Family Journal: Sunday June 22, 2008

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Caspian Fire Whistle, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.

I have not been posting much lately as I have been extremely ill. Yesterday morning I went into the walk-in clinic at the Iron County Community Hospital. I was diagnosed with strep throat and tonsilitis. Since Thursday evening I have had fever, headache, sore throat, and muscle aches. I think Nadia is coming down with it too. It is Sunday morning and I am finally feeling well enough to write a bit on the computer and drink a cup of coffee. I still have a sore throat and head ache.

The video above is from earlier in the week. I was raised in the town of Caspian, Michigan. It is located in Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula, about 6 miles from the border of Wisconsin. There are around 900 inhabitants of the town. They have a quaint tradition to sound a “fire whistle” at 9:00 PM. This is to warn all the children to go home. In the winter it sounds at 8:00 PM. My sons really enjoy it and we have to go up to the town hall and sit directly under the horn to get the full effect.

We also rode bikes on the Apple Blossom trail. This is a trail that runs along the Iron River through town over to the nieghboring town of Iron River. It follows the old railroad tracks laid down by the iron ore mining companies at the turn of the century.

Kosovo Part I

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Kosovo has been in the Serbian news a lot lately so I wanted to get a bit of historical background on the place. In February they declared independence and that caused protests in Serbia. It is a place of conflict and violence.

Kosovo was the southern part of Serbia. It held 20% of the Serbian population and composed about 12% of its land mass. The area is small compared to the USA, with Kosovo only being ¼ the size of my home of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It is actually only a bit bigger than Iron county. The majority (> 90%) of the population is Albanian but many Serbs consider it the “cultural heartland” of the nation and the scene of Serbian Orthodox monasteries, historic battlefields, and other historic sites.

It was my goal in reading Kosovo: A Short History by Noel Malcolm, to learn more about why some Serbs feel so strongly about the place, considering it is now mostly Albanian. The question of Kosovo independence is a touchy subject with Serbs and this particular book caused many ill-feelings with the Serbs. It is not my place to form an opinion this question and I will read more on Kosovo.  I can say it is sad to have had so much death and hate in the breakup of Yugoslavia. This is the last bit of it. The topic of Kosovo will come up in conversation with my future Serb friends and I do want to visit the place to see it for myself, so some background on the area will not hurt.

In general, I disagree with the former US president Woodrow Wilson regarding his view on independence movements. When the great powers were deciding the fate of nations and peoples after World War I, he had the philosophy that if an area was mostly homogeneous in regards to ethnicity, that they should have self-determination. That sounds nice, but the world is more complex than that. I see that a strength of the USA is the union of many different kinds of people to form one unified government and more importantly, one economy. Personally, I believe that standard of living takes precedence over everything and it is nicer to live in a bigger economy. There are more opportunities to earn a living and have a better home and lifestyle for individual families. I am not sure that this movement of smaller and smaller nations is beneficial in this regard.

I am mix of Slovak and Polish descent. I am a “pan-Slavist” and wish that the Slavs would have banded together from the beginning to form one country. They would have had a better standard of living and wielded more power in defending themselves against larger outside powers like the Ottomans and the Nazis. According to Wikipedia there are 320 million Slavs. Imagine if Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia along with the Slavs of  former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria formed one country. It would also be more powerful than current European heavyweights, Germany and France.

As I move through the book, I’ll blog more about what I am learning.

Family Journal: Wednesday June 18th

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Ocean, Papa, Owen, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.

The highlight yesterday was a picnic we had at Hagerman Lake. Hagerman Lake is 586 acres and located near the border of Wisconsin and Michigan. They have a small public beach. It was a cool day with temperatures in the high 60’s, low 70’s all day so we had the beach to ourselves. I packed some sandwiches and drinks and we had a grand time. We played a big game of kick ball with Uncle Jimmer and cousin Tony. We even all got into the water! Once you got in the water was not too bad. You can click on the photo above to see more.

Nadia found out today that she will be teaching kindergarten next year at ISB. It is good that she enjoys teaching and the double income will certainly help us. It does however put a bit a stress on us in finding a quality nanny for Ocean. We visited with neighbors and old friends. Carol Drake and her daughter stopped by, we talked with the Medovichs, Kinneys, and Rivards in the neighborhood.

We are gearing up for Saturday’s 10 kilometer run in Marinette, Wisconsin and we will have a full blog report on the that. The cooler temperatures will continue and after living 9 degrees north of the equator for the past 6 years, we are loving it!

Potty Training Oliver

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Oliver M&M Ceremony, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.

This clip is a short ceremony we held to encourage Oliver to use the bathroom. He is now wearing big boy underwear and Nadia came up with the idea to have an M&M jar on top of the fridge. When he tells us he has to go to the bathroom, he receives M&M’s. Yesterday he was 3 out of 5 opportunities.

We hope to have him perfect before school starts in August.

Latest Reading: Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

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I just finished reading Pollan’s latest book. I highly recommend it to everyone! The book is a follow up to “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” This book gives advice to people on how to escape from the Western Diet. The Western Diet being the highly processed, unnatural foods for sale in supermarkets. The Western Diet is also the culture surrounding food, or lack of culture. Americans spend less time and money on food than all other countries. They are over fed but undernourished, filling up on sugars, corn and soya derivitives. He goes to great lengths to document the evidence behind Americans’ poor health how it relates to our poor diet.  The unprecedented rising rates of diabetes, heart disease, and cancers are caused from the low nutrition, highly processed food products that make up the majority of Americans’ diets. The first part of the book he goes through the history of how we came to this point. The second half, which I will describe here, is advice for people who want to escape the Western Diet.

On a personal note, I am a product of the Western Diet. I remember eating a diet of Wonder Bread, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and Cocoa Puffs. Being outside of the US, has improved my diet, but I am making a committment to eat better and for my family to eat better. As Pollan writes, “In order to eat well, we need to invest more time, effort, and resources.”

Advice to “Escape from the Western Diet”

EAT FOOD…

  • Don’t eat anything my great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
  • Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting.
  • Avoid food products with over 5 ingredients, unfamiliar or unpronouncable names, or containing high fructose corn syrup.
  • Avoid “low fat” or foods making health claims.
  • Shop the peripheries of the supermarket, stay out of the middle. Walls on the outside are the dairy, produce, meat, and fish.
  • Buy food outside of the supermarket (farmer’s markets, etc.)
  • Eat foods when in season.
  • Get to know the food producers.
  • Eat whole grain rice, flour, bread, and sugar. Refined grains are less nutricious than whole grains.
  • Eat as many different foods as possible.
  • Organic fruits and veggies have a higher nutritional content due to better soils.

MOSTLY PLANTS

  • Be a “flexitarian” that is someone that is mostly vegetarian, but will eat meat, fish occasionally.
  • Look for “pastured” label on meat.
  • Buy a freezer and stock up on fruits/veggies when in season or buy 1/2 a cow/pig. Freezing does not diminish nutritional value.
  • Eat wild foods like game and greens.
  • Take a multivitamin after age 50.
  • Drink wine with dinner.
  • Eat traditional cultural foods.

Not Too Much

  • Pay more and eat less – eat better quality foods.
  • Be like the French and don’t take seconds.
  • Eat meals together, children learn manners, conversation, portion size, etc.
  • Do all of your eating at the table.
  • Don’t buy food at a gas station.
  • Don’t eat alone.
  • Smaller portions, smaller plates, more vertical glasses
  • Eat slowly and deliberately
  • Cook as often as possible
  • Plant a garden

Grandma Kralovec’s Top 5 Least Favorite Athletes

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My mother, Yvonne Kralovec is a sports fanatic. She still follows sports daily, at age 67. She was a great athlete in her day, playing fast pitch softball, basketball, and bowling. She was a long time girls’ basketball coach at West Iron County Public Schools.

Her top five least favorite athletes are as follows:

#5 – Peyton Manning, QB Indianapolis Colts – “He thinks he is so great. He still complains about losing out on the Heisman trophy to the Michigan guy.” She loved it when his little brother upstaged him this year.

#4 – Todd Jones, Pitcher Detroit Tigers- “He can’t get three consecutive outs and makes me nervous.”  Note- Grandma watches or listens to every Tiger game. She has been doing this for the past 60 years.

#3 – Alex Rodriguez, Third Baseman NY Yankees – “Too much attention is paid to him, plus he is a Yankee.”

#2 – Kobe Bryant, Captain, LA Lakers – “Braggart, ‘I am the MVP’.” Anyone who campaigns for the MVP loses points in her book.

#1 – Tiger Woods, golfer – “That is all you hear about. For example, his poor knee, he won the US Open and they are worried about his knee. If he can play 91 holes, he doesn’t have problems with his knee.”

As you can see, she loves the underdogs.

Fathers’ Day – June 15, 2008

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Fathers & Sons, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.

It was a wonderful Fathers’ Day holiday yesterday for us. The bright sunshine, cool breeze, and spending lots of time together made it wonderful. We started the day off with the traditional St. Cecilia’s Church Father & Son Breakfast. It was held in the basement of our family’s Catholic Church in Caspian. My parents are devout Catholics and I spent a lot of time there growing up. It was nice that all of my father’s sons and grandsons could be in attendance.

We then took the kids up to the Caspian Community Center playground. That is another place where I spent much of my youth. The center was built in the 1921 during the mining boom days and it is still open today. New playground equipment was donated by the De Paoli family for the children of Caspian. There are also tennis and basketball courts. Inside during the winter, it is open after school for kids. We used to play board games, play hoops in the gym downstairs, play pool, etc.

In the late afternoon Jim and I took Owen and Tony on a hike to Minnie Lake. We wanted to give a chance for Oliver and Beau to sleep. We parked the car just off of 424 and walked to the lake and around. I love the beautiful northwoods and the boys had a great time too. We then stopped in at Katy’s Bar to have a drink with my Dad before supper.

In the evening we all went to Nelson Field. Nadia ran several kilometers and the kids played and ran around. They were tired by the time we came home.

Kralovec Family Airline Schedule

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This is a post for my family to assist them with tracking our progress home.

Tuesday June 10th 2008

6:00 AM    Taxi from campus to airport

9:00 AM    Avior Airlines Flight 1220  Barcelona – Miami

1:15 PM    Arrive in Miami and spend night in a hotel

Wednesday June 11, 2008

11:20 AM American Airlines Flight 1517 Miami – Chicago (O’hare)

1:30 PM   Arrive in Chicago

3:25 PM  American Eagle Flight 4181 Chicago – Green Bay, Wisconsin

4:20 PM  Estimated time of arrival at Austin Straubel Airport in Green Bay, Wisconsin

Michael Totten Blogs About Belgrade

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“I initially thought the former Yugoslavia might be a bit far afield from my usual beat in the Middle East, but the more time I spent there, the less I thought so. The troubles that wrack that part of the world really are identical to many of those in the Middle East. This should not be surprising. Most of Europe’s Balkan peninsula belonged to the Turkish Ottoman Empire and was cut off from the West and rest of Europe for hundreds of years. The peoples of Belgrade, Sarajevo, and Prishtina belonged to the same political entity as most of the Arabs for a longer amount of time than the United States has existed as a country. Al Qaeda and like-minded fanatics insist the region will belong to their future caliphate once again.”

““I could live here,” Sean said. I was tempted to agree as I took a swallow of my locally brewed Serbian beer. Belgrade was my kind of place – intriguing and troubled, yet attractive, cultured, and fun.”

Michael Totten, an internet journalist and blogger, recently wrote about his trip to Belgrade. The post is entitled “A Dark Corner of Europe Part I” and it appeared on June 2, 2008. As you can see above, he brings a Middle East perspective to the Balkans. Interesting take on life there. He has some nice photos also. He interviews Belgrade writer, Filip David. Below is the Mr. David with Totten’s friend in front of the Serbian parliament house. This has been the center of Serbian media this month with the long deliberations of between the parties to form a majority government.

Totten is pretty opinionated and the comments on the article are interesting to follow. I will be curious if I agree with his observations after living there.

Weekend Family Journal – June 8th 2008

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100_1183, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.

We had a nice family Sunday together. We all got up early and went to the Parque Ballenas. This is a one kilometer track in a large park. The kids and I did 2 laps, one more than Saturday. Nadia ran her usual five kilometers. We then went to McDonalds for breakfast. The Sosa family was there and the boys had a nice time in play land. We had the place to ourselves as Venezuelans are not “breakfast people” and in early mornings, the city is pretty much deserted.

We then watched the movie Enchanted with the kids. We packed some more and organized the house for departure. In the afternoon, we drove out to the mesa, my favorite spot in Anaco. Above is a photo of Nadia and Ocean. I also added two photos to the “about” page with our family and changed the header of the blog. When we got back, I played soccer with the Oliver and Owen while mom cooked dinner. Owen was Germany and I was the Czech Republic. Ollie was Italia. We watched a bit of the Germany – Poland game in the Euro Cup. We then ate, put the kids to bed and cleaned the house.