According to the annual Polish Festival in Portland, being Polish apparently means:
Beer, sausage, dancing and Chopin.
I can get behind that.
I've often felt, as a white American, a strange dearth of culture. Sure, we Americans have our contrived consumer culture, with our Christmas and our Fourth of July and all the requisite plastic trimmings. We even have our national heroes and our legends, with our George Washington and our Johnny Appleseed. But it all seems so bland, so saccharine and so... recent.
I don't know if I'm the only one who is left empty by the vapidity of most American "culture", but the result for me is that I've always been really interested in learning about other cultures, especially those that belonged to my great-great grandparents.
As far as I know, bits of me belong to the Irish, the British and the Poles. Part of being American means that most of my ancestors came here running from something, be it famine, persecution, or war. On top of that, the pressure to assimilate to American ways has always been great. So, much of my family history stops about 2 generations back. I have one great-grandfather who was a run-away and never spoke of his family, and another who escaped communist Russian rule in Poland to buy a dairy farm in Vancouver. And that's where the knowledge ends.
I've always felt closer to the Irish side of my family, mostly because I spent more time with my Irish grandmother than any of my other grandparents. But she was more southern than Irish (she grew up in Mississippi) and the cultural wisdom she imparted to me was limited to Jesus, Yams and racism (seriously). So it was interesting to learn a little about Polish culture, even if it was just in a form easily digestible for the masses (i.e. kielbasa).
The dancing was great, the beer was amazing, and who doesn't like a little Chopin? I think I'll join the Polish Association, and see if i can find an Irish one too. At the very least, maybe I can learn a few new dance moves.
Beer, sausage, dancing and Chopin.
I can get behind that.
I've often felt, as a white American, a strange dearth of culture. Sure, we Americans have our contrived consumer culture, with our Christmas and our Fourth of July and all the requisite plastic trimmings. We even have our national heroes and our legends, with our George Washington and our Johnny Appleseed. But it all seems so bland, so saccharine and so... recent.
I don't know if I'm the only one who is left empty by the vapidity of most American "culture", but the result for me is that I've always been really interested in learning about other cultures, especially those that belonged to my great-great grandparents.
As far as I know, bits of me belong to the Irish, the British and the Poles. Part of being American means that most of my ancestors came here running from something, be it famine, persecution, or war. On top of that, the pressure to assimilate to American ways has always been great. So, much of my family history stops about 2 generations back. I have one great-grandfather who was a run-away and never spoke of his family, and another who escaped communist Russian rule in Poland to buy a dairy farm in Vancouver. And that's where the knowledge ends.
I've always felt closer to the Irish side of my family, mostly because I spent more time with my Irish grandmother than any of my other grandparents. But she was more southern than Irish (she grew up in Mississippi) and the cultural wisdom she imparted to me was limited to Jesus, Yams and racism (seriously). So it was interesting to learn a little about Polish culture, even if it was just in a form easily digestible for the masses (i.e. kielbasa).
The dancing was great, the beer was amazing, and who doesn't like a little Chopin? I think I'll join the Polish Association, and see if i can find an Irish one too. At the very least, maybe I can learn a few new dance moves.
Indeed, for us white Americans, (at least, Yankees, I feel like the South maybe has a bit more of its own culture, at least better "traditional american food") culture seems most interesting when sought in our European ancestry. I'm half French-Canadian (which is its own colonial mish-mash anyway, but at least some of my ancestors have been in Canada since about the 1600's, when they were run out of France) and half Irish, Swiss German, Lithuanian Jewish, Cherokee and Sioux. I don't know a ton about what my ancestors did besides what kind of food they ate, and that on my Mom's side they were mostly farmers who got starved out of everyplace until ending up in the Pacific Northwest. It gives me a certain take on people who hate immigrants though.... a lot of the things they say about the Mexicans or Russians or whoever they were saying about the Irish when they first came over... so who would I be to throw a stone?
ReplyDeletesorry, this is very lengthy. I have lots of thoughts when it comes to this sort of thing.