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The Story of Ginni and Three On A Pilgrimage Quest, Part Three: Another Calendar

2012-02-01T12:15:00.001-08:00

PART THREE - Another Calendar ////

It was the day after Ginni's encounter with the Three on a Pilgrimage Quest, a Tuesday. Monday and Tuesday were Ginni's days off at the Doll Museum. Ginni was off work and outside awaiting the truck from the pet supplies company that would bring Shadow's new bed. ///////////The manager of the doll museum storage department, Andrew, walked around the corner of the museum building from the storage area. With him were Porter, Rudyard, and Sylvia.

/////

"Our quest is achieved!" Rudyard was saying with enthusiasm. "It is the sled! Yes! Yes!" And Porter asked, "Can we have the sled?"

/////

And Sylvia explained: "You see, this is Santa's sled. Santa. Santa became mis-adjusted onto, I believe, the Mayan calendar just at the end of his route in December. Calculating that he would not use it anymore, he left the sled where someone else might find it and put it to use. When our schedulers found the mis-adjustment and re-adjusted, we were assigned to the committee of search. Porter, Rudyard, and I have been on the road for weeks. Ginni, may we have the sled, please?"

/////

Ginni, Andrew, and the Three went back into the storage area to show Ginni where the sled was kept now, among recent Doll Museum Acquisitions. Ginni explained that the sled belonged to the doll museum now.
////

"But to get the sled back we have to ask, in writing," Sylvia was definite about this. "We cannot just take the sled. And we have to include a long paragraph about how we have been good all year. We have to do what is custormary, you see. No, we cannot just take the sled."
/////

"Perhaps we can email the request to the Doll Museum CEO, suggested Ginni to Andrew. And then we might have a quick answer."

The Story of Ginni and Three On A Pilgrimage Quest: Part Two - Continued

2012-01-31T12:51:00.001-08:00

THE STORY OF GINNI AND THREE ON A PILGRIMAGE QUEST: PART TWO - Sylvia's Clue, continued
Ginni, Shadow, and Ginni' pond turtle Gypsy had late afternoon supper at Ginni's apartment. Ginni pulled back her cafe curtains a litte. There was no sign of the Three who had approached her at the transit center. But she had remembered the incident of the sled.

Victorian First Night had been fun. As Ginni and Shadow made their way back to the Doll Museum, they came across a Drastically Reduced Clearance Sale, holiday decor reduced by ninety percent. But slightly apart from the piles of glittery gew-gaws was a wonderful sled, which was marked, FREE.

Ginni imagined a wonderful winter for her and Shadow, and what an impression they would make as soon as the snow began to fall. So she was delighted when it was true that if both of them pulled on the sled rope, they could move the sled.

They pulled the sled back to the doll museum. But the sled did not belong to her anymore. The Doll Museum did not allow wrought iron sleds on the slope behind the Doll Museum. They told Ginni they were sorry. Ginni let the Doll Museum keep the sled with other new acquisitions. There might be a Currier and Ives display the following holiday season.

Unnoticed by Ginni and Shadow, a security camera, in place above the drastically reduced sale's area way, captured a blurred record of their acquisition. And when three on a pilgrimage quest made enquiries at the store, this evidence was allowed them. It became a very solid clue.

The Story of Ginni and Three On A Pilgrimage Quest: Part Two - Sylvia's Clue

2012-01-31T12:37:00.001-08:00

THE STORY OF GINNI AND THREE ON A PILGRIMAGE QUEST: PART TWO - Sylvia's Clue

Yesterday: Ginni was approached by three individuals on a pilgrimage quest who asked her about a sled.

Ginni had been taught to tell anybody who approached her that there was a church nearby that offered meals to people who were hungry. So she directed their attention to the steeple, visible from the bus stop. She told them it was only two or three blocks. And then she and Shadow turned resolutely and firmly and continued on their way to The Doll Museum.

At the meal site Porter, Rudyard, and Sylvia had the macaroni, vegetables, salad, and cherry crisp and discussed their quest with a director. Sylvia brought out the photographs. "These are from a security camera at a drastically reduced clearance sale," she explained. It was a blurred record of a person acquiring an item marked FREE.
"Contacts in Security allowed us these copies when we inquired at their store about a sled. Do you recognize this person?"

"Why, it's Ginni. Ginni is an entertainment favorite, she works at the Doll Museum nearby."

The Story of Ginni and Three On A Quest: Part One, Continued

2012-01-30T13:26:00.001-08:00

THE STORY OF GINNI AND THREE ON A QUEST: PART ONE, Continued:

That day Ginni and Shadow had searched diligently for a pet bed for Shadow, one with a rim to keep any draft from making him cold. At last they found one, and the pet supply company would deliver the bed the next day. And they had caught their bus back from the stores. The afternoon winter sky was turning darker, evening was approaching. Ginni and Shadow's bus reached the stop near the Doll Museum.

Ginni thought someone was watching her. Then she heard, "Ma'am! Ma'am!"

From among bus ridership along the street a person appeared. "May I have a moment of your time?"

Ginni was quite startled to be called "Ma'am" by anyone.

"Dog, blond hair. We - Porter, and Rudyard and Sylvia - have pilgrimaged far on this continent. Our recent lead directs us to you."

Ginni had no idea what - Porter, had he said? - could mean.

Another of their group stepped forward. "I am Sylvia. Our source said, you were seen - with a sled."

Tomorrow, more of the story – PART TWO: Slyvia's Clue

The Story of Ginni And Three On A Quest - Part One

2012-01-30T13:13:00.001-08:00

THE STORY OF GINNI AND THREE ON A QUEST - PART ONE

Porter At The Bus Stop

Porter was not terribly tired. For they had stopped for a good rest twenty minutes before, when they had some cheese crackers. They had shared some of the crackers with pigeons near the bus stop, who had been friendly and encouraging.

Porter, Rudyard and Sylvia had traveled far on their pilgrimage quest. For weeks they had searched through towns on the North American Continent. And Porter sometimes was anxious about their hopes of success.

Porter looked beyond the bus stop to the winter sky as it darkened a little toward the later afternoon. The pigeons' wings clattered in the air above as they circled away. And then two figures appeared.

"Sylvia, Rudyard –look. Getting off that bus. The pretty lady and the dog."

Story About Ginni - I Hope to Post a Part One on Monday

2012-01-29T16:22:00.000-08:00

Last April I happy to post a short story about Ginni and her dog on Spice Drawer Mouse. Again, I hope to post a story about Ginni. Tomorrow, perhaps others may see Part One of Ginni and Three on a Pilgrimage Quest. These stories have been inspired by a polaroid Swinger photo taken by my mom of her dolls in 1970.

Made of Wire Dog Made In Japan

2012-01-29T15:32:00.000-08:00

My made of wire dog made in Japan - was a gift when I was a child, I think. I do not think I bought the made of wire dog myself. I almost never bent it I liked to have it on the shelf and to look at it. It was interesting to include it in a story inspired by a photograph my mother took in about 1970 of a few dolls from her collection having a tea party.

Robert Frost's poem, Tree At My Window

2012-01-29T14:49:00.000-08:00

During the storm the tree near my unit was weighted down by the ice storm and fell. I am reminded of an earlier tree at a window, a pine, that was destroyed by a neighbor during an episode of change for the parking at the building he owned next door. I remember telling him the tree had been on the side of the grass where I rented, and that cutting it had been a mistake. I was not as unhappy as I have been at other events similar. I found a descriptive word for this - a "righteous tantrum", in an article in Seattle Weekly.

At a certain point a ruby crowned kinglet briefly lit on a branch of a different small tree near another window.

Tree At My Window by Robert Frost

Tree at my window, window tree,
/My sash is lowered when night comes on;
/But let there never be curtain drawn
/Between you and me.
/Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
/And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
/Not all your light tongues talking aloud
/Could be profound.
/But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
/And if you have seen me when I slept,
/You have seen me when I was taken and swept
/And all but lost.
/That day she put our heads together,
/Fate had her imagination about her,
/Your head so much concerned with outer,
/Mine with inner, weather.

Photo of a Bus Wrapped In Almond Roca Pink

2012-01-28T11:42:00.000-08:00

I wanted to include this photo of a bus wrapped in Almond Roca Pink in my blog today.

Saw Pussy Willows On A Branch

2012-01-28T11:38:00.001-08:00

On a walk to Wheelock Library I saw pussy willows on a branch.

Happy Holidays - Library Fines During Snow Erased

2012-01-27T10:57:00.000-08:00

Everything regifting was the holiday this year. I gifted two regifts - and two years in a row a friend gave me wine, but because I do not drink I did not use any. So this year she could not find that kind of wine for her spouse and had me get up on a chair to get the wine off the shelf so she could give it to him.

But after the deep snow Wednesday morning the library was closed until Saturday. By then I owed three dollars, which was thank goodness erased. A yet another kind of re-gift, since we had the books out. I had out Above New York, aeriel photographs, and a lot of their New York travel and restoration and historic architecture books. Found Carnegie Hall, and other places. An enjoyable holiday.

One Week Ago A Snow Morning

2012-01-25T16:04:00.000-08:00

One week ago we woke to snow on the ground. It was lovely. Followed by freezing rain. A number of trees with branches broken - lovely while it lasted.

Books At Twelve Ten January 10th

2012-01-11T12:26:00.001-08:00

Louise's War by Sarah R. Shaber. - discussed by Books at Twelve Ten volunteers. (After our discussion we chose David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars for February 14th.)

1. A New Year, Rain

Only one other book club volunteer attended the January Books At Twelve Ten. Presently we meet in an area of the curved far wall of the Olympic Room, open a couple of windowshades to a small view of historic outer stairwell, time-worn steps with a restored pipe metal hand rail. The room is at the upper side of a hill, at the back of the first floor of the Carnegie Library, a hundred years old in 2005.

Earlier in January there was rain. I raced through a downpour in my yellow poncho from the transit center to the mall entrance the day I replaced my wristwatch battery. That purchase question converged with thoughts of telephones - lots of people get the time off their cel phones now. One store employee explained that senior cel phones started at age 65. So many senior opportunities start as early as 55. Just inside the mall I blotted rain off my shoes with a bandana.

2. A New Year, A New Book

At the Olympic Room Tuesday the weather forecast was for a day of clouds, colder temperatures without rain. Our weather view at the outer stairwell was permeated damp.

Louise's War was published in 2011and is narrated in the first person by character Louise Pearlie, a World War Two era office worker with the OSS, the precurser to the CIA. In a preface the author Sarah R. Shaber asks the reader to accept the use of language used years ago before the Civil Rights Movement. The OSS office, in a refitted apartment building, and Louise Pearlie's boarding house residence are two major settings.

The other volunteer and I worked through the questions. At #3 (How does race and class play a role in the lives of the characters?) I mentioned that, at Louise's boarding house in Washington, D.C., at times only the "negro" or "domestic" workers were in the kitchen. (The term "negro" is mentioned in the preface, language that was correct in the 1940s). Louise breaks this barrier and helps clean up after everyone at the boarding house has a small celebration.

Seventy years have passed. The focus for Louise on race involves "Negroes", but also the fact that a college classmate from years earlier is held in France, her husband in the underground, and they are Jewish.

The other volunteer said that new opportunity for women led Louise to follow up on her college friendship and become a detective. I agreed and said activities were within the job definition, but that she was taking responsibilities that were new. We follow Louise's thoughts within this evolution. Both of us volunteers liked this theme very much.

3. Setting and Earlier Series Theme - Person of Size

The boarding house and office settings were convincing to me. At one point Louise ventures much farther away in the city to a castle-like embassy building. When Louise must crawl out a window and scramble down a wall with a grip on ivy, the author has not prepared me for her circus performer action.

However, I reflect that this physical challenge may compare to the barrier Lousie breaks in the kitchen, and compare to the office behavior evolution. But because I have read the Simon Shaw series I wonder if the physical capability question is affected by the question of personal size. The murder victim in Louise's War happened to be a person of size, an overweight man.

Person of Size identity was a previous theme. In the earlier series, the detective was a rather small man, a marginal Person of Size. Shaber's earlier series of mysteries explored questions of small minority groups in North Carolina. That point of view was an historic one, Simon Shaw was a detective of long-ago cases - his true profession was History Professor at a North Carolina university

Plastic Cookie Press for A Dollar and a Half

2012-01-10T10:51:00.001-08:00

Soon it will be noon, time for the first Books at Twelve Ten for 2012.

The year has been lots of shopping so far. My wristwatch battery had to be replaced. The list went on rather long. Shopping the day New Years was officially observed, was complicated by the convergence of the public schools in session and the transit people on Sundays and Holidays schedule. Our bus in the rain was more overloaded than I have been on for a long time, and I had along a small ceramic thing from the Goodwill super after Christmas sale at the Holiday Shop. Got back with no real difficulties, and had located a bicycle mirror I could get when I had along a checkbook. During the drastically reduced clearance sales I bought a plastic cookie press for a dollar and a half. So I can make spritz.

But about an hour and it will be time to discuss Louise's War, by Sarah R. Shaber. 2012 starting up -

Apple For The First Meal of The New Year

2011-12-31T11:43:00.000-08:00

Swedish tradition says have an apple for the first meal of the new year. It will promote good health all through the year.

Public Transportation and car-pool lanes

2011-12-27T14:29:00.001-08:00

The HOT lanes mentioned in the paper today allow cars driven by a person alone to pay to use the car-pool and public transportation lanes. This is a quote from an article in the Tacoma News Tribune. "We've already confirmed that the SR 167 HOT lanes are doing what they were designed to do: reduce congestion and improve travel times for everyone traveling on this corridor," state toll director Craig Stone said in a WSDOT news release issued this month.

The speaker means car by car congestion, and uses the term everybody, which refers to individual people. I think it must be true that the speaker is not discussing per capita congestion, but car by car congestion. The ecological purpose of the car-pool lanes is ruined by this use. Instead of this offense against public transportation, there should be special lines at busy post offices for people who have used a public transportation card that day. That would serve as an incentive to people to use public transportation.

Books At Twelve Ten and The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

2011-12-14T11:02:00.001-08:00

Three people met to discuss The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. First, a) to continue into the spring at the main library meeting room on the second Tuesday of every month we have to reserve the room... b) Also we discussed letting people forward absentee thoughts if unable to attend because of illness. Althought we are supposed to show up, be there and share, and also help choose the books, we might try out allowing a limited amount of contribution from absentee members. c) Next we made our choice for January - from limited library holdings, a new book by Sarah R. Shaber, Louise's War. The limited availability is the opposite of the Book Kits choices Books At Twelve Ten has experimented with in autumn.

Fifteen minutes into our discussion, we began to discuss The Corrections: according to one participant - "A big, complicated and tedious book." It was a long novel with rather few scenes and a great deal of flashbacks.

We had questions from the internet and discussed three or four - Consider the atmosphere of suburban St. Jude. and What is the significance of the title, The Corrections? and and What is the significance of "one last Christmas?"

One participant pointed out that the work is to be on HBO - (Home Box Office) I had not heard of it, according to the internet this will happen in 2013. As we made our way through questions the participant who chose the book explained they understood the title to mean the book was about the criminal justice system.

But the story only mentioned the criminal justice system distantly - one definition of corrections was a name, Correct-All, for a pill that would make criminals honest citizens. The words of the title are re-worked throughout the novel.

Here at the end of the year as I read I had dimly related to the final section of the book "One Last Christmas"as timely - and the idea of a holiday at home for the people in the story was not so unlike other unstable families.

Bird Count, Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-25T10:55:00.000-08:00

There were over forty seagulls at the pond along with twenty-some mallards, about nine were female. There was time to gaze at these gulls who crowded all over the circle/cylindar when I scattered a few bread bits, and to notice there was a difference, as shown in the Birds book I had along, between the Glaucus, the Herring, and the Western gull.

Eight appeared to be the immature Western Gull, a beautiful photograph was on-line at Matthew Filar Fine Art Photography. This photography group is near-by Humboldt County, where the Thanksgiving Bird Count I count with is located.

Four crows flew over my circle/cylindar at one point. When about five minutes remained in the hour of the count, about eight small birds flittered through the edge of the circle and lit among tree branches and on the ground among shrubs. They went to the other side of the pond quickly, so I went over and made sure they were Juncos. They were.

It only started to rain lightly thirty-five minutes into the count. But it had been so stormy, the crows were balancing on strong windy gusts, most of the other birds were budgeting their time at feeding stations, I guess.

Sunday the 20th and 27th of November, Library Closed - Reading for Books at Twelve Ten

2011-11-19T14:17:00.000-08:00

The Main Library will be closed tomorrow, November 20, and next Sunday, November 27th. If I had not visited the Main Library today, I would not have known that it would be closed tomorrow. In December the Sunday openings continue.

When Tacoma Reads Together read The Maltese Falcon, I began to read mysteries. Last New Year's Eve I remember being on a bus to Pierce County Library because my turn had come to read a new mystery. Why would I be interested in cozy mysteries? Maybe Books at Twelve Ten could read a mystery from a series and discuss mysteries.

In January Books At Twelve Ten will continue, moderated in turn by volunteers who are frequent members of the books group. In December we will discuss The Corrections.

Books at Twelve Ten Discusses A Desert In Bohemia, and Works With Book Kits

2011-11-09T15:39:00.001-08:00

A discussion developed around the title of the novel for November, Jill Paton Walsh's A Desert in Bohemia, named from a passage in Shakespeare's, The Winter's Tale. On page 140 the world immediately outside the prison cell is a "desert of concrete and wire". I commented that the reference from Shakespeare located this portrait of Bohemia as from the perspective of England.

The work was fiction based on events that occurred in Comenia, a part of Checkosovakia, after World War Two. Unlike Bohemia or England, Comenia was a fictional country. I was able to locate Comenius, John Amos, 1592-1670 - a Moravian educational reformer and bishop. It seems Jill Paton Walsh has named her novel's country after her pattern of philosophical and literary references, and for the central theme of a passion for intellectual activities and freedoms.

One group member explained that she had started to keep a record of the characters. All the parts of the book were named for characters. Not all of our discussion could stay in this vein, because many comments came up as we began to discuss the landscape. Much happened in Comenian streets or in camps, but especially in an elaborate castle.

Our discussion time came to an end as we talked about power and the character Count Michael and his historic family. Some of us did agree that Count Michael was a character with power who acted conscionably and responsibly.

John Amos Comenius is called Komensky in Czechoslovakian. One interesting internet experience for me as I read A Desert in Bohemia was to glance at a few blocks in Good Earth Street Views along Komensky Street in Chicago. This reminded me that a United States perspective about this topic might be different from the perspective from England.

We have learned about Book Kits this Autumn. All the books should be in the plastic carrier when the one patron who checks the kit out returns them. At one point a Book Kit borrower had to travel and tried to contact everyone to collect the books - she luckily found me at the library. We drove to my apartment to collect my copy and a set of little luggage wheels. Then we returned to the library, and after she checked in the kit, I checked the kit out again for us.

The five who discussed our November book rose to a half-dozen at the end of our discussion because we met the usual moderator when we left the meeting room. With her we continued the discussion, and she assured our Book Kit borrower of the month that, although we had only eleven instead of twelve of the copies, everything would be all right. Our selection for December will not be from a Book Kit, but from a title with a number of copies in the system, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections.

Yesterday, November 4th, Read at the Henry Gallery

2011-11-05T12:02:00.001-07:00

Part One

At the Henry Gallery SkySpace yesterday I introduced my reading of Folk Songs with comments. 2011 has been the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. I linked the KJV of the Bible to Pogo, the comic strip by Walt Kelly and The Anxiety of Influence by Harold Bloom.

In the wonderfully funny comic strip Pogo, by Walt Kelly, the character Deacon Mushrat speaks, in his dialogue boxes, in Old English. This could only be to me, a child reading and re-reading Pogo, the voice of the King James Version of the Bible. When Walt Kelly drew Deacon Mushrat with a large book in his hand, Kelly must have made the recognition described in The Anxiety of Influence, by Harold Bloom. Because of the great influence Kelly felt from the Bible, he needed to search along some mental bookshelf for a different title for the large book. So, The Anxiety of Influence, by Harold Bloom, suggests how, when Walt Kelly swerved, Cap'n Wimby's Bird Atlas came to be.

It was very interesting to see one or two of the events at the Translation Festival Wave Books yesterday. The festival continues today and Sunday.

Part Two

One or two copies of Cap'n Wimby's Bird Atlas exist in the swamp, another copy was featured as one-half of the library of a large bird who was training a smaller bird in bird skills.

One memorable strip involving Mole ends with this comment, one familiar to Kelly enthusiasts - "There's Nothing Quite So Lovely As A Brightly Burning Book". The book that was burning was indeed Cap'n Wimby's Bird Atlas.

In the first box, when asked by Howland Owl, "Where's Cap'n Wimby's Bird Atlas?" -

Mole declares - "Discredited." In the next box - "It didn't agree with our observations, did it, men?"

"No, sir, it's out of date."

"And on fire."

Howland Owl's expression progresses from outrage to shock from the first to the last boxes. This is wonderful work by Walt Kelly, it is nice to remember the reading and re-reading of the Pogo books both recently and long ago.

I Use Public Transportation, Walk, Or Ride Bike

2011-10-31T16:15:00.001-07:00

On the bus into Seattle last Thursday morning I saw the striped sweaters on the trees in Pioneer Square. Then I had a few peanuts as a snack and gradually realized I was staring at an old clock – it was nine o'clock - on the sidewalk where the jewelry store was a hundred years old. I walked around a block to Westlake Center and as I passed a clothing store a door opened briefly. The aroma that swung out was the artificial holiday department store atmosphere-scent from days when I was a girl going to department stores at a mall. My earliest downtown shopping for Christmas presents had not included a solid wall of immense perfume – what I remember while I was a child selecting a tie for my father was something more subtle.

That brought me around to an old clipping about Nose knows: Smell a potent link to memories – this list of identifiable aromas from decades of birth is still on the internet – except, in my clipping from Friday, December 25, 1992, the 1940s also responded to gas.

Gas was memorable to me – although I have never owned a car, I was at the flying red horse station Mobil with my mother when the attendant, who had been there for a long time, filled up my mother's tank. Well, I use public transportation, walk, or ride a bike. I do not really know where the idea of smell a potent link to memories lost the smell of gas.

This is from the internet:

1970's - Baby powder, mother's perfume, moth balls, plastic, hair spray, suntan oil, chlorine, felt tip pens

1960's - Baby powder, mother's perfume, chlorine, window cleaner, dad's cologne, detergent, paste, Play Dough, disinfectant, refineries/factories, motor oil, exhaust

1950's - Baby powder, mother's perfume, dad's cologne, crayons, pine, Play Dough

1940's - Baby powder, mother's perfume, hay/cut grass, flowers, sea air, roses, tweed

1930's - Flowers, hay, sea air, pine, baby powder, burning leaves

1920's - Flowers, grass, roses, pine, soap, manure

Attended Kenneth C. Davis Skype Event at Library

2011-10-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

In the past I have not been onscreen during a Skype event, this time the screen showed the meeting room of the Wheelock Library, which had been part of the McCormick Library before the Wheelock Regional Library was built. The room is special and lovely but free of books, except when there is an event there.

Several people attended and several asked questions about the Civil War and about his books, "Don't Know Much About The Civil War", among them. Davis said he had been familiar with the song "What a Wonderful Word" for a long time and especially the Sam Cooke version. (The song was from 1960 and written by Sam Cooke, according to the internet.) Davis makes an emphasis on the important special stories about people during historic times.

Skype. I worked at McCormick Branch Library from 1965 to 1967, during high school.

October Books At Twelve-Ten - Breakfast At Sally's by Richard Le Mieux

2011-10-12T13:14:00.001-07:00

Three people met on Tuesday, October 11, 2011 for Books At Twelve-Ten. Our book was Breakfast at Sally's by Richard Le Mieux. We agreed that imagery invoked a place successfully, at one point Richard's second-hand typewriter is accidentlly left out in the rain on a picnic table. More rain scenes portrayed Puget Sound.

We discussed many characters included in Breakfast at Sally's and the serious message conveyed regarding poverty in our present time. "Sally's" was the Bremerton Salvation Army, where Richard drove his van most mornings for breakfast. His dog, Willow, was along during all his experiences.

The reading group is using Tacoma Public Library Book Kits for our choices at this time. The kits include ten or a dozen copies of a title, a reading and discussion guide in a folder, and a plastic carry box with a plastic lid. The ten or a dozen copies circulate within the reading group from the personal library card of one member. All the books must return to the member who checked out the box before the kit can be returned.

On Tuesday, November 8th, 2011, the Books At Twelve-Ten group will read Desert in Bohemia by Jill Paton Walsh. From the internet: "a novel of the effects of communism on the lives of ordinary people in the aftermath of World War II chronicals fifty years in a small European town."

Swedish Song - Now We Have Summer Now We Have Sun

2011-09-27T12:22:00.001-07:00

Years back a cousin and I enjoyed the sunny chairs not far from the Ted Brown Music Store. I showed her a Scandinvian Song Book from Ted Brown Music. She told me Nu är det sommar nu är det sol had been our grandmother's favorite song.

This is a different version of the song about dancing in the woods in the moonlight. The tune of the song was among those performed by my mother and uncles in their family dance band, the Gord Family Orchestra.

Nu är det sommar nu är det sol / nu är det koskit i hagen / och kärringskrallet sitter på en stol / med fullt av kakor i magen. / Kom ska jag kaska koskit på dig / så att du tappar andan.

Now we have summer now we have sun / now we have cowshit in the meadow / and the old woman rattling sits in a chair / but full of cake in the stomach. / I am going to cast cow shit at you / so that you draw a breath.

During one discussion of The Crucible, a panel about the McCarthy Hearings, during Tacoma Reads Together in 2006, I brought up a book I had been reading - a treatise about the word bullshit. One topic of the book was that the term bullshit refers to language that obscures meaning. The term also is used the punctuate sentences for shock emphasis, and when the term is used this way, it is usually used over and over.

I tried to find Nu är det sommar nu är det sol on the internet. The song with "nu är det koskit i hagen" was the only thing I could find. Where my grandmother was a child in Finland was out in the country and perhaps she knew this alternative version, too, from her childhood. Perhaps this version is very far from meaningless, but is a jewel from the great treasure of children's rhymes.

Perhaps this jewel from the great treasure of children's rhymes is here, being passed on to another generation of children.

The dancer/singer who performs this song for children At Den flygande mattan wears a rather traditional sailor costume and uses lots of leg and arm gestures and energy. The children in the audience are just beginning upper elementary school grades. I think this is an outreach to the children to take on healthy eating and exercise behavior.

There are problems. In our time a dancer can be perceived to use a private car. With this luxury there is a baggage of car-dependent guilt, blame, and road rage. How does the singer and the filmed program make sure they are not taking all this out on the helpless, innocent little ones?

It is terrible to think of the committee that arrives at a school in their several cars to "Carrie Nation" the school hallway snack machine.

Drawings From Puyalllup Fairs of the Past

2011-09-21T09:48:00.000-07:00

Draft Horse Demo, Pioneer Farm with Wringer Washstand, Topiary Chicken, and Jiggle Foot.

Books At Twelve Ten Plans For October

2011-09-17T16:11:00.001-07:00

Four people were present to discuss Then We Came To The End on Tuesday at noon. This time the plan included making up our own Autumn book list. We explored the idea of Tacoma Public Library's Book Kits and will begin with Richard Le Mieux's Breakfast At Sally's.

Volunteers To Continue Books At Twelve Ten

2011-09-03T16:02:00.001-07:00

During library funding gaps, volunteers are organizing to continue Books At Twelve Ten - Tuesday, September 13th, 2011, group member will meet to discuss "Then We Came To The End", a book we enjoyed last September - If we look back on books read by Books at Twelve-Ten, there are things happening for the books and for the authors – According to the internet, if everything goes as planned, Fox 2000 hopes to start shooting The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society in the spring. Author of The Highest Tide, Jim Lynch's Border Songs won the 2010 Washington State Book Award. I Don't Know How She Does It – will soon be released, Sarah Jessica Parker stars in film version. We read The Pact– the Three Doctors are on Facebook. A Sherman Alexie poem – "The Lost Colony of Roanoke", is in the on-line magazine Guernica, August 2011.

The Story of Ginni and the "I Am An American" Speaking Tour - Labor Day Weekend

2011-09-01T12:37:00.001-07:00

The Nelson Bentley Medallion for Best Inter-Woven-Vision-of-Richard-Hugo, a lovely round award decorated with the image of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, would be awarded to the speaker ahead of Ginni during Bumbershoot. Ginni met the winner while they visited the theater where they would speak. (This is a work of fiction. Bumbershoot in The Story of Ginni and the "I Am An American" Speaking Tour, carries no resemblance to any other Bumbershoot Event in the Pacific Northwest.)

Ginni was requisitioned a t-shirt to wear if she wished to during the speech.

The Story of Ginni and the "I Am An American" Speaking Tour - Correspondence

2011-08-25T13:05:00.001-07:00

What a happy day it was when one of Ginni's post cards or notes arrived at the doll museum! These went right up on the bulletin board at the office where everyone could see them.

UW-Tacoma plans to honor Japanese Language School | Tacoma Weekly

2011-08-23T10:28:00.000-07:00

This article from the Tacoma Weekly shows a planned recognition of the Japanese Language School. This school was present in the neighborhood not far from the Tacoma Main Library before World War Two, and an effort to preserve the building continued for years. UW-Tacoma plans to honor Japanese Language School Tacoma Weekly

The Story of Ginni and the "I Am An American" Speaking Tour - Update

2011-08-18T14:06:00.001-07:00

Yard Sale Poem

2011-08-17T17:02:00.001-07:00

Poem from 1877 that I found at a Yard Sale in 1987

Last Sunday, as I went around a corner towards a yard sale, I recognized those front steps and the steep bank. This was where I found a poem, years before, among other letters in a box of old papers. The box was laid out with other yard sale items.

Because the poem was written by a Hancher and was with Iowa items and from the midwest, I thought of the Writers' Workshop and decided to mail it to Marvin Bell. This is the poem as I copied it into a diary in 1987 - Found today (8/30/87) at a yard sale to mail to Marvin Bell at The Iowa City Writers' Workshop

This world seems cold seems sad & drear,

It seems a sea of temporal woe.

Perhaps the Lord hath seen "twere best,

That I immortal joys should know:

All Else than Him seems but a blank;
Life's rugged road seems dark & drear;
It seems as if 'twere - ah! too vain!

To try to think of aught to cheer.

The past has been to me, a blank?

Ah no! Then I was filled with hope;

The present come & seems so drear,

I can but in the darkness grope;

But Lord in thee I'll put my trust,

Whatever evil may betide;

And when my mission here is done,

I trust that thou my soul wilt guide

Into the haven of the blest
Where all is joy, and peace, and love;

where sickness comes not neither death:

Oh! There I'll rest with thee above!

An hour has passed! A ray of hope

Springs on my path, my heart to cheer.

Oh! That the darkness of this hour,

Would cease; and untold joy appear:

Twould bring relief to one who sits,

And watches me with anxious heart;

Who longs to see those joys appear;

And all this misery depart.

Ever yours

J W Hancher
Summerfield, Ohio

1/12/1877

Last Sunday, August 14th, 2011, I reminded the homeowner, a lady, about the letter I had found, years before. That evening I located the event as August 30th, 1987, during my first year in a large one-room apartment with a galley kitchen.

Because of the name Hancher and the midwest location I addressed it to Marvin Bell at the Iowa City Writers' Workshop. In 1987 there was a Sunday pickup at the mail box near the pharmacy. I still remember that the letter hit the bottom of an empty mailbox with a lonesome thud. The mail had already been picked up, it would have to wait overnight.

Then remorse set in. Had I been impetuous to just put on a stamp and mail it, should I have sent it registered mail?

On the phone on Thursday to the International Workshop, which transferred my call to the Writers' Workshop with no letter found, I tried directory assistance and called Marvin Bell at home. He said he tried to call me. I probably was doing the laundry.

He sent the poem to acquisitions at the university library where they would decide if they wanted it or if it should be sent to Iowa Wesleyan. Iowa Wesleyan was the choice.

The yard sale in 2011 was again a treasury. The theme here was beautiful knick knacks, and they were wonderful. When I spoke to the lady, while I was looking through some Nancy Drew books, an old pot-holder weaving frame, she remembered me. I had brought a copy of correspondence I had with Iowa over to her at that long-ago time.

She said on Sunday that eventually they had arranged for more of the correspondence to be sent to Iowa to a Greek living community, a fraternity or sorority.

The return to this same yard sale from twenty-four years before took me across thoughts into the times I have known since then. I lived in five apartments in four old buildings in the two neighboring historic districts from 1974 to 2004 - thirty years of Historic Tacoma. Presently I am in yet another historic Tacoma Neighborhood.

The Story of Ginni and the "I Am An American" Speaking Tour - Part Five

2011-08-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

Part Five: On Their Way

And so they were on their way - Ginni, Shadow, Gypsy, and Ms.
Torvaldsen. Ms. Torvaldsen had contacted media and that day's paper included an article about the "I Am An American" Speaking Tour.

The Story of Ginni and the "I Am An American" Speaking Tour - Part Four

2011-08-11T11:33:00.001-07:00

PART FOUR: GINNI DREAMS ABOUT THE TIME GYPSY WAS FORGOTTEN

In the middle of the night Ginni sat at her table beside the cafe curtains at the kitchen window. Only a stove light was on, and above the curtains Ginni could make out one or two stars in the dark sky. Shadow was asleep on his kitchen rug and Gypsy was asleep, her head inside her shell, in her aquarium.

On her refrigerator was Ginni's list under its fridge magnet: Ms Torvaldsen was with media and public relations for the doll museum and would accompany Ginni, Shadow, and Gypsy to take photographs and tapes of the trip and the performances.

In her kitchen the night before the trip, Ginni was happy that Ms. Torvaldsen would be with them - for although Ginni had not realized she felt anxious, Ginni had once again had the bad dream about Gypsy being forgotten.

"But how we called and called to the volunteer as he was walking away from putting the pond turtles into the aquarium. Poor Gypsy!"

After that Gypsy lived with Ginni and Shadow.

"Why am I dreaming this again and again? Surely I cannot be afraid that Gypsy will be forgotten on our trip? Perhaps Ms. Torvaldsen will also help with Gypsy."

A Report for the Summer Reading Club on a book about Stieg Larsson and herself by Eva Gabrielsson

2011-08-10T10:49:00.001-07:00

"THERE ARE THINGS I WANT YOU TO KNOW": ABOUT STIEG LARSSON AND MYSELF by Eva Gabrielsson

The book is written with Marie-Francoise Colombani, and translated from the French by Linda Coverdale.

For the many readers of the Millenium series Eva Gabrielsson tells about her shared experience with Stieg Larsson. Connections to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest are many and clearly made. Places and people they knew are described in the books. Also described in the books are memories Stieg Larsson shared with her about his childhood:

"At the beginning of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Mikael Blomkvist accepts an offer from Henrik Vanger, Harriet Vanger's uncle, to move into the guest house not far from Hedestad. It's the middle of winter, and he describes the 'ice roses that formed on the inside of the windows': they were the same ones that used to fascinate Stieg in his grandparents' home..."(Gabrielsson, Page 9)

They made a visit together to the little house that was Stieg Larsson's first home. Photos of this house are in the book.

Bible references were central clues in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo mystery and important is her explanation of the Bible in Scandinavia. Gabrielsson liked to light candles in old churches they visited together. Also important is her identity as an architect. The thirty years Stieg Larsson and Eva Gabrielsson spent together were lived in a city apartment. Her struggle to hold on to the apartment, which is her home, after Stieg Larsson died, is central to the book.

The Story of Ginni and the "I Am An American" Speaking Tour, Part Three

2011-08-10T10:19:00.001-07:00

PART THREE: GINNI PACKS

The doll museum wanted Ginni to look her best and suggested she choose pieces to bring along from storage. The costuming department was a floor above the great hall. In a far storage room was a section where clothes fit Ginni.

In Ginni's current primary voters' pamphlet the announcement "We're bringing back an old tradition" stirred her again and again to thoughts of the flag. This remained in her thoughts as she opened the windowshade to let light into the dim storage room..

"Will my everyday dress be right for the train ride?" wondered Ginni, as she and Shadow planned what to bring.

The Story of Ginni and the "I Am An American" Speaking Tour - Part Two

2011-08-09T11:23:00.001-07:00

PART TWO: GINNI'S JOB AT THE DOLL MUSEUM

Ginni is employed at the doll museum. In the great hall Ginni plays the role of Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring. Ginni can wear the Native American Costume owned by the Doll Museum, it fits quite well. For this reason Ginni was chosen for her job. The museum had also owned a Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring marionette. But an Older Sister with talent for blonde wool yarn turned the marionette into Alice in Wonderland.

When Ginni got the letter from the group called The "I Am An American" Speaking Tour, which had chosen Ginni to speak on the topic, "Good Citizenship", Ginni had to explain this to the Doll Museum and ask for a leave of absence.

The Doll Museum was happy for Ginni. This would be a chance for Ginni to make a difference. They could arrange some baskets and drums beneath the cigar box felts where Ginni usually stands.

The magnificent cigar box felts are close to a hundred years old.

The Story of Ginni and The "I Am An American" Speaking Tour

2011-08-08T16:23:00.001-07:00

PART ONE: MEET GINNI AND SHADOW

In Ginni's current primary voters' pamphlet the announcement "We're bringing back an old tradition" stirred her to thoughts of the flag. This was the announcement:

Citizenship Day was first celebrated in May, 1940 and was called "I am an American" Day.

In 1952, it was moved to September 17, Constitution Day, to correspond with the signing of the United States Constitution in 1787. Tacoma's last celebration was in 1949.

Today we consider Citizenship/Constitution Day as the birthday for our country. It serves as a means for American citizens to express pride in their citizenship. Constitution Day also designates a time to honor the Constitution of America and learn more about this famous piece of legislation.

The pamphlet included photos of Jason Lee Middle School auditorium on "I am an American Day."

Ginni had attended a junior high school. To be a doll in junior high school had meant so much to her. A few days later she got a letter from a group called The "I Am An American" Speaking Tour. They had chosen Ginni to speak on the topic, "Good Citizenship". The Speaking Tour Group would pay all Ginni's expenses on her tour to places in the United States, including housing and Amtrak train fare.

Shadow and Ginni had always been friends. Of course Shadow and Ginni would both go on the tour. Gypsy had always been Ginni's friend. Of course Gypsy would also go on the tour with Shadow and Ginni.

In The Story Of Ginni and the "I Am An American" Speaking Tour, the part of Ginni is played by a collector's doll. The part of Shadow is played by a bendable toy dog. The part of Gypsy is played by a ceramic turtle figurine.

Report for the Adult Summer Reading Club - on Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky

2011-08-01T15:33:00.001-07:00

Fire Sale (G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York: 2005) is set in South Chicago, where the narrator, private detective V.I. Warshawski was a child. "In this town, your childhood home dogs you your whole life."(Page 8). As an amplification of the priority we need to make about being aware of where objects come from, the novel is set in a small flag factory, and characters in the novel reflect the hardships and dangers of people at work to craft the flags, symbols of the United States.

One motivator for me to read Fire Sale was the Bysen family characters, who own BySmart and are modeled after people who own Walmart. Presently in the news in Walmart's Food Deserts: Greening the Bottom Line by Eric Holt Gimenez: First Lady Michelle Obama announced that SUPERVALU, Walgreens and Walmart committed to open or expand 1,500 supermarkets across America's food deserts -- low-income areas without easy access to a supermarket. Gimenez concludes - if greening the food deserts are a policy priority, then we need more than just new supermarkets. We need programs that reduce record high income inequality and create jobs with decent living wages.

One motivator for me to read Sara Paretsky's Fire Sale was the current primary election voter's pamphlet. A section about the Pierce County Citizenship Celebration illustrates "We're bringing back an old tradition," with photographs of flags from 1941's "I am an American Day."

"The soft fabric was falling from her machine into a wooden box: the U.S. flag must not touch the ground." (Page 112) The factory's worker's daughters are on the basketball team narrator private detective Warshawski has volunteered to coach, and concerned about how meager the funding is for the girls' positive involvement and activity, she approaches the Bysen (BySmart) family with a request for support. The factory worker feeds six people on her small salary. A theme of the novel is teen pregnanacy. The girls sleep in flag sheets. The story centers around an explosion and fire at the factory, which becomes an even more grim place just after the fire: "...still some bolts of fabric in their plastic sheathing,...the edges had been eaten by rodents, charmed to have such soft nest-building material laid out for them." (Page 370).

Some chapter titles refer to cowboy songs, "Home, Home on the Range", for example, as a reference to the homonym Byson and Bison.

Norwegian Songs at Thursday's Listen Live At Lunch

2011-07-29T13:40:00.001-07:00

Among other familiar songs - The Ash Grove, and There is a Balm in Gilead, as well as Kum Ba Yah - presented by musical performers with the church - the organ recital for First Lutheran's Listen Live at Lunch on Thursday July 28, 2011 included Norwegian songs and very short comments by Pastor Nesvig. At one point he discussed the shared tradition between Sweden and Norway of two songs, In Heaven Above and Halsa Dem Darhemma). The Norwegian songs were a remembrance of the events of last Friday, July 22, in Norway. This is the description of this section from the Listen Live at Lunch program:

Norwegian Hymns and Folksongs

Two Norwegian Hymns: The norwegian folk melody heritage is well-represented in the Church of Norway's hymnal. Two of these melodies sung today have roots in the Hallingdal and Heddal valleys of central Norway. These folk melodies, along with their texts, are haunting and profound, especially this week as we remember the horrible events of last Friday.

Eg Veit I himmerik ei borg harm. John Lammetun

I himmelen, I himmelen harm. Lars Soraas

In Heaven Above (an organ interlude)

Two Norwegian Folk Songs: The choral tradition is strong in Norway, from kindergarten to church, from home to community. These two folk songs are widely known and sung in Norway. The first represents the longing of a sailor for "the folks back home". The second offers the way to respond as a community when adveristy strikes.

Hils fra meg der hjemme Edith Worsing

La oss leve for hverandre Sundstrom/Friis

Tacoma Downtown Market

2011-07-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

Cherries, Corn, Lettuce, and Raspberries at the downtown market today. Nice sun, a walk to the library, my plan is to attend Listen Live At Lunch at First Lutheran Church.

William Makepeace Thackeray, 200

2011-07-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

At Northeast 45th and Thackeray Place Northeast, Seattle, this morning a great poster wished William Makepeace Thackeray a happy 200th Birthday. "All is vanity, nothing is fair" he was quoted. According to the internet, William Makepeace Thackeray was born in India. The bus shelter near the poster is on a tree-lined street off busy 45th, which crosses the freeway. The walk was not very long from the University District. It was a few years between a recommendation that I read Vanity Fair in junior high school until I noted a journal entry of me reading that book while at a Hamburg Inn Diner in Iowa City. It was an evening visit, while my usual Hamburg Inn visit was a morning stop for French Toast. Vanity Fair.

Report on Blacklist by Sara Paretsky for the Summer Reading Club

2011-07-15T11:13:00.001-07:00

REPORT ON BLACKLIST SARA PARETSKY

In another book I reported on, STIEG LARSSON: OUR DAYS IN STOCKHOLM by Kurdo Baksi, I learned that among crime novelists that influenced Stieg Larsson was Sara Paretsky. Both use short chapters. Both may have been influced by other crime writers.

In one passage in THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST (2009) when Michael Blomkvist needs a different car because there is a tracking device on his car, he has recognized her car key among things in a bag she dropped - during their brief encounter while someone was chasing her - and he can go to Elizabeth Salander's neighborhood to drive her car from Stockholm to Goteborg. In BLACKLIST(2003) V.I. Warshawski has retained the car key when, hired by the family of the victim, she has gotten a locksmith to open his car. She can drive a youth she is hiding from the Patriot Act to a new location.

At times I have found the Sara Paretsky narration, nice Chicago description and a reaffirmation of the reader's attention with repeated, reassuring characterization, to include points memorable to me:

I had earliet come upon her novel, TUNNEL VISION, such a point is "I can't say I would have known him anywhere - it had been twenty years since I'd seen or thought of him. But knowing to expect him I recognized him at once."(page 79) This word choice in this observation about cognition states something we have known without words.

In BLACKLIST, the narrator remembers her mother saying, "We don't give into our worries...we do some job, like this, we do it well, we make the worries leave us alone..."(page 170)

Of BLACKLIST, the book's blurb: "As she retraces the dead reporter's track, V.I. is sucked into the middle of a gothic tale of sex, money and power." There are fewer than usual scenes, in this gothic, in which V.I. Warshawski is kidnapped or attacked. My observation about this is that as her female characters' histories reflect romance, a less violent story is appropriate.

In the post- 911 times of the Patriot Act, the characters' background with McCarthy era blacklists in the mid-nineteen-fifties includes African-Americans. The frequent chapter titles include familiar references to culture, including to Brer Rabbit and Joel Chandler Harris.

The dead reporter's name was Marc Whitby - I wonder if the name is a woven-in reference to the idea that the blacklist was a list of people with a black mark made against their name. One reference to Stockholm Syndrome at an important point in the book reminds me how proximity to others can blur borderlines. At the same time it reminds me that proximity and blurred borders are dangerous combined with weapons.

Report on a Biography of Stieg Larsson for the Adult Summer Reading Club

2011-07-15T10:58:00.001-07:00

Stieg Larsson: Our Days In Stockholm by Kurdo Baksi.

Part One

For the Adult Summer Reading Club I earlier reported on A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of the Mother of President Barack Obama. She died in the mid-nineteen-nineties and did not witness her son's achievement. She was fifty-two. Stieg Larsson died in 2004, after he finished three volumes of The Millenium Series but before their publication and success. He was fifty years old.

In these two books I found a similar construction: What drove her? asked Jenna Scott. Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Sotoro worked through difficult conditions, neglected health concerns to pour energy into anthropology field work and jobs that applied her studies. She did detailed field work on crafts in Indonesia.

Who was Stieg? asks Kurdo Baksi. "No human being is capable of working like Stieg did. Did he do it in an attempt to achieve ambitious goals he set himself, or was it some kind of escapism?"

In Stieg Larsson: Our Days In Stockholm, we learn how Larsson approached Kurdo Baksi to share publication of their magazines Expo and Svartt Vitt. On page 48 - "What the force was that drove Stieg was Justice - irrespective of class, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation".

Part Two

From Sunday to Monday after I worked on this report, at church and at a garage sale I reflected on this from the lesson in Romans: Romans 8: 5-6 - "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace."

Dedication for these two people overrode a watch on self-management and self-care. At the garage sale a Floe Blue covered dish and batiks, a collection focus for Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Sotoro, bring clearly the image of practical life spiritually enhanced by decorated or hand made beauty. Within the practical texture, color, images brought an immediate experience of the Spirit.

Part Three

In the Stieg Larsson memoir I learn that Larsson included Kurdo Baksi as a character in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Kurdo Baksi refers Michael Blomkvist to an immigrant who can work for him. It was important that none of the work will be illegal.

(One element of the experience of the two as colleagues was that Svartt Vitt, the magazine of Kurdo Baksi, had lost funding. When I read of this I remembered a news article about friction between the refugees and the government in Sweden. I read in a book that immigrants could lose funding if Sweden suspected a link to militancy in the former country. Sweden's funding of refugee groups was for survival in Sweden. Sweden was not funding militancy.)

In Kurdo Baksi's book we learn about the journalist colleagues' experience with the racism that afflicted them as a voice for justice.

There is a chapter on feminism and a chapter on Stieg Larsson's fiction.

The Downtown Market Today

2011-07-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

At the downtown market today peas, broccoli and strawberries. This followed Listen Live at Lunch at First Lutheran Church with Dr. Duane Hulbert on the piano and one of the talented musicians in the family, Evan Hulbert on the Double Bass.

1927 Concert in Portland, Oregon

2011-06-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

A song in a concert by the Order of Runeberg in Portland, Oregon in 1927 was Romance, by Merikanto. The concert was part of a longer event which had two meeting headquarters - a Masonic Hall and the Linnea Hall - the Masonic Hall is now restored as part of an art museum, the Linnea Hall is restored and still used as a hall.

In the large picture of the choir is an equestrian statue of Teddy Roosevelt as a Rough Rider. I include a photo of the statue from the internet.

A REPORT FOR THE ADULT SUMMER READING CLUB

2011-06-28T11:48:00.001-07:00

I read A SINGULAR WOMAN because in DECONSTRUCTING OBAMA: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America's First Postmodern President, by Jack Cashill, I read that President Obama lived for months in Seattle as a newborn. The Janny Scott book includes thorough research - letters, travel and interviews and records for the biography of Stanley Ann Obama Soetoro. Jack Cashill posits other possibilities than present explanations for gaps in the record, and these ideas contribute to my reading of A SINGULAR WOMAN. Janny Scott uses only meticulous reference work when she makes the reader aware of the death of Ann to uterine and ovarian cancer, she does not venture any theories about causes of the illness.
Cashill ventures ideas about alleged nude photos of Ann and about gaps in the record of Obama's birth. Perhaps it is sexism that prevents Cashill from venturing theories about the causes of the illness. Because the illness and death of his mother became part of the discussion about health reform for Barack Obama, a detailed study about this topic should have been part of the book, DECONSTRUCTING OBAMA.
There was swelling and a discussion about the illness might have brought up the idea of whether this was about overweight or illness. Or whether this was a tangible sign of an illness caused by use of birth control pills? (Such a discussion topic follows from the Cashill style.)

Listen Live at Lunch and Downtown Market

2011-06-23T11:43:00.000-07:00

Strawberries are on sale at the downtown market today. I walked up the hill and am on my way to Listen Live at Lunch at First Lutheran Church. These are one or two snapshots of the market day hill climb from an earlier year.

First Day of Summer

2011-06-21T14:29:00.001-07:00

Some sun after rather cold weather - really like summer.

Hamburg Inn One and Two were Two Diners

2011-06-03T12:39:00.000-07:00

For anyone who remembers Iowa City, Hamburg Inn One and Two were two Diners rather nearby one another - I have found nice photos of diners at a site called ronsaari.com. At "stock" you can enter and click at "Diners" - great photos.

French Toast

2011-05-31T14:21:00.000-07:00

The last day of May. According to the weather in the newspaper, it has been a rainy spring. Over Memorial Day Weekend, I may have seen a Varied Thrush fly into some trees. And I saw a Red Wing Blackbird. I can enter at the Bicycle Month logs that I rode seven miles to the cemetery.

For over five years it has been important to my menu plan that I have no French Toast or Pancakes because fried foods contain too much fat. On Memorial Day Observed I tried a recipe for Guerrilla French Toast - this is baked French Toast - from the cookbook Guerrila Cooking (1996: St. Martin's Press, New York City). Any French Toast fan will believe this meant something to me.

The Author of Guerrila Cooking, Mel Walsh, has a blog called The Geezer Diary.

Norman Rockwell - Paintings and Magazine Covers at the Tacoma Art Museum

2011-05-27T14:47:00.000-07:00

We had The Saturday Evening Post when I was a child and a student. None of our magazine copies resonate for me apart from the fame so many of the images have. I remembered liking these. We certainly had the magazine every week.

So I visited the whole set of the magazine covers by Norman Rockwell at the Tacoma Art Museum today. I visited on Art Walk but the rooms were very crowded. This time the museum also featured the new exhibit of a very high wall of the blankets Chihuly has collected since the 1970s. These face a very high wall of portraits of Native Americans.

When Rockwell represented a catholic, he used props and costumes which were familiar to the protestants - a rosary, and December 23, 1944, two nuns in black and white habit part of a crowd in a railroad station that includes a red cap, who is an African American.

Rockwell's core characters are a really specific little Anglo-American group. This small group was presented as the genuine America. I think the media has chosen not to portray immigrants - none of my grandparents spoke English when they came to the United States in the later nineteenth century. In fact some Scandinavian Americans were in America along with other immigrants from other continents. The exhibit features art by Norman Rockwell about the Civil Rights Movement.

The work was very popular. Although I certainly remember liking the Saturday Evening Post pictures, I am sure the question of the lasting meaning of Norman Rockwell -( well, does any art have a meaning that lasts )- should be about publishing as an industry and that the work was made for immediate print in mass media.

Memorial Day Weekend

2011-05-27T14:42:00.000-07:00

This post card from 1917 from my great-grandfather's sister to the family shows a Union veteran in remembrance.

Zina's park: A place to play in peace | Kits Merryman - The News Tribune

2011-05-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

Zina's park: A place to play in peace Kits Merryman - The News Tribune

The front page photograph for this article includes First Lutheran Church in the background - in the foreground children march toward King Boulevard and on to McCarver Park.

After I Returned From Scandinavia in 1990

2011-05-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

After I returned from Scandinavia in 1990 I bought a bike. I have never owned a car, I use public transportation, walk, or ride a bicycle. Now is Bike to Work Month here in Tacoma, Washington.

Futurist Architecture 50s, 60s

2011-04-26T12:16:00.003-07:00

The Hat "n" Boots - "Built in 1947 of concrete and steel, the boots are 24 feet high and 20 feet long. The hat is 22 feet tall with a 45-foot brim of curving concrete on wire and steel". (THE WELL-BUILT ELEPHANT - and other roadside attractions: A Tribute to American Eccentricity, by J.J.C Andrews).

GOOGIE: FIFTIES COFFEE SHOP ARCHITECTURE, by Alan Hess in 1985.

In a column on Monday, April 25, 2011, Kathleen Merryman quotes Melissa McGinnis of Point Defiance Park - "At this point, we are in a compile and assess mode," about the fire at the Pagoda. Merryman adds, "There's a bit of humor and gratitude in the mode. While no one wants a fire in a historic building, this one at least melted the ugly 1960s plastic ceiling lamps. It spared the shovels and rakes in the basement."

The 1960s plastic ceiling lamps can be included in the design space of a book about architecture I have been reading. In Chapter i ("Critics") the author quotes a defender of this kind of design: "Popular taste has become the modern critic's favorite whipping boy," wrote Douglas Haskell in Architectural Forum (August 1958) I quote from GOOGIE: FIFTIES COFFEE SHOP ARCHITECTURE ("Author Alan Hess traces the evolution of these early postwar designs in a lively yet learned essay profusely illutrated..."). Alan Hess explores the topic Why do these buildings look the way they do?

It is a familiar idea carried along by Merryman - that this design space from the 1950s and 1960s is automatically ugly. Somewhere in the actual social importance that people learn to appreciate antiques for beauty and the stories they tell everything 50s and 60s becomes dismissed or easy to dismiss.

One reason why the coffee shops look the way they look is that other alternative energy plans were discarded while the unusual designs created by the alternatives were retained - "Outside, the House of the Future was a cruciform set on a pedestal, a vestige of an early plan to allow the house to rotate to make best use of solar heat in winter." This Monsanto House of the Future (in GOOGIE: FIFTIES COFFEE SHOP ARCHITECTURE Chapter D - '50s Houses) followed through on a design theme (the pedestal) but discarded the purpose - rotation for solar heat.

The coffee shops can seem like mimicry of Futuristic Design. But in other chapters Hess discusses how some of the designs which repeated the shapes of cars used modern structure for practical car-related purpose - recognizable roadway signs are an example, as are wide driveways with overhangs.

One of my aunts and my mother each had an extension-rod lamp with three futuristic light fixtures attached - I was reminded of the lamps after I went to Easter Morning church service in the chapel at First Lutheran Church. Above the seating in the chapel are three futuristic chandeliers, each with five futuristic fixtures.

It has been fifty-four years. But, set into each fixture is its answer at last - over fifty years later, the curl of an eco bulb.

First Lutheran Church will be the Gathering Place for the Tour of Homes of the Tacoma Historical Society next weekend. According to a news article, the church was completed in 1929 - the chapel is in the 1957 educational wing.
The blurb of GOOGIE - "The metal-framed angular designs, employing lavish use of glass, natural (and unnatural) stone, tile, and integrated landscaping became a cachet for the proliferating coffee shops and drive-in restaurants of the 1950s." This was futuristic and some of the futuristic examples were radical.

Photo - 2003 Choir Practice - Laura Jensen in white sweater vest.

First Lutheran's Chapel recently smoothly accepted the smaller grand piano that had been in the sanctuary before the church got its present Steinway. So the design proves to handle this recent (2010) change. When we must compare it with GOOGIE because the design elements are the same, we need to remember that the style of architecture sprang from the Futuristic mode. When I notice this I see that the GOOGIE's California Coffee Shops' radical overemphasis defines the design trend, makes it recognizable by exaggeration and everyday repetition.

GOOGIE: FIFTIES COFFEE SHOP ARCHITECTURE, by Alan Hess in 1985.

Dinner Plate 1960s

2011-04-25T14:57:00.000-07:00

The starburst design on this plate is made out of trees.

The store sold these - we had this pattern.

Japan - Children's Art - about 1957

2011-04-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

This is a saved drawing of Japan from several saved. In about 1957 some drawings I did as a child were included in an art show with the sister city in Japan. I was sent a beautiful thank you letter from Japan.

Polaroid Swinger

2011-04-16T10:55:00.000-07:00

This is a computer altered drawing of the Polaroid Swinger my mom bought in 1966 to take family photos.

Polaroid Swinger Photo of Bake Sale during Leif Erickson Fest in Tacoma

2011-04-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

With the Polaroid Swinger my mom bought in 1966 to take family photos she could take a snapshot of the ladies at this bake sale. It was in downtown Tacoma at Rhodes Brothers Department Store. It was during Leif Erickson Fest.

Polaroid Swinger Photo About 1970

2011-04-16T10:48:00.000-07:00

The Polaroid Swinger could get a certain amount of close-up detail - the camera my mom bought in 1966 to take family photos was used to take some pictures of her doll collection - she had included our Ginny Dolls from the 1950's.

Books At Twelve-Ten for April

2011-04-12T13:46:00.001-07:00

Seven people gathered for the Books at 12:10 discussion of Thomas L. Friedman's HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED on Tuesday, April 12, 2010.

As we read, what strongly impressed each of us? One reader felt depressed because we wait for the government to take action on these truths about the ecology but we do not see it happen. There is a disconnect and no follow-up.

For this reader to use water and electricity with care was an emotional solution.

My own strong impression was that Thomas L. Friedman was not using logic as a writing method. His method of writing is clearly Standard English, but is not logically restricted. When logic is the method, there is a rule against calling an element of the writing by a term used in another context. In a logical method, the context is to remain restricted.

In Chapter Ten - The Energy Internet: When IT Becomes ET - the familiar term ET (Extra-Terrestrial) becomes Energy Technology instead. Friedman's language throughout borrows from different contexts (Climate Change becomes Global Wierding) as he signals an Eco-system experience as opposed to a Logical System experience.

HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED reiterates and reiterates a constant impression Friedman has of the ecological situation.

The group discussed clean power solutions and the term, affluenza. There were many points made by Thomas Friedman. President Carter has placed solar panels on the White House which were removed during the Reagan administration. I did not know that until I read it in HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED.

One reader felt hope in these truths. She believes there should be an Every Day Person's Handbook of the truths in HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED.

As some of us answered the question of how we use renewable energy in our lives, I was able to relate that I have used three adult bicycles since 1990 and have never owned a car. I use public transportation, walk or ride a bicycle. Although I sometimes am in a car with a relative, I am not at all used to riding in a car.

The discussion ended in a review of upcoming Tacoma Reads Together events surrounding THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND – an afternoon at Wheelock Library about local wind energy and an event at University of Puget Sound about Food and Justice.

Reconciliation 2009 Group Documentary

2011-04-09T10:54:00.001-07:00

"64 years after the first atomic bombs were dropped on civilians in Japan, an 18 person interfaith delegation will visit Japan with one purpose: to create a world free of nuclear weapons." freeworlddocumentary.com

The story of this trip to Japan in 2009 presently appears in the film at festivals. The trailer appears on You Tube.

Memorial Service about Japan and the Earthquake

2011-03-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

At ten o'clock on Saturday there was a memorial service at Tacoma's Thea's Park in honor of Japan and the Earthquake victims. Mayor Strickland spoke remembering Tacoma's sister cities and past-mayor Baarsma also spoke, remembering the previous sister city Kokura. Geese rose from the water and flew along in the sky. The priest who explained that the chanting would be a sutra reminded the audience that we live with nature. While the priests chanted a sutra, from time to time there was a chime as a priest struck a small metal gong that rested on one hand. And while the priests chanted the sutra a large dog went into the water after a large stick. He came to the stick and he turned and swam back and the stick was thrown again and then again. She threw a rock in to where the stick landed again and again. The water is always very cold. I walked back along Schuster Parkway past a growing huge dandelion plant and the beginnings of horsetails.

Proctor Market First Day

2011-03-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

From The Urban Dictionary on the internet - A common exclamation when in or around hillbilly infested areas. Doesn't necessarily need to be used when in a canoe; merely a warning to the other non-hillbillies in the vicinity - Paddle Faster, I hear Banjos! I got shallots and pears at the first day of the weekly Proctor Market and the bass fiddle and banjo music reminded me of a t-shirt I saw - A dog and second animal were in a canoe and one dog says, Paddle faster, I hear banjos! It did sure help to look it up on the internet. The weekly market has more booths than the Winter Proctor Market.

Holocaust Conference at Pacific Lutheran University 2011

2011-03-19T17:23:00.001-07:00

The Holocaust Conference at PLU in 2002 was attended by about 30 Holocaust scholars and the intellectual energy of their youth had a lot of dynamism. According to the News Tribune article the it was a 4-day event with a focus on early anti-Semitic teachings of European churches – it was nine years ago, I filed the article and managed to retrieve it last year for the 2010 Conference.

According to my notes from 2002, the history of the question of Semitism in Europe was considered in depth. Part of Catholic anti-semitism challenged Jews to translate Talmud passages of love for one another which existed like flowers - only a few in a neglected garden. The inference was that Jews were treated with contempt because they showed contempt for others. This was the idea of anti-goyism - the Jewish hatred of non-Jews, that Jews were hostiel against the Christian nation.

Some cricisms of protestant anti-Semitism entered focused on the belief that Jews were condemned because they did not choose Christ over Barrabas.

There is contrast to the present Holocaust Conference style, in 2010 and in 2011 the emphasis has been on the tragedies of genocide in today's world, Ruwanda, and on of teachers of youth, there to learn more about extending knowledge about these serious topics in the early years of school. Carl Wilkins presented, along with students from Charles Wright Academy.

One direct history paper presentation on Saturday was about the Kindertransport – it reflected both traditional history and the teaching interest of the conference.

Back in 2002, during one busy question and answer session I stood and asked about a theme - the rescue of 7,500 Danish Jews taken to Sweden in small boats – a scholar had pointed out that it was better for the rescued people if they looked Jewish because they were afraid. If they looked Jewish the boat owners were sure of their identity.

I wondered by who and when it was determined that someone looked Jewish. The exact strategy of placing people on the boats was so unclear to me.

In 2005 a novel about the Holocaust helped me understand this part of history better. The author's name was Kevin Haworth, The Discontinuity of Small Things, about Denmark in World War Two. The book used a lot of imagery to clearly describe Denmark at that time.

Most of the Saturday events were devoted to art and the holocaust. Poetry After Auschitz was a respectful meditation on the use of words after such a terrible idea.

Friday rain poured down, Saturday the sun was so pleasant.

A Song Performed at the 1934 Concert Can Be Heard On the Internet

2011-03-11T11:33:00.000-08:00

A song heard at the 1934 concert can be heard on the internet.

With audio you enter Och gladjen den dansar (With Joy We Go Dancing)

to locate the site with the album cover illustration -

(The song is the same as Men liljorna de vaxa opp om varen, folk music collected and arranged by Otto Anderson.)

An Article From Sunday August 26, 1934

2011-03-10T13:22:00.001-08:00

An interesting article from Sunday, August 26, 1934, tells of the Labor Day Weekend concert planned by Order of Runeberg at the Scottish Rites Cathedral. The program for the event lists a banquet after the Sunday Concert at First Lutheran Church.

(In this photo of the Scottish Rites Cathedral Building, which still stands, the spires of Stadium High School appear in the far distance.)

MUSICAL FEAST PROMISED CITY

Order of Runeberg Singing Society Will Meet Here Saturday and Sunday

Next Saturday morning at 9 o'clock, the 10th annual convention of the Order of Runeberg Singing Society will open with registration of the singers and visitors at the Scottish Rite cathedral. The entire morning and most of the afternoon will be spent in rehearsal of the combined choruses. The women of the Tacoma Order of Runeberg have charge of the luncheon to be served for the singers at the Valhalla Temple.

At 9 o'clock Saturday evening the Scottish Rite cathedral will be the scene of the grand ball. Scandinavian dances will be featured, and musci will be furnished by the Gord Orchestra. Mayor Smitley will be present and will give a short address.

The concert, which begins at 3 o'clock on Saturday afternoon, will also be held at the Scottish Rite cathedral, and it promises to be one of the most outstanding concerts ever given by the grand chorus. Guest artists for the occasion will be Miss Viola Wasterlain, will-known Tacoma violinist; Victor Wickstrom, baritone, of Olympia, and Mrs. Gene Wallin-Sundsten, soprano, of Seattle. Mrs. Sunsten is an accomplished soloist and is very popular among the Runeberg singers. Besides being a member of the Seattle chorus, she has also been soloist at a number of the conventions. The grand chorus will sing one group of American selections, but the majority of the program will be a Swedish. Prof. John Sundsten of Seattle is the present director of the grand chorus. Prof. Sundsten has been associated with the Runberg Singing society for many years, having served as the accompanist at most of the conventions. Last year he was chosen by the society as grand director, and he has proven to be a most able and sympathetic leader. One group of Swedish numbers at the concert will be directed by the honorary past-director, Martin Carlson of Tacoma. Mr. Carlson was director of the grand chorus and the Tacoma chorus from the origin of the society in 1924 until last year, when he resigned on account of ill health.

(Accompanying baritone Victor Wickstrom was Linnea Gord at the piano - Kors Spindeln by Sibelius, and De Tva Grenadörerna by Schubert)

Starting out the program was Modersmålets Sång (Hagfors), Men Liljorna de Växa (Otto Anderson), and March ur Finlands Namn (A. Von Kothen)

1934, Summertime and the Runeberg Chorus

2011-03-10T10:56:00.001-08:00

Summertime, 1934, the Runeberg Chorus at Spanaway Park.

Linnea Gord, piano accompanist, in the striped dress to the right of the photo, became the chorus director.

More About Books at Twelve-Ten for March - TINKERS, by Paul Harding

2011-03-08T16:11:00.001-08:00

On International Women's Day, several from Books at Twelve-Ten snacked on Girl Scout Cookies and discussed Tinkers, by Paul Harding.

Tinkers tells of three generations - grand-father, son and grandson - focused in the hallucinatory memories of grandson George in the final days of his life. While the story necessarily drifts, the "generations" structure provides an anchor, and the image-rich language describes the natural world of New England in the nineteen-twenties.

One of the group mentioned that the title repeats in the hand-work lives of the men. The earliest paragraphs explain that George built the house where he lies in the rented hospital bed. Many such carpentry achievements must exist in towns in America.

The group discussed eugenics and the State Mental Hospital George's father, Howard, might have entered when he had epileptic seizures – instead of entering the hospital, Howard left his family. The story emphasizes the relationship of and the distance between these fathers and sons.

Suitcases Exhibit and Books at 12:10

2011-03-04T10:55:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, Thursday, before a visit to Special Collections I saw the Suitcases Exhibit at the Undergraduate Library.

Books at 12:10 will discuss Tinkers by Paul Harding on Tuesday. A turning point in the story happens because a 1920's brochure for a Maine State Mental Institution appears on a bureau. Because of concerns for children in a family, a medical practitioner has informed a wife about the Mental Institution. A character, who has epileptic seizures, intuits that his wife plans to place him in an institution, so he takes his tinker's cart past their house, takes the road south and does not return.

One aspect of psychiatric care importantly involves the fact that diagnosis and commitment often has had something to do with the safety or convenience of others. In The Medicalization of Everyday Life, Thomas Szasz quotes Karl Wernicke (1848-1905), German Neuropathologist - "The medical treatment of patients began with the infringement of their personal freedom..."

The theme of the Suitcases exhibit is the infringement of personal freedoms of individual people committed to a state hospital in New York. To me it seemed very moving. It was easy to look at the exhibit because pertinant details - length of stay and date of commitment, along with dates of birth and death - were placed in a consistent format with portraits, one could compare the stories, each on its own large presentation board.

I wish to link to an article which appeared in yesterday's University of Washington Daily about the exhibit, Unspeakable Discourse: A Series of Lectures and Films Examines Flaws in Mental-Health System, by Hayat Norime.

In our human experience we do not doubt that mental illness and mental health exist. It is definitely possible for individuals to be in a percieved world that bears little resemblance to the perceptions of people around them. Definitions and ways of evaluating this fact have changed. When I reached Tacoma later in the afternoon and was at the branch library, I found a January 2011 Wired magazine with an article about changes over the years in mental health evaluation.

2011-02-26T11:45:00.000-08:00

A favorite Children's Book with illustrations by Hetty Burlingame Beatty, one I had out through interlibrary loan at one time and found there might be some story difficulties. Still, the illustrations are beautiful. Little Owl Indian.

At The Winter Market

2011-02-12T11:53:00.000-08:00

At the winter market, along with apples, potatoes, an onion and hazlenuts (I was given extra hazlenutes this time) I decided on eggs from Little Earthe Farm. Real eggs from a farm.

As a vegetarian, for awhile now I have not been vegan, but have used eggs. The eggs I get are marked to be free-range and vegetarian-fed.

A little gray and slightly windy which makes February at the Winter Market feel slightly grim. But hooray for the Winter Market!

Lunch Break at the Urban University Forum

2011-02-05T10:52:00.001-08:00

At the Urban University Forum on Thursday we met in two rooms, one set up for chairs and one set up for meals. In the room with the meals were the Urban Studies student projects listed in our program as a symposium.

One student project was about a neighborhood above UW Tacoma. Before World War Two, there was a Japantown there. Briefly mentioned was that the Japanese produce market there was the first public market in Tacoma. I had not known it was the first. There are to be discussions as the university enters a phase of development farther uphill around Market Street and Fawcett. Discussion should include representation of immigrant groups.

I became a vegetarian in 1987. I had notified organizers by email that I wanted vegetarian. With a cookie and chips and fruit inside my box was a large sandwich with a large dark mushroom. I ate half the sandwich and saved the other half and the mushroom. Friday morning I toasted the bread and used the mushroom in this recipe which is slightly adapted from Gittleman's Super Nutrition for Menopause:

Bisque

3 cups rolled oats

12 cups water

3 cups vegetables

4 tablespoons miso

Simmer the first three ingredients until it is all hot and softened. Add miso and blend thoroughly in a blender. Usually I divide the recipe by ten.

Maybe somewhere there is some record of the routes, but along the Tacoma Waterfront produce wagons carried produce to customers. My grandmother would walk down the hill to the road near Old Town where the Japanese vegetable man had arrived to sell produce.

So the Japanese vegetable market extended all along the waterfront and probably into other neighborhoods. And along the Old Town waterfront have been restaurants. In a walk in Old Town recently I came across a monument to an Old Town waterfront restaurant, Top of the Ocean.

An Urban University Forum

2011-02-03T16:24:00.001-08:00

Today I attended the Urban University Forum at University of Washington Tacoma Branch. Afterwards I took the bus to the main library where I described a little of the material from the Forum – Partnerships. It seems the Pacific Northwest Room could form a Partnership with groups in the city to Intentionally address the project of digitalizing older media.

The Roundtables and Panels were: Economic and Social Impacts of Urban Universities, University as Developer, and University as Community Partner. I was interested to hear Cheryl Jones, Executive Director of Allen Renaissance, express a particular concern about how development affects people.

There are projects large and small. There are different proportions to all of these projects, and –

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour. - William Blake

Linda Ishem, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies, ended the day-long event with the information that the U of Washington Tacoma Branch intends to have community discussion groups about Partnerships.

The Keynote Address by Wim Wiewel , President of Portland State University, featured discussion about the Urban University system – The Coalition of Urban Serving Universities. Wim Wiewel also spoke about Portland State University.

I Voted on Save Our Buses and These Are Thoughts

2011-01-31T14:07:00.001-08:00

2011 is years after nearby transit vanished in some areas – in another area I saw a transit line vanish in the 1990's because of low ridership. Other opinions than mine about Save Our Busses appear in the newspaper. One is that Pierce Transit does not serve some farther-out parts of Pierce County. My observation has been in areas where the bus service vanishes it is because the people who live there did not use the bus. When some people could have taken the bus for many trips in an urban sprawl situation, they did not ride the bus.

Which happened first? Did people not have public transit, or did they have transit they never used and so lost because of the car-dependency habit?

Car-dependency is often a habit. But it is also a disservice to others because many people in one's area can really need to use public transit to practice thrift, and a steady car-dependency in a neighborhood teaches by example.

A Walk In Old Town

2011-01-29T15:40:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I walked along Ruston Way to look at some of the trees. This is the Slavonian Hall. Along the way was Bilanko's Store long ago. When I was brought in to see Bilanko's Store with my mother, in the upper area above the counter was a big skein of twine - the packages were wrapped with this. There is a reconstruction of a historic log cabin which recreates the earliest settlers here. The Slavonian Hall recreates a different group, the Slavs and Finns and others who immigrated and lived here from the end of the nineteenth century.

About The Ruston Way Trees

2011-01-20T11:46:00.001-08:00

As the Point Defiance Park planned its future at Park Charettes in 2006 and 2007, the edge neighborhood at Old Town on Ruston Way sounded like a good place to slow traffic or even provide the underground parking garage solution to the traffic at the point of the link to Point Defiance. To accommodate a sense of park trees, the Ruston Way area street trees would be maintained into their natural large growth. So, Ruston Way would make the best sense as an arboretum-style area.

I have felt proud of the folks who have initiated the parking lot green-lining. We know those are parking lots. The transition into Old Town and into the Chinese Reconciliation Park and into Point Defiance might be not correctly served by a brush and shrub-style mini-landscaping similar to parking lot green lining.

Books At Twelve-Ten, 2011

2011-01-13T10:59:00.001-08:00

Books At Twelve-Ten discussed The Hungry Tide, by Amitav Ghosh on Tuesday, January 11th. Five people were present for the novel set in remote islands near Bangladesh, presented in two sections: Part One: The Ebb: Bhata, and Part Two: The Flood: Jawar. The novel was written in English by Ghosh.

Our organizer set about to briefly summarize.

My comment - that one should smile at the idea of summarizing – was somewhat justified. The book has complicated plot lines that intermingle. It is one story. In Bhata characters are separate and everything continues for them in alternating small episodes. In Jawar an important plot line (that is, I think, the heart of the novel - a diary kept in Bangalese in the 1970's) – ends. This creates a new section, for there are a hundred pages left in the novel. The character Kanai, who is translating the diary, finishes reading.

The titles of the episodes carry the story along. Our organizer asked about the theme of words. A small episode in each part is titled, Words. In the first Words people of two languages exchange basic words for things when they meet and will work together. In the second Words is a discussion between two characters, Kanai, the translator, and the wife of a fisherman (who is a major character). She has attained education to be a nurse, and says to Kanai that words are nothing but air.

To instruct her, Kanai follows with provocative speech like a proposition. And she becomes very angry. When the Book Group discussed The Hungry Tide and the portrait of Kanai, a well-educated and sophisticated individual, together with the diary Kanai is reading, we met themes of violence against women and against the poor and helpless.

Women from the women's union express doubt about Kanai's authority. When Kanai goes on a water expedition as interpreter, one tries to convince him that for him the trip is a whim and that he is a danger.

At page 179 is a description of bird and crab deaths. (In recent weeks there have been reports of bird and fish deaths in the news.) One character, Piya, is in the area to study dolphins. Described are tigers and crocodiles; along with themes of danger from animals are the mysterious dolphins. The themes of violence are described from a context of achievement by women.

Some Quotes That Might Illuminate Being Good

2011-01-06T15:06:00.001-08:00

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour. ~Japanese Proverb

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to. ~Author Unknown

Righteousness is easy in retrospect. ~Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Epiphany

2011-01-06T14:44:00.000-08:00

Cinema Grand in Tacoma scheduled the last showings of Rare Exports, the Finnish film about the mythological folk tales Santa, for today, Epiphany, the day The Three Kings are celebrated. So I went to the matinee. I think it was worth the scarey film to view the photos of Finland, of course. I wonder if there is a way to be good.

After Cold Clear Weather for New Years, Now Some Damp Gray

2011-01-05T11:22:00.000-08:00

After Cold Clear Weather for New Years, Now Some Damp Gray. The gray feels very damp, the damp feels very gray.

Narrative From Diary Continued to June 12, 1930

2010-12-22T10:33:00.001-08:00

JUNE 12th, 1930 - ÅBO (TURKU) FINLAND

Finland, hurray! At last we have reached our destination! Arriving in Åbo (boat and dock) about 8 A.M., we were all on pins and needles for fear that the customs officers would find something in our baggage which we shouldn't have. However, all they did was to open most of the suitcases and just hastily look into them. We had a great deal of waiting to do, because we were not to go to our hotel until about ten o'clock. The reperters were there the first thing when we got off the boat and took a picture of the choir for the papers. While waiting, we sat around on our suitcases on the dock, with the hot sun shining on us, and, as someone remaked, "we looked just like immigrants", which, of course, we were. We were immigrants from America, coming to Finland--some for the first time. I said goodbye to Edith, Taimi and Betty, hoping to see them again. Edith and Taimi were doing direct to Helsingfors and Betty was staying in Åbo.

After a great deal of talking, laughing, shouting, quarreling, etc. we were finally away to our hotel. We rode in a funny little short street car. The fare was about three cents in American money. We had been told that we were going to one of the best hotels in town, but if it was, the town hasn't many good hotels. The beds they had were all right, but they didn't have enough, and I had to sleep on two chairs.

(During the whole trip through Finland, Sweden, and Norway, I didn't once sleep in a real double bed or ever see one. All they have are cots or twin beds. In the hotels --at least most of them--they had two single beds rather than one double bed.)

That afternoon we went on a sight-seeing trip--walking! We walked up to an observatory and from that point you can see all over the town. We were also taken to the university, where we listed to another speech. Then to the glory of the day--the Dom Kyrka! It was wonderful! It is the biggest church I've ever been in, and it makes you feel so small when you are inside. This church is over 600 years old. The guide, who was on the entertainment committee, showed us all over the church and explained everything. We stood over the graves of bishops, pastors, clergymen, etc., saw many old statues, carvings and paintings, and listened to msuci from a beautifulpipe organ. Words can't express the beauty of that church.

After our interesing walk, we had dinner (And what a dinner!) at the Åbo Sang Forbunds Lokal, and then we looked in on the hall where the concert was to be. It was Brandkarshuset, and, in spite of the name, is a beautiful hall. After we got back to our hotel Mr. Carlson ordered us all to bed. We meekly obeyed and didn't wake up until 7 o'clock. The concert was to be at eight, and you can bet we hurried. As it was, we were just about late for our own concert. The concert went off grandly, with quite a few people in the audience, and twenty-nine as usual in the choir. Blanche sang--and the people "went wild" about her. She was obliged to sing three songs. There is something about Blanche's singing that "gets you". After the concert we were all entertained by the Åbo choir at a banquet. Here we were all mixed up--that is, we were all paired off with members of the Åbo choir--the ladies with men and vice versa. I had a good time with my man, and although I had quite a time getting started, I soon found myself talking quite fluently--with Ellis across the table to help me with the hard words. We all sang in chorus--the Finland chorus and the American chorus--and it was thrilling.

They also had the usual speeches and a short program. We had a bunch of the choir to see us back to our hotel, and I am sure we just about woke up the town.

Continued narrative from the Diary of the Concert at Marieham, 1930

2010-12-21T12:19:00.001-08:00

Our first concert seemed to be quite a success although we were all very tired and most of us had colds. The hall was filled to over-flowing--many people were turned away, but still many of them stood outside. We had no piano--or I mean they had none--so we just sang our Swedish songs, and Mr. Jofs "speeched".

After the concert, they took us for a nice long walk to a hotel, where we had more smorgasbord and a very nice sociable evening was had by all. There was a German orchestra in one of the rooms so some of our crowd had a few dances. The choir sang for us and there were the usual speeches. The time went by so quickly and we had no idea it was so late until we heard the boat whistle. But the people were so bent on keeping us longer and longer that the boat called us three or four times before we finally got on our way. That evening we had our first experience with the light nights of Finland and Sweden, for it was almost as light as day when we walked from the hotel to the boat, and it was midnight!

We received a very pretty wreath from the Marieham choir which had printed on it's ribbons:-"Till Runebergordens Finland kör, fran Ålands sang och musik förbund."

There was quite as big a crowd down to see us off as there was to see us come. When the last one of us was on board they pulled up the gang plank and we starrted. We sang as we left--our favorite song "Set maskinen i gång". We waved and looked back at the people on the dock until Marieham was just a blur in the distance.

We were quite surprised to find out that the people of Marieham thought that we had our native costume one, inasmuch as all the girls had on some kind of a flowered dress.)

Entry from a Diary from June 1930

2010-12-14T12:24:00.001-08:00

Linnea Gord, nineteen-year-old piano accompanist, wrote of the arrival in Finland for the first of the eleven Runeberg Choir Concerts in Finland in 1930:

At about noon we went aboard "Bore I" which was to take us to Åbo, Finland. It is a very pretty little boat, and we had a nice ride that afternoon and evening. We arrived at Marieham on the island of Åland at about 7 o'clock and we were met by at least a thousand people. We sang a few songs from the boat and their choir answered us with some beautiful songs. It made us so happy that so many people should be there, and that moment will remain with us forever.

Big Lake at the Foot of 11th at Tacoma Avenue

2010-12-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

One maroon vehicle edged through the big lake at the foot of 11th and Tacoma Avenue, then a white truck accelerated through at the start of the truck climb up 11th. The huge wash of waves seemed twice as high as the truck. People who were at the bus shelter at the corner might have been splashed. Another driver thinks the street is for them alone, water and people all have to dodge out of the way.

Lyrics to Deck Us All With Boston Charlie

2010-12-04T14:40:00.001-08:00

Deck Us All With Boston Charlie

There are at least three versions of this famous Kelly Christmas carol:

The most famous version:

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,

Walla Walla, Wash, and Kalamazoo!

Nora's freezin' on the trolley,

Swaller dollar cauliflower Alleygaroo!

Don't we know archaic barrel, Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.

Trolley Molly don't love Harold, Boola Boola Pensacoola Hullabaloo!

Then there is Beauregard's version:

Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Polly wolly cracker n too-da-loo!

Donkey Bonny brays a carol, Antelope cantaloup, 'lope with you!

Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon, Willy, folly go through!

Chollie's collie barks at Barrow, Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo!

We also have this third version:

Duck us all in bowls of barley, Ninky dinky dink an' polly voo!

Chilly Filly's name is Chollie, Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, Woof, Woof!

Tizzy seas on melon collie! Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, Goof, Goof!

2010-12-01T12:54:00.001-08:00

The Maltese Falcon – How I Spent 2010's Tacoma Reads Together, a Novel by Dashiel Hammett

Browsing, Walking Tours, Grand Theft Books, and another kind of book theft - patriarchal opportunism that silences the voices of women, Diaries, Conferences, Portents - And Cozy Sessions With One Cozy Mystery Novel Series After Another

Before computers in the library, my finding method, browsing, seemed the only one possible. And it seems it was not the best. In computer language, now, I mean my default method. (Of course I had the Dewey decimal system and the card catalogue, worked for twenty hours a week two years in high school at the library and had Library of Congress at the University of Washington.) But I always return to browsing.

Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon, Tacoma Reads Together choice for 2010, immediately brought me back in time to the movie after a concert at the Eagles Auditorium - more than one approach to the Reads Together, I located the concert in Seatle Times microfilm (early November, a Halloween Be-In, and it was the Youngboods). And, gazing up at the sculpted eagles on finials, I walked past the Eagles Auditorium. Later I went on the walking tour of Dashiel Hammett's Tacoma.

Some approaches are great, some not the best. Maltese Falcon from Novelist pulled up Maltese Manuscript, a mystery by Joanne Dobson. It was about book theft on the large scale, the plot climaxed with a visit to a house, room after room and floor to ceiling lined with the treasures scored by the book thief, all preserved appreciatively, and all solely possessed by the thief. An illegal way to handle Reads Together.

I needed to reread The Clue in the Diary (Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene) - because the diary was in Swedish. Keeping a diary can be a way to handle Reads Together.

Joanne Dobson's Maltese Manuscript featured a mystery writers conference.- "Dead Blondes in Red Dresses: Whiteness Studies in American Crime Fiction" was a panel one afternoon at the Conference.

One could sense a portent in what one read - a mystery novel used Josephine Tey, maybe the only adult mystery series writer I had read, as a character and portrayed the theater of a drama of a mystery play - it set up a place in England, a train station - In C.S. Lewis, the Arthur Ransome books, Enid Blyton, new Harry Potter, all use train stations - but a particular element, a architectural feature - a clock...

I remember this clock feature - perhaps I should have been warned that I did not have time to read detective novels.

Instead, I realized this was just one novel. One needed to Find Mystery Novels in a Series - and so on to the Simon Shaw books, the Sara Hoskinson books (one of which was set in an historic Swedish community in the Midwest), The Millenium series. (And the Millenium series reintroduces Sodermalm, in Stockholm, for myself and for many tourists. The Millenium series worked well with Methland, by Nick Reding, a non-fiction discussion of America's heartland and the meth epidemic)

In October Books at Twelve-Ten read The Thirteenth Tale - a mystery.

I had thought mystery novels were as they appear to be - gruesome thrillers that appeal to people as a diversion, laughing at the terrible darkness.

As one reads a mystery novel series information develops - the setting or the characterization of the protagonist or others introduces the reader to new information - in the series of mysteries the category of the information develops the characters as well. I am twenty-fourth in line at Tacoma Public Library and at Peninsula Library (24th!) to read the current Agatha Raisin mystery, a series by M.C. Beaton. Both Agatha and her significant other are incompatible, the variations and facets of this truth have progressed through the yearly volumes since 1994.

Dickinson and the Strategies of Reticence: the woman writer in nineteenth-century America Joanne Dobson's volume of criticism presented Dobson with the idea of developing her own series of mystery novels about the way Patriarchal oppression silenced the voices of women. Joanne Dobson writes her own series of mystery novels.

Then, back to browsing. As I passed through the 747's I found a book of Cotswold cottage decorations. Later I located a Stratford-Upon-Avon and the Cotswolds near the 914's that that describe this area. Already I had xeroxed a map section near this area. For I had wanted to know more about the part of England where my father was stationed for a year and a half before VE Day in 1945 when he returned from England and was married.

There are sections in these books that share with the reader an every-day United Kingdom knowledge of Norfolk and Norwich, Brighton, Blockley. But because of my father Cirncester had been a known word for me. And I had known how to pronounce it.

As The Maltese Falcon Reads Together Selection Ends

2010-11-30T16:20:00.000-08:00

At a branch library the Maltese Falcon display has been replaced by large work search books. During the year I spent some spare time reading mystery novels. One book I read again was The Clue in the Diary, a Nancy Drew Mystery. It featured a diary written in Swedish.

The mystery books have been interesting.

Arts at Work Month - Wednesdays at Plumfield with Victorian Authors

2010-11-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

The past two Wednesdays I attended a class listed in the Tacoma Arts At Work Month. The visit brought me along a path beside a row of tall poplar trees to our meeting room, which was a large parlor, lamplit from corners and tables. For the second class a cheery fire in the fireplace made this a setting even more appropriate to the reading we did. One Alcott book refers to Mrs. Gaskell - Little Men - and this happy setting surely must remind us of Alcott's Plumfield, and intense rain reaffirmed ideas from Alcott's story. The class was a chance to take my reading of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South farther along. At a certain point in the novel the mill owner brings in Irish Workers to take the jobs of the workers, who are striking. A clear case of human trafficking, by current naming.

Elizabeth Gaskell and the Conference on Human Trafficking

2010-11-13T15:58:00.000-08:00

During lunch at the Conference on Human Trafficking I was reading in Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South and came to the part where Margaret stops the labor riot. The rioters are on strike, and the management has brought Irish laborers to take their place. When she stands up to the rioters and speaks and his struck on the cheek by a rock someone throws, the rioters disperse before the soldiers reach the mill to arrest them.

She is thought of as being very forward. And she despairs of how low she has sunk.

Weavers' Guild Display at Library

2010-11-09T13:53:00.000-08:00

While the books group discussed What Is Left The Daughter, by Howard Horman, an occasional mild bump or pounding kept us aware of the setting-up of the "75th Anniversary of the Weavers' Guild" display in the gallery outside the meeting room door. This looks like another wonderful Weavers' Guild display, also portraying Weavers' Guild materials is the display case outside the Pacific Northwest Room.

Books At 12:10 - November

2010-11-09T13:28:00.000-08:00

Howard Norman's What Is Left The Daughter, Books at 12:10's November selection, was set in Nova Scotia during World War Two. World War Two history focuses greatly on the Holocaust; an earlier Books at 12:10 selection, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, told in letters the story of Nazi invasion of the Channel Islands. What Is Left The Daughter is told as a long letter written by Wyatt to his daughter in the 1960's. Although not among the primary events of World War Two, the U-Boat activity in the Atlantic was significant, an important story. The novel brings the story into focus through people in a village in Nova Scotia during attacks of U-Boats on the Canada East Coast.

The novel's main characters live in Economy, a bus can take them to Halifax. There is a financial constriction that makes their lives limited. The traditions of Nova Scotia are told by an author who has lived and traveled in Nova Scotia. The Books at 12:10's group today discussed the many aspects of the story of Wyatt, the young man taken in by an uncle and aunt after the suicides of his parents, and his continued life in Halifax.

2010-11-05T10:38:00.001-07:00

November 6^th is Sweden Day in Finland.

1930, June, about the Runeberg Choir visit to Finland Linnea Gord, who was the nineteen-year-old piano accompanist wrote: At ten o'clock we boarded the boat "Borgå" and were off for "Borgå" the city. We had a very nice boat ride, and we had breakfast and dinner combined...A crowd met us at the dock, and their choir sang for us. We sang at their statue of Runeberg and then we went direct to the Hög Skola at which our concert was to be held...

One photograph was probably taken on the steps of the Hög Skola, of the Choir from Borgå. In the other photographs the Choir from Borgå was at the dock to meet the visiting choir and they sang.

At the Film Series (Before the Race and Pedagogy Conference)

2010-10-28T11:24:00.001-07:00

"WAITING FOR SUPERMAN" / "RACE TO NOWHERE" / "PAPERS"

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After the third movie, on Sunday afternoon, the audience moved to a different room in the Cinema Grand for a conversation.

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I had a feeling about the third movie that race was emphasized in the narrative when it discusses students - a transition to adult life is difficult for so many students. Featuring these three movies together (I saw them on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday) allowed the movies to give one another balance. For example, every perfect girl graduating from high school faces the transition to adult life. When this was emphasized in the context of undocumented immigration, I reflected on the idea that teen pregnancy is a transition girls face too often.

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I commented that I noticed one student finishing college, undocumented, plans to work in the field of Measures of Happiness - often as humans we take it for granted that happiness is not measurable. Psychology has taken up this topic. It applies to the discussion about Race and Pedagogy.

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"The world seems to children like "a heartless cold-blooded place because they've been given the short end of the stick and they don't know why," one teachers says in the first movie, "WAITING FOR SUPERMAN".

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The second movie "RACE TO NOWHERE" asks if the system is not wrong, if the displaced, marginalized are trying to achieve an unhealthy ethic - this "quantity-driven model" needs reform, says the filmmaker. (She was present when I attended the film and spoke to the audience.)

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The topic of the third movie, "PAPERS", that 12 million undocumented lived in United States, and 2 million are children, featured interviews with undocumented children graduating from high school. Undocumented people enter the United States through family members, through asylum if they are not safe where they live, or with a visa through an employer, but most undocumented children have no path to citizenship.

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The movie series features a number of other films.

Title for Blog Entry: About a Song Translation

2010-10-25T16:53:00.001-07:00

One: About A Song Translation Included on a Panel During The First Tacoma Reads Together, 2002

2010: The Second Conference on Race and Pedagogy at UPS.

2006: The First Conference on Race and Pedagogy at UPS.

2002: The First Tacoma Reads Together, To Kill a Mockingbird

There was a panel discussion at UPS and I was invited by Hans Ostrom to be on the panel. I performed a folk song there - I read my song translation and performed the tune on a recorder.

The theme of "Names" in To Kill A Mockingbird had reminded me of one of the folk songs I had worked on translating from 1987 to 1992.

Atticus (the lawyer definding Tom Robinson) has a Greco-Roman name. The MayElla (the prosecution's witness and and the claimed victim) has a Christian name, Mary Elizabeth. Atticus spares his own motherless daughter and himself by calling her Scout (a nickname). She will not hear her mother call her by her name again. Atticus repeatedly calls the witness by her first name only.

At one point it is said, "The defense is badgering the winess." An important point in the novel is that the dizzying presence of a vigilante group leaves people without recourse to the law.

I believed the song translation might help develop the theme of names.

Two: About the Song and my Translation

In 1987 to 1992 I worked on about six dozen song translations during part of my writing time. My mother had been a talented piano player, accompanied the heritage group choir and in their family dance band. She saved a lot of things. There were song books, a collection of preserved folk music, from Foreningen Brage. Although Säg min vallmoblomma was not a song frequently performed by the heritage group choir, other songs in the book were.

The song Säg min vallmoblomma is reproduced in the next Blog Entry with the permission of Föreningen Brage, Helsinki. The work was arranged by Otto Anderson, the founder of Föreningen Brage and a professor of music and ethnology. A book about the work of Otto Anderson is on the internet, with a summary to the back of the work in English.

My playing songs on a recorder was for me in a way a hobby - I think a hobby is carried along without a highly-powered ambition. From the first I did not consider it an ambitious kind of aspiration, but a deeply felt activity.

One heritage group member once described songs I played on a recorder as being "between her mother and herself". She was comparing me to heritage music performance from a first-hand experience in the old country, or to the music performance from the very active and present Swedish and Swedish-Finnish community in the Pacific Northwest in the earlier half of the twentieth century. The choir in Tacoma began in 1913 at the house of my great-grandfather. By this I explain an idea of caring that existed for me about these songs.

Page Five of Song

2010-10-25T16:50:00.001-07:00

Page Four of Song

2010-10-25T16:49:00.001-07:00

Page Three of Song

2010-10-25T16:48:00.001-07:00