To Begin, Pop-Pop's A Murderer As Well as A Self-Dreading Jew Who Is Ungrateful To His Philosemitic gentile Mother

"Czarnecki" was actually a change in our name. We actually were "Chernetski" before my great-granddad Czarnecki's parents converted to avoid the pogroms, then were kicked off the family farm in Lipsk nad Biebrza because of said conversion. They took "Czerniecki", "Czarniecki", and other variants before settling on "Czarnecki" when they assimilated as Anusim in Sugar Notch, PA; and they never returned to Lipsk, Tsuman (where Great-Granddad was born while his mom was visiting Andrulewicz (Andrulevich) relatives in Buzhanka, Kiev area), or anywhere else in Poland or the Ukraine for even a visit. I didn't even know any of this until I began family research and confronted my dad's dad (John "Jack" Czarnecki) about hiding all of it.

Great-Granddad was Antoni Jan Julianowicz Chernetski, the oldest son and child of Julian Jan Antoniowicz "Felix" and Aleksjondria Alicja Antoniowicza Chernetski (respectively; the son of Antoni and Katarzyna Danilowicza Chernetski, and the daughter of Antoni "Anthony" and Katarzyna "Katherine" Morgewicza (Margiewicza) Andrulewicz). When Great-Granddad came here with his mom to join his dad (who had already joined relatives who had splintered off into Sugar Notch from the group of Chernetskis that came here- and many of whom splintered off into Jersey City, NJ and other parts besides Sugar Notch); he along with his parents had his name Americanized into "Anthony Czarnecki" (1910 Census), which was (with his middle name, "Jan", Americanized into "John") the final name that he was given and/or stuck with (1920 Census: "Anthony Chernetski"; 1930 Census: "John Czarnecki", sent away to a mental asylum in Wood River, Illinois).

By the way (I'm kvetching here; but this is a keep-in-mind thing), from what I understand, the-now Alexandria Alice Andrulewicz Czarnecki was a wicked woman who was part of what affected and effected him to be at Wood River in the first place. When the-now Julian John Czarnecki (with his name given as "Julian Czarniecki" on his death certificate) died on September 11, 1922 (and Great-Granddad was only 17 when his dad died); Alexandria took over the household with an iron fist- not that she didn't have one before (since Julian was a schicker, and she manipulated that), but she took over- and began influencing then-to-be-18-year-old Anthony and his America-born siblings (Regina, 13, dead by four laters later; Alexandria Alice, to be 12 on September 28; Stanislaw "Stanley" Peter, 10; John Felix, 9; Edward L., 7; Joseph Paschal, 5; Bernard, 2; and Cecelia, 9 months old) nuts.

This becomes important when you track down and realize that, for example: 

1. They were indeed Anusim, and dropped mixed-bag hints at that. In other words, you had to really think about the names (among other things) as hints to figure that out. (e.g., Notice any "Mary"s in there? Remember that an ancient Jewish- and still a Sefardi Jewish- practice is to name relatives even after still-living family members?)
2. The names become extremely important when you have to keep track of who went where. For example; as I recall finding out, Great-Granduncle Stanley fled to Nanticoke with his then-new-wife, Theresa Makarczyk, around the time that Great-Granddad himself came back to Sugar Notch and married the gentile Mary Trudnak (which, as you can imagine, pissed off Mama Alexandria off! In fact, for such a seemingly-Catholic wedding, there's no preist's signature on and no returned filed for the marriage license of Anthony John and Mary Trudnak Czarnecki!). By the way, why Great-Granduncle Stanley fled: Mama Alexandria wasn't hassling only daughter-in-law Mary. Besides, there were cousins in Nanticoke, so he had connections there if and when push ever came to shove (which it did).     

Great-Granddad with Dad on his lap; Great-Grandma with Aunt Mary, named for Great-Grandma and also Great-Grandma Marysia "Mary" Elizabeth Rusnak Gaydos. The Virgin Mary was far from receiving kavod from Pop-Pop (far left, next to his brother James "Jim" Julian. By the way, I told you that the naming was part of the hint dropping.).

 Not that Dad will admit that he didn't like his own "Pop-Pop" Czarnecki ("Like dad, like son" in more ways than one); but he didn't like him (and can you blame him? "Tony", Sr. took on after a certain Mama Alexandria). As the old wisdom goes; unless you really commit to conciously being the opposite of whom you dislike, you end becoming the next generation of whom you claimed that you did not want to be (and did Dad ever become like my "Pop-Pop" Czarnecki, who was like "Pop-Pop" Tony, Sr. Czarnecki!)

"Doesn't seem too upset at his.." "Grandfather Czarnecki"! Sure; he doesn't; or else he wouldn't have hidden that last part of the caption when he scanned in the photo (for which I had to fight with him); right, Grandma?. By the way, perhaps I will quote the proverb- and G-d forgive me- "Like mother, like daughter". And Grandma; who knows? Maybe, as happens as well, you even married someone like your mother- at least in some ways. Well, betraying relatives during the Shoah puts Great-Grandma Gaydos up there with Pop-Pop, no matter how (as Aunt Mary put it) kind and sweet she (apparently) was (otherwise?). Or maybe Pop-Pop is up there with Great-Grandma Gaydos (Who knows? I'm kvetching by now.).

By the way, Dad had a broken collarbone at the time- he had fallen out of a high chair.

Dad at his baptism with Great-Grandma Czarnecki holding him, Great-Granddad looking at him, and Great-Grandma Gaydos and Grandma Czarnecki posing for a picture.



"Slow and Steady Wins Races", as My Ex Points Out

 And that's one of the things that we learn with CP: thank G-d that we can't do as much in some ways. e.g., my non-disabled cousin Tommy Zinkand had the opportunity to ride a motorcycle and convinced himself that he was invincible. On June 26, 2005; he was going too fast and hit a minivan body on. On Sunday; six years will have passed (Poor Danny and Terri. Danny's his dad, Terri his sister.). By the way, that side of my Farrell-DeBoy family has not had life easy: besides Tommy, Danny's wife (and Terri's and Tommy's mom) Sylvia, cousin (and my aunt) Mary Carole Allen Hamilton, and brother-in-law (and Terri's and Tommy's uncle) Danny Dugas all died at around this time of year as well (Aunt Mary Carole on Flag Day 2008, and Danny Dugas a week ago, and Sylvie (Sylvia)... let me check... April 28, 2010. Not an easy couple of months to get through for the Farrell-DeBoy Zinkands.).

Part of My Correspondence With a True Reform Jew (i.e., One Who's Really Reforming Modern Judaism)

However, I'm going to censor out his or her name for the interim, since he or she has not yet responded to this:

Hey... (v'Shabbat Shalom!):




Thanks for the response, and I apologize for delaying in my own response. Meanwhile, I think that a good topic to cover at present would be the Casey Anthony case and the death penalty; especially because a prominent fellow Jew of ours, Geraldo Rivera, seems to unfortunately be in lockstep with URJ policy per the death penalty and is forgetting how Torah and arguably tikun ha'olam (which certainly includes tzedek) requires that Casey be convicted and get the death penalty per nefesh l'nefesh- and how any other premeditating and remorseless murderer should get the death penalty.



I think that one of the things that many- including the URJ (including Geraldo) forgets is that the death penalty is not a bloodlust-based idea or easy sanction to carry out for any Jewish or gentile person who loves Torah. To carry out nefesh l'nefesh is killing someone, and taking a life of even the most vile person is hard especially because we're all family (per Adam and Eve, and Noah) and there is a special kind of "What could have been?" heartbreak in having to execute a fellow family member who could have chosen to do the right thing instead of murder someone and attempt to evade and/or pervert tzedek (and Casey obviously chose to pervert tzedek instead of love and raise Caylee).



Nicole Czarnecki

To Geraldo Rivera's Producer, Christina Timothy

CT, morality sometimes takes precedence over the Constitution and other US law (and obviously is not in line with it at the time). Especially as a Jew, Geraldo ought to know that. In this case, he's behaving to a lesser degree and in a different but parallel way to my great-grandmother Gaydos- that is, Great-Grandma Gaydos cost the lives of relatives who died in the Holocaust because she followed US isolationist policy and did not send them the help which they requested; and in a similar way, Geraldo is costing Caylee's life and justice all the more.

My Sociology Assignment For Tonight- "Prestigia, Populus, et Familia— aka, Chapter 8 Work All Bundled Into One Cohesive and Biographical Narrative"

Prestigia, Populus, et Familia— aka, Chapter 8 Work All Bundled Into One Cohesive and Biographical Narrative


To begin, I could not even begin to list all of the different-class people about whom I know or who I know. In other words, I know about and know too many people in different classes than me to even have a simple, all-added-up list. In fact, I come from that kind of background. So, let me begin with my story— in short, anyway (and this is not off topic).

My paternal granddad is John “Jack” Gregory Czarnecki, the first-surviving newborn child and son of his parents (The first child and son— the first Anthony “Tony”, Jr. — died two days after his birth in 1934 or 1935.). After him came my granduncles Francis “Frank” (1940-1985), James “Jim”, and the second Anthony “Tony”, Jr..

Like his brothers and mom, and unlike his dad; he was born in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania into a lower American class. His dad (Tony, Sr.), on the other hand, was a Crypto-Jewish pogrom survivor and assimilationist who came to Sugar Notch via Ellis Island after his parents were outcasted by their family still in Poland Russia. Tony, Sr. also moved from relatively-fair circumstances on the family farm in Lipsk nad Biebrza to life in a rented house on 132 Main (now North Main) Street in Sugarloaf, to considerably-comfortable circumstances as the son of the coalminer who owned 203-207 (excluding 204 and 206) Freed Street in Sugar Notch.

Jack, meanwhile, lived at 203 with his parents and brothers while his paternal uncle Joe lived at 205 and his paternal aunt Alexandria Alice (who was a widow with one son— John, Jr.) lived at 207 (where she also tended to his paternal grandmother— her ailing mother—from March 28 to April 6, 1936). A 1958 graduate of King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, he married the two-year nursing student known Joan Adele Gajdos (Gaydos) on September 23, 1959 at Sugar Notch’s Holy Family Roman Catholic Church.

Joan Adele Gaydos, meanwhile, is the third daughter and middle child of Michael Gaydos, Jr. and Marysia “Mary” Elizabeth née Rusnak. Like her dad and all of her siblings, she was born in Luzerne County. Her mom, on the other hand, was born in Crabtree in Westmoreland County; where her parents, Andrew Stephen Rusnák (of the prominent Jewish Rusnák family in Košice, Slovakia) and Julia née Fosko first settled in America and married each other on July 29, 1905.

Joan, meanwhile, lived at 112 Brown Street in Ashley and only visited 163 Hughes Street in Swoyersville, where Mary had lived and returned to for the birth of her first daughter and child (Helen Margaret Gaydos Wojnar, R.N.; 1930-2006). After Joan converted from Crypto-Jewish Slovakian Byzantine Catholicism to Crypto-Jewish Roman Catholicism, and moved with Jack to Glen Burnie in Maryland; she was no longer the hopelessly-disinherited descendant of Crypto Jews that she had grown up being. She was a mother of four children (one who was sadly miscarried in 1975), the wife of one of the IRS Agents who had served Nixon tax papers, a sister of a RN and Dr. Mary Ann Gaydos at Mansfield State College, and the sister-in-law of an IBM worker (Jim Czarnecki) and a public accountant (Tony Czarnecki, Jr.).

Meanwhile, Jack’s and Joan’s son Gregory “Greg” Matthew Czarnecki came from living at Marley Station Road in Glen Burnie to earning a graduate degree in Maryland. He had married and later divorced Cecilia née Allen, one of eleven (including two sadly-miscarried) children of Loyola University professor Francis Xavier Allen (whose income went into providing for himself and his family) and homemaker Mary Ellen née Pundt (a high-school graduate who had at least four of her children still living at home when Professor Allen died on Thanksgiving Eve of 1974). Greg obviously married economically down to some extent (although Cecilia was working and still works at NASA, though she has an Associate’s and almost a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Systems), and Cecilia married economically up (at least at the time; and to make a long story short, she also married morally down).

In conclusion, I could go on and give you kol hamegillah; but I think that you get the point— that my family is of, and family history involves, all sorts of socioeconomic classes and socioeconomic mobilizations. Meanwhile, I would choose prestige over power and wealth— besides, as has been a hackneyed point, prestige can give one wealth and power. Prestige is also lasting and defines— and sometimes even is or is the result of— one’s legacy whereas wealth and power are fleeting and ultimately meaningless compared to prestige.

The Cops Listened In Illegally On Casey Anthony's Conversation? Re Roy Kronk

In the words of Jose Baez, "The answer is simple": the cops listened in legally either way; whether the way be that an inmate heard the Baez-Anthony conversation and (in street talk) snitched (By the way, I'm 21 and had no idea that "Zani" is street talk for "Xanax"- which goes to show how worldly Casey Anthony is compared to me. Anyway, either an inmate heard and snitched), or the cops (or corrections officers or whoever else) had a classified (secret) warrant from Judge Perry (since judges issue warrants, and Judge Perry would've had to have issued a non-Terry or  -Pringle, or other circumstanial or circumstance-mandated warrant).

Either way, Roy Kronk's girlfriend had the right to hear the police-given information and tip off the county (or community; either way, public worker) meter reader.

OCD On My Worse Days

Click the title. And no cheating. Hint: it's a metaphor.