Don't Shoot, It's Only Me

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays,

Because I am mostly away from my blog for last week, this week, and the next I wanted to post my Christmas letter, as short as it is. Right now I am in Edmonds, Washington. I arrived yesterday to a very snowy Seattle. It never snows in Seattle before Christmas, yet it is now on its second day of almost continuous snowing and more snow promised for tomorrow. Last night it dumped 2 feet of snow on Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. My lunch with aunts, uncle, and cousins was cancelled yesterday and my plans to spend some time with my brother and his family tomorrow night and Saturday are also cancelled. Meanwhile, my father thinks he can still make it to Spokane to pick up my husband to have our Christmas celebration in Moses Lake. I was taking the train from Everett to Spokane, but now I will only take it to Ephrata where someone in the family will still have to travel through the snow to pick me up. This has been a very interesting adventure.

I have just finished reading a book, Don’t Shoot, It’s Only Me, by Bob Hope with Melville Shavelson (one of his long-time writers and producers). Written in 1990 and subtitled Bob Hope’s Comedy History of the United States, it tells of his adventures and jokes as he traveled to war zones to entertain the troupes, our war heroes, from 1938-1990. Through the comedy he still manages to reflect the horrors our soldiers are facing as they fight. I feel he was also able to give us a revelation of history in a way some of the history books miss. His tale is very non-political. As he says, he tells jokes on them all. I have enjoyed reading this book.

Vinegar & Health

Today’s blog is not about books but is experiential instead. I am lightly chemically intolerant and Sunday I had to put my sick cat to sleep. We don’t know what was wrong with her so I decided that I needed to disinfect the house and all her supplies. But using the store bought chemicals make me ill. I was cleaning her supplies: soap & water, then bleach. The bleach was burning my throat. I use Oxyclean occasionally for my laundry but I was out of that and I didn’t know if it had any disinfecting qualities. I thought about vinegar, so I went to the Web to find out if I could use it. There at this wonderful site, http://www.vinegartips.com/, I found my answer.

1,001 Tips for using Vinegar: Vinegar will whiten & brighten your clothes, no more need for Oxyclean. It will keep ants from entering your home and fruit flies away from your fruit.
The surprise came when I was mopping the floors. I used equal portions of water and vinegar. I have a lot of mopable floor space. My house is 1459 sq. ft and has a relatively large foyer, so half or more of the house is stone tiled. Halfway through my mopping I was thinking that the water was awfully dirty and I needed to get a fresh bucket. But I was out of vinegar and would have to go to the store for more. Yet, as I lifted the mop out of the bucket the solution looked clear. How odd. So I took the mop over to the toilet and squeezed it and the color of the water in the toilet hadn’t changed; it too was clear. So I continued mopping. It seems that the solution just grabs the dirt and makes it go to the bottom of the bucket leaving clear solution for mopping. Then another thought occurred to me, since vinegar is great at removing hard water stains I wasn’t leaving hard water mineral deposits behind on my floor.

I’m off to the store now to buy more vinegar. I hope you found this blog useful. Please leave your comments here and log in to be one of my followers.

If you want a great site for free ebooks check out Project Gutenberg . They have converted a lot of books that are out-of-date and now public domain into digital files that you can download.

The Life of Emma Giesy

My husband’s cousin, Carol, emailed me in response to my blog and so I asked her if I could share her comments with you:

We love to read also. I'm interested in history and especially like Jane Kirkpatrick's historical novels re early settlers in Oregon/Washington as it reminds me of what our own ancestors must have gone through - clearing the land, etc. After reading her series regarding Emma Kiesy I would like to go to the old cemetery and museum in Aurora, OR, but haven't managed to schedule the time. Of course this time of year it isn't much fun to be tourists out in the rain.



Re your blog, glad to share! As I hadn't read the books recently I looked them up so your blog can have more accurate information. Jane Kirkpatrick's "Change and Cherish Series" are the three books regarding the life of Emma Giesy. She and her husband came out from Missouri (don't remember the year) in the scouting party for William Kiel's colony. "A Clearing in the Wild" is about the place they settled in Willapa Bay, Washington State. Their efforts at Willapa Bay were a disappointment to the colony leader Wm. Kiel when he arrived the next spring and decided the site of Aurora, Oregon, was more suitable for the colony and settled his family and others from Willapa Bay there. In time more families from his colony in Missouri came to Aurora - named for Wm. Kiel's daughter. The other two books "A Tendering in the Storm" and "A Mending at the Edge" are the life changes Emma had to make and they were very difficult. The museum in Aurora has articles from the colony and many of the people mentioned in the books are buried in Aurora.

I haven't read all her books as our library didn't have them last time I checked, but they also had the "Tender Ties Series". It is about the life of Marie Dorion, the Iowan Indian woman married to Pierre Dorion, a scout for the Wilson Price Hunt party. They were with the Astor Expedition and came overland in 1810. Many of the stories take place in Oregon - Astoria, Willamette Valley, etc. Wonderful historical novels about real people. I've found many of them on the census records.

* * * * *

Thank you, Carol for sharing.

A reminder to everyone that you can share through the “comments” on this blog and register as a “follower,” which I’ve titled “My loyal friends – I love you.”