Great Grandparents Research Articles

The Ties and Contacts between Ancient Mongolian Nomads and other Asian Civilizations

Abstract History is the study of people– specifically how people existed, lived, thought, and created in the past. It is very interesting to study how our ancestors, the nomadic Mongolians, lived on this land and the origin of our great grandparents for generations. Most of the time, people have been interested in the origin of their ancestors since ancient times, and they have explained it mostly through myths and religious views. The Mongolian plateau has been a home to nomads throughout its history. Mongolia is a heartland of nomadic empires that are famous not only in the steppes of Europe and Asia but also in the world. The large river basins and steppes of Mongolia are ideal areas for nomadic livestock farming, and the nomads who conquered these areas became a dominant force in the Eurasian steppes. Therefore, the history of the ancient states of Mongolia is the history of the empires that dominated the Eurasian plains. Scientists and researchers have proved that many states established by nomads existed on Mongolian territory and left a deep and undeniable trace on the history of Mongolia as well as the history of the world. They have done research on the topic from different perspectives which based on the specific theories. This research is based on the qualitative method. In this article, I will examine how the ancient nomadic civilization of Mongolia connected with some Asian civilizations.

Kinship, heritage, and ethnic choice: ethnolinguistic registration across four generations in contemporary Finland

Abstract We studied how individuals’ ethnolinguistic affiliation relates to the ethnolinguistic structure of kinship in contemporary Finland, a society in which Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking ethnolinguistic groups have coexisted for centuries and mixed marital unions are common. Using multigenerational data from the population register, we determined how the ethnolinguistic registration of children born in 1990–2015 relates to three generations of ancestors. We created a family tree that links children to their parents, four grandparents and eight great grandparents. Our intention was to both map the ethnolinguistic background of young people and predict a child’s affiliation based on their ancestry. The data revealed that ethnolinguistic affiliation is a more fluid and complex feature than expected when assessed only through child and parental characteristics. We found substantial diversity in ethnolinguistic background within the Swedish-speaking minority group, while most individuals in the Finnish-speaking majority group had a uniform background. We identified three types of bias in the ethnolinguistic affiliation of mixed-origin children: a matrilineal bias, a kinship majority bias and a Swedish ethnic minority bias. The analyses advanced our understanding of how the size of minority groups can shrink even when most couples in mixed unions favour minority group affiliation for their children.

Grandparenting Among Māoris of New Zealand: Reflecting on Meanings

Regardless of nation and culture, grandparents have been instrumental in the survival of families and communities as well as the preservation of cultures. This study explored the meaning and roles of grandparenting among Maori grandparents in New Zealand as a possible platform for advancing the conversation on the significance of grandparents in the lives of people across cultures. Participants interviewed included 17 Māori grandparents to great, great grandparents in Aotearoa New Zealand, living in intergenerational homes. A phenomenology approach was used to analyze the data. Five themes were extracted that elucidated the meaning of the roles of grandparenting from the perspective of Māori grandparents: Elders' responsibilities from a cultural perspective; support, resources, and assets; sociopolitical and economic challenges; current state of Elders' and role in family, and benefits and rewards. Implications and recommendations are discussed towards a more systemic and culturally responsive support of grandparents.

Emigrant ancestors, in memory of memories

Like many people, my knowledge and memories of my ancestors are becoming murkier as I get older. As a child, I delighted in the narratives of my forebears and how they arrived in Australia. However, I am losing sight of my ancestor’s displacement from their homelands and their journeys from Russia via Palestine in the late nineteenth century and from Russia via Tokyo and the United States in the twentieth century. I struggle to remember the sound and timbre of the voices of my grandparents and only know of the lives of my great grandparents through sepia-toned photographs. Now that my parents are no longer alive, I am not able to draw upon them to fill in the gaps of my knowledge of our family background and of relatives who left Tsarist Russia to flee pogroms and persecution. This article’s exploration of my family’s displacement from Russia and the Soviet Union in the nineteenth and twentieth century is inspired by the Russian writer, Maria Stepanova’s examination of the role that family archives, artefacts, photographs and memories have in shaping narratives of our relatives. My family’s migration story is also a memory amongst memories and, like Stepanova, I discuss photographs, artefacts, postcards and notes that comprise my family archive to make sense of the lives and the heritage of my ancestors.

Manuél Sánchez Gull, and: Manuél Sánchez. Arriving Port of New Orleans

These poems explore the emigration of Puerto Ricans to provide labor in the sugar plantations of Hawaii in 1900. Based on the journey of the poet's great grandparents under circumstances reported by newspapers as "kidnapping" and "slavery."

Special Report: Be Prepared to Address Technological Addictions in Psychiatric Practice

Special Report: Be Prepared to Address Technological Addictions in Psychiatric Practice

Manitou Abi Dibaajimowin: Where the Spirit Sits Story

ABSTRACT The Anishinaabe people understand Ago’idiwin (treaty) is about relationships. The spirit and intent of treaty were about two nations culminating in a shared sense of humanity and dignity. One must understand the pipe ceremony and its seven sacred cardinal directions as demonstrated by whoever conducts the ceremony. These also represent seven sacred principles of Anishinaabe laws, nationhood and sovereignty. Aanikoobijiginan is the same word for great grandparents, and great grandchildren. To me this describes a process of tying the seven generations together through Sasquatch Earth Laws, sacred story. A story both new and old because it is connected to our origin stories.

Great-Grand Parents in Brazil? A Socio-Demographic Contextualization

Great-Grand Parents in Brazil? A Socio-Demographic Contextualization

Kanne Lobal: A conceptual framework relating education and leadership partnerships in the Marshall Islands

Kanne Lobal: A conceptual framework relating education and leadership partnerships in the Marshall Islands

How Poems Mean

How Poems Mean Laura C. Stevenson (bio) Vermont Poets and Their Craft Neil Shepard and Tamra Higgins, eds. Green Writers Press www.greenwriterspress.com/book/vermont-poets-and-their-craft/ 274 pages; Print, $24.95 Vermont Poets and Their Craft originated as a ten-part lecture series delivered three years ago at Vermont bookstores and other venues under the auspices of Sundog Poetry Center, an organization founded by co-editor Tamra Higgins to promote poets and poetry throughout the state. The lectures, televised by Vermont Public Television, were subsequently revised for publication, and seven other Vermont poets were invited to submit pieces for an anthology. The result is a substantial collection of essays, all but one of which (Chard DeNiord's mainly analytical "Suspense, Suspension, and the Sublime in the Poetry of Robert Frost") are concerned with the question classically worded sixty years ago in John Ciardi's title How Does a Poem Mean? (1975). A reader searching this excellent anthology for common threads will find them less in the poets' different answers to Ciardi's question than in the similar success of their careers. Many of them teach or have taught at Vermont's colleges and universities; several are associated with the Bread Loaf Conference; two are present or past Vermont Poet Laureates, one a past Poet Laureate of Maine. Their professional reputations extend well beyond Vermont's boundaries: several of them have been awarded fellowships from Guggenheim and the National Endowment of the Arts, many have received national poetic awards, and they have been published in presses widely distributed throughout the US. They are, for the most part, seasoned professionals: thirteen of the seventeen speak about their craft on the basis of thirty or forty years of practice. Behind their different styles and interests also lie common assumptions. The forbearers they revere—"our great grandparents of American poetry," as Neil Shepard puts it in "The Art of Concealing and Revealing in Poetry"—are Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Baron Wormser's essay "The Irony and the Ecstasy" dwells upon the intensity of Polish poets who take poetry out of "the precincts of amiable sensitivity" and make it a "desperate call for fair play"; David Budbill's witty "Poetry: Special or Ordinary" draws on Taoist poets; but in the main, the poets they choose to quote and their own works reveal their debt to are Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and other modernists of the previous century. Above all, they share Sundog Poetry Center's desire to reach out poetically to Vermont's present general audience. In any state, such a general audience encompasses a variety of auditors, but it may be presumed that among them are experienced or nascent poets seeking fresh perspective or advice on their craft. To those seeking advice, several articles mix technical discussions with sophisticated literary understanding that raises them far above the level of "how-to." David Huddle's "Technique, Tradition, and the Lucky Lot of the Poet," the most Ciardian of the essays, discusses the techniques that makes certain lines in well-known poems by Frost, Dylan Thomas, and Bishop overwhelmingly powerful. Beautifully crafted poems like these, he argues, open the door for new poems: "one poet teaches another, one poem helps another make it into the world." Stephen Cramer's "Making the Road: Tools for the Poet's Journey" starts by describing an exercise that encourages the "curiosity and investigation" that are necessary parts of poetic craft, then moves on with an excellent discussion of poetic diction. Sydney Lea's "Inviting the Reader: Narrative Values, Lyric Poems" argues for clarity in poetry, offering a rule of thumb that he applies to his own poems: "who, why, what, where? If my poem can't answer at least some of these questions, I feel I need to work on it further." At the opposite end of the spectrum, Martha Zweig's "Gnarly" opens by asking "how can readily accessible communication possibly be a goal of poetry?" She prefers "flirtatious" poems that begin by teasing the ear; and she suggests engaging in verbal calisthenics ("Roughhouse, rough trade, roughshod, roughage, ruffian, ruffle, kerfuffle") with the confidence that "meanings will suggest themselves along...

Ancestral childhood environmental exposures occurring to the grandparents and great-grandparents of the ALSPAC study children.

Background: Cohort studies tend to be designed to look forward from the time of enrolment of the participants, but there is considerable evidence that the previous generations have a particular relevance not only in the genes that they have passed on, their cultural beliefs and attitudes, but also in the ways in which previous environmental exposures may have had non-genetic impacts, particularly for exposures during fetal life or in childhood. Methods: To investigate such non-genetic inheritance, we have collected information on the childhoods of the ancestors of the cohort of births comprising the original Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). The data collected on the study child's grandparents and great grandparents comprise: (a) countries of birth; (b) years of birth; (c) age at onset of smoking; (d) whether the ancestral mothers smoked during pregnancy; (e) social class of the household; (f) information on 19 potentially traumatic situations in their childhoods such as death of a parent, being taken into care, not having enough to eat, or being in a war situation; (g) causes of death for those ancestors who had died. The ages at which the individual experienced the traumatic situations distinguished between ages <6; 6-11, and 12-16 years. The numbers of ancestors on which data were obtained varied from 1128 paternal great-grandfathers to 4122 maternal great grandmothers. These ancestral data will be available for analysis to bona fide researchers on application to the ALSPAC Executive Committee.

Beneath September

Beneath September Gretchen Steele Pratt (bio) September 11, 2016 On CNN, the reporter interviews a priestfrom Manhattan, asks him what long term effect9/11 has had on us all. The priest saysFor fifteen years we've all been walking aroundwith a lump in our throats. I was an ocean away,in Ireland, already afternoon,in the stands of the Galway Races.The boys we were meeting had justheard the news on a taxi's radio. Inside, people placing their betsat each glass window. All the TV screensthat tracked the race flickered offand the news came on, and we hadbought Guinnesses, and we held them, half full, unawarethey were in our hands as the second plane hit–or a replay of the second plane hitting,again and again. I was in Ireland,in the country four of my great grandparents, Honora and John, Esther and Samuel,had left for Ellis Island.Ten days earlier, my parentshad driven me through New York Cityto the Newark Airport. From the backseat as we crossedthe George Washington Bridge, [End Page 242] the Towers. Ten days later,Flight 93 would also take off from Newark.This was the last place I would see my father alive, who would diein his sleep that November.There he stood, bottom of the escalator,in a light green polo shirt, khaki shorts,boat shoes and white socks pulled halfway up his shins, waving.I no longer remember where he said he waswhen the planes hit–perhaps in a vandelivering flowers, his newretirement job. We will keep asking each year where were you?until no one was anywhere,until a new world grows up,pushes up beneath September.My mother, up late one night watching the news–Ground Zero,family members still there, xeroxed copiesof the missing gripped in their hands.My mother, falling asleep to this,asked God if there's anything she can do to relieve their suffering –to let it be done.The next morning she found my father,cold, unmoving in the bed.I flew home for his funeral, leaving Ireland before the semester ended,before a planned trip to Amsterdam,my plane ticket exchanged for a flightback to Newark. The embersof the Towers still smoldering [End Page 243] though I didn't look out the window.Several of my aunts and uncles, my sistermet me there. In a rented limo,we rode back to our old white housein Connecticut, rode through a tangle of thru-ways, potholes,we rode home through the flags.In my memory they were everywhere–draped from every possible bridge,and homemade USA banners and posters, some in tatters. I craned my neck,the flags hung from the balconiesof the steep apartments.Uncle John, sitting across from me,noticed my noticing, lifted his hands, palms open to the grey canyons, saidIt's been incredible–you've missed it all. [End Page 244] Gretchen Steele Pratt Gretchen Steele Pratt is the author of One Island (Anhinga Press). Her work has recently appeared in Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Gettysburg Review, Fairy Tale Review, Poetry Daily and Ecotone. She lives in Matthews, North Carolina, with her husband and three children and teaches at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Copyright © 2020 Pleiades and Pleiades Press

Review: The Global Jukebox

The Global Jukebox . Anna L. Wood, Creative Director and Anthropologist; Gideon D'Arcangelo, Consulting Executive Producer; Victor Grauer, Codeveloper and Cantometrics Project Advisor; Forrestine Paulay, Codeveloper and Choreometrics Director; et al. URL: https://theglobaljukebox.org/ The Global Jukebox has a venerable history and significant aims. Its central principle is what founder Alan Lomax named “cultural equity,” “the right of all people to practice, maintain and pass down their languages, customs and traditions with equal respect and with harm to no one.”1 The safeguarding of the world's plethora of perspectives and experiences is growing ever more urgent as many confront displacement as a result of political upheavals and climate change, and the promise of the Internet to be a tool for equality threatens to dissolve under the hegemony of mass-produced culture. In the face of these issues, the Global Jukebox is more than just an online museum of sound: the remit is expansive and ambitious. It is intended as a resource for teachers, students, and scholars, enabling them to discover a rich, global tapestry of ethnomusicological content and to explore patterns of connection between the sounds and movements of various cultures. But as well as being a tool for pedagogy and data science, the site also aims to connect people with their cultural heritage. It is for migrants and refugees, separated from their birthplace, “who miss the sounds and body language of home”; it is also for indigenous peoples, “desiring to hear the thrilling voices of their grandparents and great grandparents, and to see the dances which had been for them the most …

The Ancestral Environment Shapes Antiviral CD8+ Tcell Responses across Generations.

SummaryRecent studies have linked health fates of children to environmental exposures of their great grandparents. However, few studies have considered whether ancestral exposures influence immune function across generations. Here, we report transgenerational inheritance of altered T cell responses resulting from maternal (F0) exposure to the aryl hydrocarbon receptor ligand 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD). Since F0 exposure to TCDD has been linked to transgenerational transmission of reproductive problems, we asked whether maternal TCDD exposure also caused transgenerational changes in immune function. F0 exposure caused transgenerational effects on the CD8+ T cell response to influenza virus infection in females but not in males. Outcrosses showed changes were passed through both parental lineages. These data demonstrate that F0 exposure to an aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) agonist causes durable changes to immune responses that can affect subsequent generations. This has broad implications for understanding how the environment of prior generations shapes susceptibility to pathogens and antiviral immunity in later generations.

Combining Individual Phenotypes of Feed Intake With Genomic Data to Improve Feed Efficiency in Sea Bass.

Measuring individual feed intake of fish in farms is complex and precludes selective breeding for feed conversion ratio (FCR). Here, we estimated the individual FCR of 588 sea bass using individual rearing under restricted feeding. These fish were also phenotyped for their weight loss at fasting and muscle fat content that were possibly linked to FCR. The 588 fish were derived from a full factorial mating between parental lines divergently selected for high (F+) or low (F–) weight loss at fasting. The pedigree was known back to the great grand-parents. A subset of 400 offspring and their ancestors were genotyped for 1,110 SNPs which allowed to calculate the genomic heritability of traits. Individual FCR and growth rate in aquarium were both heritable (genomic h2 = 0.47 and 0.76, respectively) and strongly genetically correlated (−0.98) meaning that, under restricted feeding, faster growing fish were more efficient. FCR and growth rate in aquariums were also significantly better for fish with both parents from F– (1.38), worse for fish with two parents F+ (1.51) and intermediate for cross breed fish (F+/F– or F–/F+ at 1.46). Muscle fat content was positively genetically correlated to growth rate in aquarium and during fasting. Thus, selecting for higher growth rate in aquarium, lower weight loss during fasting and fatter fish could improve FCR in aquarium. Improving these traits would also improve FCR of fish in normal group rearing conditions, as we showed experimentally that groups composed of fish with good individual FCR were significantly more efficient. The FCR of groups was also better when the fish composing the groups had, on average, lower estimated breeding values for growth rate during fasting (losing less weight). Thus, improving FCR in aquarium and weight loss during fasting is promising to improve FCR of fish in groups but a selection response experiment needs to be done. Finally, we showed that the reliability of estimated breeding values was higher (from+10% up to +125%) with a genomic-based BLUP model than with a traditional pedigree-based BLUP, showing that genomic data would enhance the accuracy of the prediction of EBV of selection candidates.

Forensic use of the genomic relationship matrix to validate and discover livestock pedigrees.

Correct pedigree is essential to produce accurate genetic evaluations of livestock populations. Pedigree validation has traditionally been undertaken using microsatellites and more recently, based on checks on opposing homozygotes using single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). In this study, the genomic relationship matrix was examined to see whether it was a useful tool to forensically validate pedigree and discover unknown pedigree. Using 5,993 genotyped Limousin animals which were imputed to a core set of 38,907 SNPs, the genomic relationships between animals were assessed to validate the reported pedigree. Using already pedigree-verified animals, the genomic relationships between animals of different relationships were shown to be on average 0.58, 0.59, 0.32, 0.32, 0.19, and 0.14 between animals and their parents, full siblings, half siblings, grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents, respectively. Threshold values were defined based on the minimum genomic relationship reported between already pedigree-verified animals; 0.46, 0.41, 0.17, 0.17, 0.07, and 0.05, respectively for animals and their parents, full siblings, half siblings, grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents. Using the wider population and the above genomic relationship threshold values, potential pedigree conflicts were identified within each relationship type. Pedigree error rates of between 0.9% (animal and great great grandparent) and 4.0% (full siblings) were identified. A forensic genomic pedigree validation and discovery system was developed to enable pedigree to be verified for individual genotyped animals. This system verifies not just the parents, but also a wide number of other genotyped relatives and can therefore identify more potential errors in the pedigree than current conventional methods. A novel aspect to this algorithm is that it can also be used to discover closely related animals on the basis of their genomic relationships although they are not recorded as such in the pedigree. This functionality enables missing pedigree information to be discovered and corrected in the pedigree of livestock populations. The methods in this paper demonstrate that the genomic relationship matrix can be a useful tool in the validation and discovery of pedigree in livestock populations. However, the method does rely on being able to define threshold values appropriate to the specific livestock population, which will require sufficient number of animals to be genotyped and pedigree validated before it can be used.

Analysis of genetic characteristics of pig breeds using information on single nucleotide polymorphisms.

ObjectiveThis study was undertaken to investigate the genetic characteristics of Berkshire (BS), Landrace (LR), and Yorkshire (YS) pig breeds raised in the Great Grandparents pig farms using the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) information.MethodsA total of 25,921 common SNP genotype markers in three pig breeds were used to estimate the expected heterozygosity (HE), polymorphism information content, F-statistics (FST), linkage disequilibrium (LD) and effective population size (Ne).ResultsThe chromosome-wise distribution of FST in BS, LR, and YS populations were within the range of 0–0.36, and the average FST value was estimated to be 0.07±0.06. This result indicated some level of genetic segregation. An average LD (r2) for the BS, LR, and YS breeds was estimated to be approximately 0.41. This study also found an average Ne of 19.9 (BS), 31.4 (LR), and 34.1 (YS) over the last 5th generations. The effective population size for the BS, LR, and YS breeds decreased at a consistent rate from 50th to 10th generations ago. With a relatively faster Ne decline rate in the past 10th generations, there exists possible evidence for intensive selection practices in pigs in the recent past.ConclusionTo develop customized chips for the genomic selection of various breeds, it is important to select and utilize SNP based on the genetic characteristics of each breed. Since the improvement efficiency of breed pigs increases sharply by the population size, it is important to increase test units for the improvement and it is desirable to establish the pig improvement network system to expand the unit of breed pig improvement through the genetic connection among breed pig farms.

In the Mists of Time: Searching for traces of the first settlement of four Southland families

During the 1870s, the Provincial government terminated grazing licences on large runs in Eastern Southland and West Otago. In a series of land sales, this land was surveyed into 200-acre farms and auctioned to prospective farmers on a delayed repayment scheme. 150 years later, this research searches for traces of the first buildings from this time. It focuses on the housing of eight ancestors, great grandparents of the author, who settled within a 30 km radius in the districts of Waikoikoi, Maitland, Waikaka Valley and Otama. Information was gathered from National Library collections, district and family history books, old photographs and maps, 2018 surveys of the homestead sites and interviews with cousins still living in the area. In 1870, the rolling hills were covered with open tussock. Found artefacts suggest that Māori camped in the area during expeditions to gather food from Mataura river sites. The new settlers, often in extended family groups, travelled by horse and dray overland from Dunedin or Bluff. The Dunedin to Gore railway did not open until 1879. Their first shelters were camp-sites and wagon tilts lined in felt. Soon after they arrived, established families were able to fund the building of modest timber houses often constructed by carpenter uncles and brothers. Young single men "bached" in sod and/or timber huts until they married. One great grandmother spent childhood years "comfortably" in a "half-sod and half-timber shepherd's cottage" but her teenage years at the "Big House," the 20-room homestead on the Otama Station. It was built in 1867 of "white pine" from the forest at Tapanui. By the turn of the twentieth-century, simple cottages had received additional rooms, porches and decorative verandahs or they were upstaged by new grand timber villas. In 2018, only one homestead, originally named Hopetoun, is still standing although it is substantially altered. Family photographs, usually of the front façade, provide a limited perspective only. Memoirs and local histories offer a few more clues. While buildings from the 1870s exist, historical touchstones in these country districts are more elusive.

A House in Karachi

A House in Karachi Rafia Zakaria (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution It sits on a hill—a fact that does not, in most places, distinguish a house as anything beyond ordinary. But it does in Karachi, which is in large part a flat city, squat and sprawling and a bit surly on the edge of the Indian Ocean. There are so few hills here that a house on a hill can only been found in two or three locales. But this is a special house for more than just the gradient of its setting—it is the home of my grandparents, the site of more laughter and the cause of more tears than any other my life. When the house was built, two similar but not identical others were built on either side, the homes of two of my grandfather's brothers. Three out of seven sons of my great grandparents, all living on the same street, the same hill. To get to the house, one has to ascend a steep driveway, a feat as odd for drivers in this flat city as encountering a snowstorm in the desert. When my mother drove, she relished the moment and our gasping delight. Would we make it? Would the car slip back, the blunder of a lower gear? We always got to the top, and from the head of the driveway we raced through the back entrance and past the large wooden cage [End Page 111] of parakeets and up the kitchen stairs and into the arms of an aunt and then another aunt and then my grandmother. Up we climbed, to lunch, which we ate early and they ate late, or to tea, which my grandmother sweetened with generous teaspoons of condensed milk. If we were good, and sometimes even if we weren't, we got to lick the spoons. The house was midcentury modern with three floors and wraparound decks. It was very nearly palatial, an adjective that was apt for unusual reasons. My grandmother had, quite literally, grown up in a palace. It was a palace in exile, but still … a palace. Her parents had been part of the retinue of the Aga Khan, the last of the Iranian Qajar dynasty, which had to flee Iran for Bombay in the 1920s when she was a child. In a story that was top-secret, and which I only pieced together many years later, she had eloped to marry my grandfather, an ordinary man from an equally ordinary straitlaced and middle-class Indian Muslim family. Before this house, my grandparents had lived in many others, all of them cramped or in distant suburbs, or old and crumbling, or all of the above. This house was the fulfillment of a young bridegroom's promise, the return to his bride of the life she had left for him. On either side lived her brothers-in-law, men who had for a very long time refused to accept her into the family, now unable to turn their faces away from the woman they had blamed for "stealing" their brother. The bond between my grandparents, their love marriage, would set the course for the marriages of all their daughters and at least one of their granddaughters, me. Because my mother had run off, the shadow of moral laxity—of headstrong independence, of an errant nature—hung over the house. My own story would be a bit different, but its opening scenes would also play out in the house on the hill. Behind and to the side of the house was a terraced garden, which began with a plush lawn bordered by rose and jasmine bushes. The blooms, whose heady scent punctuates my earliest memories, were resplendent, two or even three shades in a single flower's petals, pink and yellow and cream and burgundy. If you climbed up the stone steps hewn in the hillside you came to a vegetable garden: rows of the hottest peppers, okra, and the curry leaves whose fronds we picked and whose strong and spicy smells emanated from nearly everything my grandmother cooked. The higher terraces beyond were off-limits to us, unless an adult accompanied us...

Paying Homage

Paying Homage Iris Lee Stoler (bio) Woman at the Cusp of Twilight Daniel Shapiro Dos Madres Press www.dosmadres.com/shop/woman-at-the-cusp-of-twilight-by-daniel-shapiro/ 112 Pages; Print, $17.00 Reading Daniel Shapiro's Woman at the Cusp of Twilight is similar to leafing through someone's family photo album. Most of the subjects are no longer living, and the chronology is mixed up, but the faces (and stories behind them) are inviting and real. This gives pleasure. Shapiro introduces his poetic tribute to his maternal relations with a family tree, which for me, was both positive and negative. I began by scrupulously referring back to it as I read each poem, bookmark at the ready, wanting to orient myself to all the relationships and events in their lives. However, at about one-third of the way through, I decided this method was keeping me from appreciating each poem on its own merits. And there are many merits. This book differs from Shapiro's previous book of poems, The Red Handkerchief (2014), which is lyrical and imagistic and strongly first-person. That book does contain several poetic odes to family members, but the poems dwell mostly on romantic and sexual themes. (One, "Your Name Means 'Forever'," is reminiscent of Cavafy in its elegiac, nostalgic quality.) In this book, Shapiro, as curator of this family portrait, modestly conceals the "I" for the sake of leading the reader into the lives of the characters. The voice is more-or-less evenly divided between omniscient distant narrator and direct address to an individual. The work is nicely varied; there are ten concrete poems (a wine glass, Coney Island parachute, a potato, among others), several dramatic monologues, and one ekphrastic piece ("Abe, Cast in Sepia"). Most poems focus on Shapiro's parents, aunts and uncles; a few on his grandparents; and one (a sad tale of a dead child) invokes his great grandparents. Aging, dreams deferred and eventually renounced (his mother's dance career), sibling issues, marriage, and one unhappy divorce: these are some of his subjects. In "So Much in Love" Shapiro directly addresses his mother about her lost career. He addressed this more successfully in the poem "Dance" in The Red Handkerchief, where his lineation and language fly; here the language and structure are flatter, filled with not-so-interesting details. I found this so in a minority of other poems where he seems to want to give information by "reminding" the recipient of the poem of past events. When this happens, it takes precedence over his usual concern with sight and sound, as in "Max and the Memory of Elke." But now on to all the good stuff. Concrete poetry is so tricky. It can so easily turn to visual kitsch. Shapiro's concrete poems are delightful. "The Cemetery at Torrey Pines," which contains the line that is the title of the book, is a tree-trunk-shaped description of his mother at the grave of her mother. The last line makes subtle reference once again to his mother's aborted dance career: It's the treethat appears to be dancing, rooted butswaying with abandon in the breeze. [End Page 20] "Parachute Jump" attempts perhaps a bit too much, but the unpunctuated, free-floating (pun intended) lines relate perfectly to the subject matter. (Full disclosure: I grew up in Coney Island; partiality is possible here.) Shapiro is excellent in matching his lineation and metrics to his subject matter. The abrupt short lines in "Hannah" appropriately signify the drama, tension and tragedy of the story. "The Peach Tree" is a memory piece which needs to be read out loud to get the benefit of the tempo: That branch jutting over the fenceladen with fruit— but when he looks back, no one's there,only the tangy scent of peacheshangs in the air. "Rhapsody in the Sun (Esther's Dream)" is all about Grandma meeting up with George Gershwin, and appropriately, the language swings: Scintillations. Above the water,pale-green willows hung their long hair down. It's all lovely –until the turn: Because the unbenign presence growing insidecrowded out...