Sounds of Hope

Maybe you've seen this scene from Madmen as the Kodak Carousel is introduced.   If not, go here and watch it and then come back to the blog. In Greek, nostalgia literally means, a pain from an old wound .  In someways, this blog has been about nostalgia.  Even those topics of current inspiration draw life from the past.  You never escape where you came from or who you were.  We change, we grow but somehow the past is always with us beckoning us to remember. I think the pain we feel as we recall the past is cause not by the wound by knowing we can't go back.  We see visions of the past and we want to go back. We want to go back not because we made some horrible mistake and need a do-over.  Rather we want to go back to experience the joy, the wonderment, the excitement, or any of the myriad of human emotions that can explode at anytime.  While a small substitute for time travel back to that moment, a memory can cause us to relive such joy and so...

When my kids were little they used to read the Chose Your Own Adventure books, also know as Gamebook .  After reading a few pages, they'd have to make a choice.  The choice involved picking which page to go to next.  Once that choice was made, the story was altered. I've often thought life was like that.  Every so often you have to chose something.  Once you make the choice, it changes your life forever.  In life, unlike the book, you can't go back and alter your choice. I can think of so many pivotal moments of choice, as well as, minor ones.  The minor ones sometimes turned out to be pivotal.  With all the talk of Brooklyn Norwegians and my childhood, it has made me wonder about a lot of the choices. This morning my husband and I were talking about why I didn't go with my father to Norway when I was in the 9th grade.  I've regretted that decision a million times.  It was primarily their decision, I was only 14.  However, I did...

Have you ever noticed that one of the first questions a man will ask about someone else is “What does he/she do?”  My husband asked me that at breakfast this morning about someone from my past.  I’m still digging up people from my past.  I guess it will never stop.  I just like doing it and am a “connector.” Recently, a good Facebook friend started a Facebook group, Brooklyn Norwegians.  It took off like lightening.  I like this guy.  He’s a writer.  We seem to think alike about things.  We went to the same “grammar” school, PS 94, then the same Jr. High School, John J. Pershing Jr. High School – I left Brooklyn during High School and he was smart, he went on to what was then Boy’s Tech.  I imagine at some point in our childhoods our paths crossed. However, neither of us remembers that time. All this Brooklyn Norwegian talk – we talked about food, the closing of the last Norwegian bakery, we talked about the neighborhood, churches, peo...

Like something from an old black and white TV show, their faces look young and vibrant.  Their large print dresses must have been a kaleidoscope of color.  But the black and white echoes that most have gone home to the Lord.  It seems so odd to think that women would gather on a Monday night once a month to pack a missionary barrel to go to India.  One of their own was helping lepers in India.  Karin and I would take torn sheets and roll bandages.  I often wondered about the person whose wounds would be bound by the fruit of our labors.  These women made quilts to cover the lepers while I was rolling bandages.  Before the night was over, several quilts would be finished.   A page from LIFE magazine served as a pattern.  Colors and texture were blended and pinned together on those pages.  A zip through the sewing machine and a quilt was finished in hours.  Once the bandages were rolled, the quilts lovingly fold...

Heavy snow is coming down today.  It is reminding me of a Christmas in Brooklyn. One of my favorite people when I was a child was my “Tante Bitta.”  She was actually not my Aunt or Tante, she was my cousin.  However, like all of my first cousins on my father’s side, she was an adult when I was born and had children my age.  Out of respect, I called her Tante.  When I was little I couldn’t say her name Birgit; in my childish pronunciation she became Bitta.  We saw her and her family only occasionally until they moved within walking distance.  What a happy day that was!  Her eldest daughter and I became best friends. So many things I could write about her daughter and I.  After putting 75 cents in the cigarette machine, we’d puff away for a few hours.   Believing we’d rather “fight that switch” after a brief usage of Marlboros we became Tareyton smokers.  Doused in perfume, with gum in our mouths we'd try to cover ...

The smell of Norwegian baking just reminds me of Christmas and home.   At Christmas, my mother would bake for weeks filling the little railroad flat at 434-53 rd Street with smells of cardamom, almond, and butter.   In that small kitchen in an old gas oven she worked her magic.  My mother had a well-worn stained Norwegian cookbook.  She was an American girl from Waynesboro PA who was transformed into a Norwegian speaking, acting and cooking woman when she said "I do" to a former Norwegian sailor from Arendal. By the second grade I was allowed to cross streets by myself.   I would walk home  from school with Barbara.   Once in the vestibule I’d ring the bell.   The buzzer would sound to unlock the inner door.   Like going into the inner sanctuary of a holy place, an aroma better than the finest incense would greet my little nose.   Sniffing as I walked the hall to the kitchen, I would try to guess what had been baked ...

The Christmas season has begun.  I knew nothing of the first Sunday in Advent as a child.  We had no Advent wreath or theme in the Norwegian Pentecostal church I attended.  The first Sunday of Advent meant the distribution of our Christmas “pieces” in preparation for the Christmas program.  As I’ve mentioned before, I always seemed to be expect to have the longest piece, or be a narrator.  To this day, I attribute my lack of fear of public speaking to those days.  I don’t ever remember being nervous about getting up in front of people to talk.  I’ve been doing it since before I can remember. It was officially Christmas, I had seen Santa at the Parade on Thanksgiving Day.  Lights were twinkling from the houses in my neighborhood.  As you went toward 5 th Avenue, the smell of pine mixed with a small coal fire filled the air.  Miraculously Christmas trees were lining the path to the wonders of 5 th Avenue. No I am not talking about the...

I’ve been looking at a lot of old photographs lately. I picked up a very odd collection of photographs my mother had in her room. I take greater delight than most in finding an old photograph. A house fire and too many moves have claimed our treasures forever. I was particularly delighted to find this assortment. It included photos of my dad as a young man, some of his brother and sister-in-law’s trip from Norway to visit us, his son and the 1963 New York City World’s Fair. There were photos of my mother with her siblings. I found photos of my mother as a very young woman with her first two children. How very young my mother looked. Her youthful beauty that she never saw in herself was striking. She always referred to herself as “homely” and as I looked at those pictures, I thought how sad that she never saw what an attractive woman she was. There have been other old pictures to look at as well. I’ve written before that I had the very unique and wondrous experience of ha...

Coffee is a great thing. I love coffee. I used to own a coffee shop. Today my coffee tastes terrible. Not sure why. Is it just me? Is it the coffee? I don’t think it is the coffee since I buy huge amounts of whole bean Dunkin Donut coffee when in Tennessee and bring it back to South Dakota.  I have a great coffee maker so that’s not it either. I’ve been drinking coffee since I was a small child. My father always had to have a skvett of coffee before going out the door. A skvett  is like a splash or drop. The coffee was made in a small four cup aluminum percolator coffee pot.  Percolators are amazing things. I’ll bet some younger people have no idea what a percolator is or how to make coffee with it. It is a magical invention that somehow knows exactly when the coffee is done and stops the percolating action. Maybe that’s what I need to do, get rid of the Cuisinart and get a percolator at Goodwill. When my dad would have a skevtt of coffee, it was usually reheated coffe...

Christmas isn’t Christmas without Salvation Army bell-ringers and red kettles. When I was a child in Brooklyn, those bell-ringers were usually Salvation Army (SA) officers in full uniform. Sometimes there was a small brass ensemble playing Christmas carols rather than a simple bell. They were usually outside of the Woolworths on Fifth Avenue BROOKLYN (not Manhattan). I knew the Captain of the local Salvation Army Corps. Like most everything we associated with in the neighborhood, she was Norwegian. My first memory of the leader of the local corps was walking with my father and coming across a street meeting in progress. Street meetings had a little music, a short sermon, an invitation to receive Christ right there or to the local church. When I was five or six, I first met Captain Johnson. It might have been Lieutenant Johnson then but mostly I remember her as Captain. While we were not Salvationists, my father loved to go to different churches when there was a se...