WOTFA, WIND, WTA, WONDER
Sunday, July 13
Over 100°F again today. We did our outside running around tasks earlier before the temps were over 82. We picked cherries, and I got ready to leave.
Monday, July 14
Left for Moses Lake to arrive at my friend’s farm to stay in her RV trailer (with a/c). She is only 12 miles from the middle school I had to be in to attend the summer WA Old Time Fiddlers Association Workshop. After I went through on I-90, the connection between Ellensburg – Moses Lake, a fire started at the Ryegrass rest stop (south side), when a motor home was completely destroyed. The fire spread to the grass and jumped across the east bound lanes into the median. A fire resulted that closed that section of I-90 for several hours. So, I dogged a problem and arrived safely. First, I unpacked at the farm so my stuff wouldn’t have to sit in the car in extremely hot temps. Then, I joined the class a little late, so I missed a medley of three Reels – dance tunes. The link explains but here’s an example.
Everyone I knew from the past was happy to see me, and likewise. Day went well, very hot, but the school was nicely air-conditioned. I had my computer along but no Internet access at the farm, so I stopped in a Burger King that had WIFI. I was able to respond to a few emails, but didn’t have but about 20 minutes on line. I did write a note to my jobs list serve that I was unable to keep up while at the workshop. I sent a few that looked particularly timely.
Tuesday, July 15
Breakfast at Trudy’s: she used a Stoneware dish and a microwave to fix an English Muffin with Egg, Cheese, and Ham. Pretty cool. On to the Frontier Middle School and a long day.
In the afternoon we started learning cross-tuned fiddle songs, called Calico tuning (changing the G string to an A, the D to an E, leaving the A the same, and changing the E to a C#. Strumming all the strings gives an A chord. We learned 4 songs over the week in Calico tuning. We had to learn in Tab, because music would be difficult to write. Tab shows which finger on the normal strings are needed, and one has to learn by ear the timing. I took my 3/4 size (old from 4th grade) violin so I didn’t have to change tuning back and forth between banks of songs with different tunings.
That evening on the way back to the farm, I stopped at Starbuck’s for a chocolate chip cookie and a large cup of iced water, sat in a comfortable leather chair and used their WIFI for 1/2 hour. The most interesting thing that happened there was one of my former students saw me, and came over to visit. He works for the WSDOT – the WA State Dept of Transportation, on vegetation along the interstate highways.
I soon left for the farm to get ready to take my hostess to dinner. She drove and we went back to Moses Lake to a China Buffet. They had many different dish choices. I sampled small amounts of a lot of them, and decided which I liked the best. Second time through I left off the ones I didn’t like. A table of desserts offered some macaroons and soft serve ice cream. I missed the dessert table with tapioca pudding that Trudy found. On the way back to the farm, she took me on a tour of the agricultural area. It is dotted with large pivot irrigation circles. Put the words – center pivot crops – into a search application (John uses Bing and sometimes Google) and select the Images Tab, to see views. They grow a huge variety of crops in the Columbia Basin, fueled by the Columbia Basin Project and the big dam at Grand Coulee. The link is to a description with an historical perspective. We passed many fields including potatoes, sweet corn, feed corn, grass and alfalfa hay, carrots, beets (fewer than previously when a beet sugar refinery existed nearby), Coriander (seeds of the Cilantro plant), onions, green peas, and many different seed crops. Both nights I heard the nearby pivot irrigation systems lull me to sleep (they water a potato crop). In the picture below, her house is at the lower right corner, and the fields at the NE corner coming down her driveway are green bean, green peas, Monsanto corn (genetically engineered, aka as GM), and alfalfa for hay. The hay or wheat field is at the SE, and one night, we both were awakened by a neighbor running his swather. If you look in the lower part below the house, you can see a waterway. This is irrigation runoff mostly. I heard frogs during the night and a Nighthawk call. They are nocturnal birds that feed on insects. Mosquitoes were bad the first night, but the next night okay, perhaps because the Nighthawks took them out. The RV trailer I slept in was right by the south end of the house. The other delight I had was from the east (out of site on the image below) of a huge feedlot of the El Oro Cattle Company.
(Click image to make bigger.)
I left for the Workshop a bit early to get a free Specialty sandwich (coupon) from Safeway. It was great to have for lunch. Three meats with cheese, tomato, and lettuce. I only had 1/2 for my lunch. I didn’t get away from Moses Lake until 4:00 p.m. On my way home, I called John and found out I needed to go on into Ellensburg and not go directly home. It was a trip to Sears to meet John about a new refrigerator. The old one, moved from shed to garage just last year, quit. Two packages of meat and 4 small packages of frozen veggies had to be thrown out. There were several 2-liter containers of ice and about 5 gallons of cold water in the thing when it quit so it stayed cool for a few days. We think it is an early 1970s model by Hotpoint but we can’t find a date on it. Sears was selling a model recommended by Consumer Reports Magazine – Kenmore label but manufacturer unknown – a simple bottom freezer style with stainless steel front. It doesn’t talk or make ice but it is Energy Star rated and the dead one was born before that concept was introduced. John had measured the old kitchen frig and found one in the store that matched the size (fits in a cubby hole), so we added it to the purchasing. The kitchen frig works (late 1970s model or maybe an ‘80 or ’81) but is coming apart both inside and out. Parts are no longer available. New ones will be delivered to the front and rear doors with the cost for this service hidden in the purchase price. This “free” delivery does save us from running the pickup into town and then unloading without a fancy hydraulic tailgate.
After getting home I checked on the internet for fire updates. Several large fires in WA and Oregon are expanding still and many new smaller fires are shown. None are local for us and the wind direction is keeping the smoke and ash away from us.
Thursday, July 17
Up early and busy from getting ready for the delivery of refrigerators. Before I got up John had picked raspberries and moved the old pickup truck & horse trailer from the access through the pasture to our back patio door. Then he had to disconnect and swing a bit of fence out of the way for the truck to back up to the front slab. I filmed the delivery of the smaller – for the cubby hole in the kitchen – refrigerator to the concrete slab at the back door. Here is an image from advertising of the model:
And here is my personal video of the event. We have to clear off and move the dining room table to get the old frig out and the new one in. This is an instance of the saying that you can’t do just one thing. The other frig is bigger and has the freezer on the bottom but otherwise looks about the same. Black sides, stainless steel on the front.
Learned of a multi-vehicle pile-up on I-90. I am very fortunate not to have been in that. I spent Mon-Wed in Moses Lake. Came home yesterday to spend the night and get some good rest, so I could lead our music group this afternoon. John and I will go back over tomorrow to retrieve a keyboard I loaned to a teacher over there, and for me to perform with our class, in the recital. We will go down the old Vantage Hwy, I think, and stay off I-90. Too much bad stuff happening there recently – Wind, smoke and ash (and inattentive drivers) contributed to the crash this morning – 9 big rigs and 16 passenger vehicles were involved on the down-slope east-bound lanes between Ryegrass Summit and the Columbia River bridge at Vantage. That fire was at the rest stop uphill – an RV that burned Tuesday, and started a fire that jumped to the median vegetation, burned in place for awhile and then flared again. When I returned home Wed, it was still smoldering. We’ve had 41 mph winds gusts and that’s what caused the “dust” and “ash” to block the drivers’ views. It was not coming from the Wenatchee Lake complex fire, or the Miller Creek fire, or the Carlton/Pateros fire, although smoke from those is in the air over the Columbia River and east.
The horses were munching grass under the cherry trees and as John directed them back into the regular pasture I took a movie. The last in is Ebony, a black mare and quite old. We thought she was dying a couple of months ago and had a hole dug but when she saw that she perked up and talks nicely to us every day – wanting her Equine Senior brand of special food. A side note on the wind – when the wind speed is about 15 mph or higher there are almost no flies, bees, or wasps out and about. That makes for fewer issues with their care – just have to remember to throw hay in the direction to carry the chaff away.
Friday, July 18
Back to Moses Lake for recital and picking up keyboard. We had to go the old Vantage Hwy, because the eastbound I-90 lanes were still closed from the collisions east of the Ryegrass Summit. About that, here is a link to a story in the Daily Record.
Here is a photo of the group I was with at the workshop.
I’m near the center of the yellow oval. You can make this a bit bigger but it is from the video and not a high resolution still image. Here is a link to that very video of our class recital and despite the focus issue, you can hear the music and enjoy our hard work. We played a medley of two “Calico tuned” songs, Snowbird in the Ashbank and Laughing Boy. In the first, you can hear the “scratching” sound, which the class really enjoyed doing (especially the kids).
Saturday, July 19
John leaves early morning for WTA work on the Gold Creek Trail near Snoqualmie Pass. We visited there one year with our best man, Bill Howard, and his wife (Cincinnati folks). We also had lunch at the Summit Pancake House, where John was joining a few from the work crew today for breakfast. He had to leave earlier than usual to get there, but I was able to get up and help do last minute chores. I washed about 6 pounds of Bing and Rainier cherries and we put them in a cooler for him to have at the trailhead at the end of the work day. It will be like candy, and he will leave the remainder with the crew leader and his family, or others who might want some. He had an interesting morning at the Pancake House restaurant. He ordered an artery clogging breakfast there, the I-90 special. Check the link below to see the contents. Two eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and two pancakes, of which he gave one away. If you are interested, follow this link to see what it looks like. John encountered another student from our past, who was in our classes in 1988-1990. John hadn’t noticed a fellow come in and sit at an adjacent table, but shortly that person called over to the table and said, is that John Hultquist? They got to visit for about 20 minutes before the WTA crew had to take off to the trailhead. It seems amazing for me to meet someone in Moses Lake and for John to meet someone at The Pass in the same week – neither of whom we have seen for about 2 decades.
After John’s early departure I decided to go back to bed, and I was able to sleep late, making up for my last week full of tiring activities. I also was able to download several gigabytes of videos (mostly) taken during my week away. Currently, I’m uploading the final recital for our class to You Tube, for yours and the class’s viewing pleasure. You were given the link above on Friday’s write-up.
It’s almost a 2-hour upload, which will have to run in my absence, so I hope our Internet connection continues and the machine stays awake to complete. Now to Briarwood today for more music with our Kittitas Valley Fiddlers & Friends group. Wind is blowing again, make that, still blowing. High speed (gusts) today has been 38 (yesterday was a high of 43). Then “down” to 37, 36, and back to 38. The average speed is mostly closer to 30.
At the music playing I met an older woman who is moving to the Briarwood Commons Retirement community. Years ago she was a member of the WA Old Time Fiddlers in a District on the west side. She loved our music and wants to join our group when she moves to Ellensburg in a couple of months. She plays a stand-up bass fiddle and a guitar. We could have used her help today, when there were only 4 of our players present – 3 guitars and me.
Sunday, July 20
We have been in wonder about the progress of the fires in WA State, and closely checking the MODIS active fire imagery via Google Earth often. John is due to go to another WTA work party this coming Wednesday on Stevens Pass (Hwy 2). That requires a trip through Leavenworth, and both access highways have had closures. The Pateros fire is truly a tragedy, and the fires around Winthrop and Twisp are devastating as well. Despite the large fires here, the State of Oregon has more. There are numbers and comparisons at this fire information site. About half way down there is a table showing the averages for the past 10 years. Year-to-date the Nation has only about one-third (1/3) of the average area burned with WA & OR accounting for most of that. Washington has cooled off some. Some rain would help.
It is now late Sunday afternoon. We’ve about got this thing ready to go while John has done a few things outside, such as harvest yellow squash and water a few things. Dogs played in the irrigation ditch and got dirty. Ebony ate her Equine Senior. Nancy is catching up on e-mail and other computer things. And we are both resting some. We need to eat, too.
Wonder where the time goes?
Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan