Snoopy and The Red Baron!

Yes, it's Snoopy!  What would an Air Museum be without Snoopy! 

We're finishing up our Fort Abercrombie day at the Fargo Air Museum and having an impressive time of it.  There's lots to see and (yea!) lots to read.  We're both going crazy taking pictures.  Pictures are good, but you really need to personally go to an air museum to understand just how big - and how small! - some of these planes and helicopters are.  For instance, this MASH helicopter:

We're probably all familiar with the TV series, "MASH."  This helicopter looks a LOT smaller than the one we always saw on TV.  Can you imagine being wounded and strapped to the OUTside of this lil' feller?  How spooky would that be?!

Look at Granpa standing on the other side of this plane.  It is so small!  But it really is pretty - a bit more aerodynamic than the MASH 'copter.  I think this is the one that came to the guys house in bits and pieces as a kit, and he had to put it together.  Can you imagine...

They even have a Graphotype machine that was used to make dogtags for military airmen.  Why, here in Fargo they have a whole...

Fort Abercrombie, North Dakota - 1862

And so we come to Fort Abercrombie.  Granpa brought his rubber boots with him, but I didn't.  The snow is about a foot deep; I had to stay in the car.  I took one picture with my iPhone, and Granpa came out about the size of a dot, so all the photos are on him.

The fort was established August 28, 1858 slap-dab on the Red River in what was then the Dakota Territory.  Ol' Lieutenant Colonel John J. Abercrombie must not have been too good at reading the signs of flooding (debris in tree limbs, etc.) because within two years the Fort had to be relocated a tad farther away.  It was the first permanent military fort (lots of fur-trading forts were built in the Territories), but it was the first military fort in what was to become North Dakota.

Two years later, Fort Abercrombie became the only fort in the Territory to ever be attacked by Indians.  During the Minnesota Indian War of 1862 (Minnesota being just on the other side of this here Red River), Dakota warriors laid siege to the fort for almost six weeks.  Interestingly (check the date: 1862), the regular army had been called back East, and there was only the Minnesota Volunteer Infantry to protect the settlers that gathered here for safety.

Now, my literature says that the blockhouses nor the palisades (wood fences) were here during that siege, just several scattered buildings surrounded by brush and trees - which were good cover for the Indians.  Funny, back then surrounding your homes with trees was dangerous for that reason; now, surrounding your homes with trees is considered wise as protection from blizzard winds.  Ah, the times they are a changin'.

The remainder of the story reads like a movie script:

When the seventy-eight men of Company D of the 5th Minnesota Militia Regiment left Fort Snelling in March of 1862, they were told there would be 20,000 rounds of ammunition waiting for them at Fort Abercrombie.  There was, but it was the wrong caliber.  This must be where the term SNAFU originated.  SNAFU is an acronym for Situation Normal, All Fouled Up.  The ammunition that awaited them was .58-caliber.  They needed .69-caliber for the Harpers Ferry muskets that Company D had been issued. (Those are the very same muskets that Lewis and Clark used fifty years before!)  Captain Vander Horck requested the correct caliber in April.  In May he was told it was on the way.  June 10th he again requested it.  July 30th Vander Horck was again notified that it was on the way - but it never arrived.


Along with the seventy-eight men of Company D there were about eighty men, women and children that came to the fort for protection once they knew the Indians were on the war path.  There was no regular military, essentially no bullets, no fences, lots of brush - but they did have three 12-pound mountain howitzers.  Everyone set to work building piles of cordwood and timber around the buildings and setting up the howitzers.

On August 23rd things began to accelerate.  Patrols found the mutilated bodies of three men, a woman, and a child in a building about fifteen miles away.  Then they found a wounded, elderly woman, crawling along a riverbank, who had managed to stay alive by eating frogs.  (Ewww!)  She said the Indians had killed her husband and kidnapped her grandson.  And people think women - especially old women - are wimps.  Not!

Couriers were sent out to request reinforcements from St. Paul, Minnesota.

A week later, on the 30th, the Indians attacked.  Three days later, at daybreak, almost 400 nearly naked warriors (except for war paint and a loin cloth) attacked.  By sundown six Indians were thought to have been killed and fifteen wounded.  The garrison was down to 350 rounds of ammunition, so the defenders began searching through a "treaty" train that had arrived at the fort just as all the commotion was about to begin.  They found black powder, fifty muzzle loading shotguns, and canister for the cannon.  Someone had the bright idea of opening those canisters and, lo and behold, found .69-caliber balls just right for the Harpers Ferry muskets!  Folks, Hollywood can't write it this good!

Again at daybreak, on September 6th, the Indians attacked and everyone experienced the fiercest fighting yet.  There were thought to be 150 - 200 Indians from the upper Sioux Sisseton and Wahpeton band of Dakota Sioux, including a known warrior, Sweet Corn, of the Sisseton.  The Indians set fire to the haystacks, then came at the fort from three sides.  At least two made it to within thirty feet of the fort before being killed.  After extended fighting, cannon fire drove them back to the riverbank. 

The fort lost three men; the Indians fared much worse apparently, because when men later went to the river to fetch water (there was no well at the fort) they found blood soaked rags and bits of clothing along with broken guns.

On September 21st, Vander Horck having heard no word of reinforcements, sent two men - along with twenty men as an escort until they got past the Indian lines - for help.  The escort was attacked as it was returning, losing two men.

By that time, a relief column of about 450 men was on its way, and they found the body of a man named Austin.  His scalped and severed head was found some distance away.  Two days later, September 22, they discovered two more mangled bodies.  The next day two more, horribly mutilated bodies were found.  (Now, I could tell you in detail exactly what they mean by "mutilated," but it really is way too gruesome.  I have a rule about watching television:  if it's too bad to happen live in our living room, it's too bad to watch, change the channel, Granpa.  Well, this is about the same:  it's too bad to talk about.  What I do want people to know is that the American Indian was not all about communing with nature and being like the 1960's flower child.  American Indians of the old west, when they were war-like, were brutal beyond description.  (Yes, there were - and I'm afraid still are - white men just a brutal, but Hollywood usually leaves out the barbaric nature of the Indians of the Old West.  An exception that does come to mind, though, is the 1992 version of "The Last of the Mohicans" with Daniel Day-Lewis.)

The reinforcements arrived at Fort Abercrombie on the 23rd, bringing the mutilated bodies with them for burial.  A true humdinger of a celebration took place right then and there for the salvation of the settlers.  (Why don't we celebrate like that when someone accepts Christ and has eternal salvation??)   Scattered fighting continued for a while, but the siege was over.  All in all, Vander Horck lost five men with another five having been wounded.  Not too bad.

The relief force soon got sent back east to fight in the Civil War, but Vander Horck remained, clearing the brush and trees that the Indians had used for cover, erecting three blockhouses and a stockade on three sides of the fort.  They continued to provide protection for anyone and everyone until abandoning the fort in 1877.

Whew!  What a Saturday this has been!!

Another Saturday; Another Road Trip

Another Saturday, another day for investigation and adventure!  This time we are headed south of Fargo to the remains of Fort Abercrombie.  Blizzard conditions are forecast for tonight, but today seems like it will be okay.  However, the windshield washers have frozen over and Granpa pulls off at a North Dakota rest area to see what he can do to unfreeze them.  I, of course, say, "Ya' gotta take a picture of that brick mural."

Then its back on the road.  We find the exit, and as we get farther from the Interstate the roads are less maintained, but certainly still drivable.  Before we reach the town of Fort Abercrombie, John stops (mostly) on the side of the road to take one of his favorite pictures:  a lone tree in an enormous landscape.

What do you think Freud would say about that??

Just to let you know what kind of folks there are in North Dakota, though, we're in the middle of "nowhere" and a North Dakota driver pulls over to ask if we need help.  They are the nicest people up here!!  It's like the world my momma grew up in, where everyone knows everyone else, strangers are to be helped not feared, guns and hunting are good, outdoors anything is good.  They are farmers and ranchers like Momma's people.  I think I could get to like it up here...

What To Take To Bed With You

What to take to bed with you - not a joke.

Pretty neat idea.  Never thought of it before.  Put your car keys beside your bed at night.

Tell your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your parents, everyone you run across. Put your car keys beside your bed at night.

If you hear a noise outside your home or someone trying to get in your house, just press the panic button for your car. The alarm will be set off, and the horn will continue to sound until either you turn it off or the car battery dies.

This tip came from a neighborhood watch coordinator. Next time you come home for the night and you start to put your keys away, think of this:  It's a security alarm system that you probably already have and requires no installation. Test it. It will go off from most everywhere inside your house and will keep honking until your battery runs down or until you reset it with the button on the key fob chain. It works if you park in your driveway or garage.

If your car alarm goes off when someone is trying to break into your house, odds are the burglar or rapist won't stick around. After a few seconds, all the neighbors will be looking out their windows to see who is out there and sure enough the criminal won't want that. 

And remember to carry your keys while walking to your car in a parking lot. The alarm can work the same way there. This is something that should really be shared with everyone. Maybe it could save a life or a sexual abuse crime. 

Would also be useful for any emergency, such as a heart attack, where you can't reach a phone. A friend's mom has suggested to her husband that he carry his car keys with him in case he falls outside and she doesn't hear him calling for help. He can activate the car alarm and then she'll know there's a problem. 

Please pass this on even IF you've read it before. It's a reminder.

Lewis and Clark at UND

Hoping to have Granpa's contract here in Grand Forks, North Dakota extended, we signed up for a couple of OLLI courses through the University of North Dakota.  We are both taking a course on "Lewis and Clark."  They suggested we get a copy of "Undaunted Courage" by Stephen E. Ambrose and at least peruse it before classes started.  It's a pretty good book.

We have had two classes and learned a bit more than what we've gleaned over the years:

First, everyone agreed Thomas Jefferson was the most important part of the Corps of Discovery (the name given to Lewis and Clark's expedition) for obvious reasons.  But there are lots of reasons not so obvious - until a college professor (Dr. Kimberly Porter) puts them in some kind of order or context.

Jefferson's dad was a professor of math at William and Mary College, but he was also a surveyor.  He had a substantial library of books in a time when books were tremendously rare - over forty of those were about science.  Peter, his dad, instilled a love of learning in his oldest son.  Jefferson had an insatiable appetite for knowledge of just about everything, but he particularly loved America's west, possibly because it was the great unknown.  He even owned land on the other side of the Allegheny Mountains, though he never in his lifetime crossed those mountains.  (Land was a standard form of barter or payment in those days.  Most folks were land rich and money poor.)

By the time Thomas Jefferson was 40 years old, in 1783, he had made plans to send a survey party west, hoping one George Rogers Clark, a veteran of the American Revolution, would lead it.  This Clark declined, but years later his younger brother, William Clark, would accomplish that trip along with Meriwether Lewis.

Three years later, in 1786, while Jefferson was in Paris chatting with a man by the name of John Ledyard of Connecticut, the subject came up again.  This time Ledyard said HE would accomplish the deed, all by his boy lonesome, with nothing more than two dogs and a hatchet for firewood, only by going EAST from Paris, through Poland, across Russia to the Bering Strait, and walk down through what is now Alaska and the Yukon Territory, etc.  When he got to Russia, Catherine the Great had him arrested and tossed back into Poland.

Six years after THAT, in 1792, Jefferson was George Washington's Secretary of State and they together approached Benjamin Franklin's American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia to fund a trip out west.  A Frenchman by the name of Andre Michaux was chosen to be the leader only to be found out later as a SPY for France.  (Remember, France, England, Spain, and yes, even Russia were highly interested in acquiring a solid legal foothold on the North American continent.)  So ended Jefferson's plan #3...

Jefferson became president in 1801.  We'll call this next thing Plan #4:  In 1802, he sent a "For Your Eyes Only" to Congress requesting funding to send a small group of men tip-toeing out west, just for a look-see.  By 1803, Congress approved it and Jefferson asked his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to put together a Corps.

Publicly, though, Jefferson was politely, diplomatically asking the various nations that felt they had a claim to certain lands out west, if they would officially agree to the trek.  They all said no, because there was this thing known as "Right of Discovery."  Basically, any country could lay claim to "unclaimed" land, but until someone actually walked across it - and could unequivocally prove it - it was all he said/she said.

In the meantime, on the other side of the world, Jefferson's Secretary of State, James Monroe, was on a mission to offer Napoleon $10 million for New Orleans so that citizens of the Ohio Territory could ship their goods down the Mississippi River to ocean-going vessels.  Napoleon's mouthpiece, Talleyrand, said, "No."  Monroe says, "How about a long-term lease for the same $10 million?"  Talleyrand said, "No."  But how about this for a come-back:  "We will SELL it to you, though, the entire Louisiana Territory, for $15 million."  Monroe struggled desperately with his conscience and the Constitution, and said, "Okay."  Three cents an acre sounds like a good deal - but that times 550,000,000 acres would add up to 2 1/2 times the Federal budget of the day!

The New England states wanted no part of the deal.  They said America had too little money and too much land already.  What they really meant was, we don't want America any bigger because we might lose all of our political power!  But, on December 20, 1803, Congress voted to accept the Monroe/Napoleon deal.  Lewis and Clark no longer had to tip-toe; America now owned everything they had hoped to explore!  This became the successful, historic Plan #5.  Thus, Jefferson's dream would come true after more than twenty years of trying.

See?  We don't always know all that we think we know.  It's kind of Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story," eh.

SkyView App

What a really cool app for the iPhone!  and it's FREE!  When you search for it there will be several "SkyView's."  The one Granpa downloaded is:  SkyView - Explore the... by Terminal Eleven LLC Education.  It has a black and white icon with a picture of the SpaceShuttle flying between the Earth and it's moon. 

When you point your phone toward the sky, your phone's GPS will kick in and a constellation will appear.  Point the phone to a different part of the sky, and the stars and constellations will move and new ones show up!

Granpa showed it to me in bed last night.  We laid there in the warm snuggly bed identifying stars and constellations.  He says one of our sons showed it to him months ago, but he just now got around to downloading it.  I think Granpa has 1,947 apps downloaded to his iPhone now.  You know, the phone he said he didn't want...

Paul Bunyan and Babe, The Big Blue Ox

So we get back to tootlin' up the highway.  It starts to snow and the wind picks up.

We turn north and head for Bemidji.  The snow gets heavier and "flakier."  It begins to build up on the highway.  Headlights come on and windshield wipers.

At Bemidji we plan to turn west and head for home, hoping to make it by nightfall.  Remember, I always go prepared, so we have food and "Big Bertha" the sleeping bag...

But, surprise, surprise (why am I ALWAYS surprised?) we have to make a stop in Bemidji to have our pictures taken with my childhood fictional folk hero friends, Paul Bunyan and Babe, his big blue ox.  Faint little memories are coming back to me that, yes, Minnesota was his home, but I don't recall Bemidji being his "hometown."  However, here they are, bigger than life (literally!)

Now I've had my picture taken on Wall Street with the Bull and in Minnesota with the Ox!

I hope the following excerpts from the folk lore will entice you to actually get some of the stories about him and read them:

Now I hear tell that Paul Bunyan was born in Bangor, Maine. It took five giant storks to deliver Paul to his parents. His first bed was a lumber wagon pulled by a team of horses. His father had to drive the wagon up to the top of Maine and back whenever he wanted to rock the baby to sleep... 

Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard. People had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before...  (That was the winter Babe was born.)


One winter, shortly after Paul Bunyan dug Lake Michigan as a drinking hole for his blue ox, Babe, he decided to camp out in the Upper Peninsula. It was so cold in that there logging camp, that... 


One winter, Paul Bunyan came to log along the Little Gimlet in Oregon. Ask any old timer who was logging that winter, and they'll tell you I ain't lying when I say his kitchen covered about ten miles of territory...

They were tall tales for sure, but very, very entertaining to young and old.  It was the year 1910 and America needed a hero and some cheering up.  We were in the midst of World War I, there were problems with unemployment (horror of horrors! unemployment was at .023% - that's point-zero-two-three, but that translated to over 2 million out of work), and Americans had workplace safety issues and child labor scandals, and life expectancy was about 50 (compared to about 80 today).  There were immigration and poverty issues, less than 10% of students graduated from high school, black people were barred by labor unions from joining and therefore kept at terribly low wages, women still didn't have the right to vote - didn't get that right until 1919.  (Black men got the right to vote in 1867)  See?  Aren't you already more depressed than when you were reading Paul's tall tales??  Newspapermen all across the country realized this guy could have their print flying off of news stands everywhere.


Paul Bunyan was the embodiment of American frontier vitality.  He is still a "symbol of might, the willingness to work hard, and the resolve to overcome all obstacles."  Granpa, too, just had to have his picture taken with this giant of a man and his faithful companion, Babe.

We made it home after dark - but we made it home safe and sound.

Tootlin' - Eagles and Buffalo

So, we're off tootlin' around the country side of western Minnesota and come across this pretty winter scene that I just had to share with you.

This is winter, also, but it certainly reminds us of unpicked cotton fields back home:

The "cotton" is actually little clumps of snow caught in the forks of tiny branches on the roadside brush.  We must be getting homesick, huh?

It's amazing how many places here DON'T have icicles.  That means their roofs are insulated really good.  This is a fishing resort on one of the "10,000" lakes in Minnesota.  But the lakes are frozen solid this time of year, so I guess snowmobilers stay here now.

Doin' a lil' more tootlin' and what to our wondering eyes appear but some Minnesota buffalo.

And even MORE amazingly (I tell ya', God is so good to those who are faithful.  He just drops in little surprises daily so that we're reminded he's still in control of all things!), even more amazingly we see ...

John's very first wild bald eagle!!  (I saw one on my tent-camping drive to Alaska with Granma Jo in 1999.)  Now, this guy wasn't just good enough to pose for about a dozen pictures, but he decided to do a fly around for us:

This was a pretty good photo, but, even though the next one only caught a tip of his wing, I like it, too!

Then he came back, sat in his "sentinel tree," and lets Granpa take even more pictures.  He moved from one spot to another, turning his head from side to side, as though he really was posing for us.  Thank you, God, you are so-o-o good to us! 

Snowbow !!

I've seen rainbows, double rainbows, rainbows actually touching the ground (but no pot of gold there).  Now we can say we've seen a "snowbow!"

I know.  It's hard to see, but it's there!

I could tell you how rainbows are made, but that's no fun.  Snowbows are made the same way only with ice crystals instead of raindrops.  I don't know if there really is such a word as "snowbow," but there ought to be!

Does Your Bible Look Like this?

Where is your Bible?  Did you know that there are some Christian religions that basically say, "Let the priest interpret this for you."  They, then, never open the Bible for themselves.

Others open their Bible, study it during services, and put it up until the next service.  They take extensive notes in a notebook or in some other way.

Still others never take notes at all.  They must have a MUCH better memory than I do!!

This is my Bible:

Some folks are horrified, absolutely horrified! that I would write in the Bible!  The Bible is just a book in my opinion.  The words are what is sacred.  I tried taking notes somewhere else, but they never seem to be where I need them when I want to reference them.  Sometimes, if we're hearing from a new preacher, I write his name next to the text he's preaching on.  It's always fun to run across it several years later.

But mostly it's clarification to what is in the text.  Or the Greek word something was translated from, which is immensely helpful in understanding the writer's intended meaning.

Simple, but very important things like Jews were not Baptized because they were "born" into the family of God, are learned and noted.  Baptism was only intended for non-Jews.  This morning the discussion was on the Greek word "Koinonia."  We usually think of it as fellowship, but see that list of verses I penned in on the right?  Those are all scriptures where the word "Koinonia" has been translated into lots more than fellowship.  Ultimately, Pastor Ray Russell here in Grand Forks, North Dakota said that Christianity isn't about the individual; it is about the body of Christ.  It's not about being the Lone Ranger. (I wonder if he knew that was a Texas reference, since he's from Canada?)  It's about the corporate body of Christ loving each other, caring for each other, sharing with one another, lifting each other up, because we are all a part of one.  If we don't come together for "Koinonia" the "body" will fall apart.  Also, isolation prevents growth, healthy growth.

Well, those notes will remind me, and they will help me share what I learned - maybe years from now.  Maybe my kids and grandkids will pull my Bible out at my funeral and begin to understand me better, be drawn closer to the Lord because of these notes.  Without those notes, preachers sometimes might as well be throwing their words to the wind.  Today's words were penned in ink - for the ages.

When I run out of room in this Bible, I will buy another and start all over.  So, what does your Bible look like?

Something Incredibly Rare in Local History

The Thortvedts.   This family was full of talent and industry; they utilized both to the fullest!

The father, Levi, was an inventor, fiddler and a published author (beginning with his diary in 1903.)  The whole family saved their "letters, diaries, scrapbooks, photographs..."  This, in effect, recorded what they and their community felt about the things going on around them on a daily basis. In this day and age, recording the events of the world is no problem - but who is keeping a journal of the everyday family?  It absolutely is not like what you see on ANY television show.  So?  Who's doing it?

In December of 1870, Tone Thortvedt served as a midwife at the birth of their neighbors, the Skrei.

Orabel kept alphabetical listings of people, places and events in the area:

She had literally VOLUMES of data:

She was also an accomplished artist recording what folks thought then was routine, possibly boring "life":

She records the story behind the painting as follows:  "This painting depicts the first stagecoach arriving on the Red River.  In the summer of 1859, the Minnesota Stage Company built a road from Saint Cloud to the new army fort on the Red River Frontier:  Fort Abercrombie.  They had two stagecoaches filled with passengers on their way north to Fort Garry (the settlement now known as Winnipeg, Manitoba).  The plan was to have the passengers go from the stagecoach to a steamboat that had just been constructed on the Red River.  Things did not go according to plan.

"Along the way the stagecoaches met Anson Northup, the owner of the steamboat.  Captain Northup informed them that he had no intention of taking passengers on his boat.  'If you want to run her,' Captain Northup told them, 'you'll have to buy her.'  In the end, the Minnesota Stage Company had a raft made for the passengers.  It took 22 days to float down the river to Fort Garry."

The "rest of the story" is about two sisters, the Stirling's, who had traveled from Scotland to meet Elleonora's fiancee, Robert Campbell, who ran Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca in northeast Alberta.  After reaching Fort Abercrombie they had to float on the raft for 22 days, then sail 300 miles to the tip of Lake Winnipeg and take a birch bark canoe for the last 800 miles!  Now THAT is true love!!

I love to talk story, as they say in Hawaii, but, with all of my blogging, how much of it is personal or records day-to-day events in our lives?  Things like the price of a loaf of bread (almost $3 now, and I remember Momma sending me into a 7-11 to buy a loaf for a dime) or the price of a gallon of gasoline. (When I first got married I remember gasoline wars between service stations and buying gas for $.14 - fourteen cents! - a gallon.  It, too, is now $3 or $4 or sometimes even $5!)  I write about history, ignoring the fact that someday WE will be history!  The Thortvedts did good!

Fargo, ND/Moorhead, Minnesota Historical Museum

Also in the Hjemkomst Center are several collections of personal memorabilia from a couple of prominent 1800's residents of Clay County. 

Now, the information at the museum identifies this as Annie Stein (1872 - 1923), but it sure does remind me of someone in "The Wizard of Oz..." 

Miss Annie's daddy started the farm with 148 acres, left it in 1861 to fight in the Civil War, and came home with a wife and baby son.  Her family operated the Georgetown hotel, a ferry across the Red River, a stagecoach station, and built up a farm of over 800 acres.  Her brothers ran a general store and a sawmill.

How does a well-to-do woman of the 1800's occupy her time while all the men are off tending to their businesses?  Apparently, if it was artistic, Miss Annie tried her hand (very successfully) at it.

In April of 1997, Grand Forks, just about an hour north of Fargo on the Red River, experienced a flood of Katrina proportions.  Their levies broke and almost the entire city was swallowed by flood waters.  The vast majority of structures we see today in Grand Forks are brand new, located farther from the Red River, behind larger levies.  Well, Miss Annie painted a scene that she witnessed of a Red River flood in Georgetown:   100 years ago, April of 1897,

She's a pretty good artist, eh?

She also painted scenes from the Spanish American War of 1898, scenes she copied from magazines like Harper's Weekly.  The horse is bleeding from a wound and the soldier is tending to it.

Yup, she was a pretty good artist.  There are lots more paintings and representations of her other artistic works, household items, and more stories from her life.  I really do like museums!

Hopperstad Stave Church

Also at the Hjemkomst Center, just outside the back door, we discover our second bonus of the day.

How absolutely gorgeous!  I'd trade in our log home for this any day!

The church, constructed of cedar, redwood and pine, is an exact, full-size replica of the Hopperstad Stave church in Vik, Norway.

How would you like to live in a country with a coast line like this - almost within walking distance of all of its citizens!  Over 15,000 miles!


Stave (referring to the construction) churches were built after the Viking Age in the 1100-1200's.  The use of vertical posts, or staves, evolved into wooden architectural works of art.  Guy Paulson began carving for this construction in January 1997, with the on-site construction beginning in August of that year.  The completed church was dedicated in 1998.  Eighteen 27-foot tall staves make up the core of the building, with the overall finished height of the church being 72 feet tall.  24,000 cedar shingles were used for the roofing.

See the covered porch all the way around?  This allowed people with leprosy to "attend" services and participate in communion as well as providing shelter for the church.

Gorgeous!!

Norwegian Trolls

These are the greeters for the Hjemkomst Center.  They are life-size wood carvings by Steinar Karlsen.  They were carved before a live audience at the 25th Annual Scandinavian Hjemkomst Festival in 2002.  Their images were on the official 2003 Festival Commemorative Button.  I don't think anyone ever gave them a name though.

Karlsen  has written books and poetry, composed songs, mastered painting and drawing before taking  up wood carving in 1990.  He has since created over 400 human sculptures for Scandinavian festivals in the Midwest.

This is the guy that pointed the way to the Viking ship (but he's not a troll.)

I like 'em!
 If you want a fun synopsis of Norwegian Trolls, go to http://www.squidoo.com/troll-of-norway
 

A Viking Ship In North Dakota!

Golly gee!  What will we find NEXT?  This is so-o-o-o cool!

Isn't this amazing?  Especially to find it in Fargo, North Dakota!  It is magnificent - and a real ocean-going Viking (replica) ship - it's been sailed to Norway!  You know that remains of a Viking colony has been found in Newfoundland, Canada, proving the Vikings (not Columbus) were the first Europeans in the New World.  No wonder the Scandinavians up here are so (properly) proud of their heritage!

 Here is a photo of the Hjemkomst sailing into Bergen Harbor:

The Hjemkomst

It took 72 days to cross the Atlantic from Duluth, Minnesota to Bergen, Norway.

The Hjemkomst was built by hand Robert Asp.  Vikings from the Ninth century took only a year to construct one of these, but it took a whole team of skilled craftsmen.  It took Robert six years. The keel is laid first and only has an 11 1/2" drop from where the upward curves for the bow and stern begin.  (Has anyone ever heard the term, "keel-hauled?"  It's an old sailor's punishment.  He'd have a rope tied around his waist and be thrown off the bow of the ship.  If he survived being hauled under the water under the keel, he'd be hauled back on board.  I'm thinkin' I'd only need to be "keel-hauled" once... - what am I saying!  I'd only have to know what keel-hauling was and I'm thinkin' I would never step out of line!!)

Once the keel was laid, you'd begin adding on the strakes (or planks) that form the hull of the ship.  You can see that the strakes overlap and are fastened together with a "Ro."  THEN the Viking's would form fit ribs into the hull.  (Special Agent Gibbs on "NCIS" does it the other way around - ribs first then the hull.)  Ultimately this is what Robert Asp and the Vikings would end up with:

The Hjemkomst keel was laid in 1974 and she was christened in 1980 at the Hawley Shipyard in Hawley, Minnesota. 

Robert Asp based his design on the Gokstad, a ship discovered in 1880 by archeologists digging in a clay mound in Gokstad, Norway.  The ship was apparently buried along with its wealthy Viking chieftain, probably Olaf Geirstada-Alf, after his death.  The clay preserved it, and his bones, for these 1,000 years - awesome for us!!  They also buried 12 horses, 6 dogs, and a peacock - not so awesome for them.  (I understand the horses and dogs for the afterlife, but a peacock?)

This is impressive - but there is oh-so-much more at the Hjemkomst Center!

Weather Forecast - or Pastcast

Wow!  What a weekend!  We had lows of 20-25 degrees below zero, and wind chill factors of 50 below.  There were blizzard conditions and white-outs.

I thought that kinda stuff only happened in Alaska!  There's cold, and then there is downright silliness!

Yup!  This is ice on the inside of the bedroom window...

 I think it's time for one of Granma's special recipes:

Day's End

Well, thank you, Lord, for a long and wonderful day.  And thank you, Granpa, for being a sweetheart and letting us make it to the headwaters of the Mississippi.

I just don't get it when folks say they see no reason to take a trip - even a one-day trip.  We always find something to surprise and delight us.  Who would have ever expected to find this beautiful piece of artwork here?

It's time to be getting on our way.  God has one more surprise for us, though.

Some of them stop on the other side of the road for a last goodbye...

as the sun finally sets in the west.

The First Colony of the United States

No, not the first colony IN the United States, the first colony OF the United States:  The Old Northwest Territory.  I never thought about that before, the fact that America had colonies of it's own...

THAT'S a big chunk of land!  Seems to be bordered by all the Great Lakes...

The Treaty of Paris in 1763, ending the French and Indian War against the British colonies in North America, granted all French territory on the "mainland" of North America to either the British or Spanish. The French and Indian War was the war George Washington cut his teeth on, so to speak.  He got his hinny whupped (as we say in Texas) by the French at Fort Duquesne in Ohio, but he learned from his mistakes, and we know the rest of that story...

In the Treaty of Paris, the British received Quebec and the Ohio Valley, essentially extending their northwest boundary from the northwest angle of Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi River.  (Itasca was the western boundary!  THAT's why it was important to find the source!  And we found it!  Cool!)

That's the little frozen lake behind the marker that the Mississippi flows from.

The port of New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi were ceded to Spain in the Treaty of Paris for their efforts as a British ally. 

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, signed July 13, 1787 by the Confederation Congress (the United States Constitution wasn't signed until September 17th, 1787, so there wasn't "Congress" as we know it today)...  The Northwest Ordinance established a government for the Northwest Territory, outlined the process for admitting a new state to the Union, and guaranteed that newly created states would be equal to the original thirteen states.  It was officially titled "An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States North West of the River Ohio."

Thus began the westward expansion of America.  That's good because Granpa and I can now go all over and never cross an international border!

Wow, 1787 and this Ordinance outlawed slavery in the new territories.  Congress knew even then that slavery was wrong - they just weren't sure how to get rid of it.  It took the will of the people (Abolitionists for certain) to ultimately bring it about. 

This is interesting:  The Northwest Ordinance outlawed the right of primogeniture in the Territory.  That's the right of the first born to inherit the parent's everything.  We don't think about that much in America, do we?  That's another piece of the "puzzle of reasons" folks immigrated here:  if they weren't the first born son, no matter how wealthy the parents were, they received nothing of the inheritance.  The only way they could make their way in the world was to pull themselves up by their boot straps.  The best way to do that was to come to America.

Along these same lines, the Ordinance also established the awesome principle of American colonies becoming equal in all ways with the parent State if they were ever granted statehood.  (Kind of a government abolishment of the right of colonial primogeniture.)  These things were important to our Founding Fathers because they recognized first hand the harm that it created in Europe.