Author Archives: Lily Mathison

Proverb – Finnish

Nationality: Finnish American
Age: 25
Occupation: Insurance Broker
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 23 April 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Finnish

“Menan pois medä on petitu.”

“Let’s go, we’ve been cheated.”

“Let’s get out of here, we’ve been cheated.”

The informant is a 25-year-old insurance broker who grew up in Ohio and the Los Angeles region. His father is Finnish and his mother is a third generation Swedish American.

The informant told me, “You say that whenever you leave a restaurant or a store or anything like that.” He said it’s like a joke, one doesn’t say it when one is upset that the place over charged one, one says it walking out of any store or restaurant. The informant learned this saying from his father who moved from Finland to the United States from Finland during his college years and had a family here in the States. The informant said that he uses this saying much more frequently than other Finnish sayings – like the Finnish saying about the Finnish Politician Putkinen.

I think it makes sense that the informant uses this saying frequently here in America because it translates well. There’s nothing about it that is uniquely Finnish. Both in Finland and in the United States it’s easy for one to walk out of a decently priced restaurant and feel like one spent more money than one meant to or to not realize how much money one has spent. It is possible that this phrase might be a slight criticism of consumerism – in that it’s easy to feel cheated walking out of a store. In that there isn’t a type of store or restaurant that is targeted as the “cheating” kind it could be said that the system of buying and selling of goods is more the object of criticism in this proverb – however tacitly that might be expressed.

We’ve been cheated (only proverb)

Proverb – Finnish

Nationality: Finnish American
Age: 25
Occupation: Insurance Broker
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 23 April 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Finnish

“Hetkinen sano Putkinen.”

“Wait says Putkinen.”

“Pukinen says, let’s wait a little bit.”

The informant is a 25-year-old insurance broker who grew up in Ohio and the Los Angeles region. His father is Finnish and his mother is a third generation Swedish American.

Putkinen was a politician “who was always slowing down the process”. It’s a saying to “just tell someone to wait” it’s like Putkinen says that we just need to keep waiting and not doing anything. He said it’s, “light-heartedly poking fun at this past governor guy”. One would use this proverb when a couple people were going to go somewhere and one of them wa like, “I’m not ready to go yet” they would say “Hetkinen sano Putkinen.” Like relax. The informant says he rarely ever says that it’s mainly his dad who says that, who moved to the United States from Finland when he was in college. The informant was born in the United States.

I think it makes sense that a Finnish American man who was born in the states wouldn’t have as much connection to this saying as his father would, who lived in Finland and has more of a personal connection to Finnish politics. It also makes sense that the informant wouldn’t want to allude to a politician that people in the United States likely wouldn’t know anything about, Americans would likely wonder why we should care that Putkinen says wait.

Putkinen

Angel Memorate – Georgia, U.S.A

Nationality: American - Caucasian/ German
Age: 26
Occupation: Cinematographer
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 22 April 2011
Primary Language: English

“I was really young. I was, it was in Georgia. My Mom and my Dad were married at the time. My mom was at work, my Dad and my brothers were in the house sleeping. I could sleep so I – like taking a nap, it was midday I went out into our backyard and started swinging on the swings. I was facing away from the house. I was facing, like this hill that our backyard faced. And I was just swinging, running around, doing kids’ stuff and I suddenly heard my Mom’s voice calling my name – or what sounded like my Mom’s voice. It was a female voice. I turned around, and just as I turn around smoke starts coming out of the kitchen. Um, so I go running in there – the kitchen window, sorry the kitchen window. So I go running into the house and the – the kitchen’s on fire! And my Dad and my brothers were also so they had no idea. So I ran in there and I woke up my dad and my dad went and extinguished the fire and actually burned his hand in the process. And um, my Mom wasn’t home. So the voice that I heard, it was unexplained. It was a female voice that called my name and draw my attention to the fire as it began. So early on, and if it had been any later it might not have been able to be extinguished. And my family was inside asleep so who knows, you know, how bad it could have been.”

The informant is a 26-year-old cinematographer who grew up as a military brat moving every couple of years, before coming to Los Angeles, California for college and to work in the motion picture industry. He is the oldest of three boys and was recently married.

When asked what he thought it was the informant said, “I think it was an angel. I mean it was an angel or, or something along that line.” What had caused the fire initially was that there was a pizza box on the stove and his little brother had accidentally turned the stove on while climbing up on the counter to get something out of the cabinet. He said “There was no female that I knew that was there” and his Mom “didn’t even know about the fire until she came home.” He said “it was definitely a guardian angel or something.” He told me, “I didn’t know what [the voice] was until later on because I never, I wasn’t Christian or anything until my teens and then when I was saved then I realized, ‘Oh, I wonder if that’s what it was.’ To him what was significant was that his family was saved from great harm due to him hearing this voice. The informant says he usually tells this story whenever he is talking about miracles or God’s goodness, he called it a “praise report”.

I can see why one might be confused as to what to label this strange voice as. It didn’t move anything around like one might expect a ghost to do and he didn’t see the translucent form of a woman like we hear in many stories about ghosts. But most significantly what it did was good – it likely saved his family’s life. Stories about ghosts saving someone’s life are not characteristic. It is clearly a situation where the informant was trying to categorize something outside of scientific explanation or normal experience. As he says, when he heard an explanation that made sense of an experience, he integrated that explanation into his narrative. It happened to be that that explanation was of guardian angels in Christianity. Perhaps had he moved to Ireland and learned about friendly fairies (sí) he may have integrated this explanation into his memory. The key here is how closely the idea of guardian angels explained his unexplainable experience. In that he said it was “definitely” an angel says how well the concept makes sense in his mind.

Wood Carvings – Iowa

Nationality: Czech American/ German American
Age: 93
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Whittier, CA
Performance Date: 22 April 2011
Primary Language: English

“He was in a installing a gas, a-a- gas in a basement, or hot water heater and he didn’t know it but it was, the pilot light was still on – he light a match and the explosion was pretty bad. He was burned all over and one hand was burned real bad. But he started to carve things to get his hand flexible and those are from him.”

Why would it help his hands when asked why he thought it would help his hands she answered: “It flexed it, it gave his hand exercise…maybe somebody said if you exercise your hand it will be more usable and it was. Originally it was kinda like a claw [she shows me her hand in a clenched-claw shape] it was really bad.”

The informant as well as her father were born in rural Iowa and are of Czech decent – more specifically Bohemian decent. The informant is a 93-year-old housewife who has lived in the Los Angeles area since the 1950’s.

When asked who told him that whittling would help his hands grow in dexterity the informant didn’t know. In fact, I asked several members of the family and no one knew. The informant and others in the family reacted defensively when I asked, answering right away that it did indeed help him. When I asked where he got the designs from the informant said that she thought he just got them out of his head.

Whittling is a common American pastime, especially around the 1920’s and 30’s (Reynolds 80). This was the era that the Czech American folk artist was whittling away, starting with his wife’s broom (much to her dismay). This carving of whatever piece of wood could be found was observed also in a Folk Art Museum in New York state (Rita 19). As far as the folk remedy for a severely disabled hand, the origins of this are less clear. C.J Reynolds, D.D.S in a Popular Science article from April 1924 mentions that whittling helped with improving his “manual dexterity” so key to his profession as a dentist (80). The pieces picture above actually somewhat resemble some of those picture in the article. Something particularly striking about the pieces is their clear use of geographic shapes such as squares and triangles. After doing some research I found that the dominant use of these shapes are similar to those used in chip-carved spoons found in Eastern Europe – which were also carved with a simple knife (Sentance and Sentance, 118). These spoons, however only took small chips of the wood out, leaving the surface nearly flat still while the angles in the above pieces are far more three dimensional. This three dimensional quality more resembles the totem poles made by Native Americans and the walking sticks made by African Americans in the south( Sentance and Sentance, 24-25; Burrison, 70). In this way these pieces can be seen as a mixture of both old world and new world influences.

On another level, these wooden carvings are entering our family as cherished folk objects whose story has been passed down four generations now. My grandmother offered each of her over a dozen grandchildren a few of the more than 50 that she has left. It is almost a mark of family identity that we know that our Czech grandfather made them. The story itself could perhaps be seen as a family member triumphing in the face of adversity by making something beautiful in order to counteract this terrible explosion that happened.

Burrison, John A. Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in a Changing South. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2000. 70.

Reif, Rita. (1975, April 12). Antiques: wood carving: 139 ‘varied’ findings in new york state on view at folk art museum. New York Times, p. 19.

Reynolds, C.J., D.D.S. “Fun and Profit in My Jack-Knife.” Popular Science. April 1924, 80.

Sentance, Bryan, and Polly Sentance. Craft Traditions of the World: Locally Made, Globally Inspiring. London: Thames & Hudson, Ltd., 2009. 118-119. Print.

Lawyer Joke – American

Nationality: American - Caucasian
Age: 22
Occupation: Student, International Relations/Pre-Law
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 12 April 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: French, German

“So this lawyer is cross-examining this doctor and he says, ‘Doctor, so you’re the one who did the autopsy.’

“And he said, ‘Yes.’

“And he’s like, ‘Well where was the victim when you did the autopsy report?’

“He’s like, ‘On the table.’

“‘Well, what were you looking at particularly?’

“He’s like, ‘The brain. The brain was, you know out of the victim’s head on my table.’

“And he said, ‘Oh, okay. So the victim was dead.’

“‘Yes, there was no way he could be anywhere else. Well I suppose he could be practicing law somewhere else, but other than that, probably dead.'”

Friend showed it to her online. The informant is a Pre-Law student and she was actually accepted into a Law school for the coming year. This joke came up after we had talked about her recent acceptance to a Law school and when we started talking about jokes. She later went and looked up lots of other jokes about lawyers and went through them laughing hysterically. When she told the joke she told it at a pretty speedy pace, somewhat characteristic of someone who has to make detailed verbal reports often. There was not a lot of emotional changes in her voice as she told the joke – it was a fairly dry account. The informant said the that the joke was funny to her because it reminded her of some people that she knew, most likely from her years of participating in Mock Trial.

The informant has, in fact, been on Mock Trial since her freshman year and has know about the inner workings of law for a long time, which meant that she understood the allusions and situational comedy in lawyer jokes very intimately. I in no way doubt that she was thinking about someone she knew as she laughed, but she didn’t initially tell me she knew someone like the lawyer in the joke when she told me that joke. In this way, the joke was somewhat self-disparaging. This may be a case where a person has taken up an occupational stereotype in order to take some of the sting out of it, or to say somehow, “Hey, I can see this joke and I can laugh about it – I’m not some straight-laced, condescending lawyer like the lawyer in this joke.”