Category Archives: education

by | 16 April 2026 · 12:26 am

Polish Realia: Beer Styles

From the illustrated placemat at Browar Pivovaria, in Radom, Poland.
Najlepsze Piwa z Radomia / Warzone na Miejscu
‘Best beer from Radom / Brewed on Site’

Pils Pilsner
Nasz Pils to pełne, jasne piwo dolnej fermentacji w stylu niemieckich pilznerów. Posiada barwę złota i wspaniałą białą pianę, a warzone jest ze słodu jasnego jęczmiennego. W smaku czyste, orzeżwiające, z wraźną szlachetną goryczką i zapachem szyszek chmielowych. Polecane do zimnych przekąsek, dań z drobiu i ryb. Alk. 5% obj. [< objętościowo]
Our Pils is a full-bodied, light bottom-fermented beer in the style of German pilsners. It has a golden color and a wonderful white foam, and is brewed from light barley malt. The taste is clean, refreshing, with a slight noble bitterness and the smell of hop flowers. Recommended for cold snacks, poultry and fish dishes. Alc. 5% vol.

Pszeniczne Wheat 
Pszeniczne to orzeźwiające piwo w stylu weizen. Warzone jest ze słodu pszenicznego (60%) i jęczmiennego jasnego. Piwo to charakteryzuje się słomkową barwą i puszystą białą pianką. W smaku wyczuwa się pszenicę jak również aromat bananowo goździkowy. Poleca się szczególnie do dan serwowanych z sosem śmietanowym, delikatnej wieprzowiny i placków ziemniaczanych. Alk. 5,1% obj.
Wheat is a refreshing weizen-style beer. It is brewed from wheat malt (60%) and light barley. This beer is characterized by a straw color and fluffy white foam. The taste is wheat with banana and clove aroma. It is especially recommended for dishes served with sour cream sauce, tender pork and potato pancakes. Alc. 5.1% vol.

Bursztynowe Amber
Bursztynowe to piwo dolnej fermentacji. Produkowane jest z udziałem słodu jasnego jęczmiennego i ciemnych słodówkarmelowych. Barwa jest adekwatna do nazwy, a smak to mieszające się nuty słodowo – karmelowe oraz wyczuwalna goryczka. Poleca się je szczególnie do potraw z grilla i dań ze schabu. Alk. 5,7 obj.
Amber is a bottom-fermented beer. It is produced with light barley malt and dark caramel malts. The color lives up to its name, and the taste is mixed malt and caramel notes and noticeable bitterness. They are especially recommended for grilled dishes and pork loin dishes. Alc. 5.7 vol.

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by | 15 April 2026 · 1:05 am

Polish Realia: Beer Types

From the illustrated placemat at Browar Pivovaria, in Radom, Poland.
Najlepsze Piwa z Radomia / Warzone na Miejscu
‘Best beer from Radom / Brewed on Site’

Koźlak Bock
Nasz Koźlak jest mocnym, ciemnym piwem o słodkim zapachu przypominającym ciasto z owocami. Wyczuwa się również woń karmelu, fig is suszonych śliwek. Ma rozgrzewający charakter, a na podniebieniu pozostawia pełny słodowy smak z przebijającymi się nutami toffi i wyraźną goryczką. Poleca cię go m.in. [< między innymi ‘inter alia’ ] do żeberek i delikatnej wołowiny. Alk. 7,5% obj. [< objętościowo]
Our Koźlak is a strong, dark beer with a sweet smell reminiscent of fruit cake. You can also smell caramel, figs and prunes. It has a warming character, and leaves a full malty taste on the palate with pungent [not ‘punctual’!] notes of toffee and a distinct bitterness. It is recommended for ribs and tender beef, among others. Alc. 7.5% vol.

APA American Pale Ale
Piwo górnej fermentacji w stylu American Pale Ale. W smaku wyrazista, zbalansowana gorycz z wyczuwalnym aromatem chmieli Amerykańskich. Piwo polecane do pikantnych i słonych dań. Alk. 5,0% obj.
Top fermented beer in the style of American Pale Ale. The taste is distinctive, balanced bitterness with a noticeable aroma of American hops. The beer is recommended for spicy and salty dishes. Alc. 5.0% vol.

Czarny Koń (lub inne piwo sezonowe)
Black Horse (or other seasonal beer)
Mocne, ciemne piwo w stylu ALE. W smaku i aromacie wyczuwalna jest słodowa słodycz z nutami karmelu. Znaczny dodatek słodów ciemnych nadaje piwu również aromat i smak ciemnej czekolady oraz kawy. Piwo długo leżakowane. Piwo poleca się m.in. do golonek i żeberek. Alk. 9.2% obj.
Strong, dark beer in the style of ALE. In the taste and aroma, there is a malty sweetness with notes of caramel. A significant addition of dark malts also gives the beer the aroma and taste of dark chocolate and coffee. Long aged beer. The beer is recommended for pork knuckles and ribs, among others. Alc. 9.2% vol.

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by | 10 April 2026 · 12:32 am

Japanese Little League and Yakuza

From Rounding the Bases: The Story of Little League Baseball in Japan, by James J. Orr (U. Hawaii Press, 2026), Kindle pp. 130-132:

There remained one sticking point to this collaboration: Yomiuri’s special interest in Kansai Little League coverage. There were some in the Little League community who wished for Yomiuri to not only continue coverage but increase its involvement. Musashino Little League’s Mitsuyasu in particular lobbied for Yomiuri kingpin Shōriki Tōru to lead Little League Japan, and bemoaned Fuji-Sankei’s involvement. But Mitsui’s long-term plan was to work with Fuji-Sankei, and Fuji-Sankei did not want to get involved in a media struggle for coverage rights in the Kansai. When Fuji-Sankei president Shikauchi insisted on full nationwide rights, Mizukami told Hoshino he should make the trip down to Yomiuri’s Osaka offices to negotiate their withdrawal, allowing Mitsui and Sankei to handle Little League nationwide. Hoshino packed his bag for what he thought would be an overnight trip. He ended up spending almost a week there.

One might think that Hoshino would have to spend most of his time and energy convincing Yomiuri to defer to Fuji Sankei, but that decision was not fully Yomiuri’s to make. Before he even approached Yomiuri, Hoshino first had to engage certain underworld elements. At the height of their influence in the 1960s, Japan’s idiosyncratic yakuza gangster world had its origins in two broad arenas with significant overlap: bakutō (gambling) and tekiya (carnie). The tekiya traditionally made their money by organizing and operating quasi-legal protection rackets for street and carnival sales stalls. One profitable variant in the post–World War II years were corporate-level extortionists known as sōkaiya who specialized in disrupting the annual stockholder meetings unless their demands were met. Japan’s yakuza are known for their haughty profession of right-wing or ultra-nationalist postures. One imagines that making the rounds of corporations on behalf of a youth sports team about to represent Japan in an international competition presented an appealing opportunity for them. Although surely not a major money maker, yakuza had apparently made a racket of skimming a healthy portion of funds solicited from businesses in support of Little League. If Fuji Sankei and Mitsui Bussan were going to take over sponsorship of Little League in the Kansai, their support systems would have to be brought aboveboard and questionable connections with the criminal underworld would have to be severed. But in the murky world of accommodations of convenience and unspoken but implicit understandings, an unexpected departure from the cozy tekiya fundraising arrangement would have ripple effects.

In short, Hoshino knew that Yomiuri could not act pre-emptively without the understanding and consent of its associates. To do otherwise would incur the ire of yakuza and expose their organization to irritating and embarrassing harassment that was the yakuza métier. It would be a question of saving face. One thinks of the lampooning scene in comic filmmaker Itami Jūzō’s 1988 A Taxing Woman’s Return in which a local gangster boss intimidates office staff and citizens at a local tax office, all based on the absurdly reverse assertion that he was himself being harassed.16 If Yomiuri had dropped Little League sponsorship without first consulting and gaining the yakuza padrone’s acquiescence, then their whole organization would have been subjected to the charge of insulting or undercutting the yakuza’s pride.

So, Hoshino went to talk with the tekiya boss first, traveling as instructed to a desolate train station in the less-populated areas in the middle of rice paddies between Osaka and Kyoto. On his retelling, Hoshino joked that he felt like he was being kidnapped when several henchmen sauntered around him and then spirited him away in a four-door coupe to the gangster boss’s home, where he ended up staying as a nervous house guest for three or four days. It was a harrowing week, and he had to approach, as he put it, “many scary people” to extricate Little League from this legally questionable fundraising system. Hoshino’s negotiating strategy was simple: ingratiate himself with the boss and then appeal to his ego by asking for his help to convince Yomiuri to allow Mitsui and Sankei to control national coverage. After three or four days of negotiation, while being a not fully willing house guest, Hoshino succeeded. At that point, the tekiya boss took the lead in visiting the Osaka Yomiuri offices, with Hoshino in tow, to “advise” Yomiuri that Fuji Sankei and Mitsui were, so to speak, taking over the Kansai Little League franchise.

Mitsui Bussan and Fuji Sankei became official sponsors for both the 1970 All-Japan and Far East tournaments held at the Higashi Fuchū grounds, and Sankei gave the tournament good coverage in its media network. Hoshino arranged for the players to be billeted in U.S. military barracks and fed at the commissary at nearby Fuchu Air Station, a communications hub for U.S. military in the Far East. Hoshino himself bunked there during the two weeks prior while making tournament arrangements, and then as chaperone for the players during the tournaments that featured teams from the Marshall Islands and Taiwan.

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Filed under baseball, economics, education, Japan, nationalism, Taiwan, U.S.

by | 9 April 2026 · 12:03 am

Taiwan’s Little League Fans

From Rounding the Bases: The Story of Little League Baseball in Japan, by James J. Orr (U. Hawaii Press, 2026), Kindle pp. 112-114:

Taiwan’s Chinese Baseball Association, in association with Lions Club International, had also invited Yoshikura to bring a Kansai Renmei team to Taiwan for a series of five exhibition games that August. Both nanshiki [rubber baseball] and hardball baseball were popular pastimes in Taiwan, a legacy of the island’s prewar years as a Japanese colony. In preparation for an event loaded with patriotic interest, Taiwanese leaders arranged for the Hongye and Chuiyang teams, the winner and runner-up in Taiwan’s 20th Annual Provincial Children’s Cup in May, to train for as long as a month at a military base. The Kansai team, rostered from seven of the Kansai Renmei teams, defeated Chuiyang 1–0 in the first matchup. But they lost to the powerhouse Hongye “Maple Leaf” team 7–0 in front of 20,000 in Taipei Stadium and a live television audience. They lost again to a national Taiwanese all-star team the next day, 5–1, and again to Hongye the day after, 5–2. Kansai saved some face by winning the final game against a provincial all-star team from Jiayi.

The large numbers viewing this series of games in person or on television illustrated and spurred Taiwanese enthusiasm for the international Little League competition that soon far exceeded interest in Little League baseball at this point in Japan. It also presaged the popular interest in Hongye and Taiwan’s dominance of the Little League World Series for the next twenty years. A staggering two-thirds of the island’s population watched a middle-of-the-night broadcast of the island nation’s Little League championship game in 1971.

The Kansai squad’s 1968 visit became a Taiwanese national phenomenon, symbolic of several interconnected and competing ethnic and national tensions characteristic of the island community, which historians of Taiwan baseball agree was a “defining moment in the history of Taiwan nationalism.” For one thing, the ruling Nationalist KMT/GMD, the former mainland government that had been pushed into exile on the island, had not promoted baseball at all since it had not been played in China. Baseball was, ironically enough from an American perspective, intimately tied to Taiwan’s colonial era as subaltern in Japan’s empire, an inconvenient fact the Nationalist press avoided. Yet a vibrant baseball culture continued, even at the elementary school level. The fact that the Hongye school was from a mountainous Bunun Aborigine district in the southeastern Taitung Province added an ethnic dimension to the story, so the team’s success against the Japanese suggested the possibility of a native Taiwan free of Chiang Kai-Shek’s KMT/GMD mainland rule. As elaborated by Andrew Morris, David Harney, and others, the official Republic of China government attempted rather to coopt Hongye’s success in an anti-communist agenda affirming the Nationalist government rule by celebrating a capitalist work ethic in the face of their impoverished background.

The ideological import for the Japanese was rather straightforward in comparison to the situation for their hosts, for whom nationalist and ethnic pride competed in overlapping discourses between mainland Chinese and island Taiwanese identities. The Taiwanese hosts to the Kansai delegation rather celebrated the historic connection. At the official ceremony, for example, one Taiwan parent who had played at Kōshien in the prewar imperial era recited a poem on the “way of baseball” spirit by the recently deceased Kondō Hyōtarō, a fabulously successful baseball coach who took his multi-ethnic Jiayi team to Kōshien four times in the early 1930s. And at least one member of the Kansai delegation reconnected with acquaintances from the prewar colonial years.

As discussed in chapter 4, the 1967 West Tokyo Little League success in the American-sponsored Little League venue affirmed the older Japanese Little League leadership’s nationalist desire for approbation of Japan’s remarkable postwar recovery. The warm reception for the August 1968 Kansai Renmei delegation allowed a measure of nostalgia for Japan’s imperial era, despite the team’s modest performance against the former colony’s teams. In Japanese recollections of the trip, Hongye’s hardscrabble origins are conveyed by images of barefoot players. And it is suggestive that such recollections mention the delegation’s gifting of their hardball equipment as an act of noblesse oblige befitting, viewed from traditional East Asian notions of imperial governance, the beneficence of a former colonial ruler.

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Filed under baseball, education, Japan, migration, Taiwan

by | 8 April 2026 · 12:06 am

Japan’s Baseball Crazy Wakayama

From Rounding the Bases: The Story of Little League Baseball in Japan, by James J. Orr (U. Hawaii Press, 2026), Kindle pp. 100-102:

Wakayama is a provincial city 50 miles south of Osaka. Where Nanba, one of Osaka’s main commercial hubs, is the northern terminus of the Nankai main line that follows the eastern shore of Osaka Bay, Wakayama is an hour south at the other end of the line. The region has a rich provincial heritage on the periphery of the main power centers in Japanese history. A city located at the edge of waters between the Osaka Bay and the Pacific Ocean, Wakayama straddles the mouth of the River Kii, a waterway with its source in the mountainous Kii Peninsula. At the beginning of the Ashikaga shogunate in the fourteenth-century “Nambokuchō” era of competing imperial courts (1336–1392), Emperor Godaigo’s southern line ensconced itself near its source in the mountainous Kii Peninsula interior. During the two-and-a-half centuries of the relatively stable Tokugawa era (c. 1600–1868), Wakayama was held by one of the shogunal cadet houses that twice provided heirs to the main shogunal line. And in the sixteenth-century sengoku or “warring states” era of fragmented rule before the Tokugawa era, a major peasant mutual defense league known as the Saika Ikki resisted the great warlord Oda Nobunaga’s consolidation of power. Its headquarters was in a fortress near the present-day castle and today lends its name to a section of the city, an elementary school, and a youth baseball club important to the emergence of Wakayama Little League. Saika is also a common surname in Wakayama.

In the mid-1960s, Wakayama was a growing city that featured a major steel mill, a healthy agricultural and fisheries sector, and as important for our interests, a robust baseball community. Dr. Hotta Eiji, Doshisha University Chancellor and one-time president of the Japan High School Baseball Federation (known as Kōyaren), observed to the author that, although Wakayama City and its eponymous prefecture is not that large in terms of population, its residents have long been known for their fervent enthusiasm for high school baseball, and the prefecture boasts a number of perennially strong high school teams. A 1965 survey by the Wakayama Broadcasting Company found that over 90 percent of respondents considered themselves baseball fans, while only 2.5 percent maintained they had no interest. Wakayama Chū, Wakayama’s prewar prefectural middle school, was one of the inaugural teams to play in the summer Kōshien high school baseball tournament, Japan’s most popular sporting event that began in Osaka’s Toyonaka City in 1915. The school won the tournament in 1921 and 1922 (when it was played in Nishinomiya), after which they hosted the future Showa Emperor at his first baseball game at their newly built concrete stands later that year. Tōin High School, Wakayama Chū’s reincarnation after the postwar education reforms, has produced numerous players and accomplished managers in Tokyo’s premier university baseball league, the “Big Six.” One indicator of Wakayama’s enduring baseball fervor is that a group of 50 former high school players born in and around 1955, the age cohort that would have been Little League age in the late 1960s, meet annually to socialize, reminisce, and just talk baseball.

Wakayama has a vibrant nanshiki [rubber baseball] infrastructure with many elementary school-age teams formed along local social networks—school, shrine or temple, parental work relationships, and so on—that compete in summer tournaments sponsored both by the municipal youth sports promotion association as well as by local companies and volunteer organizations. Judging from common team names, contemporary reports in the local Wakayama newspaper, player recollections, later comments by league officials, and an analysis of Little League roster information with residency data from the city youth sports organization, it is clear that the 1966 and 1967 Little League teams were in fact all-star teams selected from the Wakayama Youth Baseball Association spring and summer nanshiki tournaments. Because the Japanese school year begins in April, what this means is that most of the players selected for the summer Little League tournament rosters were already in seventh grade playing for their junior high school nanshiki teams.

Hirota Hideo and Wakayama’s Youth Baseball Community

The major figure in Wakayama’s youth baseball community in this era was a fabric wholesaler by the name of Hirota Hideo. Like many baseball men in Japan in this era, he had played baseball in the prewar years, at Wakayama’s Ninoshima High School. He was a member of his local PTA, a board member on the Wakayama youth sports association, and a charismatic individual whose business and civic connections ranged far and wide. The Hirotas lived directly opposite the Saika Elementary School that their two daughters attended, and provided conveniently located home care for the infant children of the school’s young female teachers. In 1961, Hirota founded what became the strongest team in the Wakayama Shōnen Yakyū Renmei (Wakayama Youth Baseball Association). He was the manager of the club until 1969.

Like Dr. Sasa in Tanashi, Hirota was an important agent beyond baseball in creating the civic sports organizations that sprung up in response to the national government’s promotion of youth sports culture in the early to mid-1960s. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 1962, the Japan Sports Association (JASA)—Japan’s equivalent to that era’s Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) in the United States—founded an affiliate Junior association with the aim of promoting youth interest in sports in the run-up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. With offices in the city’s Taiiku Kyōkai Physical Education Association, Wakayama’s Junior Sports Association’s founding charter mandated board representation from every youth sports association in the city as well as from elementary and junior high principals, the local Taiiku Kyōkai Athletic Association itself, and the administrative offices of the city’s Board of Education. In its 20th anniversary publication, the founding director Hisashi Shōzō credited “baseball’s Hirota” as one of two individuals who really helped him get the organization going in 1965, when it listed 20 sports associations as members.

The Nankai Hawks were my favorite baseball team during my high school years in Kobe during the 1960s. Their Japanese Hall-of-Fame pitcher and catcher combination, Tadashi Sugiura and Katsuya Nomura, were hard to beat.

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Filed under baseball, biography, education, Japan

by | 7 April 2026 · 12:27 am

Polish Realia: Blood Donations

Zaznacz prawidłową odpowiedź: Prawda/Fałsz
Select the correct answer: True/False

  1. Przed donacją trzeba znać swoją grupę krwi.
    Before the donation, one must know one’s blood group.
  2. Przerwa między oddaniami krwi pełnej nie może być krótsza niż 8 tygodni.
    The interval between whole blood donations may not be shorter than 8 weeks.
  3. Do przeszczepienia wątroby często potrzeba aż 20 jednostek krwi.
    For a liver transplant often require as many as 20 units of blood.
  4. Jeden Biorca często potrzebuje pomocy kilku Dawców.
    One Recipient often needs the help of several Donors.
  5. Dawca może przyjmować witaminy.
    The Donor can take vitamins.
  6. Składniki krwi przechowuje się razem.
    Blood components are stored together.
  7. Noworodkom podaje się krew tylko od dorosłych, którzy są nimi spokrewnieni.
    Newborns are given blood only from adults who are related to them.
  8. Wegetarianie I weganie nie mogą oddawać krwi.
    Vegetarians and vegans may not donate blood.
  9. Przeziębienie jest przeciwwskazaniem do oddania krwi lub jej składników.
    A cold is a contraindication to donating blood or its components.
  10. Po donacji organizm Dawcy produkuje nadwyżki krwi.
    After donation, the Donor’s body produces surplus blood.
  11. Osoba leczona krwią nie może nigdy zostać Dawcą.
    A person treated with blood can never become a Donor.
  12. Zaostrzona alergia jest przeciwwskazaniem czasowym dla Dawców.
    Exacerbated allergy is a temporary contraindication for Donors.
  13. Po donacji organism uzupełnia braki w ciągu 3-4 dni.
    After donation, the body replenishes deficiencies within 3-4 days.

Poprawne odpowiedzi: N T T T T N N N T N N T T
Correct answers: F T T T T F F F T F F T T

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by | 4 April 2026 · 6:47 am

Poland’s Underground State

From the Epilogue by Neal Ascherson in Wojtek the Bear: Polish War Hero, by Aileen Orr (Birlinn, 2014), Kindle pp. 170-173:

The couriers who reached London did not only bring despatches from the resistance. They were themselves direct witnesses to the appalling nature of the Nazi occupation. The messenger Jan Karski laid before British and American statesmen the full news of the Jewish genocide. Jan Nowak (Jeziorański) was sent out of burning Warsaw during the 1944 uprising to plead with the Allies for help. In the West, most people knew that the occupation was brutal, especially in its treatment of the Jews. But the governments of the democracies were slow, even reluctant, to believe the sheer scale and intensity of horror which the Polish messengers and the exile government revealed to them.

In German-occupied Poland, some 5.4 million people died in concentration camps or mass executions, 3 million of them Jews. That figure does not include casualties caused directly by war and, in all, Poland lost roughly a fifth of its pre-war population. Its industry and infrastructure were almost completely destroyed, while much of Poland’s cultural heritage was burned or looted. In 1944, the whole central city of Warsaw was blown up on Hitler’s orders and reduced to rubble.

After the 1939 invasion, the Nazis divided their half of Poland into two regions. The first consisted of territory in the west of the country which was simply absorbed into the Reich, the Polish population being driven out and replaced by German settlers. The second region was the ‘General Government’, a kind of colonial protectorate ruled from Kraków by the tyrannical Hans Frank. It was in the General Government that almost all the extermination camps were constructed for the Jewish Holocaust, the industrial murder of Europe’s Jews by gas. (Auschwitz lay just out[side] the General Government, in the Upper Silesian region absorbed by the Reich.)

In the General Government, the SS began a programme of selective genocide, designed to destroy the Polish elite and to prevent any national revival. Academics, creative intellectuals and the priesthood were targeted. A little later, the German authorities started to round up the first of 3.5 million men and women for slave labour in German war industries or agriculture. Villages which resisted were burned down; their men were shot, the women deported and the children either killed or kidnapped for ‘Germanisation’ in German families.

These conditions brought immense popular support for the resistance. But at first the AK concentrated on building up its strength and acquiring weapons, and it was not until 1942 that widespread attacks on the German occupiers began. The price for resistance, even for disobeying regulations, was usually death. In the cities, the Germans carried out random mass round-ups of ‘hostages’ who were lined up against walls and shot, their bodies left lying on the street as a warning against defiance or disobedience. Ghettos were set up in the towns, as a prelude to the Jewish genocide, and the penalty for hiding an escaped Jew was immediate execution for the rescuer and his or her whole family.

In spite of these risks, the underground state survived and proliferated. This was not a new idea. During and after the January rising of 1863, the insurgents had established a ‘parallel nation’ which preserved Polish identity through illegal publishing, education and even clandestine courts. The AK’s arms and explosives were captured from the Germans, and later parachuted in from the West. But the resistance was able to do little to help the Warsaw Ghetto Rising in April 1943, as Jewish fighters decided to die fighting rather than go passively to the gas chambers of Treblinka.

By the end of 1943, AK partisan units were in control of many districts of rural Poland, especially the forests and hills of the old eastern borderlands which now lay behind German lines. But once again, strategic problems emerged. In 1943, the plan of the government-in-exile and the AK command inside Poland had been to harry the Germans as they retreated and then to join the Soviet armies as they drove the Wehrmacht out of Poland. But early in 1944, as Soviet troops advanced across the pre-war Polish frontiers, it became clear that the Russians had no intention of restoring Polish authority in the regions they had seized in 1939.

Worse still, they treated the AK units which welcomed them as potential enemies. The Polish partisans were offered a choice between arrest and conscription into the Red Army. Places liberated by the Home Army were handed over to the People’s Army, the Communist partisans, and to their Committee for National Liberation (PKWN). This body had been set up in Moscow as the nucleus for a future Communist government of Poland.

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Filed under education, Germany, labor, language, migration, military, nationalism, Poland, religion, slavery, USSR, war

by | 31 March 2026 · 12:32 am

Food Rationing in Scotland, 1945

From Wojtek the Bear: Polish War Hero, by Aileen Orr (Birlinn, 2014), Kindle pp. 61-62:

In Scotland the food allowance each person had to get by on at that time included the following: 2 ounces of bacon or ham, a finger of cheese (1.5 ounces), 7 ounces of butter or margarine, 2 ounces of cooking fats, 8 ounces of sugar, 2 ounces of tea (about 20 teabags), 4 ounces of sweets and 1 shilling’s-worth (5p) of meat. It doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Except this wasn’t a day’s ration – it was for one full week. Except for the bacon. That was two weeks’ allowance. Other staples such as bread, bananas and even potatoes (throughout 1947) were also rationed. As for fresh eggs, you could have one a fortnight – if you could lay your hands on one. Most urban families made do with the vile-tasting powdered version for the skimpy amounts of baking they could eke out of their precious rations of flour and sugar. On the plus side, people were allowed three pints of milk a week.

In fact, milk was just about the only commodity with which the Attlee government was generous; as part of its drive to maintain the nutritional health of the country’s children, in 1946 free school milk was introduced for all pupils up to the age of 18. This was later reduced to primary schools only. A quarter of a century later, free school milk was finally phased out by Margaret Thatcher. She was dubbed Thatcher the Milk Snatcher by her political opponents.

Those of us of a certain age well remember the crates of one-third-of-a-pint bottles which had to be humped in from the playground into the classrooms. For some unfathomable reason, once indoors, the crates always seemed to be stacked next to the school radiators, ensuring the milk was lukewarm by the time it was dispensed. It is one of life’s ironies that, despite food shortages and rationing, the children of postwar Scotland were better fed than many of their modern counterparts. That, in large part, was down to the free milk ration and free school meals (about half the UK’s pupils qualified for them), plus daily doses of free cod liver oil and concentrated orange juice which mothers determinedly rammed down the throats of protesting offspring.

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Filed under Britain, economics, education, food

by | 21 March 2026 · 10:12 am

Polish Realia: Forest Layers

Warstwe Lasu i Ich Mieszkańcy Forest Layers and Their Inhabitants

Las to ekosystem, którym szata roślinna powiązana jest ze światem zwierżąt i nieżywionymy tworami przyrody. We wszystkich biocenozach leśnich rośliny konkurują między sobą o światło. Rezultatem tego jest warstwowa budowa lasu. Prowadzi ona do odpowiedniego wykorzystania przestrzeni lasu przez rośliny, tworzać sprzyjające warunki do życia dla różnych zwierżat.
A forest is an ecosystem through which the vegetation is connected to the world of animals and not nourished by the creations of nature. In all forest biocenoses [= life assemblages], plants compete with each other for light. The result is a layered forest structure. It leads to the proper use of the forest space by plants, creating favorable living conditions for various animals.

Korony Drzew Tree Crowns

Najwyższą warstwę lasu stanowią drzewa. Ich korony zamieszkują niektóre zwierżeta np. [= na przykład (e.g.)] owady, wiewiórki, kuny, i liczne gatunki ptaków.
The highest layer of the forest is made up of trees. Their crowns are inhabited by some animals, e.g., insects, squirrels, martens, and numerous species of birds.

Pictured and named: buk pospolity ‘common beech’, świerk pospolity ‘Norway spruce’, sosna zwyczajna ‘Scotch pine’; zawisak borowiec ‘hawk moth’, brudnica mniszka ‘nun moth’; wiewiórka ‘squirrel’; dzięcioł duży ‘great spotted woodpecker’, puchacz ‘eagle owl’, wilga ‘oriole’

Podszyt Undergrowth

Poniżej do wysokości około 5 m jest podszyt. Warstwa, którą tworzą niskie drzewa i krzewa dobrze znoszące zacienienie tj. [= to jest (i.e.)] głóg, tarnina, dereń, czeremka, kalina, kruszyna, jałowiec, leszczyna. W podszyciu żerują m. in. [między innymi (among others)]: sarna, dzik, jeleń, zając, lis.
Below to a height of about 5 m is the undergrowth. A layer formed by low trees and shrubs that tolerate shade well, i.e. hawthorn, blackthorn, dogwood, cherry, viburnum, buckthorn, juniper, hazel. In the undergrowth feed, among others: roe deer, wild boar, deer, hare, fox.

Pictured and named: kalina koralowa ‘coral virburnum’; kruszyna pospolita ‘common buckthorn’, leszczyna pospolita ‘common hazel’; modraszek ‘blue butterfly’; paż królowe ‘queen’s swallowtail’; orzesznica ‘dormouse’; sikora bogatka ‘great tit’; sikora modra ‘blue tit’

Runo Leśne Forest Floor

Runo to warstwa do której dociera mało światła i jest wilgotno. Porastają ją drobne krzewinki – borówki, jagody, liczne zioła, trawy, mchy, porosty, paprocie, oraz grzyby. W tym piętrze lasu schronienie znajdują liczne owady, pająki, ropuchy, żaby, jaszczurki, węże, jeże, i myszy leśne.
The floor is a layer that receives little light and is damp. It is overgrown with small shrubs – blueberries, berries, numerous herbs, grasses, mosses, lichens, ferns, and mushrooms. This floor of the forest is shelter to numerous insects, spiders, toads, frogs, lizards, snakes, hedgehogs, and forest mice.

Pictured and named: borowik szlachetny ‘boletus mushroom’, muchomor czerwony ‘red toadstool’; konwalia majowa ‘mayflower’, pióropusznik strusi ‘ostrich fern’; jeż europejski ‘western hedgehog’, ropucha szara ‘common toad’, padalec zwychajna ‘common slowworm’

Ściółka Mulch

Ściółka to warstwa, która leźy bezpośrednio na glebie. Tworzą ją opadłe liście, szyszki, owoce, nasiona oraz martwe szczątki roślin i zwierząt. Występują tu drobne organizmy, odźywiające się szczątkami organicznymi tj. bakterie, grzyby, glony, pajęczaki, wije.
Mulch is a layer that lies directly on top of the soil. It consists of fallen leaves, cones, fruits, seeds and dead remains of plants and animals. There are small organisms that feed on organic remains, such as bacteria, fungi, algae, arachnids, and myriapods.

Pictured and named: mrówka rudnica ‘red ant’, żuki leśne ‘dung beetle’, ślimak winniczek ‘vine snail’, skulica i krocionóg ‘types of millipedes’

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by | 20 March 2026 · 11:08 pm

Polish Realia: Beneficial Insects

Owady Pozyteczne Beneficial Insects

Ciekawostka Trivia
Mrówki rudnice nazywane są sanitariuszami lasu. Zjadają bowiem owady będące szkodnikami lasu, ograniczając tym samym ich liczebność. Ponadto pełnia rolę czyściceli, usuwając chore osobniki i martwe szczątki zwierząt.
Red ants are called the sanitary workers of the forest. Because they eat other insects that are forest pests, thereby limiting their numbers. In addition, they fill a role as scavengers, removing diseased individuals and dead animal remains. 

Sanitariusze / Sanitary workers: Mrówka rudnica / red ants; żuk leśny / dung beetles

Drapieżcy / Predators: Przekrasek mróweczka / ant beetles; Biedronka siedmiokropka / lady bugs; Biegacz skórzasty / carabus beetles

Pasożytnicze / Parasites: Gąsienicznik czarny / ichneumon wasps; Bzyg prążkowany / marmalade hoverfly

Zapylacze / Pollinators: Pszczoła miodna / honey bees; Trzmiel ziemny / bumble bees

Próchnojady / Wood-eaters: Dyląż garbarz / root borers; Jelonek rogacz /stag beetles

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