William Penn Life, 2014 (49. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2014-02-01 / 2. szám
Tibor's Take of minutes to another drive, or they can be uploaded to a server or other location and thus be stored "in the cloud." This last option holds the most promise: for better or worse, the Internet is here to stay, and information stored on the Internet can, if handled properly, exist for the rest of human civilization. To be sure, observing the need for greater historical preservation does not mean that other people have not been doing the same thing. One Youngstown, Ohio, area resident, Kalman, videotaped many American-Hungarian events long before I was born. By giving copies of these tapes to my family, Kalman has allowed me to hear the voices and see the ceremonies of decades past. His tapes are a gift to not just historians or ethnographers but also all descendants of our culture. Other individuals engage in this sort of historical preservation as well. I know of a man in Western Pennsylvania who records and catalogs live performances of Hungarian music. Then, there's my father. My father takes photographs. Lots. Of. Photographs. Even though it may drive our family crazy at times, my father has deftly assembled a photographic record of every event that our family has attended over the past few years. Helpfully, these photographs are all on electronic storage devices, enabling easy sharing, editing and copying. These three examples (and I am sure that there are more) indicate how the trappings of our culture may survive far into the future. But, how do we make historical preservation work into the future? Now, the history of our heritage is like a shattered glass, fragmented into many little pieces. Some pieces are larger than others, like the archives of the Cleveland Hungarian Heritage Museum. Some are small, like the private collections of elderly immigrants, with only a few sacred photos, trinkets or records to memorialize each person's own private saga. The more I ruminate on the nature of our culture, the more I realize that the true nature of our heritage is not in the broad, general historical narrative crafted by professors or authors, but in the hundreds and thousands of individual stories that burn bright for a brief period of time, like a spark in the night air. Truth resides not in the mosaic, but the individual pieces of which it is composed. But, when the individual pieces crack, fall out or fade, the entire mosaic begins to wither. This is what this month's column proposes: to save the little pieces. Going forward, this would largely take a centralized effort of some sort. Sure, individuals could scan and burn music and photos to electronic media on their own terms. But beyond that, there is the secondary problem of ensuring that even the electronic media exists, to avoid the inevitable shoebox full of CDs thrown away upon a move or an estate sale. In short, what the American-Hungarian community needs is a central repository for its historical information, that patchwork quilt of more than 150 years of baptisms, weddings, suppers, festivals and funerals—the guideposts of the rich lives of Magyars that need preservation, that deserve preservation. If such a repository exists, then the local clubs of our community need to work with that repository. If one does not exist, then it may be necessary to create one. Otherwise, the vast historical knowledge, the depth of the American-Hungarian experience, may be lost with the long passage of time. Time is running out: photos decay; records get worn out; memories fade. The time to work to preserve our heritage is now. Without our own individual efforts, the collective history of our community could be lost for time immemorial. Unlike the many other factors that affect our heritage on a daily basis, this is one that we can control. / Éljen a Magyar! Tibor II Tibor Check Jr. is a member of Branch 28 Youngstown, Ohio, and a student at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He serves as a host of the “Souvenirs of Hungary” weekly radio show broadcast on WKTL-90.7 FM in Struthers, Ohio. Let's hear your take Let me know how you enjoy my thoughts and views on growing up Hungarian Style. If you have any questions or comments about me or my column, please email me at: silverkingl937@yahoo.com, or drop me a letter in care of the William Penn Association, 709 Brighton Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15233. William Penn Life 0 February 2014 0 7
