This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - Sugar Creek Slavic Fest

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

It makes sense that someone of Slavic ancestry would want to check out a festival devoted to Pan-Slavic culture.  Mike (half-Polish) talks about his experience at such a festival.

Hi, I'm Mike Chernivsky, and your listen to this podcast is Un Called for. All right, welcome to the podcast, everybody. I hope you having a great day. Now, let's talk festivals, because obviously festivals have been a lot during the summer moments. But one festival in particular I want to talk about, and I'm going to lead into a tangents on Slavic culture. as well. So there's a small town in the KC area. It's called

Sugar Creek. It is right across Independence Avenue from the main parts of Independence. A very small town, but every year now they hold

the Sugar Creek Slavic Festival. And as someone who is himself Slavic, You may have noticed my last name is Chernevsky that points to being Polish, and Polish is one of the many Slavic peoples out there. So talk about the festival itself first now, again, to a little bit on Slavic culture. so the festival itself I actually

I made the first the first time last year and decided to go again this year in fact today when I'm recording this first thing you do is if I play Spark

I was seeing then just stand around my first school bus to come and shovel you to and from the actual festival which is held at a community center right there in Sugar Creek

a very small community center and the big parking lots at the base the center is actually on a hill a very steep hill and a lot of the festivities happen both in the

community center and then the big parking lot just beneath it go in they've got food tends you know with plenty of chairs and seating that you can eat and

you know enjoy yourself despite all the hot weather and everything so I go in the first place I go I'm immediately heading for the Klobasi stand

Gobasi, that's just the way my grandfather pronounced it. It's Polish sausage. You get a Polish dog at a hot dog stand or a ball game. That's a gobbasi. So that's the first place I went was to get a galbasi dog. No sarkrat. I can't stand this stuff. but

yeah mustard ketchup the basic stuff you normally put on a hot dog and that's the that's a damn good

that's Dan Kabasi today um that also had a couple of the other things I took of this time around um

is I am working on a bit of a buzz because there was a bunch of people selling Bohemian liqueurs

Bohemian translation check All right So yeah Just give me a shot of whatever

is closest to Scotch whiskey And yeah There's shots Took this shot Okay hung out for

about an hour and a half before decided to go home get the alcohol through the system and hold on it which by the way word to the wise

don't take a shot as hot weather was there today but still the shot was all right and I think we had some live entertainment's going on as well stage set up I missed the dancers I may have to

check that stick around check that out later on probably next year's festival we'll see but yeah lots of walk around one thing I will point out from Last year, there was a gentleman, the full Polish suit of armor. And that dude was back this year, too, with the same suit of armor. And everything is really cool. Really cool. The cool thing about it said, part of this armor was two feathered poles that come up from the back and kind of curve over the head.

I'd never seen that before last year. and I thought that was pretty damn cool and I'm glad that's part of my heritage because it is a Polish thing one thing I did not do last year but I did do

this year was partake of Pavitza which is a which is kind of a cake like thing

I wouldn't exactly call it a pound cake because this thing falls apart quite easily. But there's a company locally that makes povetica. And they were selling their wares. Yeah, I didn't give this a good try last time. So I'm going to give it a good try this time. and I did the apple simmon

it seems like a good combination with just about anything and yeah it's pretty good that's pretty good so so yeah glad I got to try it this time around and

went in because went into the community center because it was cool looked around there was something like Polish pottery and the Ukrainian ladies were there again this year setting up

and I would be remiss if I didn't point out the Midwest genealogy center in Independence, so they had a booth there part of the Native American public library system from which I recorded the Royalst Town Hall that you probably heard on the podcast already.

Also, the KC Public Library was there, which was interesting because that's usually just KC proper, and even then, just Jackson County is where you'll find

them, whereas the American Public Library, they are all over the suburbs and all over the Norland. So, yeah, but also the K-U-C-R-E-E-S, I think it says, Center for Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies. They had a booth there. I'm now getting emails from them. And, yeah, I guess the gal remember me from last year.

I sent up for your mailing list and getting your emails and that's oh yeah oh yeah fun stuff uh it stuck around for a couple of hours this this time mostly you work work off that alcohol

but uh yeah not a bad experience in one I definitely recommend doing yourself another thing about last year's festival I will go ahead and point out this they honored George Toma

if that name is familiar then you must be a football fan because he's the guy that he's the groundskeeper that curated every single Super Bowl turf until

was he in the last year or the year before but yeah he's the guy that's responsible for doing all the turf day and he did the local teams to Ukrainian, I should point out, so they were inducted him into the

Slavic Hall of Fame and didn't know that that was such a thing. It'd be cool to be a part of that myself if the time ever came but for now I'll just live with the fact that I am

Polish and proud of that heritage a lot of people can see my name and say is that Russian or something no not

no but Russians and Poles we're both we're both Slavic peoples and I'm going to just go to

Wikipedia and we're going to talking about the Slavs. So Slavic peoples are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of

Eurasia. Predominantly inhabit central Europe, eastern Europe, and southeastern Europe. Though there's a large Slavic minority scatter across the Baltic states, northern Asia, and Central Asia.

in a substantial Slavic diaspora in the Americas, Western Europe and Northern Europe and I'm of course part of that diaspora. Early Slavs lived during the migration period in the Eastern, the early Middle Ages, approximately from the 5th to the 10th century A.D. It came to control large parts of central

eastern south east europe between the six and seven centuries beginning in the seventh century they were generally christianized and by the twelfth century they formed the core population of a number of medieval christian states east slavs in the kievan russ south slavs in the bulgarian empire the prince of Serbia, the duchy of Croatia, and the Benin of Bosnia, and Western Slavs, and the Principality of Nietzsche, Great Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, and the Kingdom of Poland. Beginning in the mid-19th century, a pan-Slavic movement had emphasized the common heritage and unity of all the Slavic peoples and it's a good point to time to point out that's the Sugar Creek Slavic Fest is a pan-Slavic festival with the exception of Russians I think every every Slavic group or

most of them most of the big ones were represented here certainly the Polish and the Ukrainians and Czechs and Slovaks were represented here but I didn't see anything with the Russians so the Pan-Slavic movement emphasizes the common heritage

and unity of all Slavic peoples the main focus of the movement was in the Balkans whereas the Russian Empire was a opposed to it. Slavic languages belong to the Baltoslavic branch

of the Indo-European language family. Present-day Slavs are classified in three groups. You have the West Slavs, which are primarily Polish, Czechs, Slovak,

Kashubians, which I know nothing about. Salesians and Swarbs Two other groups I don't know all that much about the Eastern the East Slavs that's

Russians Ukrainians and Belarusians and then you have the South Slavs so think primarily the former Yugoslavia Bosniaks Croats

North Macedonia Canadians, make sure we said, Slavines, Serbs, Montenegrins. Also, Bulgarians would be in this group as well. Bulgaria was the one Slavic country that was not part of Yugoslavia in that region. So though the majority of Slavs are Christians, some groups such as Bosniaks, mostly anti-inized Muslims modern Slavic nations and ethnic groups

are considerably diverse both genetically and culturally and relations between them may range from ethnic solidarity to mutual feelings of hostility

even within the individual groups um uh well given this point in history with Russia

still having invaded Ukraine and a lot of these of the Slavic countries are not

Eastern Slavic that have joined the European Union and NATO and especially Poland uh yeah we don't yeah we're not too uh high on the russians uh right now and i want to specify because i do have friends who are russian that i'm not calling out individual russians just the government

So, going back, of course, to my whole being multilingual thoughts, I'm back in season one. Wow. Back in season one, I'm referencing to, I do not speak a Slavic language. I have attempted to learn Russian, which is quite different. and no the Cyrillic alphabets is not what makes Russian difficult what makes Russian and really all-suffic language is difficult is the fact that the nouns change form I'm used to seeing the verbs change form whether it's in English or in Spanish and most romance languages is the verb that changes form hell even in Japanese the verb will change

form but never the nouns in the Slavic languages the nouns change form and is so fucking confusing and that is what makes

learn a Slavic language difficult good luck does you want to learn Polish, good luck with that. All right. Which does

bring up an interesting fact in that I mentioned the Cyrillic Alphabets. The Slavs Yeah, they're all they're mostly

Christians. but what style Christianity they practice will determines their writing style so there's a relic alphabets usually is used by Slavs who adopted Orthodox Christianity so that be Russians Serbs, Bulgarians, Belarusians, Mastonians, Montenegrins, Catholic Slavs, adopted the Roman alphabet, the Latin alphabet. So that's your Poles, your Czechs, your Slovaks, Croatians. Although Croatian and Serbian are technically the same language. slavines and a few others and of course you have your records like your

Bosniaks who adopted Islam I don't know how that affected their rating system so be it now Each of these groups, of course, has a huge diaspora. In the case of Poles, I'll specifically say Poles, because that's my people. There are 37 million 37 living in Poland that have declared Polish ethnicity. 2011 over 20 million living in

diaspora and I would be in that group 2 and in Canada about 1.1 million polls

living in Canada which I think it is interesting that Canada has that specific breakdown but yeah the food is good

the languages are difficult the traditional dress if you ever see the traditional dress is pretty cool if you're into that sort of thing but

mostly it's A, getting in touch with my roots a little bit, and B, just having a good time in early June. And I will keep going to this festival, and I, and who knows, we might set up a booth there, we'll, we'll see. but it's definitely definitely I'm going to stay on my to-do list I should say that

well that will about wrap it up for this edition of the podcast and we will talk again soon hopefully a little more not drunk

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