It’s astounding
Time is fleeting
Madness takes its toll
So listen closely
Not for very much longer
I’m going to lose control
Quick–what’s the next line?
Shakespearean Festival Theater in Stratford Ontario, originally built in 1953. Photo by kajmeister.
Forty-two years ago, I saw the legendary Canadian actor Brian Bedford play three roles at the Stratford Canadian Shakespearean festival in repertory: Angelo in Measure for Measure, Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and Richard III. The breadth of his performances changed my idea of what actors could do.
Forty years ago, as a freshman in college at Berkeley, I watched a science-fiction movie about a transvestite where people shouted at the screen and threw toast and rice. It changed my idea about how a movie can connect with an audience.
Who would have thought that, getting old, we would wax nostalgic about doing the time warp?
Stratford Festival’s Rocky Horror, starring Dan Chameroy. Program photo by Stratford staff, uncredited.
If you trace your ancestors, how far back do you go? Great-greats? Where the four brothers married the four sisters? Pre-Civil War? Neanderthals? Perhaps I should start simply, just with my mother and my grandfather, a more manageable task.
Last week, I wrote about the inspiration of seeing the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota. This week, I am traveling the path of my own people, my mother’s family, whose lives were sprinkled across the northern plains of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. We are Finns, who emigrated from Lapplander landscapes with thin, tall trees, who journeyed from bleak places of chill and sleet to cross the American “west” until they reached an equally bleak landscape. Home!
Copper Harbor lighthouse on Lake Superior above the Upper Peninsula Michigan. Photo by kajmeister.
Not to worry. This is not a full genealogy review, not a list of begats and son ofs in biblical proportions. I did a Family Tree project in the fifth grade which had some of these details, but don’t have it with me. I may be misremembering or fictionalizing pieces (I think Grandpa Hugo was oldest of 11… I think there were four brothers and sisters intermarrying…) In point of fact, my aunt has also compiled some kind of detailed review, to the point where if you go into the Finnish-American Center in Hancock, Michigan and mention the surname Busse, they say, “Oh, Ainie!” even though she lives 350 miles away.
This is about the environment of my mom’s family. What was it like where she was born and grew up? Why did she always yearn to be near a city, preferring traffic over trees? Why did she enjoy the 108-degree heat of Sacramento? Why did her family have such a strange, biting sense of humor? What was all that SISU about? Continue reading “Heartland II: Where My People Lie Buried”
“My lands are where my people lie buried.” Crazy Horse Memorial, September 2018. Photo by kajmeister.
Korczak, the sculptor, slung his drill over his back and climbed over 900 steps for almost 40 years. He blasted bits out of the granite mountain, day after day, grinding down the 563 -foot side to lay out room for a long pointing arm. If ever there was a visual definition of the word “surmount”–to mount upon, to prevail over–this must be it.
One man, one drill, one mountain.
Memorial in 1974, when I first visited. Photo by memorial staff, copy on Pinterest.
He hadn’t gotten especially far by 1973, when I first saw the Statue-To-Be, driving across South Dakota on our cross-country trip moving from Detroit to Sacramento. Now, returning back to visit some of my old haunts in Michigan, the memorial was the first big stop on our trip through the heartland, this pink-tinged grassland of our country’s center. Korczak’s grandchildren are now in charge, and the crew is slowly but surely pulling the image of the proud warrior out of the granite. Continue reading “Heartland I: The Carving Climbing Out of the Mountain”
