GENERALNI KONZULAT REPUBLIKE HRVATSKE U NEW YORKU

I
HRVATSKA KATOLIČKA ŽUPA SV. ĆIRILA I METODA I SV. RAFAELA POZIVAJU VAS NA KONCERT I SVEČANI BANKET

Postovani g. Bach!
Saljem Vam najavu koncerta koji organiziramo u suradnji s zupom Sv. Cirila i Metoda.
Svako dobro,

Zdenka Kardum
 

FOLKLORNOG ANSAMBLA “FILIP DEVIƔ IZ SPLITA

7. STUDENOGA 2004. U 1 PM

U HRVATSKOM CENTRU NA MANHATTANU.
NA PROGRAMU SU HRVATSKE NARODNE PJESME I PLESOVI.
ULAZNICE MOŽETE KUPITI U CRKVI SVETOG ĆIRILA I METODA.
 

"Sopranos" Star Produces Off-Broadway Show with Croatian

By Robert Simonson
The following description from Playbill concerns a play called Ponies by Mike Batistick. One of the main characters plays a Croatian living in New York. To what extent Batistick (Batistich?) has Croatian roots, I don't know. John Peter Kraljic, Esq.

October 7, 2004

Michael Imperioli, who recently won an Emmy Award for his work on television's "Sopranos, and his wife Victoria, will step into the role of producers with Ponies, a new play by Mike Batistick set to run Oct. 12-Nov. 6 at Studio Dante at 257 West 29th Street.The
60-seat Studio Dante was created by the Imperiolis to develop new theatre work. Though best known for "The Sopranos," Imperioli has worked on such New York stage productions as Aven'u Boys, Displaced Persons, Half Deserted Street, The Writing on the Wall and Little Blood Brother. Victoria, meanwhile, has worked in the areas of architecture and design, having studied those disciplines at The School of Visual Arts

Imperioli gets a little help from a television colleague for this inaugural production. John Ventimiglia, who played Artie Bucco on "The Sopranos," is in the cast, as are Babs Olusanmokun, Tonye Patano and Otto Sanchez. Nick Sandow directs.

Ponies, developed by the LAByrinth Theatre Company, was first seen by New Yorkers at the 2003 New York International Fringe Festival, where is was produced by Rising Phoenix Rep. It opened in London in August 2004, courtesy of The New Company. The plot concerns two denizens of the Lower East Side-Drazen, a Croatia native who spends his days playing the ponies at an OTB, and Ken, a Nigerian banished from his own country who is trying to make payments on his new livery cab.

Tickets (at $35) are available at Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or by visiting www.ticketcentral.com.
 

Texture of my life changed permanently... Angela Brkic

Courtney Angela Brkic

By THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: October 10, 2004)

"The Stone Fields: An Epitaph for the Living," by Courtney Angela Brkic (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24)
What compelled you, at the age of 24, to spend months excavating corpses of executed civilians from mass graves in Bosnia? Not exactly a common post-college choice.
Why I went is a very complicated question and one that I'm still answering, in a way. The largest reason is that I believed, down to the bottom of my soul, in the right of those individuals (who had been murdered and left without their names and histories in that grave) to be identified and receive proper treatment in death. Together with that, I believed in the right of their families to know what had happened to them. For me, the worst is the idea of simply not knowing, of living through days, months and years, and never knowing for sure.
But it's more complicated than that, as well. I was very young. Though it sounds like I am now the worst cynic, I believed then that the world was a better place than it actually was, and that, somehow, there would be justice in the end. I haven't lost that feeling entirely, but I know one thing now: There is no war crimes tribunal in the world, no reparations, and certainly no book, which can bring the dead back.
How did the fact that this is where your family was from — that this was a place you'd spent childhood vacations — affect your decision to go, and your reaction to what you saw?
It had a huge effect — I had a history there. Part of my childhood had been spent there, in the form of childhood summers, and we still had family living in Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, though not in eastern Bosnia, where I ended up working. Although my family lived in America, we remained very attached to "back there." During the war, we were worried about our family, and the war was a personal thing.
Also, when you know a place before a war, you always have an image of that place before war. It's very different for people who come in to report or work or lend aid because of that war — they don't understand what it was. The world's impression of Bosnia, for example, is the war. This is, obviously, understandable. At the same time, it's a terrible shame. Very few people realize that the same Sarajevo that's become synonymous with Sniper Alley and the Marketplace Massacre was also a beautiful city, that it actually had electrical streetcars before Vienna.
You write about your colleagues sometimes chastising you for being "too close" to the work, for not being able to put it aside after hours when everyone else seemed to just want a break from it.
In some ways, I was a lousy candidate for forensic archeology in this part of the world. One, I have a link to that geography. Two, things hit me hard. Both factors meant that I internalized what I saw to a very large extent. A certain "removal" from that work is, I believe, necessary to surviving it, and I managed it only in the beginning.
Before working for (Physicians for Human Rights), I had spent a year interviewing many women with missing husbands and/or sons. Members of my own family had been in harm's way during the war, and I was bitter about that fact. And then there was the matter of history — members of my extended family who had disappeared/been killed during the Second World War, something which had happened years before I was born but which affected me greatly. In a way, the dead were not faceless for me, and this is a drawback in that line of work. The team with which I worked (though not the leadership) was, at every turn, supportive. The situation became problematic, I think, because my lack of removal began to get to the people with whom I was working.
But there is a flip side to this. A friend of mine in Zagreb, a university professor named Ljubica Butula, lost her son in the war in Croatia. They had been living in America, but when the war started they went back. He joined the army and was killed behind Zadar. For years, she did not know what had happened to him. She searched, she marched, she wrote letters, she became an activist. Finally, she learned that he had been executed and buried haphazardly. He was exhumed, and she was able to give him a proper burial. When I came back from Bosnia, I remember feeling ashamed when I saw her. I told her, "I couldn't do it. I was too emotional. I didn't see bodies of men; I saw men." She patted my hand and told me that was not a negative thing.
So, as you can see, there is a lot of gray to the issue of being "too close."
How do you ever return to "regular" life after an experience like yours?
In a way, I think I never did return to regular life. After Bosnia, the texture of my life changed permanently, but that's not necessarily a negative thing. I have a much clearer sense of what is important to me — my family, above everything — and what isn't. It was difficult when I came back to the States in 1998, particularly in terms of relating to people, particularly to people my age. But I've carved out a life for myself, and it's on my own terms. And Bosnia is present in a lot of what I do and a lot of what I am.
I've actually found a good outlet in teaching literature and creative writing. I'm lucky to have students who are concerned about the world in which they live, who care about making it a better place, about justice. It gives me hope.

http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/101004/e0310brkic.html
 

Tree planting in Vela Luka a highlight of sister city trip

From the October 20, 2004 Anacortes American of Anacortes in Washington State. John Peter Kraljic, Esq.

Tree planting in Vela Luka a highlight of sister city trip

Anacortes Mayor Dean Maxwell prepares to play the tourist on a rented scooter during an Anacortes Sister Cities Association visit to Vela Luka, Croatia. About 30 Anacortes residents participated in the trip to their new sister city.
About 30 residents of Anacortes celebrated the first anniversary of the sister city relationship between Anacortes and Vela Luka, Croatia, by traveling to the beautiful city at the western end of the island of Korcula on the Adriatic Sea.

During the Anacortes Sister Cities Association trip in September, the visitors toured a local olive oil plant called Manjavinka, a fish cannery, Vela Spilja caves, museums, churches and surrounding towns such as Blato and Korcula. Some enjoyed trips to Dubrovnik, Split and Trogir.

Mayor Tonko Gugic and city council President Ivan Marinovic invited the group to City Hall, where Anacortes Mayor Dean Maxwell and Anacortes Sister Cities President Duane Clark spoke and exchanged gifts with Vela Luka's officials.

Nikki Lovric, one of the travelers, said that a tree planting on Sept. 25 was a particularly emotional moment.

"A moving ceremony took place as both mayors planted an olive tree symbolizing the desire of both cities to continue to work together for cultural exchange and better international understanding," she said.

Other visitors included Don Wick, director of the Economic Development Association of Skagit County; Nick Petrish, Anacortes City Council member; and Nick Mavar, representative and first president of the American Croatian Club of Anacortes.

Before they became sister cities, Vela Luka and Anacortes shared several decades of history. About 300 Croatians, many from Vela Luka, live in Anacortes. Both cities are on islands that are part of beautiful archipelagos - there are 1,200 islands along the Croatian Coast. Both cities have many years of fishing history and now enjoy a robust tourist trade.

For more information about the sister cities relationship with Vela Luka, call Lovric at 293-8530 or visit www.anacortessistercities.com.

The group meets at 7 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month at the Anacortes Public Library and all are welcome.

 

A Search For Roots - Stivan, Cres, Croatia

First printed in the Zajednicar Fraternalist
Croatian Fraternal Union of America
PUBLISHED on 31 August, 1988; Vol.#83/No.33; Page 6
Written by Constant (Connor) Vlakancic

A Search For Roots - Stivan, Cres, Croatia

Sunnyvale, CA -- This is a true story. For the last two years, my life is this story. It is also a story of the end of life, Not my life, I hope, for I have only just discovered but perhaps yours, as you have known it, as I hope you have known it.

-- I am a grown man with a well developed and materially successful life. There is always more to have but as in all life, a price is extracted when we indulge in our wants. As such and in the best of health, and raising my son, a son I am genuinely proud of, what more does the soul of man hunger for?

-- That which I have never known or known about. That which my grandfather left behind on the island of Cres in 1918. He bravely left on the greatest adventure of his young life. With a single mindedness, he looked forward, never went back that I know of and he built a life with the timber of the new world but on the foundation of his heritage that he knew so well but took for granted. For reasons that were his, he took this foundation to the grave with him.

-- My grandfather died when I was but a young teen. Yet I do have memories of him. A machinist at Barber-Green in Aurora, Illinois, respected and responsible, he had built his life to his measure. I did not know him real well as we (my father "his son", my mother, my sister and myself) did not live nearby. But this I know without hesitation, I never heard any words from him but articulate English. From my own father who had known him for all his life, I never heard any words except English. Whatever he knew, he also took to his grave many years ago.

Now moving forward to but two years ago, I accidentally learn (an amazing story in itself) that I am Croatian. A word, a nation, a culture that I had never known of or even heard of. A heritage to feed the hunger in my guts, in my heart. In two years, I have learned of things that I could not even have dreamed of. But this has not been learning to satisfy the hunger, this has only been learning that the food exists.

I sit writing this in a jet plane returning to the United States from three weeks in Croatia. I have lived the monumental frustration of my hunger that I do not know if I will ever surmount. I cannot communicate in my grandfather’s native tongue. Oh father of my father, why must I suffer this so. I am a bird with spirit in my heart, with wings to fly, to soar in this beckoning sky. Trapped in the small cage of my few words laboriously learned, I am deaf and dumb and nearly blind.

Through my own efforts, I have forged myself into a strong man, stronger than many. I demand of myself the courage to speak the unpopular thought, to perform the unpopular deed when in my heart I believe in the integrity of my convictions. And I will be patient as the oyster growing a pearl when actions are for naught. But I would say to you grandfather I am not certain that I can now still learn this language. Why did I not grow with it as a child?

I believe and live this; “To know and yet not to do, is not yet to know.â€? I have done! I have traveled to the soil you washed from your hands and walked the paths of the village that bears your footprints. But will the research that I have started ever yield to me a life I have only just discovered? This is a story of the end of life. Not my life, for I will share with my son whatever soil is on my hands. I will show him the paths with my footprints. I will show him the food that he may hunger for.

But what of your life? You, the sons and daughters born on the soil you explored with your father but now emigrated to another land, have you washed your hands? Do you share your foundation with your children? Or teach them your language? Will you take to the grave your life as you have known it?

If you do not return, with your children, then others most certainly will and your life, as you have known it, will be as dead as an old cold candle that nobody knows what it burned brightly for - or - may - never - care - again. • Constant Vlakancic/Lodge 1983

Connor Vlakancic, CEO
5 STAR Group International, Inc.
5 STAR ÉSpirit LLC
55 N Third St., #202, Campbell, CA 95008
P:831-295-7827(5-STAR) F:408/364-9108
www.5stargroupintl.com

Obveze

ÂŤHrvati bi morali nadići svoj anakroni nacionalizamÂť kazao je ministar talijanske vlade Giovanardi. Ta konstatacija i ne bi bila toliko čudna da je upućena nekim drugim povodom. Ali njome Giovanardi tako brani izvjesnog Finija koji je izjavio da su Istra i Dalmacija talijanske zemlje. Oni to pravo temelje na činjenici kako su tamo Ĺživjeli (i sada Ĺžive) Talijani.
Slovenija računa na dio hrvatskog teritorijalnog mora a kao adut za ostvarenje tog ÂŤpravaÂť drĹži svoju vojsku u Hrvatskoj - na Svetoj Geri. Valjda kako bi u danom trenutku trgovala: vama vaĹĄe a nama (opet) vaĹĄe.
Milorad Pupavac misli da su Hrvati iz BiH u Hrvatskoj povlaĹĄtena klasa. Govori o prognanicima koji su već godinama nastanjeni u Hrvatskoj, a sada ih hrvatska vlada pokuĹĄava trajno zbrinuti. Ovi ljudi su prethodno prognani sa svojih ognjiĹĄta pa joĹĄ jednom - temeljem prava drugih na svoju imovinu iz privremeno zaposjednutog smjeĹĄtaja, i na koncu treće sreće – Hrvatske, ni tamo nemaju mira.

Hrvatska je prihvatila obveze prema međunarodnim institucijama, prema susjedima, prema Srbima povratnicima itd. Nabrojane obveze su odraz političke volje i koliko god bile dodatno opterećenje za proračun provode se. Istovremeno, nekima su Hrvati iz BiH obveza (i viĹĄak) koja im prelijeva čaĹĄu strpljenja.

Međunarodna zajednica čini sve kako bi Hrvatskoj pomogla ostvariti pristup Europskoj Uniji. To je proĹĄlog utorka u Saboru jasno kazao Povjerenik za proĹĄirenje Unije gospodin Gunter Verheugen. Na mene je ostavio dojam vrlo iskrenog čovjeka. Čovjeka koji hoće pomoći i čovjeka koji je svjestan da je Hrvatska (kao i BiH) oduvijek pripadala zapadnom svijetu. Međutim, to ne ide lako. Carla Del Ponte kaĹže da je Ante Gotovina viđen u Brelima. Istina, i ja sam vidio Gotovinu. Međutim, davno za vrijeme rata u kome su Srbi pokuĹĄali doći ne samo u Brela nego sve do Karlobaga. Hoće ljudi na more - ali na svoj način.
U međuvremenu (ili za svaki slučaj), odnekud se pojavio joĹĄ jedan transkript s kojim Tuđman Ĺžestoko prijeti. Pročitao sam da je i ovaj iz Predsjednikova arhiva. Izgleda da su se neki ljudi osposobili za dodatne poslove i to za vrijeme obnaĹĄanja osnovne duĹžnosti.
Budući će uskoro predsjednički izbori, bilo bi dobro da im narod omogući baviti se onim za ĹĄto su pokazali najveću sklonost. Recimo, povijesnom građom i arhivom.

Dr Ivan Bagarić
 

Croatia joins PETTEP Project

October 13, 2004 - Croatia joins PETTEP Project
|News|Hina|
ZAGREB, Oct 13 (Hina) - The State Secretary at the Office for e - Croatia, Miroslav Kovacic, on Wednesday reported that Croatia had joined a project called PETTEP (Privacy Enhancing Technology Testing and Evaluation Project). The project is being conducted by a world leading expert in data protection, Ann Cavoukian, who is the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, as well as by other experts from Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Italy.
Croatia joined the project thanks to efforts of the central state office for e-Croatia and its cooperation with the Economy and Labour Ministry as well as with the Finance Agency
called FINA, Kovacic said.

branko.sarcanin@cyberun.com 
 

The tuna man & the sea

This article comes from The Sun Newspaper of Bremerton, Washington. John Peter Kraljic, Esq.

The tuna man & the sea
By Sue Edwards, For The Sun
October 17, 2004

It's the last weekend of September when Paul Svornich docks his tuna boat, the F/V Ocean, in Port Orchard with his final catch of the season. A Bainbridge Island resident when he's not on the open seas, Svornich comes from a long line of Croatian fishermen and operates the smallest boat in the commercial Pacific Ocean albacore fleet.

Many of his customers received postcards in advance of his arrival. They swarm the dock, eager to buy his catch. As the crowd gathers, Svornich's daughter, Kashmira, and her friends weigh the frozen rolls of loin fillet and whole fish. Nearby there are tins of Svornich's premium canned, smoked albacore, sold under his own label. Some folks, like Kit Burch of Everett, make an annual trek to Port Orchard to buy his sushi-quality fish.

"Paul has the best fish," Burch says. "This is my third year to come down here to buy it."

Jeremy Bethel of Port Orchard buys a whole fish, although he admits he's not sure how he's going to cook it. But Kashmira comes to his rescue, giving him a sheet she's put together that tells how to prepare the fish.

"First I'm going to go over there where they're coming in from salmon fishing and tell them I caught this in the bay," Bethel says with a chuckle.

Svornich's tan, weatherworn face creases into a smile at the joke.

Commercial fishing is in Svornich's blood. Both his grandfathers arrived in Puget Sound from Croatia sometime between 1907 and 1910 to do salmon seining here and in Alaska.

Svornich's father also was a salmon seiner, but Svornich says he is the only one of four kids who really loved fishing and stuck with it. He's been aboard ships since early childhood and worked his first full summer as a deckhand when he was 13.

"I loved fishing from the start, and those hard-working men of integrity I fished with provided wonderful role models," says Svornich.

He usually fishes by himself or with one carefully selected deck hand. His daughter, Kashmira Svornich, made the most recent trip with him.

"She goes every couple of years or until she forgets what hard work it is," he says as father and daughter exchange grins.

Svornich's fishing season runs from the start of July through the end of September. He fishes for tuna off the Washington, Oregon and Northern California coastline at the edge of the continental shelf where tuna feed on swarms of bait fish.

His small sailboat is powered by a one-cylinder engine fueled with "bio-diesel," made from soy bean oil, and a pair of gaff-rigged sails. The 38-foot wooden ship was designed and built by Svornich in a little over three years. It was launched in 1987 and has been running ever since. The vessel is patterned after a traditional Croatian sailboat-fishing vessel, with one exception.

"Most tuna vessels carry an average of about 15 tons of fish," says Svornich. "Mine only carries three tons."

Svornich uses the more labor-intensive sails by choice.

"I grew up in generations of using power boats," he said. "I found fishing with a sailboat is a lot more challenging and interesting. It forces you to work with the ocean as opposed to just barrelling through it with lots of horsepower."

Svornich looks every inch the fisherman, clad in old sweats and tall rubber boots, with his long, shiny brown hair pulled back in a ponytail.

As customers mill about the ship, Svornich answers questions while he pulls fish from the hold.

He hand catches every fish using six lines with only one hook per line. The small engine also powers the compressor to flash freeze his fish in a single hold at minus 40 degrees Farenheit. The fish are bled, processed and packaged by hand, then placed on the freezer plates - all within two hours of being caught. They're stored at minus 30 degrees Farenheit.

He fishes three trips a year, about 22 days at a time, and sells to local restaurants, friends, customers and passersby on the dock in Port Orchard.

He chats with his customers about other types of fishing he's done. He says he was inspired by sailing a similar boat from Belize through the Panama Canal and around to Port Townsend during a 106-day voyage in 1980.

Svornich lived aboard his boat for many years in Eagle Harbor, but now lives at home with his wife, Lorraine, on Bainbridge Island. When he isn't fishing, he serves as an Eagle Harbor port commissioner, does routine maintenance on the F/V Ocean and works at marketing his business.

"I love the deep ocean," he says, his expressive brown eyes lighting up.

"Once you get 50 or 60 miles out, it turns from green to a deep blue and the water temperature is about 10 degrees warmer," he says. "There's absolutely nothing like it."

To reach Paul Svornich about albacore tuna from the F/V Ocean, call (206) 842-6036.

Sue Edwards is a contributing writer for The Sun. Reach editor JoAnne Marez at (360) 792-9208 or jamarez@kitsapsun.com  Copyright 2004, kitsapsun.com. All Rights Reserved.

Ann Komadina lived to teach

From the October 16, 2004 issue of the Abluquerque Tribune. John Peter Kraljic, Esq.

Ann Komadina lived to teach

By Jeff Commings
Tribune Reporter

Teaching was such a natural way of life for Ann Komadina that when she retired from Albuquerque Public Schools in 1977, she never thought it meant her mentoring days were over.

"She was a marvelous Spanish teacher for me," said her niece, Julie Weaks Gutierrez. "Whenever I had a difficult time, she would sit down and be my tutor."

Komadina's brother and former student, Al Grubesic, said her desire to learn and pass on that knowledge to everyone made her a role model in the family.

"She was a very vibrant person," he said. "It was hard to keep up with her."

Komadina, who died Sept. 23 at an undisclosed age, was born in Dawson, N.M., of Croatian parents.

She majored in English and Spanish at the University of New Mexico. Though many would agree that the graduate degree in Spanish she earned at UNM would qualify her as a master of the language, Komadina still wanted to learn more. She continued her Spanish studies in Mexico, living with families there to better understand the cultures and language.

She returned to New Mexico to teach English and Spanish at Albuquerque High School. She also directed plays for the junior and senior classes there for many years. One of her students was the late Kim Stanley, who became a star on Broadway and in movies.

"Every year at Albuquerque High, they would put on a Christmas cantata," said Weaks Gutierrez. "We waited anxiously for that show every year, and it was amazing that, given all the things she was already doing, that she pulled it off."

Just when everyone thought her plate was full to overflowing, Komadina added Russian expertise to her rÇsumÇ, earning a master's degree in Russian from Indiana University at 45.

"She decided she just wanted another challenge," Grubesic said. "Even though Russia was at the time our enemy, she couldn't think of a better way to learn about the enemy than study their customs."

She became the first Russian teacher in APS, teaching the language to students at Sandia, Valley, Highland and Albuquerque high schools. She continued to work in foreign languages as an administrator at APS until her retirement.

After that, her family became her students.

"Teaching was her great love in life," Weaks Gutierrez said. "She was always trying out some new technique . . . on those of us who were the kids in the family."

"One of the great things I remember most about my sister was she took two of my kids to Europe," Grubesic said. "That had a great effect on them because they came back with a great appreciation for the United States."

Even in the time shortly before her death, Grubesic said his sister was eager to teach.

"We were in the car and she was telling (the kids), 'All right, I need to teach you how to say hello in four languages.' She was always in that mindset of wanting people to learn."