We’ve had such an odd summer in Tucson this year – no baking heat and hardly and heat heat at all. Another anomaly is the two straight days of rain that we’ve had – not monsoon downpours, but just nice steady rain for hours on end from some storm that is passing through.

It’s also Saturday, yet again, and it’s time for Randy Seaver’s weekly Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge:

1) What are you reading this summer?  Does it help your genealogy research?

This summer, I spent many hours reading two scholarly books about Rusyn history, identity and culture:

The Persistence of Regional Cultures: Rusyns and Ukrainians in Their Carpathian Homeland and Abroad, edited by Paul Robert Magocsi [East European Monographs, Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1993]

and

Committing Community: Carpatho-Rusyn Studies as an Emerging Scholarly Discipline, edited by Elaine Rusinko [East European Monogaphs, Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 2009]

Both are lengthy books, as Magosci’s is 215 pages and Rusinko’s almost 400 pages.

These aren’t specifically genealogically focused, but both have added to my understanding of the struggles that my paternal ancestors have endured to continue and pass down to the next generation their Rusyn cultural and historical traditions.

I’ve built a fairly complete home reference library of Carpatho-Rusyn related language and history, at least of books published in English.

There are quite a few other journal articles and books published in the Rusyn language (which uses the Cyrillic alphabet), but since I don’t speak any Rusyn, those publications will remain unread by me!

Thanks, Randy for another weekly SNGF challenge.