| Update: March 2009 |
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Dad & Mom's Story
In Memorium I
In Memorium II
In Memorium III
In Memorium IV
In Memorium V
My Self Esteem Project
My Self Esteem Project
22 Responses to Me
My Responses to 22
Photo/Art for Sale
My Graphic Art Gallery
Mordock Karillion
My Alter Ego: The Scribe
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| About Me |
| I live in Chicago. I write, do photo restorations and am generally an all around good guy. I'm 47 years old, 3rd child of three born to Hungarian immigrants of the 1956 revolution. I have a B.A. in Speech Communications from Northeastern Illinois University having earned 21 graduate hours (9 shy) toward my Master's before leaving academic life. I still, however, consider myself a "student of life." I have been working steadily since I was 13 holding odd jobs since I was of legal working age. I am umemployed, having lost my job to downsizing and technology, after working the agricultural commodity markets of The Chicago Board of Trade in various positions and ranks, in customer service, for 24 continuous years. April 23rd, 1985 was my first day and October 15, 2008 was my last. I recently completed and graduated from Chicago's ABC Bartending School. If you have the fruit, the garnishes, the mixers, the alcohol and the ice, leave the rest to me. I'll mix and pour those cocktails for you 'til the cows come home! From Lemon Drops to Cosmo Martinis to whatever you prefer, I'll serve your drinks with conversation and a smile because I am at my very heart a customer service person and I am also a trained professional. |
| A Tad More |
| I have been writing since I was a youngster. There have been lulls, since I first started writing and have done mostly academic writing in the last 30 years, but overall I have always been fascinated with the creation of something that is uniquely me, be it written, musical or visual. I was in an ethnic dinner band in Chicago for five years and became well-known to my niche audience. I have audio-assisted and videotaped special events and weddings. I've photographed candids and nature shots. I've also made three dimensional computer/graphic art and the creation of web pages an avid hobby of mine since I have owned a computer. Also, in the late 90s, for five years, I designed, assisted and helped to create a weekly Catholic church bulletin and other printed material at St. Stephen King of Hungary Church in Chicago, Illinois. Recently, I have been simulcasting oddities, signature songs and one hit wonders on the weekends through my involvement in Second Life. My live show / audio stream may be heard within Second Life and outside as well. I have been on the Internet longer than anyone I currently know with the exception of a friend from NEIU whom originally assisted me with my user account through NEIU way back in the fall of 1990 before the first Gulf War. Other than that, trying to live life and be happy. Welcome! |
| What This Is |
| "Ham and eggs" journal entries, prose, poetry and other minutae from a north side Chicagoan. Dear Lord, bless this mess! Amen! |
| Current Podcasts |
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| 10.06.2009 |
| Tuesday October 6th, 2009 |
Four years and seven months after I began here at Blogger, I'm transitioning to Wordpress. Done importing this morning.
See my new web log @ http://sparechangeandparadigms.wordpress.com. I may be truly ready to say leave Blogger completely one day. . .
. . .but in the meantime, take care everybody!
MJC |
posted by me @ 3:16 AM   |
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| 10.04.2009 |
| Sunday October 4, 2009 |
New Podcast: Blast from the past.
Dateline: Wednesday April 30, 2008, 4:30pm - 5pm
MikeyC explains what he's been doing for 24 years. Enjoy a rambling explanation of the business of trading commodities and a life lived at Chicago's Grain Exchange (CBOT).
Enjoy!
I found this Saturday morning October 3rd, 2009 on a little RCA digital voice recorder I had sitting under some CD cases and such on my computer desk.
As you listen, you can hear me washing dishes, making coffee and explaining - in simple, layperson's verbage - what it is that takes place at commodity exchanges.
I listened to this whole thing and still can't believe some of the things I said in this podcast.
At any rate, check the podcast Titled #80, April 30, 2008 below.
Have a great week all
MJC |
| posted by me @ 10:16 PM |
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| Tuesday September 29, 2009 |
In Memorium V
More memories Mom and Dad's flight to freedom.
From an audio taped recording used with permission of a conversation from last Tuesday morning, September 22, 2009, in Mom's own words at her home near Rockford, Illinois.
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In my humble opinion the entire country of Hungary was dedicated to the Virgin. And Hungarians are very deeply religious. And under communism you could not practice your religion, because then you are not a communist. I'm only talking about the people who believe in Jesus Christ. The Jewish people think He was a great prophet but He was not the Son of God; just a prophet. But anyone who has any kind of new religion since the birth of Christ, they are. . . (part of the faith who believe Christ was the Son of God).
Our first king did it. (Saint Stephen) got the crown from the Pope in Rome. It was what? A thousand years ago. In receiving the crown, he was baptized as a Christian. The Prelate from Rome came to Budapest and baptized St. Stephen. (Saint Stephen) dedicated his country - to the Virgin Mary - so that he would be a true, honest, compassionate king to the nation. And therefore a lot of people became Christians, that is, Roman Catholic. Under communism there are no Christians, Evangelicals, Reformed Christians or any religions including Judaism because there is no God. The Jews were persecuted not during these times so much so as in the 1940's, later.
Q: What was it after the Nazi's left that made communism even worse? Was it simply and only because a person could not practice faith?
There was tremendous poverty throughout the country and the people wished for a better life which is only natural; self explanatory and universal human characteristic of our species.
Why we came out, however, I have told you many times. Not specifically because of religion but because your father had disagreements with his boss who was well known and well connected politically, under communism, in your father's town. After the disagreement turned physical, your father's boss warned him, 'You'll pay for this. And after these 'gangs' revolts gets squashed, you'll go to Russia and cut trees in the forest all day long. You'll see.' You father never told me the precise reason they quarreled, but not long after that your father decided to escape rather than get sent to Siberia or some other such place in Russia.
That was our reason.
But everyone had a different reason for leaving Hungary at that time. There were men who couldn't stand their wives, so it gave them an excuse and was good a time as any to leave and leave the country. Or wives did this to husbands. But among all these reasons, a very deep-rooted feeling held by many at that time was that you couldn't practice or even speak of your faith freely, your children couldn't go to religious instruction freely, etc.
One of our close family had to - as recently as the 1960s - go for First Holy Communion instruction (and was also baptized and confirmed in Catholicism) secretly in a smaller village rather than the larger city nearby for fear that a more distant relative connected to communism and holding a high position in a factory in the larger nearby city would find out from people who may have seen this relative attending religious instruction classes. (Baptisms were performed in secret or private ceremonies with very few relatives and friends present.)
When we finally decided to go - we left where we lived - took our little attache case, put one pair of underwear for myself and your father into it along with soap and very few smaller items and went to go see my mother in the nearby village.
Earlier, your father had urged an escape to America but I said, 'No.' But when I found out what had happened at his work place, I gave in and said, 'Let's go." We locked out door and went to see my mother.
It was then we found out my younger brother had hopped aboard one of the buses specifically headed for the Austrian / Hungarian border the previous day. We're pretty sure most of this transpired after the revolution took place, because as I told you before, as we walked to the border on the day we did, we saw Russian tanks rolling along on some of the roads ahead of us. so they were starting to occupy the country already; in the very beginning of November (1956).
(Mom at this point confirms Michener's account of having heard three waves of Hungarians escaped during this time. Michener's lack of delicacy in describing these waves is not politically correct by today's standards but he describes the three waves of refugees, thusly: thieves and prostitutes followed by academicians, artists and professional people such as doctors and lawyers and finally average everyday working people and citizens.)
We heard that we were in the second five thousand people to have crossed the bridge at Andau by all the counting of heads that had taken place at the bridge site itself.
(Michener's book says that by the counting of heads that had taken place at the bridge at Andau during the refugee escapes - based on the figures available at the time - that if the escapes continued every day in the same amounts, Hungary would have been completely empty in 9 years time - based on the population of Hungary in 1956.)
Under Saint Stephen's time, Hungary's population was 40 million. After communism ended, it was only 10 million. This is by and large due to the annexing of Hungary during the Treaty of Trianon. The Czechs, the Yugoslavs, the Rumanians all took part of the population away with them and their new borders under the treaty.
We came alongside this forest that we saw at the end of the railroad line, where we met (people who eventually came to Chicago also) some people.
And as we walked we saw the moon's reflection in some water that lay just ahead, before us, which turned out to the canal covered by the bridge at Andau. So we proceeded to walk toward it.
And at our last step before the bridge we turned and said, "God be with you, our country and home," turned and walked the small spanse of the footbridge across to freedom.
(Mom becomes emotional at this point.)
Little by little, you'll get it all.
(Mom continues.)
I have also told you many times before that when we crossed over we saw hordes of people crying and singing? You know it always hurts when you leave your home for as long as you live. I mean who did we have? Who do I have now? My three children. I am like an orphaned sparrow.
I went through it, didn't I?
Most of everything you need to know about all this is on the Internet.
(Mom - at this point - confirms Michener's account of a 'look out tower' a bit further down along the bank of the canal where she said she did see Russian soldiers sitting in wait watching the exodus of refugees pour out of Hungary and into Austrian territory to freedom. And she said they were very scared at that point.)
I also told you before we met a man in Andau who had left his wife and two children in Hungary who had registered right there to be on a list going to Vienna to a "entrance" facility that was accepting Hungarian refugees and had turned around to go back and get his family. I quickly wrote my mother a letter and asked the man humbly that if it was in his power could he please find my parent's and give them this letter that your father and I arrived in Austria and we made it and we're fine. He lived in a nearby village.
We never met that man again. We assume he mailed the letter when he arrived home. And my mother did receive the letter. She did. She got it.
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Among other things during this conversation, Mom also told me a little more about Camp Kilmer in New Jersey. One of the married men there with his wife - would help sort and separate clothes and bring back every day, clothing, that was either new or newly donated to the refugees. She also related how cots had been set up and she and dad were fortunate enough to be able to scoot their cots close to each other and sleep together at night in the New Jersey military camp. She also recalled a favorite sweater of hers had been stolen while there.
After about two weeks of checking a bulletin board had been put out listing different American cities that were looking for specific tradesmen and through "the Bishop's resettlement committee," and this bulletin board, companies had registered their vacant positions and people willing to take refugees into their homes as sponsors, Dad found work as a blacksmith / tool and die maker and they embarked upon three bus loads on a particular day to travel to Chicago where Dad could be hired for the job in question and my folks could live with people - as boarders - until they could financially stand on their own two feet.
The Bishop's Resettlement Committee is responsible for their plane trip to Camp Kilmer as well as their bus ride to Chicago. And Mom finished our conversation that day telling me that Dad and her sent money consistently, over time, in small increments to The Bishop's Resettlement Committee until they had paid back what they believe to have been the cost of their transportation to America and to Chicago, which she remembered as being around $160.00 dollars (in 1956, 1957).
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His name was Antal and I am his son, Michael.
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God bless us all.
Happy Tuesday, folks!
MJC
Bibliography, Citation:
Michener, James A.. The Bridge at Andau. New York, New York: The Random House Publishing Group, 1957. |
| posted by me @ 1:42 AM |
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| 9.27.2009 |
| Sunday September 27, 2009 |
Many blogs for the price of one. :-)
I mentioned recently I have been watching television again. . . .
Aqua Velva, Lectric-Shave, perpetual five o'clock shadows, angular chins, muted olives and dark beige skinny little neckties, greys, teals, browns, angular furniture, simple. Hair sprayed buns and white gloves, form fitting skirts, hats, smoking, pop bottles dispensed in vending machines that have the little bottle opener waste slot. Pop! And you're holding a cold clean bottle of Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper. Our of a bottle. Cold, wet, clean. Conrad Hilton calls you and asks your opinion of a new ad campaign for his hotel chain on a whim because he met you at a country club / golf course and you made an impression on him. The life of Dan Draper on AMC's hit television series, Mad Men.
Simple answers to complex questions.
Getting your foot run over by a John Deere lawn mower - that you can ride around on - with the blade engaged being driven, badly, by a girl the secretary pool at an office party congratulating the firm for being sold to a British company. One of the new ad men from the parent company loses a foot.
Good Lord this show is crazy!
Corporate takeover.
Pleasant Valley Sunday not so pleasant.
I just got finished watching this week's episode.
Period pieces are hard to watch in film and on t.v. Invariably they get something wrong.
This show does not get anything wrong.
It feels like the 1960s - in transition - from the calm, cool, collected to the big, bold, beautiful flower-power age. Like a clear little window to the past commenting on our present. For as much as things change they stay the same. Except for the "feel" of how everything looks.
Add this to the list of t.v. shows I am currently following after a very long time of not watching television shows at all.
Very well done this is.
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This week's Monk was pretty good. Can hardly wait to see how they finally tackle the subject of Monk's wife Trudy.
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Checking my podcasts recently over at GCast recently, it turns out I have done quite a few of them over the last two years.
Sunday June 8, 2007 - Friday May 15, 2009
79 podcasts
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. . .and 775 web blog posts since March of 2005. Wow! That's a lot of bullshit! LOL!
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I finally finished reading "The Bridge at Andau" by James Michener, the book about the little footbridge over the canal in the northwest at the Austrian / Hungarian border and the people who crossed it during the Hungarian Revolt of 1956. And as The Dude said in The Big Lebowski, his final pages or so tied the room up nicely or tied it all together or how ever it's phrased in the movie.
Apparently Michener checked, rechecked and triple checked personal accounts of the flight to freedom from as many sources as he had available to him in 1957 and the composites were created literally to protect those individuals who were candid enough to talk to him about their lives under communism in Hungary.
I like that.
Scholarly. Checking sources. Being a good reporter. Call it the OCD side of me. All those years as an undergrad and the rest as a grad student-at-large at Northeastern and then the meticulousness of working on commodities for 24 years verifying, checking, correcting trade materials from the trading pits and the accompanying data keypunched into the clearinghouse computers.
Well, if nothing else, those skills paid off for a neurotic like me. Because now I know the difference between a concerted "effort" and here say or something thrown together haphazardly.
Does any of this make me a better person? T.v. shows, podcasts, doing research into my parents past and blogging?
No, but I thought I'd share. . . .
:-)
Have a great week everybuddy.
MJC |
| posted by me @ 9:55 PM |
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| 9.23.2009 |
| Wednesday September 23, 2009 |
My blogging buddy Angie, among others, have called me a "total quirk" (not the first time I've been called that!) and I have got to tell you, it's a badge of honor I wear with pride. Reason being, the perks associated with being a quirk. One of those things, or, "quirk perks," I like to call them, is that no one and I mean no one ever really and truly knows ~WHAT~ you are up to. They can try and hold you down and hold you back, put you down and even hate you for your footloose and fancy-free always smiling demeanor, but they - sincerely and quite honestly - never really and truly know what you are up to.
. . .and the reason I know this is. . .?
Because they continue in their pursuits. Some people make it their life calling to be the thorn in your flesh for no other reason than because it gives them pleasure in deeming themselves normal while deeming you a quirk - as if their knowledge of the world were any more factual, real or truer than the quirky lens through which you view your own world.
Their special knowledge and keen insight of the world is something they either beat you over the head with for not knowing the same as they do or for your not coveting their normalcy outwardly. It's as if they want you to ask them about their "secret to life," because, to them, it seems, it is so obviously more valuable than your own method. But still they think you should know it. They really want to share it with you, but they'd rather beat you ever the head with it for not asking them about it.
"Man, that guy / girl is different" (as if difference is such a bad thing) is what "the normals" think when they see your quirkiness first-hand, so rather than trying to openly share their view of the world with you, they punish you. The exact opposite of what they really and truly want. All at once then, their overblown "world view" becomes this "thing" they decide they will keep from you. And while these people play their "push me, pull you" behavior, it begs the question, "Who's actually the quirkier here?," thereby making the quirks feel as if they'd really rather keep as far from the normals as humanly possible; which no one can fault a so-called "quirk" for, really. (Who wants to be normal in the face of all that?)
Paramount in this equation is the analogy of little white / black poodle magnet theory that a "normal" and a "quirk" actually repel each other in a lot of ways due to these constant struggles I mention above.
Quirks can hold top jobs, contrary to popular opinion. But you just don't know them as "true" quirks. Quirks can hold academic degrees, too, in a variety of different fields and areas. And quirks can be normals in disguise too, just your average person on the street. Quirks can also be the guy on the off-ramp holding a crumpled up Dixie Cup, waving a sign at you that reads, "Thanks for any help. God bless!" That's the beauty aspect in all this and quite frankly the pisser aspect in all this for the normals is that just when they think they can fit you into a box, you step out of it holding a huge fake dandelion, like the late Henry Gibson, reciting poetry and wearing diver's flippers on your feet!
The punishment for the high crimes and treason of a quirk is demonstrative exclusionary disdain behavior and sometimes downright outward hatred behavior.
How far we've come, folks, from the incendiary and prejudicial hijinks and unfair treatment of the "outcasts" in high school to present day adulthood. Try as we might to deny it, adult life is kind of like high school all over again in many different senses: you're either in or you're out, sitting in the corner of the lunchroom away from the "preps". "In" or "out".
How far we've come indeed.
Well if that's the way it's going to be, then I'd rather be a "quirk," quite frankly, and in the words of Agent 86, Maxwell Smart, ". . . . .and loving it!"
And the reason I say, ". . .and loving it!," with very little fear - as of this writing - is not because I am doing God's work on this planet and have some special position as moral arbiter in this world - people will exclude and belittle and make you feel as if it is some great reward you've been given in knowing them. Rather, I am again, as many times before, in this web log - viewing the world through the lens of my own personal camera and reporting what I see, feel, think and sense living in this skin. And if I don't somehow, someway find a way to love the skin I am in - to some measure - as a "quirk" well, then Mister, all hope is lost. No?
I can hear some folks - reading this - laughing right now. That's okay. It's a humble little existence, but you know what? At least it's mine. :-)
Another "perk" in the knowing that one is a "quirk" is the acute pain and clarity with which we see this exclusionary behavior in others: it makes us reflect upon and be thankful for the ones different from these types - the ones who include you, warm people, altruistic people, humble people that we do have in our lives. And in knowing "that difference" - that a human being is capable of infinite forgiveness, mercy, goodness, altruism - simpatico for his fellow man - with the appropriate emphasis on the appropriate things in life - one mustn't always be bogged down in the differences between the "quirks" and the "normals", the Hatfields and the McCoys, the "ins" and the "outs" - but rather in things that make us all alike: wanting to live in peace with as many people and things possibly as one can. Harmony.
The true gift in knowing anyone is not "true" or a "gift" or even "knowing them." Rather, it is in the experiencing the truth, deeming it a gift and feeling it and sensing it as such - by how people behave with you.
Life is too short to keep living in high school long after graduation day. But sadly, we do it. Quirks and normals alike.
Here's to life and all it's maddening labels and quirky behaviors, to it's noble aspirations and lofty ideals and keeping it all in perspective through whatever lens we individually or collectively view the world.
God willing, we can all make sense of it one day.
Amen.
:-)
MJC |
| posted by me @ 11:32 AM |
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| Previous Posts |
- Tuesday October 6th, 2009
- Sunday October 4, 2009
- Tuesday September 29, 2009 (deux)
- Tuesday September 29, 2009
- Sunday September 27, 2009
- Wednesday September 23, 2009
- Tuesday September 22, 2009
- Friday September 18, 2009 (deux)
- Friday September 18, 2009
- Wednesday September 9, 2009
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