STARS AND CROSSES By Curtis Urness - Review Part 1

The writer Curtis Urness wrote a lovely review of my book “Waiting for Gordo”.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2723920998?book_show_action=true

 

I appreciate it so much, and of course, I wondered what he was writing and so I have read and am going to review his book “Stars and Crosses”, which is published by Kasva Press, 2022.

 

Because I feel I need to explain the context in which this book is written - the context which made the author feel he must write it - I thought I would begin by blogging a review I have done of another book (one of very few reviews I have ever done) in which Dr. Goska tackles the same subject.

 

She has done it in a scholarly way, and Curtis Urness has tackled it in fiction.  And they are brave to do so. The angle they take on this subject is not one that enhances a career - to put it mildly.

 

Both books have been very difficult for me to read and review because they are both, in their different ways, about the constant vilification of all things Polish by the most powerful media and academe in the world, and about the way that Poland is being moved to the Axis Side in the current version of WW2.

 

Dr.Goska’s title speaks for itself.  Bieganski: The Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture.

 

Her book goes out of its way to be fair, but clearly it has done her academic career no good at all.   Anyway, I did review it, though my review no longer appears on the Amazon site. I hope that this review will set the scene for my review of the Curtis Urness book to follow.

 

 

ADVENTURES IN THE AMAZON REVIEW FOREST - My review of BIEGANSKI by Danusha Goska

 

This is not an easy book to review for three reasons.  Firstly, to write it, the writer has had to sail her book through murky waters filled with the crocodiles of political correctness.  So, to review it, I too have to wade gingerly through those waters, and I am not as brave as Dr.Goska. This cannot have been an easy book to write or to get published, so congratulations to the author for managing both.

Secondly, it gives an uncomfortably close look at what the Bible calls “the deep things of Satan” – a look into the mechanisms that operate to divide the children of Adam, and get us to despise, fear, hate and then kill each other.  

 

And, thirdly, it is so troubling that I have only been able to read it in small and disconnected chunks.  So this will be a rather disconnected review.   

 

And I strongly recommend that anyone reading “Bieganski” will also read Psalm 37 – and study the whole Bible.  We, all of us in the worldwide congregations, receive regular reminders that “a fundamental teaching of Christianity is not to retaliate under provocation”. – Matthew 5:39, 44,45. 

 

But not everyone is getting such regular reminders.   It is even possible that one purpose of the current stereotyping is to goad us into retaliating, although Dr.Goska convincingly explains many of the other reasons for it.

 

She has some trenchant things to say about Academe, and she demonstrates the political agendas behind the vilification of all things Polish.

 

For example, she includes this quote from Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany (1871-1890), who said:  "Personally, I can sympathise with (the Poles') position, but if we want to exist, we cannot do other than extirpate them.  A wolf is not to blame that God made him as he is; which does not mean we shouldn't shoot him to death whenever possible."  

 

Those words bore terrible fruitage in the next century, when, by 1939, any vestiges of sympathy or fellow feeling were to be banished.   "On August 22, 1939, on the invasion of Poland, Hitler gave explicit permission to his commanders to kill "without pity or mercy, men, women, and children of Polish descent or language"".  (Wikipedia)

 

I am forced to wonder what on earth the churches have been teaching their people down the centuries - bearing in mind that Jesus taught his followers to love one another and to do good even to their enemies.

 

Dr. Goska brings us up to date with the politics behind the current vilification of Poles in America.  And I especially appreciated her chapter on Hollywood. “Bieganski in American Cinema” contains, among other things, an interesting review of “The Deeerhunter” and “Spiderman II”.   

I try to avoid the product of Hollywood, because our Creator has told us:  “Anyone loving violence his soul certainly hates.”   And isn’t Hollywood training us to be entertained by more and more violence – to be entertained by what God hates?  “Bieganski” does give me extra incentive to keep away from it.   

This book is a valuable resource, but a difficult read - and not because Dr.Goska has cloaked it in obscure academic jargon.  She doesn’t need to, as she has something very real, but very bleak to say.

 

So I can only hope that all who do read it know that a rescue is close at hand – that what we pray for when we say The Lord’s Prayer is soon to come about. 

 

As I want to end on a positive note, I will return to the Bismarckian wolf comparison, which is haunting me.

 

What a compliment!  Me - a sleek, beautiful, intelligent forest creature - a lithe huntress.   And what is more, as twilight falls in the Amazonian Review Forest, I find I am starving hungry - and I am on the prowl.   I am gliding gracefully through the forest, light and lithe as a feather – (quite a heavy feather these days, sadly) – in search of prey.  As I zimmer through the twilight, herds of startled Bambi books flee in terror.  How am I going to eat tonight?  Will my wolfish hunger be satisfied?  Will I catch anything?

 

Aha!  Rustling through the undergrowth comes “Ethel, the Elderly Tortoise”, limping rather badly. With an eerie HOWL and a rattling of zimmers, I am upon her. 

 

GOTCHA!!  The woods echo to my HOWL of triumph.  The local villagers cower in their hovels – especially Chancellor Bismarck, I find myself spitefully hoping.    At last I can eat. 

 

And so as night falls on this review, it finds me and Ethel sitting side by side on a handy forest log, sharing a nice cup of tea from my flask, eating a cheese sandwich, and having a cosy chat about our arthritis medications…

 

And also wondering again what the world’s religions have been teaching their people.

 

Bismarck said that God made the wolf predatory.  Yet don’t the Hebrew Scriptures assure us that He did not?

 

To summarise, in writing about the Bieganski stereotype, which, on the face of it, might seem a narrow subject, Dr.Goska has shown us a lot about how “the world” – the current system of things - works.  May it serve as a valuable warning to be “no part” of it.

By the way, no-one yet has written "Ethel, the Elderly Tortoise", but it will make more sense of my review once they do.