Easiest birthday to remember, good ol’ 1-2-3 or 1/23. Should we live to 2045 it will be even cooler. Women do outlive men on average so the odds favor her and not me to be around to write about it. If I do, I wonder if the Internet and Web pages will be around. Obviously they’ll be in different forms, maybe injected directly into our brains or through HUDs via our glasses or contacts.
Moving into less morbid territory, I want to wish my faraway friend a great birthday wish. She mentioned some kind of plans to give a presentation regarding her ancestry and ethnicity. Long, long ago (20 years), when I lived in North Dakota, I learned about how the state was settled by the various European people. The eastern side which is closer to Minnesota tends to have more people of Norwegian descent, if the rumors were to be believed. I wouldn’t know for sure because I lived in the western side that was more German. However, according to Cindy’s research, these weren’t the Germans most American conjure up in their collective memories or imaginations: Bavarians, Prussians, etc. Even my ancestors were from the “mainstream” Germany but left due to Kulturkampf (I have no idea which province, Grandpa told the story differently every time). The Germans of North Dakota (Cindy’s family) came from what would be modern-day Russia. I’d say they were pretty far from home, what with Poland and Ukraine being in between the two nations. Given a choice, these Germans packed up, travelled across the Atlantic (probably), trekked across the US to settle in North Dakota because the climate and geography resembled where they came from. That or the other people living in America didn’t let them see the brochures about the warmer parts of the US.
This explained a ton of things when I left North Dakota to attend Marquette in Milwaukee, another infamous city dominated by German immigrants. The Milwaukeans never heard of fleischkuekle and when I described it, they’d wince a bit followed with the statement of, “Whatever that is, it isn’t German!”
Cindy is free to post corrections regarding all this, my memory is a bit hazy since I gave my informational speech on famous NoDaks in Speech 12 at Marquette; I did get an A on it.
Not a bad anecdote. I thought I was going to be stumped after covering all the more interesting bases last year (celebrity birthdays she shares, etc.).
No corrections, you got it perfectly! Thanks for the German-Russian shout-out. We’re always looking to lure more of our bretheran in. I think except for Italians escaping the Mob, the Germans from Russia kids were lied to the most as to where Grandpa actually came from, so lots of folks don’t even know they are one of us.