Recently on Facebook, “Пані Стефа” shared a post about Galician cuisine using Galician culinary vocabulary. I’m familiar with many but not all words. Original post found here. Баняк, ринка, миска і тареля в креденсі. Зупа з ляним тістом і росіл з клюсками, налиті кохлею в таріль. Салатка в салятерці. Мізерія […]

Recently, Gazeta.ua published an article (in Ukrainian) about soccer in interwar Galicia, and it includes a list of soccer terms used in Galicia in that period. In the diaspora we still call soccer (football) копаний м’яч (literally, “kicked ball”), the term that was used in pre-WWII Galicia. Today in Ukraine, […]

Nestor Makhno (1888-1934) was a Ukrainian anarcho-communist revolutionary and the commander of an independent anarchist army in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922. Nestor Makhno’s last wife was a teacher from Huliaypole, Halyna Kuzmenko. They were married in 1919. Together they crossed the Romanian border, escaping the Bolsheviks. […]

The village of Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago, incorporated in 1869, has still a few remnants from its earliest years found in the infrastucuture and architecture.  In particular, in the yards of some of the oldest houses that date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuies one can find […]

My great grandmother had the honor of meeting Ivan Franko, who used to visit her aunt and uncle’s library in the village of Tsishky (today Chishky), near Oleskyi Zamok. Her aunt and uncle were Toma Dutkevych, the parish priest and one of the founders of the agricultural organization Silskyi Hospodar, […]

Olena Kulchytska was a Galician Modernist, legendary Lvivian, famous artist, and skilled teacher. She is my favorite Ukrainian artist; in particular, I like how she combines Secession and Ukrainian folk art. Furthermore, she lived about 5 minutes away from where I live in Lviv, and in the interwar period in […]

Lviv has always felt like my native town; however, in recent times none of my ancestors were from here. But in the last few years I discovered that my direct ancestors on two sides of my family (Polish and Austrian) did live in Lviv – though over 200 years ago, in […]

Mikolasch Passage was a glass-covered shopping arcade, which housed two cinemas, restaurants, cafes, and shops. The passage was built between 1898 and 1900. One entrance was from Kopernyka Street, through the entrance of Piotr Mikolasch’s famous pharmacy. (In 1853 in Piotr Mikolasch’s pharmacy, Jogann Zeh and Ignacy Lukasiewicz invented the […]

“If the real Jewish music of Transylvania is gone, this disc makes sure it will not be forgotten.” – See more here.

My paternal grandfather was born in the village of Lybokhora (Turka District), the “capital” of Boyko instrumental music. His parents, who were from the Sambir and Lviv regions, moved to this Carpathian village in the early 1900s to direct and teach at the local school. This is a picture from […]