The Almanac of Muszyna (Almanach Muszyny) is an annual publication that has been printed for the community since 1991 under the auspices of the Friends of Muszyna Society. The 15th Jubilee Almanac of Muszyna was edited on June 2005.

The Almanac carries the ISSN number ISSN 1234-6276. 1,000 copies were printed. This annual publication is a community initiative on the part of the authors and editors. The paper and printing is financed from private funds. Money raised by distribution of the Almanac is put towards the Muszyna Almanac Scholarship Fund as well as helping to bring to fruition the statutory aims of the Muszyna Public Library and Regional Museum.

Muszyna Almanac (Almanach Muszyny), or what every tourist, cure-taker, guest and friend of Muszyna should know.

'The Muszyna Almanac' is a yearbook published since 1991 under the patronage of the Society of Friends of the Muszyna Area. It is put together by volunteers - neither the editors nor the authors and illustrators accept any remuneration for their effort.
Our sphere of interest centres on the history and present day of Muszyna and its environs or what was once known as the 'State of Muszyna'. That name was once given to the landed holdings of the bishops of Kraków, managed by the Muszyna district authorities. We also take an interest in several neighbouring localities as well as Slovakia, chiefly in the localities of the northern Spisz and Szarysz regions.

Each year the 'Muszyna Almanac' gets thicker, containing a growing number of texts, and its graphics are also expanding. We work with dozens of people, including university staff and representatives of other scholarly institutions. As a result, the Almanac's articles are becoming mini-treatises of a sort and that frequently raise interesting and important issues affecting the region. We likewise eagerly print the unique memoirs of people linked to the Muszyna area through birth or sentiment, thereby saving from oblivion people and events of local importance. We realise that such notes have a chance to survive only in local publications, so we make every effort to convey knowledge of important local matters to the younger generation. Our pages also have room for poetry and a bit of literary prose, thereby promoting authors with roots to Muszyna and providing opportunities to novice writers who had previously not been able to have their works published.

Apart from publishing activities, we are also conducting several campaigns to integrate the local community and promote the region beyond the borders of the Muszyna area. We have first and foremost set up a Scholarship Fund for our gifted young people from the Muszyna and Krynica areas who are enrolled at the Muszyna Senior Secondary School and the State Music School in Krynica. Under our Polish-Slovak cooperation arrangement, we also grant two scholarships to young people from Stara Lubowla. Another aspect of that cooperation are joint appearances by young Polish and Slovak musicians at a December concert in Stara Lubowla and a New Year one in Krynica. Both concerts enjoy great popularity with their audience. Readers and friends of the 'Muszyna Almanac' contribute free-will donations to the Scholarship Fund's special account. The Society of Friends of the Muszyna Area enjoys the status of a public benefit organisation, hence people may earmark 1% of their income tax for the scholarships. Part of the funds comes from Warsaw's Batory - Foundation, which supports our activities, and the Łódź - based Educational Enterprise Foundation.

Our young scholarship recipients - pupils and leavers of the Muszyna Senior Secondary School - have scored considerable success in Olympiads and other competitions and have been admitted to difficult faculties at prestigious universities. Since the programme has been under way since 1998, we have witnessed a number of our scholarship recipients earning their Master's degrees in the meantime.

We collaborate with the Krynica Photographic Society and each year organise an 'Architectural Detail' competition. It involves recording in artistic photographs details threatened with destruction or irreversible disappearance from the architectural townscape of Muszyna, Krynica and other localities in the former 'State of Muszyna'. Each edition of the competition produces an abundant harvest in the form of beautiful pictures which are displayed in summer at Krynica's Main pump-room. The participants are both photographers connected to the region as well as people from distant localities who are fascinated by our region's beauty.

In cooperation with the TPSP Club we organise competitions and exhibitions for local artists, primary non-professional ones. We have succeeded in holding an auction of the works of one of the Muszyna artists representing what is known as 'art brut'. The proceeds went towards our Scholarship Fund and to help finance therapy sessions at the Social Aid Home in Nowy Sącz.

The 'Muszyna Almanac' editorial office uses its own resources to collect postcards from Muszyna, Krynica and Żegiestów, as well as old drawings and postal and court receipts from our region. Since we hold that our knowledge about collecting thing should be shared, we have used our collections not only to illustrate successive yearbooks, but also display them at exhibitions held at Muszyna's hospitable Municipal Library.

Each year on the first Saturday of July we organise a picnic at Muszyna's Wanda's Garden, where we play host to our friends and sponsors from the Scholarship Fund. That get-together provides an opportunity to award scholarships and prizes to a fresh batch of recipients, whose numbers have been growing each year.

Apart from current information about our initiatives, our 'Muszyna Almanac' Web site contains indexes of geographic and personal names as well as a bibliography of the yearbooks issued to date.

How to get in touch with us?
Editor in chief: Bożena Mściwujewska-Kruk
Mobile: (691) 710 137
Email: redakcja@almanachmuszyny.pl
www.almanachmuszyny.pl
Redakcja: Willa Wanda, ul. Piłsudskiego 56,
33-370 Muszyna