Did Christopher Columbus Need a Green Card?
[Published August 8, 2010]

Another recent article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune caught my attention.  On the front page of the August 6th, 2010 edition was a story about St. Paul hosting The National Poetry Slam.  Think raucous wrestling-crowd behavior combined with rhyming in a competitive environment and you begin to get an idea.  This is a big deal to those involved and attracts spoken-word artists from across the country.  This weekend’s competition is the Super-Bowl event of the field.

While a national slam poetry contest is interesting in and of itself, it’s part of a poem recited by a New York man that caught my attention.  The Tribune article quotes Jamaal St. John, a New Yorker, giving a reading of a poem on immigrants and U.S. History, saying in part,

“Then ask them what their life would’ve been like if the Indians had had tighter immigration policies.” 

This line hit me hard.  I think he has a point. What would our world be like if the Native Americans had insisted that the first Europeans climb back upon their ships and sail back home?  Would there even had been an “us” to have this discussion if this had happened? 

When we debate immigration policy in America, we need to remember that our ancestors came to this land without an invitation and the first peoples of America did not ask us to see a “green card.”  

A Month to Die For
Are There Seasons for Death?
[Published August 5, 2010]

In making causal conversation with an acquaintance at a recent wedding, he told me he worked for a funeral home, assisting the funeral director various ways.   I wondered if there were seasons to the funeral business, so I asked.  I was a bit surprised at his answer.  His experience was there were more deaths with the changing of the seasons, that is to say more funerals in the spring and fall.  The implication he was making was that the seasonal change triggered people who where fighting death to relax and allow death to occur.  This conversation got me wondering if this was the case for the history of deaths in the Greater Ducklow family. So I checked.



Left: Charles Ducklow Family Plot Maker in Woodlawn Cemetery, Sparta, Monroe County, Wisconsin


Of 236 known death dates of descendants and their spouses from the year 1850 to year 2010, the month with highest count was January with 28.  November had the fewest with 13.   Only one month was right on the averagethat was May with 20.  The data also does not indicate a “cycle,” climbing and falling in a predictable manner, but rather is variable from month to month.  Frankly, I’m not sure what this means other than to say it appears to be random, and the month with the fewest days has fewer deathsFebruary.

At least according to one one-line source, January is month with the highest number of deaths in America.  The same source claims September be the month with the fewest deaths. So perhaps in my acquaintances direct experience the higher numbers occur in the spring and fall, but for our family history it’s the dead of winterin January (pun intended).

Table
Deaths by Month

January      28
February    16
March        23
April          16
May           20
June           24
July           24
Aug           18
September 16
October     24
November 13
December  14

Total       236

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Footnote1 : Source is:   http://www.webanswers.com/health/months-as-ranked-highest-to-lowest-death-rate-u-s-66e524