Ny Års Afton 2006

Dear Gerdie, Gammie, Grannie, Goma, Gumma, Farmor, Fam, Famo, or Mago (my favorite),

We’re not going anywhere tonight, you're buried in the hills of Los Altos and I'm having a friend over. So what are we going to resolve for the New Year? My internet service provider (today’s mail service) is unreliable as was your mail service during the war, though today's problems are perhaps due to a global price and wage war. No point in posting any resolutions until we're (re)connected.

Looking back to 1941, I can see that you had gone as far west as you could years ago. Did you expect then to spend this afternoon and evening on the lookout over the Pacific, not at fireworks, but for ships from the Far East. (See also http://lookout1941-41.blogspot.com). Your daughter was in Honolulu just three weeks ago, on December 7th, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and you still haven’t heard from her. She told me many years later that she had hung out the laundry that Sunday morning in early December, and was angry because the pilots (whom she assumed were American) had flown so low that they burned holes in her sheets.

I’m looking back just a few years now to where fireworks are being propelled in San Francisco over Crissy Field, crackling and sparkling before they sizzle out along the Marina. The show there usually lasts for about 15 minutes. At the same time I'm writing from the old north, Scandinavia, where I can also hear the fireworks exploding from Mariaberget over the banks of Riddarfjärden in Stockholm.
I tumble dried my laundry this Sunday morning, like sage brush in an unusually warm winter wind, globally warmed. Without roots here, I rely on modern conveniences and a firm foothold on the igneous Archean rock. I’m a pioneer of the global generation and a reason for global warming. I've been hearing explosions and crackling for days, years now, across the sound barrier. Most of the fireworks here don't take off from any particular place at any particular time. They surround us, like lights. We are fascinated - in excitement and awe, anxiety and fear - of the pyrotechnical, the ephemeral light that heralds the unknown. There is fear of terrorism today, too, and some people give tranquilizers to their pets on nights like these. We can't stand their barking, howling, and screeching. We, human being, must try to protect oursleves by our greater awareness of what is going on in the world around us.

On a day like this, New Year’s Eve 1941, your son must be in South Carolina where he will soon take leave of his wife and newborn son, your second grandchild (though your first has already died in his crib), to serve on the front in France with the US infantry. There he will pass over a mine and be hit by shrapnel; he will survive to receive a Purple Heart. But why am I living with all this at once, years before and after?
You went as far west as you could on land in 1910, protected by the rawhide you received on your family farm in Indiana. Good thing that you at least seemed tough. Was it because your mother, who died when you were a young child, had encouraged you and your sisters to get an education and move on, or because your father was an autocrat? Whatever your motives, you went as far as you could, hitchhiking part of the way, with your baby in your arms. I'm looking forward to getting to know you better in the year ahead. Thanks for wanting to keep in touch. Your poetry and letters to me in Sweden in the 1970s are other California gold mines, far away and long after the big rush of the 19th century.