Wednesday, February 27, 2013

ND Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center


Sculpture by Tom Neary of  Washburn, North Dakota

This is a privately owned location and needs your support, so I do hope you find your way here at some point in time.  Down the road a piece they have a reconstruction of Lewis and Clark's winter fort - included in their $7 price - that I thought was even more interesting, but I'll get to it in a day or two...

On November 1st, 1804, as winter closed in on the Corps of Discovery, the Mandan chief Sheheke-shote told them that they were welcome to lodge in the neighborhood over the winter and, "If we eat, you shall eat, if we starve, you must starve also."  I believe that's like the Three Musketeers:  All for one, and one for all.  Sure, the Corps could hunt and provide its own meat, but life with the Mandans promised a share of their vegetables like corns, beans and squash.  That is something men on the move simply cannot acquire without the generosity of others willing to share.

Come Spring the men of the Corps would find themselves healthy and ready to challenge those mountain ranges.  However, throughout the winter months, Lewis and Clark not only socialized with the Mandan and Hidatsa, but they studied them as Thomas Jefferson had instructed them to do.

April 7, 1805 saw them on their way.

The folks on site told us this was a touchy feely kind of interpretive center, so feel free to touch and feel.

I'm busy studying all of the interpretive things, and I look over to find Granpa, well, being Granpa:




Not to be an ol' stick in the mud - which I am when it comes to doing things like this - (My momma must have busted my behind somewhere in my wicked, wicked childhood, for touching things, because I surely do get squeamish when I do...)  But there you have me, all furred out.

Notice the painting of Lewis in the background with a different big hat on.  Outside, the statue has the hat turned sideways, here it seems to be pointing front to back.  Hmmm.  No explanations that I can find.  Over at the Fort they have a hat like that.  IT IS GI-NORMOUS!!  With such limited space on the voyage, they had to have felt pomp and circumstance was of paramount importance.  Well, after all, they would be meeting with the heads of state of all the Indian nations along the way...

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Back in North Dakota...

I said I would fill everyone in on getting to Kauai, and then go back to our trip from North Dakota to Texas...

Granpa's last day at Altru in Grand Forks, North Dakota, February 16th, was a Friday.  Saturday morning we hopped in the van and headed home by way of Fort Mandan in the eastern part of North Dakota.  We had been taking a class on Lewis and Clark at the University of North Dakota through their OLLI program.  Granpa was determined to get to Fort Mandan, where Lewis and Clark spent their first winter in 1804-05.

It was Interstate all the way, (for us, not Lewis and Clark!) and so the roads were no worry.  I text Granpa's mother, Granny Beth, as we travel, so that she doesn't worry.  She thanks me all the time; says it makes her feel like she's right there with us.  The bonus is, I have a log of our travel times, places, and things we do.  Funny how, when you do something for someone else, God always has a blessing in it for you!

So it'll will be about an hour's drive south to Fargo, then west about four hours to Bismarck.  The roads were clear and, when the sun came up, so were the skies.  From Bismarck then, it's north to Fort Mandan.

There's a beautiful new Lewis and Clark Museum there.  I knew these folks were larger than life to us, but this is a bit much.

It's so nice when I find someone that makes me feel smaller than my rotund lil' ol' self...
These are beautifully crafted pieces of art.  I'm honored when I imagine them standing for all time for America, representing Lewis and Clark, in circumstances much like the first astronauts on the moon.



Both teams had consciously chosen to go into the unknown without much recourse than to go forward.  Lewis and Clark knew that if they went far enough they would find the Pacific Ocean. Sure, fur trappers had wandered around east of the Rocky Mountains, and almost every international power had sailed - and landed - up and down the west coast.  It was what was in between those points that was the great unknown (to white man anyway).  If Lewis and Clark had known that those mountain ranges would go on and on and on - and on even more - they probably would have never attempted this search for a navigable waterway across America.
However, once President Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase on behalf of America, to actually lay claim to it, an American had to impose the Right of Discovery by walking, paddling, or riding across it - and publish something about the journey.  So these intrepid explorers would have gone regardless of the hazards of the unknown just like America's first men on the moon, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin in 1969.

Wow!  Think about that!  In just 166 years we went from literally struggling to walk across the earth to walking on the MOON!  Thank you, President John F. Kennedy, for saying and believing that Americans do it not because its easy, but because it is hard.  I love our "can do" spirit!

Think about this, too.  America was the first to impose the Right of Discovery on THE MOON!  They planted the ol' red, white, and blue, documented every single step and published it - in real time! - for all the world to see.

  Woohoo!


Sunday, February 24, 2013

You Go, Kramer!

 This came off of Facebook:


"PROUD TO BE WHITE"

This is great. I have been wondering about why Whites are racists, and no other race is......
Michael Richards makes his point........................
Michael Richards better known as Kramer from TVs Seinfeld does make a good point.

This was his defense speech in court after making racial comments in his comedy act. He makes some very interesting points...

Someone finally said it. How many are actually paying attention to this? There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, etc.

And then there are just Americans.

You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you.. so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live?
You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day.

You have Black History Month. You have Cesar Chavez Day.

You have Yom Hashoah. You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi.

You have the NAACP. You have BET. If we had WET (White Entertainment Television), we'd be racists. If we had a White Pride Day, you would call us racists.

If we had White History Month, we'd be racists.

If we had any organization for only whites to 'advance' OUR lives, we'd be racists.

We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, and then we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce. Wonder who pays for that??

A white woman could not be in the Miss Black American pageant, but any color can be in the Miss America pageant.

If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships... You know we'd be racists.

There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US ... Yet if there were 'White colleges', that would be a racist college.

In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists.

You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.
You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist.

I am proud...... But you call me a racist.
Why is it that only whites can be racists??

There is nothing improper about this message.. Let's see which of you are proud enough to send it on. I sadly don't think many will. That's why we have LOST most of OUR RIGHTS in this country. We won't stand up for ourselves!

BE PROUD TO BE WHITE!

It's not a crime YET... but getting very close!

Hello, again!

Hope you enjoyed reading (or re-reading) some of our old posts while we were transitioning.  It's been a whirlwind!  I'll do a quick overview on this post, and then go back and fill in the blanks.

We got home to Texas Tuesday evening.  Wednesday was unpacking the car and setting up appointments for Granpa's lab work and primary care doctor's physical.  But first things first; I got a Hawaiian haircut - or is it, a haircut for Hawai'i?

I surprised Granpa with a late Valentine's gift.  Well, I say "I," but our son and daughter-in-law actually accomplished it - I just paid for it.  Granpa's soon-to-be-antique pickup needed some work done on it before he should be driving it.  He surely was happily surprised!  Unbeknownst to me at the time I planned it, that move allowed Granpa and his momma to go one direction Wednesday morning while I went the other - otherwise we would have never gotten things accomplished before having to catch that flight out of DFW.

The agency offered to get us a hotel at DFW for Friday night in order to catch the 6 a.m. flight to Hawai'i on Saturday, so, Granpa's brother and sister-in-law moved Granny Beth's 80th birthday celebration up to Thursday night. And, oh by the way, one of our granddaughters had her first school program also on Thursday night.  Yowser!  Instead of flying out on Tuesday the 26th we had to leave Tyler, Texas for DFW on the 22nd - losing four days at home.  But we squeezed everything in and made it to the airport on time.

Suddenly there is a Code Red security breach at the check-in line.  Everything and everyone froze.  Total silence reigned.  After a few minutes the passengers-to-be started to whisper to each other.  A few more minutes drew restlessness.  A few more minutes and some of the passengers choose to move to a different United check-in area.  Then several more bailed.  The ever-patient Granpa stood his ground.

Shortly thereafter, the all-clear was given and things moved along quickly - until they got a look at my overnight bag.  They decided a manual check was called for.  They tossed my hairspray. (Silly me!  I knew that!)  They tossed Granpa's bottle of Aloe gel.  (He got nervous - he loves his aloe in Hawai'i.)  They tossed an 8 ounce bottle of Purell hand sanitizer. (Hmm.  Really?)  Everything else they let through.  They had to manually check Granpa's CPAP - always.  And the laptop had to be removed from its sleeve and x-ray-ed.  Finally, (daggers from the eyes of other passengers), they clear us to go.  Yeah, right.  Right after we repack everything!!)

We had an hour+ layover at LAX, a lo-o-o-ng six hour flight directly into LIH (Lihue International), and a windy, slam-on-the-brakes touchdown on Kauai.  An echo tech friend of Granpa's met us at the airport, took us out to eat, delivered us to our lodgings - and left us her car to use until sundown!  Mahalo, Tammy!!  Thank you!





Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Moving on!


For about ten days now we were pretty well assured by one of our agencies that we had a lock on a contract in Olympia, Washington. I had lined up housing and mentally packed things up with a look to the west.  As always, though, when people asked, “Where to next?” we would say, “Possibly Washington state – but no contract has been signed, so, who knows?”

Well, that was a fact.  Before anything happened on Olympia, Granpa got a call from "his" hospital back on Kauai.  Simultaneously, he was getting a message from an agency asking if he wanted to take a Kauai assignment.   Within 24 hours, Granpa signed a contract taking us back to Kauai for five weeks.  

Now I’m mentally UNpacking for Washington, and packing with a view to leave all household goods in Texas as well as all the winter underwear!  I’m mentally searching the closets back home for those snorkels and aqua shoes.  Woo-hoo!  We are gonna warm up after a winter in the frozen north by lounging on a Hawaiian beach.   What a deal, what a deal!

Housing will definitely be a hassle because it’s the “high” season, the Hawaiian economy is coming back from the tsunami, it’s for a five week booking rather than everyone elses five days vacation, and it’s a very short window for shopping.  Regardless of price, most everything is booked.  I find one lady willing to let us stay in her spare bedroom for two weeks until her cabana is available.  I find a couple of places for twice the price the agency is allotting.  We reach out to friends that we made during our last stay; no joy there.  I go back to our recruiter with those facts, she reaches out to the HR department at the hospital, and they come up with a solution.  It’s tolerable – we think. 

I contact Island Cars to rent a vehicle.  There’s not a car available anywhere on the island!!  Our recruiter finds the same thing.  Island Cars tells us not to surrender; we rented from them for over a YEAR the last time.  (We could have bought a car for what we paid them – but we never knew if the contract would be extended.  Sure as shootin’, if we had bought a car, there would have been -0- extensions…) They will keep trying to get us something.

It would normally be a three day drive back to Texas, but Granpa is opting to go home by way of Fort Mandan in North Dakota and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.  That’ll make it a four day trip, putting us home late on Tuesday.  Granpa needs to see his Primary Care doctor, do the requisite lab work for a new hospital and get (another!) TB skin test.  We have a flight out of DFW on Saturday at 6 a.m.  Friday night Uncle Donald has made plans to celebrate Granny Beth’s 80th birthday, so we’ll have to get up at 3 a.m. Saturday to make the flight.  Whew!

But, we’re good for paychecks until March 30… that’s always good news.  Paying bills is always good news!

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Time To Leave North Dakota

It's been truly wonderful, spending a winter in the frozen north.


But the contract has ended.  They gave Granpa some nice good-bye notes and a going away present:

a Dream Catcher!

On our way back to Texas, Granpa wants to stop at Fort Mandan on the Missouri River to see where Lewis and Clark spent their first winter during their Corps of Discover expedition across the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase.  Then he wants to drop down to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, and THEN we will go home to Texas - for three days.

You are never gonna believe where our next contract is!!!

Saturday, February 16, 2013

The U.S.S. Rangers

Yup, that's a plural.  As I explained in the post, "Carrier Planes," the Navy assigns a name to a particular class of ship, and then they may reuse that name over and over as one is decommissioned and a newer, more modern version comes off the line.

The sixth U.S.S. Ranger (U.S.S. = United States Ship) (H.M.S. = Her Majesty's Ship), CV-4, was commissioned in 1934, the very first air craft carrier to ever be built from the keel up, as opposed to taking an existing ship and making a "flattop" out of it.  Her design was commissioned in 1922, the keel was laid in 1931 at the Norfolk Navy Yard by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, and seventeen months later, at a cost of just over $2 million, she was floated and loaded with aircraft.

She was named after the American colonial fighting men, the Rangers, "who knew the habits of the enemy and could serve effectively as scouts or combatants behind enemy lines."

Her first plane was an SBU-1 Bi-plane fighter.  (A BI-PLANE?!?)  She also carried a Grumman J2F Duck Bi-seaplane.  America focused on larger carriers; Japan built smaller, faster carriers.  Her shake-down cruise took her down the east coast to South America, Rio, Buenes Aires, Montevideo and back to Norfolk for a tune-up.  Then she steamed through the Panama Canal to San Diego which became her first home port.  For the next four years she patrolled from Alaska to Peru to Hawaii and back.  In January, 1939 she headed for Guantanamo Bay and proceeded to patrol our East coast from Bermuda to Newfoundland.

On December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, the Ranger was headed to Norfolk (arriving the next day).  By March, 1942 she received her first top-secret radar equipment and brand new Grumman Wildcat fighters and Curtiss P-40 Warhawk pursuit fighters.  Within a month she was off of the Gold Coast of Africa.  There, the very first Army carrier planes were flying off of her decks.


After participating very successfully in a battle in the Casablanca area, Ranger CV-4 operated mostly in a support capacity and survived the entirety of World War II.  She was decommissioned in October of 1946 and sold for scrap.

CV-61, her replacement, was commissioned in 1957, operated mostly in the Pacific, earning 13 battle stars for combat during the Viet Nam War, but also served in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.  She appeared in several movies:  Top Gun, Star Trek IV The Final Countdown, and Flight of the Intruder.  She also appeared in the television shows, Baa Baa Black Sheep and The Six Million Dollar Man.  (How fun is THAT?) 

CV-61 was decommissioned in 1993 and is currently in storage at Bremerton, Washington.  A group, the Ranger Foundation, made a proposal to Congress to turn her into a museum, but the proposal was declined, so she is to be scrapped in September, 2014 unless something else is done.  So sad.   

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Carrier Planes

Didn't expect to find this in an air museum - but then again, why not?  It's whole purpose for existing is to carry planes closer to the battle before they take off.


This particular aircraft carrier, CVA-61, the USS Ranger, was Pa's.  (I don't know why this poster is showing CV-4...??  Ah!  this was the original Ranger.  She would be able to carry 86 fighters; CVA-61 could carry anywhere from 70 to 90 fighters.  Like Star Trek's Enterprise, NCC-1701-D, they keep naming new and improved versions the same thing.  There's a note in the stat board saying the CV-4 version was sold for scrap on January 28, 1947.  Speaking of Star Trek, probably the reason Gene Roddenberry chose to name his vessel the starship Enterprise is because the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was the USS Enterprise, CVAN-65 ...  but I digress.)

Pa was coming home aboard the Ranger (CVA-61) from a tour in the Tonkin Gulf during the Viet Nam war when it was diverted to join the task force responding to Korea's capture of the USS Pueblo.  He was in communications and was sent out on the sponson to do some work.  The sea spray froze his mustache, and he was in the geedunk thawing it out over a cup of coffee when some wiseacre came along and thumped it.  Broke the end right off.  Not a happy camper was Pa.

When the ship would pull into port or leave port, they would play the William Tell Overture over the PA system.  You might know it as the theme to the "Lone Ranger."  There's about 3,000 sailors that man an aircraft carrier, and they would all get in their dress whites and stand at attention on the perimeter of the flight deck.  'Twas a pretty sight.  Not Pa though.  I think he was busy shinnying down a line to be first on the dock.  Always was a bit of a non-conformist, Pa was.

I was having Granpa take this picture with his good camera while I tried the same picture with both my iPhone and my underwater camera.  Granpa's pictures came out best - less glare.  No surprise.  He's always been a much better photographer than I.

So, anyway, back to airplanes.  In order to get more planes on a carrier, and to get them up and down the massive elevator from the hanger deck to the flight deck, they created a couple of planes with wings that fold like a birds.



This is the Avenger built by Grumman.  It first saw action in June 1942 against the Japanese at the battle of Midway.  Six of these were involved in that first battle against overwhelming odds, and five were shot down.  That thing under it's belly is a torpedo tube.  There were also three .30 cal machine guns.  It carried a crew of three:  pilot (of course!), rear gunner, and belly gunner/bombardier.  This is what former President (Daddy) Bush was flying when he was shot down during World War II.  9,836 of these were built; only 42 are still flying today.  The Avengers fought in every carrier-vs-carrier battle of WWII, and after Guadalcanal it flew from land bases, too.  In battle, it could climb at over 2,000 feet per minute.  Wowser!

From the 2003 Hemlock Film, "The Restorers"

There was also the cool Vought F4U Corsair.  (Pa's father, Poppa, worked for LTV - Ling-Temco-Vought.)  The Corsair was a single-seat fighter that first flew in 1940, but it wasn't until 1942 that the Navy got it's first delivery of them.


It first saw action in February, 1943 with a Marine at the controls!  It was considered to be the best carrier-based fighter of WWII.  During the Korean war, it actually operated for a NORTH Korean airfield!  USN Lt. Guy Bordelon was piloting one of these when he became the only US Navy "ace" of the Korean War.  This baby had six .50 caliber machine guns and could carry up to 3,000 pounds of other ordinance.  Over 12,000 of these were built, the last coming off the line in 1952. And here one sits, wings folded, at the Fargo Air Museum in Fargo, North Dakota!




Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Snoopy and The Red Baron!

Yes, it's Snoopy!  What would an Air Museum be without Snoopy! 


We're finishing up our Fort Abercrombie day at the Fargo Air Museum and having an impressive time of it.  There's lots to see and (yea!) lots to read.  We're both going crazy taking pictures.  Pictures are good, but you really need to personally go to an air museum to understand just how big - and how small! - some of these planes and helicopters are.  For instance, this MASH helicopter:


We're probably all familiar with the TV series, "MASH."  This helicopter looks a LOT smaller than the one we always saw on TV.  Can you imagine being wounded and strapped to the OUTside of this lil' feller?  How spooky would that be?!

Look at Granpa standing on the other side of this plane.  It is so small!  But it really is pretty - a bit more aerodynamic than the MASH 'copter.  I think this is the one that came to the guys house in bits and pieces as a kit, and he had to put it together.  Can you imagine...


They even have a Graphotype machine that was used to make dogtags for military airmen.  Why, here in Fargo they have a whole...


Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Fort Abercrombie, North Dakota - 1862

And so we come to Fort Abercrombie.  Granpa brought his rubber boots with him, but I didn't.  The snow is about a foot deep; I had to stay in the car.  I took one picture with my iPhone, and Granpa came out about the size of a dot, so all the photos are on him.


The fort was established August 28, 1858 slap-dab on the Red River in what was then the Dakota Territory.  Ol' Lieutenant Colonel John J. Abercrombie must not have been too good at reading the signs of flooding (debris in tree limbs, etc.) because within two years the Fort had to be relocated a tad farther away.  It was the first permanent military fort (lots of fur-trading forts were built in the Territories), but it was the first military fort in what was to become North Dakota.

Two years later, Fort Abercrombie became the only fort in the Territory to ever be attacked by Indians.  During the Minnesota Indian War of 1862 (Minnesota being just on the other side of this here Red River), Dakota warriors laid siege to the fort for almost six weeks.  Interestingly (check the date: 1862), the regular army had been called back East, and there was only the Minnesota Volunteer Infantry to protect the settlers that gathered here for safety.

Now, my literature says that the blockhouses nor the palisades (wood fences) were here during that siege, just several scattered buildings surrounded by brush and trees - which were good cover for the Indians.  Funny, back then surrounding your homes with trees was dangerous for that reason; now, surrounding your homes with trees is considered wise as protection from blizzard winds.  Ah, the times they are a changin'.

The remainder of the story reads like a movie script:

When the seventy-eight men of Company D of the 5th Minnesota Militia Regiment left Fort Snelling in March of 1862, they were told there would be 20,000 rounds of ammunition waiting for them at Fort Abercrombie.  There was, but it was the wrong caliber.  This must be where the term SNAFU originated.  SNAFU is an acronym for Situation Normal, All Fouled Up.  The ammunition that awaited them was .58-caliber.  They needed .69-caliber for the Harpers Ferry muskets that Company D had been issued. (Those are the very same muskets that Lewis and Clark used fifty years before!)  Captain Vander Horck requested the correct caliber in April.  In May he was told it was on the way.  June 10th he again requested it.  July 30th Vander Horck was again notified that it was on the way - but it never arrived.


Along with the seventy-eight men of Company D there were about eighty men, women and children that came to the fort for protection once they knew the Indians were on the war path.  There was no regular military, essentially no bullets, no fences, lots of brush - but they did have three 12-pound mountain howitzers.  Everyone set to work building piles of cordwood and timber around the buildings and setting up the howitzers.

On August 23rd things began to accelerate.  Patrols found the mutilated bodies of three men, a woman, and a child in a building about fifteen miles away.  Then they found a wounded, elderly woman, crawling along a riverbank, who had managed to stay alive by eating frogs.  (Ewww!)  She said the Indians had killed her husband and kidnapped her grandson.  And people think women - especially old women - are wimps.  Not!

Couriers were sent out to request reinforcements from St. Paul, Minnesota.

A week later, on the 30th, the Indians attacked.  Three days later, at daybreak, almost 400 nearly naked warriors (except for war paint and a loin cloth) attacked.  By sundown six Indians were thought to have been killed and fifteen wounded.  The garrison was down to 350 rounds of ammunition, so the defenders began searching through a "treaty" train that had arrived at the fort just as all the commotion was about to begin.  They found black powder, fifty muzzle loading shotguns, and canister for the cannon.  Someone had the bright idea of opening those canisters and, lo and behold, found .69-caliber balls just right for the Harpers Ferry muskets!  Folks, Hollywood can't write it this good!

Again at daybreak, on September 6th, the Indians attacked and everyone experienced the fiercest fighting yet.  There were thought to be 150 - 200 Indians from the upper Sioux Sisseton and Wahpeton band of Dakota Sioux, including a known warrior, Sweet Corn, of the Sisseton.  The Indians set fire to the haystacks, then came at the fort from three sides.  At least two made it to within thirty feet of the fort before being killed.  After extended fighting, cannon fire drove them back to the riverbank. 

The fort lost three men; the Indians fared much worse apparently, because when men later went to the river to fetch water (there was no well at the fort) they found blood soaked rags and bits of clothing along with broken guns.

On September 21st, Vander Horck having heard no word of reinforcements, sent two men - along with twenty men as an escort until they got past the Indian lines - for help.  The escort was attacked as it was returning, losing two men.

By that time, a relief column of about 450 men was on its way, and they found the body of a man named Austin.  His scalped and severed head was found some distance away.  Two days later, September 22, they discovered two more mangled bodies.  The next day two more, horribly mutilated bodies were found.  (Now, I could tell you in detail exactly what they mean by "mutilated," but it really is way too gruesome.  I have a rule about watching television:  if it's too bad to happen live in our living room, it's too bad to watch, change the channel, Granpa.  Well, this is about the same:  it's too bad to talk about.  What I do want people to know is that the American Indian was not all about communing with nature and being like the 1960's flower child.  American Indians of the old west, when they were war-like, were brutal beyond description.  (Yes, there were - and I'm afraid still are - white men just a brutal, but Hollywood usually leaves out the barbaric nature of the Indians of the Old West.  An exception that does come to mind, though, is the 1992 version of "The Last of the Mohicans" with Daniel Day-Lewis.)

The reinforcements arrived at Fort Abercrombie on the 23rd, bringing the mutilated bodies with them for burial.  A true humdinger of a celebration took place right then and there for the salvation of the settlers.  (Why don't we celebrate like that when someone accepts Christ and has eternal salvation??)   Scattered fighting continued for a while, but the siege was over.  All in all, Vander Horck lost five men with another five having been wounded.  Not too bad.

The relief force soon got sent back east to fight in the Civil War, but Vander Horck remained, clearing the brush and trees that the Indians had used for cover, erecting three blockhouses and a stockade on three sides of the fort.  They continued to provide protection for anyone and everyone until abandoning the fort in 1877.

Whew!  What a Saturday this has been!!


Monday, February 11, 2013

Another Saturday; Another Road Trip

Another Saturday, another day for investigation and adventure!  This time we are headed south of Fargo to the remains of Fort Abercrombie.  Blizzard conditions are forecast for tonight, but today seems like it will be okay.  However, the windshield washers have frozen over and Granpa pulls off at a North Dakota rest area to see what he can do to unfreeze them.  I, of course, say, "Ya' gotta take a picture of that brick mural."


Then its back on the road.  We find the exit, and as we get farther from the Interstate the roads are less maintained, but certainly still drivable.  Before we reach the town of Fort Abercrombie, John stops (mostly) on the side of the road to take one of his favorite pictures:  a lone tree in an enormous landscape.


What do you think Freud would say about that??

Just to let you know what kind of folks there are in North Dakota, though, we're in the middle of "nowhere" and a North Dakota driver pulls over to ask if we need help.  They are the nicest people up here!!  It's like the world my momma grew up in, where everyone knows everyone else, strangers are to be helped not feared, guns and hunting are good, outdoors anything is good.  They are farmers and ranchers like Momma's people.  I think I could get to like it up here...






Friday, February 8, 2013

What To Take To Bed With You

What to take to bed with you - not a joke.

Pretty neat idea.  Never thought of it before.  Put your car keys beside your bed at night.

Tell your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your parents, everyone you run across. Put your car keys beside your bed at night.

If you hear a noise outside your home or someone trying to get in your house, just press the panic button for your car. The alarm will be set off, and the horn will continue to sound until either you turn it off or the car battery dies.

This tip came from a neighborhood watch coordinator. Next time you come home for the night and you start to put your keys away, think of this:  It's a security alarm system that you probably already have and requires no installation. Test it. It will go off from most everywhere inside your house and will keep honking until your battery runs down or until you reset it with the button on the key fob chain. It works if you park in your driveway or garage.

If your car alarm goes off when someone is trying to break into your house, odds are the burglar or rapist won't stick around. After a few seconds, all the neighbors will be looking out their windows to see who is out there and sure enough the criminal won't want that. 

And remember to carry your keys while walking to your car in a parking lot. The alarm can work the same way there. This is something that should really be shared with everyone. Maybe it could save a life or a sexual abuse crime. 

Would also be useful for any emergency, such as a heart attack, where you can't reach a phone. A friend's mom has suggested to her husband that he carry his car keys with him in case he falls outside and she doesn't hear him calling for help. He can activate the car alarm and then she'll know there's a problem. 

Please pass this on even IF you've read it before. It's a reminder.

Lewis and Clark at UND

Hoping to have Granpa's contract here in Grand Forks, North Dakota extended, we signed up for a couple of OLLI courses through the University of North Dakota.  We are both taking a course on "Lewis and Clark."  They suggested we get a copy of "Undaunted Courage" by Stephen E. Ambrose and at least peruse it before classes started.  It's a pretty good book.

We have had two classes and learned a bit more than what we've gleaned over the years:

First, everyone agreed Thomas Jefferson was the most important part of the Corps of Discovery (the name given to Lewis and Clark's expedition) for obvious reasons.  But there are lots of reasons not so obvious - until a college professor (Dr. Kimberly Porter) puts them in some kind of order or context.

Jefferson's dad was a professor of math at William and Mary College, but he was also a surveyor.  He had a substantial library of books in a time when books were tremendously rare - over forty of those were about science.  Peter, his dad, instilled a love of learning in his oldest son.  Jefferson had an insatiable appetite for knowledge of just about everything, but he particularly loved America's west, possibly because it was the great unknown.  He even owned land on the other side of the Allegheny Mountains, though he never in his lifetime crossed those mountains.  (Land was a standard form of barter or payment in those days.  Most folks were land rich and money poor.)

By the time Thomas Jefferson was 40 years old, in 1783, he had made plans to send a survey party west, hoping one George Rogers Clark, a veteran of the American Revolution, would lead it.  This Clark declined, but years later his younger brother, William Clark, would accomplish that trip along with Meriwether Lewis.

Three years later, in 1786, while Jefferson was in Paris chatting with a man by the name of John Ledyard of Connecticut, the subject came up again.  This time Ledyard said HE would accomplish the deed, all by his boy lonesome, with nothing more than two dogs and a hatchet for firewood, only by going EAST from Paris, through Poland, across Russia to the Bering Strait, and walk down through what is now Alaska and the Yukon Territory, etc.  When he got to Russia, Catherine the Great had him arrested and tossed back into Poland.

Six years after THAT, in 1792, Jefferson was George Washington's Secretary of State and they together approached Benjamin Franklin's American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia to fund a trip out west.  A Frenchman by the name of Andre Michaux was chosen to be the leader only to be found out later as a SPY for France.  (Remember, France, England, Spain, and yes, even Russia were highly interested in acquiring a solid legal foothold on the North American continent.)  So ended Jefferson's plan #3...

Jefferson became president in 1801.  We'll call this next thing Plan #4:  In 1802, he sent a "For Your Eyes Only" to Congress requesting funding to send a small group of men tip-toeing out west, just for a look-see.  By 1803, Congress approved it and Jefferson asked his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to put together a Corps.

Publicly, though, Jefferson was politely, diplomatically asking the various nations that felt they had a claim to certain lands out west, if they would officially agree to the trek.  They all said no, because there was this thing known as "Right of Discovery."  Basically, any country could lay claim to "unclaimed" land, but until someone actually walked across it - and could unequivocally prove it - it was all he said/she said.

In the meantime, on the other side of the world, Jefferson's Secretary of State, James Monroe, was on a mission to offer Napoleon $10 million for New Orleans so that citizens of the Ohio Territory could ship their goods down the Mississippi River to ocean-going vessels.  Napoleon's mouthpiece, Talleyrand, said, "No."  Monroe says, "How about a long-term lease for the same $10 million?"  Talleyrand said, "No."  But how about this for a come-back:  "We will SELL it to you, though, the entire Louisiana Territory, for $15 million."  Monroe struggled desperately with his conscience and the Constitution, and said, "Okay."  Three cents an acre sounds like a good deal - but that times 550,000,000 acres would add up to 2 1/2 times the Federal budget of the day!

The New England states wanted no part of the deal.  They said America had too little money and too much land already.  What they really meant was, we don't want America any bigger because we might lose all of our political power!  But, on December 20, 1803, Congress voted to accept the Monroe/Napoleon deal.  Lewis and Clark no longer had to tip-toe; America now owned everything they had hoped to explore!  This became the successful, historic Plan #5.  Thus, Jefferson's dream would come true after more than twenty years of trying.

See?  We don't always know all that we think we know.  It's kind of Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story," eh.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

SkyView App

What a really cool app for the iPhone!  and it's FREE!  When you search for it there will be several "SkyView's."  The one Granpa downloaded is:  SkyView - Explore the... by Terminal Eleven LLC Education.  It has a black and white icon with a picture of the SpaceShuttle flying between the Earth and it's moon. 

When you point your phone toward the sky, your phone's GPS will kick in and a constellation will appear.  Point the phone to a different part of the sky, and the stars and constellations will move and new ones show up!

Granpa showed it to me in bed last night.  We laid there in the warm snuggly bed identifying stars and constellations.  He says one of our sons showed it to him months ago, but he just now got around to downloading it.  I think Granpa has 1,947 apps downloaded to his iPhone now.  You know, the phone he said he didn't want...

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Paul Bunyan and Babe, The Big Blue Ox

So we get back to tootlin' up the highway.  It starts to snow and the wind picks up.


We turn north and head for Bemidji.  The snow gets heavier and "flakier."  It begins to build up on the highway.  Headlights come on and windshield wipers.

At Bemidji we plan to turn west and head for home, hoping to make it by nightfall.  Remember, I always go prepared, so we have food and "Big Bertha" the sleeping bag...

But, surprise, surprise (why am I ALWAYS surprised?) we have to make a stop in Bemidji to have our pictures taken with my childhood fictional folk hero friends, Paul Bunyan and Babe, his big blue ox.  Faint little memories are coming back to me that, yes, Minnesota was his home, but I don't recall Bemidji being his "hometown."  However, here they are, bigger than life (literally!)


Now I've had my picture taken on Wall Street with the Bull and in Minnesota with the Ox!

I hope the following excerpts from the folk lore will entice you to actually get some of the stories about him and read them:

Now I hear tell that Paul Bunyan was born in Bangor, Maine. It took five giant storks to deliver Paul to his parents. His first bed was a lumber wagon pulled by a team of horses. His father had to drive the wagon up to the top of Maine and back whenever he wanted to rock the baby to sleep... 

Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard. People had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before...  (That was the winter Babe was born.)


One winter, shortly after Paul Bunyan dug Lake Michigan as a drinking hole for his blue ox, Babe, he decided to camp out in the Upper Peninsula. It was so cold in that there logging camp, that... 


One winter, Paul Bunyan came to log along the Little Gimlet in Oregon. Ask any old timer who was logging that winter, and they'll tell you I ain't lying when I say his kitchen covered about ten miles of territory...

They were tall tales for sure, but very, very entertaining to young and old.  It was the year 1910 and America needed a hero and some cheering up.  We were in the midst of World War I, there were problems with unemployment (horror of horrors! unemployment was at .023% - that's point-zero-two-three, but that translated to over 2 million out of work), and Americans had workplace safety issues and child labor scandals, and life expectancy was about 50 (compared to about 80 today).  There were immigration and poverty issues, less than 10% of students graduated from high school, black people were barred by labor unions from joining and therefore kept at terribly low wages, women still didn't have the right to vote - didn't get that right until 1919.  (Black men got the right to vote in 1867)  See?  Aren't you already more depressed than when you were reading Paul's tall tales??  Newspapermen all across the country realized this guy could have their print flying off of news stands everywhere.


Paul Bunyan was the embodiment of American frontier vitality.  He is still a "symbol of might, the willingness to work hard, and the resolve to overcome all obstacles."  Granpa, too, just had to have his picture taken with this giant of a man and his faithful companion, Babe.


We made it home after dark - but we made it home safe and sound.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Tootlin' - Eagles and Buffalo

So, we're off tootlin' around the country side of western Minnesota and come across this pretty winter scene that I just had to share with you.


This is winter, also, but it certainly reminds us of unpicked cotton fields back home:



The "cotton" is actually little clumps of snow caught in the forks of tiny branches on the roadside brush.  We must be getting homesick, huh?

It's amazing how many places here DON'T have icicles.  That means their roofs are insulated really good.  This is a fishing resort on one of the "10,000" lakes in Minnesota.  But the lakes are frozen solid this time of year, so I guess snowmobilers stay here now.

Doin' a lil' more tootlin' and what to our wondering eyes appear but some Minnesota buffalo.


And even MORE amazingly (I tell ya', God is so good to those who are faithful.  He just drops in little surprises daily so that we're reminded he's still in control of all things!), even more amazingly we see ...


John's very first wild bald eagle!!  (I saw one on my tent-camping drive to Alaska with Granma Jo in 1999.)  Now, this guy wasn't just good enough to pose for about a dozen pictures, but he decided to do a fly around for us:


This was a pretty good photo, but, even though the next one only caught a tip of his wing, I like it, too!


Then he came back, sat in his "sentinel tree," and lets Granpa take even more pictures.  He moved from one spot to another, turning his head from side to side, as though he really was posing for us.  Thank you, God, you are so-o-o good to us! 



Monday, February 4, 2013

Snowbow !!

I've seen rainbows, double rainbows, rainbows actually touching the ground (but no pot of gold there).  Now we can say we've seen a "snowbow!"




I know.  It's hard to see, but it's there!

I could tell you how rainbows are made, but that's no fun.  Snowbows are made the same way only with ice crystals instead of raindrops.  I don't know if there really is such a word as "snowbow," but there ought to be!



Sunday, February 3, 2013

Does Your Bible Look Like this?

Where is your Bible?  Did you know that there are some Christian religions that basically say, "Let the priest interpret this for you."  They, then, never open the Bible for themselves.

Others open their Bible, study it during services, and put it up until the next service.  They take extensive notes in a notebook or in some other way.

Still others never take notes at all.  They must have a MUCH better memory than I do!!

This is my Bible:


Some folks are horrified, absolutely horrified! that I would write in the Bible!  The Bible is just a book in my opinion.  The words are what is sacred.  I tried taking notes somewhere else, but they never seem to be where I need them when I want to reference them.  Sometimes, if we're hearing from a new preacher, I write his name next to the text he's preaching on.  It's always fun to run across it several years later.

But mostly it's clarification to what is in the text.  Or the Greek word something was translated from, which is immensely helpful in understanding the writer's intended meaning.


Simple, but very important things like Jews were not Baptized because they were "born" into the family of God, are learned and noted.  Baptism was only intended for non-Jews.  This morning the discussion was on the Greek word "Koinonia."  We usually think of it as fellowship, but see that list of verses I penned in on the right?  Those are all scriptures where the word "Koinonia" has been translated into lots more than fellowship.  Ultimately, Pastor Ray Russell here in Grand Forks, North Dakota said that Christianity isn't about the individual; it is about the body of Christ.  It's not about being the Lone Ranger. (I wonder if he knew that was a Texas reference, since he's from Canada?)  It's about the corporate body of Christ loving each other, caring for each other, sharing with one another, lifting each other up, because we are all a part of one.  If we don't come together for "Koinonia" the "body" will fall apart.  Also, isolation prevents growth, healthy growth.

Well, those notes will remind me, and they will help me share what I learned - maybe years from now.  Maybe my kids and grandkids will pull my Bible out at my funeral and begin to understand me better, be drawn closer to the Lord because of these notes.  Without those notes, preachers sometimes might as well be throwing their words to the wind.  Today's words were penned in ink - for the ages.

When I run out of room in this Bible, I will buy another and start all over.  So, what does your Bible look like?

Friday, February 1, 2013

Something Incredibly Rare in Local History



The Thortvedts.   This family was full of talent and industry; they utilized both to the fullest!

The father, Levi, was an inventor, fiddler and a published author (beginning with his diary in 1903.)  The whole family saved their "letters, diaries, scrapbooks, photographs..."  This, in effect, recorded what they and their community felt about the things going on around them on a daily basis. In this day and age, recording the events of the world is no problem - but who is keeping a journal of the everyday family?  It absolutely is not like what you see on ANY television show.  So?  Who's doing it?

In December of 1870, Tone Thortvedt served as a midwife at the birth of their neighbors, the Skrei.

Orabel kept alphabetical listings of people, places and events in the area:


She had literally VOLUMES of data:


She was also an accomplished artist recording what folks thought then was routine, possibly boring "life":
She records the story behind the painting as follows:  "This painting depicts the first stagecoach arriving on the Red River.  In the summer of 1859, the Minnesota Stage Company built a road from Saint Cloud to the new army fort on the Red River Frontier:  Fort Abercrombie.  They had two stagecoaches filled with passengers on their way north to Fort Garry (the settlement now known as Winnipeg, Manitoba).  The plan was to have the passengers go from the stagecoach to a steamboat that had just been constructed on the Red River.  Things did not go according to plan.

"Along the way the stagecoaches met Anson Northup, the owner of the steamboat.  Captain Northup informed them that he had no intention of taking passengers on his boat.  'If you want to run her,' Captain Northup told them, 'you'll have to buy her.'  In the end, the Minnesota Stage Company had a raft made for the passengers.  It took 22 days to float down the river to Fort Garry."

The "rest of the story" is about two sisters, the Stirling's, who had traveled from Scotland to meet Elleonora's fiancee, Robert Campbell, who ran Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca in northeast Alberta.  After reaching Fort Abercrombie they had to float on the raft for 22 days, then sail 300 miles to the tip of Lake Winnipeg and take a birch bark canoe for the last 800 miles!  Now THAT is true love!!

I love to talk story, as they say in Hawaii, but, with all of my blogging, how much of it is personal or records day-to-day events in our lives?  Things like the price of a loaf of bread (almost $3 now, and I remember Momma sending me into a 7-11 to buy a loaf for a dime) or the price of a gallon of gasoline. (When I first got married I remember gasoline wars between service stations and buying gas for $.14 - fourteen cents! - a gallon.  It, too, is now $3 or $4 or sometimes even $5!)  I write about history, ignoring the fact that someday WE will be history!  The Thortvedts did good!