Tag: Family
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THE ELK MOUND TOUR
I was born in Southern California and didn’t move to Wisconsin until I was 10 years old. As a result I always felt like a bit of a foreigner here and that probably explains why I left Wisconsin after finishing university and spent most of my adult life living overseas. What I didn’t know at the time though is that my ancestral roots are very deeply embedded in Wisconsin and my ancestors were some of northern Wisconsin’s original homesteaders. I was keen to get in touch with my Wisconsin roots so…
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CALLING ALL WEBERTS
Grab a map of Germany and find Frankfurt in the centre of the country. Then trace your finger about 100 kilometres northeast and amongst the forests and fields you’ll find the tiny hamlet of Olberode. In 1364 four brothers Adolf, Christian, Frederick and Eckhart cleared land at the site and the village of Olberode was born. Now, 650 years later, Olderode is throwing a big anniversary party and is inviting its lost sons and daughters to return to their ancestral homelands this September. In the mid-1800s emigration fever struck Germany and…
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LOST SOMETHING?
Some people have a knack for losing things … not me. I can tell you countless stories of how things I have ‘misplaced’ – wallets, phones, sunnies – have miraculously found their way back to me. And now I can add to that list a one hundred dollar bill. Padma and I received a card from Josh for Christmas and upon opening it we found a crisp new one hundred dollar note. In the card, Josh wrote, the money MUST be used to treat to yourself to dinner at Jaime Oliver’s…
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AN OVERNIGHT IN HELSINKI
Noon in Helsinki. The sun hardly makes an appearance at 60 degrees North and barely gets much above the horizon. As we’re right near the winter solstice we only got about six hours of light, but it was hardly light as it was overcast and dark and dreary all day. A lot of ties to Russia in Helsinki. Here’s a statue of the Russian Emperor Alexander II right on the Senate Plaza in front of the White Lutheran Church. The Helsinki Lutheran Cathedral is a central landmark of the city. It…
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