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Youngstown's Festival of the Arts attracts despite heat
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown State University campus was sauna-like Saturday afternoon, and the heat, plus a recent rainstorm, had chased many people away from YSU’s Festival of the Arts.
Vendors at the arts and crafts booths sat in front of their fans watching as the few people who were brave enough to withstand the heat strolled by on the sidewalks.
Tucked back in its own corner at the arts festival, closer to Lincoln Avenue and near Jones Hall, the Festival of Nations was still tempting people in with food from Italian to Indian to Eastern European.
Donna Edwards was noshing on pirogies as she and her husband, Dave, started their annual visit to the arts festival.
The couple from Girard wouldn’t miss it.
“I like all the ethnicities, artsy stuff — food, of course,” said Donna. She also likes to see the programs in the Ward Beecher Planetarium, and she was looking forward to heading over to Jazz Fest at 5 p.m. at Harrison Common, where Pieces of a Dream was headlining.
Still, the couple looked a little lonely on the sparsely populated sidewalks in the Festival of Nations.
“It’s normally more crowded,” Donna said.
“It’s the heat,” said Dave.
Today is supposed to be a better day, though. Though Saturday’s temperatures stopped climbing just short of triple digits, they are supposed to reach a high of only 87 today. There is only a chance of some isolated storms.
This year’s Festival of Nations provides lessons on different cultures as well as tasty ethnic favorites. Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church’s booth is offering stuffed cabbage, haluski, pirogies or borscht.
Church member Christine Patoray, 23, of Youngstown is using the proceeds from the food sale to help fund a trip to the Ukraine for herself and three other people. They will visit orphanages there, she said, to bring children staples such as socks and underwear. They’ll also determine what else the children need.
She, two other young women from Pittsburgh and a nun from the Sisters of the Order of St. Basil the Great near Philadelphia will leave for the Ukraine on July 17 and return Aug. 30.
Down the sidewalk a little way under a tent and behind an instrument that looks a little like a small piano at first glance, a young man will be sitting in rare company.
Andrew Check, 19, of Chesterland, Ohio, is one of perhaps only 10 people in the country who know how to play the cimbalom, a Hungarian cousin of the hammered dulcimer.
“Eight of [those 10 people] are over 60,” said his father, Tibor Check, who hosts a radio show, Souvenirs of Hungary, from noon to 1:30 p.m. Saturdays on WKTL-FM 90.7.
Andrew has been playing the cimbalom for nine years, he said, and dedicated himself to learning it after his grandfather died in 2004 “as a tribute to him.”
There are not many cimbaloms left in the world, so seeing one is a rare event.
“A lot of them got destroyed in the war, and nobody makes them anymore,” said Tibor.
Andrew said he appreciates being able to perform at the arts festival.
“I like this event because there’s so many young people walking around,” he said. “If we don’t get kids my age involved, it’s going to die out.”
Across the sidewalk and well within earshot of the cimbalom music is a booth tended by the Carpatho-Rusyn Society. Rusyns, an ethnic group scattered throughout several eastern European countries, are not the most well-known of the ethnicities. But they sure can cook.
“When people came over here, they didn’t want to be known as Rusyns,” explained Mike Vasilchek of Youngstown. The Rusyns were looked down upon in the old countries, he continued.
“There was a pecking order,” said Tom Maley of McDonald, who also was helping to man the booth.
As a consequence, people have even grown up not knowing their true ethnic roots, said Maley, adding that he thought he was Slovak until learning the truth through an Internet search 12 years ago.
Their specialties are authentic haluski that features dumplings made from scratch instead of noodles from a bag. A cucumber salad includes fresh dill because it grew wild in the old countries.
Many people topped off their day at the festival with the Jazz Fest on Saturday evening.
Heading into the free concert, Neil B. Hagan and Meka Miller of Warren were looking forward not only to the music, but to seeing the neighborhood Smoky Hollow, where Harrison Common is located.
“They call this ‘the old neighborhood,’” Hagan said, adding that he’s followed efforts to revitalize it. “They’re trying to bring it up. This is what we need.”