Prva Katolicka Slovenska Jednota

The First Catholic Slovak Union ⇒ (“FCSU”) is a fraternal benefit society aimed towards, but not exclusive to, North American Catholics of Slovak descent. Benefits include life insurance, conventions ⇒, modest scholarships, and a bi-lingual English-Slovak newspaper to be further considered.

Among those who took out life insurance policies through the FCSU were one set of my grandparents. At donation time, Donor Grandma * confirmed that Grandpa was confused when this shirt arrived, and that he also never wore this shirt. I would have been surprised if he had because t-shirts were not his style.

Union

The back of this shirt proclaims that “I am a Jenotar”. What exactly does that make me? My guess is that the phrase is supposed to mean that “I am a union member”. The bi-lingual FCSU member newspaper “Jednota ⇒” offers the transliteration “The Union” within the masthead. Considering that the phrase on the shirt is an English phrase with a Slovak word thrown in, “union member” makes the most sense to me. Any English/Slovak polyglot is welcome to correct me.

“Join Me”? Impossible! I am not, nor do I have any interest of ever being, a member of the FCSU.

Czechoslovakia Has Not Existed Since 1992

Previous to independence, present-day Slovakia was part of Czechoslovakia along with the Czech Republic. During the period of 1918 through 1992, the two cultures began and ended on parliamentary republics with subjugation by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in between. After the fall of communism, heated disagreements between the two cultures over things like whether or not to hyphenate the name of the country ⇒ lead to the feeling that things would be better if the two cultures were to go their own ways.

Two decades or so later, I still occasionally hear some people refer to Czechoslovakia as if it still exists. I figure that if a memo has not reached those people by now that nothing will. I mean, not knowing about the recent ascension of South Sudan ⇒ even though it recently happened is sort of understandable. Czechoslovakia stopped happening a couple of decades ago.

The wait for independence for the Slovak culture had extended through centuries. Before Czechoslovakia, the area was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire ⇒, having previous to that existed as part of the Kingdom of Hungary ⇒ since 1000. Great Moravia ⇒ was the earliest likely state that exercised control over the area and served as inspiration for Slovak nationalism.