSKA.pl

A 3D map of the Tatra Mountains created by scientists from Kraków universities was named the best map published in 2014 by the Journal of Maps.

“It is more than a map. It is a 3D model of the Tatras that can be presented as a topographical map, in perspective view, and as an animation,” explained Dr Jerzy Zasadni, who headed this project.

The map presents a spatial image of glaciers across the entire mountain range. A whole new perspective for avid Tatra hikers.

Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog, his 10-hour series of films each inspired by the Ten Commandments, is to have an American version made at NBC. Set in Boston, the script will be written and directed by Todd Ellis Kessler.

Many doubt that any new version can possibly come close to capturing the moral complexities Kieślowski’s original work explored. For the younger crowd, here’s a review written by the incomparable critic Roger Ebert. Kessler has quite a challenge on his hands.

Aquila Polonica’s latest book, The Color of Courage, has won both the Gold and the Silver 2015 Benjamin Franklin Awards, the Gold in the category of Interior Design, and the Silver in Autobiography/Memoir. It is also shortlisted for Foreword Reviews’ Indie Book of the Year Award in the category of Nonfiction War & Military.

Aquila Polonica’s publisher, Terry Tegnazian, is no stranger to awards. AP’s first book, The Mermaid and the Messerschmidt, published in 2009, was the 2010 winner of the Silver for Best First Book (nonfiction). The Ice Road took the 2011 Silver for Autobiography/Memoir; Maps and Shadows the Silver for Historical Fiction; The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery got the 2013 Silver for Autobiography; and Squadron 303 for the Gold Award for History and the Silver for Interior Design. The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery also won the 2012 PROSE Award for Biography and Autobiography from American Publishers Awards.

That is such an amazing record that it may come as no surprise to our readers that Tegnazian herself is a multiple award winner as well. Her laurels, to date, include: The Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, the Polonia Award from the Polish American Congress of Southern California, the Amicus Poloniae Award from the Polish American Historical Association, and the Los Angeles City Council honored her with the 2015 Pioneer Women of the year Award.

Her next book, Sikorski: No Simple Soldier, is due out in 2016 and we expect another great work. She knows no other way.

Congratulations, Ms Tegnazian.

CR

CR

CR publishes book + film reviews, interviews, profiles and more. All with a Polish slant, in English.