the great light way

In the early part of the twentieth century electricity was cheap and cities displayed their progress with lots of downtown lighting.  I remember that a town where I lived in Massachusetts had a slogan in the early twentieth century that said "electricity is cheap.  Use it freely".

Here is what Portland did.

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Photos from the late thirties and early forties

Yale recently created a site where you can search photos taken for the government in the thirties and forties.  There are some really great photos.   You can see some of the photos here. 

You can search this map by county.  Or you can search by photographer, location, and some other criteria.  Note that if you click the photos a second time, they are shown bigger.  Too bad you can't do a slide show....

This photo was taken in the county where I grew up by Arthur Rothstein.  He had a job with the federal government documenting life in America, especially the more remote places it seems.  He took a lot of photos in Rosebud County (Montana) where I grew up.  It was certainly remote.

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I grew up on the farm where my father's parents homesteaded in Rosebud County.  We didn't have sheep but I remember sheepherder's wagons like this.  I wanted very much to explore one but my mother was ag'in it.  I think she thought I would get lice or something worse.  I can't imagine living a cold Montana winter in one of these but I think they did.

This one shows a phone on a ranch in Rosebud county almost ten years before I was born.  Having a phone that early in Rosebud County is amazing to me.  Our closest access to a phone was twelve miles away at the local country store.  We didn't have a phone on the farm until sometime in the sixties.  I guess some parts of Rosebud County (like where I was) were more remote than others!

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The modern bathroom and its problems

This is a really interesting article on the history of the "modern" bathroom, how it came to be and why it isn't such a great idea.

Indian Trading Blankets and Serendipity

Pendleton Woolen Mills has an interesting history of their Indian trading blankets.  I got curious about trading blankets when I was working on a quilt recently.  I was using a 2.5 inch strip set and had a plan for what I was going to do.  I happened to pin a few of the strips on in a way that reminded me of trading blankets so I went with it.  Serendipity is the friend of creativity.  You just have to be paying attention!

The Sewing Machine

I am selecting the thread and batting for John's quilt and I am also practicing my machine quilting.  I don't do it that often any more and I have forgotten much.  I had problems with skipped stitches and breaking thread.  I tried various needles and threads and adjusted my tension.  I also did some research on the internet and ran across this interesting video about the sewing machine.

From another time

Phillips Brothers steam powered mill.

Woody Guthrie and the Columbia River

The Bonneville Power company paid Woody Guthrie ten dollars a song to sell building dams on the Columbia River.  Shilling for Bonneville Power seems at odds with a man who wrote beloved folk songs and was a champion of  the underdog.

Bonneville Power hired him when he was poor and hungry.  Was he aware of the consequences of the dams?  Did he understand that it would destroy Celilo Falls which was a very important fishing site for native Americans?  Did he understand that it would turn the mighty Columbia into a big slow lake?  Did he know what it would do to the salmon?  I can't find answers to these questions.


Woody Guthrie and Bonneville Power

Why do we need bigger kitchens

the beam used to be a wall

I've been watching the Victorian Kitchen series as well as the Kitchen in Wartime series. It's got me thinking. In earlier days, they cooked at home more than we do and they had fewer convenience foods. They also generally had larger households. So I would say they spent more time in the kitchen cooking than we do.
I live in a 1920's house that has had its kitchen expanded to fill what used to be two rooms. And yet, though I have a bigger kitchen than before, my house had a lot more people living in it then than it does now. Old kitchens never seem to be big enough for us these days. Why is that?

I've been giving it some thought. Some of it is fashion, I think. Some of it is that we cook more differing cuisines and so we need more kinds of ingredients and special equipment. What else?

When I was young my mother had certain things on certain days. On wash day, we had bean soup (clothes washing was a big deal with a ringer washer that had to be pulled out, along with its rinse tubs and then there was dragging everything out to the clothes line. Etc, etc). On Sundays we almost always had fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. I know we had pot roast pretty frequently. I don't remember what else. The point here is that it took less thought and less equipment to cook, I think. Though not less time.

Palouse Falls and the Missoula Floods

I am fascinated by the Lake Missoula Floods.  That's where a gigantic ice age lake near what is now Missoula Montana broke through an ice plug and roared across parts of  Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.  In Oregon, it came down the Columbia Gorge at an estimated speed of 70-80 miles per hour, and that is why we have all those wonderful waterfalls.  It happened more than once, filling the Columbia Gorge, carrying lots of soil and rocks the size of school buses.  When it reached the Willamette Valley, it had the room to slow down and deposit all that soil from Eastern Washington.   The topsoil in the Willamette Valley is 300-400 feet deep.   Sorry, Washington.  We have all your topsoil and we aren't giving it back.

Palouse Falls are in the scablands of Washington and are part of the Missoula Floods geology.  I'd love to go there.  Recently a Portland Hiker named Dean did and he took some fabulous photos.  Portland Hikers lets people post trip reports for their hikes and their are many great photographers who post their photos.  There is lots of other cool information about hiking on Portland Hikers as well.

Dean's trip to Palouse Falls

Map showing Missoula Flood path

Missoula Floods

Moving a huge historic building...temporarily

This is quite an endeavor and the story is told well here, if you want details.

Who lived in our house first?

Portland Maps historic permits lists G. G. Joyce as the first owner of our house.  I searched for his name and found that he was the manager for the Broadway Hazelwood Confectionary store which was part of the Hazelwood Cream Company.




 I found that tidbit in an ad in this old football program.    PDXHistory has a page on the Hazelwood Cream Company.

This post is for you, Sharon!

Countdown to D-Day

I was on a Tom Selleck jag and I took a chance on this movie about Eisenhower preparing fo D-Day in WWII... I am not much of a war movie fan but I liked this one.   The war is not really the topic.  Instead it is about making difficult decisions and handling big egos.  I think Tom Selleck plays it very well.


Countdown to D-Day on Amazon

Portland's early streetcars

A lot of older neighborhoods in Portland have rings for tying up horses along the edges of the street.  We have one in front of our house which was built in the early 1920's.  I found myself wondering who was using horses for transportation then.  Was milk being delivered in horse drawn wagons?   I didn't find the answer to that but I did find this interesting bit of history about Portland streetcars.

Portland Streetcars


And here is something about early dairies in Portland with photos...


http://www.pdxhistory.com/html/dairy_farms.html