Happy St. Patrick’s Day from the stony walkers at Coulon Park!

~ Susanne

I don’t take many pictures in black and white but my favorites are from the Oregon Coast. A few years ago we took a trip down the coast in January, and stopped at Ecola State Park just north of Cannon Beach. The weather was windy and rainy but I’d never seen this view before and was determined to get some pictures anyway. I didn’t shoot them in black and white, these were the stormy conditions at the time!

We made a similar trip in June and it was just as stormy at Cannon Beach though this dog didn’t seem to mind.

Nor did my husband.

Down the road we stopped at the Yaquina Head Lighthouse – slide to see the original – prettier in color I think.

Finally I’ll close with a seagull who seemed happy to pose for me in black and white.

We’re already planning our next trip…

After I left the power plant and went to work for Dell on August 20, 2001, I wrote letters back to my friends at the plant letting them know how things were going. This is the twenty eighth letter I wrote.

04/11/02 – Evolution in Texas

My Sooner Friends,

Do you remember a long time ago, how there was this discussion about whether they should be teaching evolution in the schools? You know. There was an argument about whether God created the world in seven 24 hours days, or he made our world in some long drawn out process that took Billions of years to get to this point — since God created Time, and is not bound by it. – Anyway. I have found “Evolution in Texas”!!

This is not the same kind of evolution, but it may be something that happened in England many years ago. – I’m…

I pretty much have to. I’m from Seattle where rain – or the threat of rain – happens often, especially November through March. And while we only get an average of 38 inches a year – far less than many other U.S. cities – it’s distributed over 152 days. That’s a lot of rainy day walks.

And so I get out with my husband and walking companion on this journey of life, carrying umbrellas, despite the myth that locals don’t use them. We do. When we remember.

We did remember at Federation Forest where all was lush and green and fragrant from the rain.

And at Point Defiance where we found raindrops on roses last fall.

And last week in Olympia, where the rain arrived just as forecasted, making everything wet and dreary and mousy brown.

But even then I found beauty in the raindrops on Capitol Lake,

and…

C-47 flying over The Hump

 In April 1942, the Allied Forces initiated an airborne supply line  that crossed the Eastern Himalaya Mountain Range. This airlift supplied the Chinese War effort against Japan from India and Burma to the Kunming area and beyond.  The C-46 Curtiss Commando and the DC-3/ C-47 Douglas Skytrain in the China- Burma- India Theater of War (CBI), also dubbed as the Hump operations. Other Cargo aircraft types that were also activated in this operation: the Douglas C-54 Skymaster, the Consolidated B-24 Liberator converted as a fuel transport C-109 and its Cargo version C-87 Liberator Express.

Loading in a grasshopper, (Piper L-4, observation or ambulance aircraft)

 The Allied Forces supplied the war effort of Chinese Nationalists first by road, later by air. They flew day-and-night missions from airfields in eastern India over the Himalayan Plateau known as the “Hump.” The 500‑mile air route to…