Family and Cultural Traditions
A tribute to multiculturalism--
within a single family
A poet and her fabric artist cousin sing of three generations of women in their rural Ohio family
High school friends compare the Santa Claus/St. Nicholas legends in their American and Dutch families, respectively.
“Go West, young man, and North, and South, then East again”--mapping one modern family’s diaspora throughout the
United States.
Tribute, here, to what a small, committed group of citizens can do to change the world. Led to action by two visionaries, Fred Holdridge and and Howard Burns, German Village residents were the first in Central Ohio to band together as a society to save the architectural and cultural heritage of their threatened neighborhood from the wrecker’s ball. Once housing for the army of laborers who worked Columbus’ beer breweries, the district rapidly declined after the breweries’ closed down. Efforts of the German Village Society in the early 1980s, inspired by the devotion of Fred and Howard, reversed that trend and soon launched a true renaissance of lovingly restored brick homes,
colorful pocket gardens, an Oktoberfest, an annual home and garden tour, and an outdoor summer theatre series of Shakespeare in Schiller Park.
© 1991 The Public Book
.
Memories of a Midwest childhood