A Poem of the Mundane

Up in the morning

Down at night

Always like clockwork

Never a plight

Off to Knowing Place

Never a change in that brick face

Words come in by day

And leave at night

Always like clockwork

Never a plight

Leaving the Knowing Place

With the same brick face

I walk down the street

Thinking of nothing to reap

Till comes night

Always like clockwork

Never a plight…

Educated Post 1

Educated is about a girl, named Tara Westover, who lives a very sheltered life in the Idaho mountains with her very paranoid parents. In this cut off existence, Tara sees beauty in the natural world, even in the most simple plants, such as sage bushes and conifer trees. She views wild wheat as “a corps de ballet.” Above all things, she sees beauty in the peak of a mountain, of which her father told her that the mountain is like a cathedral, calling it “the Indian Princess.” The problem Tara has is that her parents are incredibly paranoid, thinking the world will end and they will survive by being cut off from the rest of the world. Thus, though Tara can appreciate the natural world, she cannot learn about the beauty she enjoys. I relate to the appreciation of nature Tara has; I enjoy hiking, biology (specifically botany), and camping. Unlike Tara, however, I do these things voluntarily, rather than living by the insane way of life of a family. Tara also has a love for knowledge because of her appreciation of beauty of the natural world. Whenever something new is introduced to me, I like to learn all I can to satiate my need for something stimulating. In this capacity, I also relate to a character of Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot, a private detective. Without something stimulating to think of, such as a jewel robbery or a murder case, he claims his “little gray cells will starve and die” (Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan). To think of something stimulating is like exercise for the mind or perhaps food for thought; without such things, your brain will degenerate, forget, and eventually stop working all together. This is Tara’s plight; she has nothing to stimulate her and probably never will as long as she is living with her family in the mountains.

Gabrielson-Familjen

My family has a hard to track history for various reasons. First off, we used to follow the Swedish tradition of changing the surname of each child every generation to reflect the forename of the previous generation with the suffixes -son or -dotter. Secondly, soon after my eldest known direct ancestor was born, Gabriel Borjesson, a war caused the archives to be burnt to the ground. What I know now has been passed down from Gabriel to his son, Elias to his son, Algot to his son Eric, to his son Johann, and my Grandfather, Johann, to me. Little is known Gabriel, but Elias was of the first generation to bear the name Gabrielson, then spelled Gabrielsson. Elias had many children, some going by Eliasson and Eliassdotter, though some were immigrants who kept the Gabrielson name. One of the immigrants was my second great-grandfather, Algot. Algot was married in Sweden to Augusta Mathilde Blad, a women who worked in a prison and was pregnant through three different men, and they immigrated to Connecticut, USA. They had two children Carl Gabrielson and Eric Gabrielson. Eric lived in Connecticut all his life, where he married Mabel Linnea Anderson, who three children; Alan, Budge, and Johann. Johann served in the army for several years, until retiring from the military to be salesman. He met a woman named Elaine Jacobson, born from George and Dorothy Jacobson. Elaine was a wild woman. She convinced her brother, Robert, to secretly get their flying certification. She wanted to travel the world, but after her marriage and having three children, she found a calling in motherhood. Sadly, she felt her life was missing something, and she turned to alcohol, and slowly drank herself to death. Johann and Elaine’s children were Leslie, Tammy, and Robert. Robert married Katrina Vancortlandt Teller and had two children; me, Kyle William Gabrielson, and my sister, Aubrey Elaine Gabrielson.