Texas AG Threatens Providers Who Comply With Abortion Court Order

[mch]

Sorry to be late in replying. The weekend has been busy with holiday prep…

I’m no expert on this, but my impression is that most German speakers who came to this country in the first half of the 19th c. – and this may have been true of Norwegians, Swedes and Danes – were more educated than later German immigrants and/or had skills that were in short supply here, skills like watchmaking and professional-level music-making. (My mother’s paternal grandmother, who largely raised her – her first husband was the son of an organist from Hamburg (though his citizenship was Danish) who had trained in Hamburg and Vienna. He came to NY in the late 1830’s and benefited from being “German” since that added luster to his reputation as an organist and intellectual.) These earlier immigrants also arrived with more money in their pockets. From the late 1840’s onward, esp. after the CW, poverty was the main reason people came here from Sweden, Germany, Ireland, and Eastern Europe. These immigrants came in great numbers, of course, and often had little or no formal education. Quite a few (not just DJT’s grandfather) were escaping military service and wars, while Jewish immigrants were escaping pogroms. I have no idea what led my 3rd great grandparents from “Sweden” and “Norway” to NYC in time for their daughter to be born in NYC in 1828. (Scare quotes because Norway was still ruled by the king of Sweden, so maybe she was technically a Swedish subject?) Maybe her father, Swensen, was in that Quaker group who came to NYC in 1825? (Quakers, back in the say, weren’t keen on dancing, as I recall.)

I just did some online research about Norway and Norwegian Americans. If what I read is correct, Norwegians came here less to flee poverty than to flee the prospect of it, given the primogeniture laws, radically decreasing infant mortality rates, and the shortage of farm land. They often came with enough money to get off to a decent start.

I’ve never thought of Norwegians, or Norwegian-Americans, as particularly introverted or not inclined to dance, though now that I think of it, one of the things that struck me about the Minnesotans I knew when I went to college there decades ago was their restrained way of conducting conversation. I thought that was just a contrast with my NYC area habits. I did know that it mattered a great deal to people whether their surname ended in -sen or -son. And my nephew’s Minnesota family maintain Norwegian traditions at Christmas.

[fiftygigs]

@osprey

but threesomes with the Zieglers are over

Check cellphones at the door  ; - )

[darrtown]

@21zna9

That could happen anywhere.

Yah, I know.
I was really pissed that day. Mostly at the incredably lazy cop here in Tucson who was way more interested in his lunch and a magazine than he was doing his damn job. The perp in my case coulda been nabbed had the cop here called a counterpart in that town in Arkansas. Then maybe I coulda kept my original card. But I had to get a new one and watch a banker cut up my old card. Then wait a few days for the bank to issue a new card.

[mch]

As I replied to @ted, I became familiar with some Norwegian- and Swedish-American traits when I went to college in Minnesota, and I recognize what you’re talking about. Very friendly and polite but, to “outsiders,” what seems in a superficial way. (The old “Minnesota nice.”) I will say, though, that my nephew’s Norwegian-American wife from Minnesota (surname “Rogness”) danced up a storm at her wedding, as did her bridesmaids – all of them St. Olaf grads.

I get the Alaska back-and-forthing with western Upper Midwest and the Northwest. My Minnesota born-and-raised grandfather went to Alaska (from Montana) for work during the Depression, and one of my husband’s sisters used to go back and forth between Oregon and Alaska until she settled in Alaska, marrying a Minnesota-born man whose family had moved to Alaska when he was a teenager. They’re planning to retire in the next couple of years and move to the Seattle area. (They’ll live near another sister who’s just moved to that area from Colorado – her husband was raised in Florida by Danish parents, and he still has relatives they visit in Denmark. He is the most taciturn and self-contained person I have ever known. I have trouble imagining him dancing! A friend of mine here in NE, born and raised in Ohio, is Danish on her father’s side – he was born in Denmark and raised all over the place because his father was in the diplomatic service. She’s also quiet and very self-contained. FWIW.)

[jnbenson]

@mch

I have trouble imagining him dancing!

I think we’re required. As I remarked elsewhere, I took up bass playing to get out of dancing.

ETA. I think that’s why so many Scandi folk dances are mixers. You can start out with your cousins, or even your sibling (usually literally) and get to dance with other people, without requiring an introduction.

[godwit]

@mch

From the late 1840’s onward, esp. after the CW, poverty was the main reason people came here from Sweden, Germany, Ireland, and Eastern Europe

There was also fleeing political oppression. Many of the Finnish settlers in Minnesota and the Dakotas were actual, factual socialists in addition to being impoverished.

Many current residents of the upper Midwest are unfamiliar with this history and don’t know why there’s a strong tradition of communal aid in their communities. They may feel nostalgic for barn raising and quilting bees, but they rarely stop to consider the fundamentally socialist nature of those activities.

People talk about rugged individualism, but what early European settlers actually did was set up community institutions as soon as they could: schools and churches - even if they only met when the circuit-rider came through - plus seasonal dances and entities like the grange movement.

[dicktater]

I’m a god

[ted]

… and Johnny Winter, Molly Ivins, Lady Bird Johnson, James Cotton, Albert Collins, Lucy Parsons … I could go on for hours.

[mch]

So true. Hence the Democratic Farmer Labor Party in MN. I remember reading years ago (when What’s the Matter with Kansas? was much in the news?) about Nebraska (as I recall) farmers who were part of collective that owned farm equipment (those massive harvesters and the like) which none of them could afford to purchase on their own. At the same time, they railed against “socialism” and “communism” (which they couldn’t distinguish from one another). One of the sites I just visited to learn more about Norwegian Americans, which reported on a recent book, made a big deal of Norwegian “volunteerism” and “community spirit” and included a photograph of a barn-raising either here or in Norway – as if rural folks everywhere, if they are fortunate enough to own or lease their own small farms, don’t participate together in things like barn-raising.

I observed something when I was researching my MA-to-RI-to-WI-to-MN family line (about whom I knew almost nothing). I found, online, local histories from the late 19th century, and articles from newspapers like The Mower County News, that celebrated “the pioneers” of Whitewater and Milwaukee (Wauwatosa, actually) and Mower County. These accounts were written as if Richard had gone to WI from RI in 1838 all by himself, joined a year later by his “pioneer” wife, Lydia, and their two toddlers (one born while Richard had gone ahead to WI). Turned out, I kept finding more and more of Richard’s brothers and sisters-mit-husbands (he had 10 siblings/half-siblings) coming at the same time (one brother) or within a year or two (all but one sister, who stayed with her husband and children in Providence). Also joining the clan in WI a year or two later: Richard’s father and stepmother. In 1859 Richard did go to MN with just his wife and 10 children (the eldest of whom would die a few years later in the CW, from disease), but a son of one of his sisters who had ended up back east soon moved to Minneapolis… Anyway, Richard was a “pioneer,” but hardly on his own.

His MA and RI ancestors would have called this “planting,” not “pioneering,” and they always settled on frontiers with family and other fellows. But in the late 1800’s a Colonial historian wrote a book, The Pioneers of Western Massacusettes. The myth of rugged individualism was being applied to the late 1600’s.

[dogselfie]

She is in for power and for as long as the money lasts.

[trnc]

@txlawyer

Reading Marcy’s articles is like reading somebody’s description of assembling a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle without bothering to tell you what the picture is on the box.

[bradbennett]

I’d love to take a trip again (50+ years later). But I can’t imagine I’d find a source I could trust.

Back in the day, tho…can’t believe the stuff I would take without much concern at all. Never did really have a bad trip though…except for those giant spiders. Boris gave me a flashback feeling!

[psudawnc]

My husband’s Swedish grandfather came to avoid being drafted into the Finnish Army. I don’t know about the grandfather on the other side except once here he worked for the railroad. Eventually, everyone worked for the steel mills around Pittsburgh.

[psudawnc]

I married a Swede and I see him and his family all have the look but with their personalities I cannot imagine any of them being Vikings.

[bradbennett]

Hey! I have that book!..somewhere…

As I recall it was way over my head as a boy just looking to have fun…

[john_adams]

@osprey

threesomes with the Zieglers are over

What kills me is that dumbass was invited to the party only because this woman wanted to get down with Mrs Fascist Asshole. He had a kinky little wife and got to have the kind of fund most men only see online. But - and here’s the warning for all of us - he was such an entitled psychopathic fascist that he thought he could take her whenever he wanted. That’s the dangerous mental illness caused by religion - I’m right, therefore you cannot argue with me.

Religion needs to end. All of them.

[mondfledermaus]

@darrtown

Got a question. Does HIPAA law apply to the AG of Texas? And is it legal for him to issue threats aimed at Ms Cox’s medical providers?

That is called limited government.

[mondfledermaus]

@godwit

There was also fleeing political oppression. Many of the Finnish settlers in Minnesota and the Dakotas were actual, factual socialists in addition to being impoverished.

One of the characters in my family’s history is Mrs. Guri Moe. She emigrated from Norway with her husband and brother in law at the beginning of he 20th Century. That part of Central Minnesota, has very marginal soil for agriculture, but according to legend Mr. Moe told his brother: “We can grow potatoes here, and there is fish in the lake, so we should be ok”. My grandfather was marveled at such a low expectations for life, but I guess when you are escaping starvation, keeping body and soul together is an acceptable goal.

[bradbennett]

Wow…just…wow.
What a find! One of the ‘newer’ songs?
What, they couldn’t get the rights to MC5 Kick Out The Jams…?

[bradbennett]

Laudable, to be sure.

My crowd was more the let’s throw him in the deep end and see what happens!
Come to think of it, I do recall watching many calls to Acid Rescue (hmmm…none were…fatal) so I did get pretty good at the connection and calming thing.