The Universities are next…
 
 I seem to write a blog post about once a year.  This year, 2025 may be the year when I do more.  I had never intended to use this site for personal essays about current issues but these are the times in which we live.  Unexpected things happen.  People voted for President assuming that whoever won would follow the law, respect the Congress and the courts and governing norms.  This has not been the case and as an ordinary citizen there seems to be no place to go with our concerns.  So,  with this post,  I launch a few random thoughts about the issues I am experiencing as the unprecedented administration unfolds.
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My husband and I are graduates of a small Lutheran liberal arts college in Iowa.   We got an excellent education there that prepared us well for successful careers.  In the tradition of the liberal arts, we learned to look at the big picture, to ask why and why not?
We have watched with dismay the dismantling of science and research programs at major universities and the punitive attack on DEI programs.  Using Federal funding the administration is punishing Columbia University first by withholding $400 million.  Johns Hopkins has had $800 million in grants cancelled.   
Still, we were shocked to learn that a private scholarship that we have funded at our alma mater,  entirely with our own personal funds is being rewritten against our wishes, solely because the scholarship funds were designated to give preference to U.S. students of color or Tanzanian students.  
Redefining the terms of our scholarship fund shocked us because of the reach of this movement against the existing diversity of our society.  If the anti-DEI agenda reaches individual scholarship funds in a tiny sectarian school in rural Iowa, where will this oppression reach next?  Will it stop? Or will it permeate our neighborhoods, our churches, our living rooms? 
 











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“Family gives us our original sense of identity.  We belong to some people and they belong to us”    Rachel Held Evans    


    Martha Marie Hansen was sixteen years old when she, her brother Peter and her sister Anna emigrated from a dairy farm in Denmark on the Jutland Peninsula to Waukegan, Illinois.  Like many single immigrant girls from Scandinavia, she knew no English, had no money and was valued for her marriageability and ability to work hard. A distant relative who owned a rooming house sponsored her passage in return for work as a housemaid.
    Now, over 100 years later, I look for her wedding picture and find a different picture that tells me how little I know about my paternal grandmother.  There is nothing written on the picture, no date, no names of the four young women in their Sunday best, standing arms linked.  That might be because Grandma Reckling, as my siblings and I still call her, had only been educated at her local church until she was confirmed.  She could read and write in Danish enough to sign and date her name and memorize the catechism but recording details about herself was not something she did.  
    I wonder who took this picture, who the other girls are, how soon it was taken after she arrived in Waukegan, why they were all dressed up? I notice the sidewalk, the other houses in background, the electrical poles.  I am only sure that it is her because she is the tallest in the group and her big round eyes staring directly into the camera are mine.  Her thick dark hair pinned in a modest style around a heart shaped face, tells me she has not been in this country long enough to cut her hair.   Like the others, she is wearing a necklace but her dress is cruder, not well-fitted to her, with a ribbon substituting for a waist band. The picture gives me some details of a story I only vaguely know. 

I asked her once how she met our Grandpa? The only part of her answer I remember is that they met at the rooming house where he was staying and she was working.  I wish I had been more curious. Were they attracted to one another right away?  Did I imagine that he caught her eye when she was serving the stew and potatoes the boarders usually got for dinner?  Or was that part of the story she told?  She was still a teenager.  Ten years her senior, he had been a plasterer and union man for over a decade.  An inexperienced farm girl, was she attracted, intrigued or seduced?  He was the grandpa who frightened me with his swearing and demands.  Did he frighten her?  Did she flirt with him or was he the best option to escape long hours of cleaning, washing sheets and serving food?
    I wish I had a letter that she might have written home, some clue to her life then.  I think she told me that her mother and a sister, had died in the 1918 flu pandemic.  Still recovering from the German occupation of World War I, her father could not afford to keep her on the farm.  Is it my imagination or did she still  have younger siblings?  Was she sent away when her father remarried?  A younger brother, Robert, visited Waukegan from Denmark once during the 1960’s.  For Grandma it was very important.  Why hadn’t I paid more attention then?  
     She had come to Waukegan with an older brother Peter, did he write letters home?  Did he and their sister Anna also work at the boarding house?  I know that Grandma’s sister Anna married shortly after they arrived but I don’t know anything about Peter.
    If there are pictures from Grandma’s wedding, none of my siblings or cousins have located them. In family lore, most of her story begins with her eldest son, my father’s birth.  Grandma’s story through him belongs to me.  I record what I know,  so that if my grandchildren wonder about how they might belong to me, they will have a trail to follow for their own questions.  
​      Some distant cousins in Denmark have asked about Marie who went to America through a geneaology site and suggested that Pete and Anna had slightly different stories from mine.  My sister Kristine remembers a different story about Grandpa and Grandma meeting.  Any and all who have information about the meeting and Grandma Marie's early years, or a better story than mine should feel free to post a comment.  It is through sharing stories that we find out who we are.

Originally,  when I started writing,  I did not envision a book about my grandmother.  I envisioned a telling of the details of both her life and Fredrik's.  How I got to Kristine Finding Home is the subject for another post.  The best outcome of publishing a book and writing it  as a story is to connect with people in a way that speaks to them.  I have had many unexpected people across a wide spectrum read and appreciate Kristine Finding Home which humbles and delights me.  Recently though, I was surprised to find that Kristine's story was used as an example of how to research family history by Daytona Danielsen.  
     Daytona was a journalist specializing in Scandinavian Food writing based in the Seattle area.  I came across her work while doing my research.  I had at one time thought to tell Kristine's story in recipes. Danielsen's  life has changed somewhat but she maitains an active online presence including hosting a book club while writing, working and going to graduate school. She writes about her grandparents, 
 "They, like Kristine, intended to return to Norway after a period of time. They, like Kristine, never moved back. Although much is different between my grandparents’ experience and that of this woman and her family, I appreciated this glimpse into her story, knowing that there is something universal about being human and the way we experience life. Even though I’ll never know much about what it was like for my grandparents to leave Norway, reading Kristine’s story—as written by her granddaughter based on letters, reports, and oral history—expands my understanding of an experience that I’ve never had, and helps me to perhaps understand my grandparents more as well."  Her website daytonadanielsen.com is filled with interesting stories and another way to delve into how we become the people we are.
     Writing down family stories continues to open doors that I never knew existed.  I have discovered a rich and varied community for which I am grateful.  
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Once again it has been quite sometime since I posted to this blog.  However,  I am delighted to add a family story from my history.  Flying solo without Kristine, however,  she is always with me.
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The following essay was written in the spring of 2022 and received Honorable mention in the Jade Ring Non-fiction contest of the Wisconsin Writer's Association.  Introducing you to Olga.


Intricate Pattern

I smooth the lavender fabric and stand back to admire our table.  A plant with periwinkle blossoms picks up the delicate stitched pattern on the tablecloth.  Winter has been long and dark, so I have chosen a pastel cloth to lighten the table for the small group that will gather on Easter Sunday.  Because Olga Yevgushchenko, a Ukrainian student, gave me this cloth nearly 30 years ago, I think it’s fitting to use this year, 2022.  My thoughts go to the Ukrainian grandmothers who will not set an Easter or Passover table because they have fled their homes. Images of mothers and teenagers shepherding young children with their warm jackets, stuffed animals and a single suitcase, bring back memories of Olga.

Nearly thirty years ago, a friend asked us if we could provide housing for a 15-year-old piano prodigy who was going from an exchange program in Racine to study with a particular piano teacher at UWM, the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.  Because she was underage, the terms of her student visa required her to stay with responsible adults, but she also needed to be within range of UWM’s campus transportation system.  As recent empty nesters, we fit all the criteria. Our friend introduced us to Olga’s Racine sponsors, Cathy and Scott Olson, who assured us that they would be responsible should any trouble occur. 

Olga was fluent in English and had spent 6 months going to school and studying piano in Racine. So young to be living in a different country without her parents, she brought with her many of the social adjustment problems of a teen whose talent or intellect gallops ahead of her social maturity. 

When the occasion seems to call for it, I have proudly claimed being a first generation American, based on the fact that my mother was born in Norway and “emigrated” here.  While this is technically true, I use this fact like a politician to claim a sensitivity to something I have never really experienced.  My mother was a year old when she came to this country.  Her father was on his way to citizenship and her only sibling, a sister, was born in this country.  Through effort and determination, her mother assimilated quickly  among other young mothers  in the growing town of Waukegan, Illinois.
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    Even though I did not suffer any trials of assimilation or indeed adjustment issues of a first generation immigrant,  I am drawn to the stories of those early years.  I explore the details, looking for clues to who they were, that can tell me who I am, why I have taken the paths and  made the choices that I have. 
    My sisters and I reminisce about our mother and her independent spirit.  Life as a housewife in the 1950’s did not really suit her.  She was more interested in politics and the library than cocktail parties and neighborhood gatherings.  When other mothers were creating adorable Halloween costumes, our mother was writing programs for the local YMCA or a letter to the editor.   She loved to cook but was not content with meat, potatoes and jello.  An early adherent to fresh and local,  she would haul us out of bed during summer vacation to help her pick strawberries or apples at the nearest U-Pick farm.   Her mothering of  five children was loving but haphazard.  We might be enrolled in swimming lessons but sent alone on the bus to attend without the proper swimsuit and hat.   
     At the height of the civil rights movement,  she enlisted the local synagogue’s help to pilot the first HeadStart program in Northern Illinois.  With too little funding to hire someone to recruit students, she drafted her teenage children to go door to door in poor neighborhoods.  At ages 13 to 16, my siblings and I  were cold calling on families to enroll their four year olds in this new program.  Her single minded pursuit of what she believed in was perceived as  boldness.  Today, jeopardizing our safety for her program would be considered folly at best.
     In a time when women choose their names,  own property and have their own checking accounts, my sisters and I marvel over  her choices and bemoan that  she was so unconventional.  We laugh to remember how she got us to  cook, clean bathrooms and scrub floors,  so she could pursue what really interested her.   
     My peers and I think we were the first generation to make hard choices about careers and child rearing, whether to marry or stay married, to use our college degrees in a male dominated work force.  We are proud of what we rejected.  We didn’t trust anyone over thirty, or forty or whatever decade marker we were approaching until sometime in our fifties when that no longer worked.  We insist on not being ignored in our old age.  As boomers, we believe that we are the ones who changed it all. 
      But in fact, we stand on the shoulders of those women who stayed at home and made our school lunches, sewed our clothes and read us stories, who advocated for college for both girls and boys.  If they worked outside the home, they balanced the routine jobs of sales, typing,  nursing, social work or teaching with their family life.  Devoting time to leading the Sunday School,  or the PTA,  organizing the neighborhood fundraiser,  they taught us how to use our skills in the community.  
      Now, my granddaughters listen to my stories of immigration as pleasant but archaic tales of a time that has little to do with them and their concerns.  But our daughter asks about my life?  What was it really like to be the only woman in the boardroom? Did your employee ever do this? How did you figure out how to be where when?  
    She recognizes in my stories the determination of her grandma and courage of her great grandma, to leave homeland and everything familiar.   I tell her that I only recently have come to appreciate the difficulties they faced and the strengths  we inherit.    
The Shakers have an old song that ends, 
To bow and to bend I will not be ashamed
To turn, turn will be my delight
'Til by turning, turning, 
I come 'round right. 


    Do daughters just keep turning?  Have I turned away from, around and now towards my mother?  Eldest daughter of eldest daughter am I coming round right?   Maybe, we are all assimilating, adapting the past to the present.  A new generation in the way things are now, built upon the bowing and bending of another generation.