All We Leave Behind

 

Evert Hjalmer Nelson, my dad, at left
with his mother Signe in 1959 as she
was about to set sail for a visit home
from the U.S. to her native Sweden.

A few weeks ago, I was part of a conversation that moved me greatly on multiple levels.

We were prepping for a March 3 public presentation in Portland Ovations' Seeking Resonance Series -- Toward Being Future Beings, a preview of an ongoing commissioned work with Yu'pik creator Emily Johnson.

I was honored to be in the room.

We were talking about home. About our connections to place and people and ancestors. About culture and what we create from these connections.

Jason Brown, a self-professed "hyper creative" of Maine's Penobscot Nation, was among us. Jason began talking about how he was teased in school for being a "half breed" because his father was Swedish and his mother Penobscot.

As importantly, he was talking about how he knew nothing about the Swedish side of his family. They had sailed for America and left it all behind them: the language, the culture, the stories, the families along with the land.

I might be 100% French-Canadian in my genes, but my adopted family was second gen from Bohemia on my mother's side and first gen Swedish on my father's side. Similarly to the Swedish side of Jason's family, our people had left their old lives and seemingly their old selves behind with little trace when they immigrated to the States.

It's a lot to leave behind: those gifts of belonging to place and culture and the people who came before.

And as a result, White America tends to be a very disconnected culture. And in our disconnections, we have done a lot of damage -- especially to the land, but also to each other.

I was lucky growing up. Signe did keep returning for visits to Sweden. She spoke Swedish with the Swedish community in New Britain, CT, and made us Swedish foods for the holidays. Sometimes Swedish cousins would appear in CT on vacation. And when I was 13 she took me to Sweden with her for a month.

This all sounds like a lot and it was definitely something. But my dad never once went to Sweden. None of the rest of my family ever did. He did not speak the language, and as my grandmother aged we saw less and less of the Swedish cousins. I never connected with them as adults and their names and addresses are lost to me. My connections to the people who came before me are not strong, and I've noticed that is baked into White American culture. Our people were leaving behind where they came from, and when they arrived here, in order to benefit from the privileges of joining "White America," they conscientiously erased their differences.

Looking back, I see the moment when I was a teenager and became aware of this. In the 1970's, Puerto Rican immigration to New Britain boomed and new arrivals quadrupled the existing population. My father -- who no longer lived in the industrial city in central CT in which he was born -- began complaining about them. He was predominantly angry that they insisted on speaking Spanish, and often cited Signe's experience -- of arriving in the U.S. and attending night school to learn English.

Like many white western European immigrants, Signe valued assimilation. The new Puerto Rican population valued sustaining their native cultures: they brought their home with them to the mainland U.S.

We all leave things behind. Yet the history of native genocide, enslavement of Africans, and domination resulting from white immigration is a tragic result of our displacement from our own native cultures, places, and peoples. We're disconnected. We've forgotten our "we" to fiercely hold onto our "I's." In so doing, much of value has been lost to us forever -- including the humility that arises when one gives credit to those who came before.

Meatloaf and the Common Good

 

This is the Pyrex bowl in which my mother always made meatloaf.

And yes, being overseen by the Shawnee Pottery mid-20th century vintage pig bank and cookie jar in which she never kept cookies. Or coins.

I still make meatloaf in this sturdy old bowl, the same way she did: for every pound of ground meat (hamburger only in Mom's house) add 1 egg, ketchup and Worcester Sauce and salt and pepper to taste, packaged Italian bread crumbs, and enough milk to bind it all together. Set the loaf on 3 strips of bacon and put 3 more on top.

For some reason, making meatloaf for a family had me thinking about the cultural values that must be top of all our minds since the election, then January 6, then January 20.

The other overseer of both my mother's and my Gram's kitchens were magazine photos of JFK taped to the walls.

It was important to them to have a Catholic President -- not because he was a member of the same institution as they, but rather because they shared his values.

They believed in asking "not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."

I suppose it sounds terribly old-fashioned and simplistic to call up this old warhorse, but I'm grateful that our new President Joe Biden and VP Kamala Harris are asking the same thing.

They're focused on how to help working folks rather than put more dollars into the hands of Big Business and the 1%. They're focused on ending the pandemic: on track to get more than 1 million doses of vaccine not just manufactured but into people's arms by March. They're focused on rebuilding our nation's sorry infrastructure -- think Texas in an ice storm -- because our roads and power and internet and communications are what regular people like you and me rely on to survive and to thrive.

And maybe because we too often don't share a common belief in the goodness of this universe, in which we are so small, and thus in the power of our communities -- I just don't get Republicans. Their very transparent selfishness and lust for power and control boggle my mind. I don't want to believe in it. I don't understand those who support it. I don't want you to believe in it, either.

In the faith in which my mother raised me, there was no room for living a life based on anger and resentment. We didn't have much, but what we did have -- family, a roof over our heads, meatloaf -- was a gift and a blessing not to be ignored.

My mother had multiple, painful, ineffective eye surgeries before she was 10 years old. She had a full hysterectomy at 17, in 1941. She couldn't have children. She married a man who was legally deaf.

Together, they adopted first me and then my brother. They built a home on land given them by my Gram and on my father's machinist salary. By the time I was 11 years old, we were ALL working 12 hour days on a gravel pit-turned-campground my dad had envisioned and was managing, and on which we were living.

My parents were deeply grateful. They had had plenty of experiences that could have led them to live lives of anger and resentment -- and they chose not to.

This is just one of the many wonderful articles of faith which they passed along to me. I am grateful, too.

#pyrex

#meatloaf

#commongood

#jfk

#growingupinCT

Maine Legislative Breakfast 2021: The Impact of Our Cultural Sector

Below are comments I delivered to a Maine legislative breakfast hosted by the Maine
Association of Nonprofits on Friday, January 22, 2021. By posting them here I am able to include links to underlying statistics, research, and resources for your reference. Questions? Need additional info? Please don't hesitate to be in touch with me at lindanelso@gmail.com.

Good morning. Thanks again to you all for being here --  we're all grateful for your interest in and attention to the vital work nonprofits play in Maine, as well as to the impacts the pandemic has had on our work and priorities.

I'm Linda Nelson, Deputy Director of Portland Ovations and founding Executive Director of Opera House Arts in Stonington, with you today from Bath, the homeland of the Sagadahoc of the Wabanaki Confederacy.

As I hope you are all aware, the performing arts in Maine, as around the country, were among the first to shut down and will be among the very last to regain normalcy. Stages are shuttered; hundreds of thousands of events cancelled; millions in event and related revenues are lost.

This extreme shut down is due to one very crucial fact: bringing people together is the heart of the charitable mission of nonprofit performing arts organizations.

Literally bringing people together. To share experiences. Across differences.

We are traversing an historic time when our need to create such opportunities is greater than ever. Learning and understanding each others' stories, perspectives, and cultures through music, dance, and performance -- sitting in the dark beside a stranger with whom you later talk, laugh, and cry; watching live people perform ourselves and others on stages across our great state -- is one of our most powerful, and underrated, tools for uniting us. And for healing.

That's the heart of what we need to acknowledge today: arts and culture are the unsung heroes of the strengths of our Maine communities.

Nationally, the arts generate more revenues than construction or transportation. Fact. Surprising, hey? The latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis show that arts and culture make up more than 4.5% of the nation's GDP, with over 5 million wage and salary workers.

Here in Maine, the last study of five years ago documented over $150 million in revenues generated by this sector, with over $12 million in state and local government revenue.

Here in Maine, for every dollar spent on a cultural event ticket a local purchaser additionally spends more than $30 in that community. A visitor, who has been attracted to that town by that performance, spends an additional $60 plus dollars.

Maine's nonprofit arts and cultural sector employs thousands of people around the state.

While these numbers generate significant impact, there is also opportunity for growth as indicated by the national figures.

But economic impact is not the only, or perhaps even the best way, to understand the impact of arts and culture in Maine communities.

That, perhaps, was best felt during Wednesday's inauguration.

When Lady Gaga performed a national anthem like no other, gesturing to the flag that still flies above what was a besieged U.S. Capitol.

When J. Lo brought her own amazing heritage to This Land Is Your Land and America the Beautiful.

And most strikingly: when 22 year old U.S. Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman recited an original poem that returned the light to many hearts.

Amanda reminded me and hopefully everyone here today of Maine's own recent Poetry Out Loud champions, Joao Victor of Lewiston and Allan Monga of Portland.

THE ARTS had people weeping and remembering why we love this country. THE ARTS enflame a passion for UNITY in our HEARTS -- where it matters most.

But this pandemic has stolen many such experiences from us and will continue to do so.

My organization, Portland Ovations, is working almost entirely virtually and despite the optimism of Dr. Fauci, in his recent keynote address to the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, does not see a return to "normal" ticket sales until our 2022-23 season. Like our peers in the cultural sector, we've used our creative ingenuity to pivot -- and our pivot includes investing our budget, greatly supported by recovery dollars, directly in Maine artists, in the form of five commissions of new performances.

State and federal recovery dollars make up ESSENTIAL parts of our budgets: keeping arts workers employed and nonprofits from permanently shuttering. Even the most innovative amongst us -- and I look toward my peers and friends at Portland Stage, Penobscot Theater, Opera House Arts, Celebration Barn and beyond -- are, like the 90-year old Portland Ovations, operating at less than 20% or our usual revenue capacities.

We are all swimming hard to get back to shore -- making up new strokes, including a pilot project called the Cultural Alliance of Maine that unites Maine's cultural organizations for a stronger voice and more visible seat at the table. We can't continue to retain and attract workers and visitors alike to Maine; we can’t continue to support the Maine artists and events that are an important component of what makes Maine a special and unique place; we can’t continue to bring people together across our differences and divides without YOUR continued inclusion of the cultural sector in all that you do for Maine people.

Maine people and communities need the arts to thrive. And the arts need you.

Thank you.

#nonprofitmaine

#MANP

#cultureME

#MaineArts

The Holiday Card List Revived for MLK Day

I'm guessing that a lot of us working class white people of a certain age had a mother who kept some kind of list of Christmas card recipients.

Mine kept hers in a couple of places as time went on, but they started out very neatly on index cards in a little box. Everyone had an index card, and everyone had the many, many years marked on the card on which she had shipped off a holiday card to them.

I decided to copy this tactic. It being 2021, I loaded my list of recipients into a Google Doc in Google Drive and decided to send cards in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and our perpetual quest to become a nation that lives up to the ideals in our own Declaration of Independence and Constitution. 

It's been a long quest and it's not over yet.

Meanwhile, I keep my mother's box next to the Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, CA salt n' pepper shakers I recovered from my grandmother's stash when I was cleaning out my mother's house in 2014 (see previous post).

Actually, I'm not sure they're a pair. Not sure what the rabbit is doing there or where it came from. But I imagine it on its way through the hot desert (I mean, its ears are drooping) trying to find its way to Hollywood to get its paw prints in the famous sidewalk.

My mother's oldest brother, Richie, and his wife, Jody, never had kids. So they made a plan to take all four of us nieces and nephews on a roundtrip road trip to California when we turned 12. It was held out before us our entire lives, something to look forward to despite the fact that cars back then did not have air conditioning and by the time we would reach Needles, CA it would be 111 degrees in the shade.

They road tested the trip on my grandmother, Richie's mother, Mary, in the late 1950s/early 1960s. I wish any of them were alive now to talk about that trip. My grandmother was a big woman, six feet tall and over 200 pounds. What kind of car did they travel in? I know she -- a huge enthusiast for life with a loud voice and endless generosity and maybe a touch of manic-depression -- loved the trip and brought back boat loads of souvenirs -- pieces of the Painted Desert, cedar toothpick holders from Crater Lake, etc. in addition to the salt and pepper shakers -- so how did they fit all of this into the vehicle?! It had to be larger than the one in which we journeyed in 1973, a blue, four door Mercury Comet circa 1971. 

The first of the kids to go was my cousin Walter in 1965. My cousin Cindy must have been on the trip in 1969. Looking back at the sometimes violent civic unrest of that era during the height of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War, a time in which the nation sustained the political assassinations of four progressive leaders, I am wondering what both those trips were like. Did they follow the news? Did they circumvent certain cities? 

Luckily my cousins are still well and with us, and I can find out. Luckily we've elected a new administration in Washington that is respectful of Dr. King's legacy, the Black Lives Matter movement, and our ongoing work for equity for all. Stay tuned.

The Slippery Longings of Crises

Last Sunday I found myself pulling out my mother's 1938-vintage Hamilton-Beach stand mixer to make some banana bread. 

Who can believe this damn thing still works. But it does, with its two white Pyrex bowls and a crumbling cord no doubt leaking asbestos covering across my counter.

This is no Vita Mix. It needs some help creaming butter and sugar together, scraping the sides of the bowl toward the beaters, unclogging the beaters which...just don't go fast enough. It's not that they've slowed down. It's that things just didn't go as fast in those days.

In the six years since she died a month before turning 91, I've been surrounded by a lot of my mother's stuff. My brother, a local garbage hauler who had loyally and miraculously lived with and cared for our diabetic parents until each of their deaths, had run up some debts and could not afford to keep the house. We had to empty and sell it. Our parents had lived in that same cheaply built tract house in Mystic, CT for 41 years at that point. Previous to that, they had resided in the house they built for themselves, with heavy plaster walls and an ocean of front lawn on land my maternal grandmother had given them next door to her own, for only 16 years before moving to Mystic to follow my father's entrepreneurial dreams.

Yes, those cereal canisters in the background of this photo were my mother's too.

Finding myself making banana bread with my mother's mixer caused wave after wave of longing for my parents and my grandmothers to crash over me: for times when I, an adopted child, was secure and loved and cherished by the strangers who took me in. Blessed.

That's how everyone wants and deserves to feel right now: secure and loved and cherished.

And very few do. The COVID-19 pandemic has us quarantined in our separate homes, many, especially elders, fighting the ills of social isolation. As I write this, almost 4,000 people A DAY are dying from COVID here in the U.S. alone. And all around the world, people continue to die not only from the pandemic but from violence, starvation, grief. Many try to flee the horrific circumstances in which they find themselves, refugees seeking better lives just as my biological French ancestors did emigrating first to Quebec and then across the border to the U.S. But we, the wealthiest nation in the world, essentially closed our borders and wallets to refugees under the Trump administration.

It's possible that Trump himself and his "base" feel the least secure, loved, and cherished. They sure act that way. Their white male "politics of resentment" is right from the playbook of the insecure. Like the Confederacy before them who fought to keep Black people enslaved in their service, these fellows' insecurity about losing their white privilege and power becomes aggression against the rest of us. The fragility of their white masculinity is on display for the world to see.

Change is tough, and to achieve equity those of us with privilege -- whether skin color, education, gender, or economics -- are all gonna have to give up something. We need to use government to do what it does best: bring us into the commons where we can figure out the difficult solutions that will best serve the most of us, and in particular those with the least among us.

It would be easier to feel compassion for these angry white men if they were not so hateful, armed, and violent.

In the meantime: we have to hold them accountable for themselves not cherishing those around them. Not the women, girls, boys, people of color, or legislators with whom they differ. They are operating under the misperception perpetrated by Trump: that their government supports their incivility. They are wrong, and our government now needs to hold them accountable for their uncivil, illegal behaviors. Only after they realize they are NOT supported can we start to urge them toward healing.

My mother never made a banana bread from scratch her life. She was a fan of Duncan Hines and Pillsbury prepared mixes, and produced unmessy, perfectly even, black-speckled little breads every time.

Mine, on the other hand, is densely filled with banana mash and walnuts.

A fine example of plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.