My new book, Plights, and Perils of Persevering Pioneers got released on March 31st, which is about the time all of the libraries in the United States closed. I have attached links to the book for those of you who have Internet access. I hope to get our local libraries interested in carrying the book for those without the internet. The first link below is for Austin Macauley, then Barnes and Noble, or go to https://www.amazon.com/Leland-Olson/e/B078X4QNT8%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
Some great reading, I just found your blog. Thank you.
Members of the Estensen family recorded in Wisconcin continued moving west to settle near Lake Poinsett in Dakota Territory. They were first cousins to my family the Hoels. Torsten Estensen was a preacher who traveled on horseback.
Campaigning in Iowa a few weeks back, presidential candidate Michele Bachmann made reference to the “Muskego Manifesto” and its impact on her ancestors’ decision to migrate to the United States. Be that as it may, since it was a “manifesto” the Muskego document must be a weighty declaration on some matter of great import, right?
It certainly was important to the eighty men who signed it. They were Norwegian immigrants, among the first Norse to settle in Wisconsin. They had followed the age old immigrant pattern of following those who had come before and settled in the vicinity of what became the Waukesha county village of Muskego.
The first Norse settled at Muskego in 1839. Many others followed, and Muskego became a sort of Plymouth Colony for Wisconsin Norwegians. If you could say you stopped in Muskego before moving on to found or join one of the many other Norwegian…
All of the doctors and scientists around the world are in mad rush to find a cure to beat the coronavirus. I hope somebody out there considers a simple natural solution. It is possible one of natures strongest germ killers tea tree oil could be used in some form. It might be the weapon that will stop COVID-19. A cure must be found.
I have started to wonder how accurate genealogy testing is. My test shows that I’m 97% Finnish and 3% Norwegian. My grandma Minnie Grape was Swedish, there should be a little Swede in me someplace. Ole at Crimson Lake
Ole and his brother Eston, went to Alberta Canada around 1905 and settled near the Rocky Trading Post. They remained there for the rest of their lives.
Ron Kangas, a Finnish friend from Lake Norden South Dakota USA sent me this book. He was one of the first Stihl chainsaw dealers in this area. He started his first Stihl shop on his farm west of town and later built a store in Watertown South Dakota USA. I want to share some of the pictures from his book with the rest of the world. I’m sure many people will recognize him and his family, especially those living in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon and Washington. Ron and his wife also made trips to Europe to the home of Stihl chainsaws. Ron mentioned having one customer from Australia.
I have had to use CPAP and, finally, BiPAP machines for 20 years. The oxygen level in my blood gets low while I sleep. I usually have dreams that wake me up. I have concluded the subconscious mind creates those dreams to wake me up to start breathing again. The alternative would be to sleep until the oxygen to my brain got depleted, and I would simply die sleeping. The more I think about it, that would be a way to check out.
My dreams are mostly about falling, so before landing, I automatically wake up and start breathing, this has worked well. Recently my thoughts have been tainted or infiltrated by news flashes, shocking events of suffocating, suffering and dying people, also mass graves. Family members trying to cope with the situations get told to stay home and not touch each other. Touching and togetherness are what they need the most.
A shroud of hopelessness has fallen over the whole world. We must regain and cling to hope. My entire life, I have remembered and cherished my grandmother’s loving hugs; it was a safe, secure feeling that is indescribable. I also got blessed with a loving godmother who people hugged on site. She prayed for me regularly, giving me an armor shield of unseen hope in my life. The corona virus appears to be changing everything in this world for future generations. The eternal hope that comes from close family units with loving hugs is getting destroyed. We have orders to remain apart, no socializing, so the virus doesn’t spread. Satan seeks to separate people.
We must all seek the creator to solve this problem and turn it around for good. The alternatives paint a very bleak picture of future societies. The masses connected by electronic wizardry and gaggles of gadgets. Social media and other space-age communications have no familiar, loving human touch, feeling, or emotions. We can see each other talk to each other as if we are already robots living in a cyber world. We could quickly become a plethora of pixels with no hope of ever having human personalities .
There is no way tiny little hearing aid batteries are a spin-off from space-age Technology, or they would certainly last more than two days. They would not get very far on a trip to Mars. I usually change batteries at the kitchen table, when I drop one, there is not much chance it will land on edge and roll off the table, but that has happened also.
I usually change those wee little batteries while sitting in my recliner after putting on my shoes. That is a poor location to work with batteries when I drop them. They go down into the carpet, a magnet on the end of a stick is needed to find and pick them up. I can usually fish them out but must find the right spot to start fishing.
I was going to get one of these little Robo vacuum cleaners. But I’m afraid of what would happen? It would suck up all the dropped batteries out of the carpet. There would probably be such a mass of negative and positive charges clashing inside of the cleaner. The little robot would crash into a corner somewhere and go tilt. I will continue to use the Shark to eat them up.
My fingers have become crooked and deranged, plus I lost so much feeling. It is almost impossible to do anything with those wee, tiny batteries. The finger dexterity has been gone for a long time now. I recall visions of the cowboy, riding at full speed across the plains, rolling a cigarette with one hand.
It is easy to understand why they got so crippled and deformed. Those early days of milking cows by hand got them off to a good. I could, even tear a deck of cards in two. There is a trick to it, you must hold them real tight and squeeze while your twist. The later years are the ones that took their toll on the hands and fingers
I think back, my fingers have been through a lot. It is easy to understand why they got so crippled and deformed. It could have something to do with Ice fishing while cleaning the ice out of the holes with bare hands instead of a dipper and reaching in the icy minnow bucket to get a minnow with bare hands. We certainly abuse our fingers and hands.
In a lifetime of trapping your hands go bad. I’ve had chapped Muskrat hands clear up to the elbows. Talk about chapped skin! A trapper cousin once told me, “If you feel like a muskrat is going to get loose from the trap, just let it bite down on your finger, then slowly pull it from the house, only tried that once.
I was taking what I thought was a dead weasel from my trap one time. The sneaky little bugger bit right down on my trigger finger. It wouldn’t let go. I shook my hand up and down with that cute, tiny white weasel on the end of my finger. I finally squeezed it real tight with the freehand, and it looked me in the eye and decided to spit my finger out.
My wife always got mad when I dropped batteries and started to cuss at myself. I have almost stopped doing that. I feel one of these days her spirit will be standing by my recliner saying, “Could you please give me a break, let me have some rest?”
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I will soon have hearing aids that are rechargeable. Then I might not have to say “MITA” all the time.
We got to continue using our hands in these Golden years if we want to do anything. Occupational therapy every day helps, putting square pegs in round holes, squeezing play dough, things like that, keep using the old fingers to get some life back into them. When the feeling is gone, hope tries to follow soon.
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