Another American Adventure: A Ukrainian Festival

Sunday, September 26, 2010

A Ukrainian Festival

Sometimes following a whim can lead to interesting things. In this case it was a sign on the side of the road that read: Ukrainian Art Festival, 6th Street, Ambridge PA. We had not idea where Ambridge was, so we put it into the GPS and found out it was 12 miles away.

It turns out that Ambridge is an old river town - on the Ohio River south of Freedom. The Ukrainian Art Festival was hosted by SS Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church. The other Church in town was Byzantine.

When we were in Prague I remember telling a shopkeeper that I didn’t even know where the Ukraine was. I’m still not real sure. But I am charmed by the people, their art, and especially their music.

2 comments:

BarbaraSeptember 26, 2010 at 9:57 AM
Gorgeous Pysanky! Wow! One of my students gave me a painted egg one year. I still have it and bring it out at Eastertime. There is a considerable Ukrainian population in Canada and in Montreal. Did you have anything to eat while you were there?
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beth cioffolettiSeptember 26, 2010 at 2:54 PM
We had already had lunch so we didn't have any of the dishes that smelled so good - looked like a kind of beet soup, sauerkraut, sausages. But we did try some of their pastries that were yummy.

I love the painted eggs too. I probably would have bought one but that we are on a "plan" whereby we really can't add anything to the stuff that we are carting around. Sometimes getting a photo of something that is beautiful is enough for me. Then I don't have to have it.
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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.