My Father Spoke Finglish at Work

My Father Spoke Finglish at Work

Author: Noreen Sippola Fairburn

Publisher: Voices of Diversity

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13:

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A regional view of Finnish immigration In 1874 the first Finnish immigrants came to Northeast Ohio's Lake Erie port towns to work on the docks loading coal or unloading iron ore from ships sailing the Great Lakes or to work on the railroads. As with most immigrant groups, the Finns clustered in the same area, hoping to retain their language, customs, and culture, even in the New World. The Finnish American Heritage Association of Ashtabula County was organized in 1995, and one of its first projects was the interviewing and taping of elderly Finnish Americans to obtain historical accounts of early immigrants. These first-person accounts were written as the narrator told them. Many of the first- and second-generation Finns were in their eighties or nineties at the time of their interviews, yet their recollections of times gone by were told with frankness and clarity. Photographs representative of these early years are also included in this volume. Genealogists and those interested in immigration studies will find these first-person accounts valuable research tools and fascinating testimonies to the migrant experience.


They Took My Father

They Took My Father

Author: Mayme Sevander

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published:

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9781452907147

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"Mayme Sevander and Laurie Hertzel tell a poignant tale of a hidden corner of U.S. and Soviet history. Tracing the hopes and hardships of one family over two continents, They Took My Father explores the boundaries of loyalty, identity, and ideals." -Amy Goldstein, Washington Post "What makes Mayme's story so uniquely-almost unbelievably-tragic is that her family chose to move from the United States to the Soviet Union in 1934, thinking they were going to help build a 'worker's paradise.' They found, instead, a deadly nightmare." -St. Paul Pioneer Press "This gripping and timely book traces the beginnings of communism not as dry history but as a fascinating personal drama that spreads across Russia, Finland, and the mining towns of Upper Michigan and the Iron Range of Minnesota. . . . An important and largely ignored part of history comes alive in one woman's story of her tragic family, caught up in the all-consuming struggle of the twentieth century." -Frank Lynn, political reporter, New York Times Mayme Sevander (1924-2003) was born in Brule, Wisconsin, and emigrated with her family to the Soviet Union in 1934. Laurie Hertzel is a journalist at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.


Hidden History of Ashtabula County

Hidden History of Ashtabula County

Author: Carl E. Feather

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2015-07-27

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1625855052

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Picturesque Ashtabula County harbors a rich and sometimes strange history. Ohio's Western Reserve settlers were astonished by the ancient graveyards they found that yielded bones belonging to a gigantic race. Mr. Buck of Conneaut lived a secluded life married to himself, assuming the character and dress of the fictional Mrs. Buck. A legend persists to this day that the ship of a Spanish princess lies at the bottom of Pymatuning Lake. Author Carl E. Feather delves into the rich history of Ohio's largest county and uncovers its little-known secrets in the most unexpected places.


Well, Here We Are!

Well, Here We Are!

Author: J. Beck

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2005-06

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 0595357725

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Bans and Bertha Hanson and their children arrived in Mountain Iron, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range in 1892. John and Hulda Beck and their children arrived there in 1906. After they arrived, both families had more children and both lost some children. The four parents all worked very hard and made very little money. But they had dreams that their surviving children could have more comfortable lives if they could get an education which they had been denied. The two families were brought together in 1922 when the Becks' oldest son married the Hansons' oldest daughter--the first marriage for both families. Well, Here We Are! is a record of what is known about the ancestors and descendants of Bans and Bertha and John and Hulda. It is a remarkable story of how the dreams of four minimally educated people came true, largely as a result of their hard work and sacrifice, but even more because they succeeded in making their children believe in those dreams and passed them on to following generations.


The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay

Author: Hooman Majd

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2013-11-05

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0385535333

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With U.S.–Iran relations at a thirty-year low, Iranian-American writer Hooman Majd dared to take his young family on a year-long sojourn in Tehran. The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay traces their domestic adventures and closely tracks the political drama of a terrible year for Iran's government. It was an annus horribilis for Iran's Supreme Leader. The Green Movement had been crushed, but the regime was on edge, anxious lest democratic protests resurge. International sanctions were dragging down the economy while talk of war with the West grew. Hooman Majd was there for all of it. A new father at age fifty, he decided to take his blonde, blue-eyed Midwestern yoga instructor wife Karri and his adorable, only-eats-organic infant son Khash from their hip Brooklyn neighborhood to spend a year in the land of his birth. It was to be a year of discovery for Majd, too, who had only lived in Iran as a child. The book opens ominously as Majd is stopped at the airport by intelligence officers who show him a four-inch thick security file about his books and journalism and warn him not to write about Iran during his stay. Majd brushes it off—but doesn't tell Karri—and the family soon settles in to the rituals of middle class life in Tehran: finding an apartment (which requires many thousands of dollars, all of which, bafflingly, is returned to you when you leave), a secure internet connection (one that persuades the local censors you are in New York) and a bootlegger (self-explanatory). Karri masters the head scarf, but not before being stopped for mal-veiling, twice. They endure fasting at Ramadan and keep up with Khash in a country weirdly obsessed with children. All the while, Majd fields calls from security officers and he and Karri eye the headlines—the arrest of an American "spy," the British embassy riots, the Arab Spring—and wonder if they are pushing their luck. The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay is a sparkling account of life under a quixotic authoritarian regime that offers rare and intimate insight into a country and its people, as well as a personal story of exile and a search for the meaning of home.


Language Contact across the North Atlantic

Language Contact across the North Atlantic

Author: P. Sture Ureland

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-09-08

Total Pages: 569

ISBN-13: 3110929651

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This volume contains a selection of papers which have been revised and extended for publication from two working groups held at conferences at Galway (1992) and Göteborg (1993) which celebrated the quincentenary of Columbus' discovery of America in 1492. The pre-Columbian period of language contact is covered by articles on Old Norse in the Faroes, Scotland and Ireland, the Shetland dialect and Norn, and placenames in Iceland and Greenland. The articles on the post-Columbian period are wide-ranging and cover, in the Scandinavian context, the Scandinavian emigration, American Swedish, American Finnish, Swedish-Spanish and various aspects of Norwegian in America and also in Spitzbergen; in the British colonial context, English dialects in New England, Scottish Gaelic in Nova Scotia and Scots in North America (Maryland, the Appalachians and Virginia); in the context of the later continental mass emigration, American Dutch, Texas German, Croatian and Italian. Two papers deal with reverse emigration, that of Sicilian and Calabrian dialects, and the special case of Krio in Sierra Leone.


Caves and Culture

Caves and Culture

Author: Linda B. Spurlock

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13:

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A collection of the last forty years of research on Ohio's caves and rockshelters Caves and Culture seeks to address a number of important problems, specifically the use of rockshelters by humans through time and transcontinental continuities. It presents new and updated, unreported research from such Ohio caves and rockshelters as Stow Rockshelter (Stow), Peters Cave (Ross County), Hendricks Cave (Wyandotte County), and Chesser Cave (Athens), among others. Caves and Culture is primarily focused on the archaeological research of Dr. Olaf H. Prufer and his associates as they investigated and explored caves in Ohio since 1964. Spurlock and her co-editors report, sometimes reclaim, and frequently reinterpret data that will be useful to the understanding of Ohio archaeology for decades to come. Anyone with interest in local or regional (Midwestern or midcontinental) prehistory will appreciate this exploration into Ohio's history.