Posing at Gearhart Gardens Park, along SR 432, then a distant view of Irish field hockey at Tam O'Shanter Park, and lastly, another self portrait at Gearhart Gardens. The two at the park were trickier, because I had to tie the camera strap to a tree, and it kept twisting in the wind. Hence, the angle of the shot. I literally had to be moving based on the camera's movement. Which totally stunk (or maybe that was because I was downwind from both Fibre and the Cowlitz County Dump).
The Longview/Kelso area is pretty dull. There aren't any "major" art museums to peruse different works of art, not like when I lived in Tulsa and spent many a happy afternoon at the Gilcrease and Philbrook Museums (URL's at the bottom), or the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Museum... but we do have SOME cultural life. We're not quite yogurt, but we're a piece of moldy old bread. There IS life there, but it partially stinks. And if you've ever come into Longview via exit 36, YOU KNOW what I mean. The very first thing you see is the Cowlitz County Municipal Dump. And then, for further olfactory pleasure, the first thing you smell in Longview is one of our two paper mills (Fibre, the other being Weyerhauser).
Yesterday afternoon, I crossed the Peter Crawford Bridge into Kelso, WA, and was at the Highlander Festival long enough to get a slight sunburn (damn Frisian genes, they cause me to be one of two colors-- pale or pink), or about 90 minutes. I would've stayed longer, but had to get back to Longview to go to Mass. I SHOULD'VE just stayed longer and gone literally 500 yards to Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is caddy corner to Tam O'Shanter Park in Kelso, where the Highlander Festival is put on. Upon getting there, there was a group of men playing what I believe to be field hockey, though it could've been cricket... in kilts. My first stop was the Scottish-American Heritage Society, where I found out a bit about my Mom's Mom's father's side of the family (the Shanleys), though I forgot to ask about Mom's mother's mother's side-- the Gillespies. Yes, on my Mom's maternal side, we're VERY Irish. On her father's side, it's mainly Scottish, the Godman's, probably from Inverness, Scotland. My father's father's side is Dutch, specifically Frisian... and I did find the following URL to be INCREDIBLY laugh out loud funny:
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Frisians -- though the part about the Nazis, not so much. My grandfather, may he rest in peace, DID parachute into Holland during WWII. He "looked the part", being incredibly tall-- 6'6" or 195 cm-- but with darker hair and brown eyes. He spoke fluent Dutch and Frisian Dutch, one of the last Harkema family members to do so. The rest of us know bits and pieces, and if we get drunk and try to speak English, we're probably speaking Frisian instead. Which probably means I insulted the half-Libyan toadie's ancestors on Lundi Gras without him knowing it! I haven't seen many pictures of my Grandpa Harvey or of my Grandma Etta Mae. While I have the typical Frisian look (save for the part about boobs... yeeeeesh-- though I do gain and lose weight out of my chest first!), I DO NOT look like many of the Harkema family members. I, according to the immortal words of my Great Aunt Marie (no, my middle name IS NOT for her, though she always thought it was), "look like a Whetzel"-- the German-Jewish/Yiddish side of the family tree.
When I worked at J.C. Penney, I used to get asked ALL the time, in German, "when did I come over from the Old Country?"
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Old_Country -- and being the loquacious sort that I am, I'd answer, "Ich bin ein Amerikanerin" (I'm an American), and then they'd be like, "But your accent is just perfect..." Yeah, whatever.
Without further ado, the websites for my two favorite museums in the Tulsa area:
http://www.philbrook.org/ -- The Philbrook Museum and Gardens, which was about a kilometer and a half from where I lived in Tulsa. I used to jog down there and GET LOST among the Old Masters, on the grounds in the gardens writing crappy French poetry, or sketching things... but a lot of journal entries were done here. I wish I would've had a laptop, because I would've LOVED to blog or write down my thoughts there.
http://gilcrease.utulsa.edu/-- The Gilcrease Museum, Museum of the Americas. This was a short walk, perhaps a half kilometer, from where my sister Shelly worked. The first time I went there was two days after the first root canal I ever had, where I was given a wee bit too much nitrous oxide to the point where I was legally intoxicated, seeing pink elephants that were floating alongside me in happy cloud land, and Shelly (who works as a dental hygienist) had me stay with her that night, because she was afraid I'd turn into something out of the Exorcist. As it was, I was puking pretty heavily for the better part of the next day and a half, and then, due to the ONLY thing I'd been able to keep down being my allergy pill (Allegra/fexofenadine), I ended up having a nosebleed right in the middle of the Gilly. I managed to make it back to Dr. Thorne's office, then because I was pretty out of it and drowsy, Shelly gave me an iron pill, which tasted nasty and was about the size of my thumb. Ahhhhhh, good times.
Yesterday afternoon, I crossed the Peter Crawford Bridge into Kelso, WA, and was at the Highlander Festival long enough to get a slight sunburn (damn Frisian genes, they cause me to be one of two colors-- pale or pink), or about 90 minutes. I would've stayed longer, but had to get back to Longview to go to Mass. I SHOULD'VE just stayed longer and gone literally 500 yards to Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is caddy corner to Tam O'Shanter Park in Kelso, where the Highlander Festival is put on. Upon getting there, there was a group of men playing what I believe to be field hockey, though it could've been cricket... in kilts. My first stop was the Scottish-American Heritage Society, where I found out a bit about my Mom's Mom's father's side of the family (the Shanleys), though I forgot to ask about Mom's mother's mother's side-- the Gillespies. Yes, on my Mom's maternal side, we're VERY Irish. On her father's side, it's mainly Scottish, the Godman's, probably from Inverness, Scotland. My father's father's side is Dutch, specifically Frisian... and I did find the following URL to be INCREDIBLY laugh out loud funny:
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Frisians -- though the part about the Nazis, not so much. My grandfather, may he rest in peace, DID parachute into Holland during WWII. He "looked the part", being incredibly tall-- 6'6" or 195 cm-- but with darker hair and brown eyes. He spoke fluent Dutch and Frisian Dutch, one of the last Harkema family members to do so. The rest of us know bits and pieces, and if we get drunk and try to speak English, we're probably speaking Frisian instead. Which probably means I insulted the half-Libyan toadie's ancestors on Lundi Gras without him knowing it! I haven't seen many pictures of my Grandpa Harvey or of my Grandma Etta Mae. While I have the typical Frisian look (save for the part about boobs... yeeeeesh-- though I do gain and lose weight out of my chest first!), I DO NOT look like many of the Harkema family members. I, according to the immortal words of my Great Aunt Marie (no, my middle name IS NOT for her, though she always thought it was), "look like a Whetzel"-- the German-Jewish/Yiddish side of the family tree.
When I worked at J.C. Penney, I used to get asked ALL the time, in German, "when did I come over from the Old Country?"
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Old_Country -- and being the loquacious sort that I am, I'd answer, "Ich bin ein Amerikanerin" (I'm an American), and then they'd be like, "But your accent is just perfect..." Yeah, whatever.
Without further ado, the websites for my two favorite museums in the Tulsa area:
http://www.philbrook.org/ -- The Philbrook Museum and Gardens, which was about a kilometer and a half from where I lived in Tulsa. I used to jog down there and GET LOST among the Old Masters, on the grounds in the gardens writing crappy French poetry, or sketching things... but a lot of journal entries were done here. I wish I would've had a laptop, because I would've LOVED to blog or write down my thoughts there.
http://gilcrease.utulsa.edu/-- The Gilcrease Museum, Museum of the Americas. This was a short walk, perhaps a half kilometer, from where my sister Shelly worked. The first time I went there was two days after the first root canal I ever had, where I was given a wee bit too much nitrous oxide to the point where I was legally intoxicated, seeing pink elephants that were floating alongside me in happy cloud land, and Shelly (who works as a dental hygienist) had me stay with her that night, because she was afraid I'd turn into something out of the Exorcist. As it was, I was puking pretty heavily for the better part of the next day and a half, and then, due to the ONLY thing I'd been able to keep down being my allergy pill (Allegra/fexofenadine), I ended up having a nosebleed right in the middle of the Gilly. I managed to make it back to Dr. Thorne's office, then because I was pretty out of it and drowsy, Shelly gave me an iron pill, which tasted nasty and was about the size of my thumb. Ahhhhhh, good times.
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