News You Can Use -- Friday, December 21, 2018

Herb and I are sad as we say we have sold Willie's Tug, and she may be seen somewhere in the wonderful PNW waters.  

Willie's Tug at Kake, Alaska, on our way back to her home in Seattle.  We went to Sitka, Alaska.

But the sadness is replaced with happy thoughts of future travel in our motor home, Sweet Caroline. 

(And my fun post of where we are at the end of the day will be "Find Sweet Caroline," instead of "Find Willie's Tug.")

Here are photos made as we traveled home to Texas from the PNW at the end of the summer four years ago, in 2014.  Our golden retriever, Jake, fondly called 'The Doctor,' guards our site in an RV park.

So our next bit of news to share is that Herb and I will close our Facebook account December 31, and spend more time traveling, visiting with family and friends, reading the many unread books we have and the ones we want to buy, and writing our blogs -- which we love to do!!!

We have enjoyed keeping up with friends and seeing all the photos, but we will be just a phone call away, an eMail away, and a text away.

We hope to see and hear from family and friends.

Willie of Willie's Tug,
   and of Walldog, Willie and Jake
   Friday, December 21, 2018

Texas in the Washington State Museum ? -- Thursday, August 17, 2017

It was almost a year ago, August of 2017, that Herb and I spent the month aboard Willie's Tug at Foss Harbor Marina in Tacoma WA.  We took advantage of the time to explore much of what Tacoma has to offer, and one of our favorites is the Washington State History Museum.

I was so excited to see the exhibit of mountains and volcanoes with the diagram of the single and multi-vents.  I had mistakenly thought Mt. Baker near Bellingham had one vent, because it seemed more pointed as I viewed it from near Anacortes, and Mt. Ranier appears more rounded on top from where I see it in Seattle.

The great diagram below names Mt. Ranier by the single vent, and Mt. Baker by the multi-vent.  I've got a lot to learn and find it so interesting.

In the Pioneer exhibit people are shown making pottery, bread, and weaving.

According to Eric Amesen, African Americans were denied better paying jobs, so they went into the service industry, the men becoming porters and the women maids and kitchen help.

Chinese took the least attractive and more dangerous jobs in the West.  While working on the railroads, they blasted tunnels in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In Montana copper mines, they dumped cars and removed surface rubble.  In Nevada silver mines, they washed clothes and cooked.

In the top photo below, a laborer is shown applying Latimer's dry lead to the apples.  One customer who bought this product reported that it really made his fruit better, because it was less wormy.

Yikes!

In the 1940's this product was banned and replaced with DDT, which was later banned, also.

The photo below shows a picking crew.

Label on a can of salmon.

United States citizens were encouraged to buy War Bonds during WW II, when full employment collided with rationing.   This was seen as a way to remove money from circulation, and reduce inflation.

Citizens were also asked to can the crops.

What's left of a poster communicated that there was a concern about the Japanese already owning 47 per cent of Seattle's hotels and having a monopoly on truck garden products.  Other worries were the Japanese population growing faster than whites.

Below is a page from a book about building the Grand Coulee Power and Pumping Plant.

One of my favorite exhibits tells about an anchor that was lost sometime between the 1850s and 1870s when the chain was fouled on a large rock at the bottom in what is now Thea Foss Waterway.

When it was later discovered, the anchor was found to have sea creatures attached.  They were removed by high pressure water hoses and packed to keep them moist.

Now here's what I had to smile about:  "The anchor and stock were trucked to the Conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University's Nautical Archaeology program.

"They were given further cleaning, then placed in a vat of water and sodium hydroxide.  An electrical current was applied to remove the chloride ions from the metal, stopping the corrosion that had been happening for 150 years.  The process took nearly three years to complete.

"Finally, the anchor, chain links, and stock bands were painted with a tannic acid solution and sealed with a microcrystalline wax to prevent any further deterioration."  

Thank you, Texas.    

My heart is in anything Native American.

Especially their art -- the trickster, Raven?

Celeste Kardonsky Dybeck, a Jamestown S'Klallam Tribal Elder and a lifelong seamstress, created the Kardonsky Family Tree button blanket in collaboration with artist Candice Olsen.  The project was inspired and precipitated by a life-changing personal challenge (cancer diagnosis) and her creative vision.

The Kardonsys are a mischievous bunch.  The Raven, a known trickster, represents her late father, Walt.  The Moon is her late mother, Deloris.  Waves are their children -- Lou, Celeste, Tim, Candy, Sandy, Valerie, and Alan.  The larger buttons on each of the waves represents their children, and the smaller buttons, their grandchildren.

My favorite exhibit in the museum is a story by Maria Williams of the Native American Tlingit tribe, in which she tells the story of Creation.  (Reference Genesis 1 in the Bible.)

No comment of mine could improve on it....

Willie of Willie's Tug,
    and of Walldog, Willie and Jake

    Thursday, August 17, 2017