MDBCs 08 Oct 2024

Usually stuffed with meat, potatoes, vegetables and fruit, pierogi have become popular in the United States and Canada due to large Polish immigrant population.

Considered to be one of Poland's national dish, pierogi are first boiled and then served several at a time with melted butter or fried with onions.

Pierogi Fest

In Eastern Europe, most countries have their own version of this dumpling. In the United States, pierogi are a popular dish in Polish communities and many events are held in honor of this humble but delicious dish. In Whiting, Indiana, a pierogi fest is held for 3 days in July, while in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, every Pittsburgh Pirates baseball home game features a pierogi race, where runners in pierogi costumes compete in a race.

How to Celebrate?

Visit your local Polish restaurant and order yourself a big plate of pierogis.
Make sweet and savory pierogis at home and serve to family and friends.

Did You Know...

...that people in the village of Glendon in Alberta, Canada love pierogi so much that in 1993 they constructed a 25 feet tall fibreglass pierogi, with a fork through it?

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Ada Lovelace Day

Ada Lovelace Day is celebrated annually on the second Tuesday of October.

Named after Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer, the day not only commemorates the lives of women in the field of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), but also encourages girls and young women to enter careers in these fields.

Any Date in October

Ada Lovelace Day began in 2009 after an extensive online campaign in the United Kingdom. About 2000 people blogged about women in sciences and technology on March 24, 2009, a practice that has since become an Ada Lovelace Day tradition. There is no fixed date for Ada Lovelace Day. According to the organizers of the day, the choice of the date for the day is arbitrary.

Analytical Engine

Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician who worked with Charles Babbage on his calculating engine, called the Analytical Engine. Her plan to calculate Bernoulli numbers using the engine is now widely considered as the world's first computer program.

In 1980, the United States Department of Defense created a programming language and named it Ada in honor of Ada Lovelace's contribution to the world of computing.

How to Celebrate

Honor the women in your life who are in the STEM fields.
Encourage the young girls in your life to pursue one of the STEM fields as a career.
Buy the young girls in your life science kits, building games and books that make them interested in science.
Read more about women scientists and their contribution to the world.

Did You Know…

…that Mary Shaw became the first woman to get a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1972?

***

Don't ever pay a surprise visit to a child in college. You might be the one getting the surprise. I learned this the hard way when I swung by my son's campus during a business trip. Locating what I thought was his fraternity house, I rang the doorbell. "Yeah?" a voice called from inside.

"Does Dylan Houseman live here?"

"Yup," the voice answered. "Leave him on the front porch. We'll drag him in later."

***

I spent an afternoon helping my boyfriend move into a new home. In one carton I found a crockpot, with an odd-looking and very dirty metal lid. Later I ushered my boyfriend into the kitchen and asked why he hadn't mentioned this perfectly good pot.

He stared at it, then replied,

"Well, after I broke the lid I never thought of replacing it with a hubcap."

***

It seemed that all our appliances had broken in the same week, and repairs were straining our budget. So when I picked up the kids from school and our Jeep started making rattling sounds, I decided that rather than burden my husband, I'd deal with it. I hadn't reckoned on my little tattletales, however.

They rushed into the house with the news: "Daddy, the Jeep was breaking down, but Mom made the noise stop!"

Impressed, my husband asked, "How did you fix it?"

"I turned up the volume on the radio," I confessed.

***

During that first roll call in the Army, I waited in dread as the sergeant got to my name: DiFeliciantonio.

There was bound to be trouble, and  I was right, because suddenly, he  fell silent—eyebrows arched, brain overloaded.