Dear relatives and friends!

It has been 11 years since we were first brought together by the Family Tree of the Vunjak Family and a year since an even closer union resulting from the launch of the Skamija magazine.

From the the first gathering of Vunjaks, 2002.

Both anniversaries evoke memories of joys of life, existence and belonging to a large family in a huge world.

Skamija continues along the path taken many years ago – in 1934 – by an enthusiast journalist, Ljubomir Vunjak, who wanted to bring together young, talented, artistically-minded individuals with a desire to learn new things and prove themselves.Ljuba was an intellectual who looked at the good side of everything, a teacher of his own virtues who spread wisdom to everyone around him. One year ago, endowed with such wisdom, his daughters Mirjana and Ljiljana established the Skamija magazine, this time in a contemporary form, marvelous in its concept and implementation.

Many of our relatives have recognized the significance of Skamija to today's and future generations as a legacy that cannot be lost, forgotten or given away, but used to share their experiences, successes, awards, memories of past events, old jokes from Lika, anecdotes... Reading the magazine lets us forget for a moment our everyday worries and reach towards our inner selves and our roots. Here is what our Nobel Award-winning writer, Ivo Andric, had to say about the difficulties of writing:
In writing – in happy moments, of course! – words appear effortlessly, they tie together and bounce back off each other, they move around and change places, or get erased completely, until they all fall in their perfect position, creating the only possible picture of what the writer wanted to say. It all seems as an easy and automated game played by words at their own will and out of their own nature, in and of themselves. However, this is not true, as this process is not a sterile game of happenstance. Words, like trees and plants and everything that lives, possess an invisible living spirit which – like an inner Sun – moves them around, giving them their color and shape, their strength and expression. The man who writes – he only carefully follows them and more or less skillfully, more or less luckily, utilizes the intricacies of the vague and elusive game.

Therefore, the words live two different lives: one for themselves, on their own, and another as tools of the man's thought that is in search of its expression.

In the end, I can say that it has been a long and arduous jurney from the homeland of Lika, from our ancestors Jakov, Jovan, Simo, Dane, Mile, Ilija, Gajo, Stanisa to their descendants Mimica, Ljilja, Tatjana, Slobodanka, Maja, Dragan Cvetkovic and the Skamija magazine. But I may be wrong, since life is like a flare whose shine encompasses several generations, but all of them live their unique lives under different stars.

Subotica, 30 September 2013

^{Translated by Bojan R. Golubović}