I’m going to try and pull off a hat trick this month and write this report to you, CC a copy to Dad and transmogrify part of it into my first blog post in 9 months. In my blog posts I usually try to dignify my rambling thoughts with a theme. In that vein, I was thinking back to my days as a programmer for the Assessor’s Office and the impact I had changing their system from a noisy but very social manual system to a computerized and more specialized multi-user database. It basically re-defined what it means to be human. Before computers, punching numbers into an adding machine and stamping out metallic address plates for the addressograph machine were standard fare. The office was basically a tax statement factory. Afterward everyone had a part defining values, looking up information, changing addresses, reporting to the treasurer, commissioners and state department of revenue. All these functions were linked together and maintaining those links was everyone’s job. So life went from repetitive mechanical work to a division of responsibilities for thinking through information in your corner of the office and linking it to everyone else’s work. In the Internet age, creating links and tying them into the Internet is a big part of being human. In my everyday work on the crossroads archive, camping maps, trail maps etc. I create links that I hope will enrich people’s lives even long after I am gone. It’s funny to think of those links as more permanent than brick and mortar.
The David`Thompson canoe brigade stayed at Kettle Falls, commemorating the 200th anniversary of the first contact between David Thompson and the local Salish people. A hundred years ago they celebrated the event by steering a steamboat over Kettle Falls with the river at full flood. This wasn’t
quite that dramatic, but it was impressive nevertheless. There were canoes of all kinds here. Modern fiberglass used by the David Thompson Brigade of 150 paddlers, birch bark made from original Ojibwa materials in Eastern Canada, a sturgeon-nosed canoe in the Kalispell style and a dugout canoe made from a single pine log. Pictures of our event are in my
Picassa album, I was there making connections, documenting the event and bonding with our new dog, Gretchen (shown in the second and third pictures of the album) while Cheryl was off to a wedding with a neighbor and my daughter, April. They had a grand time and Gretchen actually started to like me. I don’t know if these pictures will be around 100 years from now, but they might be.
At any rate the second topic is not really a link but close. With the shade shed built over the grape starts last month, I got back to working on the shed for Dad’s stuff. I got the forms made and called in some professional help for a concrete pour. We used a new blend of concrete that has fiberglass fibers mixed in. They eliminate the need for rebar or steel reinforcing mesh, which was a big relief. The pad was poured June 30th. Now we just need to pack up
everything in and around the concrete form that has been our bedroom in the underground house for the last 17 years, move the bedroom essentials into the TV room and tear out the forms, build a shed out of them, rebuild the bedroom wing of the house into a living room and be ready for winter when it comes. (There goes the summer.)
Speaking of summer and weather, it’s hot out and has been for a week. I’m watering grapes again, the new asparagus bed is coming to life, tomatoes, potatoes and corn are looking good thanks to Cheryl's attention. All that rain has put some monster growth on the grapes and garden. Last year’s wine is finishing up and I bottled my first batch, Carmel Apple Wine, which was actually the last to be started. So summer has come on in a big way and with it, non-stop events on the heels of the David Thompson bicentennial.
One of the events that I missed out on was the 50th reunion of graduation from St. Francis School (K-8) in Seahurst June 25th. Luckily, in the digital age, stalwart classmates have pieced together little biographies and addresses for many of the graduates and even those of us who didn’t attend can do a reality check on how the lives of the rest of us played out. Talk about links. This was a kind of déjà vu all over again since my Franciscan Seminary had what amounted to a 46 year reunion in January and I haven’t had time to blog since then. Well I also started out to build a whole new website and did not do that either, which is ironic since much of what I do lately is build websites.
Also with advent of good weather, the rockhounding season kicked off. Actually it had started a little earlier with a class I taught on local geology for four classes of 7th graders at Meyers Falls. Here is a picture from the rock club newsletter I write every month. But the first big field trip was to get pink Thulite from a quarry near Riverside in the Okanogan, June 25th. I have another album from that adventure on line. The big surprise was something called Iolite, a blue crystal that was in seams next to the pink, amber and green Thulite. And then there was Zebra rock, which does look surprisingly like a Zebra. I could and do go on about all the rock stuff, but to catch up with that you can read the newsletters and other blog posts at
http://panoramagem.com/
So my day job is working on the Crossroads Archive websites where we are building an Internet library of material on Stevens County Washington. This month I have spent a lot of time building links into the
Old Towns Map, You can click on the targets next to Old Kettle Falls and Rice to find links to web pages about these places and directories of people who once lived here. Someday I too will fade into that tapestry of lives once lived here. And although it is a little like those collages of faces you see that build a picture of something entirely different when viewed from afar, I’m still not sure what that far away picture looks like or maybe it’s a moving picture in 4D with time as the fourth dimension. Okay, that was pretty far out there. I had better rein it in and get down to business. So long blog viewers for this month.