Pursuits : Elizabeth Thomsen

Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

My grandfather often talked about arriving in America with five dollars in his pocket. I pictured the scene in my mind, the young Luigi standing on the deck of a ship pulling in to New York Harbor, seeing the Statue of Liberty and taking a deep breath, removing the old wool cap from his head in respect. I could see the chaotic scene at Ellis Island, crowds of immigrants from many different countries, mothers whispering soft words in Italian, Polish, Swedish and a hundred other languages to soothe their frightened children. A lot of paperwork and then they all burst out into the streets of New York, ready to begin their new lives in America. I could see this scene like a movie in my mind, and it was so vivid to me then that it feels like a memory now, as if I was really there.

A few months ago, I went on the Ellis Island website and found the record of my grandfather’s arrival. Our family name was transcribed incorrectly, but the search engines “sounds like” option brought up the right record. It was quite thrilling to see my grandfather’s name and information in the ship manifest, to know the date of his arrival, and to know the name of the ship, the Duca degli Abruzzi, and to see a picture of the ship. I loved the picture so much, I ordered copies for my daughters and sister and nieces for Christmas. There were two different versions of picture, so I ordered both. I hope they will all keep their copies, and that children in future generations of the family will come across these, and look at the picture, and want to know a little more about their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, where we all came from and their family’s story.

My grandmother came from the same region of Italy as my grandfather, but she didn’t come through Ellis Island. She took a ship from Naples to Boston. I was able to find her records as well, and learn the name of her ship, the Canopic. Here’s a postcard from Cardcow.com showing that ship:

Cardcow.com

Just remembering my mother with this movie clip of Judy Garland singing “You Made Me Love You” to a photograph of Clark Gable. My mother loved this song and sang it often, and described this scene to me many times. She was around 13 when she saw this, and thought it was wonderfully romantic. I never saw the movie, Broadway Melody of 1938, so I was happy to find this clip on YouTube.

I’m posting this in memory of my mother, in honor of her birthday. She loved this song, and I often hear it in my head as I sort through all these old photographs, seeing her (and too many other loved ones now gone) in all the old familiar places…Pheasant Hill Street, Westchester Circle, Columbus Street, Swift’s Beach, Crystal Park and more.

Instant Karma — “Before Polaroid fades into history, let’s remember how influential — and cool — the art of the snapshot, and the cameras themselves, could be” [Mark Feeney, Boston Globe : March 16, 2008]

Polaroid announced last month that they would no longer produce instant film was just an inevitable step in the long, slow decline of Polaroid and the world of instant photography. Instant film photography, killed off by digital photography. In the world of cameraphones, Flickr, photoprinters, who needs instant film cameras?

But Polaroid really was once so cool. In Feeney’ words:

“…there are those who remember when it was the Apple of its day: feisty, ubiquitous, pioneering. The Polaroid Land Camera was like the Mac, with all other consumer cameras PCs. There was the same sense of engineering superiority and cultural cachet.”

When I was a child, my engineer father had a serious camera with a light meter and a lot of accessories. He took slides and wrote the technical data on the frames, and he carefully ordered and organized the slides in trays for the projector. My mother had an old Brownie box camera, later replaced by an Instamatic, totally point-and-shoot. She had some of her older photographs in albums and baby books, but most of her pictures were just tossed into shoeboxes, undated and unlabeled.
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