Stanislava Rotkvic M.D. has passed away

It is with great sadness that I have been informed that Stanislava Rotkvic M.D. has passed away earlier this week.
Funeral Mass will be held at
10:00 am Wednesday, December 29, 2004 at
St. John’s Church
239 Anderson Avenue
Fairview NJ 07022

Dr. Rotkvic originally a native of Croatia was retired. She leaves behind sister, nephew and a niece in Croatia. She was contributor to numerous charities. She was a Life Contributing member of The Croatian Academy of America and a former Executive Council member.
 

Preminuo slikar Josip Generalic

Srijeda, 22. prosinca 2004. http://www.hrt.hr/vijesti/

HRVATSKI slikar naivac Josip Generalic preminuo je jutros u koprivnickoj Opcoj bolnici, potvrdjeno je u toj bolnici. Josip Generalic rodjen je u Hlebinama 1936. Slikanjem se bavi od 1950., najprije pod utjecajem oca Ivana i Hlebinske skole, zatim od 1960. u njegove kompozicije prodiru nadrealni i dekorativni elementi. Zavrsio je Uciteljsku skolu u Krizevcima 1956., a diplomirao je na Visoj pedagoskoj skoli. Nakon 1973. gradi vlastit stil, temeljeci ga na ekspresivnosti i fantazmagoricnosti.

Od 1977., u tzv. crnoj fazi, svojevrsnim verizmom slika svijet na rubu katastrofe. Autor je mnogih grafickih mapa, a radio je i scenografiju te prijedloske za tapiserije. Priredio je vise od stotinu samostalnih izlozaba u zemlji i inozemstvu i sudjelovao na vise od devet stotina skupnih izlozaba. Sudjelovao je na smotrama naivne umjetnosti u Bratislavi, Zagrebu, Muenchenu i Zuerichu. Hina

Compassion is not something one person has for
another, but rather something that arises when one
begins to see all others as ones own self.

-Amma

History ofCroatian Science

http://www.hr/darko/etf/et22.html - the whole story

Š by Darko Zubrinic, Zagreb (1995)

In this section we should again mention the names ofMark Antun Dominis andRugjer Boskovic (1711-1787), whose work was veritably encyclopaedistic.

The first known manual about book-keeping was "Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto," written by Benko Kotruljic (born inDubrovnik, 15th century). Its French translation appeared under the title "Parfait nĂŠgociant" in Lyon in 1613.

On the islet of Kosljun near largest Croatian island of Krk there is a beautiful Franciscan monastery, which had one of the oldest "banks" in Europe. It was operational from the 17th to 19th century, providing loans for the poor at low interest rates, to protect them from exploiters. See "What's on Kvarner," p. 81, available at Appleby.

Frederik Grisogono (born inZadar, 1472-1538), a mathematician, physicist, astronomer and physician, was educated in Padova, where later he became a university professor. His commentaries on Euclid's `Elements' were published in his book Speculum astronomicum terminans intellectum humanum in omni scientia, Venice in 1507. His most important contribution was the theory of tides, based on the attraction of the Moon, which influenced Mark Antun Dominis. He discovered the antipodal tidal wave. His theory of tides is described in De modo collegiandi, pronosticandi et curandi febres, nec non de humana felicitate ac denique de fluxu et refluxu maris, Venice 1528.

Juraj Dragisic (Georgius Benignus), Franciscan born in the famousBosnian town Srebrenica, suggested a reform of the Julian calendar to Pope Leon X in 1514 in his study Correctio erroris, which was accepted by the Pope Gregory XIII. The new, Gregorian calender is in use since 1582.

Vinko Paletin (1508-1575), born in the noble family on the island of Korcula, arrived to Mexico as a young missionary. Later, after his studies in Italy, he became professor of mathematics in Vicenza. For several years Paletin was employed on diplomatic missions for the Spanish King Philip II.He translated from Spanish into Italian the work about navigation written by the Spanish cosmograph Pedro Medina (L'arte del naviger, Venice, 1554). Paletin's most important work is De jura et justitia belli contra Indias, preserved as manuscript in Latin, and a more extensive version in Spanish (Croatian translations exist since 1978 and 1979). He mentioned that builders of Maya pyramids in Chichen-Itza, Mayapan and Uxumal, as well as builders of huge basalt heads, were in fact old Cartagians which according to antic authors sailed off long ago across Gibraltar, and discovered the New World (Hesperids). Maya Indians recounted to Paletin an old legend about "the arrival of bearded people from far away". For more details see [Zoric].

The first technical discoveries are related to the name ofFaust Vrancic (lat. Faustus Verantius, italianized name Fausto Veranzio, hungarized nameFaustus Verancsics, 1551-1617). It is known that he collaborated with Tycho Brache and Johannes Keppler. Vrancic was fluent in at least seven languages. At the court of King Rudolph II in Hradcani in Prague (Rudloph II was Roman-German Emperor and Croatian-Hungarian King) he worked as his secretary, and in that period completed his importantdictionary of five most noble European languages (Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europeae linguarum: Latinae, Italicae, Germanicae, Dalmaticae et Hungaricae) and published in Venice in 1595. He is best known for his book of inventions inMachinae Novae, published also in Venice in 1595. The book was finantially supported by the French King Louis XIII, and the Toscan Duke Cosimo II de Medici. Among his numerous inventions the most famous is the parachute, which he tested in Venice. It is true that Leonardo da Vinci had a similar idea earlier, but he made only a rough sketch of it, of pyramidal shape, while Vranic's parachute had rectangular shape, as today.

http://www.hr/darko/etf/et22.html - the whole story

Bosnian refugee wins $1million
Lottery numbers came off bottle
By Sheldon S. Shafer
sshafer@courier-journal.com 
The Courier-Journal
By Pam Spaulding, The C-J

Sanel Barakovic held the vitamin bottle that provided the numbers that his father, Kemal Barakovic, right, selected for his five Cash Ball tickets. He claimed his winnings yesterday.

A Bosnian refugee who used bar-code numbers from the bottom of a vitamin bottle to choose his Kentucky Lottery Cash Ball numbers ended up with five winning tickets. Yesterday he claimed $1million in prizes.

Kemal Barakovic, who settled in Louisville after leaving a refugee camp in Croatia 10 years ago, has always dreamed of having "his own home in America, and now that dream can become a reality," said his son, Sanel Barakovic.

Kemal Barakovic speaks little English; Sanel and his brother, Amir, spoke for their father yesterday at Kentucky Lottery headquarters in Louisville.

The elder Barakovic bought five $1 Cash Ball tickets Monday at the Thorntons at 5318 Preston Highway and played the same five numbers on each ticket — 11, 14, 21, 24 and the Cash Ball, 22. Each winning ticket paid $200,000. The odds of matching all five numbers are one in 1,268,520.

Lottery officials said it's the first time a player has had multiple winning tickets in a drawing for Cash Ball, a game that started in March 2001 and has six drawings a week.

Kemal Barakovic, 61, who makes air filters at Airguard in Louisville, spends about $20 a week on lottery tickets and has a habit of picking numbers off items he finds around his apartment in Buechel, Sanel Barakovic said.

Sanel Barakovic works as a clerk at the Thorntons and frequently sells his father tickets. He said his father came in Monday evening with the numbers off the bottle, saying he wanted to play the same numbers on all five tickets.

Sanel Barakovic said he tried to persuade his father to pick different numbers on each play, but "Dad always said, `Why go for $200,000 when you can shoot for a million?'"

Lottery president Arch Gleason said there is no prohibition on clerks selling tickets to family members. He said there is no way they can know in advance the numbers that will be drawn.

Still, Gleason and lottery spokesman Chip Polston said the lottery security staff went to great lengths to validate the five winning tickets, including checking the videotape of the Monday-night drawing and screening the store's security-camera tape of the transaction. They found everything "was on the up and up," Gleason said.

Sanel Barakovic said his father intends to share the money with him and his brother, a truck driver who lives in Iowa but came to Louisville yesterday for the festivities.

Amir Barakovic said his mother, Habiba, stayed home yesterday because "she couldn't handle this."

With the winnings, minus 31 percent automatically withheld for federal and state taxes, the family plans to visit relatives in Bosnia, and his father plans to buy a house and pay off some debts, Sanel Barakovic said.

The father probably will take a break from playing the lottery for a while and intends to keep his job, Sanel Barakovic said.

http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2004/12/31ky/B1-lottery1231-5057.html

Book review "NEITHER RED NOR DEAD" STEVO JULIUS

Reviewed by Katarina Tepesh

A new book is creating more buzz among Croatians than any other recently. "NEITHER RED NOR DEAD - Coming of Age in Former Yugoslavia During and After World War II," written by Stevo Julius.

Stunningly powerful, this tragedy and triumph of a non-practicing Jewish family portrays a happy and privileged family life dedicated to medicine and intellectual pursuits. All that changed in late May of 1941, when first German motorcycle with machine guns arrived practically in front of their home. Forced to run and hide, first from Germans and soon from Ustashe, Julius family with two sons barely survives attacks and joins resistance.

The parents, father a doctor and mother a nurse, worked day and night to save wounded communist partisans. Their youngest son Stevo, the author, at age 14 is appointed a military courier, given an outdated Italian gun, and sent to roam alone through mountains, forests, and small rural villages of Croatia. Their older son, 18-year-old bravely defends the territory of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Severely wounded, caught by Germans, he talks his way out with fluent German.

"Neither Red Nor Dead" is an inside story, full of details and naming names among 481 pages, explaining why communism failed in Croatia and f-Y.

After the WWII, in 1953, the Julius family suffers a fatal blow, when dirty communist politics in Zagreb pins the father, a hard working and totally dedicated head of a hospital, against the wall with false accusations. Meddling into hospital administration in a typical communist style, Dr. Julius sees no way out and commits suicide.

The elder son dedicates his life to the communist ideals, but when he criticizes Milosevic, he is considered a persona non grata in the country he loved so much. He dies from cancer.

The author, Stevo Julius, born in 1929 received M.D. in 1953 and Sc.D. in 1964 from the University of Zagreb. Since 1964, the author has resided in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he is Professor of Medicine, Physiology, and Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of Hypertension at the University of Michigan. He is internationally recognized as one of the leading scientists in the field of hypertension.

In Croatia, "Neither Red Nor Dead" will be translated and published by Durieux.

"Neither Red Nor Dead" is published by Medvista. To purchase the book, see www.amazon.com $10.59 or www.barnesandnoble.com .

****

Weapons of Mass Deception Opens in St. Louis tonight in Tivoli Theater

WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception
By Joe Williams
Of the Post-Dispatch
12/17/2004

Do you remember, lo those many weeks ago, when it was still permissible to ask why our soldiers were dying in Iraq, and to count the civilian casualties, and to follow the money trail? No? If the mainstream press continues down the path that's charted in this late-arriving documentary, the debate that recently galvanized the electorate will become as hard to remember as the tradition of investigative journalism.

Danny Schechter is a former ABC news producer who knows, literally and figuratively, where the bodies are buried. Now working as a "self-embedded" media critic, Schechter turns his lens on the industry itself, specifically how it covered the invasion of Iraq. Although much of his presentation is old news to Internet denizens and emulates the outraged-schlub theatrics of Michael Moore, it's still vitally important.

Schechter and his sheepish peers contend that two wars were being fought simultaneously. One was the "shock and awe" campaign being fought on the ground; the other was the battle for hearts and minds being fought on the airwaves. Key to winning that war was the tacit cooperation between the U.S. government and the press. To that end, according to Schechter, American TV networks that were headquartered in post-9/11 New York were loathe to examine the "why" of the war, including the U.S. role in first supporting Saddam and then goading him with sanctions and shoot-downs.

Schechter is particularly critical of the process of "embedding" reporters with military units and thus either coercing or forcing favorable coverage. Reporters were encouraged to use shaky cameras, and producers added stirring music and graphics to make the footage more exciting. When firsthand footage wasn't available, the government would provide it from the comforts of its media center in Qatar.

Schechter traces the problem to the network executives, who took their cues from ratings-ascendant Fox News and hoped to curry favor with the FCC for the next round of deregulation.

We've heard most of these things before, in films like "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "The Control Room," but except for the usual failure to interview Iraqis, it's harder than ever to find fault with Schechter's argument.


WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception,
*** (NR; 1:38)

Music by Nenad Bach

www.NenadBach.com

Danny Schechter, News Dissector
Editor, Mediachannel.org
GLOBALVISION
575 8th Avenue
New York, New York l0018
212 246-0202x3006

FOR WMD INFO, see
http://www.wmdthefilm.com

VISIT "DISSECTORVILLE"
Danny Schechter's work and times
http://www.newsdissector.org/dissectorville

Croatian Glagolitic Script

http://www.hr/darko/etf/et03.html  - the whole story

Š by Darko Zubrinic, Zagreb (1995)

In the history of Croatian people three scripts were in use:

1. Croatian Glagolitic Script,
2. Croatian Cyrillic Script (bosancica),
3. Latin Script.

Today the Croats are using exclusively the Latin Script.

The Arabica was also in use among the Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was in fact the Arabic script used for the Croatian language and it constitutes the so-called Adjami or Aljamiado literature, similarly as in Spain. Its first sources in Croatia go back to the 15th century. One of the oldest texts is a love song calledChirvat-tĂźrkisi (Croatian song) from 1588, written by a certain Mehmed. This manuscript is held in the National Library in Vienna. Except for literature Arabica was also used in religious schools and administration. Of course, it was in much lesser use than other scripts. The last book in Arabica was printed in 1941.

It is important to emphasise that the earliest known texts of Croatian literature written in the Latin script (14th century) have traces of Church-slavonic influences. Hence, Croatian glagolitic, Cyrillic and Latin traditions cannot be viewed as separated entities. We know that Middle Age Croatian scriptoriums were polygraphic (for example in Zadar and Krk), see [Malic, Na izvorima..., pp 35-56].
 

My dream came true In the heart of a Astoria

In the heart of a Astoria, New York, lies a vibrant
and strong Croatian Community. The Croatian Apostolate
is lead by their coordinator, Fr. Robert Zubovic in
the parish of Most Precious Blood. Various activities
and events take place throughout the whole year to
bring people together to celebrate their culture and
heritage. On Sunday December 19, 2004, the stars of
our annual Croatian Children's and Youth Festival came
together to do a Christmas Concert. The church was
filled with people eager to here the wonderful and
much loved Christmas songs of their childhood. Over 40
children and teenagers gathered around the altar and
sang 12 beautiful Christmas songs in Croatian and in
English. They were led by Andrej Basa and Viviana
Knapic. The program was divided between the children
and the exceptional choir or Klapa in which songs are
sang "a cappella". Klapa "Astoria" was led by
maestro Srdan Berdovic.
The concert lasted over an hour hosted by one of the
students of Croatian School, Loredana Crncic, and
guest speakers who greeted the public. Including the
pastor of the parish, Msgr. Raymond Stafford, the
consulate general Petar Ljubic and Fr. Robert
Zubovic. "My dream came true" were the first words
that Fr. Zubovic proudly and happily stated to the
audience and choirs. For many years he had hoped and
wished for these talented children to record and
perform Christmas songs. He was very proud of the
successful concert and thanked all those who worked so
hard to making his dream come true.
 

www.PhoneCroatia.com

Pre-paid phone service. 5.7 cents a minute to call Croatia. All calls from USA.