Grapes!

We have canned 16 quarts of grape jelly. The grapevines look like they have never been touched. It makes a person wonder how easy it would be to make wine.

Picking Grapes

He Who Must Be Obeyed was helpful in picking the Concord grapes along the east fence in the back yard. Taking only the ripe ones, we still got our huge berry bucket full. There will be more and we didn't even start on the back fence.

Now I must count how many wide mouth quart jars we still have; go to the store for sugar and pectin and start the process. Sometimes we work very well together. Sometimes we don't. But making jelly is a process that goes much better if I let him micro-manage the business. Engineers have a need to be in charge; teachers never want to stop teaching. Ours is often a dangerous and noisy combination; but we have made gallons of grape jelly together.

Follow that Rock!

As we were driving down the Oregon coast line on the 1st of August, my adventuresome auntie told her adventuresome daughter, my cousin, who was driving, "Follow that rock!" As you can see, it was only one huge rock on the truck.















Jetty repair was being constructed with the massive boulders being placed along the old one on the Pacific Coast where the Columbia River unloads its fresh water into the Ocean and opens its arms to the incoming tides..












An overlook provided a magnificent view. This is and has been historically a very dangerous place for sailors and their ships. I thought about Lewis and Clark, who ended up on the Washington side of the Columbia that long ago late fall. How would they get to the other side to the south where they would build Fort Clatsop; here they would spend a damp, cold miserable winter before going back to St. Louis. Too bad Jefferson just could not appreciate the magnitude of what they had done.

"The love of possession is a disease with them"

My title this morning is from Sitting Bull, Powder River Council, 1877.

"I (Sam Hurst) climbed Bear Butte with a friend last Wednesday, right smack in the middle of the Rally, in the heat of the day. Native prayer bundles hung from the low limbs of a hundred trees. In the shade of the north slope, two prairie falcons hunted. A tourist helicopter roared around the mountain, shaking their concentration. Two young Indians along the ridgeline sat quietly and watched the sun set in the west." Sam Hurst: Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Our Religion. RapidCityJournal columnist. Sunday, August 13, 2006.

He Who Must Be Obeyed and I experienced the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally several years ago with my high school friends, one of whom taught at Sturgis during most of her career. It was captivating in a hedonistic way with incessant noise, strange sights, and a devil may care attitude. We are glad we did it but once was enough even with front row lawn chair seats on LaCrosse Street at another teacher's home.

Hurst nails it this morning in his column..."This isn't a clash between native spirituality, tradition or treaty obligations and a week-long biker party. This is a clash of religions. They have theirs and we have ours.

Sam Hurst is a Rapid City filmmaker.

Rapid City Journal. Sunday, August 13, 2006.

Sturgis motorcycle rally our religion By Sam Hurst, Journal columnist

Astoria Photos

I uploaded a few photos from FinnFest in Astoria. A click on Flickr at the right will get you there. An Elder friend sent me the web site on the kantele. It has much more information than just that, for any Suomilainen, it is a treasure.

The Articles/Reviews click on that site will take you to Wilho Saari's "This Makes Me So Quiet."
He was one of the kantele players I heard play and speak.

Ram Sale

Bernie Hunhoff, who writes South Dakota Road Stories wrote yesterday about the Newell, SD September Ram Sale. According to him, Newell is the Sheep Capitol of the United States. I would kind of like to see that ram sale, myself. A cousin and his son and daughter raise sheep north of Newell.

I used to sit by my grandpa, John Tuovinen, at the Buffalo, SD Ram Sale. I would push up close to him so I could smell his pipe and get in on his buying action as the auctioneer cried out the increasing price for the bucks. Papa, as my mother called him, was a little nervous that I might get into the buck pasture across the road from their house on their sheep ranch in the Cave Hills of SD. A ram had knocked Roger out cold when he was little. I think I heard that story a dozen times when they were trying to get it through my skull that I could get killed if I went over that fence.

The last time I saw sheep was on the South Island of New Zealand a few years ago when two of my high school friends and I went there and to Australia for three weeks. We watched as one type of ram after another was called to the front of an auditorium and they mounted their properly labeled stand on a man-made mountain of magnificant rams.