A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

All Roads Lead to Jackson

Serbian American Contributions in Amador County, California, since the Gold Rush
Milina Jovanović offers a unique compilation of individual and family immigration stories that include enormous contributions to the development of California and significant community involvement. In this version of people’s history she chronicles how Serbian Americans have strengthened community, region, state, and country through the endeavors and struggles of 150 years. This book also focuses on women’s contributions that are too often overlooked. Ms. Jovanović’s study reveals that Jackson not only remains an original and symbolic home to Serbian Americans and Serbian Orthodox religion, but also an oasis where the Serbian community has preserved its positive reputation and social influence.

From editorial reviews:

Here is a book that gives us an accurate and engaging picture of the Serbs, an intelligent, tolerant, and democratic people. Here we can see how Serbian-Americans helped lead the way in the development of a viable and valuable society in California from Gold Rush days to modern times.
- Michael Parenti, author of "The Face of Imperialism", "To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia" and many other books

Every ethnic group in America deserves as fine a study as this about its contributions to the United States, but none more so than Serbian-Americans, whose achievements until this book have remained largely in the shadow of obscurity and discrimination resulting from a one-sided view of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
- Joe Lauria, journalist and author of "Political Odyssey"

Jackson, California has long held a special place in the Serbian American community. In the deeply researched All Roads Lead to Jackson Milina Jovanović tells that story, expertly weaving together oral history with sociological and historical analysis. Here is the beautifully told account of an immigrant community that reaches back to the Gold Rush days.
- Greg Elich, Balkan expert, author of "Strange Liberators"


SA

 

People Directory

Paul Djurisic

Paul Djurisic, born and raised in Chicago Illinois, is a graduate of the University of Illinois – Urbana with honors in economics. He obtained his Juris Doctor from DePaul University in 1991. Following graduation, he did a six month internship with United States District Court Judge George M. Marovich, and then began his legal career as General Counsel for a professional golf tournament operations company. He spent the next 14 years practicing immigration with his own boutique immigration practice before merging with Chicago’s largest immigration firm in April, 2007.

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Publishing

Sailors of the Sky

A conversation with Fr. Stamatis Skliris and Fr. Marko Rupnik on contemporary Christian art

In these timely conversations led by Fr. Radovan Bigovic, many issues are introduced that enable the contemporary reader to deepen and expand his or her understanding of the role of art in the life of the Church. Here we find answers to questions on the crisis of contemporary ecclesiastical art in West and East; the impact of Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract painting on contemporary ecclesiastical painting; and a consideration of the main distrinction between iconography and secular painting. The dialogue, while resolving some doubts about the difference between iconography, religious painting, and painting in general, reconciles the requirement to obey inconographic canons with the freedom essential to artistic creativity, demonstrating that obedience to the canons is not a threat to the vitatlity of iconography. Both artists illumine the role of prayer and ascetisicm in the art of iconography. They also mention curcial differences between iconography in the Orthodox Church and in Roman Catholicism. How important thse distinctions are when exploring the relationship between contemporary theology and art! In a time when postmodern "metaphysics' revitalizes every concept, these masters still believe that, to some extent, Post-Modernism adds to the revitatiztion of Christian art, stimulating questions about "artistic inspiration" and the essential asethetic categories of Christian painting. Their exceptionally wide, yet nonetheless deep, expertise assists their not-so-everday connections between theology, ar, and modern issues concerning society: "society" taken in its broader meaning as "civilization." Finally, the entire artistic project of Stamatis and Rupnik has important ecumenical implications that aswer a genuine longing for unity in the Christian word.

The text of this 94-page soft-bound book has been translated from the Serbian by Ivana Jakovljevic, Fr. Gregory Edwards, and Andrijana Krstic. Published by Sebastian Press, Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Contemporary Christian Thought Series, number 7, First Edition, ISBN: 978-0-9719505-8-0