Did you know almost half the girls in Cleveland are half Irish, half Polish? That is a fact I made up just now. - Bridget's right it seems.
Like many of my generation and possibly the previous, many of our parents were no longer obligated to marry within ethnicity, as the common bond of Catholicism tended to be sufficient, and we were mostly potato-eating peasant stock anyway on either side anyway, with some sense of diluted and abstract ethnicity.
I don't identify strongly with either side, as my parents and grandparents have little in the way of nationalistic tendencies, though I've evidently got rabble-rousers of the Easter Rising variety from way back when. I don't do much for St. Patrick's Day because while I enjoy infrequent libations, I don't drink in large quantities and can't stand large masses of drunk people. I don't like most bars. I think corned beef is gross, never tell anyone to "Erin Go Bragh" and the caricature of Irish culture gets to be a bit much.
It was bad enough in grade school doing fake stepdancing in music class or having your first grade teacher suggest adding "O'" or "Mc" to the front of your last name which looks really stupid when you've got a long certain ethnic surname like mine.
I dig the poetry and art, and the mythology and the music, but not on March 17th. Some people I know are way into the whole Irish festival thing and seeing these sucky local bands that sound great when you've chugged too much Guinness but having a fiddler in your group doesn't make it more authentic, and IRA t-shirts are not cool.
Still, despite my previous paragraphs, this is the best Deep Purple tribute act turned 70's punk band ever. I think one of the reasons why "The Kids" go back to the early punk acts has to do with some sense of relevance to the current situation paired with anger and power chords.
Showing posts with label roots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roots. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
the breaks...
Christmas was wonderful this year with no car crashes or drama, even though we all got the flu one day after another. We did the traditional Polish fish and kluski, breaking the oplatek together before us 'kids' split off for Apples to Apples.
I wasn't expecting everyone to still be hanging out when I split to go to Midnight Mass with a friend from church. We both grew up Polish and Catholic before our search for God took us to the same place, but those roots run deep, that staying up late to sit there and listen to the choir, bask in the echoing quietness, the incense and candlelight. If anything we believe more than we once did.
Most of my cousins on the other side came in on Christmas and we joke that the alcohol consumption has gone up massively in the past few years, which has something to do with all of us getting older, and I got some family history about relatives who were in the IRA and how everyone ended up where they did way back when because back then no one else talked about things.
But it's a week off, and I've got some fresh stuff for my show to get a good world format going again, and friends coming in to visit, and hopefully a trip to the art museum to check out that medieval relics exhibit. It's nice to have a winter break again.
I wasn't expecting everyone to still be hanging out when I split to go to Midnight Mass with a friend from church. We both grew up Polish and Catholic before our search for God took us to the same place, but those roots run deep, that staying up late to sit there and listen to the choir, bask in the echoing quietness, the incense and candlelight. If anything we believe more than we once did.
Most of my cousins on the other side came in on Christmas and we joke that the alcohol consumption has gone up massively in the past few years, which has something to do with all of us getting older, and I got some family history about relatives who were in the IRA and how everyone ended up where they did way back when because back then no one else talked about things.
But it's a week off, and I've got some fresh stuff for my show to get a good world format going again, and friends coming in to visit, and hopefully a trip to the art museum to check out that medieval relics exhibit. It's nice to have a winter break again.
Monday, October 18, 2010
everyone knows this is nowhere...
My dad and I took a roadtrip to beautiful Belmont County to visit relatives and get out of the city and it was the perfect day to drive around listening to "Everyone Knows This is Nowhere" and "The Joshua Tree," as I'm wondering why these two records feel so American when they're not, but they sound so good and epic when driving through tiny towns under huge blue skies as the colors turn to yellow and rust.
I wonder how these towns hold on, and I see creeks where the water is rusty and hills that have been carved out by strip mining, empty farmhouses with torn curtains waving in the breeze, old cars rusting in back yards.
We stopped and visited relatives and I heard stories about working in coal mines, the way that things have changed since then, and caught up on the family gossip, since my grandma's passed away, no one knows what everyone's up to anymore since she was the link between us in Cleveland and them in Maynard.
A lot of people weren't home, so we didn't end up staying overnight like we planned, but it was good to see the aunts, uncles, and cousins that I did know, and to end up in places that I've never been to before as we took detours and back roads so steep and narrow I wondered if we were going to get stranded and also how my relatives drive their big old Cadillacs and Crown Vics up and down these steep gravel roads on precarious hills.
We stopped by to visit a few of my uncles but nobody was home. I'd never been to some of these places before, but my dad knew every watering hole and uncle's house including Joe's where he jokes about his six Cadillacs that rust in the yard along with all the ephemera he's picked up over the last few decades.
The drive home was beautiful and I got to have some great conversations with my dad and indulge my artistic id by taking photos of everything I could snap from the car windows. I'd love to get down there more, to be somewhere so different and yet so familiar, the place where my roots were and where I came from.
I crashed on a friend's couch that night when I came home and then painted my new kitchen and moved more stuff over. I couldn't stay over that night and didn't want to go home so I studied for my Latin American History midterm at a coffeeshop and walked around Lakewood talking to the partner in crime on the phone before tiring myself out sufficiently.
My dad and adopted uncle and a couple friends of mine helped me move the big stuff that morning, I got free tickets to see "The Screwtape Letters" that afternoon and then picked up my former college roomie to go see Greg Dulli do an "intimate set" at the Grog Shop, which made me realize that I am still more of a fan of the full band setup (even though the violinist/cellist was amazing) and that his fanbase has a surprising amount of very drunk and obnoxious people.
I mean, really, it's the first time my personal space was blatantly violated, the women (I say "women" because they were older than me) were trying to throw themselves at this aging rock icon with a serious self-hating streak, the dudes were completely wasted and couldn't keep their hands to themselves, and I was a bit cranky and sore from having moved all day and seen enough dysfunction in the past few months to really not want to hear about more of it.
It's back to the daily for me after two days off and a weekend of moving and movement, trying to impose order on the jumble of boxes and bags, adjust to living upstairs and taking into consideration that the floors are thinner than I thought, and the little kids living below me need to go to bed early, that my gas doesn't get turned on until Thursday when I can be home and therefore I have no heat, hot water, or a working stove, so I pile up the covers and my grandma's feather bed, eat takeout, and wait for things to start to feel a little more stable than they do right now.
I wonder how these towns hold on, and I see creeks where the water is rusty and hills that have been carved out by strip mining, empty farmhouses with torn curtains waving in the breeze, old cars rusting in back yards.
We stopped and visited relatives and I heard stories about working in coal mines, the way that things have changed since then, and caught up on the family gossip, since my grandma's passed away, no one knows what everyone's up to anymore since she was the link between us in Cleveland and them in Maynard.
A lot of people weren't home, so we didn't end up staying overnight like we planned, but it was good to see the aunts, uncles, and cousins that I did know, and to end up in places that I've never been to before as we took detours and back roads so steep and narrow I wondered if we were going to get stranded and also how my relatives drive their big old Cadillacs and Crown Vics up and down these steep gravel roads on precarious hills.
We stopped by to visit a few of my uncles but nobody was home. I'd never been to some of these places before, but my dad knew every watering hole and uncle's house including Joe's where he jokes about his six Cadillacs that rust in the yard along with all the ephemera he's picked up over the last few decades.
The drive home was beautiful and I got to have some great conversations with my dad and indulge my artistic id by taking photos of everything I could snap from the car windows. I'd love to get down there more, to be somewhere so different and yet so familiar, the place where my roots were and where I came from.
I crashed on a friend's couch that night when I came home and then painted my new kitchen and moved more stuff over. I couldn't stay over that night and didn't want to go home so I studied for my Latin American History midterm at a coffeeshop and walked around Lakewood talking to the partner in crime on the phone before tiring myself out sufficiently.
My dad and adopted uncle and a couple friends of mine helped me move the big stuff that morning, I got free tickets to see "The Screwtape Letters" that afternoon and then picked up my former college roomie to go see Greg Dulli do an "intimate set" at the Grog Shop, which made me realize that I am still more of a fan of the full band setup (even though the violinist/cellist was amazing) and that his fanbase has a surprising amount of very drunk and obnoxious people.
I mean, really, it's the first time my personal space was blatantly violated, the women (I say "women" because they were older than me) were trying to throw themselves at this aging rock icon with a serious self-hating streak, the dudes were completely wasted and couldn't keep their hands to themselves, and I was a bit cranky and sore from having moved all day and seen enough dysfunction in the past few months to really not want to hear about more of it.
It's back to the daily for me after two days off and a weekend of moving and movement, trying to impose order on the jumble of boxes and bags, adjust to living upstairs and taking into consideration that the floors are thinner than I thought, and the little kids living below me need to go to bed early, that my gas doesn't get turned on until Thursday when I can be home and therefore I have no heat, hot water, or a working stove, so I pile up the covers and my grandma's feather bed, eat takeout, and wait for things to start to feel a little more stable than they do right now.
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