Hans Howe

My Great Uncle, Tor Olaf Gustav Kolberg (Billy), wrote a memoir covering his childhood in Norway, the trip to America, and growing up in Red Wing. It covers the years 1875 through to about 1909, but includes bits from some later times too. It’s a bit of a ramble that can give a present reader some insights.

I thought it had been lost – but now it’s found. I scanned it, ran it through an OCR and then made it into a PDF. Not a huge book, 25,000 words. I’m attaching the PDF so feel free to grab a copy to read when the mood may strike you.

Tales of Tor Olaf Kolberg – Viking and American Citizen.pdf

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Spearing fish through the ice was a thing c. 1925 +/-.

Here are some fellows doing it on the Mississippi’s Back Channel that’s between Trenton Island and the Wisconsin shore.

Note the Wisconsin Game Warden on left in one of the photos.

A trench about two feet wide would be cut across the channel, a gang of men would go downstream aways and stomp on on the ice, driving the fish toward the spearmen.

Harry Howe took these photos and told me the game warden was there to make sure only rough fish were speared, and kept. Inadvertently speared game fish would go home w him…

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Trump’d by Atrios

I suppose Bad Man Theory is just the flip side of Great Man Theory. Without the existence of One Horrible Man things would be very different. Donald Trump has altered history!

And, yes, sure that Donald Trump is president has altered history, but that’s more about a few hundred thousand votes in the wrong places than Donald Trump. It isn’t just him. President Rubio would be better in some ways and worse in many others, and the conservative movement/Republican party they preside over would be much the same. Some bad acts are uniquely Trump, and there are the tweets, but he didn’t make Republicans what they are. Republicans made him their leader! And they stand with him. I don’t just mean because they fail to pull some noble West Wing bullshit, I mean they *really stand with him*. Why wouldn’t they?

That people forget how bad Bush was – and not just Bush, but the entire conservative/Republican/media apparatus that surrounded him – makes me mad. Bush, too, was a very bad man who was completely unqualified to be president. Two Very Bad Stupid Republican Men in a row! Both surrounded by illustrious members of the conservative movement past and present. People we were reassured were very fine people. And were monsters.

“OOh..Dick Cheney just oozes credibility…” – said an objectitudinal journalist.
by Atrios
https://www.eschatonblog.com/2019/12/trumpd.html

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Cattle have stopped breeding, koalas die of thirst: A vet’s hellish diary of climate change
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/cattle-have-stopped-breeding-koalas-die-of-thirst-a-vet-s-hellish-diary-of-climate-change-20191220-p53m03.html

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