Been to the parish. Very dedicated and loving people. Congratulations on your anniversary! Dwieście lat!!!
SOUTHINGTON, CT — Marilyn Folcik and her sister Arlene Strazzulla looked at a black and white photo pinned on a corkboard inside the Holy Trinity Polish National Catholic Church on Summer Street Thursday afternoon.
Strazzulla leaned into the picture from 1957 to get a better look and then pointed to a little girl among a crowd of people standing outside the church.
“That was me and that was my sister,” she said.
Then she pointed to a man in the back.
“And that was my grandfather,” she added.
Folcik and Strazzulla’s grandfather, John Knapp, along with 16 other men, helped build the church 100 years ago. It opened its doors in July of 1914.
Rev. Joseph Krusienski, pastor of Holy Trinity Polish National Catholic Church, stands with long-time parish members Arlene Strazzulla, left, of Southington, and Marilyn Folcik, right, of Bristol, Thursday, July 24, 2014. The church, located on Summer St. in Southington, is celebrating its 100th year anniversary. | Dave Zajac / Record-JournalIn October, the church and its parishioners will celebrate the anniversary with a Mass followed by a banquet at the Aqua Turf Club.
The first Polish National Catholic Church was formed in 1897 in Scranton, Pa. after many Polish immigrants were longing to have Mass spoken in their native language.
“It was one of the original reasons why we broke away from the Roman Catholic Church,” said Folcik who is also the chairman of the church’s Parish Committee.
“They wanted a Polish-speaking priest,” Strazzulla added.
One of the major differences is that Polish Catholic priests are encouraged to marry and have families. The Holy Trinity Polish National Catholic Church also doesn’t consider the Pope to be infallible. Some of the seven sacraments have also been modified.
Folcik said she remembered her grandfather saying he wanted Polish people to be able to become priests and bishops and wanted Mass in their native language. The desires prompted some Polish members of the Southington community to form their own church.
A short history of the church written by Folcik for the anniversary, says the foundation of the building was “dug by hand by these sixteen men and others.”
After 1958 all Masses were in English.
“Even though ‘Polish’ is in the name of the church, that’s because it’s our heritage,’” said Strazzulla. “But it’s open to all nationalities.”
In April 1944, a fire tore through the building. Strazzulla and Folcik said the cause of the fire was never determined, though many speculate it could have started from a candle left burning from a wedding ceremony earlier in the day.
After the fire, parishioners joined together to salvage the church. Many made donations.
The Rev. Joseph Krusienski, who has been with the church for 43 years, went to the front of the church Thursday to retrieve old receipts from the repair work.
“The main altar, it was $1,050 to repair,” he said pointing to the typewritten receipt.
He added that each stain-glass window had to be replaced, costing $200 apiece.
“Now they’re worth a couple thousand,” Krusienski said.
In the 1960s the church underwent renovations that included new carpeting, paint on the walls, new pews, and new altar railings. A lot of the help came from parishioners who donated money to keep the church going.
The church’s properties, which include a rectory next to the church and a cemetery on Prospect Street in Plantsville, are owned and maintained by the parish. The parish committee and pastor make decisions regarding the properties.
Strazzulla and Folcik, both born and raised in Southington and now nearing or in their 50s, reminisced on the many years they spent in the church. As the third generation, they remembered being baptized, having their communion, confirmation, and even getting married in the church. The church’s 100th year anniversary is important, they said.
“It’s a really warm feeling,” Strazzulla said.
“We’re proud,” Folcik added.
“We’re very proud and honored to carry on what our ancestors started,” Strazzulla said.
LOWELL — It may be one of Lowell’s best kept secrets, particularly for those who love traditional Polish foods like pierogi (dumplings), golabki (cabbage roll) or kapusta (braised sauerkraut or cabbage with bacon, mushroom and onion).
At a church kitchen and hall on Lakeview Avenue, volunteers who know their way around a dough pressing machine as well as the tricks to producing the perfect cabbage roll lend their talents a few times a month to their church, St. Casimir’s Polish National Catholic Church.
The team effort of these volunteers, who range in age from pre-teens to their 90s, results in hundreds of handmade pierogi and golabki, plus dozens of quarts of kapusta — all later frozen and sold in their parish store.
On Sundays from 11 a.m. to noon, St. Casimir’s Parish Store is open to the public. Pierogi sell for $11 per dozen, kapusta is $6 per quart, golabki $18 a dozen. Proceeds benefit the parish.
“This is a labor of love. We make these the old-fashioned way, with so many steps that it’s time-consuming. People often don’t have the time today,” said Joanne Menzia, who took part in the pierogi assembly line on Tuesday, along with more than a dozen other volunteers.
“People use pierogi as a side dish, a main dish, or even as an appetizer,” said Janice Klimczak. “We sell quite a lot of them.”
The store also sells for $12 each the parish’s new cookbook, A Taste of Heaven, featuring traditional Polish recipes from church members as well as recipes contributed by the church’s many non-Polish members.
Doing his own part in the pierogi assembly line was the pastor, the Rev. Andrzej Tenus, a native of northern Poland who came to the United States in 2006 speaking no English.
Tenus, a former Roman Catholic priest, born in 1972, and a current beekeeper, musician, husband and father of four, went to Pennsylvania to study English for three months at the Polish National Catholic Church headquarters. He was preparing for his new role as a pastor within the Polish National Catholic Church in the U.S.
He did pretty well with the Pennsylvania dialect; then he came to Lowell, where the Boston accent made it a little more difficult, he said, smiling. Today, Tenus has only a trace of a Polish accent, which belies the fact that he’s spoken English for less than a decade.
One of the questions he’s often asked from those outside the community is how the Polish National Catholic Church differs from the Roman Catholic Church. Many find it hard to grasp, he said, how a Catholic church in Lowell is not connected to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, that its bishops and priests (since 1921) are allowed to marry, and the church is democratic. Its governing board chooses the pastor, controls the finances, and the parish owns its assets.
The Polish National Catholic Church, according to its website, is a Christian denomination formed in 1897 in Scranton, Pa. While it serves the spiritual needs of its members, it also welcomes all people who wish to follow Christ. Today, there are more than 25,000 members in the United States.
The National Catholic movement, which encompasses more than the Polish National Church, resulted from the division in the Christian Church that similarly initiated the Protestant movement. However, according to the St. Patrick Catholic Church website, a National Catholic Church in Rhode Island, it differs from the Protestant divisions in that it kept its belief in the Mass and the priesthood necessary to have the Mass, as well as other Catholic rites and rituals.
The liturgy, especially the contemporary liturgy that Tenus is initiating at St. Casimir, closely resembles that of the Roman Catholic Church. Standing inside St. Casimir’s Church, which was built in 1908 for the then-large Polish community in the city’s Centralville neighborhood, is like standing inside any Roman Catholic Church.
“We keep the same beliefs. The difference is only in the administration level. We’re not connected to Rome,” said Tenus.
Tenus leads a busy life while living next to the church with his wife, Agnes, who followed her husband to the United States three months after his arrival. In Poland, Agnes trained as a nutritionist and professional cook. She creates recipes from her home country and often bakes desserts for home and the church with the honey Tenus harvests from three bee hives located at St. Casimir Cemetery in Pelham. Beekeeping was a hobby Tenus started in Poland and has since resurrected.
Their children, Karina, 13, Jonah, 9, Christoper, 6 and Amelia, 3, consider St. Casimir’s close-knit parish family as surrogate aunts, uncles and grandparents, Tenus said. Likewise, the parishioners love having them here, he added.
Tenus has many ideas to keep the small parish active within and outside the community, including a busy youth group that produces an annual talent show. He emphasizes the importance of welcoming others to their church.
“No matter your background, ethnicity or denomination, we don’t look at that. Just people with good will looking for some place to fill out their souls,” he said. “If you need comfort, a place to pray, this is the place. We do not judge — it’s not up to us to judge.”
Sunday Mass is offered at 10 a.m. at 268 Lakeview Ave., Lowell, followed by fellowship hour. For more information, visit the parish website, call 978-453-0742, or send an E-mail.
The Masterpieces will be shown at the Cinema Arts Centre, at 423 Park Avenue, Huntington, NY from June 18th through July 23rd. More Masterpieces to come on July 9th, 13th, 16th and 23rd. Titles to be announced.
Organized and curated by Martin Scorsese, one of the most recognized and respected filmmakers in the world, the series is the largest presentation of restored Polish cinema to date.
21 Films you might not know
Martin Scorsese has personally selected 21 Polish films that have been an inspiration and influence.
30+ Theaters across North America
Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema is an unprecedented cultural event. Polish cinema has never been showcased in North America on such a scale. The best in classic Polish film will be shown in cities in the U.S. and Canada throughout 2014, beginning with a special premiere presentation in New York City on February 5th.
Pristine quality
Films in the series will be presented in the highest possible quality thanks to extensive digital picture and audio restoration. Dirt, scratches and other ravages of time have been removed, while preserving the integrity and beauty of the original films.
In 2013 the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission approved a historical marker to honor Dr. Walter Golaski (1913-1996), engineer and inventor who was a leading pioneer in manufacturing knitted Dacron blood-vessel replacements. A Drexel University graduate, he was also a philanthropist who devoted much time and energy to establishing closer ties between the United States and Poland through cultural and scholarly exchange. Though a Philadelphian, he was Chairman of the Board at the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York during the years 1973-1982.
A The dedication ceremony for the Historical Marker honoring Dr. Walter Golaski will take place at 12:00 noon on Saturday, May 17th at the corner of 34th Street and Lancaster Ave. in Philadelphia, this is Lancaster Walk in back of Drexel University athletic center. All are welcome to attend.
A luncheon will follow the dedication at approximately 2:00 pm at Drexel University’s Paul Peck Alumni Center located at 32nd and Market Street. Seating is limited – please make your reservation now. Tickets are $40 per person.
The contact person for information and tickets to the luncheon is Jean Joka, telephone: 215-483-0193.
Music educators Elise Sobol and Alan Núñez offer methodologies for teaching in and through music in inclusion settings. Drawing on their decades of experience as teachers and trainers for teachers, Núñez and Sobol will provide specific music ed techniques that build on or contribute to learning approaches in other art disciplines. Intended for music specialists and generalists alike, this webinar will give participants both theoretical and pragmatic approaches to multi-modal, multi-sensory learning that can be used in any K – 12 classroom, and are particularly successful for students with a wide range of abilities. The webinar will include a question and answer portion for participants.
The nuances in Polish language make it particularly beautiful, poetic, and musical. In addition, it allows for plays in language that are useful in conveying meaning and humor. It has helped Poland and Poles everywhere in standing up to countries and dictators.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish language experts launched a campaign Thursday to preserve the challenging system of its diacritical marks, saying the tails, dots and strokes are becoming obsolete under the pressure of IT and speed.
The drive, initiated by the state-run Council of the Polish Language, is part of the UNESCO International Mother Language Day. The campaign’s Polish name is complicated for a non-Polish keyboard: “Je,zyk polski jest a,-e,.”
That’s a pun meaning that Polish language needs its tails and is top class. Part of the meaning is lost and the pronunciation sounds wrong if the marks aren’t there.
Computer and phone keyboards require users to punch additional keys for Polish alphabet. To save time, Poles skip the nuances, and sometimes need to guess the meaning of the message that they have received. This is also true for IT equipment users of other languages with diacritical marks…
As part of the new campaign, some radio and TV stations are playing songs with words stripped of diacritical pronunciation, making them sound odd to the Polish ear. A rap song concludes: “Press the right Alt sometimes” to obtain Polish letters, referring one of the keyboard buttons that Poles need to press to write characters with diacritical marks.
In Poland, linguist Jerzy Bralczyk said the diacritical marks are a visual, defining feature of the Polish language, and they carry meaning and enrich the speech.
“Today, the Polish language is threatened by the tendency to avoid its characteristic letters,” Bralczyk said. “The less we use diacritical marks in text messages, the more likely they are to vanish altogether. That would mean an impoverishment of the language and of our life. I would be sorry.”
The tails make “a” and “e” nasal, strokes over “s,” “c” and “n” soften them and sometimes make them whistling sound, a stroke across “l” makes it sound like the English “w,” and a dot over “z” makes it hard like a metal drill. And each change matters.
“Los” means “fate,” but when you put a slash across the “l” and add a stroke over the “s” it becomes “elk.” “Paczki” are “parcels,” but “pa,czki” are doughnuts.
Foreigners who know Polish say the diacritical marks are a visual sign that it’s a tough language and that they add to the complexity of the grammar and vocabulary, which does not derive from Latin or from Germanic languages.
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In Romania, the tongue’s tails on “t” and “s,” circumflexes on “a” and “I” and hats on “a” are ignored even by state officials and institutes. Some words have up to four diacritical marks, and not using them changes the pronunciation and, in some cases, the meaning, to the point of no meaning at all.
Developing Sustainable Practices within Affordable Housing Communities
Living Resources, a program of a California-based nonprofit organization, has teamed up with Grand Central Art Center (GCAC), a unit of the College of the Arts at California State University, Fullerton, in enlisting community-driven “Creatives” (artists, architects, social activists) to respond to a “Call” for proposals.
Specifically, the Creatives selected will be awarded a one-year opportunity to engage the residents in one of two affordable housing communities in Southern California and Phoenix, AZ to ignite social change through sustainable practices and programs. The Creatives selected – individual and or collective groups, will be given housing (or a housing stipend), a working stipend, and a small budget to execute their projects.
Complete details and application information is available online.
Living Resources is an outreach program developed and funded by a nonprofit organization founded to promote the preservation and/or rehabilitation of affordable housing for low-income households. Living Resources provides support – financial or otherwise, to underserved individuals or other nonprofit organizations serving those in need.
California State University, Fullerton Grand Central Art Center is dedicated to the investigation and promotion of contemporary art and visual culture: regionally, nationally, and internationally through unique collaborations among artists, students, and the community.
The Kosciuszko Foundation annually awards a number of Fellowships/Grants to Poles for advanced study, Research, and/or Teaching at universities and other institutions of higher learning in the United States. Please note that Foundation grants do not provide for tuition costs. As such, applicants who are accepted by universities for Ph.D. programs should apply for a Kosciuszko Foundation award only in cases where their tuition has been waived totally or at least substantially.
The Kosciuszko Foundation annually awards a number of Fellowships/Grants to Poles for advanced study, research, and/or teaching at universities and other institutions of higher learning in the United States. The Foundation provides a cost-of-living stipend, which includes trans-atlantic travel, housing allowance, health and accident insurance coverage, and (when warranted) domestic travel. There is no allowance for dependents (spouse and children). Recipients are solely responsible for all expenses of accompanying dependents.
There are no restrictions as to fields of study/research.
Awards range from $7,650 to $25,500 depending on award category and duration of stay.
In addition to overall excellence, consideration is given to a number of other factors such as scholarly affiliation and geographic location. This is done in order to achieve fairness and reasonable diversity among recipients.
Award Categories
Currently, the Kosciuszko Foundation’s Exchange Program to the U.S. has 3 award categories:
Fellowships: awarded to successful candidates with doctoral degrees, including postgraduate scholars, professionals, or artists.
Grants: awarded to candidates without doctoral degrees.
Teaching Fellowships: university faculty members with teaching assignments at U.S. universities, in addition to individual research projects.
Eligibility
Only Polish citizens permanently residing in Poland are eligible. This program is NOT for Poles residing outside of Poland, or those residing temporarily outside of Poland, whether or not engaged in research/study.
Dual citizens (United States and Poland) as well as individuals applying for/holding United States permanent residency status (green card) are not eligible. There are no exceptions to this requirement.
Applicants must hold an M.A. or M.S. degree prior to the commencement date of the award. Preference is given to doctoral or postdoctoral candidates. Current academic affiliation is required in all cases and must be documented with a certificate from an institution of academic employment/study.
Applicants must have strong English language proficiency in order to carry out their proposed projects. English proficiency will be assessed during personal interviews in Warsaw.
Good things happen when the community gets together! Come join in a Community Meeting and Discussion focused on Taking Action for Mont Pleasant Middle School on Sunday, February 9th at 2:30pm. This meeting will be focus on community action to encourage our youth, promote success, stop violence, and get the resources our children deserve!
This meeting is for Parents, Families, and Community Members. All are invited to come and hear from educational experts and ask questions. Coffee, Soda, and Desserts will be served.
Join fellow community members and educators on Sunday, February 9th at 2:30pm at Holy Name of Jesus Church Hall, 1040 Pearl Street (between Crane Street and Chrisler Avenue in Mount Pleasant), CDTA Route 353, Pearl Street Stop.
In 2013 the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission approved a historical marker to honor 
Computer and phone keyboards require users to punch additional keys for Polish alphabet. To save time, Poles skip the nuances, and sometimes need to guess the meaning of the message that they have received. This is also true for IT equipment users of other languages with diacritical marks…
