Fellowship of the Sausage Ring: A Meditation on Wasch

Ron Vossler, a native of Wishek, North Dakota, well known for the famous homemade German-Russian sausage, writes about traveling to his hometown and having sausage with his family.

On the back cover of the publication, appears: “There is likely nothing more integral to German from Russia culture on the prairie than sausage; and in this essay Ron Vossler celebrates the various ways that wascht, or sausage, has been intertwined with his own, and his family’s life, over the past half century.”

“Vossler practices what he preaches, using a variety of ingredients, from his grandfather’s dream of Jesus, from high school basketball cheers, from homely prayers, and even from the ideas of a famous writer and a Russian scientist, to create a delectable essay that meditates on the meaning of sausage.”

Vossler writes: “The rising sun balanced on the horizon- my car barreled along the interstate and I placed my guilt, last minute cell-phone call to the grocery store in my old hometown of Wishek, North Dakota. ‘Fossler?’ a heavily accented male voice said. ‘Ok. We’ll haf your sausich ready about tree dis afternoon. All tirty fife rings.”

About the author:

An appointee to the International Committee of the Ukrainian World Congress, and recently named Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota, Ron Vossler has also authored eight popular and scholarly books, along with articles, fiction, essays, reviews, and poems, which have appeared in scholarly journals, magazines, anthologies, newspapers, as well as on humanities and public education web-sites. He has also authored a series of film-scripts which have won both national and international recognition and awards. His writing has also appeared in journals in Germany and Ukraine.