Riverbend Journal

  My post yesterday included this picture of Herbert and wife Clara in the context of Clara's life but blogger friend Steve over at Shadows and Light asked what Herbert was doing in Bahrain which written on the back of the photo above, he was evidently departing for by train. I did not know the answer but I had a bit of time on my hands when responding to Steve's question and so I thought I would just do a quick search to see what there was to find. Prior research told me that Herbert was born in Canada in Oct of 1887 so he was actually 4 years younger than Clara. He immigrated to the United States around 1912 at the age of 25 and married his first wife Annie who was a native of New Zealand six years later at age 31. According to the census records he was a boat builder/designer living in Berkley, California. Annie would died after 20 years of marriage to Herbert at age 54 in 1938 and I have found no records of them having any children. One year later, he married Clara Kuck an...

  Before all this came about, this was the sole picture I had of Clara Kuck, likely taken about mid life. Then when I received the photo album from the Good Samaritan, I suddenly had quite a few taken in the years between around about 1900 to around 1912 when Clara would have been between 17 to 29 years old. More than I had but it still left a lot of gaps. The box of loose photographs filled in all those gaps and I thought I would compose a pictorial of her through the ages for posterity. On the back of the photo above is an inscription saying this was Clara at six months old. Above is one with her as a young toddler on the left with older sister, also a toddler on the right. It wasn't dated but carried the inscription, "Sister Bertha and I". Here she is at age 10 in 1893 evidently playing tea with younger brother Paul and older sister Bertha. Above is her high school commencement photo taken in 1899. Here she is a few years later in 1904 upon her graduation from Carleton...

  You may recall that between Christmas and New Years we drove down to the panhandle of Florida for a small vacation that was pretty cold. One of those days we ended up going from one pawn shop to another looking at nothing in particular just to stay out of the cold wind. At one of those pawn shops, my eldest daughter saw the bookcase above and said that would be perfect for her apartment she will move into later this summer. It wasn't in the best shape and we had 700 or 800 miles to haul the thing in a vehicle with not enough room and so I just took a picture of it and we went on our way. Before our spring break trip, I had a post on starting to build my version of this bookcase and created a post with pictures of the various parts cut out and my starting to cut the joinery in everything. Upon returning from our spring break trip, we had a spate of good weather allowing me to start assembling things. Above, I started assembling what will comprise the two sides of the bookcase. The...

I wasn't old enough to remember the Apollo missions. I grew up firmly in the years of the Space Shuttle as it shuttled astronauts and equipment into low earth orbits. While fascinating, it always made me wonder what it has been like for my parent's generation to sit there and watch in real time as man stepped onto another celestial object for the first time. It must have been a mixture of excitement and pride at human ingenuity. Then we lost one of those shuttles, the Challenger, and the world mourned collectively at the loss. The program continued on until the Columbia was also lost and then the writing on the wall became more pronounced. What had been routine to send people into orbit was now in jeopardy of stopping all together. What came next was a scramble and as a result, I was pretty much resigned that seeing mankind go beyond low earth orbit was not something that was ever going to happen in my lifetime.  Five days ago, that changed with the launch of the Artemis II mis...

This is the third growing season since I've had a completed greenhouse and a relocated garden. The first year we had both, we started our seeds in the greenhouse and had excellent luck in raising the various plants to a size big enough to transplant in our garden. The second year we had abysmal luck and after replanting everything a few different times, gave up and had to buy starts from our local plant nursery. In figuring out why, I came to the conclusion that our greenhouse, which is unheated, just got too cold at nights during the second growing season causing the soil temperatures to be too cold for the seeds to germinate. The first season, we had an early start to spring and it stayed warm. Last year it started warm but got cold for several weeks. This year has been a yoyo of temperatures. It was 73 degrees in mid February followed by a week of below 0 F temps followed by another week of nearly 80+ F degree weather followed by a few more days of below 0 F temps. Today it is g...