Culture Clash

I attended my last session at the Osher Institute last evening, the one dealing with the military frontier. The time goes too fast and all three topics I attended , Myths and Legends, History of Rock and Roll and this one, should have lasted longer. But I can always look forward to the new material next fall. In addition, free movies once a month have been shown. A few days ago we attended "Sweet Land." The blurb in our catalog read thusly: Norwegian-American farmer Olaf Torvik and his rural Minnesota community must struggle to overcome years of anti-German propaganda and prejudice when he discovers that his mail-order bride, Inge, is not only a German but also an accidental Socialist. . . . award winning tale of love's ability to triumph over ignorance. It seemed so true, especially since both my wife and I have knowledge of that happening in our families. In the movie, Inge found herself being shunned, talked about, ignored, whatever. The poor girl did not understand English, but headstrong, she made herself learn as quickly as possible. Olaf was a good man, a Norwegian bachelor farmer like Garrison Keillor often talks about on his weekly radio show, but felt the influence of his culture. They did come to love each other and everything worked out for the good.

Dad's family lived at Nome for a few years when he was young. Nome was a Norwegian community but Grandma, a German from Russia, never felt comfortable among the Norwegian speaking folks, sometimes thinking they were talking about her. Then it was that they relocated to Sheldon, and I - a result of the rest of the story.

Ma's family experienced cultural difficulties, too. Her father was drafted into the army in World War I while still a citizen of Norway. When he married Grandma she lost her citizenship because of it. He went to war and fought in bloody battles but no slack was shown to Grandma. She had to go through the citizenship application process when she wanted to receive social security payments.

Mary's parents, both from Raleigh, ND, were of different German cultures in Russia. For instance, the word potato was voiced as krumbera (sp?) by her mother and kaduffala (sp?) by her father. Some of the nuances in their respective cultures clashed a bit and were looked on as being a bit odd by the others.
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p.s. This blog is number 601. I've been bloviating a good deal, it seems. But there is still more to come, so why count.