Encounters

The Jews of Kolomea (Galicia) welcome Charles, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary visiting the Eastern Front on 4 August 1917

More than a year ago Andrea Deák asked us to help to interpret a postcard from a Hungarian collector of WWI Jewish relics, Gábor Izsák, on which Galician Jews greet with their Torah scroll the commander in chief of the Austro-Hungarian army. The date – 9 November 1915 – was found out by Deák Tamás on the basis of contemporary press; the historical background was provided in part by the KehilaLinks, who then also quoted us back; and the Hebraist Két Sheng, an expert of the role played by the Jews in WWI, sent us some similar photos from Erwin A. Schmiedl’s Juden in der K. (u.) K. Armee, 1788-1918 (Eisenstadt: Österreisches Jüdisches Museum, 1989). And today Kálmán Dániel drew our attention to the above photo published by Yvette Métral – another of our long-time readers – on the Yiddish Florilège, one more, hitherto unknown Galician example of the welcoming of a commander in chief with a Torah scroll. Just on this day, when – on the request of Héjoká – we have written about Kolomea concerning a very different matter. We also commented on the Florilège, which was then looked at by many of our readers. Then we asked Deák Tamás, who within a few minutes, figured out that the festive event took place on 4 August 1917. Well, río Wang is fed by such sources. Thank you all.

Update: Paweł, as if he just wanted to illustrate our closing sentence, has sent an extremely interesting addition to this photo: “I have found on the web the memoirs of some Polish families from the Kresy, among others that of the Chanias from Kolomea. Pages 23-24 have the following passage:

“In the summer of 1917 the Russian front collapsed again, and the Austrians returned to Kolomea. Before the war, in 1911-1912 Archduke Charles of Austria lived with his wife in Kolomea, serving there in the same regiment of dragoons as dr. Chania, he as a lieutenant, and Dr. Chania as a lieutenant-doctor. The two lieutenants were friends. With the return of the Austrians, Charles also came to Kolomea, this time already as an emperor. In the summer of 1917, Emperor Charles on entering Kolomea was welcomed by a delegation of the inhabitants in front of the town hall. When Krysia Chania [a daughter of the mentioned dr. Józef Chania; my comment] greeted the emperor in beautiful German, handing him over a bouquet of roses, the emperor kept this bouquet, while he put the other bouquets aside. He thanked her, and endowed her with the imperial brooch with the letter “K”. Dr. Józef gave Charles welcome in his home. The emperor spent there the evening and one night”.

Illustration of the Polish memoir: Archduke Charles as a captain of dragoons in front of his house in Kolomea, 1911-1912.

Viewer

As people dealing with images, we have always wanted to illustrate the posts of río Wang with plenty of images. However, it was not easy to figure out how we could do this the best. Our old readers may recall how the initial modest number of two or three illustrations slowly increased into galleries of forty or fifty pictures. These, however, slowed down the display and made difficult the overview of the post.

We have gradually developed that characteristic solution of río Wang, where dozens of images were composed into one mosaic, and the pictures appeared in pop-up windows when moving the mouse over the mosaic tiles. There are many reasons why we have loved this solution. We could illustrate the post with a large number of pictures – the record holder, I think, was the Jewish cemetery of Lesko with its nearly three hundred photos – without significantly slowing the download. The images held together in one mosaic did not push apart the paragraphs to a great extent, making it more pleasant to follow along. You could browse at your discretion among the images, and discover the connections. But we loved it most because in the mosaic tiles we could emphasize such meaningful details, which were often overshadowed in the original images. Thus we could create interesting connections between the expectations formed on the basis of the details and the full image displayed in the pop-up window, which have also affected the interpretation of the images. And last but not least, the richness and context of the mosaic composition often made excusable even the weaker images.

It was due to the technical problems of the pop-up windows – occasional flickering, poor positioning – and to the requests of our readers that we began to experiment with new solutions. This was doubly the merit of Lloyd who, first as a linguist reads also the commentaries of the Hungarian version of the blog, and thus found Gábor’s request to convert the mosaic into a scrollable gallery, and second as an informatician undertook to realize it. And also the merit of our readers, who with their commentaries helped the development of the final version.

From now on, if you move the mouse over the mosaic, the usual small images are displayed in pop-up windows, and if you click on it, you can scroll through a gallery of large images. This version retains the advantages of the previous solution, but corrects its technical problems. At the same time it enables you to view the images enlarged to full screen when leafing through the gallery. In this case, the pictures download a bit slowly, the reason for which is that we always upload them in their original size (at least our own photos), so that everyone can freely use them according to the Creative Commons (BY-NC) rules. A serious drawback of this solution is that in this large size the imperfections of our photos are more conspicuous as well. On this problem we are still working :)

Thank you. Muchas gracias

The news has been known for a week, but today we were also officially notified that Poemas del Río Wang was voted into the ten most popular Hungarian cultural blogs at this year’s Golden Blog competition. Many thanks to all our readers for having made with their votes even better known our blog, and curious those browsing the lists of results, of whom quite a few have clicked over onto us in recent days. We hope they will also stay here.

Conocíamos la noticia desde hace una semana pero hoy se ha hecho oficial: Poemas del Río Wang ha quedado clasificado entre los diez blogs culturales más populares en Hungría en la competición por el Blog de Oro. Muchísimas gracias a todos nuestros lectores que nos han dado a conocer todavía más con sus votos. Y a todos aquellos curiosos que al repasar la lista de resultados han entrado a ver qué ofrecían nuestras páginas les damos la bienvenida esperando que se queden aquí por mucho tiempo.

Play with us

We have never applied for GoldenBlog, the most prestigious blog contest of Hungary. Yet each year our readers submit Poemas del Río Wang. And once we play, let us play it well. If you really like our blog, please vote for it until 6 September with your Facebook profile on the GoldenBlog ballot page, in the second, “Kult-Szórakozás” – that is, Culture and Entertainment – category, in the sixth row (“A Wang folyó versei” = the Hungarian title of our blog). Just imagine what a shame it would be if the number of the votes lagged far behind that of those liking our blog on Facebook, which is 1245 in this moment. You see? So go and click. Thank you!

Pomocy!

On Polish ships to America and Canada! (1934)

POLACY !

Szukamy polskiego czytelnika, który może pomóc nam sprawdzić jeden artykuł w języku polskim i z polskim tematem (rok 1939/40).


We’re looking for the Polish reader who would generously help us to revise our Polish translation of an imminent post on Poland in 1939/40. Thank you in advance!

Hungarian alfafa seed gives the best crop in Poland! (1936)

Transition

Erik Johansson

Tonight we will go over to the new server. For this reason in some more remote locations the site of Studiolum and the images of the blog will not appear for a couple of hours, until all the servers in the long chain leading there will take over the new address.

We thank all our readers who helped us with advices and suggestions on choosing a new provider. On several considerations we finally decided for the second-largest Spanish web host (which happens to be German), whose offers and recommendations were good and a personal consultation with them also sounded reassuringly. We hope it would firmly carry on the back for several years the valley of Río Wang and the studiolum hiding in it.

Igor Oleynikov

Globat.com

This is the name of the American web host who has kept the site of Studiolum for almost ten years. At the time, we have chosen them because a number of reviews evaluated them among the best, and so it was: they were cheap, fast and reliable. We have been satisfied with them, and over the years we have also recommended them to others. Then they gradually began to deteriorate. The server has slowed down, the site was frequently down, letters were lost. Prices began to creep upwards: the initial $ 60 a year became 107 by the last year and 134 by this year. As a hidden price increase, they have introduced negative option billing: they have unilaterally introduced various upgrades, and if you do not refuse them in time, they submit a bill.

But now the last drop fell in the glass. We received a letter from the legal department of Globat.com informing us that we have stored a large amount of material on our server (where, just to make it clear, we subscribed to unlimited disk space and bandwidth) which is not related to the site, so they request us to remove it within three days. When we asked them which files they refer to, they answered that the audio files, which we have kept in a single folder. We have replied that each of these files – as our readers know it well – are linked to our site. One more day later – that is, two days after the first letter – we received their letter informing us that in fact there are no longer any files in violation of the contract. We have calmed down, but only as long as we did not check the audio folder. Then we had to realize that the reason why there are no such files is that while we were waiting for their answer, Globat.com arbitrarily deleted the entire content of the folder.


Here is the end of the story which we just shared with you so that anyone else may learn from it. In fact, web host reviews, as we have just checked it again, today already consider Globat.com among the worst providers. Here you are just a few examples, without any selection, just copying the titles of the evaluations one after the other:

Webhosting Reviews: “Globat sucks!” “Only interested in your money!” “Run far away from Globat!” “Tech support rude & incompetent” “Complete waste of money” “Globat is a horrible excuse for a business”

Best host ratings: “The Worst” “No service” “Our PHP scripts got hacked” “Virus on Globat” “Poor service, Downtime” “Unreliable” “Globat has the worst customer service” “The worst in the world”

Host Search: “Try to automatically upgrade ten times a year” “Files are unrecognizable. No refund” “Incomprehensible tech support. Dubious business practices. Unreachable most of the time. Run. Save yourself”

Webhosting Jury: “I have had too many bad-to-nightmare experiences with this company to even know where to begin…”

Cheap Web Hosting: “Globat. Rating: NOT RECOMMENDED. We no longer collect and publish Globat complaints in this page.”

So many arguments are hard to resist. We are looking for a new host. We ask our readers to share with us your good experiences, if you have any. Our requirements are: unlimited storage and bandwidth, possibility of installing Joomla, multi-domain user account, good speed and reliability, for no more than about $ 80 per year. And that our materials may not be deleted without notice. If it is not too much to ask nowadays.

Thank you

Exactly two weeks have passed since we have asked our readers again, after the great fundraising of last year, to help us to collect the minimum amount of 1,500 euros necessary to our friends in Szék/Sic (Romania), whose house was washed off by the flood of last July, to move in before the coming winter to the new house they have been building with great sacrifice.

Donations immediately started to come, especially after the Hungarian portal Mandiner also published our appeal, which we want to gratefully acknowledge once more. Some sent five euros and some four hundred, but the gesture of commitment and willingness to help was equally valuable in each of them. And today, almost at the same time arrived the last two donations – from Azerbaijan and from Budapest – by which the amount reached the foreseen 1,500 euros, and even exceeded it by sixty. However, we do not fear it would not find its good place in Szék, just like any other eventual donation until the house – hopefully next spring – would be finally complete. We will hand over the money to Rózsi this weekend in Budapest, so the preparation of the house for the winter can already start next week.

Faithfully to the tradition, let us call the names of those who helped to make this dream a reality:

Douglas Kretzmann (USA), Petrus Augustinus, Kardos Bálint, Gyarmati-Szabó István, Komáromi András Levente, Sz. Kis László, Szabó Kristóf Imre, Pető István, Szávoszt-Vass Dániel, Balázs Péter, Fehér Tibor, Gábor Dávid, Farkas Gábor, Szabó Zsolt, Szedlák Ádám, Catherine Willis (France), W (Britain), Dömötör Károly, Fügi Balázs, Simonfi Dávid, Pozsonyi Máté, Kaleha Zsolt, Vándor Kinga, Nagy Tibor, Molnár Gergely, Araz Yusubov (Azerbaijan).

By clicking here you can send via PayPal or from bank card any amount to the flood victims of Szék. We will send a receipt of each donation. Thank you for your help. • e-mail to us

Thank you very much for all the help and generosity, also on our friends’ behalf. And on our behalf, for the trust with which you’ve honored our blog, the treasurer of this fundraising. The almost fairy-tale-like fact that our readers and the readers of Mandiner, of whom only a few know us personally, on a single appeal collected a thousand and five hundred and sixty euros in less than two weeks, which, together with the 2,056 euros collected last year for the same purpose, almost reaches one million Hungarian forints, tells us more about the confidence of our readers and is a greater glory to our blog than the best place in any blog competition.

En alas de la Fama

Acabamos de saber que nuestros lectores han calificado nuestro blog para el premio del Blog de Oro 2011 de Hungría, y como esto no tiene vuelta atrás tenemos que encarar el desafío con honor. Como esta versión internacional del blog no es sino un fiel reflejo de la versión húngara (o viceversa), invitamos a todos los que lo deseen a expresar su aprecio yendo, desde el avatar propio de Facebook, a la página de Elección del Blog de Oro, y clicando en la segunda columna («Kult-szórakozás», es decir, «Cultura y Entretenimiento» – miscuit utile dulci) sobre “a wang folyó versei”, el título centroeuropeo del hermano gemelo de este muy viajado y cosmopolita Río Wang. Se puede votar hasta el 21 de agosto. Muchas gracias por el honor que ya hemos recibido.

On the wings of fame

We have just received the news that our readers have nominated our blog for the 2011 Golden Blog of Hungary contest, and once it happened so, we cannot but face the challenge with honor. As this international version of the blog is but a true mirror of the Hungarian one (or vice versa), we invite you to express your appreciation (in case you have any) by going in your Facebook avatar to the Golden Blog voting page, and clicking in the second column (“Kult-szórakozás”, that is, “Culture and Entertainment” – miscuit utile dulci) on “a wang folyó versei”, the little Eastern European twin brother of this widely traveled and cosmopolitan Río Wang. Voting is going on until 21 August. Thank you for the honor.

A question: gapi.plusone.go

In the present English version of the blog the javascript pop-up windows have ceased to work since yesterday (e.g. here), while in the Hungarian version they work merrily on (e.g. here). I have checked the source code, and I found that in the English version the following javascript has been included without my intervention:

<script src='https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'>{'lang': 'es', 'parsetags': 'explicit'}</script><script type='text/javascript'>gapi.plusone.go();</script>

If I remove this script, the pop-up windows work again. The problem is that I do not know how to remove it from the source of the blog. It cannot be found in the html version of the blog template, so it must come from somewhere deeper. I have posted a question to Blogger’s forum, but received no reply yet. However, I see there that it has come into conflict with others’ Javascript applications as well, and he also did not get a convincing reply.

Does anyone know what this is and what might be the solution?

Hoşgeldiniz

In vain I try to post the first photos: Río Wang is unavailable in Istanbul. Instead, this message appears in large red letters: “Bu siteye erişim mahkeme kararıyla engellenmiştir.” – “This site was disabled by court decision.”

I try to recall when could I have interfered with the Turkish court, but nothing comes to mind. I relax a little bit only when I see that for every other Blogspot.com blog the same message comes in. Then with a search it turns out that it was the Digiturk channel TV who reached this sentence at the court of the South-Eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir. They, in fact, have a monopoly for broadcasting the Turkish football league games, and they were bothered by the pirate videos uploaded to Blogger and YouTube. So, as a result of the judgment of the wise kadis, now the complete Blogger and YouTube is unavailable in Turkey. And what is more, even in Georgia, which receives the internet service from the Turkish network, although they probably did not find that much pleasure in the pirate videos of the Turkish football league. But it also becomes obvious that such sentences are easily distributed in Turkey: the prolific Islamic author widely known under the pen name of Harun Yahya recently managed to have a court ban on the whole WordPress in all Turkey because of some negative blog posts on creationism.

After an examination of conscience I admit that we are imposed by this sentence with a reason, for with the live report on the Liverpool-Beşiktaş league game we have seriously infringed the monopoly of Digiturk. The less considerate Turkish bloggers, however, have already launched a campaign with the title “Bloguma dokunma” (“Hands off my blog!”). I just do not understand: while I cannot even read back what I have just written, how come there are still so many Turkish visitors to the blog?

Dubious quality

The post planned for this morning is still lingering on my computer which does not start. I have to  save my data and reinstall it. Instead, let me share a spontaneous praise received this morning by the Poemas del río Wang on the Dubious Quality blog:

Josh Eaves sent me a link to a terrific and interesting website called Poemas del río Wang, but I’ll be damned if I can really explain what it covers. Mainly, there are loads of beautiful photographs of both contemporay Russia and the Communist-era Soviet Union, but there's quite a lot more as well.

The reference to the Russian photos only means that Bill Harris is just scanning this part of the elephant: a month ago he would have probably seen it mainly as a Spanish travel blog. And in the inspiring space of computerlessness I also wonder whether I can explain what it covers.

bX-o3qgph

The dragon eating up its own tail has been since the Egyptians and Plato the symbol of  the universe renewing itself from its own matter. From today, however, it is also the symbol of Blogger which eats up its own tail, the comments. The name of the problem is bX-o3qgph, and complaints with this error code have been arriving at the emergency forum of Blogger since the end of May, but Blogger’s owner Google has hitherto left them without any reply or solution whatsoever. Today, however, the issue has culminated. It appears that now Blogger does not display any comment posted with a Google identity any more, but swallows them all in the air.


Nevertheless, it seems that you can still send comments either anonymously or by choosing the option Name/URL and typing your name. So if you send a comment to Río Wang, watch whether it gets displayed. If not, send it again anonymously, and then it will most probably appear. In the meantime we are keeping an eye on the watchdogs specialized on the problem, and waiting for them to give a signal when the dragons will have retired and commenting returned into its old course.