The Peninsula Park at Point Defiance which is looking for a name could feature one of the metal sculptures like the Top of the Ocean Memorial, but the new sculpture could show the whole Ruston Way Old Town Industrial Complex. My first home was above the Dickman Mill in Old Town. The size and level of destruction of the harvesting of natural resources in this area is hardly apparent to people who see it today. It cries out for an explanation that is true and factual. The name I submitted is: Old Town / Ruston Way Industrial History Park - 

And another poem from 1993:  A 25-year Reunion Directory, when the catering groups for reunions were only starting up,  was mailed over three months after the event...

A SERIES OF EVENTS IN JANUARY 1993

 

The arrival of the reunion directory

was supposed to culminate a series of four events.

I bought wool on sale

and sewed an A-line skirt,

gray plaid with a line of brown.

I biked in my black jeans for the Sunday

smelter smokestack demolition.

 

I stood two hours in cold on Sunday

in a clear view on a lot with many others,

until they set off charges in the stack

and a puff crawled up the base

and it began to tip, then collapsed

all in a shimmer, down, and that

was how it vanished.  Then I pedaled back.

 

I wore the skirt on Monday for the march

when they changed the name of K-Street

to Martin Luther King, Jr. Way.  It means

the area is African-American, now,

despite the Valhalla Temple.  Strange,

yet not at all, to walk below the temple

windows behind some Indians.

 

My mother would not have winked an eye.

And would have played piano,

my father filled prescriptions

where it is now Browne's Star Grill.

 

When the storm woke me

on Inauguration Day

I dressed in the skirt and a pink sweater.

In the cold and dark of the wind

a panel of fresh tar paper

blew off the roof past my window,

but my radio batteries were good.

 

Later, when I phoned about the directory, 

they explained rather riskily, already

over three months, they had been

out of power, like so many all weekend long.

This poem from 1993...

UNIVERSAL GRIND   October 21, 1993

 

Can opener wedged into

slit and slit only a dent

across the several gallon firmament.

 

Folger's Universal Grind

holds the larger plant up

to the kitchen light,

 

the Eastern Magician

carries the stars in a row.

But the sense within it

 

of the useless opener

thwarted and outsmarted

tinctures the idea of it.

 

Deaths falls out of the glass

like snow -  it fell and fell,

that box of candles

 

all the listed glass unwraps

tissue papers, all are crowds

of tears all balled

 

tear-filled hankies

on the floor.  Ice crackles

in the glass,  ice water

 

down again on the mat.

I want my pieces I've salvaged.

I dreamed last night

 

that a man carried off

my revere ware pots, I cried

those belonged to my mother.

 

And after it all, all pieces,

the sorrow chases me

without a brain, undoes

 

my strenuous agony,

the ministry, from its carport,

cries for charity.

 

My mind walks

to the cemetery again

to clear a leaf off our name.

Revision - Slideshow Audio

A day or two after I posted Vart skall jag köra hästar och vagn?   I revised.  Information had appeared on Facebook that pointed out changes necessary to improve the translation.  Also, I had seen the gap - between the two times the song was played - was too wide.  I had seen I wanted to enlarge the crops from the photo.  So I made a new copy from the song recording and made new slides with the improved translation.  So far I like the new version.

A Reeves Soundcraft Recording Disc contains two songs by the Order of Runeberg Choir:  Slumrande Toner and Vart skall jag köra hästar och vagn?  I did a slideshow audio for Slumrande Toner and posted it at Facebook earlier, yesterday I posted a slideshow audio for Vart skall jag köra hästar och vagn?  

 

Vart skall jag köra hästar och vagn?   was on the program at the April 30, 1955 Runeberg Songfest in Seattle.   This event was held at a Masonic Temple.

 

The song is not in the collected songbooks at the Scandinavian Immigrant Experience Archives and not on the internet.  Hasse Nygard shared a link to the three verses and the music through "Malax Bygden Forr och Nu" on Facebook.

 

It is possible that Order of Runeberg Choir Directors avoided the song  because of content.  A story had to be innocent of any wrong-doing, according to the principles of the Motion Picture Code established in the early 1930s.  Vart skall jag köra hästar och vagn?   is a song about a buggy ride. "The Surrey With The Fringe on Top" met the standard.  In Autumn, 1955, "Love and Marriage…" in a musical of Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, remained met the standard:  "...goes together like a horse and carriage.  Dad was told by mother, You can't have one without the other."

 

The buggy ride in Vart skall jag köra hästar och vagn?, is a duet about sexuality, and the couple portrayed is clearly not married.  It is possible that Order of Runeberg Choir directors avoided a song like this because of this content.

 

Much of the translation in the slideshow audio I did is from PLU Archives Director Kerstin Ringdahl.

Novels and Amber Alert and MILK CARTONS – Thirty and more years, since the 1980s milk cartons have spoken in kitchens of children's misfortunes.  The internet now provides Amber Alert.   

The novel I am reading right now is a re-read of a third volume in a mystery series, The Ruth Galloway series.  By Elly Griffiths.  The House At Sea's End, in its scope, also speaks out about children's misfortunes as it continues an exploration of an ancient history of archeological finds in Norfolk, England. 

The books' mild, forgiving approach, an approach of moderation in appeal, shape a character study of the earliest realities of a single mother and her child.  As a reader, I am made aware (The trap is set.) as the father initiates a rendezvous, near the time of the child's first birthday.  The single mother is a forensic archaeologist.

The series includes organic literary references; at one point, in a rowboat, Arthur Ransome's name rises.  Or the characters' goings about feel like Shakespeare's characters lost in a forest.   A new volume in the series is out and before I read it I wanted to re-read to remind myself of this story.  I think the Norfolk, England archaeology setting, the kind approach to the characters, and the stresses of our times make the mystery series important. 

New Route 15 At The Park

A Trolley Enters the park

A Trolley Exits the park.

At the park the new route enters towards the first stop just ahead of the Pagoda.  The new route goes to the picnic area and to the zoo, then the route exits from the zoo area.