Stories

These are stories about my Slovak family going back over 200 years, usually somehow related to food, because that is what we love to grow, pick, make, serve and eat, especially together with friends and family.

Category	The Blog	What it’s About
About being Slovak and Female
	Slovak is a language of Love	What being Slovak means to me
	If you have baked me, so you shall also eat me	The story of Juro Janosik, the Slovak Robin Hood
	Slovak Women – Beautiful, but is that all?	Who are Slovak women?
	If You Are Not Drinking With Us, You Are Drinking Against Us	My family’s contacts across the oceans, wars and generations
	Slovak Women of Vojvodina	About traditional Slovak women
	Celebrating the Female Business Leaders of Washington DC	About being a female CEO in the 21stcentury
Paul and Maria Milec,Pauline’s Parents	So far, mostly stories about WWI
	Coming to America, V1.0	When Paul and Maria first came, to the US, in 1907/8
	Back Home in the Austro-Hungarian Empire	Going back home
	Drafted to the Army, Paul is captured and now a POW	WWI Starts
	A Volunteer Army with no Country is Formed	Czechoslovak Legion is formed
	Get me out of here!	Legion is stuck in the Russian Civil War
	Brother in America, why don’t you join our army?	Call for Slovaks around the world
	All hell breaks loose	Fighting the Bolsheviks
	Cold blooded murder	Russian Czar and family are murdered
	To Strangle at Birth	Czechoslovakia is formed, 1918
	Dream of Moonstruck Idealists	WWI ends
	Around the World and Home at Last	Two years after the end of WWI, the Czechs and Slovaks go home
	The Long Walk Home, Part I	Paul walks home across Siberia
	The Long Walk Home, Part II	Paul arrives home, 1920
	And then there were Two	Death in the Milec family
	Expropriation and the End of a Dream	The bank takes their money
	That Son of Mine	Ludwig, the Milec’s oldest child
	Child of my Right Hand	Another death in the Milec family
	A Decent Man Bakes Kifle	Paul goes back to work in the bakery
	Where Fields of Poppies Grow	The poppy flower and its symbolism
	Greenies	Augustus Sherman photos, Ellis Island immigrants
	The Women Who Sang their Way out of Jail	Mother Jones and the Coal Miners
	Attila’s Successors	Andrew Carnegie and the brutality of work in the mines
	Masters of the Universe	Herbert Spencer, Lewis Hine, Andrew Carnegie and life as an immigrant Slovak
	Frickin’ Hell	The daily deaths of Slovak steel workers in 1895
	The Wrinkled Peapod	Eugenics and the Gegor Mendel
	Barbarianism of the Huns	Canadian internment camps for Eastern Europeans, WWI era
Milec Friends and Family
	Ondrej the Good Shepherd	Milec family friend
	Gypsy Gold	Pauline’s first cousin Mihai
	Land of Opportunity and Freedom	Mihai leaves for the US
	Some Work, Others Merely Daydream	Mihai has a whirlwind romance
The Shusters, Pauline’s Husband’s Family
	Julia Pintir, the Woman Question	Julia, Pauline’s mother in law, and what life is like for a woman born in the 1800’s in Eastern Europe
	Educating Karolina Suster, the Slovak Girl	Karolina, Pauline’s sister in law, defies society and dares to go to school
	Star Lauder	Karolina and Michal Suster’s friend Pavol the poet
	The End of the Golden Horned Bull	The Andel family and loss in Slovakia (Pauline’s in laws)
	Cheating can have deadly consequences	WWI and Michal and Marisa Suster
	Kakaové – Čokoládové Plásty (Oblátky)	Eating too much Plasty
	Beethoven and the Barbequed Ox	Beethoven’s best friend, Niklaus Zmeskall, and my family
	Chances Are	The first triplets are born in Pivnice, 1800’s
	October Sets the Gypsy Blood Astir	Gypsies, then and now
	Black and Blue	Kovačica, Naive Painters, live in a Slovak village in Vojvodina
	Man does not live on Bread, Alone	Food and family
	From the Frying Pan, into the Fire	The Lamos family in Bratislava, 1946 – the Iron Curtain is about to fall
	A Terrible Otherwise	The Lamos family’s attempt to escape from communism
	You had me at Ahoj	Pauline meets Jaro
	The Peasant and the Actor	Jaro and Pauline acting in Slovak theater, 1930’s
	First to the Front	Jaro in the Royal Yugoslav Army
1993	No Justice: To Karla on her 40thbirthday	The unsolved murder of Pauline’s granddaughter
	The Blind Man and the Valley of the Concave Heads	The Blind grave digger and other stories from Dolny Kubin
	Pass the Potatoes, Please	WWII story from Dolny Kubin
About Food
	Bread Rules	Why I love bread
	Chewing the fat	Where old sayings come from
	Ode to the Chicken	Why I love chickens
	Cooking for the Pope – Traditional Czech Recipes	My day of cooking with a chef from Prague
	Zapekana Fazoule – Slovak Cassoulet	My favorite bean casserole, by Jaro
	Dede’s Veal Paprikash	Delicious veal from Jaro’s parents in Petrovac