{"id":417,"date":"2009-01-16T14:26:57","date_gmt":"2009-01-16T14:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=417"},"modified":"2009-01-17T04:21:47","modified_gmt":"2009-01-17T04:21:47","slug":"good-bye-joska-bacsi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=417","title":{"rendered":"Good-bye, J\u00f3ska b\u00e1csi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My uncle, my mother&#8217;s younger brother, is dead this morning I am told.<\/p>\n<p>His name was J\u00f3zsef Sztojka, although I remember him from my childhood as <em>J\u00f3ska b\u00e1csi<\/em>, or uncle J\u00f3ska. I have many, many, many fond memories of him. He has been suffering from illness for a long time, so his death is not altogether a surprise, but I am saddened nevertheless.<\/p>\n<p>Some random memories.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I have a copy of volume 3 of a Hungarian language physics book, <em>Mechanics<\/em> by Tibor Cholnoky, which was the first book I ever owned that explained in detail how the laws of orbital mechanics can be derived from Newton&#8217;s law of gravitation. This book was a gift from <em>J\u00f3ska b\u00e1csi<\/em>. I saw it on his bookshelf when I was around 10 or so, and sat down reading it, forgetting about the world. That&#8217;s how he found me and that&#8217;s when he gave the book to me. Thank you for helping to steer my life in this direction.<\/li>\n<li>I loved playing with my cousins, his two children (later three), at <em>J\u00f3ska b\u00e1csi<\/em>&#8216;s place. It was the selfishness of childhood (I was no more than 6 or 7 at the time), as it wasn&#8217;t family ties but my cousin&#8217;s toys that I found the most interesting. But what is most memorable is how <em>J\u00f3ska b\u00e1csi<\/em> played with us. He helped us build toy castles and helped us destroy them with toy weapons. He helped us build elaborate tracks for Matchbox cars (oh, how I envied my cousin&#8217;s amazing Matchbox car collection!) and helped us race them. Though I never understood why he seemed so offended by my childish attempt at poetry. When one of the Matchbox cars kept oscillating left and right as it went down the track, I attempted to describe this in rhyme with words that may be best translated into English as &#8220;wiggled its fanny&#8221;. He angrily told me not to say such things again.<\/li>\n<li>A relative of my father visited us once from Romania. His family name was Fogas, a word that means, among other things, (coat)hanger in Hungarian. Together with this relative, we went to the flat of <em>J\u00f3ska b\u00e1csi<\/em> one day, a flat that was under major renovation at the time. So we rang the doorbell, <em>J\u00f3ska b\u00e1csi<\/em> opened the door, and as he never met our distant relative, introductions began. &#8220;Fogas,&#8221; said our relative, thrusting his right hand out for a handshake, while holding his coat in his left. &#8220;We don&#8217;t have those yet,&#8221; apologized <em>J\u00f3ska b\u00e1csi<\/em>&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>I first heard the record <em>At the Speed of Sound<\/em> by Paul McCartney and the Wings at <em>J\u00f3ska b\u00e1csi<\/em>. I also first heard Jeff Wayne&#8217;s musical experiment, <em>The War of the Worlds<\/em>, at his place. I still enjoy listening to both records from time to time, and when I do, I often remember <em>J\u00f3ska b\u00e1csi<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Shortly before I left Hungary, I visited <em>J\u00f3ska<\/em> (by this time, I often omitted the <em>b\u00e1csi<\/em> part) at his cottage north of Budapest. He was already in the habit of spending much of his time alone, like a hermit, in this cottage. I spent a whole evening with him before heading back to town, and we had a long, long conversation about life, universe, and everything. He was a sad man by this time, and I listened to him with the infinite wisdom of youth, certain that I had all the answers, certain that if he only heeded my advice, all would be well.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well, <em>J\u00f3ska b\u00e1csi<\/em> is no more. Only the memories remain.<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=417' send='true' layout='standard' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My uncle, my mother&#8217;s younger brother, is dead this morning I am told. His name was J\u00f3zsef Sztojka, although I remember him from my childhood as J\u00f3ska b\u00e1csi, or uncle J\u00f3ska. I have many, many, many fond memories of him. He has been suffering from illness for a long time, so his death is not <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=417' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-35-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":444,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions\/444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}