Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Lunch at the Pierrogeria

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Or should that maybe be PQ?

The root of Polish “pierogi” is “pir,” for festivity. Pierogies look like half-circles of dough because they start out as circles you cut with a drinking glass–then you fold each in half over some bulging lump of good filling.

People boil, bake, or fry these fat little dumplings in many different Slavic home kitchens.

Frank’s dynamic Grandma Wilczek, who grew up in Babice, made delicious fried pierogi every Thanksgiving. But Warsaw’s Pierrogeria goes way beyond Grandma, offering pierogi with every kind of filling from mushrooms and spinach to blueberries, raisins, and rum.

Yum. I really like Polish pierogies. But I’m afraid that if people keep taking me out to wonderful Polish restaurants, meal after meal after meal, I’ll look more like a fat little dumpling than I really want to!

Gate to Warsaw Old Town

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Warsaw’s Old Town got brick walls around it in 1339.

And again, much more recently.

The Old Town’s cobbled streets, dignified marketplace, and medieval townhouses had to be rebuilt from heaps of rubble. Nazis terror-bombed it in 1939, then dynamited much of what was left in 1944 as revenge for the Warsaw Uprising.

The Old Town was rebuilt from the rubble. Our guide’s grandfather was one of many Polish citizens who would go every night after a full day of work elsewhere to help, as a volunteer, on the reconstruction.

By 1980 the restoration was so complete that UNESCO added it to their list of World Heritage Sites.

A beautiful place, a history to inspire pride.

Billie and Walter at Nobel parties

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Frank’s Aunt Billie and Uncle Walter came with us to all the Nobel fun in 2004. Now a new adventure–Uncle Walter (although, I’m sad to say, not Aunt Billie) will be joining us in Poland to visit the village where his mother was born, Babice near Cracow.

In the photo, Uncle Walter is getting ready to say something funny, as is so often true in real life. This is going to be a lot of fun! Many thanks to Adam Zielinski and to the Foundation for Polish Science for arranging this journey of discovery.

Blogging this, as so often, from yet another airport!

Black and white Brompton

Originally uploaded by yhase

Frank and I were just leaving Nordita when I saw it–the most gorgeous bicycle ever! When I say a physical object is gorgeous, I mean that it clearly has much information cleverly packed in its essence.

I was not disappointed. Ulf kindly set down his backpack and demonstrated just how he could fold up his Brompton bicycle into a tiny, portable package to carry on trains or store in a small closet. Flickr has a photo pool for Brompton bike enthusiasts where you can see these amazing bikes folded and unfolded in places like London, Paris, and NYC. I guess I just never noticed them before.

Judging from the expression on Frank’s face, he now wants his own Brompton bike to fold and unfold.

The decisions we make in our 20s…

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Not that I regret this young woman’s decisions, crazy as some of them were–well, maybe I’m blushing a bit at those orange curtains.

You see in this photograph married grad student housing in Princeton, where Frank and I were living when we got the word–we were pregnant! Well, OK, I was.

So this long-haired black turtlenecked soon-to-be-ex-grad-student, wearing a lotus-y necklace, decides …I’m going to be a mom–time to get serious about my life! No more cigarettes–well, that was a good decision.

Get serious, be grown-up–I know! I’ll get Frank’s grandmother to teach me how to crochet so that i can make a blanket for my baby.

Now, there were a ton of things I didn’t think of. Just for example, since Frank stopped being a grad student and started being a post-doc during my pregnancy–neither of his two different medical insurance groups would pay for the delivery.

But, by gosh, my baby had the most beautiful blanket!

Staatsoper PDA

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

As of July 3, it’s 34 years and counting for Frank and Betsy–not to mention (wow!) more than 60 years now for Frank’s mom and dad.

I still don’t understand why the long-term love of any two people is endangered by the thought that two different people (whose lifestyle couple #1 might not approve) want to promise to love one another forever.

It’s easier to imagine that Hollywood “marriages” lasting 55 hours set a bad example to couples from more normal origins–but I hate to think that our US Constitution needs an amendment fo protect us from poor Britney Spears. (And isn’t she heterosexual, IIRC?)

The best marriage advice, according to my little brother, is to keep on caring about each other, respecting each other. For my more long-winded but heartfelt version, here’s some advice I wrote way back in 2003.

Love is a wonderful thing, and good luck to us all!

Jim Clash posted an interview with Frank to his charming online “Adventurers” TV series at Forbes.com:

• What it’s like to win a Nobel Prize?

Jim Clash’s work deserves much wider notice for his quirky and quick-witted and very short incursions into the lives of interesting folks–e.g. Roger Bannister, Joe Frasier, Buzz Aldrin, and my own adventurous husband Frank Wilczek.

It’s a shame that the Forbes “video network” seems maniacally determined to tax your patience and interest to the limit before letting you access the content you came to see. Blaring and obnoxious video ads just don’t quit! Have an ad for Microsoft–now have an ad for Forbes.com–now have another ad for Microsoft.

Do you need to search for the content using Forbes’s search box? New search results page–new ad for Microsoft! Click through from search result to content–sorry, first you have to watch another long pre-ad for some extraneous Forbes content before the video you want to see.

Still, none of this slogging should overtax the courage of a real Adventurer!

"Wait–I see a square foot of empty space in the corner!"

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

…who are all these folks in my living room?

These two questions are strangely connected because our living room is getting each moment more crowded by crew members from the PBS TV show Closer to Truth, visible online via The Research Channel.

Having now Flickred some photos of them, I’m headed back downstairs to enjoy all the chaos, including free brownies!

Wonderful Tshirt hand-painted for Frank

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

what the back of this Tshirt says?

Thanks to Luis and Cinzia for Frank’s new favorite Tshirt.

Well, maybe not totally Polish, but now I’m *in* Polish, and so is Frank (who was half-Polish to start with) in a new translation of our book Longing for the Harmonies. More on my newly discovered Polish attributes: Betsy Devine Z wykształcenia jest informatykiem, studia ukończyła w Princeton. Regularnie prowadzi w Internecie blog „Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Peculiar” poświęcony różnym zagadnieniom z pogranicza nauki, polityki i humoru. Od 1973 roku jest żoną Franka Wilczka.

Thanks–I think! What a handsome cover design–I hope we get one of these. Thanks to Ewa L. Łokas and Bogumił Bieniok [sic] for this translation and to the busy bots of Technorati for letting me know the book is now out on the Internet.