ANACORTES EAGLES CLUB FUNDRAISER BARBEQUE

Anacortes Eagles Club puts on a yearly fundraiser barbeque where they serve salmon, chicken or ribs, barbequed on these huge barrel pits. The cooks were taking a bit of a break.

The women bake home-made pies, beans, coleslaw and serve you. They close  a section of the street to set up their cues and tables.

When in the West, eat salmon. Done to perfection. Our plate was heavy. I believe we were dished out a half-pound of silver salmon. Whoever cleans it, didn't leave a bone. I guess I was too hungry to take a picture, light breakfast, no lunch. We went inside to eat. We managed some blueberry and cheery/rhubarb pie, too. Good stuff.

Jim's Eagle's Aerie closed about two months ago. He made arrangements  to switch his membership to Anacortes Club. People here are very friendly. I took a picture of this unusual rocking chair. It was built and carved and donated by a long ago member.

We walked around town taking pictures of murals that Anacortes is known for. I'll publish them and some art tomorrow. Finally got an art fix. On the way, we met this sweet little papillon.

I swear, when she saw the camera she stopped and posed for me. Her owner says she does that because she is a show dog. Traveling like I do, I enjoy other people's pets and no longer have a dog or cat of my own.

I spent two hours before our Eagles dinner in the library, catching up on some business stuff when we first got to town because our signal is so slow in the park. But, I can't pass an Elks Club, since I'm a member from Sonora.  The people in this Elks Club were also very friendly. Three murals graced the club walls.

They commissioned this one to honor a couple who raised more money for children through their club, than any club in Washington by making and selling Jam. Arlitta Pitcher and Stan Jewell. He is 89 years old, now, and they no longer attend.

And, they honored member Carl Frantz, a Sea Scout, who brought them fish, and boats, and apparently a lot of fun.

This gentleman was a band leader that for years played the Elks major dances. Not many clubs, it seems, have those big dances any more. His name is on that bass fiddle but I couldn't read it in my editing program. Sorry sir!
Weather was beautiful, with a full day, in a friendly town. Life is good.

LIVING IN LIBBY, MONTANA

Driving from Kelispell to Libby yesterday morning  brought us through 9 miles of road work much of it really, bumpy gravel.

Elevation rises, more trees and stump farms with scraggly second or third growth. One plot had about 3 scraggly trees and nothing but stumps. This is lumber country obviously and the twigs we see everywhere that pass for trees is disheartening even if it is private land.

Libby is called the City of Eagles. We didn’t see any flying around or nesting spots along the roadway, but there were plenty of them around town.

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We had expected to see the Museum and Nordic Heritage Center, but it was closed.

We missed by one day the Nordic Heritage Days annual celebration. This sign was left on the street. We pulled in to stay at the VFW in town and just walked the downtown area and took pictures.

I  judge the health of a small town by its art or lack of it, good beer, buildings that are well cared for and if you see a nice child care center, a drug treatment center, senior center, plenty of doctors offices, a hospital and good looking schools you know you are in a progressive community. Libby qualifies. The main street was only about four blocks long and two blocks deep, but it was full of murals and they are expensive.
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Even their garbage cans were painted. This one mentions their Annual River Front Blues Festival.
They still have a working theater in town. Nice.

The Libby Cafe claims to have the best huckleberry flapjacks in Montana.  I liked their sign.

This one too.

Libby has an Amtrak Station so you can get where you want to go. Country living, small town, pretty nice place to live.

SUPERIOR, WISCONSIN, WAR AND CLIMATE

Leaving Ashland, we stopped at the Northern Great Lakes Visitors Center. They were celebrating the grand opening of a new exhibit about Aldo Leopold and the docent teasingly said this fall basket of mums matched my clothes and I should have my picture taken with it. The building is quite impressive but I found the displays rather plastic. A voices about Native Americans film was poorly done. The see-through lighted-from-behind screen was shadowed by the exit sign lights and other invasive light made it difficult to see.  The exhibits are designed to play with and press buttons and the story and pictures, except for a 75 foot tall mural, just didn’t give me a satisfied feel, or peak my curiosity, except for this sign:

Just the sign, then very little about people settling here and struggling to make it. Duluth is in Minnesota, maybe that is why. But, Highway 2 is on a direct line to Duluth. I guess I’m jaded. I’ve seen so many wonderful visitors centers that give you a strong feel for where you are.

The Leopold exhibit was sparse. Aldo Leopold was one of America’s foremost conservationists.  He is renowned for starting the national wilderness system, founding the field of wildlife management and ecology, and writing the conservation classic A Sand County Almanac. He devoted his life to the question, “How do we live on the land without spoiling it?”  A question we are still asking today.  But, no counterpart of what Wisconsin has done to fulfill that goal. I asked the docent where I could see some big sugar maples, some huge hemlocks and pines and birches. She said there are a few stands here and there, on an island, or a park. Except for a nice garden in front of the center, it is surrounded by grass. A beautiful viewing tower to look at twigs for trees and grass. It makes me wonder, is this state way behind in recognizing the very lessons that Leopold brought to American consciousness? I was truly disappointed.


This map is suggesting that climate change is a reality and this is what could happen. While we travel around the country we hear people everywhere, say:  “This is unusual weather. It isn’t usually like this.” At Ashland, a storm blew up like a veritable tornado. Campers commented at how unusual it is to get so many violent storms. In Michigan, the humidity and weeks on end of higher than normal temps? people were shaking their heads, “don’t know, this weather. My barley heads are bigger this year, but my corn is destroyed,” etc. etc.

The center had an artists rendering  of the extinct American Carrier Pigeons that were so important during WW1. I was amazed at how beautiful they were and wonder how our society let them die out. It bothers me still that these things happened. In fact, one poster of a former Wisconsin governor claimed, “We have enough great forests to last our population forever.”  If only they knew what greed could do.

When we reached Superior, we spent the night at the Richard Bong Veterans Historical Center. Richard Ira Bong above was a WWII fighter pilot who surpassed Eddie Rickenbacker’s record for downing 27 enemy planes. Just a young kid of 18, his  first battle netted 6 kills. They stopped him at 22 kills thinking their new, young hero would make a better emissary for selling war bonds.  He got bored with that and asked to go back to battle. Then they stopped him at 40, for fear they’d lose their hero as the war just about over. This center is unusual in that it is mostly devoted to this one man’s exploits with a lot of war statistics and memorabilia to fill a huge three-story building. It is located here because Richard Bong was born and raised in Poplar, WI, just  a few miles away from this center. His control of the Japanese air attacks made a huge difference in the outcome of the war. Many battle plans rested on his ability to perform and he is fittingly a great American Hero. Well worth a visit. This visit came as a positive, in one way because I’d just finished reading In Harms Way, by Doug Stanton, about the horrible shafting the Navy dealt Major McVay, the commanding officer of the Indianapolis when it was sunk by a Japanese sub. It took until 2001, 56 years after the sinking, to exonerate McVay.

And, a negative because I am so anti-war. Not that WWII wasn’t necessary, it was. But most wars are over American expansionism, our corporate interests in foreign countries, intervention in foreign countries leadership, ideology, religion, lack of tolerance for other nations culture, oil, business.  Look at these statistics of World War II:
Of a global population at the time of 2.3 billion people, 85 million served as soldiers. Sixty million died, 38 million of them civilians.
2/3 rds of the Jewish Population was annihilated.  The Soviet Union lost 27.5 % of their population. 17% of Poles died. 19.4% of Germans died. 3.67 % of Japanese lost their lives.  All countries lost some.
I read here General MacArthur’s  statement after the war:


We do have a better world. But we don’t have freedom, tolerance or justice. We give our freedoms away, piece by piece. We are at war on our city streets. Tolerance and justice are still unmet goals as a nation.

Protesters then were women and had I been old enough, I’d have been there with them.  I do appreciate that I had the right to protest, a freedom much diminished, narrowing and threatened as I write.
Amen!

CHEVY ON A STICK.

We are wrapping up our trip to Albuquerque, filled and dumped, did laundry and scrubbed up the motorhome yesterday.  Today we move to Acoma, New Mexico. It has been a nice visit here and I often grab “drive-bys”,  photos of something I see along the road, or sidewalk,  just curiosities, or something that gives the flavor of a place.  I must have taken seven  pictures of this sculpture on an incredibly busy intersection before getting a couple you can actually see  from front to back.

Jim found a website about it. It has been voted “Best of Burque”  several times. Locals  love this Icon and named it Chevy on a Stick.  The story is, during a highway widening, the city that loves tile,  built this thing at great expense and the naysayers objected to it. It is here to stay.

A huge band of colorful tile work decorates the ABQ Convention center. Much of the front entrance and some around a side entrance. Taking photos from a moving car is chancy, but I got a couple of decent shots.

The tile work isn’t limited to city projects.  Many businesses have their buildings decorated with murals and tile works.

I enjoyed that aspect of ABQ very much. When you visit, remember to take a drive  around town just to see the tile work.

And if you are going to close your business with gates, why not make them beautiful? This is just one panel of a gate across a business front.

If you want donations for a food bank, or something important,  a casual way to attract money makes it easy. People don’t often know where to go to give to the food bank.

Jim engaged this “living sign” on a very hot day. She was sticking to the shade. We sincerely thought a person could die of the heat inside one of these costumes. She let us look and it is mesh and quite open on the side. She was dressed in shorts and a halter; still hot, though. We suggested she get a personal fan.

I don’t know why I took a picture is this girl. I asked her first. She looked so forlorn as though she didn’t belong anywhere. 
Until I got a point and shoot camera, I never regarded a camera as a frivolous toy. What fun!

A PERFECT HOUSE AND HARBOR-FORT BRAGG

Maybe it was the weather. Sunny and fair, walking around Fort Bragg on Friday, what a happy circumstance.  Then a most perfect house caught my eye. There was just something…perfect about it.  Perhaps the manicured bushes and lawn.
Or the perfect stained glass windows. I snapped a picture and the sign revealed it as The Guest House Museum.

 I couldn’t put my finger on it, but inside it was as comfortable as an old shoe. The 1892 Victorian was built for C.R.Johnson of the Union Lumber Company. A well crafted beauty built of 67,000 board feet of old growth redwood and Douglas fir. One room is devoted to a history of the family and the lumbering business. From old timers like these:
To a modern Paul Bunyan.

Kind-to-the-feet hardwood floors, carved moldings, high ceilings, some antique furnishings and rugs. No matter your rank and wealth, nothing  wasted. Rag rugs made from saved fabric pieces; old clothes torn in lengths. Rugs on the floor hand braided or made on a solid redwood, 100 year-old loom.  Rag rugs are made the same way today on a factory scale.

This house was comfortable, I think, because of great windows,  rooms flooded with light and rich, warm wood. Well worth a visit if you go, for a small donation. Staffed by volunteers.

Most of the morning we spent at Noyo Harbor, a fetching place to take pictures on a gorgeous day.

A gull kind of posed for me.

Most of the fishing boats were out for the day leaving us an uncrowded view of those left.

Boat owners like clever, catchy names.

It is a working dock with more pleasure boating and fishing excursions than in former days.

A row of unused big ship tie-downs bring to mind the port did a big  freight business in the past.

A derelict; somebody’s dream just waiting.

We walked to the jetty and the inlet where part of the movie, The Russians Are Coming was filmed. Jim likes to follow movie locations and then re-watch the movie. I’m not much of a  fan.

I  came to this area in the late 1950′s as a competitive skin diver. I remember swimming through a forest of this  type of kelp. It  grows on long “tree trunks”  rooted 25 to 30 feet down to the bottom and blooming at the top.  Big, thick,  red colored abalone were plentiful in these waters;  a wolf eel  in every hole in the rocks.  Abalone shells that come up now are practically flat.  The red abs have been over fished and signs at the beach give warning about their endangered status.

Piles of kelp lay rotting on the sand. Happily, scientists are finding use for it as a biofuel. Chances are they’ll decimate the kelp and then find out what purpose it really served as a form of beach garbage.

We poked around town; nice shops and services; restaurants; an independent book store. I happened on this beautiful sculpture  in a charming square. Whale watching during migration is a popular activity out of Noyo Harbor.

The old water tender stands among the weeds, but the popular Skunk Train makes use of practically abandoned train tracks. A huge nearby mural engaged my interest because the people in it were obviously painted from real people.

You can click on these photos to enlarge them. Before the day ended, we walked out on the famous Glass Beach. I say famous because I think every 5th grade science class from California schools visits Glass beach. Someday, I expect all the glass will be gone. The glass is from years of throwing garbage in the ocean. The glass bottles wash up and break against the rocks and become beautifully smoothed and polished by the waves and rocks.

The river meets the ocean at this spot;  glass chips small, but plentiful glimmered in the sun. A fun day. I took 70 photos if you’d like to see more of them:
https://picasaweb.google.com/106530979158681190260/2011107FortBragg