Pazdziernik II

Pro-Life Poland

"I cannot understand what motivates parliamentarians and all others who agree to the modern day slaughter of the innocents. In 2009 over 500 children were killed in Polish hospitals. How monstrously egotistical, devoid of the smallest drop of humanity, you have to be to agree to murder under the auspices of law. It’s not about belonging to any party, religion or anything else. It’s about being human. Nobody has the right to decide on the life or death and if somebody thinks they do, then they don’t represent civilized society, but only their own subjective instinct of a person isolated from any morals or social ethics." —Mr. Wojciech Kossakowski, Polish MP, Law and Justice party

More super pro-life quotes from Poland's Parliament can be found here.

Cousins united.

Well, yesterday I found a "long lost" cousin at work. I started a new project and got a new office. Across from me was the nameplate "Szymczak". I recognized this name and knew Szymczaks were cousins of my mother. Well, it turned out that my grandmother and his great-grandmother were sisters! He told me that I even looked like his father. Small world indeed. He did not know much about that side of the family, so I got some more information from my mom and made a family tree for him. Unfortunately, most of the rest of his family changed their name from "Szymczak" to "Sims". Only his grandfather kept the original name. If he changed his name as well we never would have known we were cousins. It just goes to show the consequences of our actions!

July 26,2007: More....
I went to ancestry.com and got a one month membership ($29.95). I found 1920 and 1930 census records of my mom's family. (Census records are not released until 72 years to protect people who are still living.) However, I could not find "Szymczak" records. What I discovered was that these records were tagged incorrectly as "Synirzak" in their database. The cursive entries on the census records were misunderstood. Fortunately I knew that these cousins lived in the same neighborhood as my mom's family. I easily found them and correlated their names with my mom's list! I don't expect to go back too far since many records in Europe (Poland and Germany, in particular) were destroyed during WW II.

Photo: Our common matriarch Amelia in center.