GROUPS OF ETHNICITY IN HUNGARY : The History and Present-day Organization of Hungarian Ethnology

"Reaching over present-day borders, partly from geographical, partly from historical consideration, we can divide that part of the Carpathian Basin into four large sections where the mother tongue of the people who live there is Hungarian. Transdanubia (the Dunántúl) is the western territory bordered by the Danube and the Dráva rivers, and there are also smaller Hungarian areas in Austria. Upper Hungary (the Felföld) contains the northern hill and mountain area and reaches into Slovakia. The Great Plain (Alföld) is the central plain of the Carpathian Basin, which continues into Yugoslavia on the south. The Hungarian ethnic groups of Transylvania (Erdély) in places even sweep through the crest of the Eastern Carpathians. We will follow this geographical division in the following chapters." Just a tiny excerpt from a paper entitled "The History and Present-day Organization of Hungarian Ethnology. "

ORAGAMI ROZSA

Thinking of the paper flowers I saw as a child decorating fire place mantles...

BASKET OF RED AND PINK ROSES

KURGYIS ATTILA : DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES

HUNGARIAN STEREOTYPE : THEY INSIST THEIR GUESTS EAT UNTIL THEY ARE READY TO ROLL OUT THE DOOR

If you are a guest in a Hungarian's home you must eat, eat, eat.
Try everything twice.

Here in the United States at a Magyar-American's home ?

Help them eat all the left overs in the fridge, or at least not leave anything uneaten at the table.

If you do not, you will INSULT them!

This goes double for drinking. You must keep up with or exceed your host.

THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE : PBS THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE :MAGYAR AMERICAN FILM REVIEW

I found this Golden Gate Bridge video more interesting than I thought it would be, because of the Trenton - New Jersey connection. You see a lot of Hungarian immigrants were wire workers in Trenton, and worked for the company that made the wire - those long thick cords of them - for suspension bridges like the Golden Gate Bridge, which opened for traffic in May of 1937. THE ROEBLING wire manufacturing company of Trenton - New Jersey, was essential to the building of the bridge. Joseph B. Stauss was the engineer whose life mission it was to build a suspension bridge over the dangerous churning waters of the San Francisco Bay, but he didn't last to project's end.




2004 WGBH Educational Foundation.
PBS VIDEO... THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE : A Wonder of the Modern World"

I also found the Golden Gate Bridge project interesting because the bridge was build during the Great Depression and kept a lot of men working though this was very dangerous work. Typically on every bridge project some workers fell top their death. For the Golden Gate lives were saved due to a safety net that was designed to catch the falls.

The net was an expensive but worthy innovation. It might have given the workers more confidence so they could work faster but then a heavy piece of equipment fell into the net which didn't hold and took workers with it.

C 2014 All Rights Reserved  Magyar-American BlogSpot

PITTSBURGH PENNSYLVANIA'S LAST HUNGARIAN CLUB CLOSES!

Breaking News...

Fortune has it that there is still a club in McKeeport. Linking to the AP Press article about the club: some excerpts.

"Today, this two-story brick haven in Hazelwood -- a spartan, smoke-filled forerunner of modern man caves -- passes into the hands of Pittsburgh Firefighters Local No. 1. The union, which paid $75,000, will use it for offices and a social hall after renovating the building at 120 Flowers Ave.

The last one remaining in the city limits, this Hungarian club was chartered in 1918, said Mike Kerekgyarto, a 37-year-old plumber who lives in Lincoln Place and is the organization's youngest member and its president. (The oldest member is Zoltan Palfy, age 92.)

"It was a place where everybody could sit down and talk about certain issues, political problems, family problems. You could always get advice," he said, adding that members included doctors, lawyers and judges, as well as the late Joe Chiodo, who owned Chiodo's Tavern in Homestead and whose wife was Hungarian.

Members said the causes for the closing included a 10 percent drink tax that took effect in 2008 and the club's dwindling membership, which has dropped from an all-time high of 1,500 to 35.

By the 1940s, more than 1,000 people belonged to the Hungarian club. On Friday nights, "In the 1960s, they used to have two bands, one downstairs and one upstairs. If you were not there by 5 p.m., you weren't getting a chair or a table," Kerekgyarto added. Now, the small Hazelwood-based fraternity will move southeast to McKeesport's Hungarian Social Club on Walnut Street which has about 65 members."

BLOND HORSE

ARE YOU ADDICTED TO YOUR CELL PHONE?

Pestering Google prompts to link this blog to a cell phone, which I will not and cannot do, have me wondering if soon Google will make it mandatory to have an operational cell phone in order to link to their services. I hope not. While I tend to march with technology at the back of the parade, that is way too Big Brother for me.

Over the last few years I've gone from a plan with very few minutes that I was so happy to be out of, to a prepaid phone I'm more satisfied with. Within my city both carriers have significant areas where there is no reception and there are times when messages come in hours later after they were left, floating around in space I guess. I found myself waiting until the day before my unused minutes expired to make dozens of phone calls to use those minutes, and found that the limited day minutes didn't work for business and the free after 7 pm and before 7 am calls didn't work for my personal life, especially not long distance, which had been my primary motivation for signing up in the first place, to kill the long distance land line bill.

I left that phone in a restaurant a month before the plan expired and decided to try life without a phone. I went 4 1/2 months before I got a prepaid plan with another carrier, and so far I've paid on time, without getting any benefit to my credit rating. I don't care. I like the idea that I can walk away without any penalty. For ten dollars more than I was playing on the previous plan I have texting and internet. I'm presently really irritated with two friends who want to text instead of speak, and who don't know that 9:30 PM is a little late to keep up the conversation about nothing important.

Once in a while I forget my cell phone at home and get to experience what life was like just a few years ago before I felt insecure without a cell on me. The way I feel as though I'm missing something really concerns me. When I get really radical I wonder when exactly is it going to be manditory for us humans to be chipped the way they do dogs and cats these days.

REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE PRETTY SURE THAT IF THERE WAS AN EMERGENCY YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO SUMMON HELP? REMEMBER WHEN YOU WORKED YOUR WHOLE DAY AT WORK FOR YOUR BOSS, making a limited number of personal calls on your break or lunch hour? REMEMBER WHEN YOU GOT HOME and GOT CALLS FROM FRIENDS IN THE EVENING TO MAKE PLANS FOR THE WEEKEND? REMEMBER WHEN YOU COULD GO TO A MOVIE, PLAY, or THE LIBRARY and not hear buzzing and ringing? REMEMBER WHEN YOU GOT ON A BUS AND YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO OTHER PEOPLE'S PERSONAL CONVERSATIONS? REMEMBER WHEN YOU KNEW PRIVATE WAS PRIVATE AND YOU DIDN'T MAKE OR TAKE PERSONAL CALLS WHILE SHOPPING AT THE GROCERY STORE? I've made the mistake of forgetting and found myself followed down the sidewalk by a person or two who were listening and wanted more information : this is no way to make friends.

THE TRUTH IS, most of the time your phone should be OFF.

I'm thinking of going without a cell phone for a few months to see if I can even live the way I've lived most of my life till I got one.

CZISKO : HUNGARIAN COWBOYS

Hortobagy National Park is one scene of the traditional Hungarian cowboys of the great Hungarian plain - the Cziskos.

Here is the explaination this YouTube video poster wrote : In this video I proudly represent the CSIKÓS (Hungarian horse-herder) from the region of HORTOBÁGY and HAJDÚ county. We´ve been using the whip since ancient times to push the horse herd in the favoured direction. The animals react to the sound but aren´t touched by the whip. Due to the oppressive rule of the Habsburg dynasty, many herdsmen of the Hungarian lowlands became highwaymen or/and joined the freedom fight of 1848. The light cavalry evolving from the csikós used the whip as a weapon. The act of laying down the horse derives from ancient Hungarian warfare. It was a way of staying unseen by the enemy. The highwaymen also applied this technique to perform robberies on surprise.

Standing on the horse doesn´t cause pain, it simply demonstrates the close connection between man and animal.

In today´s time, there are still a few traditional horsemen left, who do the work. Cracking the whip during a demonstration like this is also an act of honoring the land and its people. The herdsman is a symbol for freedom and independence and carries the old spirit of the nation.

WATER POLO : HUNGARY PLAYS THE UNITED STATES

I'm learning that water polo is a very serious sport in Hungary. The Hungarian Team has played Greece, Russia, Great Britian, Italy... I have to admit that I like the videos, such as this one, that I see on Youtube, because whatever team, these are some handsome men! Linking to the Hungarian National Water Polo team site,

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

AKRON HUNGARIAN AMERICAN CLUB

Since 1923... join them for Father's Day Celebrations, or perhaps GRAPE DAY in early October (Do they get into the grape vats in Akron? (I've always wanted to stomp the grapes!)

Here April 2022   AKRON HUNGARIAN AMERICANS

THE MAGYAR - KOREAN CONNECTION - LANGUAGE LINKS? DNA?

I'm sure you've heard. There are many theories about who the original Magyar - Hungarians - were and where they came from, including a story about the founding of Hungary that involves men marrying fairy women, following a white stag though the mountains, spitting into two groups, and one of them finding a new country to live in. Linguistic experts have been arguing over it, but it is commonly believed that Hungarian has only two other language links - Korean and Finnish.

I've been reading DNA sites because I think THERE LIES THE ANSWER, and one of then suggests that the Magyars are the ORIGINAL SUMARIANS. One of them said that about 17% of today's Hungarians show evidence of Asian Blood. I think I'm one of those 17 %. Someday I'll take a few different DNA tests and see what comes up.

I notice that readers check in once in a while from Korea, and I would love to know what the Koreans think of their possible connection - 1000 or more years ago - with the Magyars!

AN INTERVIEW (EXTENSIVE!) WITH ARPAD GONCZ : PAST PRESIDENT OF HUNGARY : IDEAS HAVE A LONGER HALF LIFE

This interview is extensive, with a great number of pictures...

Árpád Göncz: "Ideas have a Longer Half-life"

"Whether you see your life as successful or unsuccessful depends on what kind of hearth and home you set out from. I can call my life a string of collapses, failures and blind alleys. And I can say I've ended up, after twists and turns, just where I wanted to be, and I can do, I'm free to do the things I want to do for the rest of my life... I'm not at odds with myself, I'm at odds with the world; I'm just as out of sorts as everyone else. But I feel I can allow myself, in the time I'm left with, to live for the future, not in the past. And if there should ever be five minutes, five political minutes in Hungary when there's a need for a man who can get on with both communists and populars and has a clean record, I'll be here if I'm needed and elsewhere if I'm not."

(From the interview with Árpád Göncz made by András B.
Hegedűs on February 14, 1985)


This is a history lesson that Hungarians are probably familiar with and Americans not.