[Colonel_Flagg]

Your grandmother is wise. January here serves no useful purpose.

We have a heavy Scandinavian influence all over the state. I'm Swedish, we have lots of those pesky Norwegians around (we tell them that Syttende Mai is really Swedish Independence Day since it's the day we ditched Norway) and there is heavy Finnish influence as well.

Besides having lots of shops where you can buy really cool sweaters, the cultural influence is quite profound.

[Soaring Feather]

I have Swede blood as well. Mummu (grandmother) was half Finn, half Swede. When I was in Finland 2002 we went to her church in Alavus. What an experience to walk on the floor of the church my grandmother walked on.

Away back then, the church owned huge farms. Her job was tending the cows. She met and married a Vet, they had one child who died from childhood diseases. Her husband fled Finland to escape the war and came to America/Canada. She sailed for America at the age of 24 years.When she arrived in Fitchberg MA, she learned her husband was ill and in hospital. He killed himself three weeks after she arrived in the New World.

Her parents were here already, in Lakota, N Dakota, she went to live with them. While there she met my grandfather. They married in 1900, had one daughter in N. Dakota and then moved to Edmondton, Alberta, Canada, where four children were born. My mother was one of them.

In 1911 grandfather got the itchy food again and moved the family to Tarpoon Springs FL. Things did not go well there. Sickness for everyone. My mother and aunt nearly died from Malaria.

The next move brought them to New York State. Grandfather died in 1923 and Grandmother lived to be 94 years young. She left us in 1970. She out lived three husbands.