- April 30 in New York: Anthony Domestico in conversation with Christian Wiman
- May 11 in "Bay Area, CA" (venue is still TBD): Matthew Sitman in conversation with Dorothy Fortenberry and Kaya Oakes
- May 29 in Chicago: Dominic Preziosi in conversation with Cardinal Cupich
If you're interested, you can register at the link in the first paragraph. Seems to be a free event. I registered for the Chicago event. If anyone is present, or lurking, who would like to come and meet me in Chicago, I can promise you that I am less scary in person. I'm all about the face-to-face interaction, much to the delight of one or two of our regulars and, I think, the consternation of some others :-). And if it's over a cold and frosty one, we're getting even closer to my conception of what heaven must be like. Or if shaking my hand is more than you want to deal with but you are still interested in the event content, go ahead and stay anonymous and we'll see each other there only not realize it.
I briefly met Cathleen Kaveny and Patrick Jordan when they were in East Lansing for these conversations, maybe 10-12 years ago.
ReplyDeleteCathleen talked about the culture wars and took some rather hostile questions with very good grace. Patrick talked all about Dorothy Day, whose "Long Loneliness" I had just finished reading. He knew her from his work on the Catholic Worker.
Very worthwhile events, and, yes, they were free at that time.
... or maybe it wasn't Commonweal Conversations but some other thing where they sent mag reps on the road. Anyway, I enjoyed the talks.
ReplyDeleteFor anyone on the St. Johns-Owosso, Michigan axis, please also note that the Holy Family Men's Club Fish Fry is March 23. $10 per person. No longer all you can eat by edict of Recording Secretary Al, but he can't be everywhere at once, and Raber usually manages to smuggle out a few kremkes or rolicky in a napkin for me.
I won't be there, but Raber will be the very large man with a beard in the kitchen making cheesy biscuits. Probably wearing a black chuke and a blue apron.
It seems that the northern midwest has dialect all its own kremkes? rolicky? chuke?
ReplyDeleteYah, you bet, we have party stores and play euchre, too. All beer is called Bud. Just like all pop (NO, IT IS NOT SODA) is called co-cola Down South.
ReplyDeleteA chuke is a stocking cap or watch cap. Kremkes and rolickys are Czech pastries. All Germans and Czechs up in here. The local high school plays polkas and reads the farm reports. WOES. Those are really the call letters. http://www.ovidelsie.org/woes-fm/
We used to have a convenience store/ pizza joint/ gas station called Dean's Deli and Gas. No one but me found this ironic.
I haven't played Euchre of 500 Rummy since I left Wisconsin in 1962! EVERYONE ate fried catfish, fries and cole slaw on Fridays ... even the Prods. Ah, for the bad old dayz.
DeleteWell, we're still playin' it, Jimmy!
DeleteCatfish, ugh. You might as well eat rats, in my book. We get lake perch with our side of slaw and fries.
May the left bower always be in your right hand!
LOL!
ReplyDeleteWell, my paternal side is German (my grandfather came to the US when he was about 20 years old), but there was no close German community in Los Angeles. So we were never introduced to German pastries (much less to Czech). My father was cold and distant from the family, so there were no German customs at all except the universal ones, like Christmas trees. In California a soft drink of almost any kind is called Coke. Just Coke - not co-cola, no pop, no soda.
I suppose that chile rellenos, churros and chalupas may not be common foods where you live. Tacos and enchiladas and guacamole seem to have spread throughout the country during the last 30 years or so though. No longer confined to the southwest.
The DC area doesn't have much in the way of euro-ethnic neighborhoods but there are some where newer immigrant groups (Ethiopians or Latino neighborhoods for example)gather.
We have a large Mexican American population here owing to migrants who settled in two or three generations ago. My son's former landlord used to send us homemade tamales. We have an Our Lady of Guadalupe next to Our Lady of Czestochowa at the local church. Germano-Czechs pray to their BVM, the Mexicans pray to theirs. We have the whitest looking Holy Family statues you could find. They look positively Swiss.
DeleteFirst time I ate in a mexican restaurant (a genuine one at that) was in Rock Island, IL in 1973. Musta snuck up the Ole Missisipp or something.
DeleteSeveral authentic restaurants in Lansing, mostly Mexican, though one of the owners told me that finding fresh ingredients year round in Michigan for reasonable prices is a challenge.
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