Hi there. :) This is in regards to a comment of yours on the Sami People: Talk Page. I posted this response there, but I thought I might as well copy it to your talk page.

Garrison Keillor is NOT Norwegian-American. He is of Scottish and English descent and he was raised in a non-Lutheran church. He did, however, grow up, attend college, and work in Minnesota amongst a plethora of descendants of immigrants from Norway, which is how his shtick was inspired. He has discussed this.

Some references regarding his ancestry:

1. A journal article from the University of Virginia

2. A short autobiography by Keillor, himself.

3. See Question 3 of the Official Prairie Home Companion Web Site's Quiz on Garrison Keillor

Best Regards, Peer Gynt (talk) 07:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Peer - Thanks for telling me. I actually just found this out last week - geeezzz... This is something that really hasn't been well advertised in Minnesota (or conveniently overlooked - for obvious reasons). This would be a good plot for a conspiracy novel (Garrison excluded...). Dinkytown (talk) 15:28, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just want to double check that this building is indeed home to International Academy - LEAP. Cheers, Eóin (talk) 22:10, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You might be interested in looking over Gordon Parks High School. It's another Alternative Learning Center in Saint Paul. Eóin (talk) 02:01, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you on any social networking sites? I lived in Dinkytown in 2003-2004, and met quite a few people interested in Scandinavian studies, linguistics and history, primarily. Maybe we know some of the same people? TeamZissou (talk) 16:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

*please do not revert sourced infomation if it is done again an aministrator will be notified and you may be blocked indefinately for removing sourced relivent infomation than you --Wikiscribe (talk) 18:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikiscribe - I am confused about your message that you wrote to me which is described above. First, I did not remove or revert any sourced material on on the Sami article - or any other. I value good sources and I wouldn't do that. Second, what I did do was edit a single word spelling of "Saami", which I know is common and acceptable, but conflicts with the dozens of spelling of "Sami" throughout the article. I am going to assume that you had me confussed with someone else. Dinkytown (talk) 05:12, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

*well in doing so you removed my sourced infomation citeing the sami people may be closely related to the berbers of north africa instead of reverting you should just have fixed the spelling--Wikiscribe (talk) 19:24, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Okay - After a closer look at the issue, I concide that I did accidently revert a section that you did before. I only wanted to fix the common spelling, not remove your citation. We just discovered the power or 'revert'. I'm sorry - that was not my intention.

However, word of advice: threatening people with "blocking" and administrative intervention will not make any friends or allies on this system. Please review good faith and staying cool. Both apply here. I wish you luck. Dinkytown (talk) 00:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unless you use the term SAOMI for the Finns, SVENKA for the Swedes and NORSK for Norweigens, then the term for SAAMI is Lapps. It's disrespectful to everyone else. BTW, Anyone living in a place is indeiginous, and that includes Scandinavians and Finns.Ericl (talk) 16:26, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Ericl - Your statement is your own POV - and not any stated fact. If Finns, Norwegians and Swedes consider their names derogatory, what is their prefered names? There isn't any. "Lapp" for the Sami is considered derogatory as described in the article. Would you still consider African Americans/Blacks to be called the "N" word? That's considered derogatory also. In addition, there are no "Lapp" Councils, "Lapp" Parliaments, or "Lapp" Siidas that are run by the Sami. Even in the Norwegian Constitution they use the words "Sami ethnical group" (den samiske Folkegruppe). The use of "Lapp" should not be used, as everyone from the Sami to the Norwegian government considers it derogatory. Dinkytown (talk) 22:48, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm "clearly" not qualified to say who is Sami and who are partly Sami. In Finland, I think, The Lapps are those Finns who have some Sami ancestry, and this number has not been estimated. Thus my addition.(unsigned by 80.186.231.91)11/4/2008

Dear 80.186.231.91 - the "Lapps" in Finland are Finns who live in Lapland Province irregardless of wheather or not they have Sami ancestory. The Sami do not call themselves "lapp" - as described in the above paragraph statement. Dinkytown (talk) 03:13, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please, see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sami_people#Concerned_about_.22Genetic_History.22_section -- It was not my intention to offend anyone, by the way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.53.61.233 (talk) 01:47, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Glad you like it. I was trying to make it look neater and more of a piece on the screen - which it did. However, now I've looked at it on a wide screen it doesn't all fit quite so well. Irritating - but not really solvable I suppose. Fainites ^barley 11:46, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Had you thought of putting it in for WP:GA. Its not so much a question of getting gongs, but more that its a way of getting completely fresh eyes on a subject. Fainites ^barley 22:01, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for uploading Image:Lovenskiold.jpg. You provided a source, but it is difficult for other users to examine the copyright status of the image because the source is incomplete. Please consider clarifying the exact source so that the copyright status may be checked more easily. It is best to specify the exact web page where you found the image, rather than only giving the source domain or the URL of the image file itself. Please update the image description with a URL that will be more helpful to other users in determining the copyright status.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source in a complete manner. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page or me at my talkpage. Thank you. —Bkell (talk) 03:19, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the link for the Image:Lovenskiold.jpg. It can now be accessed from [1]. Thank you and Take Care... Dinkytown (talk) 23:29, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. —Bkell (talk) 03:13, 26 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What do you see as contradictory? I might try to look up the article if I have access and check out the conclusions, but I don't see any staggering contradictions, so I would like to know what you would like to have clarified. The last paragraph (Less is known about Finns and very little about Lapps/Sami.) is a definitely obscure but it refers to (There is basic agreement between these conclusions and historical data on Hungary.) In other words, the historically documented ethnic mix of hungarian people support their findings, but less such historical documentation of ethnic mix exists for the Finnish and very little for the Saami. I don't know (yet) what the European thing is, I would assume that they have construed an "average european genotype" or other such standard. This article is one thing but apparently another of Cavalli-Sforza's works "The History and Geography of Human Genes" (1994) is in high regard. Genetic distances is one thing, often confusing and unintuitive, but the principal component maps do look interesting.--AkselGerner (talk) 20:57, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, so far so good:

• "European" is used to refer to a genetic sample of eight south-east european populations, Germans from Stuttgart and München, Poles from Prague and Wrozlaw, people from Serbia and Bosnia, German-speaking Swiss and Italians from Bolzano and Verona. The main focus of the article is the study of the people of Hungary and the "european" sample is used to provide data on the peoples with which the authors assume the Magyar have mixed with upon arriving into europe around 900BC.

I thought about adding this to the article, but it seems off topic since the focus is on Hungarians, so you can have it instead :). So there seems to be no intentional claim that Saami are not europeans, rather it's revealed that Saami are not "average south east europeans", which is probably safe to say anyway.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:58, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Aksel for your thoughts. The tags that I placed before were back when 193.69.76.3 had his revision from 12:21, 27 March 2008 [[2]]. That paragraph back then made little or no sense and (if you read *very* closely) it did contradict itself, though it was so badly worded that its hard to pin point (mostly about the Finnish connection/non-connection). Since you and other people made the revisions, the paragraph has been improved which made the 'contradiction' tag mute, but this paragraph still needs work. The pre-revision paragraph was from an acedemic abstract, and not 'translated' into normal English. After I write this article I will remove the 'contradiction' tag and let the paragraph form on its own, but I would like to keep the other standing tags until they are addressed.

Much of what I wrote in the discussion page under Concerned about "Genetic History" section [[3]] I am still concerned about. I have refrained from doing any deleting because this area is out of my are of knowledge. However, I am very aware of the abuses by acedemia and the sceintific community against the Sami, and I am afraid that this paragraph will be viewing the Sami as mer 'lab rats'.

I will not do any editing yet but may include another paragraph about acedemic abusses. This whole thing will take time and just waiting to see where this goes. Take Care. Dinkytown (talk) 04:15, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Take a look at what I did [4]. Now you or others can add stronger info on the details of negative research and it's consequences (I can't do that because I don't have references). It can be put in the first paragraph. I hope the reworked second paragraph isn't too offensive, let me know if there's something disagreable there.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You did a good start Askel. I placed that paragraph with a subtitle, removed the tag and put in the citation need clip to remind myself. I do have some sources that can/will the claims and I'll put that up in a few days. What you did to the 'second' (now first paragraph is fine, and I think someone will jump on it with their own info. Thanks and take care... Dinkytown (talk) 05:46, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That IP-editor is up to no good, very revealing little twists.--AkselGerner (talk) 20:41, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

BTW I've been looking at material about sterilization campaigns in sweden, and there is a number of cases of forced sterilization of Sami, but not seemingly an organized campaign, although at least one top swedish researcher, Herman Lundborg, probably desired one.

The main goal of the sterilization programme in Sweden appears to have been one of increased social productivity, and reduced social expenses. For that reason it mostly target people who were seen to be a burden to society, and sami, being far away from urban slums and highly self-supporting compared to the inhabitants of these slums, did not often come into the crosshairs. A total of nearly 63000 people were sterilized, mostly women and girls and many completely healthy, but with the bad luck of being dependent on social welfare.

So-called "Tatter" people were very frequently targeted on clearly racist basis, even though they were not an ethnic group, rather something like a caste of poor rural itinerants. Their frequency as victims of forced sterilization was much higher than their frequency in the population, but according to one source the frequency of Sami as victims of this programme was equal to or lower than those of other groups (including "normal swedes").

This is really scary stuff, and it's especially scary that modern day swedes are mostly oblivious to this history, despite the policy being in effect up until the 1970s. There was a parallel programme in Finland, and with a similarly late abolishment, but I haven't had time to check up on that one yet.

The sources below I checked for this. Two are in swedish, the last one is in english. As a loose fact Anders Retzius, is reported to have been aided by Lars Levi Laestadius in grave-robbing and desecration of dead bodies in the gathering of skulls for the "research", and other priests and medical professionals were clearly also highly involved.

[5], [6], [7]

--AkselGerner (talk) 20:13, 5 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Aksel - I also found some stuff too and here's the following:

a) I also came up with a Valdemar Lundborg (I think your Herman Lundborg are one and the same) who started the National Institute of Eugenics in Uppsalu in 1921 whoes objectives were to protect the "purity of the Swedish race".

b) the number of women sterialized that I found were: Sweden, 70,000; Finland, 60,000; Norway, 30,000.

c) the date of the respective government sterilzation programs began: Sweden 1934, Norway 1935, Finland 1939. All this is from the documentry that I described before, Give Us Our Skeletons

Sweden apparently ended their program in 1975, accourding to this article. [8]

I also found that there doesn't seem to be an organized program targeting exclusivly Sami for the sterialization programs - although they did suffer. However, there have been a number of sources that I saw that described the Sami as the 'most studied people in Europe', regarding eugenics and skull measurements (Phrenology) which was promoted to show the primitive peoples compared to the respective countries. From the documentry I did get a quote from Gunnar Broberg, professor of University of Lund that there was "...a direct link between skull measurements and the steralization programs of the Sami throughout the twentieth century". It would be great if we ever did get a percentage of those women who were sterialized by what reason, but those numbers are going to be hard to find, I believe.

Apparently the Sami were in human zoos also...

One of the women interviewed in the documentry was sterialized because she was hospitalized, suffering from acute depression because her father died. They told her the only way you can leave is that you have this simple operation.... What were they thinking? (BTW, she was Sami but probably not the only one who went though that).

During my searches on the internet, I found this book as a reference several times:

Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen, eds., Eugenics And the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland (Michigan State University Press, 2005). This seems to the latest research on the subject.

I haven't heard that Laestadius helped in grave-robbing, I'l read up on that. Take Care... Dinkytown (talk) 05:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Dinkytown. :) Thanks for your nice note about my edits to the Population Genetics of the Sami Peoples article. Also, thanks for your reply some time ago re: Garrison Keillor (I'm just terrible about getting back to people, as you can see!). Take care and thanks again. Peer Gynt (talk) 23:34, 27 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nice edit to the lead section: I had been trying for a while to come up with wording that was accurate but which flowed well, and you nailed it. Yaknow, go ahead and take this:

		The Minor Barnstar
		By rearranging only two or three key phrases, you changed the Conservapedia article's lead section from awkward to elegant. Thank you! Fishal (talk) 13:28, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're very welcome. I generally like giving these to people. And I only have the one, also. Fishal (talk) 20:23, 9 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I had noticed the earlier author's interest in whether Jenna Bush was "fuckable." While unsourced, I thought it just needed a bit of cleaning up. It may have been vandalism at first, but her sex appeal is very important to her overall notability. People are interested, I'm pretty sure, in the looks of the twins. See, for example, http://www.askmen.com/women/votes_300/393_political_daughters.html or http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/janeross/presidentsspawn/index.asp

Please don't dismiss my contributions out of hand. If you think you can write better than I, please do. I have reverted to my original so you can do just that. I will follow the 3RR.

Apologies for missing the existing article (I was thinking I should redirect "pa ndau" to Hmong textiles and if I had remembered to do it, I would have realized the duplication.) It should be pretty easy to merge the two. I had actually written much I what I put up on the Hmong textile art a while ago, but never got around to finishing it. Then today I stumbled across the textile article and decided to take action.

I think the main question is, what should the article be named? There seems to be precedent (in the textile arts category) for using either a general title (e.g. Australian Aboriginal fibrecraft) or the name of the art form itself (e.g. Mola (art form)). I could go either way. "Textile art" is potentially more inclusive and be used as a stepping off point to discuss other aspects of clothing. At the same time, pa ndau is the common term. Of course, there is the issue of spelling. Pa ndau would be the English version, while paj ntau would be the correct way to write it in Hmong (although it appears to be written more commonly (at least according to Google) as paj ntaub). This could be easily addressed in the first line of the article though. Surveying the bibliography it appears that both "Hmong textiles" and "paj ntaub" are used frequently in the literature. This makes lean towards the Hmong textile art title: it says clearly what the article is about and it has precedent in the literature. Let me know what you think. Thanks. (It interesting that "pa ndau" is not commonly used in English language literature. I note that it is used in Teaching with Folk Stories of the Hmong: An Activity Book by Cha and Livo.) Nposs (talk) 04:18, 28 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You questioned the use of waterway as the name of a streak of deck plank on large vessels with laid wooden decks. PAASCH, H.; ILLUSTRATED MARINE ENCYCLOPEDIA is a good source for arcane usages like this one. Boatbuff (talk) 09:53, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Dinkytown. I wrote you a reply; it's on my Talk page. Thanks. :) Peer Gynt (talk) 23:42, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

There is a section in wp:flag that says:

• Flag images, especially flag icons in biographical infoboxes, should not be used to indicate birth or death places...

does that seem reasonable? Lightmouse (talk) 17:19, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your kind words. It has been a long-held ambition to do an as much as possibly correct and up to date map of the City. If you find any mistakes, please let me know. Cheers, Constantine ✍ 10:43, 14 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When you edit that page it suggests cutting it. Whatever. Do what you like. andycjp (talk) 02:50, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It did not suggest cutting it, it suggests to expand it [9]. Dinkytown (talk) 14:37, 24 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]