Check cellphones at the door ; - )
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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.
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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.)
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.
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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.
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I’m a god
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… and Johnny Winter, Molly Ivins, Lady Bird Johnson, James Cotton, Albert Collins, Lucy Parsons … I could go on for hours.
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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.
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She is in for power and for as long as the money lasts.
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!
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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.
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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.
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Hey! I have that book!..somewhere…
As I recall it was way over my head as a boy just looking to have fun…
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.
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That is called limited government.
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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.
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Wow…just…wow.
What a find! One of the ‘newer’ songs?
What, they couldn’t get the rights to MC5 Kick Out The Jams…?
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.
One of Richard’s sons, my great grandfather Will, was born in WI, was a young teen when they went on to MN, helped his father and brothers break prairie on the incredibly rich soil of Mower County, and as a young man had his own farm. As it happens, Will didn’t like farming and, according to one of his daughters, Helen, whose letter to my father I have, wasn’t very good at it, either. Will seems to have been very religious (well, they all were, but Will very much so) and sort of passive, but his wife Callie – born in Alabama of Connecticut/RI parents who, for reasons that flummox me, had moved to Alabama as young marrieds, and then she as a little girl came from Alabama with her parents to Mower County after the CW – well, Callie was a force of nature, and thanks to her, she and Will sold their Mower County farm, moved to a college town where Will painted houses; all but the eldest of their 10 children – a girl who never married and always stayed with her parents – went to college, even the girls. Callie saw to that.
So, where was I going? Notice that Richard moved to WI and MN just after each had gained statehood, felled woods in Wauwatosa, and broke prairie where Indians had recently been removed as a serious threat to white settlers. In other words, he worked his ass off but also benefited (shrewdly) from “being there first.” His sons did, too. (His other sons – less Henry, who died in the CW – were more ambitious than Will. For instance, one went to Nevada as a young man, made a lot of money from silver mining and, returning to MN, bought a number of farms in Mower County and became very wealthy in a farm-owning way (he also worked his own). Another introduced – get this! – commercial hog farming to MN! That one also served in the MN legislature. He also lost both his daughters, his only children.)
Will and Callie retired to San Diego (that’s a story in itself, involving Callie’s “bachelor uncle” Mower Country farmer who left everything to Callie, so they could afford this move), followed by two other sons, one of whom became one of the first farmers in the Imperial Valley. My father’s aunt Helen wrote him about this – in his old age my father took an interest in family history. I love Helen’s letters – that New England wryness with the added lightheartedness of the Midwest. She delighted that this brother of hers in the Imperial Valley “grew asparagus for the eastern market!” (Exclamation mark: hers.)
So, back to the subject of Nordic MN and beyond. My NE Anglo ancestors in MN were, by my father’s generation, blithely marrying Nordic folks (and Jews and Muslims – more stories there). But in those earlier days, many of the Anglo New Englanders had gotten there first and owned the best land and were the dreaded bankers.
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