Svacina Project

My parents' deep freezer is an amazing place. There aren't many shelves, so the ones that are there (and the shelves in the door) are stacked from the bottom of one to the bottom of another, front to back with frosty packages, some commercial and some things packaged by my parents in Ziplock bags and Tupperware containers. I don't know how they can possibly find anything at the back without taking dozens of pounds of food out first to get to it. It is intimidating and comforting at the same time. My parents could eat for weeks without going to the grocery store. There are leftovers, of course, plus all cuts of meat bought when on special, vegetables from overabundant gardens, game and fish from family and friends, and store-bought prepared meals for busy nights. A month or so ago, I took home a bag of catfish fillets caught by Aunt Deneise and Uncle Gary. At least that's what I thought I was taking home. The Ziplock bag had the word "catfish" scrawled across...

When my 14-year-old was in preschool Montessori, he had a classmate whose grandmother's last name was Tugendhat. I knew it sounded familiar, but couldn't figure out where I'd heard it. Then on a playdate, Marcia asked about my Czech background. She, too, had a Czech background, and I realized where I'd heard the unusual last name. Many people who've been to the city of Brno in southern Moravia in the Czech Republic have visited the Villa T ugendhat . It is considered a masterpiece of modern architecture, designed by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and built between 1928-1930. The residence is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, reopened in 2012 after restoration. The fascinating story of the house can be read on the Villa T ugendhat  website. Even though I've been to Brno three times, I've never visited the house. The Villa Tugendhat. Brno, Moravia, Czech Republic. It was built for Fritz and Grete Tugendhat, who were my friend Marcia...

Summer in Texas means church picnics. The website www.texasczechs.com lists the dates for over 60 statewide throughout the year. But from May through September, there is a concentration of events in the predominantly Czech and German Catholic churches in Fayette and Lavaca Counties in South Central Texas. On a hot Sunday in July (the 21st this year), the Ascension of Our Lord Catholic Church in the community of Moravia hosts its annual picnic, which raises funds for upkeep of the church, its halls, and cemetery. Local residents, their children and grandchildren, have continued this tradition for decades - like Gene Marie and Arnold Bohuslav - Texas Czechs that have been living in the community their whole lives and cooking at the picnic for most of that time. Gene Marie and Arnold Bohuslav   Moravia is a tiny community (less than 200 people) in Lavaca County locatable by finding the intersection of Farm roads 957 and 532. Though originally settled by Angl...

I'm sitting at my dining table eating a bowl of garlic soup and thinking about my great grandfather, Alois J. Morkovsky. The story my mother tells me is that he would ask my grandmother to make the soup for him when he was feeling under the weather, like coming down with a cold.  (He lived with her and her family in his later years.) I have friends in the Czech Republic who recommend the same treatment (eating garlic) for a cold along with tying a scarf around one's neck. The soup I'm eating today evolved over the last week or so. On Sunday, the 30th, I went to Hallettsville for the annual Morkovsky reunion where I got several people to tell me stories about Alois Morkovsky. My parents and I stayed at my grandmother's house (she passed in January of 2012) and I helped my parents make roast pork, a squash casserole, and potatoes with butter and onions for the event. When it came time to drain the water from boiling the potatoes, both my mother and I had the sam...

I love potlucks. Last night, I attended the monthly meeting of the Austin Czech Historical Association (ACHA) at the Gethsemane Lutheran Church Fellowship Hall. Members share a potluck meal together and then listen to a speaker or musician or other interesting person present some topic related to Czech or Texas-Czech culture. This group has the evening's timing down right. BEFORE the program, we go through the line on either side of the long tables set with dishes and we make our plates. And the event is BYOB, which people do. We are Czech, after all. I heard someone comment that this evening there were too many meats and not enough vegetables in reaction to a previous meeting where the opposite was true. That's the nature of potlucks and the fun. I personally loved having three kinds of sausage on my plate. And Czechs do know how to balance the flavors of a meal. A little rich pork and something sour to cut it - pickles, olives, vinegar...

On Sunday the 10th, my cohort Lori Najvar and I went to the annual church picnic in the community of St. Mary's outside of Hallettsville on FM 340.    Parishioner volunteers measuring out picnic stew to sell by the quart in the "drive-thru" line. The first religious activity in Lavaca County happened in the area around the present St. Mary’s Catholic Church, near Smothers Creek, which dates back to a missionary effort in 1841.  And the beginning of Sacred Heart Parish in Hallettsville (where my parents were married) resulted from this effort. My mother's father's side of the family has had their reunion at the St. Mary's church hall the last few years, so I'd been there several times for that event.    But Lori and I were there to work - interviewing, filming and photographing for the travelling exhibit we're producing called Texas Czechs: Rooted in Tradition . Lori's been collecting film footage from church picnics i...

On April 29th I returned from a week-long trip to Sweden, where I spent half the time in Stockholm and half the time on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. This trip was a very long time coming... in fact, since my dear friend Laura moved to Sweden in 1989. Neither Gotland nor Stockholm were places I expected to run into signs of Texas or Czech culture. But to my surprise, there was a Mexican restaurant in the medieval town of Visby on Gotland. We did NOT partake, though, even out of extreme curiosity. I grew up on Tex-Mex and did not want my ideas of it sullied. And with dishes like Fajita Tropicana on their menu, I was not hopeful.    Later in the week, we sought out a very popular Czech pub in Stockholm called Soldaten Svejk (Soldier Švejk) named after the character in the satirical Jaroslav Hašek novel about a soldier during World War 1. Laura had been there several times, never able to get a table because the wait was so long. But one quick r...