The Price of Ignorance: A Lesson from 1883 In a quiet Minnesota cemetery, there is a weathered, joint headstone for Ida Mathilde and Fritjof Bernard Dunham. They were my ancestors, and they died three days apart in 1883. For years, the inscription was a blur of degraded stone—a literal erasure of two lives. But the cause of death wasn't a mystery; it was a death sentence called smallpox . In 1883, my great-grandfather watched his siblings die because science hadn't caught up to the cruelty of the natural world. They didn’t have a choice. They didn't have a "personal philosophy" or a "suspicion of big medicine." They just had tiny coffins and a lifetime of grief. Today, smallpox is gone. We didn't pray it away, and we didn't "boost our immune systems" with essential oils. We eradicated it with vaccinations . The fact that we live in an era where people actually choose to invite these monsters back into our schools and homes is a s...
I am a stroke survivor. My blog is about my recovery, family, and possibilities.