President Thomas Jefferson sent captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on a journey of exploration. Congress approved the expense of the venture because it was hoped that a water route across the continent would be discovered. On a personal note, Jefferson was eager to learn what there was to be discovered in the 530 million acres America had purchased from Spain in 1803 for a mere $15 million dollars.

There was no water route across the continent, as the Corps of Discovery found out. But Lewis and Clark collected and sent back to Jefferson 239 pressed plants and some 176 were new to science at that time. 

In what is now North Dakota, they “discovered” the plant was named after Meriwether Lewis, the lewisia.  (Pix on left.) This plant was also known as Bitterroot because the Indigenous Peoples had been making bread flour from the dried roots for centuries. Lewis found the taste bitter; hence the name. 

Clarkia (on the right) was named in honor of William Clark. Lewis found this plant near Kamiah, Idaho, in 1806 on their return trip. 

For the record, Lewis and Clark really didn’t discover that many new plants. The specimens they collected were likely sub-sets (for lack of a better name here) of known species. 

Lewisias come in a variety of colors (as shown above) and may be purchased in most area garden centers in spring. They are a hardy perennial. 

This is a deee-lightful, hits-the-nail-on-the-head joke book. For instance:

* “The future will soon be a thing of the past.” George Carlin

* “You know you’re old when you see the movie Jurassic Park and it brings back fond childhood memories.”

* “The older I get, the better I used to be!”  Lee Trevino

* “Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.” Benjamin Franklin

* “Old age is 15 years older than I am.”  Oliver Wendell Holmes

* “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”  Kurt Vonnegut

* “A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.”  Robert Frost

* “You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.” Bob Hope

* Some people will never be too old to learn new ways of being stupid.  Unkown

* “Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed.” Charles Schulz

* “You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.”  Woody Allen

* “If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.”  James A Garfield

Charles Bauman’s Meat Shop was a thriving business in Belleville, Illinois. The business placed this ad in The Semi-Weekly Advocate, the local paper, on Friday, Sept 26, 1879:

BAUMANN’S EXCELSIOR MEAT ROASTER

“This apparatus is an air-tight chest or box, which must be put in the baking part of the Cooking stove. By this mode of Roasting or Baking, meats will cook as tender as mutton. Poultry of all kinds cooked in this way is the most palatable and delicious ever produced by any other mode of cooking and as regards economy this chest cannot be excelled. The cost of this apparatus will be more than saved in three or four months from the fact that butter, (by the way, a large item in the course of a few years) as the essence from the meat forms a most delicious gravy, by a distilling process. The chest if made of the best quality of sheet iron, on a self-sealing principle. Any housewife who gives it a fair trial will not do without it. The cost of the Apparatus is very small, from the fact that it is very durable. If well cared for it will last from ten to fifteen years.            320 East Main Street, Belleville, Ill. 

This image is the best I could find for a Baumann’s Excelsior Meat Roaster. 

Likely not correct but surely close? 

I’ll leave it to you to name the city shown! Good luck!

Kennewick, Bellingham, Grays Harbor, Seattle, Spokane, Port Angeles

Couple of years ago, a like-minded friend and I spent a delightful day driving in southern Spokane County to the places where her family had lived. 

I snapped this pix in that cemetery (name I’ve forgotten). I was wandering around while she was taking pix of her family’s tombstones. I was immediately struck by the eyes in the tree. Do you see them?

We cemetery-wanderers have often times felt a special kind of feeling when we visit any cemetery and especially when we visit a family cemetery. It’s the sort of feeling nearly impossible to describe but it is real enough, as many would attest.

Is that big tree a “hiding place” for spirits? A resting place? A visiting place? Do the spirits of our dead ever come back to the places of their burials? And we have to ask: why would they? But if they do, they surely have their reasons. 

This photo I took in Fairmount Cemetery in Spokane. Some family member (I surmise) had come to visit and had left this little red ceramic cardinal bird atop their family’s tombstone. Why would they have come to visit…….. and to leave that little red bird………. unless they felt “something,” some connection with their dearly departed. 

Ah, the tales that cemetery trees could tell if they only could. 

This is a true story. If you can’t handle a very sad truth, quit reading right now.

I was walking one day with my Tika (dachshund) a few years ago on my gravel-county road. I came upon some stuff that a yahoo had dumped along the roadside. THAT was bad enough, but this picture, all busted apart, was in that pile of dumped junk. It didn’t look recent enough to me to be a jilted girlfriend but somebody’s mother or grandmother. And there it was dumped into the weeds along a gravel road.

Picture on the right was taken in a big thrift shop near Sequim. One corner of a big room was filled with stacked picture frames……… and not just frames but PICTURES. Family pictures. Why in the world? How in the world?

Okay, dear readers. A line from an old Kingston Trio song rings in my mind: “This could happen to you!” 

If you do not have a plan for all your family genealogy and photos and memorabilia, the likelihood is 90% that it will go to the dump or Goodwill. (Where do you suppose all those shoeboxes of old photos found in thrift shops comes from??????) 

Your family has their own busy lives and collecting genealogy and family history was YOUR hobby. You must not assume that they’ll be as fanatical about it as you’ve been. 

Please, please know that I “preach” the truth here today. Please start crafting a plan for when you “cross over that Rainbow Bridge.” It takes a plan to leave a legacy and not a mess.

 I do apologize that I didn’t think to note the date but this wonderful story was found in The Spokesman Review. It’s hard to read, so here goes:

BRISTLY VISITOR RIDES LOG PILE

Johnny Porkypine Goes To Police Station but is Later Released

Gunting (sic) irritably and threatening everyone who approached, Spokane’s strangest tourist arrived in the city this morning on a load of logs from the north woods.

Motorcycle Officer Victor Hudson and employees of the Milwaukee railroad discovered the visitor, an immense porcupine, hiding beneath a load of logs on the railroad tracks near Sprague and Greene. The porcupine was rounded up and coaxed into a sack. He was taken to the police station.

“I didn’t lose him,” declared Captain R. W. Hinton. “Call up the park board.”

After some discuss, the animal was taken to the Manito zoo, where he was refused admission on the grounds that he would pine away and die. Unable to find a home for the porcupine, he was carted to the timbered flats of Hangman Creek and released.”

Gotta wonder how they coaxed him into the sack and whose job it fell to????

I spotted this photo in a collecting at the Cheney Historical Society Museum. There was no identification on or with the photo. I’ve kept it on my desk top to let my imagination run wild creating a story…………

* Is this a 1930s or 1940s photo?

* Is this a grandmother with a favorite grandchild? 

* Notice the ribbon on the hat…. a gift from grandma? 

* It’s obviously outdoors…were they gardening?

* Half of a big shaggy dog sit with them, of course. 

* The dog’s feet are clean….. there is water nearby???

* Grandma’s dress looks clean and pressed…no easy job with the tools of the day. 

* Was it a flour-sack dress? 

* She wears glasses…. so better to read bedtime stories to the tot.

* Her hands look like working hands, as they surely would have been. 

* They sit in a “wild place” not a manicured lawn like today. 

* I see one sandaled foot for the child…. not running barefoot today. 

My thought to share with you today is this: Don’t just glance at a photo of an ancestor. Study it and let the details spring forth into your imagination. 

Lake Washington is a 22-mile-long freshwater lake bordering Seattle and Bellevue. It is the second-largest natural lake in our state. It is renowned for a massive mid-century ecological cleanup that reversed severe pollution. 

The surface area of the lake is 34 square miles; average depth of 108 feet with maximum depth of 214 feet. The shoreline stretches for 58 miles bordered by Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland and Mercer Island. The lake is fed primarily by the Cedar River and Sammamish River.

The lake is a deep glacial trough carved thousands of years ago. It was officially named in 1854 by Thomas Mercer, honoring George Washington. Historically it was called It-kow-chug by the local Duwamish people. 

In 1916 the construction of the Montlake Cut for the Lake Washington ship canal lowered the lake’s water level by nearly nine feet and changed its outflow to Puget Sound. Because of the lake’s deep water and muddy bottom, building traditional piers is impossible. Instead, engineering feats like the I-90 bridge and Evergreen Point Bridge float on pontoons and rank among the longest floating bridges in the world. 

Several high-profile tech billionaires, musicians and sports figures have homes on Lake Washington. These include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,  legendary cartoonist Gary Larson, veteran actor Tom Skerritt and Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft and owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. 

Note: Many of us drive regularly to Seattle and points west but have we ever thought to ask WHY floating bridges and not “regular” bridges? And I find it fascinating that a freshwater lake can be so close to ocean water and stay “fresh.” 

Note: Thanks to Google AI for help with this bit. 

Lake Coeur d’Alene Facts:

• ·     Name was given by French fur trappers impressed by the sharp trading skills of the CdA tribe; their own name for the lake means “those who are found here,” or “the discovered people.”
• ·      Is a natural but dam-controlled by the Post Falls dam on the Spokane River
• ·      Is fed by 2 rivers: the CdA and St.Joe with Spokane River as outflow
• ·      David Thompson is the first recorded European explorer to see the lake in 1807
• ·      Covers an area of 50 square miles; is 25 miles long and 1-3 miles wide with 109 miles of shoreline.

• ·      Has a surface elevation of 2128’ above sea level
• ·      Has average depth of 120’; deepest “hole” is 220’ (south of Driftwood Point)
• ·      Several celebrities have homes on Lake CdA: Kim Kardashian, George Clooney, Matt Mc Conaugey for some.
• ·      Most expensive home/property is the 18 acre, $27.5million place on Windy Bay
• ·      Typical summer temperatures: The lake’s average summer surface temperature (June through August) is 67.5°F. 
• ·      Swimming temperature: Many people find water temperatures between 70°F and 78°F comfortable for swimming; peak temp is 76o in mid-August.
•   Lake Coeur d’Alene has several “sister lakes” in the Northern Idaho panhandle. These include Hayden Lake, Pend Oreille and others. All are clear, deep and mostly cold.