The Carpatho-Rusyns were everywhere at this year’s 40th Anniversary Folk Festival - with a beautiful new “wooden church” food booth, spectacular stage performances, and the C-RS sponsored Christmas “Coming Home” cultural display & Rusyn Marketplace. We wish to thank every one of our members who together made such a tremendous effort and helped our participation in the Festival to be the great success that it was. These members volunteered their time at the Rusyn Marketplace and at the Cultural Display: Bonnie Balas, Sharon Chernick, John Chura, Rich Custer, John Dudak, Dave Felix, Sandy Gall, John Gembinski, Mary Gembinski, Jerry Jumba, Keith Koshute, Emma Lazorchik, George Lemak, Helen Lemak, Tina Lesko, John Mihaloew, Cynthia Mustari, John Righetti, Cathy Silvestri, Maria Silvestri, Helen Timo, John Timo, Susan Timo, Sandy Zenk. And we also thank especially everyone from the Slavjane Folk Ensemble (a C-RS Group Member) who also undertook the tremendous effort of sponsorship as they have done year after year! We got to meet many members of the ACRY (American Carpatho-Russian Youth), especially from New York City and Binghamton, who were attending their annual Bowling Tournament which was held in Pittsburgh this year. A special treat was the visit of His Grace, Bishop Nichols to our Rusyn cultural display & marketplace. His Grace was also recognized at the Slavjane Folk Ensemble’s performance, and was specially greeted on stage by Dean Poloka (C-RS, Baden, PA) along withthe Slavjane dancers. Thanks to Christina Duranko (C-RS, Pittsburgh, PA) who ran the “ACRY Shuttle” back & forth from the Festival!
The writer Ivan Cendej gave a speaking tour in December 1995 in several Ukrainian centers in the United States: Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York, and North Port and St. Petersburg Florida. His topic was "The Cultural and Political Situation in Transcarpathia Today." During these talks, he portrayed the Rusyn movement (which he terms "political Rusynism") in Subcarpathian Rus' as "inspired by foreign interests and pseudo-intellectuals." The writer, a native of Dubove near Tjacevo in former Marmaroša county, initiated the drive to erect a monument in Uzhorod to Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko, and is a leading critic of the Rusyn national renaissance, frequently heard on the radio and newspapers giving harsh condemnations of the Rusyn national renaissance. One wonders why the Rusyn community in America was completely ignored since the talks were promoted only among Ukrainians! It's just one more example of the Ukrainian community's long history of condemning Rusyn "separatism" without any attempts even to involve our community in the discussion.
The Management and Engineering Department, and the Stevens Business Incubator, of the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, hosted sixteen members of the Slovak Republic. The Slovaks were there to participate in a week-long seminar on the development and management of business incubators. This seminar is the first of three seminars on Entrepreneurial Business Development funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The other seminars are given in Slovakia in June and November.
The recipients of the grant are Ms. Gina Boesch, Director of the Stevens Business Incubator, and Professor John Mihalasky (C-RS, Clifton, NJ), Exemplary Service Professor of the Management and Engineering Management Department of Stevens. The coordinator in Slovakia for this series is Ing. Artur Hausler, President of the Poradenská Odborná Služba company of Bratislava.
The Slovak delegation was composed of federal, county and regional officials, academics, business consultants, entrepreneurs, and a student from the Economics University in Bratislava. Among the delegates were several Rusyns, including Professor Ing. Myroslav Zafka, DrSc. (a native of Bardejov in northeast Slovakia), who is also President of the Slovak Quality Control Society.
The June seminar was on starting a new business, and the November seminar will be on Growing a Business. One aim of this series is to motivate and educate the Slovaks on how to organize and institute business incubators, business centers, and science and technology parks. Another is to educate potential entrepreneurs on how to set up and grow a new business, especially technically-related ones, what problems they will encounter, and providing them with solutions to these problems. In Slovakia, as in the United States, the largest number of jobs are created not by large corporations, but by new start-up companies.
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Last modified on September 27 1997
URL:http://www.carpatho-rusyn.org/crs/america7.htm
Greg Gressa [ggressa@carpatho-rusyn.org]
The Carpatho-Rusyn Knowledge Base