Poet/friend Dawn Trook, now living in Merced, CA, sent this in about her background:

I cling to the edge of a creek in California’s Central Valley, staring at the water, wanting it to take me back home the way my ancestors came.

Before America was invaded by my family, we lived in Europe. Our name, Trook, digs us back to Germany or Holland, but no one can tell me for sure. I know before we came to America, on a boat not the Mayflower, but way back that far, we lived in England. We made our marks on the new country. Not famous, but almost. Always just missing fame. A relative ran a pre-Lewis and Clark expedition down the same rivers. Other relatives came west down a Southern river route. My grandfather was born in Nebraska. But there was then, even a need to be near bigger waters, and his parents took him to San Diego, where they could stand on the ocean and wonder their way back home. I don’t think anyone knew what they were getting into when they boarded those boats, the wreckage they would cause, the journeys ahead, the Southern California lemons they would grow, or me standing at a creek, trying to see my reflection, waiting to find the source of my longing.

My family in Taipei, Taiwan @ 1950

With her husband, Mamei left her homeland a few years ago, following in the footsteps of her brothers and sons. Retired now, she and her husband have settled in Newport Coast, a beautiful neighborhood overlooking the Pacific in Newport Beach.

In her melodic voice and in her native language (Taiwanese), Mammei sang two childhood songs with the accompanying hand gestures in Dancing With Ghosts, an all-seniors performance in the fall of 2008 at the Newport Beach Senior Center (OASIS). These photos and geographic genealogy were part of this production.

My Grandfather, Henry Spicer

My dad, Dempsey WWII

My Dad is from Memphis, my Mom from Baton Rouge. My Dad moved to Chicago after WWII, my mom after her divorce in the early/mid 1950s. They met not to long after my mom moved up and eventually married.

My mom, Marjorie, in the 1950s

Debra Levine, who is currently a

This photo montage is of my mother Bernice Rosenberg Levine. Growing up in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh as the daughter of immigrants (Sarah from Romania, Isaac from Poland), my mother quickly assimilated as the chapter president of the Frank Sinatra fan club at her high school. One day, one of her two older sisters (Mickey, Honey) had a friend at the house and they heard a shriek from the other room. Terrified by the sound, they ran into the bedroom and found my mother, the bobbysoxer, arms draped around the radio practically weeping while Frank Sinatra crooned.

My grandfather (Charles) with my dad and Aunt Gerrie in the stroller. On the Boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ 1938.

My ancestors came from Eastern Europe—Riga, a coastal city in Latvia, Bialystock in Poland and somewhere in Romania.

They headed to the eastern US in the late 1800s/early 1900s and settled in the Philadelphia area, leaving their homes as the pogroms made it hard to live in their hometowns.

My immediate family stayed in Philadelphia until my generation, when my sister moved to southern Florida (and my parents followed her) and I moved to (in this order):
College Park, Maryland,
Providence Rhode Island,
Rohnert Park, CA
New York, New York,
Irvine, CA
Costa Mesa, CA
My brother and his two teenage children remain in the City of Brotherly Love.

One of the great telling things about my family’s assimilation into the US is how their first names changed. My paternal greatgrandfather was named Itzak and he married Yetta. Their nine children were named Joe, Henry, Al, Sam, Harry, Bessie, Lillian and Bertha. My grandfather was named Charles. That there were nine of them living in poor immigrant conditions in the South Philly and Stawberry Mansion neighborhoods of Philadelphia is dramatically different from my parents–Edward and Elaine—raising my brother and sister and I in the Fox Chase (working class) and Laverock (middle class) sections of the city or suburbs. My maternal grandparents were named Lena and Isadore (called Whitey). My aunts and uncles were named Shirlene, Geraldine, Arthur and Herbert.

One interesting note about my Pop Pop Charlie (dad’s dad) was that he joined the Navy at age 13; a big boy who lied about his age . . . to get ahead in his world, I guess, or at least out of the house. He became a boxer in the Navy and is referred to as an old timer at 26. He retired from the Navy at age 40, after which he met and married my grandmother, Nettie, and became a policeman. His brothers had jobs like:

Joe, the oldest . . . also a policeman
Al was a salesman and moved to California
Sam was a motorman, what they called men who worked on the trolleys
Harry was a cab driver
Henry had Parkinson’s Disease, as did my father’s younger sister, my Aunt Gerrie.

I think my mother’s grandfather, who was always called “Zaida” in front of me (a Yiddish term for grandfather), sold produce from a cart on the streets of Philadelphia. The story goes that he and his six or seven brothers came to the US from Romania to make some money. All of them went back to their home in eastern Europe pretty quickly, except my Zaida. No one knows why his brothers went back or what happened to them once they left the US. My great grandmother died and my Zaida remarried (to Esther) and they had two children who were close to my parents’ ages. Uncle Ben and Aunt Etta moved to the San Francisco, California region and raised 5 children with their spouces–Ben with Lee (Ben, Jr., Sandy and Barry) and Etta with Woody ( Paul and Susan) and brought Double Bubba (my family’s name for my great grandfather’s second wife) with them. My maternal Uncle Herb relocated to Miami Beach, Florida in the 1960s, married Norma (for a time) and didn’t have any children that I am aware of. My Uncle Arthur still lives in the Germantown section of Philadelphia with my cousin, his son Peter.

photo courtesy www.ushmm.org

On June 26-27, 2009 I will be presenting an evening length dance, performance and video production at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, California that abstracts my interpretation of this phenomenon described above. Far From Home highlights four cultures within the performance hour–Eastern European (Jewish), Mexican, Afro-Caribbean and Japanese–using memories, traditions and customs as jumping off points for live theater. With a multi-cultural and intergenerational cast of twelve, the work includes movement, texts (in several languages), original and archival music and video to explore who we are now and where we came from.

I hope you will feel free to contribute to this blog, sending in digitized photos and stories from your past. It’d be great to see a linear travelogue of how you came to live where you now live, i.e. where your ancestors lived, where the next generation moved to (and why) moving on down to you now.

Thank you, in advance, for your contribution. I hope to see you in June at Highways!

warmly,

Keith

from the 2006 performance of Gold Men at Highways Performance Space:

photo by Keith Weng