Niagara, My Home Town by Stephanie Vigh Nielsen

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Rendezvous Motel & Restaurant, 3611 Lundy’s Lane, Highway 3a & 20, Niagara Falls, Canada. Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

In the town where I was born, we’d walk up Lundy’s Lane
And talk about the dreams we had.
Life was a glass of ginger ale and a juke box serenade,
And we never thought of growing old.
Yes, I know those days have come and gone
Still I think about my old home town.

At a place called the Rendezvous, we’d congregate at eight
And talk about the baseball game.
Lights flashing on the window pane, watching cars go up the lane,
We’d wait for friends and lovers.
Yes, I know those days have come and gone
Still I think about my old home town.

Lavender mist makes a foggy night haze
While the falls come crashing ahead.
And I lean on the rail feel the damp cooling spray
Watching the foam turn a luminous maze.

And as I drive towards the town, the neon signs flash on
And thoughts begin to fill my head.
Oh the happiness I found, in my family’s old home town
Where nothing seemed to ever change.
Life was very simple, way back then
And we thought that it would never end.

When my dreams of long ago were scattered on the way
And those magic times forgotten.
Life went on but not the same, we grew up, we’re not to blame,
And those magic times forgotten.
Life was very simple, way back then
And we thought that it would never end.

Source: Niagara Falls (Ontario). Coronation Centre Newsletter, 1974

©1974 by Stephanie Vigh Nielsen

Visit Stephanie Vigh Nielsen’s Niagara Proud website

Apple: Skin to the Core: A Memoir in Words and Pictures by Eric Gansworth

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Apple, a memoir in verse and pictures by Eric Gansworth is an important addition to the literature of Niagara. Gansworth,  who was raised on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation in Niagara County, New York, just outside Niagara Falls, still resides in the area and teaches in Buffalo, NY.  The book has been longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award and is a Junior Library Guild selection.

Publisher supplied book information:

How about a book that makes you barge into your boss’s office to read a page of poetry from? That you dream of? That every movie, song, book, moment that follows continues to evoke in some way?

The term “Apple” is a slur in Native communities across the country. It’s for someone supposedly “red on the outside, white on the inside.”

Eric Gansworth is telling his story in Apple: Skin to the Core. The story of his family, of Onondaga among Tuscaroras, of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds.

Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking.

Run to your nearest library or book store to read this remarkable collection by Eric Gansworth.

Visit Eric Gansworth’s website

A Tribute to George Seibel by Alan Tustin

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Portrait of George Seibel

George Seibel set a standard for service to his town
And for his contributions he gained his cap and gown.

For he chronicled Niagara with a zeal quite unsurpassed
And left us with anthologies that will forever last.

He served us as an airman when the foe was at the gate
And shared a long and happy life with his beloved mate.

George repaired fine furniture for many, many years
And was esteemed by those he met, by all his friends and peers.

He did not sit in idleness when retirement days came round
But made Niagara his career, and his efforts knew no bound.

George’s books and articles have won him lasting fame
For our knowledge of Niagara now rests largely on his name.

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George Seibel Article: Only God Knows More About the Falls Than Upholsterer George Seibel. by Anthony Bannon (undated)

George and Olive’s family was extended to embrace
Several chosen children of a different tongue and race.

They formed a close-knit loving group yet still they found the time
To work for local causes – and produce book number nine!

George has now been called to fill a greater role on high
Yet still he lives in all our hearts – we serve his watchful eye.

He left us all a legacy we never can repay —
Now may he rest in peace at last, forever and a day.

September 25, 1992

Source: Niagara Falls Public Library. Biography – George Seibel [vertical file]

Poem read at George Seibel’s funeral.

Link to George Seibel’s plaque on the Niagara Falls Arts & Culture Wall of Fame

Nickel Eclipse: Iroquois Moon: Poems and Paintings by Eric Gansworth

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Cover of Nickel Eclipse: Iroquois Moon

Although no poem or painting is included here, this book of poetry by Eric Gansworth is an important addition to the literature of Niagara. Gansworth,  who was raised on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation in Niagara County, New York, just outside Niagara Falls, still resides in the area and teaches in Buffalo, NY.

Publisher supplied:

“Nickel Eclipse is a merging of personal and cultural history. Structured in part like the alternating colored beads on a wampum belt, patterns emerge from this exploration of contemporary life on an eastern Indian reservation and the sometimes tenuous persistence of a culture after centuries of survival within another, more dominant, culture. The poems, while highly personalized, reflect the tension of speakers surviving within-though never fully of-that larger culture, where lives are formed and meaning defined by their inherent separateness.
Gansworth’s paintings complement the poems, using the metaphor of the cycle of moons identified in the traditional Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) culture’s calendar. These paintings of the different lunar phases serve to organize the poems around a common image, breaking them into sections through the use of an eclipse. Additionally, the relationships indigenous communities have had with the United States-from thriving to near extinction to eventual re- emergence-are symbolized in the progression of that eclipse across the moon.
Symbols common to the culture appear throughout the cycles: the Three Sisters (Corn, Beans, and Squash), Strawberries, and Green Corn, from the ceremonies named for them, and more consistently, wampum beads-within which Haudenosaunee culture is iconographically documented-appear in various incarnations, from the earliest shell groupings, through isolated shaped beads, small strings, and full- belt formations.”

Run to your nearest library or book store to read this remarkable collection by Eric Gansworth.

Visit Eric Gansworth’s website

A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function: Poems and Paintings by Eric Gansworth

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Cover of A Half Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function

Although no poem or painting is included here, this book of poetry by Eric Gansworth is an important addition to the literature of Niagara. Gansworth,  who was raised on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation in Niagara County, New York, just outside Niagara Falls, still resides in the area and teaches in Buffalo, NY.

Publisher supplied book information:

“Echoing the muscular rhythms of the heart beat, the poems in this stunning collection alternate between contraction and expansion. Eric Gansworth explores the act of enduring, physically, historically, and culturally. A member of the Haudenosaunee tribe, Gansworth expresses the tensions experienced by members of a marginalized culture struggling to maintain tradition within a much larger dominant culture. With equal measures of humor, wisdom, poignancy, and beauty, Gansworth’s poems mine the infinite varieties of individual and collective loss and recovery. Fourteen paintings punctuate his poetry, creating an active dialogue between word and image steeped in the tradition of the mythic Haudenosaunee world. A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function is the most recent addition to Gansworth’s remarkable body of work chronicling the lives of upstate New York’s Indian communities. ”

Run to your nearest library or book store to read this remarkable collection by Eric Gansworth.

Visit Eric Gansworth’s website