February 22, 2012 | 12:01 PM | By Meg Cramer
Jillian Jones Sisko of Michigan writes:
Letter-writing has always been an important part of my family’s legacy.
My mother discovered her family origins through letters written in the early 1900′s that were found in a desk drawer in an attic in Epernay, France. The letter was written by my grandfather and addresses to his brother. When my mother discovered the letters, she started communicating with her family.
When my oldest sister left for college in the 70′s, my father, Wayne Muren, began writing weekly letters just as my great grandfather did many years prior. The letters served as a source of inspiration for my sister and as well as a blanket of comfort.
After all five children grew up and graduated from college, several moved away. Wayne kept writing letters. To this day, 35 years later, I am blessed to still receive a weekly letter filled with newspaper/magazine articles. The no. 10 envelope that was once delivered to my college dormitory is now a large manila envelope packed with news and information.
Maureen Houston/BND.com
Jillian's mother and her father Wayne with a stack of letters
The letters are sent to not only his children, but also to his 11 grandchildren. The letters are now mailed in large envelopes which accompany 10-20 newspaper clippings to keep the family up-to-date with current events as well as comic strips from a local artist.
This gift of communication is one that I hope will never stop arriving at my door for many years to come. This ritual is now our family tradition.
The day before Ash Wednesday has many names — Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras. Shrove Tuesday. But all over the Midwest, it’s become known as Paczki Day.
Happy Paczki Day! photo via About.com
From Green Bay, Wis., to Lorain, Ohio, from Calumet City, Ind., to Hamtramck, Mich., people are snapping up the jelly donuts that have their roots in Polish cuisine.
One Chicago bakery alone expects to sell 80,000 paczkis, so we’re going to go out on a limb and predict there may be millions sold in the Midwest on Tuesday. (On a slightly smaller scale, we stopped into Zingerman’s Next Door in Ann Arbor this noon. They had pre-orders for 600. All were gone before dawn.)
Changing Gears has been taking a look at immigrant traditions and culture across the Midwest, but the paczki seems to have transcended its beginnings and become a pre-Lenten staple.
Originally, the paczki (pronounced poohnch-KEY) was meant to use up the last of a Roman Catholic household’s fat and sugar before the Lenten fast began the next day.
Small ethnic bakeries used to be the only place that carried them. (When I was growing up in Michigan, you had to know somebody who could bring them over from Hamtramck, the Polish enclave that borders Detroit.) Continue reading →
February 21, 2012 | 10:55 AM | By Meg Cramer
Rosalyn Park of Minnesota writes:
My parents emigrated from South Korea to Iowa in the early 1960s. My mother struggled with the dualities of raising children the American-born way and being the wife of a traditional Korean man. Every night, she would cook two dinners: a Korean meal for my father, and an American one for us girls.
Over time, as my tastes expanded, I grew to truly appreciate Korean food.
One tradition in particular really epitomizes this shift. Growing up, my mother would make traditional Korean potstickers (mandu) once a year. It was a huge ordeal—everything was made by hand. We’d sit down and make mandu for hours.
Being the last of 3 daughters, I eventually found myself facing this daunting task alone. I’d come home from high school to see the big mandu bowl and be filled with dread—it was like a bad Chinese movie: Night of Three Million Eggrolls. I’d sit at the kitchen counter, hand stuffing each mandu by myself and thinking wearily of the unfair plight handed to Sister Number 3.
Continue reading →
On Monday, there will be word on the new members of a growing collection across the Midwest: vacant churches. The Archdiocese of Detroit is expected to officially announce which parishes will close or be combined with others across a six-county region, and the Detroit News says that could result in 39 fewer churches.
Hobbs & Black Architects are in this Ann Arbor, Mich. church
Vacant churches dot our cities — not just Detroit, in but Cleveland and Chicago, as well. But, like other empty places that we’ve reported on in the Midwest, some are being put to new uses.
One longstanding example is in Ann Arbor, where Hobbs & Black Architects have their offices in the former First Unitarian Church. The imposing stone building at 100 N. State Street was built in 1885, and was used as a church until 1975. Hobbs & Black bought it in 1985, and gave it a painstaking restoration, including a soaring Tiffany glass window.
We’d like to know about other churches in our region that are being put to new use. Please let us know about the ones in your city. And if there are churches sitting vacant, we’d like to hear about those, too.
Tell us how church buildings are coming back to life.
February 20, 2012 | 2:12 PM | By Meg Cramer
Jeff Karoub writes:
I’m half-Arab, but maybe I should best be described as a Detroit Arab-American, because this is the place that helped to shape my family and my family helped shape.
Like any family of mixed ancestry, traditions have been blended and blunted, but being in a place with such a large, diverse population with roots in the Middle East has allowed us to keep things like the food front-and-center in our lives.
I’m grateful for being part of a family that is open to many cultural and religious traditions and I think we are stronger for it.
As my family’s 100th anniversary in the U.S. approached, I thought of its contribution to this place. My grandfather worked at Ford while he served as a Muslim minister and Arab-Muslim newspaper publisher. My father played French horn for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and so many classic Motown records.
All of it inspired a song I recently wrote called “Made by Motown.”
You can listen to Jeff’s song here.
February 17, 2012 | 10:54 AM | By Meg Cramer
Michelle Guevara writes:
My great-grandfather migrated from Sicily. Like a lot of Italian migrants, he was poor but carved a name for himself and ended up having a large family.
I miss the big family gatherings. Most of us are grown now. Weddings and funerals are the only time the extended family gets together any more. The older generation held more of the old traditions together than we do now. I find that a shame. Those were some of my best memories.
I remember cannoli day, a tradition that my family and cousins continue to this day. Everyone brings a batch of cannoli dough and we set up an assembly line. A few roll the dough out then pass it along to those rolling the forms. They drop the rolls gently into the deep fryer.
- Michelle demonstrates her cannoli rolling technique
Before the last batch is done, my cousins start dinner of spaghetti, meat balls or sausages, salad, and garlic bread. We fill our bellies to the point of bursting.
For dessert we eat…what else? Cannolis! By the end of the day, we pack the shells into boxes and divide them among the family. One day we made 700 shells.
-Michelle Guevara, Michigan
(In case you’re wondering—700 cannolis would add up to 4950 cubic inches of Italian dessert, or: one giant 3.5×1 ft cannoli.)
Most Americans have ethnic and cultural roots outside of the U.S. We’re asking you to share cultural traditions that are still important to you.
Changing Gears is looking for stories, recipes, songs, and pictures. We’ll be collecting these stories on the Your Family Story page. They’ll also appear at changinggears.info and we’ll even put some on the air. You can share your story here.
February 15, 2012 | 9:21 AM | By Sarah Alvarez
Changing Gears just wrapped up our Midwest Migration series. The project documented the stories of people who left the Midwest in search of economic opportunity.
Now, we’re exploring stories of people who came into the region from other places. We’re looking for stories of how these traditions change and shape the identity of families, communities and cities. You can send in your recipes, traditions, family trees, usic and stories and become a part of the project.
Brigitte Kirchgatterer from Forest View, Illinois shared some of her traditions, and the photo at left. Her mother immigrated from Fulda, Germany and her Father from Volklamarkt, Austria. They met in Chicago. Kirchgatterer says that one of her favorite traditions is celebrating with Krampus around Christmastime. But, she says the tradition hasn’t always translated to America.
“It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to explain to a non-Austrian in my entire life.” said Kichgatterer. “In fact, my kindergarten teacher in 1981 was so concerned about the “tall tales” I was telling after Christmas break she called my Mom about it saying,’Your daughter said the Devil comes to your house for Christmas?’ Only to learn it was all true!”
We love those Facebook pages where people share their memories of growing up in their home towns. On Tuesday, Mitt Romney, who was born in Detroit, but hasn’t lived in Michigan since high school, joined in. 
“I grew up drinking Vernors and watching ballgames at Michigan & Trumbull,” he writes in the Detroit News.
(In case you only know Comerica Park, Michigan and Trumbull was the address of Tiger Stadium.)
He also might have thrown in Faygo Red Pop and Better Made potato chips, and maybe Sanders hot fudge sauce.
That’s a short list of Detroit touchstones. We want to hear more.
Chicago people: do you still call it Comiskey? Clevelanders: does anyone remember League Park? How about our friends in Milwaukee: what was in your fridge growing up?
Share your Midwest touchstones. We want to hear what you’d mention if you were writing about growing up in your home town.
February 10, 2012 | 10:47 AM | By Meg Cramer
Over the last few weeks, we have been hearing from people who have left the region to settle in other parts of the country and the world. We’ve been mapping the migration and documenting the experiences of these Midwestern exiles. We’ve heard from around 200 people. Now that the project is wrapping up, we wanted to know how these stories compare to regional trends.
See a larger version here
February 8, 2012 | 10:49 AM | By Sarah Alvarez
Name: Sarah Wells
Midwest Home: Van Wert, OH
New Home: Hollywood, CA
I left my small town in Ohio to become a working actor. It seemed to me the only way to do this was to be in a city where the entertainment industry is in national shape. Four years later, I can see that I was wrong, and I would give anything to have never left at all.
I think everyone who has left the Midwest ought to go home where they belong. We as a nation have created cities where no one knows anyone else outside of their little created circles.
The ideal small town, the one of our collective American dream, is one in which the dentist sings in your church choir and the grocer is the brother of your doctor, and we all work together to help each other out, spending our money amongst ourselves and enriching each other instead of outside, unnamed, faceless corporations. This is what we have in Los Angeles, it’s accidentally been created by people who left what was left of a functioning community.
