Riverbend Journal

  A little over two years ago, our neighbor passed away. She and her husband had owned a lot of restaurants in a particular franchise that were quite popular back in the late 70's and 80's and were quite wealthy I think so they have a nice property which sort of dwarfs our modest house. Most people probably considered our neighbor sort of a snob from conversations I overheard but perhaps because we shared a physical property line denoted by those small bushes in a row, we got to know her a bit better. She was actually quite nice and often brought over chocolate chip cookies for our girls and I reciprocated with garden vegetables when they were in season. We occasionally talked over the "hedge" when we were out in our respective yards and any property line decisions we had to make were always made quite agreeably. But due to her economic status I guess, she was a private person and I respected that. Unfortunately though, dementia took her mind and we drifted out of con...

  The next photo to catch my interest was this photo 14 pages into Clara Kuck's album. Clara is the girl on the far left of this picture. What caught my eye were the letters at the bottom, S.P.E.'s and what did it stand for? I googled it but couldn't find anything that resonated. So once again I turned to Gemini A.I. and after inputting the picture, asked what it stood for. It gave me a handful of possible answers but the one that stood out was one that said in the late 19th century and early 20th century, right when this photo was taken, there was a Society for the Promotion of Education. It went on to say chapters existed and promoted women's literacy and higher education. Judging from what I know about Clara after this picture was taken, this is likely what she was referring too since she studied at four different Universities and taught at a fifth later on A.I. went on to tell me that the girls were all dressed in "middy blouses" paired with dark bloomers ...

During that last extreme cold snap we had, since we were avoiding the panic and ransacking of grocery shelves apparently happening in our largest urban cities, we decide to enjoy a nice warm fire and spend our time ransacking the pages of our current books and perhaps taking a nap or two. Our fireplace had frosted over quite a bit due to the extreme cold air in the chimney and the warmer moist air inside our house. Never the less, I stuck a few logs inside, threw in a couple handfuls of my wood scraps from various projects last year, and got it lit. In a matter of minutes, the moisture was gone and the heat was starting to heat up the room. Since I have to open the outside sliding door a bit while starting the fire until it starts drafting properly, the basement cools off a bit before it gets warmer. It is naturally a bit cooler anyway due to the property of heat rising. So while the basement family room was preheating, I decided to go back upstairs and make some biscuits. Biscuits wer...

  Clara Kuck's photo album seems to start with her time in Great Falls, Montana where she worked as a teacher of Latin, German, French and English as well as teaching dramatic arts. After her initial pages dedicated to seeing the local sights, she starts focusing more of her camera on things closer to home. I assume the above picture is of where she boarded during her initial time in Great Falls and local directories at the time seem to corroborate that. Clara is the center lady directly behind the girl on the swing. I ponder the use of the structure the swing is tied to as it seems overly built for a simple swing. Perhaps they used that as a older version of an engine hoist for working on vehicles since it spans the driveway? Maybe they were big hunters and skinned a lot of animals? Subsequent sleuthing however made that less likely. On a whim, I uploaded the photo into Gemini A.I. and started asking questions and one of the things it reported back to me was that the house was bui...

  I am at the point of crying uncle on this project. When I last wrote about it, I had assembled all (except one) of the sets I had instructions for and was trying to figure out the rest by finding unique pieces, searching for sets that used those unique pieces and then going by gut instinct and a bit of trial and error. I would print off all the parts used for the set and see if I had them. If I had all but maybe one or two, I would save the pieces in a labeled plastic bag and add the missing pieces to a growing online list. After I had a half dozen or more of these sets separated, I would place an order for the missing pieces which usually only cost me less than a $1 to order. The shipping always cost more. Once those pieces came in, I would assemble the sets using online instructions found on another site. I kept rinsing and repeating until I got to what you see above.  The one exception I alluded to earlier is the Space Shuttle Atlantis set you see in the back right corner...