Yesterday Remembrance Day About The Holocaust

On Facebook yesterday I saw it was remembrance day for the Holocaust.  There was a request that we print we remember on paper and show our face with the paper.   So I did so, there was a sticky note with an empty side on the notebook I had with me at the Archive at PLU - Scandinavian Immigrant Experience Archive.  I made a Women's Rights sign last Saturday and carried it up to Westlake.  Because I thought I might not walk as fast as everyone and was not certain about walking over three miles briskly, I joined the walk at Westlake Center and did about eight blocks or so to the Seattle Center, and not trying three miles probably made sense.

 Often in the evening I hear stories on talk radio, often in the day I visit the computer labs at the library.  The women's walk mattered.

I Remember the Valhalla Hall

Hurt and bewildered, I must remember the Valhalla Hall as today the building is torn down.  It is so very sad that this old building is not a restoration. My first public appearance probably was at the Valhalla Hall, a song accompanied on the piano by my mother.  She was ten when she gave a piano solo at the hall, with much praise.   

2008

The Swedish Order of Valhalla was a men’s organization from 1884, they built the hall in 1905, it represented the architectural style of American Renaissance.  It served as an interim venue for First Swedish Lutheran Church of Tacoma when First Lutheran’s second building burned in November, 1924. The group sold the hall in the 1990s, in 2008 a group associated with the Allen AME leased the building to try to remodel it as a similar performance and activity hall.  The group removed the interior: that included removal of the original horsehair insulation, an architectural detail that had made activities at the hall hard to insure.

The Swedish Order of Valhalla was a men’s Masonic-type group.  The Order of Runeberg, the Swedish-Finnish Group my mother’s family could belong to,  in the 1960s began to  meet at the new, accessible Wild West VFW Hall because many of their members could no longer climb the stairs to the second floor where meetings and events were held.

2017

During the activity at MLK during the subarea plans I did enter comments about the hall and I allowed an interview for the project, which was included among others in a video about the history at the Tacoma MLK subarea.

The Allen AME fell short of attaining the necessary funding for their project, as far as I know the new project there will be a housing building that had promised to reflect the hall.  Some were uncertain that the new project intends to reflect the appearance of the old hall.  And now the hall is torn down. 

Stairs 1995

During interior removal

Since 2009 I have done some volunteer work at the Scandinavian Immigrant Experience Archives at Pacific Lutheran University, where the Valhalla Archives are kept,  with the guidance of the archivist I was able to help advance the Valhalla Papers preservation.   

Thirty Years Vegetarian January 1987- January 2017

Melon

January 1987 to January 2017 - thirty years of Vegetarian foods.  The third floor galley kitchen of the brick apartment building had less ventilation.  As I moved in I stopped eating meat, began with eggs and dairy but continued to vegan.  Now I buy eggs but not dairy. 

At the Puyallup Fair one year I knew a memorable moment in a quiet spot close to the dairy building - I had a free small cup of chocolate milk.  For the most part, I complied with the necessities of being a vegan. 

Part of my lunch during my volunteer job break today was cantaloupe I carried from my apartment. (I have moved twice since my move-in to the brick apartment building in 1987.)

A New Year 2017

The bus yesterday went past snow on the lawns and roofs on the east side of Tacoma.  A bus I thought I wanted left as I reached the downtown transit center, because it was cold I got on another bus.  At the Goodwill I found a plastic coated metal small rack but cannot find one like it anywhere on the internet, so I do not know what it was for.  At the University Place library later I saw someone taking down the Menorah.  It was a chilly day, with some snow remaining along the transit routes.

Facebook Discussion With Other Arthur Ransome Childhood Readers

"Laura had read in Arthur Ransome you had to tack to sail upwind,  you tacked from one side of the lake to the other to sail against the wind."  In an essay about childhood reading published at Salt River Review, I remembered Arthur Ransome. 

On Facebook a couple of days ago:  "I can attach a crop from The Summer Reading Club in 5th Grade - I was re-reading Arthur Ransome books to make reports the summer I was ten..."and

"I recall how terribly interested I was to discover a biography of Arthur Ransome in the 1980s. I think it must have been The Life of Arthur Ransome by Hugh Brogan, shown on the internet. I read the biography with a lot of enjoyment. I discovered many things I did not know about the author."  I shared an earlier blog entry about The Summer Reading Club.

This year I watched the 1970s Swallows and Amazons movie in episodes on the library internet computer.  At some point I expect I will be able to view the new 2016 movie, Swallows and Amazons.  To read some of the older titles, in older formats, was to enjoy other illustrators than Arthur Ransome, especially Helene Carter.  I re-read parts of The Picts and the Martyrs during the year and realize how beautifully written the story is – although Helene Carter is not present in the version I read, the book is a wonderful read without those illustrations.  So it was the writing that was wonderful for me at the time.

Read This Poem at the December Open Mike at King's Books

Christmas Angels 1960s

 

White Christmas 
A Poem From The 1990s 

My list of birds I saw in the winter.  Robin,

Spotted Towhee, American Widgeon, Surf-Scoter -

Herring Gull, Woodpecker, Oregon Junco -

who appears here in the bushes, inside
the flowering camelia at the door.  Once
I wanted to see White Christmas.  No one else

wanted to go.   But my mother let me off

in the dark above the Rialto; the neon, but
only the street, dark, and other cars.
Canada Goose, Wood Duck, Buffle-Head -

Hooded Merganser, Heron, Hawk, Wren -

White Christmas was fine.  Only the worn
gummy carpet, the curtain that slowly flung
open and the Technicolor.  I was in junior high,

but there was nothing wrong in being alone

at the movies.  We never ascended the levels
at the Roxy to the stained glass.
Western Grebe, Cormorant, Sparrow, Crow -

Goose, small tit inside the many blossoms

of the flowering quince.They restored the Roxy,
the old Pantages.  In the dark we never noticed
that the curtain was magnificent.
 

Now during the vigor of arms at violins

we glance up at a sculpted muse with sheaves
of grain.  And the Rialto, too, is restoration.
And on the street of stores a chickadee

might try the new branches of the saplings.

Today was tree day.  Blocks I walked from school
are anchored by them, eight each way, small pears
and they are flowering.  And a sparrow,

the sparrow who would greet you kindly

at the bus stop, who would stop and stand
and look from concrete that I thought went
to the center of the earth, but that was not,

perhaps, that deep, but ony a thin shell

over top soil.  The mallard, the pigeon,
the others I could not recall.  Or could not name.
The Varied Thrush, the Flicker, the Golden-Eye.

And the Eared Grebe, and the Sparrow

with the stripe, the dark one. 

Saturday, Thanksgving Weekend

 

Needed to pick up some groceries.  A pink sky lighted everything, and from the bus a rainbow.  After the store saw Eyes Of The Totem at the ten a.m. Saturday Holiday Matinee at the Blue Mouse at Proctor, they will follow with a twelve-thirty matinee.  The Eyes Of The Totem was great.