romania revealed

A few pieces of Romanian history from books around my house.

From the inside cover of an abecedar.

From the inside of a story book- it looks awfully competitive for "communism".

An ode to "The Party" and its metaphysical gifts.

"Requiem in a Classical Style", a poem by Magda Carneci.

Requiem in a Classical Style
For those who died in Bucharest, December 1989

by Magda Carneci

1.
With a drop of blood, innocent bright liquid,
  could a putrid, slumbering sea of marrow be purified?
Could only one body, mine, inscribed crosswise upon you,
  cure your sickness, o homeland?
 
And a thousand bodies, young boys, young girls,
  thrown into the starry vault of your mouth, your greedy belly,
your bloated memory, could they satisfy your hunger?
 
Let me be the solitary seed for a redemptive and young matter,
  Let me become the flowering field for an unknown, invincible plant,
Would that we were myriad of unconsumed pyres to light your darkness?
  Could a shower of love, a downpour, save a land?
A cataract, a flood, a billowing sea of blood?
  Could your corpse be reanimated by a sea of blood?
  
3.
Should I be the one to defy you, to accuse, to curse,
  the first to cast the stone at your face, in reproach and hatred?
Should I be the one to crucify you one more time-
  you, so often cut and wounded, stoned, nailed up, disfigured?
 
Should I set fire to your ever multiplied, ever burning pyre?
  to this famished destiny that devours you, should I add a blasphemy,
Never to be satisfied with hunting you, through all eternity?
 
If I do not burn together with you, then it would be in vain
  for the tormented light of your body to illuminate the dark.
If I do not crucify myself with you, mocked and martyred within you,
  then your endless sacrifice would be in vain.
 
If I do not love you, then it is myself I do not love.
  Alienated and festering, I would vanish into the corrupt world.
If we do not love each other, who or what could bring this sad land
  back from the dead, this blood, these bitter words?
 
6.
Come once more, vast suffering woman, unconsoled,
  follow in the wake of your martyrs, young girls, young boys,
those who have not yet become weary, who have not fallen asleep,
  who have not run away, and who will never forget anything.
 
Come, o homeland, before your dead and your living,
  to bathe yourself in the clean dust of their feet,
to purify yourself in their endless suffering.
 
You will be created anew. In each of us. You will be forgiven once more.
  Reborn. A virgin. How many times? Again and again.
Ocean of old marrow, chaotic magma, greedy ravenous mud
  spread everywhere, through hamlets and recesses, fields and towns,
 
You will engulf us, you will again swallow us into you-
  luminous tide of blood, loving lava of fire,
your powerful current will wash us into the final delta of our silence:
 
where out of eternity
new worlds
new worlds
unborn children
and your Ideal Form
dreamed once again
are forged
for all Eternity.

(Online source)

Derrida and the art of Bucuresti.

Grafitti somewhere on a wall in Bucuresti, October 2011.

Deconstruction is not a theory that simply applies, deconstruction is, I consider deconstruction, what happens, is what happens.

So, you don`t have to, let`s say, rhetorically and dangerously speak of deconstruction when something is destroyed.......

The fact that in some of the works there is no frame, does not mean there is no frame: there is a frame that is not simply circumscribing the work, but which is constituted by the very form so that, we know where to remove the work.

It wouldn`t be any work of art without a frame, especially where there is a market. If you want to identify a work of art and put it on a wall in a gallery or to sell it on the market, you have to have a frame.

There would be no field of art, no history of art, no discourse on art, and no market without a frame.

And then there are artists that attempt to remove, to destroy or to deconstruct if you want, to question the very existence, the very effect of the frame, but then, they have to disappear as artists producing works of art.

The idea of art cannot be, let`s say, constituted or dealth with without some frame.

Excerpted from "Deconstruction Is What Happens: An Open Discussion with Jacques Derrida"

The streets of Bucharest.

 

Chris Corthout's photo of a young lady on the streets of Bucharest.

Jean Negulesco's legacy.

Jean Negulesco (or Ion Negulescu, but not to be confused with Ion Negulescu) was born in 1900 in Craiova in southern Romania. In Paris, as a young man he was a friend of Constantin Brancusi and other members of the artsy crowd in Montparnasse and Montmartre. In fact, his artistic career did not begin in cinema. According to the stellar deep space daguerrotype:

Because once you've directed films in Hollywood all other claims to posterity become secondary, Romanian-born Jean Negulesco is best known for his work as a screenwriter, production designer & director, even though he first came to America in 1929 for an exhibition of his paintings. Before giving himself over to the business of show, he was first & foremost a painter & designer. His marker sketches bear a striking resemblance to those of Cocteau and, of course, Picasso from the same period, but like most artists who are trained as designers, he was able to astutely mimic almost any modernist style.

Though he began his career in Paris as a painter and scenic designer, taught by his fellow Romanian Brancusi and friendly with Modigliani, the Parisian market did not absorb his work. When he left for the United States to exhibit his work in New York, he was asked to prepare some drawings for the rape scene in The Story of Temple Drake (1933), based on William Faulkner's harrowing book, Sanctuary. 

Negulesco found that he had to depict the scene in discreet visual terms so that it could be passed by the censor. The producer of the film, Benjamin Glazer, liked the result so much that he made Negulesco his assistant, enabling him to gain experience in almost all aspects of movie-making. His work as second-unit director at Paramount and then at Universal brought him to the attention of Gordon Illingworth, producer of short subjects at Warner Bros, who put him in charge of those with pretensions to art. The rest is history.

A sample of Negulesco's drawing.

Director and Painter Jean Negulesco ponders his sketches of Claudette Colbert, star of his Three Came Home (1950).

In 1927, he moved to the United States and began his movie career as a sketch artist for Paramount Pictures, where he designed the opening montage for the musical Tonight We Sing. In 1944, he directed his first successful movie, The Mask of Dimitrios, based on a story by Eric Ambler.

Among his successful movies were The Conspirators (1944), Three Strangers (1946), Johnny Belinda, with Jane Wyman (1948), The Mudlark (1950), How to marry a millionaire, starring Marilyn Monroe, Titanic (1953), Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), Daddy Long Legs, with Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron (1956).

Negulesco was famous for his directing style, represented by images taken from unusual angles and the use of shadows and silhouettes. He was the first to use the cinemascope technique in movies like How to marry a millionaire or Daddy Long Legs. He made the first movie about an aircraft accident and the first one about the tragedy of war prisoners during World War II.

In 1948, he directed Johnny Belinda, a drama about the rape of a deaf-mute girl and the scandal triggered by her resulting pregnancy. The movie was a success; Negulesco was nominated for an Academy Award for best director (he lost to John Huston), and Jane Wyman won the Oscar for best actor.

Negulesco worked with Hollywood’s biggest stars including Fred Astaire, Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Burton, Lana Turner, Irene Dunne, and Sophia Lauren.

His 1954 movie Three Coins in a Fountain won two Academy Awards for cinematography and for the title song and was nominated for an Oscar for best picture. In 1955, Negulesco received a BAFTA Award for Best Film for How to Marry a Millionaire. His 1959 movie, The Best of Everything, was on Entertainment Weekly’s “Top 50 Cult Films of All-Time” list. In 1970s, he retired from film making and moved to Spain.

Perhaps he painted this during his time in Spain...

In 1985, he published his autobiography entitled Things I Did and Things I Think I Did. Negulesco died in Marbella, Spain in 1993 at the age of 93 leaving behind 72 movies. He is remembered as a key contributor to the film noir genre.

More to explore:

• Hat tips go to Alex Fodor for her bio on Jean (from which I borrowed quite heavily)
• An excellent synopsis and bio on Jean from the Prodan Foundation.
• Negulesco's Hollywood star.
• Diva's Classics also has a great bit of info about Jean's life and development.
• I Love Cinema reviews his film, Humoresque.
• More art by Negulesco. If you would like to purchase one for me as a gift, I will marry you in my next life.

Beautiful Maria Tanase.

This photo was taken from a Maria Tanase photoset on flickr.

LUME, LUME - Maria Tanase

You can listen to her spectacular voice in Lume, Lume above. She is almost sacred to me.

A human trafficking halfway house in Timisoara.

Photographer David Ellicson spent time in Timisoara for a few days documenting the critical work of Generatie Tanara for their American partner Not For Sale. Both nonprofits help Romanian victims of human trafficking. Generate Tanara runs a home in Timisoara where women can stay as long as they need to in a loving and supportive environment.

A multiethnic democracy?

Around 100 Csango people, members of a Hungarian ethnographic group living mostly in Moldavia, Romania, swore their oaths of allegiance to become Hungarian citizens in the Buda castle on Tuesday, as part of the celebrations commemorating the 163rd anniversary of the 1848-49 revolution and war of independence from Habsburg rule.

First district Mayor Tamas Gabor Nagy, of the ruling Fidesz-Christian Democratic alliance, said this was a historic moment for the Csango Hungarians. By taking up Hungarian citizenship, their century-long exclusion comes to an end, he added.

After the nearly 100 Csango people took their oaths, a Csango cultural festival started in the castle quarter.

[Source.]

Small renderings old and new about the latest Romanianisms.

An old Cyrillic inscription displays reverence for Basarb dynasty ruling in Wallachia.

A little essay on the Cioran Centennial (I'll reserve a post for this next week).

In 2008, the first foreign language edition of the New York Times Book Review was launched in Romania. Of course, Americans who did not know about Romania's vibrant literary scene were surprised. In a condescending way. I wonder how effectively the Review is competing with the amazing Cultural Observer, which I would like to see on the newsstands in the USA. 

The decline in Romanian billionaires.

Why didn't we hear more about Romania winning the 2010 World Cup in handball? Is ping pong next on the table?

Questions over property rights in the Danube Delta.

[Photo credit goes to abejorro's flickerstream for depicting the Czech village of Svata Helena in Romania.]

"How not to run a country", says The Economist.

An unflattering picture of Romanian politics emerges from this article in The Economist. An excerpt:

IT LOOKED like April Fool's Day. On Tuesday lawmakers from Romania's ruling Democratic Liberal Party (PDL), including ministers, voted to slash VAT on food and eliminate income tax on pensions worth less than €500. It seemed an odd thing to do, given that the government had raised VAT to its current level only a few months earlier, as part of a deal with the IMF.

Oops. It was an "error", said the finance minister. The MPs had actually thought they were voting to scrap the two proposals. The PDL is now hoping that the president will not sign the bill into law, and is fast-tracking a new draft to "correct" the mistake. The government may also adopt an "emergency ordinance" to fix the problem.

But this latest blunder fits into a weary tradition of dysfunctional policy-making in Romania, where laws often appear to be drafted minutes before parliamentary votes with little thought to long-term strategy or financial impact.

A review of the Romanian government's structures drafted by the World Bank and seen by The Economist speaks of a "prevalence of ad-hoc decision making" and slams the "frequent use" of emergency ordinances that override approved parliamentary laws. Despite plans announced five years ago to measure results against plans, nothing of the sort has taken place, the document reads. There is also no prioritising of policies and "laws are commonly approved without adequate funding."

The review issues a series of recommendations on how to improve national decision-making. Such proposals are nothing new, says Alina Mungiu-Pippidi from the Hertie School of governance in Berlin.

"In the last decade, Romania received a lot of advice, technical assistance and funding to improve its policy formulation and implementation capacity", she says. "Romania's quality of governance might not have induced the 2009-2010 crisis, but it does seem increasingly that it contributed to its severity and duration."

Links on a theme: Industrial archaeology in Romania.

From the very beginning the term industrial archaeology was applied to the physical remains of the Industrial Revolution, although there was, and continues to be, a recognition that the industrial archaeology of the manufacturing process applies as much to neolithic stone axe quarries as to steam engine production. The early decades of the discipline were spent arguing as to which of these two intellectual strands would predominate. However, the decline of many of the classic 18th and 19th century industries in mid-20th century, and the growing recognition of the historic value of textile mills, iron works, and transport networks, led to a general acceptance that industrial archaeology meant the archaeology of the industrial revolution. (Source: Association for Industrial Archaeology)

Arheologie Industriala - Industrial Archaeology, the rusty remnants of communism.

Industrial Archaeology in Banatul Montan

The Virtual Museum of Industrial Archaeology

The International Committee for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage

European Textile Routes

"The role of industrial archaeology in conservation: The Resita area of the Romanian Carpathians", Nicolae Hillinger, Martin Olaru and David Turnock (GEO Journal Volume 55, Numbers 2-4, 607-630)

New whispers about military ties between Romania and Israel.

So maybe a helicopter crash is a little louder than a whisper. But the continuing whispers proved intriguing enough that I've taken to reading the Armenian exiles' newspaper articles to learn more about Romanian military alliances.

Romania, which after the end of the Cold War “changed sides” and joined NATO in recent years, has become one of the staunchest supporters of the United States in the alliance and enjoys very good political ties with Israel. Romania earlier this year made it clear that it actively wanted to join a U.S.-led collective missile defense system to counter potential missile threats from Iran.

The Israeli-Romanian military cooperation inadvertently became public when an Israeli heavy-lift military helicopter crashed in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains area in late July. Several Israeli soldiers were killed in the incident.

The helicopter, which probably crashed due to bad weather conditions, was a U.S.-made CH-53 Sea Stallion, called the Yasour by the Israelis. “One might wonder why an Israeli helicopter was in Romania in the first place. The answer is that every long-range Israeli Air Force operation today, wherever it may take place in the world, including in Israel, takes into consideration ‘third-sphere threats’ like Iran, which are far from Israel,” the Jerusalem Post, a top Israeli newspaper, said in an analysis published just after the July 26 accident.

“The Yasour helicopters in Romania this week, for example, flew nonstop from Israel and received midair refueling over Greece, something they do not get to do every day. That is why these training exercises are so important,” the Jerusalem Post said. “Israeli airspace is limited and flying in places like Romania, with lots of open spaces, also gives Israeli pilots the ability to train in new and unfamiliar terrain, especially mountainous areas similar to those in Lebanon.”

The Jerusalem Post also offered the explanations provided by Israeli officials at a memorial event:

Nehushtan said that Israeli airspace was relatively narrow, and expressed gratitude to those countries that opened their skies to Israeli planes. He was particularly appreciative of Romania, which had not only opened its skies, but also enabled Israeli air crews to undergo training exercises in Romanian airspace for several years. These exercises contributed to an ever-developing friendship between the two countries, added the IAF chief, and he noted the grief expressed by the Romanians following the crash.

A "friendship with benefits", as one might say here in the States. 

From the mouth of Isarescu.

Mugur Isarescu, the governor of the National Bank of Romania, has been quite vocal in his views lately. His vociferousness, on several occasions, is worthy of quotation:

"The Central Bank has to control market liquidity depending on the instruments at its disposal, playing a vital role in this sense. Technically speaking all those that keep commenting BNR actions based on exchange rate evolution alone are making a mistake. The National Bank is doing a good job; it manages to maintain the macro-level balance through liquidity control. The exchange rate is almost an obsession for Romanians and the mass-media is more or less doing its job but the public debate remains superficial." [Source]

Victor Lupu warned us earlier this year about the possibility of Isarescu's warnings being more than just political small-talk. If Isarescu's warnings turn out to be on target, then Lupu's warnings follow suit. I enjoy Victor Lupu's column- he is a sharp thinker at a time when sharpness has been reserved for fashion. 

"I do not believe that after the ongoing agreement is over Romania will still need another financial agreement with the IMF, because the IMF funding is for consolidating international reserves and boosting credibility abroad." {Source]

“Currently we are still in recession. But mixing up the recession with the crisis causes much trouble. Many of the above-mentioned solutions for getting out of the crisis make us go deeper into the crisis. We want to impart the public opinion this major idea: if we want to get out of the crisis by doing everything that was made in previous years and what made us encounter this difficulty means that we have learnt nothing. The solutions that have been suggested seem good in the short run. The trap of populism is threatening us, it is almost prevalent in the present-day public discourse and is exactly the road to hell equipped with good intentions.”  [Source]

He's right about the road to hell.

Variations on a theme which predicts resurgent populism.

Norman Manea is big in Spain.

Valentin Mandache on adobe townhouses in southeastern Romania.

The Fiterman family takes a corner in the healthcare market.

H & M comes to Romania. I predict droves.

Ozzy in Bucharest.

A flooded street in Braila and a conspicuous lack of press for Danube floods this year. Pars de cours?

Miss World Romania 2010 can't muster up a flattering dress?

The Interior Minister is getting antsy about "unauthorized protests".

Romanian folk art and folk treasures travel to San Diego.

“Romania is safer than the majority of European countries. A foreigner can easily live in Bucharest or any other city, without problems. Many criminals “work” abroad, because they find it easier to do their activities there and more profitable too. Plus, with all the good and bad things that it might have, Romanian police maintains a feeling of safety for people. I feel very comfortable living in Bucharest”. Sounding a tad defensive there, Ilia?

What happened to Romania's oil?

The latest Romania Oil & Gas Report from BMI forecasts that the country will account for 3.79% of Central and Eastern European (CEE) regional oil demand by 2014, while providing just 0.53% of supply. What a pity. You'd think Romania had enough oil to be self-sufficient. I wonder what regulatory or political stumbling blocks are preventing this oil from being drilled.

Words scattered like bread-crumbs.

"Noi".

Controversele with rub.

Vive la revolution.

Misconceptions dispelled.

Doublespeak. Again.

Returning stolen children.

Kirk Cameron critique.

Firme veche gets attention.

1944, Bucharest is bombarded. (See photo.)

Plesita leaves us in peace.

Blasphemy remains illegal.

The modern villa.

In the hands of a Spanish princess.

Orphans.

Home-made mountain lamp.

Dana Grad's visit to the Traditional Watermill Museum led to a beautiful collection of photographs. My favorite, posted here, shows a lamp made from a hand-made plate typical of the mountain style. 

Dana's photos of a rainy day in the Maramures mountains also deserve your attention. And nostalgia.

Constantin Virgil Banescu: The angel in the Coloseum.

The last time I spoke to Bobita, this past June, was pleasant. He agreed to answer questions for an interview to be published on this website. Things were going well. He preferred not to be called "Bobita" anymore-- Virgil wore better. He seemed at the top of his world. 

The last time I saw Bobita, I was at the bottom of mine. And he was still Bobita.

I was in Europe, savoring the days lived from a backpack. After spending a summer in Krakow, my cousin whisked me back to Romania on a long, beautiful, broken train ride. Once in Bucuresti, there was little to stop me from exploring the dark alleyways and haunted crannies of Romanian life. It was the early 2000s; every moment milked for its vitality and generosity. 

My cousin and a few of his friends threw an all-night party at a Bucharest apartment-- a party which mixed poetry, wine, tuica, Aristotle, Cioran, and Marilyn Manson (the latter would not have been Bobita's choice for music). Among the ten of us laughing and arguing was included the gentle presence of Bobita. When he spoke to you, there was nothing else more ravishing than the sounds coming from your mouth. As in his poems, Bobita's words came slowly and softly, yet so powerfully one couldn't help but marvel. I remember being impressed by his talent, his interest, and the scent of angels than seemed to surround him. 

Speaking to my aunt in Bucuresti yesterday, our Skye connection fuzzed by storms, she told me that "Busnadms" (covered by storm fuzz) had taken his own life. I knew before she repeated it that she was talking about Bobita. There were no more angels in the room, the light wove its own texture.

Constantin Vigril Banescu was 27 years old when he took his own life. Or rather, he took what was left of his life after the medications treating his alleged schizophrenia made peace with the difference. In those 27 years, Bobita emerged as an exceptional talent, winning the coveted Prize of the Bucharest Young Writers Association and the international Hubert Borda Prize for Young Poets. He had a 4-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. And when he read his poems aloud, every single word was a song. But in the last few months of his life, Virgil seemed to lose his voice. 

My worst disease is the fact that I am still alive.

So read the note found by his mother in the room with empty pill bottles and a body empty of Bobita. Family and friends knew he was depressed, but everyone hoped the medicines would work. In a blog conversation early this summer, Bobita told Mugur that he couldn't sleep and he "didn't see a sense to life anymore", though he admitted that he would like to "escape to a hospital where he could read and write". Even as Bobita's taste for life diminished, his desire to put his words on paper did not.

Mugur Grosu suggests this may have been Bobita's last poem. My translation, of course, has that heartless aftertaste that translations tend to spread like a virus, but I wanted to share it. Somehow. To convey the place he left as he saw it-- heavy, tiresome, and thick with dread.

sufletul meu se odihneşte My soul is resting

văd un copac înalt strălucitor I see a tall, sparkling tree

înfăşurat în toate culorile Wrapped in a rainbow of colors

apoi o fântână mică Then a small fountain

din care se ridică From which there rises

odată cu fiecare trecere puternică a vântului    With every powerful passing of the wind

un bulgăraş de apă A tiny lump of water

cerul s-a desfăcut The sky has opened

dintr-odată mai e atît de puţin Suddenly there is so little

până mă voi trezi Before my waking

şi iarăşi voi ieşi de sub pleoape And again I will emerge from underneath eyelids

ca să mă îndur pe mine Only to endure myself

printre măştile realu Among the masks of the real.

Before I finally got around to sending those interview questions, Bobita (or Virgil) finally renounced his masks. May his soul find the sleep he sought. His touch will be missed.

A link tribute to Bobita plus a video in which he reads in May 2009 at the Writer's Union meeting:

• The Romanian Writer's Union, in which he played a part.
• Bobita at the 9th International Literature Festival in Berlin.
• Virgil's translation of "Encounter" for Words Without Borders.
• Virgil's page at Agonia.ro (note his one-lined biography).
• Virgil and a colleague won the 2007-2008 ICTW Translation Grant.
• More about Banescu's Burda Prize (in Romanian).
• "Romanian Bodies: An essay on new Romanian poetry" from Romanian Bodies.
• A tribute from a friend.
• Razvan Tupa's final memories of Virgil.

Ghita Ionescu's legacy to Romanian history.

One of Ghita Ionescu's most critical contributions to Romanian and post-communist studies  was his emphasis on the academic study of "opposition" to political regimes. He founded a journal at LSE, Government and Opposition, which explored this topic in many countries which were communist-led at the time. He also wrote a book, Opposition: Past and Present of a Political Institution, with Isabel de Madariaga, emphasizing his view of opposition as a civil institution. 

At the time, the field of "Soviet Studies" still focused on analysis of formal government institutions under communist regimes, including the COMECON. Content analysis of party documents was all the rage. Professor Ghita ameliorated the study of communist regimes by introducing the test posed by opposition and its role in the evaluation and popular legitimacy of a political regime.

Certainly his association with Radio Free Europe played a role in his interest in the social phenomenon of political dissidence. In fact, Radio Free Europe would have been a pointless endeavor without the assumption that popular legitimacy remained critical to a communist regime's long-term hold on political power.

In fact, Ionescu believed that popular movements, as opposed to internal government reform, would eventually bring an end to the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. 

More links, information, and works influenced by Professor Ghita Ionescu:

• His obituary by John C. Campbell in The Independent
• Ionescu's books are available in Romanian from Humanitas
• Hlavacek, Petr and Holzer, Jan (2009) "Opposition in Non-Democratic Regimes: Notes on Possibilities and Limits of Current Theory," World Political Science Review: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1, Article 5.
• Cas Mudde, "Populism in Eastern Europe", Radio Free Europe, 8 March 2000.
• Robert Cutler, "Soviet Dissent Under Khruschev: An Analytical Study", utilizes Ionescu's opposition paradigm.
• Laura Radulescu, "An Intellectual Cleansing Which Never Took Place, Or How We Became What We Are"

Out of Harm's Way in Romania

Out of Harm's Way in Romania, originally uploaded by UNHCR.

Peaceful days and a safe environment is probably more than these Palestinian and Sudanese refugees expected when they were stuck in a desert camp in Iraq. Now they are recovering at a special transit centre in the Romanian city of Timisoara while their applications for resettlement in a third country are processed. Most people forced to flee their homes are escaping from violence or persecution, but some find themselves still in danger after arriving at their destination. UNHCR uses the centre in Romania to bring such people out of harm's way until they can be resettled. The Emergency Transit Centre (ETC) in Timisoara was opened in 2008. Another one will be formally opened in Humenné, Slovakia, within the coming weeks. The ETC provides shelter and respite for up to six months, during which time the evacuees can prepare for a new life overseas. They can attend language courses and cultural orientation classes.

I couldn't resist.

Acuma: 25 things that make me smile about Romania right now.

1. Andrei and his Harley looking for friends in Constanta. Somebody show him some Harley hospitality, please. Or just direct him to Red Bull Romaniacs...
2. Razvan Vintilescu's razor-sharp blog is just that. He will cut all fools to the quick. And nothing makes me smile like crying fools.
3. The new US ambassador to Romania plans to focus his efforts on corruption and adoption. He won't be distracted by small-scale social problems like poverty, housing shortages, or disease.
4. But someone, apparently, still cares about the plight of Romanian canines. Janak has some dog biscuits for sale and all the profits go to Romanian dogs. Brigitte Bardot seems a little old for the young Janak, but you know, you can't dispute taste.
5. A blogger watching the Enescu Festival in Bucuresti, the fond voyeur.
6. The discussions surrounding Charging the Rhino keep getting hotter. J'aime bien.

   

7. Organic food carves its market niche in Eastern Europe. Finally, the granolas and the yippies can start planning their vacations to Romania.
8. Architecture & Mortality compares the Romanian and German experiences under communism from a somewhat removed perspective.
9. Meanwhile, Abhishek waxes poetic about the Danube Delta with the help of a postcard.
10. More school choice and decentralization in Romania? Or is this just a change in management protocol? Hard to say from here.
11. The Ukraine accuses Romania of breaching environmental obligations. On that note, a new legal publication is due soon on Romania v. Ukraine with respect to maritime delimitation rights in the Black Sea.
12. Hardiek "books a rest" in Bucuresti and reveals his limited capacity to engage a culture he can only superficially apprehend.
13. Six things about teaching English in Romania.
14. Banesa Forest, north of Bucuresti, gets a quick view.
15. UN rights experts warn of "impact" of Romanian migration trends. If I didn't know better, I might think they were talking about a swine flu epidemic. 
16. Romania gets its own Muslim TV station. Why not?
17. The University of Bucuresti. Because it's still there.
18. If you can ignore the terrible pronunciation, this video "A World Without Romania" is actually quite illuminating.
19. US auto giant, Ford, starts work at its new factory in Craiova.
20. Bovine anthrax in Romania? Or maybe just doom and gloom.
21. How to outsource Romania's maps.
22. Romania is the first country in history to win three Pomme d'Or Tourism awards in one year.
23. Looks like Romania might also be at the top of another list-- the list for top ten spammers in the world.
24. A day with Michael Shermer in Romania.
25. Great post about Ceausescu court poet Adrian Paunescu, which also deserves credit for the image you see above. Clever caption from Poor Mouth describes Paunescu, walking next to the Ceausescus, in the act of "dissent". The smile that just won't go away.

Paul Celan's literary love affair with Ingeborg Bachmann.

From Romania to Austria

Celan's parents were killed in the Holocaust; he escaped death by working in a Nazi labor camp. When he realized that the communists were going to take power in Romania, surrealist poet, translator, lecturer, and essayist Paul Celan fled Romania for Austria. There he fell into German literary circles and began a love affair with Ingeborg Bachmann. 

Love Gets Lukewarm

The affair was neither sordid nor spacious enough to last. Though Celan chased ghosts, fancies, and implausibles around Nazi-wasted Europe, his love life never met the aesthetically-jaunty standards of surrealism. In fact, it seems he was quite the realist, knowing Bachmann's feelings dwarfed his own. How Bachmann reconciled her love for Celan with her philosophical crush on Martin Heidegger remains baffling. 

Ina Hartwig writes about the newly-published correspondence between Celan and his short-time lover:

"Glorious news" the 21-year old Ingeborg Bachmann writes in a letter to her parents, the "surrealist poet" Paul Celan has fallen in love with her. It is May 1948, Vienna. The 27-year-old Celan, whose parents, Leo and Friederike Antschel, died in a German concentration camp in Ukraine, had fled just a few months earlier from Bucharest, via Budapest, to Vienna. Bachmann, the daughter of a teacher and a former member of the Nazi party, is writing her PhD on Heidegger. Celan, of all people, will write in a letter to Bachmann several years later, that Heidegger's choking on his own mistakes is more agreeable to him than the solid Federal German conscience of someone like Heinrich Böll. 

The correspondence opens with Celan's poem "In Egypt", which he sends to his beloved, with the dedication "to one who is painfully precise", on her 22nd birthday. It contains a motif, so tantalising and uncomfortable, that it foreshadows the conflicts to come: "Adorn the stranger beside you most beautifully./ Adorn her with the pain for Ruth, for Mirjam and Noemie". This motif of "adorning pain" - the pain of the Jewesses adorns the Gentile - is close to the bone, and yet it constitutes something akin to the constitution of the love between the Austrian philosophy student, who stands before a precipitous career as a poet, and the stateless Jew from Czernowitz in Galicia, whose most famous poem "Deathfugue" has already attracted attention in literary circles.

Like Hannah Arendt, Bachmann's early intellectual milieu revolved around the existential writings of Martin Heidegger. Later, she would abandon Heidegger's existentialism for Ludwig Wittgenstein's analytic, language-centered philosophy. In the interim, however, she would love a man which her intellect was trained to scorn. Though this book has not yet been translated for English or Romanian audiences, I'm holding out hope. 

The last letters in the book were written by Celan's widow to Bachmann following Celan's suicide in 1970. Bachmann, herself, died under mysterious circumstances, suicide-speculating circumstances. Their love passed away before their bodies.

For the Hungry

"Celan" is actually an anagram of the Romanian spelling of his surname, Ancel. For more about Celan, Bachmann, and their tryst:

• "Celan and Heidegger: Translation at the Mountain of Death", a thoughtful essay by Pierre Joris.
• Dr. Klaus Hubner reviews the book for the Goethe Institut.
• Paul Celan on Osip Mandelstam, courtesy of Pierre Joris encore.
• Four new translations of poems by Paul Celan by Iain Fairley in Guernica.
• Stephen Mitchelmore examines the "post-Holocaust" poetry of Paul Celan for Spike magazine.
• David Vickrey read the German version of the book and liked it enough to blog about it here.
• Paul Celan from LightDuress (Cycle 6).

"Death of Europe", a poem by Nicolae Sirius.

Hissing snakes withdrew into underground forests:
Europe was a game
A cross
We carried in our scales.

Some speculate
That Europe is not dead
It still trades
And has recently raised
The price of uranium.
Its warships increase
In sophistication, and an angel
>From across the seas
Watches over her
As over an innocent, still unspoilt child.

Long ago
Someone said that Europe was a bloodbath
And even the stars,
Gazing at her tremulously,
Burn off
And grind into metal-gray dust.

Cannon-eyed metal wreaths rose
In her place.
As dargsmen, what would you know?
You have learned
To kiss and fondle the silicon.

I was told
Europe was a princess
And she became enamoured 
Of a golden calf
She had met at a ball
(Just as a wave clings
To an oar)
And she wore her bridal gown
Hemmed about the restiveness of planets.

And everyone came to woo her
Offering her giant mother-of-pearls
Which later opened up 
Like coffins.

She was sad, as if permeated
By the sorrow of autumn.

She was angry with Hitler, who wanted
To kidnap and conceal her under a rock
Of aversion.

She was Othello's disconsolate
Spouse; but one stormy night
She met a man who was to tell
All her misfortunes:
"Look, your gown is undone,
I think you're courting great danger;
Listen, don't try to make out
You're still a virginal bride;
Stop overacting - after all,
You're not a harlot
But a woman of prodigious elegance;
For you kings went barmy;
For you they die every day.
Stop deflecting
Or you may lose the moon
From the chignon of your hair."

There was a time
When Brahms saw her too. And Brancusi;
He loved her speechlessly
Offering her a Table of Silence
And sculpting her body
Into the raptures of the Endless Column.

Lee Miller's take on dancing bears.

"Dancing Bear and Musicians", taken by Lee Miller (Romania, 1938).

Sunwapta River

Sunwapta River, originally uploaded by Captain Romania.

On the Romanian horizon.

+ An ancestor's assistant named Romania. 

+ The Italian ambassador is "forging new links between Romania and Italy". 

+ Meanwhile, four young Romanians are arrested in Italy for robbery.

+ President Basescu says he supports Israel and Palestine as "separate states". 

+ Over 3,000 Romanian Catholics protest the government's treatment in Bucharest.

+ Foreign currencies prove a profitable investment for the first half of 2009.

+ Mark Gitenstein is confirmed as the US ambassador to Romania.

+ Dr. James F. McGrath marvels over the rumor mills in Romania, while I marvel at his suggestions that Romania is a tribal society most akin to what one might find in North Africa. Granted, some Romanians put their stock in unusual and even silly beliefs, but more than half of Americans believed W. Bush bombed Iraq to save us from weapons of mass destruction. For even more silly, ridiculous American beliefs, take a little visit to the Fox News website.

+ CEOWorld has all the details on Nabucco, and the demise of Russia's energy monopoly.

+ Romania's car park renewal program, Rabla, offers opportunities for leasing and buying.

Through the lens of Betuel Hreniuc.

More here.

Three ways of seeing.

A panorama view of Mogosoaia Palace hovers around you.

The Romanian Ultras movement adds fire.

Victorelli takes a road trip to Sibiu.

Moldovan sex scandal rocks the Romanian diplomatic corps.

Ion Nuica, Romania's consul to the Republic of Moldova, resigned Monday, July 13, after a few Romanian Web sites posted a video clip showing him having sex with an unidentified woman. The film starts with the Romanian national anthem and the Romanian flag on screen. The words “This is how the Romanians want to have us, the way the Romanian consul Ion Nuica had an employee of the Consulate. Watch and gather if you want”. Then a photograph of Nuica is shown, followed by the sex scene. Here is a link to the video posted on ProTV, a Romanian private TV channel (warning: graphic scenes).

The Romanian Foreign Ministry's spokesman Alin Serbanescu confirmed Ion Nuica has resigned, according to Romanian Mediafax news agency. Serbanescu also said that Nuica was summoned to Bucharest last week from Moldova for other reasons that are not related to this sex scandal.

Nuica resigned on Monday, only hours after the Romanian Curentul daily online displayed photos and a very graphic video showing Nuica having sex with a woman believed to be from the Republic of Moldova suspected of being an employee at the Romanian consulate in Chisinau. The Curentul Web site said it received hidden video camera footage, but it had no idea who taped it.

Ion Nica had been Romania’s most senior diplomat in the neighboring country since the expulsion of the Romanian ambassador, Filip Teodorescu, from Moldova in April, following allegations of Romanian involvement in the violent protests on Aprl 7 in the Moldovan capital Chisinau.Curentul stated that the tape appears to be the work of Moldovan intelligence services.

Giurgiu

Giurgiu (Romania) - Infinite Block, originally uploaded by Danielzolli.

Hopes for a haiku, dashed again.

1. A video of Romania's competitive street-racing culture takes me back to Paul Abdul videos and bobby-socks. Barely.
2. US soldiers team up with Romanian soldiers for the latest venture in Afghanistan.  
3. Romanian trains are slow and useless. 
4. The Romanian Foreign Ministry releases passports for "Romanians only".  
5. Journalist Sorin Stanescu sues President Basescu for slander. If it weren't so bourgeois, it would make a great haiku.  
6. Will somebody please ask these guys to stop making imbeciles of themselves?! Are they serious?
7. Sucu says the business environment is "dependent on signals from the state".... Does he mean signals in the form of subsidies?  
8. Thank goodness this turned out to be false.  
9. At least the local Romanian ice cream market is looking hopeful.
10. The US transports a large quantity of uranium from Romania to Russia for "safe-keeping". 

Gica Popescu shows how patriotism becomes an excuse for being pathetic.

Gheorghe (Gica) Popescu, the former captain of Romania's national soccer team, finally admitted to having been an informer for the country's secret police during the communist era. Popescu's admission comes just three days after he denied the allegations, calling a newspaper report that he had been a Securitate informant "a big lie"-- a big lie followed by bigger evidence. 

In an interview with the daily Evenimentul Zilei, Popescu said he wrote four notes informing on teammates and other colleagues while he was playing at Universitatea Craiova. The defender was part of a Romanian team that qualified for three consecutive World Cups, starting in 1990 and for two European Championships. He also helped Barcelona win the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1997. When the allegations surfaced on Monday, the 41-year-old Popescu said he had only signed a document in 1985 promising to "defend the national interests" during the regime of the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Always the seasoned opportunist, Popescu defended his actions under communism--  "Even if I wrote notes, I wrote good things", he insisted. "I praised [those] people." 

Romania's star soccer player Gheorghe Hagi, who is related to Popescu through marriage, came to his defense, saying sports had brought glory to Romania in the communist era. "We [sportsmen] were the ambassadors for Romania. They should look elsewhere" for Securitate agents, he said. Hagi, of course, maintains that he did not inform-- or, at least, that no one has evidence to the contrary.

It seems to me that such unselfish, noble athletes love to be looked upon by cheering crowds only to blush modestly when one attempts to look at how they really served their countries under communism. In case no one taught Popescu and Hagi how to be "good sports", here's a quick lesson: When you get caught cheating, at least have the honor to admit what you did without adding all those apparatchik-inspired excuses.

It's settled.

Unlike most Hollywood starlets, Romanians drink more beer than bottled water.

Trailer for Tales From the Golden Age.

10 bits from Romania.

1. Romania and Vietnam are boosting economic ties, especially in the oil and gas sector.
2. Hunedoara Castle, the insider's Dracula deal, has opened to the public.
3. Richard Andrew Hall's latest post on the 1989 revolution.
4. President Basescu said that almost half of Romanians depend on some form of government aid.  He also said he thinks this is too much-- a statement which won't win him any popularity points with the pensioners.
5. The Romanian government increases gambling taxes. Is this because the government needs more revenue, or because they wish to discourage gambling in these economic doldrums? 
6. Moldovan President Voronin said he would lift visa restrictions for Romanians only after the EU lifts visa restrictions for Moldovans.  
7. Drug consumption is low among Romanian youths, but the country is part of the heroin transit route, according to 2009’s World Drug Report published Wednesday by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
8. A senior official says Kazakhstan will not take part in the Nabucco pipeline project. 
9. An Australian journalist finds the Romanian capital to be "romantic". 
10. The Romanian National Vanguard News Agency, an "interesting" outlet for lack of a better word, looks at German World War II weapons with wonder.  This would not necessarily be a cause for concern if the ad to the right didn't claim that blonds were becoming extinct-- as if blonds weren't usually armed with a case of peroxide in Romania anyway.

Iliescu, Iran, Christian Suciu, and genocide: Odd equations.

Jon Lee Anderson replies to Christian Suciu on an error in his June 19th post on the “Iran’s Basij militias,”  In Anderson's words now:

Christian Suciu wrote in to point out an error I had made in comparing the relationship between the Basij and its theocratic regime with “the one between Nicolae Ceausescu and the loyalist miners trucked in from the Romanian countryside to strong-arm pro-democracy protesters.” Suciu writes:

Actually, the events referred to (the “Mineriads”) happened in 1990 and 1991, by which time Ceausescu was dead and buried. Ion Iliescu was President of Romania at the time, and it was he who trucked in the miners.

Siciu is absolutely right. The miners had been loyal to the Ceausescu regime for many years, but it was Iliescu—a former senior party figure and erstwhile ally of Ceausescu’s—who succeeded him after his execution in 1989, and when there was pro-democracy ferment in the capital afterward, it was Iliescu who brought in the miners to break heads and quell things. At the time, Iliescu was facing accusations that he represented little more than a face-change of the ancient regime, i.e. “Ceausescuismo without the Ceausescus.”

As in present-day Iran, the protests that were ended violently by Romania’s miners (who used bats and clubs and killed up to a hundred people) had taken place just after an election; The Party man Iliescu had been sworn in as a caretaker president following Ceausescu’s execution in December 1989. In elections held in May 1990, Iliescu won eighty-five per cent of the vote. But pro-democracy demonstrators, including many students, protested what they saw a hijacking of power by the country’s ex-communists. 

After the miners’ rampage, Iliescu thanked them for their “attitude of high civic conscience” and disparaged the demonstrators as “hooligans,” as part of a “right wing neo-fascist international conspiracy.” In announcing his own crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tehran last Friday, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei referred to the demonstrators as Iran’s “enemies” and as “espionage machines working for Zionists and the Americans,” who were determined to destroy Iran’s Islamic revolution. 

Last week, coincidentally, a court in Bucharest cleared Iliescu of genocide charges in his responsibility for that crackdown and a bloodier, previous one that had immediately followed Ceausescu’s downfall, in which as many as twelve hundred civilians were killed by security forces—suggesting that repression often follows time-honored patterns, and that demands for accountability in such cases are not as easily met as one would hope.

The lore of the willow tree in Romania.

In Romania the willow tree reigns supreme. Before starting to build a house for his family, a villager will first put a little willow shoot in the ground; in no time it becomes a weeping willow embellishing the 

entrance to his house. Willow trees surround water wells, providing shade around the water pump, the traditional village meeting place; they denote boundaries between individual peasant plots; they grow along the fast-flowing mountain streams and form closely knit clumps of greenery on the meadows. [Christine Sutherland, Enchantress: Marthe Bibesco and Her World]

The willow keeps its sacred spot in Romanian tradition and legend. Little willow rods are used to make traditional bouquets for New Year's wishes. The willow's evergreen rods are used to make bride coronets, believed to pass the regenerating power of nature to humans. The willow also saves the single moms. 

In a tradition going back to pagan times, a village girl who becomes pregnant out of wedlock must undergo symbolic marriage to a willow tree. The village elders come and take her from her home, leading her to the riverbank, where they tie her to the trunk of a willow, whose branches symbolically cover her shame. After the requisite incantations, the pregnant girl is pronounced duly married. From then on, she will be allowed to walk with her head covered, like the other married women in the village. The willow tree thus exorcised her shame and dishonor.

Coincidentally, The Wind in the Willows (2006) was filmed in Romania. The photo, Salcie atingand lacul (the willow touching the lake), was taken by Maira.

The metal-omania of Constanta.

Constanţa, once known as Tomis, is the second largest and also the oldest living city in Romania, founded around 600 BC. The city is located in the Dobruja region of Romania, on the Black Sea coast, with a beach length of 13 km. 

The Port of Constanţa has an area of 39.26 km² and a length of about 30 km, it is the largest port on the Black Sea, and the fourth largest port in Europe. Here, ships can be seen as white dots on the Black Sea, moving to and from the port. The city itself is bright white, while most of the surrounding land is used for agriculture.

While seeing the statue of Ovid, as well as the old casino, is impressive, the sheer size and scale of the actual port dumbs the serenades of ancient history in this town. You can see an image of Constanta from satellite here. You can also see a map of the northern port area here, though the best satellite image I've found is this one.

Iranians in Timisoara wish to continue the tradition of protest.

An interesting post from an Iranian-Romanian community website:

Any protest meetings planned by the Iranian people in the city of Timisoara (RO, EU) which are also viewing this, please reply here the detalis (place, hour, date) or PM at YM id : hsqdw . I know the last rally was not allowed by the mayor's office, but lets hope they turn green too. God bless you all.

Ceausescu, of course, was visiting Iran when the 1989 revolution broke out in Timisoara, and bloggers have explicitly pondered whether the election revolts in Iran might be a "Timisoara moment". 

The Iranian community in Timisoara is significant enough to sustain an Iranian restaurant, the Restaurant Persia. And the Persian culinary legacy in Romania includes that staple, rice pilaf. I'd be curious to know if anything comes of this, and, if it does, whether there will be any mainstream press coverage in Timisoara.

[Photo credit for this photo taken on the streets of Timisoara goes to Mihai Zegrea.]

Persistence of vision may not be enough.

Members of The Austin Film Society took their cameras to Transylvania this summer for an intensive collaborative film project workshop this summer.  Romanian filmmaker Sergiu Lupse accompanied them on this daily filmmaking workshop for disadvantaged teens which aims to help them document their communities, their lives, and their original perspectives. The report from the first week of the workshop is back, and it seems the team has faced challenges in building trust with the local Transylvanian villagers.

Unfortunately for the Austin Society, many Romanian villagers are more concerned about keeping their land in these economic hard times than with providing autobiographical feel-good portraits about their local struggles. I respect the historical efforts on the Austin folks, but also wonder if they wouldn't find more success in filming something about the mummy from Vacaresti...

Romanians invented baseball. Or so the story goes...

Romania invented the godfather of baseball. It's called "oina" and it was invented in 1364 during the rule of Vlaicu Voda. Originally, the game was playes by shepherds. The rules are similar with baseball....there are two teams, one that is "at bat" and one that is "at catching". The game begins with the team "at bat", with one of the players throwing the ball while another player of the same team has to hit it with a wooden bat and send it as far as he can towards the adversary field. After that, the player has to run the "back-and-forth lanes" that are to be found in the adversary field before the adversary receives the ball from his co-players. Oina uses the same weight of the ball (around 140 grams for both), the bat si longer and slimmer comparing with baseball, the game lasts only 30 minutes and oina uses 11 players comparing with baseball that has 9. Oina is the romanian national sport. [Source: WikiAnswers]

The strange attractions of socialism: A roundtable worth re-visiting.

In October 2006, Horia Roman Patapievici moderated a roundtable on "Intellectuals and Socialism", which explored the attraction posed by socialist ideology to Western intellectuals and academics in the 20th century. Over one hundred invitees attended this event at the Institute for Romanian Culture, and the vitality of the discussion can be appreciated in the video below.  

Why did the traditionally skeptical intellectual class find itself seduced by promises of government's power to work for that lovely abstraction otherwise known as the Common Good? Why do we assume that the state can provide better solutions to human problems than the marketplace of goods and ideas? What did the experience of communism teach us about the effectiveness of the state in working for the Common Good? Among other interesting explorations at this event: the relationship between culture and the state, the meaningfulness of left-right distinctions, the possibility of libertarianism as a credible alternative, the unspoken etatism of the EU, and more.... Don't take my word for it. See for yourself. 

A word of thanks to my comrades at Liberalism.ro for keeping the fires burning.

Help Phillipe Legrain with his new book.

Phillipe Legrain doesn't believe that immigration is the cause of Europe's social and economic ills. In fact, Legrain makes the case that immigration, as experienced through globalization, might actually be a good thing. Currently working on a new book about the effects of globalization, Legrain will be examining the "risks to globalisation from the ongoing crisis (such as protectionism, nationalism and political extremism)" and try to find what needs to change in the global economy, as well as what doesn't need to change. 

Using a combination of first-hand reporting, economic and political analysis, and reasoned argument, Legrain is in the process of gathering the materials, examples, stories, and real-life data which will give life to his book. On his blog, Legrain makes a request which I think might be well-taken by some English-speaking Romanians: 

I'd be really grateful if you could suggest papers I should read, people I should talk to, and places I should visit. I'm particularly interested in hearing about people that the mainstream media often neglects. You may be able to point me to a small business in China whose exports have evaporated and whose migrant workers are going home, or to one that is prospering by taking on a new line of work. You may know Icelandic people who can relate how their lives have been turned upside down by the financial collapse. You may have connections to communities in Australia that until recently were booming by exporting to China, and drawing in lots of foreign workers as a result; how are they coping? You may know Mexicans who have gone home from the US, or Poles who have left the UK or Ireland, because of the recession. And amid all the gloom and despair, what new opportunities are emerging that could help build a better and fairer global economy? Or something else entirely. Please email me on mail AT philippelegrain DOT com I'll get back to you if I think there could be a fit. Thank you very much.

Take F.A. Hayek to heart on this one, and provide Legrain with a little local knowledge that he might not otherwise discover. In the meantime, I'll be scratching my own head for ideas.

How to make yourself feel a little more "in touch" with your Romanian side today.

• Play Who is this Ecademy member?.
• Get into an argument with a neighbor about whether General Chitac should have been allowed to leave prison to receive medical treatment.  
• Host an inflation party and make t-shirts which read, "Highest Inflation in the EU and Proud of It, Too". Then try to sell them for money to help those suffering from inflation in the Danube.
• Make yourself nauseous reading dated, dull materials like this.
• Try to talk Cornel Oprisan into giving you a discount on that Lack shelf, what with the sales drop and all. 

Former general manager of Romania's state-owned railway company, Mihai Necolaiciuc, is arrested in Palm Beach: A poetic take on yet another story of corruption.

Mihai loved the feel of his toes in the white sands of West Palm Beach, almost enough white to wash away the memories of the gritty, dark textures in Mamaia. And Mihai liked the kinds of memories, like stains, that washed away. 

He hadn't even bothered to check the calendar on the day he was arrested. The Securitate, it seems, had come all the way to Palm Beach dressed up in the local police costumes in order to punish him for being far-sighted, for thinking like an entrepreneur, for making money when others only manufactured complaints.  Was he the only Romanian patriot who walked away with $111 million that did not belong to him? How slick the walkway from businessman to criminal.

Of course Mihai knew he was wanted. His mother had always parted his hair with a comb in the mornings, a clear sign of how much she wanted him. The young Romanian girls at the beach loved his fabulous hats and sunglasses; they wanted him like a paycheck. The Romanian government wanted him for embezzling millions from a Romanian national railway company. Mihai had made them wait their turn. 

When Mihai was arrested on charges of violating the US Immigration and Naturalization Act, he knew how to spell every word in this sentence. No one could fool him anymore. He was smart enough to attract the attention of Cuban street musicians, hot dog vendors, and Interpol. His two condos in the CityPlace Tower were valued at $400,000 each, and he made sure his neighbors knew that he had paid for them up front. No dishonest mortgages for him. 

His name, Necolaciuc, wasn't Dacian enough. The nationalists in power must be behind his arrest. When the National Anticorruption Department initiated criminal investigations against him in March 2006, he wished he had paid that priest an extra $25 to bless his office in addition to his house. In the grand scheme of things, one can never be too careful. The other 29 defendants, drawn from the uppercrust of the Ministry of Transport and the National Railroad Company, couldn't tell good whiskey from old tuica. Hadn't he enthusiastically promoted the modernization of Romanian railways to Oana Bran? Hadn't he worked for the good of the Romanian railways, and a little bit of socialism on the side, since 1973? 

People, like the color of sand, like the scent of salvation, could hardly be trusted. He could name his friends on one hand-- Illeana Preada, Frank Barbieri, Danielle Darling-- and leave the hair follicles on his back to count his lovers and special companions. But even the faces of his friends blurred. Was Danielle the girl who ran in the 5k? Had she been married to a Mr. Toscano before it all began? Was Frank the one who started programs for schools in Florida, the humane man who always gave back more than he got? Who was who since Ceausescu's death turned everything from black-and-white to the horizon of gray? 

Mihai secretly hoped that his arrival would be greeted by a parade in Bucharest. 

On the Romanian literary scene...

Sharon Mesmer and her friends involved in the Best American Poetry are "run ragged" by the Romanian Writer's Union. 

Meanwhile, the Guardian UK has chosen to honor the 20th anniversary of the Wall's fall with a literary extravaganza featuring Eastern European writers, a subject close to my heart. You can read the short story, Zgaiba, by Stelian Tanase, and other bests from the Balkans and post-Soviet state.

Ugly nationalism in Ireland directed against "Romanians".

According to a news report by the BBC, racism is en vogue again in Ireland:

More than 100 Romanian people forced to flee their homes in south Belfast have been moved to a leisure centre. The group of about 20 families spent Tuesday night in a church hall after a spate of racist attacks on their homes. Police have said they do not believe paramilitaries were involved in orchestrating the attacks. The attacks were condemned by Prime Minister Gordon Brown who said he hoped the authorities would take all action necessary to protect the families. Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, who has met with the families, said the attacks were a "totally shameful episode". "We need a collective effort to face down this criminals in society who are quite clearly intent on preying on vulnerable women and children," he said. The police have met Belfast City Council and social services to discuss how best to care for those affected by the attacks. Most of the Romanian families, including one with a five-day-old girl, have been taken to the Ozone Leisure Centre in south Belfast, where they will spend the rest of the day. They said they do not want to return to their Belfast homes.

"This is a small number of people who are engaged in this violence. I understand this is cold comfort to the people affected by it." Bernie Kelly, from Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, said it had been a very traumatic experience for the Romanians. "The whole thing has escalated very quickly," she said. "Working with the police and all the agencies together we are going to have to find a resolution." There have been suspicions that a loyalist paramilitary group is involved in the violence, but this has been denied, our correspondent added.

One of the women who took shelter in the church, who did not want to be named, said she was very upset and scared. She said she had feared the attackers had come to kill her and her family, and she now wanted to go back to Romania. But the help of the church had shown a positive side to the people of Belfast as well, she added.

Anna Lo of the Alliance Party said the families were "very frightened". Ms Lo said attacks on Romanian homes - which included bricks being thrown through windows - had been increasing in frequency in recent months. "They are really very frightened," she said. "The women, when they were talking to me yesterday, they were really upset, tears in their eyes and said, 'You know we love it here, we'd like to live here, but we're too scared.' "A woman showed me her shoulder which was quite bruised and cut across, she was hit across the shoulder." Jolena Flett, Racial Harassment Adviser for the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities, said they had been threatened verbally and then three properties were attacked on the same day. "There has been an issue about the families feeling unsafe in the properties they were attacked in. What we are trying to do is provide them with alternative accommodation," she said.

This looks terrible for Ireland's reputation as a civil member of the European Union. However, this news report also looks terrible for the BBC, who continuously fails to identify the families in question as ROMA families, choosing instead to identify the Roma as merely "Romanians". To find out why these Romanians were being targeted, I had to read The Guardian's version of events, which mentioned that the Romanians in question were Roma:

Belfast's lord mayor, Naomi Long, said the repeated attacks on the Roma families close to the university district had brought shame on the city.

This distinction is important because the Roma have long held the status of a persecuted minority in Europe. Remember that Hitler's first attempts at exterminating minorities included the Romany people.  Ignorance about the crimes of history makes the crimes of the present seem less serious by depriving them of their disastrous context in the past. To report about crimes against "Romanians" when you mean crimes against "Roma" is ridiculous. Would the BBC have merely mentioned their Romanian-ness had the persecuted in question been Romanian Jews? Would it be too much to ask for some clear reporting on the situation in northern Ireland? Are those people who are being driven out of their homes Romanians, Romanian Roma, or a combination of both? The conversation can't really begin without an answer to this simple question.

News briefs.

Romania's Petrom started building a power plant in Brazi to the tune of many Euros.

Never one to rock the boat, Basescu restated Romania's support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Moldovan activist Oleg Brega says, "We are freer because we have nothing to lose".

Meanwhile, the Moldovan High Court upholds the controversial citizenship law.

The Romanian Social Democratic Party is apparently preparing to win the upcoming presidential elections.

On the ledger.

• President Basescu pays a visit to the Middle East and proclaims the end of Romanian troops' missions in Iraq. Romanian troops have  been stationed in Iraq since 2003. [Mediafax]
• Romania's ruling coalition parties score big in the EU parliament elections. [The Sofia Echo]
• Talks on the details of Romanian-Polish cooperation wrapped up, with PM Boc announcing a strategic bilateral partnership between Romania and Poland. [Financiarul]
• Hungarian minority leader Senator Marko Bela says he "voted for a Europe that would impose minorities' rights". [Mediafax]
• Tensions between Slovakia and Hungary flare just before the EU election vote. [EU Business] 
• How Congolese workers in Romania are treated. [Being African in Romania] 
• Yoshiko Chuma’s new 90-minute work, “Not About Romanian Cinema: Poonarc,” which opened in New York City this week. According to the critics, it is "a feast of beautiful and strange images and sounds".[New York Times] 
• Romania's former car czar explains what happens when the government nationalizes the automotive industry. [The LRC Blog]  
• Elena Basescu won a seat to the European Parliament running as an independent candidate, but now she feels ready to return to the warm fold of the Liberal Party. [Mediafax] 
• A blues band in Oradea makes a lasting impression. [Insights] 
• The International Literature Festival begins in Romania. [Balkan Travellers] 
• The Seductiveness of the Interval. [Art Daily] 
• Romania might soon have its very first Animal Police. [Seven Times] 
• Lifeguards at Mamaia and Constanta threaten to go on strike unless the government pays their overdue wages. [UPI] 
• 78% of Romanians did not bother to vote in the EU elections. Is this absenteeism a form of protest? [Power & Politics]  
• Rumor has it that Trajan's palace was discovered in Zavoi, Romania. [Bread and Circuses] [SCA Today]
• Romanian high school students win an award from NASA in an international competition. [HotNews]