http://4and20poetry.com/
I have a poem in the September 2009 Volume 2 Issue 9 of Four and Twenty.
Please visit.
The Short Happy Life of Clint Essentials
15 years ago
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Four and Twenty
Yeah, it sounds like long shot in a football game or a meeting time for hippies, but it is actually a poetry journal... and a fun one. They publish short poems of no more than 4 lines and 20 words (hence four and twenty). It is great for those of us with short attention spans. Plus, brilliance usually comes in short bursts.
http://4and20poetry.com/
http://4and20poetry.com/
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Where Young Maidens Wait ((or My Mom Talks to Dead People) or Finnish Maidens and Tom Petty - A Family Journey))
... I found this old article when looking through some files. While the questions posed within were never answered (or come to think of it, never followed up on), it's still a decent read and captures some of my work from my college years.....
I-5 Northbound, somewhere around Olympia and when Tom Petty started singing “the waiting is the hardest part,” I realized why mother was my travel partner for the day. Because there was no way in hell I was going to explain to Lillian Schauer why I was scheduled for her 10:30 morning appointment.
I ran the conversation in my head.
“Welcome to the Schauer Law Office. Why are you here?”
I pictured Lillian as I picture all lawyers, polished, slick and ready to laugh at your expense (both emotionally and financially).
“My mom talks to dead people.”
“Mom,” I said patting my hand on my mother leg, “I’m glad you could come up with me.”
“I’m glad too, Matt.”
So, what does my mother talking to the dead have to do with a road trip to Port Orchard, Washington to visit Lillian Schauer, attorney at law? Long story, but it goes something like this.
One night, probably after watching The Sixth Sense, or something, I asked my mom if she believed you could communicate with dead.
“Yeah, I did it once.”
“You did what?”
“Talked to the dead. I used a Ouija board.”
I could have sworn the room got a few degrees cooler; all right, the room didn’t get cooler, but my mom was quiet for a few minutes. Mom is never quiet.
“It scared me to death,” she said.
And it should, I thought. That’s what you get for playing with the devil’s toys.
I’ve never known my mother to lie to me, except for that time she told me Humphry, my cat, just went away for awhile; the next day I found him ground into the road a block from my house. So I was willing to hear her out. After all, I could tell if she was lying, mom is an awful storyteller.
It was raining in July. Not really raining, just drizzling, making the South Bend air damp and thick. The midnight air was salty, both refreshing and chilling. My mom, Judy, and her cousin, Shelly, sat in the basement asking the Ouija Board the usual silly questions 11 year-old girls ask. Who will I marry? Does the new boy have a crush on me? Do I look fat in this?
“Come on mom,” I said. “Rainy night, around midnight, playing with the Ouija Board in the basement?”
“It’s true.” Mom got up to get make some tea, maybe to take a little sting off the sudden chills her memories were causing. Maybe because she likes tea.
The girls spent a lot of time together in the summertime of the early Sixties. Judy’s Grandma, Adeline, would bring her to South Bend when her parents went fishing in the Pacific. Judy stayed at her aunt Shiela’s (1) house and played with Cousin Shelly.
“Why don’t you girls ask it something spooky?” Shiela asked. “After all, it is the bewitching hour.”
“Like what?” Shelly asked.
“Ask if there is a dead ancestor trying to get in touch with us.”
Judy laughed a little nervously at the suggestion. But what could really go wrong? At worst it might give a simple yes or no.
“Why not?”
“Why not? I’ll tell you why not,” I said.
“We were just messing around, Matt. We didn’t really think anything was going to happen.” She poured the tea. “Want sugar?”
“Yeah.” She handed me a mug. “Mom, didn’t you tell me to be careful for what I asked for because I might just get it?”
“Yeah, probably.”
The girls put their fingers on the pointer and asked. The pointer started to move, at first slow, but then it started picking up speed. It stopped at a letter, hesitating for a second or two, then it quickly moved to the next. Repeating the phrase.
“A Finnish Maiden.”
“Are you doing that, girls?”
“No mom,” Shelly said slowly as the pointer picked up speed.
“No.”
Adeline tensed up and picked up the paper, refusing to watch. Shiela got a pen and some paper and wrote down the messages.
“Clear My Name.” The pointer flew off the board.
“Girls are you doing this?”
“No,” they answered in unison, their voices a little wobbly. Shiela took a couple of T-shirts and blind folded the girls.
“Now ask.”
“Clear My Name.”
“She didn’t blind fold you.”
“Yes, Matt, she did.”
“Are you sure you’re not making any of this up?”
“No.”
“Ask it what it means,” Shiela said.
“Murder.”
The pointer moved rapidly under the girl’s fingers, sliding from letter to letter, not just answering “yes” or “no,” but telling a horrifying tale.
A young maiden was working on a fishing boat off the coast of Finland in the early 1800’s. She was having an affair with the captain. The wife of the captain had become jealous and killed a baby.
“How?”
“Rat Poison. Clear My Name.”
The captain’s wife accused the maiden of killing the child. She lied under oath in a mockery of a trial. This lady was out to destroy the maiden.
“She was Homosexual.”
What was Homosexual? The girls had no idea, but the board continued to weave a twisted tale of a love triangle gone bad.
“She Loved Me. Clear My Name.”
“Who are you?”
“A Finnish Maiden. Clear My Name.”
“Who are you?”
“Clear My Name.”
“That seriously happened?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And you never thought to clear that maiden’s name?”
“She never told us her name.”
“And she spoke English?”
“She probably spoke Finnish.”
“But in her spare time she has learned enough English to spell out a story?” I asked amused with myself for finding the weak link in this fabulous tale.
“Well, she has had a bit of time to figure it out now, hasn’t she, Mr. Smarty pants?”
After verifying this story with Shelly and Shiela, I decided to clear this maiden’s name myself, to rescue her from her purgatory. But to clear a name, you got to know a name, and that’s where Lillian Schauer enters the story.
Lillian was hired by Robert Bush, self made millionaire and war hero and distant (very distant) relative, to assist in research and investigation regarding the estate of Sylvia Lampi, a distant (yes, very, very distant) relative of his wife, Wanda (2). It turned out that Wanda was not an heir, as was no one in my direct line of ancestors. But to discover this, Lillian had to trace our family roots to Finland, early 1800 Finland. I thought she might have the name of the Finnish maiden in one of the family trees she created.
I called and asked if I could come look at the information she had gathered about my family. She said she charges for copies. I said o.k. She said 10:30 on Friday. I said o.k.
My mom called in sick.
We gassed up at the edge of town at the Chevron by the weathered cedar sign that read “Welcome to Port Orchard.” The sign looked pretty rugged and classy, except for the plastic seagulls nailed into the posts. It was quite appropriate. Everything about Port Orchard had a classy charm that was underscored by all the seagull droppings. I never saw one live gull, though. Just the evidence.
The law offices of Lillian Schauer were located in a renovated house that overlooked Puget Sound. The house was the town’s focal point. You could see its high spire from anywhere downtown or on the docks.
Lillian’s office was very warm. Antique waiting-room chairs and quilts hanging on the wall gave the place a homey quality. Lillian greeted us, not with a slick handshake and aloof demeanor, but with a hug. She looked motherly. She showed us to the conference room and brought out two boxes of briefs and charts and other legal stuff on oversized paper.
“Help yourselves,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“It’s really great that you’re looking for your roots,” Lillian said.
Then she listened to my mom’s tale and didn’t think she was crazy. She actually was quite impressed with the spiritual implications of such a story. How, if true, it gives depth to family histories, a sense you belong to something bigger than yourself. She showed us how she could see, from her office window, her son’s aircraft carrier across the Sound in Bremerton.
She didn’t charge for copies.
It was 1 p.m. as the ferry pulled from the docks in Bremerton. A few seagulls milled about, hoping for someone to toss them some crumbs that they would dump over Port Orchard on their return flight. I zipped up my blue Columbia Sports Wear jacket and stepped out on to the front deck.
Fog hung over the hills across the way in Port Orchard, blurring the line between land and air, making any color beside green and gray indistinguishable. The mist stung my face as the ferry picked up speed and turned towards Seattle. Droplets attached themselves to my waterproof jacket and I brushed them off like sand, the drops disappearing as they hit the slick deck.
There was something about the beginning of a voyage that stuck with me. Standing on the threshold of a new journey. The past blurring itself and fading behind you, the future, sometimes just as blurry, staring you in the face.
I had copied several versions of the family tree in Lillian’s office. I looked through them and found only one possible maiden, Maria. Maria Ahvenlampi, born in the Finnish fishing town of Pyhäjoki in 1846. She died, unmarried, at the age 22 in 1868. Maria was the first generation of Ahvenlampis (3) to be born in a coastal town, making her the first generation that would be able to work aboard ships.
The source for all these records is the church. Local parishes kept records of the families that moved in out of their areas, as well as births, deaths and marriages.
They didn’t keep the crime records.
Lillian gave me the name of a lawyer in Finland, Kerri. I got in touch with him and he said he was willing to look into it for me. He just happened to have a friend that was really in to old crimes.
“This could take awhile.” He warned.
“I’ll wait.”
Bremerton faded in to the foggy background as the ferry made its way through Puget Sound southeast to Seattle. I wondered if this was how Maria had felt as the village docks in Finland disappeared behind them, the Gulf of Bothnia before them. I pictured her perched on the deck, the wind chilling her face making her cheeks red and rosy, making the captain smile, making his wife jealous. I bet it started there. The need for the sea. The need to be in the middle of something bigger than yourself, the ability to disappear in its enormity.
The sea ran through my veins. Passed down from generation to generation. From Pyhäjoki to Ilwaco, from father to son, mother to daughter, and finally from mother to son --- from my mother to me.
The emerald city rose in front the boat. Soon we would be on I-5 Southbound, the radio blasting classic rock.
Buildings reaching up and out of visibility as if they never ended. They stood tall and proud with the knowledge that things do reach forever, things are passed on. A duty to clear the name of an ancestor is passed from generation to generation until somebody clears that name. And while the road of the past disappears behind you, the road to the future opens in front of you --- but it is all the same road.
One day the future road will meet with the past like we are on some large continuum, like we’ve all been on some never-ending return voyage. But until those roads meet, and you have a clear sense of your roots, and hope for your future, you wait.
And of course, Tom Petty is right; “The waiting is the hardest part.”
(1) Shiela is correct, Shy-la. As opposed to Sheila, She-la.
(2) Sylvia is a common Finnish name. Sylvia Lampi is a distant relative of mine, as well as Wanda’s. There is also a Sylvia Lampi that is a direct descendant of ours, the reason that Robert Bush thought we had a right to the estate. I’m sure that there’s a great story of ambition here that reflects why Mr. Bush is a self-made millionaire, but that’s not this story.
(3) The family name, Ahvenlampi, was shortened to Lampi when my ancestors came to the United States in the early 1900s.
I-5 Northbound, somewhere around Olympia and when Tom Petty started singing “the waiting is the hardest part,” I realized why mother was my travel partner for the day. Because there was no way in hell I was going to explain to Lillian Schauer why I was scheduled for her 10:30 morning appointment.
I ran the conversation in my head.
“Welcome to the Schauer Law Office. Why are you here?”
I pictured Lillian as I picture all lawyers, polished, slick and ready to laugh at your expense (both emotionally and financially).
“My mom talks to dead people.”
“Mom,” I said patting my hand on my mother leg, “I’m glad you could come up with me.”
“I’m glad too, Matt.”
So, what does my mother talking to the dead have to do with a road trip to Port Orchard, Washington to visit Lillian Schauer, attorney at law? Long story, but it goes something like this.
One night, probably after watching The Sixth Sense, or something, I asked my mom if she believed you could communicate with dead.
“Yeah, I did it once.”
“You did what?”
“Talked to the dead. I used a Ouija board.”
I could have sworn the room got a few degrees cooler; all right, the room didn’t get cooler, but my mom was quiet for a few minutes. Mom is never quiet.
“It scared me to death,” she said.
And it should, I thought. That’s what you get for playing with the devil’s toys.
I’ve never known my mother to lie to me, except for that time she told me Humphry, my cat, just went away for awhile; the next day I found him ground into the road a block from my house. So I was willing to hear her out. After all, I could tell if she was lying, mom is an awful storyteller.
It was raining in July. Not really raining, just drizzling, making the South Bend air damp and thick. The midnight air was salty, both refreshing and chilling. My mom, Judy, and her cousin, Shelly, sat in the basement asking the Ouija Board the usual silly questions 11 year-old girls ask. Who will I marry? Does the new boy have a crush on me? Do I look fat in this?
“Come on mom,” I said. “Rainy night, around midnight, playing with the Ouija Board in the basement?”
“It’s true.” Mom got up to get make some tea, maybe to take a little sting off the sudden chills her memories were causing. Maybe because she likes tea.
The girls spent a lot of time together in the summertime of the early Sixties. Judy’s Grandma, Adeline, would bring her to South Bend when her parents went fishing in the Pacific. Judy stayed at her aunt Shiela’s (1) house and played with Cousin Shelly.
“Why don’t you girls ask it something spooky?” Shiela asked. “After all, it is the bewitching hour.”
“Like what?” Shelly asked.
“Ask if there is a dead ancestor trying to get in touch with us.”
Judy laughed a little nervously at the suggestion. But what could really go wrong? At worst it might give a simple yes or no.
“Why not?”
“Why not? I’ll tell you why not,” I said.
“We were just messing around, Matt. We didn’t really think anything was going to happen.” She poured the tea. “Want sugar?”
“Yeah.” She handed me a mug. “Mom, didn’t you tell me to be careful for what I asked for because I might just get it?”
“Yeah, probably.”
The girls put their fingers on the pointer and asked. The pointer started to move, at first slow, but then it started picking up speed. It stopped at a letter, hesitating for a second or two, then it quickly moved to the next. Repeating the phrase.
“A Finnish Maiden.”
“Are you doing that, girls?”
“No mom,” Shelly said slowly as the pointer picked up speed.
“No.”
Adeline tensed up and picked up the paper, refusing to watch. Shiela got a pen and some paper and wrote down the messages.
“Clear My Name.” The pointer flew off the board.
“Girls are you doing this?”
“No,” they answered in unison, their voices a little wobbly. Shiela took a couple of T-shirts and blind folded the girls.
“Now ask.”
“Clear My Name.”
“She didn’t blind fold you.”
“Yes, Matt, she did.”
“Are you sure you’re not making any of this up?”
“No.”
“Ask it what it means,” Shiela said.
“Murder.”
The pointer moved rapidly under the girl’s fingers, sliding from letter to letter, not just answering “yes” or “no,” but telling a horrifying tale.
A young maiden was working on a fishing boat off the coast of Finland in the early 1800’s. She was having an affair with the captain. The wife of the captain had become jealous and killed a baby.
“How?”
“Rat Poison. Clear My Name.”
The captain’s wife accused the maiden of killing the child. She lied under oath in a mockery of a trial. This lady was out to destroy the maiden.
“She was Homosexual.”
What was Homosexual? The girls had no idea, but the board continued to weave a twisted tale of a love triangle gone bad.
“She Loved Me. Clear My Name.”
“Who are you?”
“A Finnish Maiden. Clear My Name.”
“Who are you?”
“Clear My Name.”
“That seriously happened?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And you never thought to clear that maiden’s name?”
“She never told us her name.”
“And she spoke English?”
“She probably spoke Finnish.”
“But in her spare time she has learned enough English to spell out a story?” I asked amused with myself for finding the weak link in this fabulous tale.
“Well, she has had a bit of time to figure it out now, hasn’t she, Mr. Smarty pants?”
After verifying this story with Shelly and Shiela, I decided to clear this maiden’s name myself, to rescue her from her purgatory. But to clear a name, you got to know a name, and that’s where Lillian Schauer enters the story.
Lillian was hired by Robert Bush, self made millionaire and war hero and distant (very distant) relative, to assist in research and investigation regarding the estate of Sylvia Lampi, a distant (yes, very, very distant) relative of his wife, Wanda (2). It turned out that Wanda was not an heir, as was no one in my direct line of ancestors. But to discover this, Lillian had to trace our family roots to Finland, early 1800 Finland. I thought she might have the name of the Finnish maiden in one of the family trees she created.
I called and asked if I could come look at the information she had gathered about my family. She said she charges for copies. I said o.k. She said 10:30 on Friday. I said o.k.
My mom called in sick.
We gassed up at the edge of town at the Chevron by the weathered cedar sign that read “Welcome to Port Orchard.” The sign looked pretty rugged and classy, except for the plastic seagulls nailed into the posts. It was quite appropriate. Everything about Port Orchard had a classy charm that was underscored by all the seagull droppings. I never saw one live gull, though. Just the evidence.
The law offices of Lillian Schauer were located in a renovated house that overlooked Puget Sound. The house was the town’s focal point. You could see its high spire from anywhere downtown or on the docks.
Lillian’s office was very warm. Antique waiting-room chairs and quilts hanging on the wall gave the place a homey quality. Lillian greeted us, not with a slick handshake and aloof demeanor, but with a hug. She looked motherly. She showed us to the conference room and brought out two boxes of briefs and charts and other legal stuff on oversized paper.
“Help yourselves,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“It’s really great that you’re looking for your roots,” Lillian said.
Then she listened to my mom’s tale and didn’t think she was crazy. She actually was quite impressed with the spiritual implications of such a story. How, if true, it gives depth to family histories, a sense you belong to something bigger than yourself. She showed us how she could see, from her office window, her son’s aircraft carrier across the Sound in Bremerton.
She didn’t charge for copies.
It was 1 p.m. as the ferry pulled from the docks in Bremerton. A few seagulls milled about, hoping for someone to toss them some crumbs that they would dump over Port Orchard on their return flight. I zipped up my blue Columbia Sports Wear jacket and stepped out on to the front deck.
Fog hung over the hills across the way in Port Orchard, blurring the line between land and air, making any color beside green and gray indistinguishable. The mist stung my face as the ferry picked up speed and turned towards Seattle. Droplets attached themselves to my waterproof jacket and I brushed them off like sand, the drops disappearing as they hit the slick deck.
There was something about the beginning of a voyage that stuck with me. Standing on the threshold of a new journey. The past blurring itself and fading behind you, the future, sometimes just as blurry, staring you in the face.
I had copied several versions of the family tree in Lillian’s office. I looked through them and found only one possible maiden, Maria. Maria Ahvenlampi, born in the Finnish fishing town of Pyhäjoki in 1846. She died, unmarried, at the age 22 in 1868. Maria was the first generation of Ahvenlampis (3) to be born in a coastal town, making her the first generation that would be able to work aboard ships.
The source for all these records is the church. Local parishes kept records of the families that moved in out of their areas, as well as births, deaths and marriages.
They didn’t keep the crime records.
Lillian gave me the name of a lawyer in Finland, Kerri. I got in touch with him and he said he was willing to look into it for me. He just happened to have a friend that was really in to old crimes.
“This could take awhile.” He warned.
“I’ll wait.”
Bremerton faded in to the foggy background as the ferry made its way through Puget Sound southeast to Seattle. I wondered if this was how Maria had felt as the village docks in Finland disappeared behind them, the Gulf of Bothnia before them. I pictured her perched on the deck, the wind chilling her face making her cheeks red and rosy, making the captain smile, making his wife jealous. I bet it started there. The need for the sea. The need to be in the middle of something bigger than yourself, the ability to disappear in its enormity.
The sea ran through my veins. Passed down from generation to generation. From Pyhäjoki to Ilwaco, from father to son, mother to daughter, and finally from mother to son --- from my mother to me.
The emerald city rose in front the boat. Soon we would be on I-5 Southbound, the radio blasting classic rock.
Buildings reaching up and out of visibility as if they never ended. They stood tall and proud with the knowledge that things do reach forever, things are passed on. A duty to clear the name of an ancestor is passed from generation to generation until somebody clears that name. And while the road of the past disappears behind you, the road to the future opens in front of you --- but it is all the same road.
One day the future road will meet with the past like we are on some large continuum, like we’ve all been on some never-ending return voyage. But until those roads meet, and you have a clear sense of your roots, and hope for your future, you wait.
And of course, Tom Petty is right; “The waiting is the hardest part.”
(1) Shiela is correct, Shy-la. As opposed to Sheila, She-la.
(2) Sylvia is a common Finnish name. Sylvia Lampi is a distant relative of mine, as well as Wanda’s. There is also a Sylvia Lampi that is a direct descendant of ours, the reason that Robert Bush thought we had a right to the estate. I’m sure that there’s a great story of ambition here that reflects why Mr. Bush is a self-made millionaire, but that’s not this story.
(3) The family name, Ahvenlampi, was shortened to Lampi when my ancestors came to the United States in the early 1900s.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
NEW BLOG
I am not sure when I will begin posting. I wanted a place to share some of my short story drafts and ideas. More to come...
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