family

Moving On

August 21, 2010

The short answer is: I am moving. The question being: Where have you been, Leila? The actual decision to move was quite sudden, but the underlying reasons have been simmering for quite awhile−frequently causing me to be absent from my usual haunts. For awhile I entertained the hope that I could contact each of my [...]

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Streamline Adventure – Day Three

July 31, 2010

Today’s big accomplishments were to: pay my brother for all the diesel we used in the pressure washer while cleaning the inside of the trailer, clean up the debris left in the trailer after pressure-washing the paint, and, take rough measurements of the floor plan and windows and cabinets. Oh, and make a list of [...]

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Streamline Adventure – Day Two

July 30, 2010

Today our paint stripping attack used more radiator cleaner, and a LOT of steam cleaning. The front end is looking pretty good, and the paint is being rather easy to peel off in the kitchen and bedroom area of the trailer; slow going though. Stripped the doors and drawers out, and started removing and wire-brushing [...]

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The Streamline Adventure – Day One

July 29, 2010

And so it starts. Accidentally, almost. I was contemplating buying this 24-foot aluminum darling, a 1958 Streamline. The interior had been painted several times, and in some sections all the layers of paint had loosened–including the original paint, and so I stood inside the Streamline, peeling paint off and revealing the shiny, virgin aluminum beneath. [...]

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Something in My Roots

July 28, 2010

Granted, my wheat heritage is based in Montana, and my recent travels through wheat country were in Washington, but the colors and the vistas are so identical and my deep response, the way my heart resonants at the scene, wheat has got to be in my blood. The thing I cannot figure out though, is [...]

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Using my tools and talents for good

July 13, 2010

Today I came up with another idea for making use of some of the vintage things I have saved—pocket notebooks with postcards as covers. These were pretty fun and easy to make, but of course the right tools made that so. These included: bone folder booklet stapler colored staples fancy die-cutting device for rounding corners [...]

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Despair is Invisible

July 10, 2010

I am on my way soon to a memorial for a family member who committed suicide. This is of course a somber occasion, and we all have the challenge of the shadow that suicide casts when it is the cause of death. Suicide is a classic elephant-in-the-living-room, right. An additional dimension to this shadow is [...]

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Hit the Road, Jack

July 9, 2010

Next week I go on my first Airstream adventure. This photo is of the fer-true rig that I’ll be camping in, not just some purely representative image I dug up on the Internet. :) This is the same Airstream that my (ex) husband and I tried to buy from my brother awhile back, but couldn’t [...]

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Save ice in the winter

July 8, 2010

More talk today about preservation. This time Suesanne and I were comparing notes about how each of our great grandfathers would cut and save ice in the winter for use in the summer. It must have been early 1900s when they were doing this, her great grandfather in North Dakota and mine in western Montana. [...]

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Against a tide

July 7, 2010

This evening we talked of things we did as kids. Something in the conversation got me to remembering a time when I was about eight and my family was out on Puget Sound in our old Chris-Craft cabin cruiser for one of our weekend wanderings through the waterways. We’d stopped at some little cove and [...]

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