Old Family, New Friends

     I love it when I can visit with family. It's been a long and frustrating few years since we all lived close to each other and gas prices made it easy to just plan a trip for the weekend. When we were little it was easy because our family lived in Portland, Gra'ma and Papa lived in Central Oregon, and out of my seven aunt-uncle sets the furthest lived in Central California. Since we moved everyone else has moved too, but it seems we're moving closer together.
     What is it about Central Oregon that draws us all back? Is it that my parents' generation grew up there, or is it that all of our best memories are there? I don't know, but for me it's that my family is mostly close by no matter where in Central Oregon I am.
     I came down to Madras to visit my aunt and her kids. I wasn't expecting to see much of my oldest cousin, but I've been given the opportunity to meet his children and I absolutely adore them. The older two are girls and sweethearts. They're brilliant for a nine and seven-year-old, they love to cook, they're outdoorsy, and we all get along so much better than I'd have thought with our age differences. The youngest is a four-year-old boy who looks just like daddy. Their boy is a ladies man, as young as he is, and I can't sit in a room with him without him curling up next to me.
     My cousin's kids are wonderful, so is his wife, but I'm most glad I got to know him again. He's several years older than me and when the family started going its separate ways he was just starting his family. Now that we're adults it's great to become friends as well as family. There is something to be said for creating friendships with family, even the ones you don't see very often.

Just thinking...
Stephie

Vacation Time!

     This September I've been away in Wisconsin. My grandmother and I went to visit her third husband's cousin's wife (very complicated, I know) in Madison. It was a wonderful trip and we got to see a lot of different places and sights. Some highlights were the American Players Theatre production of Hamlet, the Mid-Continent Railway Museum, the Wisconsin Big Cat Rescue, and spending a week in the Northwoods.
     Hamlet was a stunning production. The American Players Theatre is centered in Spring Green, WI and has both an indoor and outdoor stage. This summer the woman my Gra'ma and I were staying with, we'll call her Mrs. Lucas, went to see APT's production of Hamlet. She absolutely loved it and insisted we go to a production. I have seen a couple different versions of the play, including Kenneth Branaugh's movie and Laurence Olivier's performance, and I wasn't expecting to be impressed, let alone blown away. Matt Schwader as Hamlet was stunning. I absolutely loved it! Mrs. Lucas also took Gra'ma and I to The Night of the Iguana, a Tennessee Williams play, and I was still spinning from how completely the cast of Hamlet took me from my here and now and transported me into the story like only a good book does.
     I think my favorite part, however, was that afterward the audience was given the opportunity to speak with the actors and have questions answered. I learned that Eric Parks, Laertes, attended my Alma Mater and I got to speak with him about that as well as the play itself. A bonus was that one of the women in the audience also attended Pacific Lutheran University, and her son roomed with Matt in college. Not only was the experience amazing theatrically, but it was driven home to me how interconnected the world can be, and how influential collegiate connections can be.

     Over the course of my four weeks in Wisconsin, Mrs. Lucas did not have internet. This is understandable: she gave up her computer when her husband became ill several years ago and there was no reason to continue paying for internet when she had no ability to use it. This did make for some complications though. You'd never realize how much we depend on the internet, or any of our other electronics, until they are taken away completely. I learned this when we trekked into the Northwoods for a week. It was a wonderful week full of visiting with friends and exploring the beauty of Autumn descending on the Midwest, but it was also a week without television, internet, cell phones, or even a landline! The next nearest neighbor was ten minutes down the road, and the nearest internet connection was an hour into town. In contrast I got a lot of reading done, wrote about the books I'd read, and just relaxed. With Gra'ma and Mrs. Lucas reminiscing about everything and anything they could come up with, it was nice to have some time to myself. Especially in such a beautiful setting.
     In our last couple weeks in Wisconsin, Mrs. Lucas wanted to expose both Gra'ma and me to as much of the area as possible. We started with a trip to the Overture Center where we had a beautiful dinner atop the building at the rooftop restaurant Fresco. Then we explored a Swiss town to the south west that didn't seem much different than any Midwest town I'd been to, but it was some sort of tourist spot. Next Mrs. Lucas took us to Baraboo and the surrounding area where we went to the Railway museum and rode the train.
     The Mid-Continent Railway Museum is in North Freedom, Wisconsin, and houses several steam and diesel engines. They both restore and run the trains that are donated to the Museum. All the work is done by volunteers, with some experts called in for specialty work, and the only paid workers are the ticket agents and the gift-shop employees. It was a wonderful place, the people were friendly and wanted to share their love of railways with everyone. The train rides are over three miles of track owned and operated by the museum and its volunteers. The rides run over the summer, ending the third week of October each year, with special events in November and February.
     We got to ride the train first class in the dining car. It was exciting; I've always loved trains and getting to visit the Jamestown, California, train museum made this trip no less exciting. Trains on the west coast are different than trains in the Midwest, though most people wouldn't think so. Gra'ma kept telling us about her experiences on trains when her father was a roundhouse foreman. She even knew the name of a particular train when no one else did! It was interesting to see such a vibrant recreation of the past in a small town in Southern Wisconsin.
     On the way back from the Railway Museum, we stopped by the Wisconsin Big Cat Rescue. They have twenty-nine cats that have been donated, rescued, or born at the rescue. We were there around naptime so the cats weren't very active, but they were beautiful! It was a nice foil to a small zoo we visited in Baraboo, WI. The zoo wasn't anything near what I've always considered a zoo, only three or four acres. They had some pretty cool animals, most of which are from North America. They had a bear, a couple wolves, deer, llamas, and a couple golden pheasants. I wasn't too impressed, but it was in a beautiful park and it was a free zoo, so I'm surprised they had so many animals from outside the area.
     I had a great time in Wisconsin; caught up on reading, explored the area, and had fun with family. I missed my parents, and especially my dog. But It's always fun to get away from daily life. I hope everyone gets a chance to do something like my trip, something out of the ordinary, and something to simply get away.

Stephie

MASH

     I started reading like crazy this summer, to make up for all that time I spent on required readings, and in looking for something interesting found M.A.S.H: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. This was exciting for me because I've been watching the television show since I was a kid. It was fascinating to see the transition of the story: the movie, and television show, were based on this book. I hadn't noticed when I saw the movie or in watching the show--I guess they didn't credit the author unless he or she was associated with the screen production too--so I was surprised when all three of the renditions were similar.
     The show follows Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, a Captain in the US Army stationed at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital situated near the front lines. He lives in "The Swamp" with a rotation of four other officers and makes it through the Korean War by drinking and flirting outrageously with any and all women he comes across. Yet, he is still one of the best doctors in Asian campaign, with an honest care for the well-being of the people around him. Hawkeye and his friends' hi-jinks illustrate the futility of war while still showing their humanity: their pranks and shows of temper are how they maintain dignity in the midst of one of the most brutal situations man faces.

     The movie is a precursor to the television show and based on the novel. A dark comedy about the same characters and problems as in the novel and television show. The 4077 MASH calls in two replacement doctors and gets Hawkeye and Captain "Duke" Forrest. The two encounter their new tent-mate, Major Frank Burns, who is extremely religious and an inferior surgeon to Hawkeye and Duke. A new surgeon arrives, "Trapper" John, whom Hawkeye knew in college. Hi-jinks ensue and Burns is sent stateside. Meanwhile, the unit's dentist confesses to the chaplain that he is considering suicide. He comes to the Swampmen (for they again live in a tent named "The Swamp") for a quick and easy way to finish it. The three men suggest a "black-pill" quick acting poison and prepare a Last Supper-like going away party for the dentist. The black-pill is a sleeping pill and the dentist's confidence is renewed when he spends the night with one of the nurses, negating his worry of inability to perform. The movie then includes Trapper and Hawkeye's journey to Japan to save a congressman's son. Through blackmail and political implication they escape court-martial and run into a friend of Hawkeye's from college. The story ends with a football game between the 4077th and 325th MASH units. Both sides have ringers and the 4077th manages to win through a combination of cheating and trickery. Soon afterward Hawkeye and Duke are discharged and sent home.
     The book is much like both the movie and the television series. Character outlines vary and some characters are combined to create those who appear in both the movie and television show. I found the personifications between the book and shows enlightening. Alan Alda as Hawkeye in the show has always struck me as the perfect character, but in reading the book I realize how much the two are intertwined. Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye in the movie is a good imagining, but he doesn't have as much of the carefree rake in his personification as Alda's Hawkeye does. Yet the Hawkeye of the book isn't quite as much of a womanizer as in the television show. The relationships between characters, though, are spot-on. How they interact and react to each other, in both the show and movie, mirrors a relationship in the book that creates the community the characters can exist within.
     Despite the differences in characterizations between mediums, the MASH characters are powerful examples of humanity in times of trouble and chaos. I enjoyed all three tellings of Richard Hooker's story. What if all franchises had this similarity threading through them?

Just a thought....
Stephie

New Obsessions: BBC America

     This last week was Spring Break for my university so I've had some free time on my hands, actually I've had a lot of free time on my hands. I started watching Doctor Who this evening--it's the first new episode since Christmas--but got caught by the new shows that followed.
     Orphan Black and The Nerdist were interesting: Orphan Black is about a woman who watches someone who looks just like her jump in front of a train. She takes on the woman's identity and strange things start to happen in the dead woman's life. The Nerdist is about all things nerdy. The host, Chris Hardwick, described the show as a place where any thing that people can obsess over, talk about, argue about, then talk about more can be explored and talked about. I thought it was an accurate description of being a nerd; it's also a description John Green used when talking about nerds and nerdiness in his vlog. But it's also an accurate description of Tumblr, so The Nerdist is Tumblr in a television show.
     It looks like we, as a society, are becoming more interested in talking about our interests in an informal and impersonal manner. What happened to book clubs and other organizations where people meet up in real life and talk about things?
     I know I'm a culprit of this same anti-social mingling; I am, after all, talking to you from my computer while you're out there on your computer or smart phone, but what happens outside of these glowing boxes? Will we revert to finding meeting places and talking about things just as people have started writing letters again? Or will we stay tethered to the magic box that allows us to travel to an alternate world where all the other people are traveling to talk about their obsessions.

Just a thought....
Stephie

Sequester: Air Tower Closures

     I was stunned to learn that the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) is closing down several of their locations because of the sequester. I went searching for information and according to a Forbes article even though air traffic makes up only 20% of the Department of Transportation's budget, it is taking 60% of the cuts to transportation. I would like to see some reasoning behind this--Why is the FAA getting the lion's share of the cuts?
     The cuts will close 149 air traffic control towers that are run by subcontracted employees, meaning that the controllers are employed by outside companies rather than the FAA itself. Out of 250 towers nation-wide, the FAA originally planned on closing 189 towers but changed the plan because of "national interest."
     My shock was mainly at the scale of the closures. The 149 towers are in 46 states, they are in small towns and the outskirts of large cities alike. But the closures aren't really closing down the entire facility, instead they're pulling the air traffic controllers and closing the towers. Some "have likened the tower closures to a city suddenly losing its stoplights. It doesn't mean that crashes will happen, but pilots will have to be that much more vigilant" the article said. 
      As someone who travels to small towns and has family and friends in aviation, the closures are concerning; there are ways to deal with an empty control tower, but a location that has been functioning with personnel will be handicapped at least initially by these decisions. I just hope we don't have to hear about a tragedy because of the FAA's cuts. 

Just a thought...
Stephie

Boomerang Nebula

Hubble Space Telescope

     So I was talking to a friend today and we got into some pretty interesting stuff about science and the universe. Bottom line is that this guy knows a whole lot about physics for a history major. He told me about this place that's known as the coldest naturally occurring place in the universe: the Boomerang Nebula. Apparently it's in the Centaurus constellation and it's colder than actual space.
     The Nebula has such a cold temperature because it's releasing gas from the star's core and expanding at a rate of 164 km/s. It's located 5 thousand light years away and is pretty neat. The scientists who first saw it in 1980 only saw the Nebula's bend, but after viewing through the Hubble Space Telescope some scientists now call it the Bowtie Nebula.
     There are places that are colder, such as Wolfgang Ketterle's lab at MIT in Cambridge, where temperatures have reached 810 trillionths of a farenheit degree above absolute zero, but the Boomerang Nebula is the coldest known naturally occurring place in the universe. It's incredible!

Just a thought...
Stephie

Library Woes

     Yesterday I made a trip to the library with my grandmother: not a completely unusual occurrence, but it was not what I expected. Instead of going to the library we normally visit, we stopped by a branch closer into town and I was surprised at the difference between both size of the building and the selection. At our usual library the main room is probably sixty feet long and eighty feet wide. The entire selection of books, movies, audiobooks, music and the public computers take up that space. The fiction section at the library we visited yesterday was about the same size. What made it unexpected was the fact that we're in the same county and run by the same library system.
     My question is: why? Why is a library is the same system--in a more populated, yet more rural area--so much smaller than one closer to town? Wouldn't the thought be, if the library is one of the only modes of entertainment and public enhancement make it more varied and bigger? I don't understand. Okay, I understand that the system wouldn't want a larger library in an area where people wouldn't use it, but if the library was larger, it follows that more people would be able to use it. I guess my largest frustration is that I have read most of the selection at the local library, and now I have to go to other branches if I want to explore something new.
     On the plus side, I now know that particular library has a good selection of general fiction, and a spectacular media section. I think I'll send in a letter to the main office.

Just a thought...
Stephie

Lost Friends

     It's getting on toward graduation season again. All you high-schoolers and college kids know what that means: the loss of relationships. But why does it have to be that way? With Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and all the other facets of the internet, why do we still lose all those friends? Were some of them just friends of convenience, or was it really just time to break off the connection? I had friends that I spoke to every day; we knew everything that was going on in each others' lives, but when school got out and we went our separate ways we just stopped talking.
     On the other hand, I've had some of the same friends for years--despite moving away, graduating high school, and going to schools in different states with different focuses. Is it just that our personalities matched better, or was there something else going on? I had a graduating friend promise to keep in touch, swears that he's not very good at it, but says he will. I know he'll try, but what methods would keep everything together?
     Was it easier to keep in touch back before all the social media of the internet when everyone had to think about keeping in touch and take the effort writing down thoughts, emotions, experiences in letters? My grandmother receives something like two letters every day from people she went to school with, or people she knew while she taught in Japan.
     Maybe what's happening is just a natural transition: as a person moves to different chapters in life, they give up friendships and relationships to create new ones. When we move from chapter to chapter, we change as individuals, and the friendships from one portion of life don't fit together with the new person from the new chapters.
     I've known my best friend for nearly sixteen years (a lifetime, I know) and when we meet up it's like nothing has changed. Recently she met one of my new friends from college. It was a strange arrangement: the friendship we've shared for years is much more innocent than the newer one, but we communicate on a deeper level for the most part. Not to say my newer friend and I don't talk about the "deep stuff", but it's done in a more immediate manner.
     I guess the question I'm grappling with is: what makes a friendship or relationship last? Is it the constant communication or a deeper connection? Is it all thing things two people have in common or is it just two personalities fitting together like puzzle pieces?

I don't know. It was just a thought....
Stephie

Happy Halloween!

     Halloween is one of those holidays that not everyone participates in. I remember growing up a friend from elementary school and her family didn't celebrate Halloween because it was a day of demons and the dead walking. Another friend didn't celebrate Halloween because her family had a big celebration around the Day of the Dead.
     My family never did big parties or anything, but the three of us kids would go out and Trick-or-Treat up and down the street; then we'd trek over to my aunt and uncle's house and walk around their neighborhood. We always had fun, and it was a great time to dress up and be something that, normally, we weren't.
     I enjoyed the costume part of the holiday. Some favorites were Aurora/Sleeping Beauty, Porthos of the Musketeers, Jasmine, and Anna Valerious from Van Helsing. I was also a tavern wench, Laura Croft, Tinkerbell, and a princess (several different times) on top of the usual little kid ghost costumes. I think the ones that are my favorites are the ones my mom made the costumes for: she sewed together both Aurora's blue dress and Porthos' musketeer poncho, and we gathered together random pieces of costumes for the rest of them.
     The costume I was looking forward to the most, at the time, was a princess complete with the Miss United States Tiara. I never got to wear that costume because I got in trouble and grounded, at first. Then, to make everything worse, I didn't even get to dress up and hand out candy because I got strep throat the day before Halloween. (It was not a good year for me.) It's not as big of a deal anymore because I was a much more legitimate princess my sophomore year of college, then a mardi gras masquerade dancer last year.
     For the last couple years I've been at school for Halloween, so I missed getting dressed up and handing out candy to the kids of the neighborhood. Instead I was helping one of our Residence Halls with their Haunted House. It's so much fun! There are scenes where different terrifying moments from horror movies happen: a operation scene, the creepy child playing in blood scene, a zombie dog & owner scene, and a witch, to name a few.
      This year we're going with the much more creepy and realistic side of things: when your tour guide just vanishes, when a family scene goes insane, a super freaky classroom, and a zombie wedding. I get to be the creepy tour guide (I'm not sure how creepy I'll really get) and I'm looking forward to it.

Some tips for a great Halloween:

• Only eat the candy that's been professionally sealed: while there are myths and rumors about people putting razor blades and other dangerous things in candy, 99% of the population is just trying to help the kids have a great Halloween. If you're suspicious, don't eat it. 
• Only go to the houses with a porch light on. It's the universal symbol for "We have candy!! Come and get it!" Unless you know the people, there's really no point in going to a house with the lights out, even if the windows are lit up, it makes people angry.
• On the other side: If you don't have candy, don't turn on your porch light. When the trick-or-treaters come, don't hide in another room: your lights are on, you're home. Don't feel obligated to give them something, just turn off the light. 
• Beware allergies! I don't know about the rest of the world, but I've encountered more kids with allergies in the past few years than when I was a kid. If you're not sure, a simple Hershey's candy bar without almonds is usually a good choice. 
• Most of all: HAVE FUN! It's not about getting the most candy or going to every house on the block, it's about getting to be something you're not, scaring your friends and siblings, and enjoying yourself. If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong.

Have a happy, and spooky, Halloween!

Stephie

Sasquatch

     I live in the Pacific Northwest, I have my entire life, and I still don't understand how people can't believe that there is something out there that we don't understand. I'm watching whatever this is on the History channel about Bigfoot. They keep talking about skunk apes and mutant gorillas, or even the missing link between humans and the apes. They've gotten a group of "experts" together to look into whatever the sightings might really be.
     They wonder what Bigfoot eats, where he lives, why he is secretive or hides, where did he come from, and what is he doing? They look at what Bigfoot had to evolve toward in order to survive. They mapped out where sightings have been reported, they're focused along the western coast in North America, and the experts compared that to what they believe to be the best climate for a large omnivorous ape. Supposedly they match almost perfectly. The sightings describe a tall, broad, hairy-looking man that walks on two legs, can run like a man or an ape, makes calls into the night and hunts in the forest.
     The scientists compare the Bigfoot sightings they're researching to the Loch Ness monster and to the Yeti as mythic creatures. When they compare the Bigfoot to creatures we know to exist they usually compare them to humans or to chimpanzees or gorillas. They talk about the Yeti living in the snow fields and being compared to the Mande Burung and the Yeren in Asia, and to the Oreng Pendek in Indonesia. These are creatures that have been seen for thousands of years and match a human ancestor called Heidelbergensis.
     The name Sasquatch is a native american term and the tales match up with each of these different ancient human examples. There is another theory that the Bigfoot creature is a modern human that has become the "Wild Man" and evolved to live in the wild. It wouldn't necessarily be a future example of humans, but a parallel species. They cite the similarity to humans in diet, shape, possible rituals, and purported sexual desire (apparently Sasquatch has an attraction to human women and the tribes of the Pacific Northwest take care to protect their female guests) to draw lines between human ancestors, giant apes, modern human cousins, or even modern homo sapiens.
     I'm just interested in what's out there. Is it a spiritual location for the native tribes where the shamans become wild people and transform into a completely different kind of person? Is there a cousin or ancestor to modern humans wandering the forests? Or is it just a trick of the eye? I think there is something out there; I know of at least one person who has seen something like the typical image of Sasquatch, and I'm sure there are more.
     There is some magic in the mystery of Sasquatch and the other Bigfoot, as well as in the Loch Ness creature. I don't understand why we, as a human collective, insist that there isn't something in the forests and waters of the world. One day we might know what's out there, but I hope that we still have some of the mystery that pervades our planet when we do discover what it is.



Just a thought...
Stephie

Novelistic Settings

     I was getting ready to write about a book I read years ago, The Secret at Shadow Ranch. It's a Nancy Drew Mystery, short and sweet, but I just couldn't remember the plot so I decided to search the internet for it. I came up with a Wikipedia site for Shadow Ranch--it's a real place!

     I was shocked to discover this so I continued reading, only to find that the ranch in real life is in California, while in the book it's in Arizona. All interest lost. But then I got to thinking: how many places in books have existed in real life (other than what we expect to be on the map) and how to people come up with them? 

      Then I heard about a book that's become extremely popular lately: the Fifty Shades books. My friend was complaining about how they're set in Seattle yet nothing about the setting is realistic, other than the rain. Another friend chimed in that it was because it's Twilight fan fiction and the author lives in Australia. While that's all good and fine, there are so many other, good books that have a better description of Seattle than the Twilight series and so many other ways to discover more about the area than to use another fictional book. 

     I know Jayne Ann Krentz lives in the Seattle area. Her books are usually set in the Pacific Northwest and have a pretty realistic setting. While you can't go to a particular part of town and say "Oh, So-and-so lived in that building on the fourth floor" you see parts of the city that the characters walk through and live in. 

     Why is it that some authors write much more realistic settings into their books than others? The mythical realms are usually the most detailed: Narnia, Middle Earth, Alagaesia, and so many other worlds have more dimension than places that really exist. But why? Is it so much more difficult to paint a picture in your reader's mind of a place they could actually go and visit than one only you can see?

Just a thought....
Stephie

Bucket List

     A couple years ago, more like five, The Bucket List came out. For me it was a life-changing movie; the idea of making a list of things I wanted to accomplish in my life was completely new (I was also seventeen years old). Since then I've made many different "Bucket Lists" but I haven't been so good at the checking-off part. I finally went through all the paper and put the different lists on my computer.... it was a long document. But I decided that I wouldn't delete things as I checked them off--only put a line through them. That way I wouldn't put them on the list again. It still hasn't helped me with checking things off my list. And the list just keeps on growing, despite how often I "check" things off.

     Here are some of the things I've got left:

1. Learn French
2. Run a Marathon
3. Visit Graceland
4. Read the classics for fun
5. Buy a house
6. Tailgate at the Superbowl
7. Ride the elevator up the Eiffel Tower
8. Go to the Olympic Games
9. Ride the Orient Express
10. Meet James Garner

and there were so many more. I crossed off a good number of them in my first years of college, but I've still got more to go, and I keep adding more, like I said. It's crazy how much I want to do with my life and how much I probably won't ever accomplish from that list (I had "Meet Andy Griffiths" on it, but then he died). It's wonderful to have something to strive for.

Just a thought....
Stephie

Patriot Day

     Today was an interesting day: eleven years ago four air planes were hijacked in flight and used as weapons in an attack on the United States. Now, I know that most of what I truly know about 9/11 is filtered through a childhood lens and what I've since been told by the media and my parents, but I did live through one of the most traumatic events of the last thirty years.
     Everyone says you remember where you are when it happens. It's true: I had just turned eleven years old,  my sister and brother and I were at daycare while my dad was at work and my mom was in Turkey on a trip for work. We were just getting to the "big kid center" when our supervisor/teacher got a call. It was the daycare's main base--where the younger kids stayed while the school-aged kids waited for time to leave--telling her to check the news. She turned on the television and the image of the smoking towers was everywhere.
     We stood in shock: what happened? What did that mean for a bunch of kids living three thousand miles away? What was going to happen next? It was a bigger question for my sister and me; what would happen to us? Both of our parents were in the military and any attack on the United States meant they could be sent anywhere around the world. The most difficult part for us was that neither of our parents could be reached... All military bases were on lockdown--nothing goes in or out (people, equipment, non-military communication)--and even they couldn't get a hold of some places overseas.
     It turned out that my dad wouldn't be going anywhere (he had three children at home and his wife was overseas) but my mom wouldn't be coming home either. Mom ended up coming home several weeks later than expected, and no one knew how long anyone was going to stay. My siblings and I ended up going to school as normal, going home, and staying with an aunt while Dad worked.
     We later learned that there were more than just the two planes we'd seen on the television: one landed in the Pentagon wiping out thousands of lives, and another was commandeered by the passengers, who diverted the plane from its destination in the White House to a field in Pennsylvania. Those passengers are now considered national heroes and are remembered for the lives they saved.
     It's sort of terrifying to think that all of those events, events that have driven our country into a decade-long military conflict and caused a significant change in how we live our daily lives, were so long ago. I am now twenty-two and have spent half my life living in a world where the people are scared to death of anyone different. If the attack on the United States hadn't happened, would we have moved beyond caring about what a person looked like or where their ancestors lived? Or would we still ignore the actions of truly amazing people just because they look or speak or come from somewhere different than us?

Just a thought....
Stephie

Columbia, California

     So I was off roaming around the country this last week and visited some family in Central California. It was great; there was a wedding, we went to see Magic Mike and Brave (two great movies for two completely different audiences), and we did the touristy thing and visited Columbia.

     Columbia is this great old-time mining town that has been preserved as a California State Historical Park. There are all sorts of things to do, including mining for gold, riding the stagecoach, making your own candles, watching the blacksmith at his craft, and watching the Nelson's Columbia Candy Kitchen make their homemade candies. We've been going as a family for years and still love to walk around and see the sights. My favorites are the Candle Courtyard and the candy shop. 

     At the Courtyard you can buy candles that have a basic shape, and dip them in hot wax to add color and your own unique spin on the candle. They have the traditional taper-shape and other shapes, like roses. It's great fun for kids, though you'll want to be careful with the wax . 

     Nelson's has a great selection of old-time candies: chocolate dipped honeycomb, fudge, divinity, hard candies in all sorts of flavors, jellies, lollipops, gummy candies, and even sugar free selections. Most candies are made in the shop, but there are a few that come from elsewhere. 

     There are other saloons and shops as well as street vendors. This last trip there was a cart selling old-fashioned root beer floats and lemonade and another with popcorn and other goodies. There's Brown's Coffee House & Sweets Saloon, the City Hotel, Kate's Teahouse, Columbia Booksellers & Stationers, and many other shops and eateries. 

     My favorite part of the town is that it started out as an actual mining town and has been restored. There are mini-museums throughout the town as well as a bowling alley from the 1800s and citizens dressed in era clothing. All the while, the town has grown up around its historical center and incorporated the park into the life of the town. 

     Columbia is a great place to visit for a touch of the California Gold Rush, but by no means the only attraction to the area. Nearby are Sonora, Jamestown, Angels Camp, and Murphy, California. Each have their own touch of history including Jamestown's Railtown 1897 State Historical Park. Stop by and enjoy what Tuolumne County has to offer. 

Just a thought...

Stephie