Back in the days when HWMBO was part of the US corporate culture and during a time when corporate profits were soaring, his company used to host major upscale events for its Maryland employees at one of the local Martin's Caterers. Most often, these events were held at Martin's West. The marriages or other rites of passage of several of our own family members and family members of friends were often celebrated at one or another of the Martin's facilities as well. Therefore, Martin's was an integral part of our daily lives when we lived here in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Now Martin's Caterers, founded by Martin Resnick in 1964, seems to be booming despite the recession. It provides full-scale catering services at seven different locations throughout Maryland for groups from 50 up to 2,000 persons. In addition to Martin's West in Baltimore, the facilities are Valley Mansion in Hunt Valley, Camelot in Upper Marlboro, East, also in Baltimore, Westminster in Westminster, Walkersville in Walkersville and Crosswinds in Greenbelt. Nearly two weeks ago, Crosswinds was the subject of a special feature article in the Washington Post, complete with photo gallery, where it was referred to as a "United Nations for weddings." With a reference like that, I was hooked.
The article stressed that "At Martin's Crosswinds, weddings incorporate the heritage and diversity of the bride and groom." In addition to the "typical perils" that a wedding entails, e.g. anxious brides, interfering in-laws, last-minute cancellations and guests who have celebrated by imbibing a tad or more too much, staff at Crosswinds find themselves having to juggle "complex religious traditions and tastes for a burgeoning ethnic clientele." As examples, the article described three recent wedding receptions that occurred on the same weekend at Crosswinds, located in a sedate and "sterile office park" near the Capital Beltway. In all, Crosswinds that weekend hosted 11 different celebrations for about 2,500 guests, with instructions "as complicated as a set of football plays."
The article described a Persian buffet for the marriage of two young Iranians, both with similar backgrounds, having fled Iran together with their families when they were young children. The buffet included sweet rice studded with orange peel as is traditional at wedding ceremonies in Iran. For the wedding of a young woman from Haiti and a young man whose family were refugees from Sierra Leone, who had been sweethearts since their days in US high school together, Crosswinds provided a "fusion menu" of Caribbean jerk salmon and chicken served with West African jollof rice. The third wedding celebration featured the arrival of the Bangladeshi bridegroom on horseback, while his Bangladeshi bride arrived in a special litter known as a doli, and combined American wedding traditions with Bengali. Cultural exchanges also took place more informally as guests attending one reception or ceremony often mingled with others waiting for another to begin, with hijabs, saris and colorful West African attire mixing and matching amid a babel of languages, many far more ancient than English: Farsi, Bengali, Haitian French, Arabic and so on.
I was delighted to read this article and wish Martin's Crosswinds much success in its ongoing catering endeavors, particularly those in which cultural diversity is recognized. We live in a wondrous world that has wondrous people in it. Instead of seeing these wondrous people as "Other" to be hated or feared, avoided, persecuted or bombed into oblivion, we must learn to know, appreciate, accept and celebrate our differences as well as our commonalities. We will all be the richer for it. And if we don't, not only will we be poorer - sad excuses for human beings - but we may not survive at all.
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