The FinNALA Newsletter
Volume 8, No. 2
Publication of the Finnish North American Literature Association
© September 16, 2015
Beth L. Virtanen, Editor-in-Chief
Sirpa Kaukinen, Assistant Editor
G.K. Wuori, QC Watchdog
Announcements
Offer your books for sale
at FinnFest 2015 FinNALA Table
FinNALA is planning to have a booth at the tori at
FinnFest 2015 in Buffalo. For a small fee of $25 US, you can have your work for
sale there, too. If want to make your book(s) available at FinnFest 2015 (Oct.
9-10) in Buffalo, New York, then FinNALA has a great opportunity for you.
For a modest $25.00 (U.S.) fee, FinNALA will:
1. display your book on its table in the Tori for the duration of FinnFest
2. keep a small reserve supply to replace sold books
3. keep a record of all books sold & pay each author for sales of their books
4. keep you from having to pay the $400 fee to rent and staff your own sale table
5. staff the FinNALA during all regular Tori hours of the FinnFest.
We think this will be a great opportunity for our authors to gain exposure and to make some money, whether they can attend or not.
1. display your book on its table in the Tori for the duration of FinnFest
2. keep a small reserve supply to replace sold books
3. keep a record of all books sold & pay each author for sales of their books
4. keep you from having to pay the $400 fee to rent and staff your own sale table
5. staff the FinNALA during all regular Tori hours of the FinnFest.
We think this will be a great opportunity for our authors to gain exposure and to make some money, whether they can attend or not.
If you’re interested and will be present at
FinnFest, please contact Beth Virtanen, FinNALA president, as soon as possible
at bethlvirtanen at yahoo.com.
If you are unable to attend FinnFest and wish for your books to be sold at the FinNALA table, please contact the FinNALA president at the email address above so we can make arrangements to make your book available.
If you are unable to attend FinnFest and wish for your books to be sold at the FinNALA table, please contact the FinNALA president at the email address above so we can make arrangements to make your book available.
--
It’s time to Subscribe/Renew your Membership for 2015 in the
Finnish North American Literature Association (FinNALA)
The Perks of Membership:
· Receive online access to Kippis! Literary Journal
· Receive access to the FinNALA Facebook group
· Get announcements of what’s happening in the Finnish-North American literary community
· Get online issues of the FinNALA Newsletter
Membership Fee for 2015
· $20.00 US
By Mail
· Send your name and address and your membership fee in the form of a check or money order made out to “FinNALA” to the following address:
Beth Virtanen, President
FinNALA
931 Bayshore Road
L'Anse, MI 49946 USA
Online
Use your credit card for online payment
· Click on Membership and submit payment with PayPal
· You don’t need a PayPal account—look for link to pay with your credit card.
--
New Book by Karl Luntta
Karl Luntta has released a collection of short stories from SUNY press called Swimming. It contains "compelling stories of intercultural contact and survival."
“Karl Luntta’s Swimming takes us from Botswana to America and back to Africa, in short stories that capture humanity from childhood to old age. Luntta’s great strength: crystallizing the moments when lives are changed and the future (as well as one’s memories of the past) is altered.” — John Coyne
Karl Luntta is the author of the novel Know It by Heart as well as numerous travel books. His stories have appeared in International Quarterly, Talking River, and Baltimore Review. He lives outside Albany, New York.
Karl Luntta is the author of the novel Know It by Heart as well as numerous travel books. His stories have appeared in International Quarterly, Talking River, and Baltimore Review. He lives outside Albany, New York.
Here is a direct link to the book page with SUNY press: http://www.sunypress.edu/p-6140-swimming.aspx.
--
Matson's "Pie" a Ploughshares Solo
Suzanne Matson's story,
"Pie," online as a Ploughshares Solo, is downloadable through
Amazon's Kindle Singles <http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Single-Ploughshares-Solos-Volume-ebook/dp/B00N11XS8G>.
The story has a Finnish strand in the character of Carl, Kathryn's suitor, who
is a first-generation American of Finnish parentage.
From Ploughshares: "Leaving behind
her strict Mennonite upbringing, Kathryn has moved west. America has just won
victory in Japan, and a charming older man begins visiting the diner where
Kathryn works, taking her out dancing and around town. With her old soldier
boyfriends now scattered, and the country flush with postwar happiness, Kathryn
takes a chance on her mysterious admirer and moves to Los Angeles with him. But
how much does she really know about this new man? In "Pie," acclaimed
novelist and poet Suzanne Matson looks at the thrill and danger inherent in the
American dream of unrestricted liberty.
--
Dettmann Releases Historical Fiction:
Courageous Footsteps: A WWII Novel
Fifteen-year-old Yasu Sakamoto loves living in Glenville, California, but Japan’s attack on Pearl
Harbor on December 7, 1941 turns her young life into a devastating nightmare. Anti-Japanese threats appear everywhere—in store windows, painted across buildings and in her school. Her hopes and dreams unravel quickly when President Roosevelt orders the internment of all people of Japanese descent living along the West Coast. Within weeks her family is imprisoned in a camp in eastern California. Surrounded by barbwire fences and the constant watch of armed guards, Yasu and her older brother, Haro, struggle to accept the overcrowded living conditions and hardships of camp life. As time passes, the confinement, strict regulations and humiliation force them to make courageous choices that will change their lives forever.
“Once
read, Courageous Footsteps will not
be forgotten. Teenagers, Yasu and Haro, show resilience and courage in the face
of unwarranted hardship and injustice. It’s an important story— relevant even today—that needs to be discussed,
remembered and hopefully will inspire the reader with the courage to stand on
the side of justice.”—Ann Wolff,
President of the Stillwater Library Foundation
Courageous Footsteps A WWII Novel is available at many independent bookstores and online
at Amazon, Barnes and Noble in both e-book and paperback. To purchase books
directly, send check for $25.00 (includes cost of shipping) to Diane
Dettmann, P.O Box 36, Afton, Minnesota 55001-0036.
Visit
Diane Dettmann’s website at www.outskirtspress.com/footsteps for information about Courageous Footsteps A WWII Novel (Outskirts Press).
--
Creative Submissions
Stealing
of the Sampo: A tale from Kalevala
translated
and illustrated by Hazel Lauttamus Birt
How the
Crane made terrible trouble for the Kalevala heroes.
The great wizard Väinämöinen and his friends Ilmarinen and Leminkäinen set sail
by ship to steal the Sampo, a magic mill from Louho, the wicked witch of the
North. She had it hidden in the Copper Mountain.
 |
| Crane of Finland (woodcut) by Hazel Lauttamus Birt |
Väinämöinen picked up his magic harp, the kantele and began to play. In no time
everyone on the witch Louho’s North Farm was fast asleep. He then played to the
Copper Mountain asking it to release the nine locks and ten bolts holding fast
the Sampo, the magic mill that ground out not only good fortune but gold and
silver.
Ilmarinen greased the hinges of the door to stop them from squeaking. He
boasted as he entered, ‘I think I’m man enough to wrestle this lid of many
colors from the mountain.’ But the roots went fifty-six feet deep into the
ground and it was only with the help of a strong steer from the North Farm yard
that they finally loosened the mill from the mountain and made off with it in
their ship.
As they sailed along Leminkäinen was jubilant. ‘This calls for a song! Why
don’t you give us a song, Väinämöinen?’
‘This is no time for singing! Time enough when we get the Sampo home to
Kalevala!’ he said.
But the reckless, handsome Leminkäinen could not contain himself, arranged his
face, cleared his throat and burst into song.
The raspy harsh roar was heard six farms over across the water.
The Crane was sitting on a stump in the marsh. The sudden noise so startled him
that with a great shriek he flung himself into the air. He flew screaming with
rage and circled the North Farm.
The crane’s shrill cry woke the evil domain. Louhi, the witch ran to check her
cattle and grain bins. Nothing was missing. Then she thought, ‘The Sampo!’ She
ran to the mountain and found the many colored lid torn off from it’s hiding
place.
Louhi was in a rage. She at once used her magic powers to call down vengeance.
‘Mist Girl, hang out some fog. Let down a haze over the clear sea. Turso, evil
man of the sea, drown the men of Kalevala! Ukko, golden king of the air, create
a violent storm to stop Väinämöinen from taking the Sampo to his Slack Water
Farm!’
Väinämöinen said, ‘A lesser man than
I would be daunted by so much disaster but I think I can handle this.’
With his sword he slashed great
tears in the mist and dispelled it.
When Turso, the terrible creature of
the sea reared his head out of the water, our hero grasped by the ears and
would not let until he promised to leave the people of Kalevala alone.
Väinämöinen used powerful magic
charms against the stormy sea and violent wind, ‘Water, check your child the
Billow! Ahto, quiet the waves!
Vellamo, quiet the genius of the
water! Wind, rise back into the heavens, back to your own tribe up on high!’
Thus the Kalevala men brought home
the Sampo in triumph despite the harm done by the screaming crane.
<><
<>< <><
Author-Illustrator Hazel Lauttamus
Birt. Born in New Finland, Saskatchewan
she is fluent in the Finnish language. ‘the Stealing of the Sampo’ is from her book,
‘Festivals of Finland’. She lives in Winnipeg.
--
Three Poems
by K. Alma Peterson
Meeting the Photogenic
Ancestors
1.
Freckles of disaster airbrushed out.
Sepia
fatigue blurs the vagaries of
romance.
Innocence its own stock takes.
Pansies
for her palsied mouth. Betrayal a
long stem.
2.
Plaid the rules of camp. His grin
deepens
and up go the stakes. Meadow-waves
of thick
dark hair rile the cicadas. The
stamp of pleasure
bears his name. Unrequited. Lies to
answer for.
In Full Leaf
The author, who I'd met
in passing --- she, the turned
leaf a-shiver in the semi-sun
and I, an upturned stone
absorbent of her veined text
---
will spend the altered future
pulling prints and titling a sequel.
Inhabiting the Disengaged Father
His deerskin night-shoes
make almost no sound. Misgivings
arise in his mind; he lightens
his step when the floorboards creak.
Stops. Steadies himself. A stalwart
boat about to capsize.
No decisions need be made
tonight. His weathered frame
stiffens; so much unnamed
force. His sandbagged family
sleeps behind the wall, waves
him in, a given.
Except this is dry land; his grave
hidden by low hills, wiry pines.
Everything is loamy; even the horizon
shifts, not sure which illusion
to efface.
--
Illegals
by Albert
Vetere Lannon
This
is a true story. It is not another
bleeding-heart liberal crying towel, but you will have to read it to see that,
and why it matters to you. This is about
an illegal immigrant.
Isaac
came from a land of poverty and dictatorship, a land where peaceful protesters
were dispersed with violence, where some responded with violence, where
military rule was met with assassination.
Faced with conscription, Isaac, like many others, chose to leave. Alone and scared, the young man braved the
many miles of danger to find his way to America.
America
needed the muscle of young men willing to work long hours for little pay, and
Isaac was allowed provisional entry. Not
speaking the language he was always the Other, the foreigner, the stranger in a
strange land. He found countrymen, and
they made places where they could speak their own language without feeling
threatened. They did things together in
the little spare time they had. They got
drunk together to quell the constant fear they felt. Soon anger replaced fear. Isaac grew assertive.
He
and his friends joined a rough gang and challenged authority. When it cost them their jobs they retaliated
with violence. They were labeled “knife-fighters,”
and “troublemakers.” With the authorities after him, Isaac crossed the border
and went home.
Things
were not any better there than when he had left, but Isaac found a wife and
returned to the United States with a new, false, last name. They were now illegals. He found work doing the hard jobs others
refused. They had children, sending them
to American public schools. The children
never graduated; they, too, had to work, but unlike their parents, they spoke
English as well as their native tongue.
The
children, caught between two worlds and labeled as the offspring of foreigners,
took on their parents fear and anger, and sometimes acted out. There were arrests along with rebellion.
My mother was
proud of her arrest. She was sixteen
years old and part of a Washington protest against sending scrap metal to Japan
to be turned into tools of war, later returned as bombs at Pearl Harbor.
Isaac
Björklund
came from Vaasa Province in Finland to work in the copper mines of the American
West, and to escape conscription into the Russian Czar’s army. He joined the radical union, the Industrial
Workers of the World, and fled Butte, Montana, during a bitter strike. With his new wife and a new, false, name he
returned to the United States to work in the steel mills. They were now illegals. Isaac
and Mary Lund went to the Finn Hall to drink with countrymen. They never learned much English, but somehow became
citizens. Others did not.
Mary
and Isaac had three children. As they quit
school to work in factories they learned the customs of their birthplace. Unlike the descendants of slaves, the
“Finlanders,” also derided as “China Swedes” and “roundheads,” could pass. Many of those first-generation children of
immigrants, like my mother, devoted their lives to social justice movements. They helped make America a better place,
fighting for unions and civil rights and women’s equality. They passed that passion on to their
children.
Those
particulars fit several generations of immigrants who came to America from many
lands to work hard for low wages, immigrants who faced discrimination and
banded together for survival, in unions, communities, gangs and movements. They came across oceans and met the words on
the Statue of Liberty:
Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Immigrants
like my grandparents, legal and not, built America. But without his particulars, Isaac’s story
could be a story of today as well as yesterday, and of tomorrow. It’s
our story. It’s America.
--
by Gary V. Anderson
My logger friend
paused on our snowshoe walk
and said,
something happened here.
He scraped through
early snow,
then moss,
with his boot;
revealed broken crosscut saw,
runners from sled,
forgotten tools of long ago.
We sat talking
about the war,
difficult work of healing,
loss of soul.
He scraped snow
from my shoulder,
and said,
something happened here.
I recalled a journey:
A Shaman
appeared with an opening in his heart.
Orange light and eyes of a
raptor were visible. The Shaman placed a
ring of orange on my body and a
raptor came out of my heart.
and said,
my ancestors acknowledgedmy knowing, my seeing.
The logger thought,
and said,maybe you could find the
ax I lost here last summer.
Gary V. Anderson was
raised along the Columbia River. He has
performed at local and national Finn Fests for many years. His project, The Sami Exhibit, was at the
Naselle, WA Finn Fest 2014.
is poems
have been published in Kippis!, a
Literary Journal of the Finnish North American Literature Association, and Curio
Poetry, New York. He has been featured
in performances on Lyle Haataja’s Scandinavian Hour radio show in Astoria. He recently performed with Gary Stroutsos,
world flute player at Dayaalu Center on Bainbridge Island. He has published two books, My Finnish Soul and Bunchgrass and Buttercups.--
Eros
Abides
by
Lisbeth Holt
Oh,
it causes distress…
How
exactly do I deal with this uninvited guest?
I’ll
ignore it, I promise myself, will it away,
Transform
it, ruthlessly rip it out…
To
no avail:
Firmly
implanted for a reason, an unexpected season,
Just
for me to comprehend…
A
thorn from a rose!
Fragrance
redolent of that most beloved of blooms…
A
seed promising growth of dormant powers
Emerging
into flower…
A
pulsing dart giving no peace but awakening
An
ecstatic breaking free of false assumptions,
Wintry
acceptances…
A wild rose defying an arid world yearning
for sweet rain,
The sun’s caress in deep rich loam of
blessedness.
Earthy, sensual, Eros abides;
Spirit-filled, ethereal, no longer a
divide.
A
bell clamoring within which cannot be stilled:
Reuniting
precious forgotten pieces of my soul,
Now becoming whole.
--
Finland
Summer 2015
by Elsie
Jaehn
Finland was cold this summer, the coldest in 25 years so said the local
Helsinki newspaper, and we definitely have to agree with that assessment. When we arrived at our cottage deep in the
forest in mid-May, spring was just beginning to unfold. As the days evolved into weeks and nature
took on a grand green dress, the temperatures didn't want to accommodate the
season.
Jackets and socks and shoes took the place of shorts and flip flops as we
walked down the gravel road to drink in the beauty of a huge variety of
colorful wildflowers that graced the forest floor. May turned into June and Midsummer Night on
the 21st. The days were looong, and we
were visited periodically by a tall species of Canada geese with their brood of
5 goslings that made themselves right at home at the shoreline of the
property. Koskelo diving mother duck
with 8 babies on her back came to visit frequently as well. On an overnight trip to Helsinki to visit
with friends, we spent time down near the harbor, the focal point of the city,
wandering through the marketplace enjoying the vibrant scenery spread out
before us where visitors are able to take scenic boat trips to a variety of
local venues, including Tallinn, Estonia, an hour's journey by hydrofoil across
the Baltic Sea.
In mid-July the temperatures began to moderate somewhat, and after all
the rain we experienced previously, we were able to go into the forest and
harvest an abundant supply of Chanterelle mushrooms that we enjoyed with
several meals. In early August, as fall
was beginning to make inroads on the season, we were able to pick blueberries
and raspberries right on the property that provided added pleasure to our daily
breakfast. Before we left in mid-August,
we had a few days of sunshine and temperatures in the low 70s when we could
finally discard our jackets. The night
we arrived home in Florida, we were very happy to take a swim in our nice, warm
pool that was waiting patiently for our return.
--
the river, the lifeline
by Anita Erola
in the evening
light
the river
Danube
reflects buildings
illuminated
the
water’s sheen mercurial
for musing
journeys past
and present
of ancient
ships
that navigated
their way
this
travelers’ waterway
Finno-Ugric
speaking DNA
sought their
destinies
unknown
the waterway
link
to ancestral
days
and ancestors’
ways
kinship of
unrecorded times
struggles
of determined lives
and
battles survived
persistence
forged onward
odysseys to
prehistoric futures
across rivers
and sea
by
moonlight
by north
star bright
the compass
light
the river,
the lifeline
carrying
the bloodline
the DNA
line
today’s distant
cousins
made their
way
by water, blood,
trade
Finnish
and Hungarian words similar
intonation
familiar
today
water vez
vesi
blood ver veri
currency
valuta valuutta
the connection
the DNA
the lifeline
my connection
my dna
my
lifeline
No comments:
Post a Comment