Paula Pederson's Blog, page 2

Hindsight on History

Slave Auction Block Green Hill Plantation, Campbell County Virginia, Historical Buildings Society courtesy Wikimedia Commons

One topic for American as an  election draws near, is the progress of civil rights throughout our history. English author Charles Dickens wrote scathingly about slavery after his 1842 U.S. visit.  Delancey Place notes in their April 16, 2018 blog that in his book, American Notes for General Circulation (Penguin Classics 2000), Dickens described three type of slave owners:

 

 

“The first, are those more moderate and rational owners of human cattle, who have come into the possession of them as so many coins in their trading capital, but who admit the frightful nature of the institution in the abstract…

“The second, consists of all those owners, breeders, users, buyers and sellers of slaves…who doggedly deny the horrors of the system in the teeth of such a mass of evidence as never was brought to bear on any other subject…

“The third,…is composed of all that delicate gentility which cannot bear a superior, and cannot brook an equal; of that class whose Republicanism means, ‘I will not tolerate a man above me: and of those below, none must approach too near, whose pride in a land where voluntary servitude is shunned as a disgrace, must be ministered to by slaves…”

Dickens spoke truth, but Americans condoned using men, women, and children as slaves for another 19 years before they tore the country apart in order to end slavery.

 

 

 

Hired by Harvard

Underwoodfive typewriter Courtesy X570, Wikimedia Commons

 

With Harvard in the news this week, I’m reminded of my brief stint on the office staff of the college. I set out as a pioneer in 1955 to make my mark as a writer with my newly-minted Smith College English Literature degree. The train from Maine brought me to Boston where, after pounding the city pavements, I landed a job in Cambridge as an assistant secretary at Harvard College. Not quite where I wanted to be, but Harvard after all! I’d be starting at the bottom, but I was on my way.

To what? As an English major I knew how to spell. As a ninth-grade graduate of Typing 1, I knew how to return the typewriter carriage at the end of the line, install a new ribbon when the type faded, and paint over my errors with the little wite-out brush.

My supervisor, Miss Mabel Herning, had a nose so small I feared her glasses would slide off the end of it. Pointing to a sleek black armchair embossed with a gold Harvard seal she said, “You see that chair? If you’re here twenty-five years you’ll get one of these, so it’s something to look forward to.”

Having started me off with a goal, she handed me an eight-line letter to type on my manual typewriter along with several sheets of 5×8 letterhead stationery along with carbon paper. (Copiers had not yet been invented.) I realized that producing four carbon copies would require more accuracy than I had achieved in Typing 1.

To fit between the five pieces of 5×8 letterhead stationery, I had to cut two pieces of carbon paper in half. Then I alternated the carbon paper with the letterhead and rolled the seven sheets of paper into the typewriter.

I made my first typo on the first line. With no way to correct the four carbon copies, I tossed the seven sheets of paper into the wastebasket and began again. Soon my wastebasket overflowed with papers, so I emptied the mess into my desk drawers to keep Miss Herning from noticing,

“Where is the stationery,” I asked Miss Herning when I ran out of letterhead and carbon paper before lunch. She pointed to the supply closet.

I finished the eight-line letter at four p.m., typed five envelopes, and returned the completed assignment to Miss Herning.

She smiled. “Thank you.” She didn’t ask me to do anything else.

Well, I didn’t get fired. But I never got my Harvard chair either. Two years later I  got my Mrs. degree and left Harvard forever.

 

Meditation

 

 

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

I don’t understand profound Buddhism. Meditation is just a part of it. So is chanting. Some unapproved practitioners of an offshoot of Buddhism practice the strengthening and soothing chant, “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.” As an observer I notice that chanting of any sort builds both calm and lung power.

Yet, we graduate, change jobs, lifestyles, partners. People move away, relationships change, distance, and sometimes wither. We get old and sick. We tell ourselves, “Buck up, cheer up.” But we can’t.

We might try travel, sports, parties, new projects, new causes, drinking, drugs, politics. We want  to commit to something. But we can’t. We’re filled with resentment, hope, anger, paralysis. Anxiety prevents us from getting anything done.

Prayer works for some. Others say meditate. Be mindful. Concentrate on the here and now. Stop reacting and learn a new way to act.

Too much going on now. I’ve spent my time writing the history of my Danish and Ukrainian immigrant forbears who gave birth to my mother and father. They travelled the early Pacific Northwest railroads as homesteaders to Seattle and Canada.

Sometimes meditation has worked for me—still, being in the present is not easy. The first group I tried, for an hour at a time, considered the heavens and the stars. I learned to keep my mind from jumping around, but one evening I remained in a trance driving home and drove clear to the next town before I realized where I was.

I found a mindfulness practitioner who encourages breathing. Simply focus on your breath, inhale slowly through the diaphragm, expand to fill your lungs, then reverse and concentrate as you slowly expel the outflow of breath. Stresses moved away and I began to realize a calm perspective. Then we moved for a while. Now we’re back where I can rejoin that group.

So, if you’re having trouble sleeping  at night, maybe you’re still  turning over today’s stresses, or tomorrow’s challenges.

“Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone: and do not be troubled about the future, for it is yet to come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.”  Ida Scott Taylor McKinney

 

 

 

 

Climate Change Impacts Maine Lobsters

 

Photo Credit:Wikimedia Creative Commons, Attribution Share Alikec.3.0 unproved

 

 

Maine and Canadian fishermen know the North Atlantic and its many moods and seasons. In Maine, Portland’s Gulf of Maine Research Institute completed a  recent study reflecting the perspectives of  some Maine lobstermen who have experienced the impact of climate change on their northern fishery.

 

 

A New York Times article noted Maine lobstermen’s commitment to conservation:           “The lobstermen clip the tails of egg-bearing female lobsters and release them, a practice called V-notching that began voluntarily in the late 19th century and was later mandated by law. They throw back lobsters that already have V-notches, alongside lobsters that are smaller than 3.25 inches or larger than five, measured from the eye socket to the base of the tail. These measures help conserve the brood stock, ensuring that the lobsters continue to repopulate.

“It allowed them to take advantage of the boom, and it’s going to give them some resiliency to the changes that we think are coming,” said Andrew Pershing, the chief scientist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and a lead author of the study.”

Check out the story:

us3-62de2de3a3-e560d6270@conversation01.mailchimpapp.com.

 

 

 

Klondike Gold Rush, the Yukon River

 

 

Hope-filled prospectors  on the Yukon River, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

 

Hans Pederson, My father, joined the 100,000 prospectors on the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898. Following the 1893 and 1896 depressions, people were ready to try anything. The majority of prospectors were either recent immigrants to America, or else marking time as clerks or salesmen. In Seattle the mayor 12 policemen, and many streetcar drivers joined the Alaskan stampede.

Historian Pierre Berton, described the Klondike as “just far enough to be romantic and just close enough to be accessible.”  Here is how Jack London, chronicler of Arctic tales narrated his journey:

“The man flung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon river lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many as three feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations where the ice jams of the freeze up had formed, north and south as far as his eye could see it was unbroken white, save for a dark hair-line that turned  and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the south, and that a curved and twisted away into the north, where it disappeared behind another spruce-covered island. This dark hair-line was the trail—the main trail—that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea,and salt water, and that led north seventy miles to Dawson and still to he north a thousand miles to Nulan and finally to St. Michael on Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half a thousand more.”

The Klondike Gold Rush seemed no more inviting than it does in the above photo.

Immigrants and Pioneers

Since we North Americans started out as immigrants, many of us are searching for our roots—DNA tests and Ancestry dot.com among others.  I found my roots thanks to having written a memoir published in 2017, MYSTERIOUS BUILDER OF SEATTLE LANDMARKS Searching for My Father.

Well into my eighties, I found my father in 2018. Hans Pederson left Denmark for Seattle in 1884 where he became a major pioneer builder— roads, bridges, dams, buildings. How did he learn to do this? Hans attended a laborers’ school twice a week from the ages of 7-14. Years later he shared his Northwestern good fortune by bringing his Danish relatives to the Seattle area as dairy farmers. I hope to meet them. Last summer they told our Danish cousins Dorte and Hanne that we’d be passing through Denmark on a cruise.

This past summer we spent an enchanting day with them as we feasted with 20 cousins. They  drove us to the village of Stenstrup where we found Hans’ childhood home. His grandparents raised him because his mother had to return to her life as a maid shortly after his birth. We visited the church where he was christened and climbed the twisting staircase to the church tower. How moving it was to move outdoors  and tour the church cemetery. Rather than stone markers of various sizes spread throughout a graveyard, each family plot was surrounded by a little hedge with room for a little garden as well as the family headstone.

 

I knew little about either of my  parents until I was in my seventies. My mother rarely  mentioned her own family. In 2009 I was invited to a a Huchulak family reunion in Edmonton, Alberta. Along with 50 relatives, we retraced the steps of our great grandfather, Stephan Tokaruk, a Ukrainian horse groomer who brought his family to Canada in 1899 on the Canadian Pacific Railroad. After they felled the forest,  they  homesteaded their farm Since the Canadian government offered schooling only to English-speaking children, my mother, a fourth child, was the first in her family to attend school.

It was heartwarming to learn that the family gathers for an annual picnic at the Andrew cemetery on Orthodox Easter. I felt that this is a family that knows where it belongs.

Wanderlust brought our forebears to North America. Most of us settle down, but many of us pick up and wander again.

 

 

 

 

Steve Jobs, Creator

Steve Jobs; Cofounder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc.

Chairman and Majority Investor of Pixar

Founder Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NeXT

Steve Jobs holding a MacBook Air at the MacWorld Conference and Expo, 2008

 

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.”

20th vs. 21st Century International Travel

First Class Childrens’ Playroom of the R.M.S. Empress of Japan,  courtesy Wikimedia Commons

 

I found  my father Hans Pederson’s,  childhood home after a tiring trip to Denmark during the summer of  2018. My husband drove me to Portland, Maine about 8 a.m. where I caught the 11:30 bus to Boston’s Logan Airport. I reached the international terminal about 3 p.m.

Rolling my luggage to check in for my flight, I lined up to be x-rayed and patted down as  I watched TSA workers paw through my belongings. Wending my way to the plane, I settled into my end seat which allowed ample room for my 5’3’ frame. Then taking pity on my 6’7” neighbor in the cramped center seat, I traded places with him.

The red-eye flight to Amsterdam arrived the next morning about 8 local time. I met Ellen who had flown from Los Angeles and at  11:30 we boarded our final flight to Copenhagen, ready for bed and prepared to face several days of jet lag.

The trip brought back memories of my early childhood in prewar Shanghai, Manila, and Honolulu where my stepdad served as a Far Eastern agent for the Standard Oil until the outbreak of World War II. On our periodic home leaves we’d travel first class on ocean liners. From Honolulu to Los Angeles took five days.  Stewards served steaming cups of bouillon, “tiffin” in mid-morning as we lounged on deck chairs covered with steamer blankets after promenading around the deck. My mother and father dined formally on multi-course meals, always with a turn at the Captain’s table. Afterwards they danced away the night under the stars.

Still, the children required tending. Even though we enjoyed staff-supervised activities in the children’s playroom, our amahs had been left behind in port. My sister and I ran up and down the carpeted circular staircases gawking at the frescoes on the ceiling.  We swam in the pool and bet on wooden horses that “raced “across the deck at the roll of the dice. At dinner in the children’s dining room, we were supervised by matrons in white uniforms. The childrens’ tea party served as the grand finale—we sipped hot chocolate and ate tiny pastel petit fours.

Embarking five days later in the U.S. we sometimes felt like immigrants, but we never experienced jet lag.

 

Hans Pederson’s Denmark, Next Norway

We met the family of my Danish father Hans Pederson, near Odense and continued our Scandinavian cruise arriving at this imposing sight in  Norway’s harbor, Oslo.

We spent the morning in Oslo. In Frogner Park we toured the amazing Vigeland sculpture installation created by Gustav Vigeland. Norway’s most popular tourist attraction is filled with statues depicting people in various activities in all stages of life.. The most abstract one shows a man fighting off a horde of babies. These photos show others:

 

The Angry Boy, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

 

 

The bridge between the main gate and the fountain with several statues

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Vigeland Monument, 46.32 ft. high, composed of 121 human figures courtesy Wikimedia Commons

 

Later in the morning we viewed the Olympic Ski Jump, awestruck at the skills mastered by cross-country skiers— Norway’s national sport.  No surprise that the sport brought Norway the 2018 Olympic gold medal

Holmenkollen Ski Jump, Oslo Norway Mathias Stang photo, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandfather’s Gift

 

courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Grandfather (Opa) traveled on his magic carpet after he retired. A World War I pilot who flew into a tree in France, served in China with the Standard Oil and managed aviation fuel projects in World War II, he and grandmother later toured the US in a VW Beetle— including Alaska, where they drove on a slant because the ruts only handled larger cars.

The Rubber Budget Account Book arrived in a brown mailer after our 1957 wedding; the latest in Opa’s imaginative gifts. I was already stitching my first maternity top on the portable Singer sewing machine he’d given me. The Rubber Budget Account Book provided a column for each family member. I decided how to divide the monthly money. The idea was to allocate family funds like a rubber band as needs shifted, but avoid overspending since the monthly amount was fixed. We Depression babies were conservative spenders, especially in the pre-credit card era.

Through the years we raised five kids and moved several times, along with various careers and hiatuses. We zeroed in on thrift shops and yard sales and sometimes drank powdered milk. I canned vegetables, stitched drapes, and sewed two slipcovers for the couch with grandfather’s sewing machine. Today’s middle-class women have more choices . Time is money.

By the time the kids had their teeth straightened and headed for college, imbued I hoped with careful shopping habits, I was bringing thrifty brown-bag lunches to my office cubicles.

Writing is my magic carpet now. How I love the ride. Grandfather set the stage. I’ve featured the other side of the family in my recent memoir, Mysterious Builder of Seattle Landmarks, Searching for My Father. The story focuses on my immigrant forebears. In North America we are all immigrants.