April 2021 The Good Life

REJUVENATING A CENTURY OLD ORCHARD HOME

WENATCHEE VALLEY’S

NUMBER ONE MAGAZINE

April 2021

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Contents

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HAS YOU COVERED! NOW ALSO : COVERING

page 12

DELICATE BEAUTY HARVESTED FROM BLISTERING HEAT

Columbia Basin/ Eastern Washington

98.5 FM

Features

7 WALKING AWAY THE COOPED-UP BLUES

Alan Moen suggests three places to hike to get out and about during the pandemic

10 CAMPING IN APRIL

The shoulder season months offer benefits for early campers — like campgrounds with more wildlife than humans

Methow Valley

106.3 FM

Wenatchee Valley

93.9/98.1 FM Pateros / Brewster

101.3 FM

Lake Chelan Valley

Okanogan Valley

95.3 FM

97.7 FM

12 FIRE AND GLASS

Creating a business born in 2,000 degree heat

14 SHE’S A REAL DOLL(MAKER)

It took Bobbie Tremblay ages to make her first doll... but when she got started, hundreds more followed

17 VERY COLD WATER SWIMMING

Can these people actually enjoy wading into the Columbia River in the winter? They say yes they do... for a few minutes anyway

19 WHAT WAS THE PREACHER SAYING?

Family letters from the 1800s reveal hopes and dreams... and a question about a marriage prospect

20 REJUVENATION!

Retrofitting a century-old orchard house Art sketches n Artist Marlin Peterson, page 26 n Writer Marlene Farrell, page 28

! y a m n i g n i Com

Columns & Departments 6 A bird in the lens: A beauty of a state bird 18 Pet Tales: Dogs on Saddle Rock 24 The traveling doctor: Colon cancer hits younger people 25 June Darling: Finding value in dark side emotions 29 The calendar and a Dan McConnell cartoon 31 History: Wenatchee Flat: From horse racing to apples 34 That’s life: Spilling watermelons April 2021 | The Good Life

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OPENING SHOT

®

Year 15, Number 4 April 2021 The Good Life is published by NCW Good Life, LLC, dba The Good Life 1107 East Denny Way, Apt. B-7 Seattle, WA 98122 PHONE: (509) 888-6527 EMAIL: editor@ncwgoodlife.com

sales@ncwgoodlife.com ONLINE: www.ncwgoodlife.com FACEBOOK: https://www. facebook.com/NCWGoodLife Editor/Publisher, Mike Cassidy Contributors, Shannon Keller, Alan Moen, Linda and Ken Reid, Marlene and Kevin Farrell, Sebastian Moraga, Mike Irwin, Dale Foreman, Bill Landsborough, Donna Cassidy, Jim Brown, June Darling, Dan McConnell, Susan Lagsdin and Rod Molzahn Advertising: Lianne Taylor Bookkeeping and circulation, Donna Cassidy Proofing, Dianne Cornell Ad design, Linda Day TO SUBSCRIBE: For $30, ($35 out of state address) you can have 12 issues of The Good Life mailed to you or a friend. Send payment to: The Good Life subscription services 1107 East Denny Way, Apt. B-7 Seattle, WA 98122 For circulation questions, email: donna@ncwgoodlife.com EVENTS: donna@ncwgoodlife.com BUY A COPY of The Good Life at Safeway stores, Mike’s Meats at Pybus, Martin’s Market Place (Cashmere) and Dan’s Food Market (Leavenworth)

Ghost snow train M

By Shannon Keller

y husband and I have had a home in the Leavenworth

area (off Icicle Road) for about 16 years and in September 2020 relocated just off Eagle Creek Road.

I’ve been mesmerized by the beauty of our canyon and the mountains that surround us.

While driving toward town this winter, I just happened upon this train, kicking up snow

ADVERTISING: For information about advertising in The Good Life, contact Lianne Taylor at (509) 6696556 or lianne@ncwgoodlife.com

as it whizzed by.

A “photo fun fact” is that this train is moving AWAY from the camera! What is shown is the rear engine. This is why so much snow is being kicked up around the train.

If this was the front of the train, moving toward the camera, there wouldn’t be nearly as much snow swirling around the train. Right time, right place.

On the cover

C

WRITE FOR THE GOOD LIFE: We welcome articles about people from Chelan and Douglas counties.

Send your idea to Mike Cassidy at editor@ncwgoodlife.com

raig Sorensen uses a torch for reheating a piece of glass art he is working on at Boulder Bend Glassworks, a glass studio in Peshastin owned by Craig and Jori Delvo. Photo by Kevin Farrell See the glass factory story on page 12.

The Good Life® is a registered trademark of NCW Good Life, LLC. Copyright 2021

by NCW Good Life, LLC.

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editor’s notes

MIKE CASSIDY

Dear Mr. Postman, send me a letter I

am at a children’s park watching my almost 2-year-old granddaughter fly down a blue plastic slide.

I take a picture at mid-slide point of her with a nervous smile on her face from enjoying the longest slide she has been on in her young life, and send it via iPhone to her at-work mother.

Then, at the bottom of the slide, static electricity has charged her hair to stick up, so I take a headshot.

I type in a quick, clever message and hit send.

Only later, I see when I attempted to write, “The experience was electrifying!” my phone corrected it to “The experience was electric icing!”

Gaagh! And you call yourself a smart phone!?

But, was the phone really to blame? Maybe it was the fault of the human and his big thumbs.

Or, maybe the fault was that the art of writing has deteriorated to the point we can’t be bothered to proofread our own four word sentence.

Remember those days in the last century when email first came along? And how great it was to send sentences and whole paragraphs to friends, family and business connections without having to find paper, a pen that works, an envelope and a first class stamp?

Now, of course, no one emails.

At least not my kids. Too slow, too desktop computer bound.

Nope, it’s messages on the smart phone with their speed and

brevity or nothing.

At our house, when I was growing up, my grandmother with her fine penmanship taught in school was the designated letter writer.

She was also the letter reader — and not just for our family.

Neighbors Fred and Eunice Zuker — neither who could read or write — would bring over a handwritten letter from far-off relation once a month or so, and my grandmother would read it aloud. (How long ago that must have been — do you know anyone who can’t read and write if they were to choose to these days?)

My grandmother would also

read letters that came in periodically from my uncle Joe in Texas as my grandfather, my dad and myself sat listening at the round oak dining table.

Joe, though an actual nuclear scientist and a hobby farmer, had terrible handwriting, and my grandmother would stumble over his penmanship. The rest of us would offer up guesses as to indecipherable words — and the letter reading became performance art we all were characters in.

Did Joe mean to say there was an accident at the farm, or the bomb factory? Did they have hail as big as baseballs, or a hell of a time at a son’s baseball game?

Each sentence — those we understood and those we didn’t — were diagnosed and discussed, and stories about Joe recalled.

My grandmother might remember the time Joe stumbled over a word in his valedictorian speech, my dad would remember his high-school-aged brother

arguing with an IRS agent questioning the year-after-year losses of my grandfather’s small dairy.

“Well, you can’t just give up,” my dad remembered my brother telling the agent — drawing out the words “just give up” — and we would all laugh, because, to be totally candid, probably the taxes reported didn’t match reality.

I thought of these stories when I read part 2 in this issue of Dale Foreman’s account of letters passed down in his family.

Passed down family stories not only help knit together generations, but create a family personality.

And I wonder: what will be passed down for future generations to remember us by? Four word text messages?

Hope you find this issue electric icing — oops, I mean electrifying … enjoy The Good Life.

— Mike

WELL CHILD CHECK

HEALTHY KIDS MAKE A HEALTHY COMMUNITY Schedule your Well Child Check Today Your child’s health matters to us.

Visits with a pediatrician, even when your child is not sick, is an important part of your child’s health care.

These appointments track growth and development, address general health concerns, and ensure vaccination milestones are met.

Do you have an interesting story to share why you moved here?

Send an e-mail to: editor@ncwgoodlife.com

509.436.4004

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column a bird in the lens

American Goldfinch — a beauty of a state bird T

By Bruce McCammon

he American Goldfinch is one of the most common birds in our area.

This bright bird is easily seen and appreciated by everyone. You’ll see them high in trees, flying as an undulating group, or at feeders.

American Goldfinch are almost exclusively vegetarian, preferring seeds to all other foods.

Bruce McCammon They reis retired, colorspond well to blind and enjoys nyjer thistle photographing the birds in north censeed that is tral Washington. presented to them in a wide variety of feeder types including web socks, plastic tubes, wire mesh tubes. Fill a feeder and sit back to enjoy the energy and beauty of these small birds.

Or, if you want to really help goldfinch and other birds, plant native thistles or milkweed in your yard.

The American Goldfinch is the State Bird of Washington.

Because they are widespread and common birds, New Jersey and Iowa also claim the species as their state bird.

The bright yellow color of the male during breeding season is certainly one of the reasons that the species climbs to “state bird”

Know of someone stepping off the beaten path in the search for fun and excitement? E-mail us at editor@ncwgoodlife.com

The male American Goldfinch, left, is a brilliant yellow during mating season, while the female, right, is more muted.

status.

The male American Goldfinch is a brilliant yellow during mating season. The male also shows a prominent black spot or cap on the top of its head.

Females are a duller yellow on their undersides and an olive color above. Their under-tail area is white. They have black wings with bright white wingbars.

During winter, both sexes become more muted, drab brown and the bright yellow disappears from the males. You can find more information about goldfinch on the Wenatchee Naturalist website (https://www. wenatcheenaturalist.com/curious-about-american-goldfinch/) American Goldfinch nest later than other birds since that provides the young with a greater opportunity to find seeds as

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Fill a feeder and sit back to enjoy the energy and beauty of these small birds. they fledge.

As they begin to nest, you may see them gathering nest materials from a variety of sources. If you set out balls of clean wool or dog hair the birds may entertain you as they extract a portion of your supply.

Your entertainment will increase by knowing that you are providing quality, healthy, nesting material during this critical time.

American Goldfinch may over-winter in north central Washington. We see them all

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April 2021

year at our feeders and at several locations in the lowlands around Wenatchee. Sometimes their numbers dwindle but they always seem to return after a short absence.

Last winter, finches and siskins experienced a variety of diseases, falling ill or dying.

If you feed birds in your backyard, please make a serious effort to keep your feeders clean and safe. Clean up under the feeders to remove waste.

If you see birds that look lethargic or that have a fungallooking growth around their beaks, consider taking your feeders down for a few weeks to make sure you are not contributing to the spread of disease.

While you aren’t feeding is a great time to thoroughly clean and disinfect your feeders.

Thanks for your help.

The Entiatqua Trail offers cool (sometimes cold) views for the early Spring walker.

Pathways from the pandemic NCW Spring hikes to walk off the cooped-up blues Story and Photos

By Alan Moen And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks... and good in everything.

— William Shakespeare

T

he COVID-19 pandemic, now raging worldwide for over a year, has obviously had a huge impact on our lives, causing the tragic losses of friends and family members, as well as the loss of employment, financial hardship, a big downturn in our economy and social isolation.

The affect of the virus on outdoor recreation has also been enormous, as people have tried to escape the effects of the pandemic in record numbers, causing crowded beaches, parks and trails.

But even in this time of destination desperation, there are still many places to go that provide exercise, scenic beauty and even a measure of solitude.

Here are a few suggestions for lowland trails in our region accessible year-round that will lift both your legs and your spirits.

Entiatqua Trail (Entiat River Confluence Trail) This short family-friendly trek begins in an undeveloped park just half a mile up the Entiat River Road, located midway between Wenatchee and Chelan off Highway 97A. Take a left into a large parking area past a big sign and drive to a gate. The trail begins here, following a section of old river road eastward along the Entiat River to its confluence with the April 2021 | The Good Life

Columbia River.

Passing an open field, it becomes more of a path, bordering the brushy, marshy edge of the river.

Although backwater from the Rocky Reach Dam has altered the flow of the river here, it’s easy to see why the Entiat tribe called the river Entiatqua, meaning “grassy water.”

This is a great spot to view wildlife, particularly in the early morning or at dusk. Ducks, geese and herons ply the calm waters, while eagles and osprey circle above. Look for beaver lodges and other signs of beaver activity here as well.

Farther along, the trail curves around a wooden fence and passes under the Highway 97A highway bridge and a steel railroad bridge.

Swallows have built nests at

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Beavers are busy along the Entiatqua Trail.

Pathways from the pandemic

of side steams on small bridges to emerge into a clearing and a junction with Forest Service Road 615.

Then it goes left over an old wooden bridge and crosses the creek on the high Rock Island concrete bridge, leading to a small campground with a toilet and picnic tables. A good lunch spot.

Picking up the trail again, head back east, edging along the creek for more whitewater views, then entering forest close to the Icicle Creek Road. At 3.1 miles, there’s a junction with the Icicle Gorge View Trail, which goes left across the road up a brushy slope for more views, adding another optional 1.25 miles and some elevation gain to the trip.

Finally the trail reaches the parking lot where you started.

A Discover Pass or a $5 day hike permit is required at the trailhead, Dogs are welcome, but they must be leashed.

}}} Continued from previous page the top of the highway bridge columns, and a local artist has built a “troll” above the path under the bridge.

The wide pools at the confluence of the river are a favorite spot for shorebirds. Across the river is “Numeral Mountain,” a 600-foot cliff decorated with nearly a hundred years of Entiat High School class numbers.

Continuing past the bridges, the trail contours the Columbia, affording panoramic views of the river and the mountains across it.

The trail ends at a park bench at the edge of the south parking lot of Entiat City Park.

While the round trip distance of this hike is only about a mile, hikers can continue through the park for another 1.5 miles to its northern end, passing restrooms, picnic shelters, and many campsites.

The entire trail is dog-friendly, but visitors are encouraged to keep their dogs on a leash so as not to disturb wildlife. There are “pooper-scooper” boxes at both ends of this short trail and also within the park.

Cyclists are required to walk their bikes on the section of the trail that passes under the bridges.

Icicle Gorge Trail It’s not much of a gorge compared to the Columbia Gorge or the Royal Gorge in Colorado, but the narrow canyon of Icicle Creek near Leavenworth is a scenic treasure in its own right.

The gorge is at its best in spring, when snow keeps hikers from accessing the higher mountains, and snowmelt

Ancient Lakes (Lower Trail) Icicle Creek’s waters thunder under the high trail bridge over the Icicle Gorge.

causes a big surge in the rushing waters of the creek.

This gentle 4.2-mile trail, marked with some interpretive signs, is easily accessible from the Icicle Creek Road after it opens to travelers in the spring.

Drive 15.3 miles on it to a large, well marked parking area just past the Chatter Creek guard station.

Here’s a choice: follow the trail to the left, or go right. Both paths make a loop, but the left route is more immediately rewarding. In just a quarter mile, the trail crosses a high bridge over the creek, with dramatic views of waters tumbling over striated rocks on their way to a junction with the Wenatchee River.

After crossing the bridge, the trail works up a damp slope in about a mile to an overlook

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The gorge is at its best in spring, when snow keeps hikers from accessing the higher mountains, and snowmelt causes a big surge in the rushing waters of the creek. rimmed with a stone wall.

There’s a good view here upriver toward the creek’s origin in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.

From here, the trail edges along the creek through a pine and fir forest, crossing a couple

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April 2021

Perched in a hidden valley above the Columbia River near Quincy, the Ancient Lakes are an unexpected oasis in a dry and barren landscape. Three small lakes nestle between high basaltic cliffs, offering much room for roaming.

To get there, drive Highway 2 south from Wenatchee to the rest stop at the top of the long grade past Trinidad above the Columbia River. Turn right, then left, following the road around the rest stop, and go straight ahead to a junction with road 9 NW. Here take a right, heading steeply down off the plateau onto a wide gravel road that goes south 3 miles to a parking area at its end.

The 4.6-mile trail starts here, following an old road through grass and sagebrush south, then a path turns east (left) into the wide valley.

Past a marshy area, look for

Some of the upper waterfalls on the Ancient Lakes hike, looking down toward the lakes.

a 150-foot waterfall plunging improbably from a cliff on the left. After climbing a small hill, the trail drops down to pass near a gigantic boulder and then ascends another hill. Below to the right is the first small lake, bordered by rushes and willow trees.

From here, either contour up right to a higher lake below the cliffs or go left below it to reach the final two lakes, with a 100foot waterfall plunging down at the far end.

Scramble up to the top of the falls on a scree slope, entering

With its wide valley, waterfalls (which freeze into tall icicles in winter) and charming lakes, the Ancient Lakes are a great place to explore... a small basin with more little waterfalls pouring down over rock ledges.

April 2021 | The Good Life

From here, either return the way you came, or make a loop by climbing right to the top of the cliffs and following them back to where it’s feasible to descend to the upper lake.

With its wide valley, waterfalls (which freeze into tall icicles in winter) and charming lakes, the Ancient Lakes are a great place to explore any time of the year, but it can get quite hot and crowded in the summer.

It’s a favorite place for mountain bikers and horse riders, too.

It’s probably best visited in the spring, fall, or even in winter

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when the lakes are frozen over.

Carry water, as the lake water is not safe to drink.

There are many other lowland hikes in north central Washington in the spring that are worth taking.

But when you go, be sure to take a mask and use it when encountering other hikers. This dangerous virus, even in the outdoors, is going to be with us for some time to come.

Writer Alan Moen has been an avid hiker for over 40 years. He lives in the Entiat Valley.

Ken and Linda’s secret to comfy camping in October and April, their little pop-up A-Liner.

Spring-ing into April

Off-season camping can require heavy blankets, a warm trailer and a mug of Sleepy-time tea before calling it a day.

Camping when it is not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, not too crowded, and usually not smoky.

Story By Linda Reid Photos by Ken reid

Camping? In April?

We never would have ventured out so early when we lived on the “206” side of the mountains. Camping was pretty much relegated to June, July and August, but not these last few years since retirement to the drier, sunnier part of the state.

Now fall and spring are the best times to be out. It is not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, not too crowded, and usually not smoky.

Admittedly, graduating from tenting to a pop-up trailer makes camping more comfortable, but the unparalleled beauty of spring and fall in north central Washington is the primary motivator.

My husband, Ken, and I discovered two other perks that make camping during these shoulder seasons so appealing.

First, you can almost always find campsites

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anywhere you want to go in April or October, without even having reservations.

And second, the Washington State Parks have a special “Off-Season Senior Pass” that we only became aware of last fall. For $75 you can camp from the first of October until April 30 as many times and places as you want for that one-time flat fee. (There is an additional fee if you camp in a utility site.)

April dates are restricted to At Steamboat Rock Campground in the early spring you will find Sunday-Thursday but other than that, if the park is open, more deer than campers. you are covered by the pass.

Truthfully, we are not likely to venture out Dam area).

Lincoln Rock was a favorite campground camping in the months between November when we lived in Seattle, when it took us and March, but when we did the math, we realized what a great bargain this was, even three hours to get there.

Ironically, since we moved to East if we only used it a few times in October and Wenatchee we have not camped there beApril. cause it is so close to home. We daytrip there Did you know that many KOA campregularly, through all four seasons to snowgrounds are now close to, or over $100 per shoe, bike, walk, picnic and enjoy the beach. night? In our early tenting days, the U.S. This spring we have decided to camp there Forest Campgrounds were completely free, again, and if we happen to forget something, and state parks were under $10 per night. we can make the 20-minute drive home to We have narrowed down our choices for get it. spring camping this year to four near-by We discovered Bridgeport State Park last state parks: Lincoln Rock, Steamboat Rock, Pearrygin Lake and Bridgeport (Chief Joseph November when we were out doing wildfire | The Good Life

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... everywhere we go in NCW whether in our car pulling our trailer, biking, hiking, or walking, we are filled with wonder at the rebirth of the earth. damage assessments for the Red Cross. We had a picnic there and walked through the vacant campground where the only creatures stirring were squirrels preparing for winter.

We decided we would add it to our ever-expanding campground repertoire for 2021. April will be our camping debut there.

Steamboat Rock is just a short distance from Coulee Dam and about a two-hour drive from Wenatchee. The park is right on Banks Lake with such bold, rocky scenery it is other-worldly.

We have enjoyed fall hikes in past years, but this year we plan to see what it looks like in the spring. I wonder if the wild turkeys will be less stressed in April than they were in late October, just a month before Thanksgiving?

Pearrygin Lake is only a few miles from Winthrop, which always has something interesting going on. The little shops are a fun way to walk away the afternoon. I never miss spending time in their amazing local, independent bookstore, Trails End. Their staff is knowledgeable, friendly, and always willing to help you find just what you didn’t even know you were looking for.

One of Ken’s favorite local tourist attractions is the Schoolhouse Brewery. He hasn’t yet met a beer there that he didn’t enjoy.

Speaking of spring, everywhere we go in NCW whether in our car pulling our trailer, biking, hiking, or walking, we are

Lovely, lavender lupine spring up early in the year.

filled with wonder at the rebirth of the earth.

The foothills are in full bloom with a carpet of sunflower-like balsam root flowers and periwinkle-blue lupine proclaiming the seasonal change. The shrub steppe has its own eccentric floral beauty, specializing in all shades of yellow from lilies, to buttercups, to bitterbrush, a rogue member of the rose family. It is also a stellar place to birdwatch.

Orchards are budding out along every highway and byway, and all over town in Wenatchee pink dogwoods and cheerful forsythia erase all memories of snow and ice.

There is no question in our minds, north central Washington is a rejuvenating place to live the good life, especially in the spring.

This is the third piece about seasonal change in NCW that Linda has written for The Good Life, including November’s fall colors (“Four Seasons Add Spice to our Lives”) and January’s “Solitude & Skiing.” She and her photographer husband Ken love collaborating on stories that feature the unique beauty of this part of the world.

Balsam root thrives in NCW’s forests as well as on the sage steppe.

April 2021 | The Good Life

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fire and glass When pulling glass from the fiery furnace, ‘it’s like honey on a warm summer day’

S

by Marlene Farrell

tepping inside the Peshastin warehouse of Boulder Bend Glassworks, one senses how harnessing the power of heat yields such delicate beauty.

Beyond the gallery area where dozens of pieces dazzle the eyes lies an industrial studio with equipment and tall shelves packed with supplies. Central to all that are the ovens, six in total.

Owners and partners Craig Sorensen and Jori Delvo built this studio from the ground up, including welding and electrical work and it was “hot,” with the main oven running, in 2020.

Now they can do what they love best, creating art on a daily basis.

The first oven in the creation process, the furnace, blazing at over 2,000 degrees 24 hours a day, holds the crucible of molten glass.

To begin a new piece, the furnace door is opened and Craig, standing behind a heat shield, pulls a bright orange blob of molten glass from the crucible on the end of a blowpipe. “It’s like honey on a warm summer day,” Jori explains.

Craig carries the blowpipe over to his bench and rolls it, keeping it in constant motion on a rail. With the viscosity of honey, he can use gravity and motion to shape the cooling glass into a perfect orb.

The glass expands when Craig or Jori blow on the end of the blowpipe. Thinner glass cools faster than thicker glass, which allows it to stretch uniformly,

Fireworks Diatom Ridge is a stunning example of the effect of using murrine, which reveal complex patterns as they stretch during the glassblowing process. Photo by Jori Delvo

without blowing a hole through the thinner spots.

“Heat management of the glass is difficult to see,” said

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Craig. “The trick is getting your heat just right, some parts hot, some parts cold, then the glass will work almost on its own.”

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April 2021

They use wooden ladles, known as blocks and made of resin-free wood like almond, cherry or the native madrone.

The blocks are kept submerged in water. Steam rises when they’re used to cup and shape the glass.

The marver — a perfectly smooth steel table they built themselves — helps control the cooling process as well. Craig will alternate these cooling methods with reheating the glass in the second oven. This oven is called the glory hole, perhaps because it’s during the many reheating steps that something undefined develops into something glorious.

Craig and Jori’s glasswork are complex, giving a sense of frozen movement. This is one of their specialties, often starting with murrine. “Murrine is a small cross section of glass, usually about a half inch in diameter, that can have intricate patterns and colors,” explains Craig. “Murrine will start as a long stick of glass that we make ourselves, and once we cut them, we place them so the cross-sectional patterns and colors will repeat.”

Nature inspires their designs.

They can envision the final product’s color palette, with both soft and sharp lines and with intersections and interstices, honoring something in nature, whether astronomical or aquatic, geological or intracellular. Certainly, some of their work is reminiscent of the underwater wonders they discover while scuba diving together.

About one of her favorite pieces, Knotted Saddle #1, Jori said, “It’s inspired by knots in a tree, combined with the bends in rivers; thus, the blue colors.”

But to reach an ethereal end product, Craig and Jori must work together with instinctively choreographed movements,

Jori opens the glory hole for Craig so he can reheat the glass. They both stand behind heat shields. Photo

by Kevin Farrell

keeping their eyes on the glass and their tools, speaking little but understanding what needs to be done at precisely the right time.

One such step of recent teamwork is when Jori blows through the blowpipe while it’s rotating on the rail and Craig continues to shape the glass with a block and giant tweezers.

Collaboration is also required to transfer the glass from the end of the blowpipe to the end of an iron rod called the punty so that the open end can be released and finished.

At final release of the glass, Craig gives a sharp knock on the punty, and Jori, wearing a heatresistant jacket, Kevlar gloves and face shield, catches the glass between large Kevlar pads, and then carries it lightly, like a hot potato, to the annealing oven.

This final resting stage for the glass allows for slow cooling over one or two days. More rapid cooling would lead to cracking

Made

HERE

An occasional series about local entrepreneurs chasing their business dreams or shattering under thermal stress.

Craig and Jori both bring an array of skills to bear in their work. Before art, Craig was in the military. “My enlistment was three years active duty and three years reserve, and I had an amazing duty. As a plane captain I was the lead of, and responsible for, many senior personnel. I learned that with the proper training, preparation and hard work, I can perform under pressure.”

He had the advantage of two mentors. “George Jerich’s work is creative, whimsical, and unique.

He encouraged me to experiment and look for inspiration April 2021 | The Good Life

outside of the glassblowing world,” said Craig. “Then in 1996 I took a Venetian Techniques class with Bill Gudenrath, from the Corning Museum of Glass.

His techniques are detailed, structured and precise.”

Craig takes this learned skill and his own creative impulse to create pieces like Fireworks Diatom Ridge. It was inspired by fireworks seen on the first trip Craig and Jori took together, the intricate patterns of diatoms, which are skeletal remains of algae, and snow-capped mountains.

The gestalt for Craig is, “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Take a mountain, microscopic remains and firework patterns, mix it up in molten glass, and you may come up with something that will be cherished for generations.”

As for Jori, glassblowing started more recently, and she had previous careers as a CPA and a restaurant owner. “Indepenwww.ncwgoodlife.com

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dence, determination, hard work and adventure are all threads which connect my work and life experiences,” she said.

They’ve settled in Peshastin, drawn to mountains begging to be explored, the lively river and its byproduct, inexpensive electricity.

Jori and Craig have been together since 2005, and their comfort with each other enables them to accomplish what, for other glass artists, requires a larger team.

Craig acknowledged this, saying, “Sometimes Jori is the gaffer, or lead, and sometimes I gaff. As long as exactly one of us is gaffing, we are ready to work.

It always takes both of us to make our best work.”

To view Boulder Bend Glassworks, one can visit their studio at 8210 Highway 2 in Peshastin or their website (boulderbendglassworks. com), and they’re also showing at Ganz Klasse, Kris Kringl and Loves Me Flowers.

She’s a real doll(maker) “My poor husband.

(I would be like) ‘Look! Look! Look what I did!’ (and he would say) ‘Oh, good job, good job.’”

Life’s a doll-icious time for Bobbie Tremblay

By Sebastian Moraga

From grief came inspiration.

And from inspiration came wonder… and hundreds of treasured keepsakes and gifts.

When her parents and her aunt died, seven and eight years ago respectively, Bobbie Tremblay says she could not bear to part with some of the things they owned.

“They had buttons, and zippers and ribbons and material and I just brought them home and they sat for a year or two,” she said.

Once she retired, the box proved a blessing, as Bobbie, from East Wenatchee, took the contents of the box and began adding them to her dolls, handmade cloth toys that she first made for her family on a whim, three years ago when she decided she needed something to fill her hours as a newly-minted retiree.

“I just thought they had really pretty ribbons and lace,” she said. “I had been using my aunt’s stuff and then I found that pattern, I thought, ‘I’m gonna make that Raggedy Ann.” The first doll took a while.

“I always wanted to, but I was always too busy,” she says. “I bought my first pattern when I was first married, carried it around all over the country and I never did anything with it.”

The doll was a Raggedy Ann. Bobbie got married in 1970, and started and finished the doll in 2018.

A piano player and clarinet player who also liked to crochet, Bobbie began shelving her hobbies one at a time, as the passage

Bobbie Tremblay has made close to 200 dolls... and gives a lot of them away to friends and children.

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of time coupled with osteoarthritis started playing unkind tricks with her hands and their dexterity. Doll-making came to the rescue, since hand-stitching comes coupled with machine work and embroidery, and it’s not so taxing.

“A little doll face, I can still do,” she says. She can do a lot more than that, with a tally so far of close to 200 dolls made.

She gives a lot of them away to friends and to children of her three grown children’s friends.

Some she sells on eBay and at Wenatchee’s Ye Olde Bookshoppe, but most end up as gifts, or as quiet, permanent houseguests.

The dolls are a hit with her lone grandchild, a 7-year-old named Max, who likes to play with the dolls when he comes to visit Grandma. Bobbie’s three children have informed her that there are no more grandkids forthcoming, so it’s a point of pride for Bobbie that Max digs the dolls she makes.

As evidenced by her first doll, (the first Raggedy Ann appeared in the year 1915), Bobbie prefers older dolls. The patterns for such dolls are harder to figure out, turning the hobby into a bit more of a challenge.

Another challenge is figuring out what material she’s using.

Since a lot of it is used and/or recycled and/or from her parents’ boxes, sometimes Bobbie has to tell people she has no idea what the doll is made of.

“I’ve never bought new fabric,”

she said.

“Most of the fabric is stuff that I had in boxes, sitting around.”

Since she still uses the materials she has at home, making the dolls does not prove to be too large a financial challenge.

The only thing Bobbie says she has to buy a lot of is the stuffing material for the doll.

She uses Poly-Fil, which markets for about $26 for a 10-lb bag.

When she first started, she never imagined she would end up selling her dolls. She never imagined that her husband, Paul, would ever get so involved as to say that a certain doll, a clown, was the best she had ever made and could not be sold.

From the start, Paul has been a patient and staunch supporter of Bobbie’s hobby, especially at the beginning, when Bobbie could barely contain her excitement at her finished creation.

“My poor husband. (I would be like) ‘Look! Look! Look what I did!’ (and he would say) ‘Oh, good job, good job.’”

At first, as the dolls piled up, the idea was to donate the dolls to hospitals but they don’t like to take in homemade toys due to sterilization concerns. That’s when the idea of switching to eBay and the bookstore came in.

The hobby is slowly becoming a cottage industry, with a small group of devoted fans of her creations who are not shy about giving feedback.

“One lady said, ‘I really want that one but I don’t like the face

Moving?

The post office will not automatically forward The Good Life magazine.

DANGEROU

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March

Bobbie bought a pattern for a Raggedy Ann doll when she was first married, and finally finished the doll in 2018. She prefers older-style dolls, and uses material that she has sitting around in boxes.

you put on it.’ I said, ‘no problem,’ and took the face off since it’s all embroidery, and stitched on a new one.” Sometimes the whole head comes off, replaced by a new one, just so she has something new to look at.

For Easter, she makes rabbits, April 2021 | The Good Life

for the bookstore she has made book-themed dolls, and for Halloween she makes witches.

Not bad for a hobby that took nearly 50 years in getting started.

“Better late than never,” she said. www.ncwgoodlife.com

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2016

THE M OF A AKING

Price: $3

COWB OY From to yee-quiet scient

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they built this city

ay’s

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Are you serious?

Yes, say these cold water swimmers, there is joy in wading into 37-degree water

By Susan Lagsdin

In August, when a breeze

sweeps across your favorite swimming beach, it’s a little shivery.

In early spring, glacial runoff and blustery wind can make swimming scary cold and would prompt a quick turnaround at the water’s edge for most of us.

If we even made it that far.

Fortunately, on this March day the Columbia River at Hydro Park in East Wenatchee was silky-smooth, and the sun was shining. But at 7 a.m. the water temperature was close to 37 degrees and the air temperature 33 degrees.

Three of the Wild Wenatchee Swimmers, recently and loosely organized and spunky as hell, hit the water and waded in up to their shoulders.

One might ask: Why? Answers varied but were unfailingly positive: “I’m off my anti-depressants now.” “I feel good for hours afterwards.” “Once you get out, it’s quite exhilarating.” “I feel rejuvenated and empowered.” “I have less muscle and joint pain.” From physical therapy to spiritual centeredness to temporary euphoria, the benefits are intensely personal.

But there’s a distinct social aspect, too. The consistent challenge that invigorates body and soul also creates lively camaraderie among the 10 active mem-

It’s not water ballet, but it does show a good amount of esprit de corps: These three adventurous Wild Wenatchee swimmers greeted the cold morning sun at Hydro Park in East Wenatchee.

“There’s an ironic warmth to this pretty ‘cold’ group,” Jarrod Groenen quipped as he vigorously toweled off... bers.

“There’s an ironic warmth to this pretty ‘cold’ group,” Jarrod Groenen quipped as he vigorously toweled off about 10 minutes after he initially strode into the water. He used to swim solo, now he appreciates a group for the safety factor.

Kelly Anderson, her coldpinked legs still bare, was bundled in a warm jacket for the drive home. She called the group “amazingly welcoming and supportive… I’m a certified dog-paddler, but it doesn’t matter. You do your own thing.”

Eloise Barches strategically wrapped her body in terry and fleece a few steps onto the sand.

April 2021 | The Good Life

“It’s good to have a group like this, especially now when there aren’t many opportunities to meet people.”

Most swimmers she knows joined solo. “There was none of that ‘oh, that sounds like fun. I’ll come too’ from anyone’s close friends.”

Enjoy cold-water swimming (or running, dog paddling, dipping, or standing in the river up to your neck) any way you like; there are few rules beyond safety and good manners, little gear beyond a warm hat, neoprene

booties or gloves. Their reasons are varied, but few people walk into almost-freezing water for pure whimsy — it’s too hard.

These cold-water swimmers aren’t competitive or judgmental, and they don’t brag, but don’t you think they all probably enjoy what Kelly called “a little bad-assery”?

If you’re keen to try out this not-foreveryone sport, check out the Wild Wenatchee Swimmers’ Facebook site set up last October and managed by Charlene Woodward.

The Good Life is available at Safeway stores, Mike’s Meats at Pybus, Martin’s Market Place (Cashmere) and Dan’s Food Market (Leavenworth)

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PET tales

Tells us a story about your pet. Submit pet & owner pictures to: editor@ncwgoodlife.com

What’s on your bucket list?

Have you recently crossed out an item on your bucket list — that list of goals you want to reach before you kick the bucket?

Or, have you recently celebrated a birthday that ends in a zero with a monumental moment that will stick in your memory?

Send us an e-mail — with pictures if possible — to: editor@ncwgoodlife. com. We would love to share your feat with our readers and maybe inspire others to create memories of their own.

Our Aussie Shepherds Kona

and Kiki love a Sunday morning hike up the Saddle Rock trail with my wife Jan and me.

It’s all dry on the southern slope so the trail is perfect.

With Balsamroot season just starting, we love this spring hike with the power pups.

— Steve Lutz

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Loving letters from long ago, part 2

What was this young preacher saying?

I

By Dale Foreman

n 2018 a packet of very old love letters arrived in Wenatchee, passed down to family members.

Written by a dozen people over 100 years, these shine a light on the ways and means to keep a family, and a nation, together during hard times. Times like these.

Miss Ella Hapgood smiled a lovely smile but at the same moment she was a little miffed at this John Samuel MacGeary.

Was he proposing marriage or not? She was 23 and had been waiting for him to ask her. His letter was just full of sweet poppycock but he never got to the point.

She always opened his letters with high hopes and read each word carefully, looking for his real message, searching for a hidden meaning, dying to read the words: “I love you. Please marry me.”

But instead he wrote about the weather, his work, his travels.

He was an itinerant preacher in New York. He was so formal, calling her Sister Ella.

It was Aug. 19, 1878. John was 25 years old. He had preached the day before in Jamestown, NY. He promised to come to visit her in Olean on Sept. 5.

Surely he would propose then?

His letter began: “Dear Sister Ella, I will endeavor this morning to redeem my promise of writing to you...

I preached here yesterday a.m. and p.m. in the morning from Hebrews 12:28 and in the evening from Romans 8:16-17. Dwelt particularly on ‘the kingdom’ and had a good degree of lib-

erty...

“I do not think I have ever felt my own unworthiness than I do this morning. I wonder how it is that the Lord can bear with me at all, but He does, bless his name.

“As with reference to the matter of which we talked I have got some things from the Lord since I saw you. I am more and more settled in the opinion that it is of God. But of this when I see you. I wish I could see you this morning as I have many things to say but I can not write them...

“You will find my experience this morning in the 130 and 131 Psalms. There are many things I would like to say but I defer.

Praying that God may bless you in all things temporal and spiritual and bring you to His kingdom. I remain yours in Jesus.

“J.” (He signed it J., not John.)

Ella read the letter again and pondered. John was a good man, a good preacher. His heart was warm. She would say “yes.”

On Sept. 5, 1878 John did come to Olean, NY and he proposed. One year later Clara was born, then in 1881 Herbert followed and in 1887 my grandmother Frances was born.

The family lived in New York and after years as a pastor, John and Ella boarded a steamship, sailed through the Suez Canal, and became missionaries to South Africa and then to India.

Frances was a gifted musician. In 1907 she was a student at Greenville College in Illinois when her brother Herbert, who was an accountant at the US Treasury Department in Washington, DC, wrote to her: “Dear Frankie, Your dandy letter came yesterday. You must have received mine about the time you wrote. I had seen in April 2021 | The Good Life

“Dear Sister Ella...” the 1878 letter (with its three cent stamp) John Samuel MacGeary wrote to a puzzled Ella Hapgood.

the Advocate mention of your entertainment… I would have enjoyed seeing you do your recital. I should like to slip into the room unseen when you are playing alone, for at such times that the soul of the composer and the piano unite with the soul of the player to work out a grand expression of harmony.

Music is as near a solace for all ills as anything I know of...

“My regards to any friends and bushels of love to you. Herbert.”

By 1914, Frances had married Clyde C. Foreman of Tionesta, PA. They felt called to be missionaries.

Clyde spent a year before their marriage in Portugal learning Portuguese, but when he returned to the States, met and married Frances, they decided to go to India as the work in Yeotmal was in need of additional missionaries.

On Jan. 27, 1914 Daddy MacGeary (by now a bishop in the Free Methodist Church) wrote to them: “Dear Children, I am afraid you are having a long, hard tedious trip from Ceylon to Bombay on that old tub (of a www.ncwgoodlife.com

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steamship). In all probability you are now in Yeotmal and are beginning to get a little insight into the missionaries life...

“There are plenty of things to test ones grace and patience in the work anywhere. Only one thing will prevent occasional fits of the ‘blues’ and that is to keep ‘the vision.’ Underneath all the indifference and ingratitude you will find coming out of the natives are the ‘jewels’ Jesus wants to polish for His crown, the souls for whom He died.

“How little I thought when my curly headed bright-eyed baby was born that I should ever write to her in India.

“Whole bushels of love to you both. Daddy.”

Little did Bishop MacGeary think that Frances would be infected with malaria and that Clyde Foreman, his son-in-law, would soon be in the jungle, perched up in a tree, holding a rifle, in the dark of night trying to shoot a marauding tiger that was killing all the livestock and threatening the children of the village.

But that is another story, another letter from long ago.

! n o i t sing a u o n h e ing r v u d u e old d j h e l t b e g R kin tum os r ta h o f w e r acto as an ey r t n o C wh o n , esh h cras aking it fr and m

When Hugh first saw the old house in 2015, it was a compact three-story home with a small footprint; its sturdiness and the hillside location with great views convinced him to buy it.

Story by Susan Lagsdin Photos by Mike Irwin

Trained by his dad to be a competent handyman, he was also a journeyman pipefitter skilled in installing heating, cooln this healthy building boom, it may be ing and water systems. And, when he was hard to remember how quickly and precipiyounger and married with kids, he had extously fortunes were ruined in the housing panded a small mid-century box house into crash of 2006. Hugh Carr remembers. a five-bedroom family home.

He had just acquired what he calls his But he wanted more career skills. Hugh dream home in Minnesota, and two years decided right then after the loss of his later he couldn’t sell it. Bankruptcy followed. much-beloved home to sweeten the odds, to Hugh said, “I decided that was never going become indispensable. to happen to me again.”

I

Classes and certification in an array of the construction arts followed. “I made sure I had every trade I ever need to have, so I could use my skills whatever the economy,” Hugh said.

That forethought served him well. In 2009 he was able to buy himself an old house, completely remodel it doing almost all the labor, and sell it for almost five times the price.

Breathing easier, Hugh established himself

High up at the end of Springwater Street, this century-old farmhouse is expanding to suit modern needs. It still gives the owner plenty of privacy in the midst of growth and even more grand views to the south and east.

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“The house was square and straight. That’s the most important thing. And I knew what it could become the moment I saw it.” as a contractor and then bought, lived in, improved and sold other houses in the Midwest.

This time, at 53, Hugh might be ready to settle, and he thinks he’s found just the place.

This area was familiar to him because he’d made a few trips to Leavenworth to help his brother Dan, a Leavenworth restaurateur, with some new construction. So, while visiting family in Las Vegas in March of 2015, he was casually perusing Wenatchee real estate on his computer when he saw a goodlooking, affordable old house on a hillside at the end of Springwater Street that grabbed his attention.

With his teenage daughter in tow, Hugh said, “I drove straight through, 16 hours, to Wenatchee. That was March. I saw the house and made an offer. We closed in June.”

The orchard home, built in 1921, had a simple floor plan. It totaled 2,200 square feet over three floors, the lower one a rock-sided cellar with 12-inch by 12-inch beams.

Hugh surmises from his experience with vintage construction that the main house was probably remodeled but could have started life as a Sears kit home popular that decade, with its kitchen, living, dining and bath on the main level and sleeping quarters up.

“The house was square and straight. That’s the most important thing,” Hugh said. “And I knew what it could become the moment I saw it.”

The house was livable, occu-

ABOVE: Hugh’s home improvements will continue well into the summer; meanwhile he’s created a cozy work/dine/ relax area. The sturdy wood-look flooring has served him well through all the re-construction.

LEFT: In the course of his career as a home builder and remodeler, Hugh Carr has been diligent in mastering most construction trades, in addition to creating architectural plans like the elevations seen here.

pied until a few months prior to the sale, so he didn’t begin the renovation immediately. He was busy building a tract house in Entiat and improving and selling one in East Wenatchee. When he did start work on his own home, it was full speed ahead.

Well, maybe not full speed.

The former orchard land below the house lot is being intensively developed, so a period of (resolved) issues with boundary adjustments, road access and utility lines ensued. Fortunately,

}}} Continued on next page April 2021 | The Good Life

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! n o i t a n e v u Rej }}} Continued from previous page Hugh says, he’s a fastidious follower of protocol. His architectural drawings are his own, and he knows his way around city and county permitting.

The biggest decision was to lower the sloping ground level on the south side and add a full garage and upstairs bedrooms.

That new two-level addition connects to the main living area in the old house with three interior steps.

A walk through the house, still in progress, reveals choices that add not only space but function.

The new wing has two bedrooms and two full baths, one

The original kitchen probably filled this same space, but with a dividing wall. Hugh chose functional modern elements like flooring, lighting, chairs and cabinetry to evoke the feel of the old farmhouse.

Come see our custom work

en suite, one for guests, with good-size closets and a convenient laundry room.

The upstairs (in the original structure with its attic roof line) will become one large master suite. Hugh may also restore the old cellar-level habitation — a small room and bath — giving the house plenty of room for family and guests, or a caretaker/renter.

He’s refurbished the kitchen with a center island and white cabinetry, dark stone counter

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tops and stainless-steel appliances, 2021 farmhouse style hinting at 100-year-old origins.

Two items he’s particularly pleased with: he re-purposed a three-sided, slide-in dining booth into a spacious pantry with barn door closure, and he kept a non-functioning but evocative red brick chimney stack that helps bridge the kitchen and living area.

Besides his ability to do every job a house needs, as Carr & Company Hugh had accumu-

lated a shop full of tools, heavy equipment for grading and filling, and good connections with vendors like Western Materials at Baker Flats.

With occasional help from family and friends on the muscle jobs like the foundation, framing and roof, he was happy to handle all the rest: flooring, windows, sheetrock, paint, trim, plumbing, electrical…

“There’s really nothing I don’t know how to fix,” he said. “ I like working by myself, for myself. I can work at my own pace whatever time of day I want to,” he said. “…and I don’t have to clean up afterward.”

Hugh said he considers this his home — with great views, easy access to town and a good solid house to roam in, he intends to settle in and relax a while.

But anyone who’s started tinkering with or full-on transforming their own home realizes it’s tough to know when to stop. Hugh’s eye for detail and

WESTERB984CF

Sold and erected by an independent locally owned builder.

The traditional ambience of this original 1921 bedroom will be respectfully preserved, but in 2021 it will become fully functional for the future with two big closets and a nearby bathroom.

reserves of energy may keep him at this project longer than most.

One last question for this multi-talented builder: “Is there

April 2021 | The Good Life

anything you’re not good at that you’d like to be good at?” Hugh thought a moment, smiled, and said simply: “Contentment.”

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Your building can be customized just the way you want!

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>>

column THE TRAVELing DOCTOR

jim brown, m.d.

Colon cancer: Not just for older people Editor’s note: March was the national Colorectal Cancer awareness month.

I

suspect most people if they think about colon cancer think it is something that primarily affects older people or seniors.

Not too long ago, popular actor Chadwick Boseman’s fans were shocked to hear he had died of colon cancer at age 43.

The Baltimore outfielder Trey Mancini was diagnosed with colon cancer just before his 28th birthday.

I remember the day very well when I was doing a colonoscopy on a 28-year-old female because she had been seeing blood in her stool. I was shocked to find the source was from colon cancer.

Fortunately at surgery, there was no evidence of the cancer’s spread, and she did well.

Deaths from colon cancer overall have been declining; however deaths from colon cancer in younger people have been increasing.

An oncology professor at Johns Hopkins said they are seeing colon cancer in more people in their 30s and 40s. Thirty percent of colorectal cancer diagnosed today is in people under the age of 55.

The American Cancer Society now recommends people of average risk should start screening for colon cancer at the age of 45.

They also recommend that people in good health with a normal life expectancy should continue screening to age 75.

For those over 75 the decision to screen should be based on their life expectancy and their prior screening history or prior history of cancer or precancerous polyps.

Colon and rectal cancer caused more than 50,000 deaths

Factors include obesity, especially abdominal obesity around one’s waist, physical inactivity, type 2 diabetes, cigarette smoking, excessive alcohol drinking, a diet high in red, processed and charred meats and as well as having low vitamin D levels.

You have heard it said, “We are what we eat.” Eating a diet with plenty of vegetables, fruits and whole grains and low in animal fat has been shown to lower one’s risk.

Quitting smoking, exercising regularly and drinking less alcohol will help lower your risk.

I know I sound like a broken record, but we all should strive to walk at least two miles daily, six in 2020. One in every 24 men days a week. It is our best and and women has a risk of getting cheapest “medicine” to maintain colon cancer. Colorectal cancer our health. is the third leading cause of Everyone should be screened cancer death in women and the by age 45, especially those with second leading cause of cancer any of these risk factors. death in men.

If polyps are found that could The death rate from colorectal be a precursor to colon cancer, cancer has been dropping over they will be removed. If that is the last few decades due to betthe case these patients generter screening and treatment. In ally are recommended to have a 2021, more than 100,000 people screening colonoscopy every five will be diagnosed with colon years. cancer and 40,000 with rectal I have been asked if there is cancer, which includes 18,000 in any way to screen without going people younger than age 50. through a colonoscopy. ColonosCancer that starts in the copy is still the “gold standard” colon or rectum is often called for inspecting the colon, and if colorectal cancer. The surgical precancerous polyps are found approach is different depending or a suspicious lesion is biopsied, on where the cancer started. the diagnosis of cancer in an Like most illnesses and canearly stage can lead to a cure. cers we humans get, there usuMany say they don’t mind the ally are some risk factors that procedure as much as they do play a role in getting colorectal the colon clean out that is necescancer. One is a family history sary in order to do an adequate of this type of cancer. Trey Man- study of the entire colon. cini, mentioned earlier, had a These colon clean outs have family history of colon cancer as become less onerous than they his father had been diagnosed at once were in the earlier years of age 58 with stage 2 colon cancer. colonoscopy.

There are several risk factors There are some noninvasive for developing colorectal cancer methods to screen the colon that are controllable.

One in every 24 men and women has a risk of getting colon cancer. Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death in women and the second leading cause of cancer death in men.

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that test for abnormalities that might suggest the possibility of colon cancer. If the result were positive, obviously a colonoscopy would then be indicated.

One is called a fecal hemocult test that tests a stool sample for evidence of blood in the stool through a chemical reaction.

Obviously, if blood is found, it needs to be investigated.

Another test is called a FIT or “fecal immunochemical test” that uses antibodies to detect evidence of blood in the stool that might have come from a polyp or cancer. This requires a very small sample from one’s stool.

Blood in the stool can come from several causes including taking too much aspirin or NSAIDS that might have irritated the stomach lining and other possibilities.

The FIT-DNA test or Cologuard tests by detecting altered DNA in the stool. This test requires the collection of the entire bowel movement that is sent to the lab for testing.

There is no single test that is best for every person. Each test has its pros and cons.

Personally, after having had three precious normal colonoscopies and now being past age 75, I have opted for an annual FIT test.

These are things that you need to discuss with your own physician.

Jim Brown, M.D., is a retired gastroenterologist who has practiced for 38 years in the Wenatchee area. He is a former CEO of the Wenatchee Valley Medical Center.

>>

column moving up to the good life

june darling

See the value in the dark side emotions “Don’t fight against negative emotions — it’s exhausting. Try to embrace them instead.” ― Anoir Ou-Chad, writer

I

am listening to my husband, John, explain what would help him live more of the good life.

“Give me an easy tip for how to deal with my negative emotions.” John thinks he has caught the COVID Blues — his own term for being tossed around in new, nasty ways by a flurry of difficult emotions during these pandemic times.

John is not alone. This desire for some relief from emotions we find unpleasant like fear, anger, disgust, loneliness, irritation, disappointment, self-doubt, jealousy, guilt and sadness is common even when we are not in the middle of extremely challenging times.

As it turns out, however, trying to rid ourselves completely of our negative emotions is not a good idea.

As Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener write in their book, The Upside of Your Dark Side, “bad” emotions and feelings are healthy in various ways, largely because they motivate us to make changes.

Here are just a few specific examples of how so-called “negative” emotions are helpful: Guilt can help us become better people, or as Kashdan and Biswas-Diener write, “adds to our moral fiber.” For example, researchers have found adults who feel guilty are less likely to steal, hurt others, or take drugs.

Anxiety and fear can motivate us to find solutions. Many situations are complicated. If we all sit back and twiddle our thumbs thinking all will be well, we can miss our opportunities to successfully identify and address

Do not immediately try to push away dark side emotions.

That approach is often ineffective and makes us feel worse. Rigorously trying to avoid any unpleasantness can make us more psychologically weak, fragile and fearful. problems.

Self-doubt can help us perform better. Doubt can nudge us to check out our skills, develop them further, and effectively prepare us for our challenges.

Accepting and seeing the value of dark side emotions is, strangely enough, an effective way to tone them down — moderate them, so they do not hang around past their usefulness. So, most of us can start there.

The second tip for regulating our dark side emotions (when they are too intense and prolonged) is to learn how to identify them.

The approach is rather straightforward. When you sense that you are having a dark side emotion you simply try to label it. “Name it to tame it” is the refrain to remember and employ.

As I have been experimenting with the name it to tame it idea, I have realized that I need help identifying my emotions.

It helps me to think about some basic emotion words like mad, April 2021 | The Good Life

sad, glad, surprised, afraid, disgusted. Then I can branch out from those words to find a closer match to the emotion I am experiencing.

For example, I might sense that I am feeling something close to anger, but as I sit with it, I realize that the emotion is closer to annoyance or irritation or resentment.

Studies are showing that naming our emotions, particularly if we can notice the nuances, almost immediately releases their grip, and reduces physiological and psychological distress.

Recently, I listened to a friend, Margie, describe how her emotions changed and moderated as she used the “name it to tame it” technique.

Margie was driving cautiously and slowly around what she considered a dangerous curve on Stevens Pass. A truck beeped loudly and passed her despite the yellow lines. The driver turned his head around, stuck up his hand and made a not-sonice gesture.

Margie immediately noticed her rage as well as her fear.

As she continued to drive, within a couple of minutes she noticed that her fear and rage had morphed into annoyance and sadness. A bit later, she noticed her curiosity as to why the driver was in such a hurry.

Bottom line, we all feel “bad” sometimes.

Do not immediately try to push away dark side emotions.

That approach is often ineffective and makes us feel worse.

Rigorously trying to avoid any unpleasantness can make us more psychologically weak, fragile and fearful.

Instead, understand that “negative” emotions can be useful if they are not overly intense for www.ncwgoodlife.com

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prolonged periods of time.

Learn to regulate your emotions by accepting, even embracing, dark side emotions. Remember “name it to tame it.” (Of course, professional mental health folks deal with this stuff for a living; that is always an option).

Here are some ways to learn more right now. Close your eyes for 10 seconds; try to identify what you are feeling.

Use the internet to google Plutchik’s wheel of emotions if you want to find the names of emotions and see how they are related. Read The Upside of Your Dark Side.

And hang on. For those of you who still think all this emotion stuff is airy-fairy, pay attention.

Being able to notice, accept, appreciate, understand and effectively manage your human emotions (emotional intelligence), particularly those dark side emotions, is not only a way to transform your psychological pain. There seems to be physical health benefits (for example, better immune function and cardio-health) and social benefits of being able to deal better with others’ emotions as well.

AND, according to new research, this sort of emotional balance is connected to wiser decision-making. We can all use more of that.

How might you learn how to effectively deal with your dark side emotions and move up to The Good Life?

June Darling, Ph.D. can be contacted at drjunedarling1@gmail.com; website: www.summitgroupresources. com. Her bio and many of her books can be found at amazon.com/author/ junedarling.

POP-UP ART Marlin Peterson makes art that jumps off the page — or wall or asphalt parking lot — while teaching others that yes, you can get paid to make art

I

By Susan Lagsdin

s it an alien invasion, or just a zoological anomaly worth shouting about?

Gazing almost straight down from the observation deck, you can see them menacing the roof of the Seattle Center Armory building: two astonishing 40-foot Harvestmen, also known as “daddy longlegs.”

Marlin Peterson, who teaches drawing and illustration at Wenatchee Valley College, was commissioned in 2012 by the City of Seattle to paint an attention-getting rooftop mural for the World’s Fair 50th anniversary, and he proposed those distinctive arachnids. (“They aren’t spiders,” he said. “But people call them that anyway.”)

Their outsize spiky legs gave him a great chance to play with light and shadow to create a perfect optical illusion. After scraping seagull detritus off the gritty roof, Marlin painted solo from wire and clay scale models and gridded mock-ups, and he fulfilled his grant in five weeks.

“I wanted to do something grandiose,” he said, “something startling that would catch people off guard.” The notoriety of that project led to recent requests from Ohio and Texas for similar 3-D murals of giant spiders.

A dream job for him, he said, would be traveling to do more commissioned work like his startling trompe l’oeil surfaces, but for now he’s found plenty to do at home in Wenatchee, where he moved shortly after the first arachnid invasion.

Marlin sees the wealth of unadorned alleyways, walls, parking lots and flat roofs as the perfect blank canvas and is hatching plans for even more public murals.

This city has already been blessed with his

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This Austin, Texas parking lot exemplifies Marlin’s expertise in 3-D imagery, done large, very large. Photos taken on the ground just show innocuous black and brown stripes; from above the spider seems to be moving right along.

These fish in their first “alevan” stage are part of a long horizontal mural that Marlin produced in 2016 depicting the life stages of salmon. You’ll see it on the east wall above Centennial Park on South Wenatchee Avenue.

mural art, which he sometimes uses as an extension of his college classes: a huge dahlia on Fifth Street and much-larger-than-life animals indigenous to the area: salmon, foraging bears and the latest June 1920 design at Kiwanis Methow Park of vibrant migratory birds.

A collaborative project last year was the student-made, large-scale graffiti art on the | The Good Life

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brick walls of WVC’s Wells Hall, completed just before its scheduled tear-down. Many of the images, in homage to the building’s his-

April 2021

duced him to formal professional art, from which he’d veered away in favor of a history degree from Western Washington University.

“I was in awe of the natural world and then I discovered scientific illustration, which led me back to illustration of all kinds,” Marlin said. “I was turned off art for a while, but now I can strongly encourage my students to create good portfolios and aim for careers. I assure them — yes — you can get paid to make art.’”

As a working graphic artist who’s also a teacher, Marlin takes opportunities to hone his own skills. He works in everything from charcoal, ink and watercolor to digital images and latex house paint, so his students are exposed to a range of media.

“When I give an assignment, it’s always something I would actually enjoy doing too,” he said. “I start it beforehand so I can anticipate problems and advise them as we go along.”

Animals and insects are frequent subjects.

One class project involves creating a small wire and clay maquette, or scale model, of a prehistoric creature, then aiming light from different angles to define contour for fineline scratchboard or pen and ink drawings.

Naturalistic, scientific drawings hone hand-eye focus; sometimes, however, his students loosen up with large, spontaneous ink brush washes.

He prepares challenging assignments for his students despite pandemic distance, and Marlin is an involved dad to his sons as well.

“I know I have FOMO (fear of missing out), but when they’re in the house I want to be with them,” he said. So, whether he’s doing free-lance scientific drawings, making a Samples of Marlin Peterson’s work on his home’s walls show a fascination with the natural world and mock-up of a new installation, or planning the impeccable accuracy that’ s needed for scientific illustration. Sometimes, though, he’ll concoct genhis next day’s classes, he gives himself a late eralized creatures just for fun. Photo by Mike Irwin shift, working around 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. in his tory, are archived at WVC. “I used to bike here when I was a kid, so it small basement studio.

Though he’s known here mostly for his was great getting over here to the Loop and In these last difficult months, with the murals, Marlin said, “Because I’m a freelance learning all the biking trails,” he said. Pedcouple adroitly juggling job schedules and artist, I have to be willing to do anything a dling fast and far is a favorite pastime of the childcare both at home and away, and a client asks,” so he also does science illustra- couple; their two toddlers, already adept on house-remodeling project to boot, Marlin tion for books and journals, cartooning, pa- tricycles, will soon join them. said, “I’m always on the hunt for personal leo reconstruction, logo design and branding Marlin’s a model for their confidence. He creativity time — many ideas seem so close (add posters, tee shirts, cider labels, coffee spent years (“most of my 20s”) on a series of and possible I can almost taste them, but mugs…) Fortunately, much of that work is biking adventures in Ethiopia, Madagascar, they remain out of reach.” digital, a very familiar medium for him, so Kyrgyzstan, India and Russia.

Spring will help, for sure. Marlin’s other he can work from home.

He’d sketch and take pictures and, on creative outlet, an extensive garden of fruit Seattle was his basecamp for artwork and return to the USA, repair his bike and make trees and berry bushes, will beckon him traveling for years. a little money touring slide shows and paint- outdoors.

Marlin’s wife Christine’s job in health care ing houses. “Not artistically,” he clarified. “I And, who knows? Maybe he and his young precipitated their 2012 move to Wenatchee, mean exteriors.” crop of trained mural enthusiasts will be givand they were delighted to live in the center A specialized graphics program at the Uni- en free rein to adorn even more Wenatchee of such wide-open recreational bounty. versity of California at Santa Cruz reintrowalls.

April 2021 | The Good Life

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The Art Life

// SKETCHES OF LOCAL ARTISTS Sometimes featured on The Good Life pages running mountain trails, Marlene Farrell also has a varied literary life that blends her writing and her lifelong interests.

Photo by Kevin Farrell

Marlene Farrell

Taking the long run to be a published author L

By Susan Lagsdin

eavenworth writer Marlene Farrell needn’t go far from home to enjoy an enviable medley of work, art, recreation and family — not always symmetrically balanced but full and fulfilling.

We spoke in front of the fireplace at her neighborhood’s O’Grady’s restaurant, pre-pandemic one of her away-from-thehouse writing spots.

As a young girl, Marlene pictured herself in Africa about now. “I thought as an adult I’d be in the savannah, following lions around,” she said, “studying animal behavior and the needs of threatened species.”

She did use her college degrees in ecology and biology to work (albeit in this country) as a wildlife biologist, but she also continued to hone — with one voluntary break — an early and ongoing talent for writing.

Marlene enjoyed fiction and poetry as a child and was involved in her high school’s literary magazine. Then she headed off to college and found the creative writing staff at Princeton, with notables like Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates, somewhat intimidating, so she backed off that course of study.

On the other hand, she said, “I was like a kid in a candy shop with the number of biology classes — I took as many as I could.”

A love of the natural world led Marlene to Leavenworth in 2004, where she’s now involved year-long in outdoor sports.

Trail running is a personal passion, she sails an ocean-worthy boat with her husband Kevin

The “big ones” are her middle-grade fiction books: one tucked away as the starter novel, one half-finished with serious revisions already made, one already 30,000 words and growing. and their two teens, and she coaches Nordic skiing through Leavenworth Winter Sports Club and running, on several levels, in the local schools.

Her literary life is just as rich and varied.

She’s honed her craft over the years with a few online community college classes as well as intensive writing workshops through Write On The River and Washington State Artist Trust.

She uses National Novel Writing month (NaNoWriMo), a daunting 50,000-word challenge, to start novels and is an active member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

Inspired initially by Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, Marlene and her local writing group continue to support and challenge each other. And this spring, she’s excited about an upcoming three-day writing residency with the Icicle Fund’s Conservation, History and Art (CHA) program.

Marlene is intent on find-

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ing her voice and her place as a writer.

An anthology of essays by female natural scientists will contain her reflections on interning on a Panamanian island and later as a wildlife biologist for the Forest Service working in the field while pregnant. “I distinctly remember being on a survey crew,” she said, “and making the connection between my in vivo daughter and the fish I was observing.”

In 2016, her children’s picturebook, a first-time submission, won a prize in the prestigious Pacific Northwest Writers Association competition; that affirmation gave her the confidence to submit other manuscripts (40 at last count), without illustrations, for possible publication.

Local readers have seen her by-line frequently. In her two years as coordinator of the Cascade Medical Foundation, Marlene built a robust newsletter and social media presence and recently wrote her first (very) successful grant. She covers school issues and news events for the Leavenworth Echo, writes an occasional story for The Good Life and is compos-

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April 2021

ing a feature for Foothills.

“I have so many small projects going,” she said, “And I admit it — sometimes I use those frequent freelance deadlines to avoid the big ones.”

The “big ones” are her middlegrade fiction books: one tucked away as the starter novel, one half-finished with serious revisions already made, one already 30,000 words and growing.

“Write what you know” is time-tested advice, and Marlene does that.

She brings her passion for both running and the natural world to young readers and aims resolutely toward seeing her books in print, whether through an agent or through assisted self-publication.

Using advice gleaned from mentors, writing seminars and a dose of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, she keeps a flow chart of slowly accumulating chapters. The plot thickens and she logs the book’s steady progress, though weekends are the only time she can block out hours to work on her fiction writing.

Not only do a job, sports and freelance assignments make it difficult to dedicate the hard time a novel takes, the literary world has tipped a bit from 2016 when she first started writing her most current middle-grade

With these questions, she’s gone back to her manuscripts-inprogress to ensure that her writing is as empowering, true and personal as she can make it. fiction books.

Writing for a budding generation, Marlene is as sensitive to cultural appropriation as she is to story arc or point of view.

Does a boy’s conversation with a (real? Or imaginary?) otter on Washington’s coast ring of Native American animism? Might the LatinX girl protagonist’s home and school issues in Airborne be inadvertently misrepresented?

With these questions, she’s gone back to her manuscriptsin-progress to ensure that her writing is as empowering, true and personal as she can make it.

Being truthful is important to her, and to her readers. Marlene describes it this way: “I stumble on connections while I’m writing or thinking about writing, insights that make me want to share my work. Maybe they will help someone else the way they’ve helped me.”

Marlene walked home from our interview in the chilly late afternoon sun, and I guessed she’d probably try to make time for a quick trail run before dinner.

And if she did, as she wended her way through local woods she was likely thinking hard about her newest novel.

Know of someone stepping off the beaten path in the search for fun and excitement? E-mail us at editor@ncwgoodlife.com

fun stuff what to do around here for the next month We want to know of fun and interesting local events. Send info to: donna@ncwgoodlife.com

Please check all events to make sure none has canceled.

1 million cups, every first Wednesday of the month. 8 a.m. Entrepreneurs discover solutions and thrive when they collaborate over a million cups of coffee. Come join this supportive, dynamic community and hear from two businesses that are between 1 – 5 years old. Discover how we can help move them forward in a positive environment.

Zoom link: 1mcwenatcheevalley. eventsbrite.com.

Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center is now open, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.

Info: wenatcheevalleymuseum.org/ reopening or call 888-6240.

Two Rivers Gallery, 3/31-4/29, Wed-Sat 11-4 p.m., Sun. 1-4 p.m.

12th anniversary with 55 local and regional artists showing some of their finest works. Featuring the Wenatchee Watercolor Society.

Info: 2riversgallery.com.

Virtual Local Music: Eden Moody, 4/1, 7 p.m. Live-streamed to you from Snowy Owl Theater.

Cost: $5 or pay what you can. Info: icicle.org.

Physical Well-being and Symptom management, 4/3, 10 a.m.

Virtual lecture series via Zoom.

Managing fatigue, neuropathy, osteoporosis, sexual health and more from EASE Cancer Foundation.

Register: easecancer.org.

Outdoor artisan Market, 4/3, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Pybus Public Market. Cost: free. Info: pybuspublicmarket.org.

Wenatchee Riverfront Railway, 4/3, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Home of the Nile Saunders Orchard mini train. All train runs are weather permitting. Wenatchee Riverfront Park. Cost: $2. Info: facebook.com/ thewenatcheeriverfrontrailway.

Sundays at Icicle: Poochikian and Dorman, 4/4, 1 p.m. Hoorig Poochikian, violin and Elizabeth Dorman, piano, performing from Canyon Wren Recital Hall. Cost: free. Info: icicle.org.

Benevolent Day at Muchen April 2021 | The Good Life

Haus, 4/6, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. Dine at the Muchen Haus in Leavenworth and support Chelan/Douglas Land Trust. 25 percent of all sales go to CDLT. Info: cdlandtrust.org.

Virtual Local Music, The Nate Weakley Project, 4/10, 7 p.m.

Nathaniel Weakley, Steve Clem on guitar, Evan Anderson on drums, and Debby Shea Anderson on bass playing classic and modern rock.

Virtual event. Cost: $5. Info: icicle. org.

Individual cut pieces must not be thicker than 8” in diameter. Stack similar sized items together in plies. Debris should not be blocking any traffic. Chipping will occur in mid to late May. Track your hours preparing for the chipping crew.

Proof of landowner contribution is required for this program. Record your time raking, pruning, thinning trees and other activities to make your home better prepared for wildfire. Cost: free. Register: bit. ly/2NpALJP or cascadiacd.org.

Pybus University: Homelessness in the Valley, 4/13, 7 – 8 p.m. Join local area individuals and groups working to combat homelessness and create positive change. Pybus Public Market. Cost: free. Info: pybuspublicmarket.org.

Chelan Earth Day Fair, 4/17.

Experience all the color, fun and informational opportunities digitally and live with planned panel discussion and questions and answers on topics from keeping the lake clean to barnyard chickens.

Firewise Communities: Chipping Event, 4/15. When stacking debris place all the stems of trees and brush pointing in the same direction with the cut ends toward the road. This makes the pile easier to pull apart to feed the chipper.

Maximum pile height is 5 feet.

Humor, coping and creative experiences, 4/17, 10 a.m. Lecture series via Zoom. Coping with cancer in a humorous fun inspirational creative writing experience.

Register: easecancer.org.

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WHAT TO DO

We want to know of fun and interesting local events. Send info to: donna@ncwgoodlife.com

}}} Continued from previous page Wenatchee Riverfront Railway, 4/17, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Home of the Nile Saunders Orchard mini train. All train runs are weather permitting. Wenatchee Riverfront Park. Cost: $2. Info: facebook.com/ thewenatcheeriverfrontrailway.

Master Gardeners of Chelan and Douglas Counties plant sale, 4/17 – 24. Wide selection of tomato, peppers, veggies and herbs along with Walla Walla perennials. Online sales. Curbside pickup will be scheduled on May 1 and 2.

Customers can schedule a specific pickup time when order placed.

Order: mgfchelancounty.org.

Introductory Series to Wildlife Tracking, 4/20, 6 p.m. Explore the art of inquiry and engaging curiosity in the natural world, learn basic wildlife foot physiology and morphology, learn clear print identification, concepts in behavior and wildlife sign interpretation and how wildlife interacts with landscapes in the three part Zoom series. Wenatchee River Institute.

Cost: $15 per class or $40 whole series. Must register: wenatcheeriverinstitute.org.

Pybus University: Stress, anxiety, sleep and cannabinoids, 4/20, 7 – 8 p.m. Learn about the endocannabinoid system/ECS, the largest neurotransmitter system in your body that is considered one of the most important healthcare discoveries of the last century. Zoom class. Info: pybuspublicmarket.org.

WVC’s Sustainability Committee Earth Day/Poetry Month Celebration, 4/22, 1 p.m. Two visiting writers are wise and engaging ambassadors of sustainability.

Scott Sanders’ essays place people and social justice at the heart of sustainability. Ross Gay’s genius lies in bringing people together through poems that celebrate joy and delight seen as he leads efforts at community gardening. Cost: free. Must register: wvc.edu/about/ sustainability/events.html.

Wenatchee Symphony virtual concert: Promises of spring, 4/24, 6:30 p.m. Streamed from the stage of the PAC to your home.

Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and from his opera The Tender Land. The Promise of Living with guest tenor and soprano

Chelan Earth Day Fair going virtual this year

By Gary Myers

L

ike the swallows to Capistrano, if it’s the third Saturday in April, it’s time for the Chelan Earth Day Fair.

Since 1989, the fair has been the community’s unofficial coming out party for Spring. Riverwalk Park traditionally swells with visitors, and one of the longest running Earth Day events in the state has grown to include over 100 educational booths and demonstrations, arts and crafts vendors, a large collection of electric vehicles, local produce and a book and plant sale.

Facing the challenge of hosting an event during the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, the organizers decided to reinvent the wheel for 2021 and go virtual.

First, they had to figure out just how to define that.

Co-coordinator Anne Brooks says the answer came from an unlikely place, thousands of miles away. “We did an internet search and found a group in Piedmont, North Carolina that managed to put together a virtual Earth Day fair last year. They actually had fun with it by combining informative and fun video segments and live presentations and panel discussions via Zoom.”

Of course, Chelan has a habit of putting its own spin on things.

“We decided to take advantage of the opportunity to capture some of the fun and color that the fair is known for, but also to present information in an entirely different way,” she said.

The answer is to utilize the chelanearthdayfair.org website to soloists. Special appearances by the WVSO’s Brass Ensemble and Classic Pizzazz. Info: wenatcheesymphony.org.

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The Chelan Earth Day Fair is usually a chance to celebrate beauty and bounty of mother earth outside in the park, but this year, all events will be in cyber space.

digitally host the fair this year. The goal is to still have the full slate of activities, music and information of the traditional fair, and combine it with live panel discussion and Q & A’s with experts on topics from ways to preserve Lake Chelan’s water quality to backyard chickens.

Links to the live sessions will be available on the Earth Day fair website.

“Once we started thinking about it, we realized a virtual fair opened up a whole world of possibilities as far as guests we could feature, but also the people who could attend, so to speak,” said Anne.

April 17th will also mark the release of a two hour video presentation that is designed to highlight the various aspects that make up the fair in the park, WVC’s Sustainability Committee Earth Day/Poetry Month Celebration, 4/26, 6 p.m. Derek Sheffield will give a reading and talk with Drew Lanham and Jane

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April 2021

including musical performances

by Kevin Jones, Older & Wiser and Savanna Woods, interviews with experts from organizations like the Lake Chelan Research Institute and Cascadia Conservation, and the latest in electric vehicles with Plug In NCW. Attending is easy, and you can do it from anywhere you have an internet connection. Check out chelanearthdayfair.org for details.

In the meantime, Anne said, don’t worry about the future of the fair, “Next year we’ll be back in the park. We’re excited to get back to normal.”

Gary Myers and his wife Leslie usually organize and host the music on the Chelan Earth Day fair entertainment stage.

Hirshfield. Must register: wvc.terrain.org/events/terrainorg-readingseries-3/.

Wenatchee in 1900. Panoramic view down upon Wenatchee, up the Columbia River to confluence with the Wenatchee River and across to Douglas County.

Miller Avenue is in middle of picture. The ferry ran from the foot of Orondo Avenue to the ferry building on the east side of the Columbia River. (No other buildings on the east side.) A dirt road ran north on the east side ferry stop to Corbaley Canyon uphill to Waterville, out of sight over Badger Mountain. Photo courtesy of Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center, 009-70-11

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column those were the days

rod molzahn

Wenatchee Flat: From horse racing to apples Philip Miller had a fine view.

His homestead was at the southwest corner of the Wenatchee Flat where the flat begins to climb into the foothills. He looked north across the flat with Burch Mountain in the distance.

Streams flowed from two canyons at the west edge of the flat and meandered to the Columbia River. An Indian racetrack stretched for a straight mile across the north end of the flat.

On the northeast edge of the flat the collection of tents that was the trading post looked out of place. There was nothing else on the flat taller than a sagebrush.

About 4,500 years ago, the climate changed and became colder and wetter. Indians living

On the northeast edge of the flat the collection of tents that was the trading post looked out of place. There was nothing else on the flat taller than a sagebrush. in higher locations in the mountains around Lake Wenatchee were forced to move from villages they had used for thousands of years to warmer locations along the lower Wenatchee River and its confluence with the Columbia.

April 2021 | The Good Life

About 2,500 years ago, the climate warmed and dried and the Wenatchee Flat became a gathering place and council grounds for local Indians and others from around north central Washington.

On the 14th of August, 1811 Alexander Ross and a party of Pacific Fur Company men pulled their canoes on shore at the Wenatchee/Columbia confluence. They were the first white men to set foot on P’squose land.

Alexander Ross wrote later, “Indians met us in great numbers, and vied with each other in acts of kindness.”

Up on the Wenatchee Flat the fur company men made camp next to a sizable Indian camp.

Ross recalled, “Sopa (the chief) invited us to pass the day with him, which we did and were www.ncwgoodlife.com

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highly gratified to see the natives hunt the wild deer on horseback.

They killed several head of game close to our camp.”

Thirty years later Navy Lieutenant Robert Johnson led an expedition to explore the upper Columbia. They reached the Wenatchee/Columbia confluence on June 4, 1841.

Lt. Johnson wrote that they encamped on the south side of the confluence “in a beautiful patch of meadowland of about 100 acres in extant, which the Indians had enclosed in small squares by turf walls and in them they cultivated the potato in a systematic manner.” The meadow also held numbers of

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THOSE WERE THE DAYS

Wenatchee Flat: Easy to plow for family farms }}} Continued from previous page

grouse and curlews along with wild currents just ripening.

The meadow is not the Wenatchee Flat. It is the grassy meadow that still exists where the KPQ radio towers stand.

It’s a delta created by material washed down the Wenatchee Valley by melt water from the Icicle Glacier. The Wenatchee Flat borders it on the south and west sides.

Captain George McClellan brought a well-armed force of soldiers to the Wenatchee Flat in 1853. The flat was covered with tipis and mat lodges. Hundreds of Quiltenenock’s people from Rock Island were gathered with as many P’squose led by Tecolekun. Owhi, head chief of the upper Yakamas, was also there. They had all come for a council with McClellan.

At the close of the council the Wenatchee Flat was, again, the place of an epic horse race. The course was a straight line close to a mile long with a post at the far end where riders turned then whipped their horses a mile back to the start.

In May of 1879 the Wenatchee Flat saw its last great horse race. All of north central Washington’s tribes gathered at the traditional council grounds to hear General O.O. Howard, Territorial Governor Elisha Ferry and Chief Moses describe and discuss the newly created Moses/Columbia reservation.

Army Lieutenant Charles Erskine Scott Wood described the view from the Wenatchee Flat as the tribes rode in and set up camps.

It was a “gorgeous setting in the evergreen and snow clad hills: the eternal snow peaks high in the air against the blue sky; the irregular streets of dusky tepees… the lounging men, the playing children, the sneaking dogs and the working

About 1911: Wenatchee Valley Apple Orchards, as seen from Shale Rock. Photo courtesy of Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center, 99-3-226

“A faint cry at the other end of the line, a whirl of horses, a tumult down there, a waving of whips, a wild yelling growing nearer, louder, and here they come...” women.”

The council ended with a two horse race on a straight stretch of about a mile along the half grass-grown plain between the camps and the foot of the mountain. Lieutenant Wood called the race.

“A faint cry at the other end of the line, a whirl of horses, a tumult down there, a waving of whips, a wild yelling growing nearer, louder, and here they come — flying, side by side, the naked riders plying the lash with every terrific bound. Here they come! Heads out, eyes

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strained, nostrils stretched, fore hoofs seemingly always in the air, the whip thongs falling with a quickening vigor.

“A horse, wild shouting, a deafening burst of yells, a swish in the air, an apparition before the eyes, a bound over the finish line, and the race is over, the white just half a length ahead, and there they go down towards the river, the boys pulling them in for dear life.”

Two years later, in 1881, white settlement began on the Wenatchee Flat.

Tom Doak claimed 160 acres fronting on the Columbia at the foot of Fifth Street. By 1883, 160-acre homesteads were starting to fill the Wenatchee Flat.

Families were moving in: Tallman and Arzilla Tripp next to Tom Doak, George and Margaret Blair with five children between Fifth Street and Washington Street and the Rickman family west of Western Avenue along Fifth Street.

These were families determined to farm and who appreciated a big piece of flat land that could be plowed in straight

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April 2021

rows.

There were other flats just right for farming but not so large as the Wenatchee Flat: Warner Flat below Cashmere, Brown’s Flat that became Monitor, Burch Flat where Olds Station is now and Pogue Flat, the largest Kame terrace in Okanogan County.

By the late 1880s and into the early 1900s irrigation came to all the flats. The Highline Canal turned the Wenatchee Flat from a sagebrush and boulder covered wasteland to green productive land full of alfalfa and orchards.

Philip Miller’s fine view was changing but Miller didn’t live to see the final transformation when houses began to replace crops on the Wenatchee Flat.

Finally lawns and gardens became the users of the flat and its irrigation water.

Historian, actor and teacher Rod Molzahn can be reached at shake. speak@nwi.net. His third history CD, Legends & Legacies Vol. III - Stories of Wenatchee and North Central Washington, is now available at the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center and at other locations throughout the area.

Watermelons: Oops, there goes another one from me.

The man turned out to be the safety officer and was more than happy to sign anything, especially my BOL. After those two times I vowed to never haul watermelons again.

}}} Continued from page 34 third of it on the way. We still lost dozens as we tried to make things right.

I had to drive to Tacoma, have them unload my disaster, repack every watermelon into new boxes that would go into grocery stores, add more watermelons to make it a full load and then I had to tarp the load.

I drove back to Spokane and delivered the load one week after I picked it up in Nogales.

I had to pay $4,500 for the deductible for the insurance and received not one cent for a week’s worth of work.

The second time I hauled watermelons was a little more controlled.

I loaded in southern California and they did not try to put so many on this time.

So this time my drive was uneventful until I got to the cosigner, which was a major food chain store dock in Kent.

The forklift driver was unloading the boxes of watermelons stacked three high when the bottom box collapsed under the weight and the top two boxes started falling away from the forklift’s bridge.

He tried to stop it but to no avail and three boxes of watermelons crashed on the concrete next to my trailer. I got out and took pictures to make sure I was safe from any blame.

The forklift operator finished unloading my trailer then without saying a word, drove his forklift up the ramp and closed the door leaving me with an unsigned bill of lading.

I waited for a while then crawled up onto the dock through another door to go find my forklift driver who had to sign my BOL. I got into the massive, produce warehouse and immediately realized it was about 40 degrees inside, everywhere. I had a tee shirt on. So I’m quickly looking for my forklift guy and I

Bill Landsborough and his new bride, Sharon were married in January 2018 and were featured in The Good Life as the winner of The Best Day writing contest. He and his wife continue to enjoy golf, ping pong, off-roading and hiking around Wenatchee. He has never eaten watermelon again.

Watermelons hit the deck.

see him but he would not talk to me, saying go find someone else, as he was busy.

I went to a supervisor and he told me the forklift driver has to sign it off and to go find him.

Well, by now I’m cold and I’m angry and now I can’t find the guy to sign my bill of lading.

So I’m standing in an intersection of the forklifts moving the tons of produce trying to find my driver when all of a sudden I am hit from the right on my nose and forehead and went crashing to the concrete floor. I was dazed but not badly hurt.

A man came up to me and asked what was I doing there and I replied I was trying to get my BOL signed by the forklift driver.

He asked quite aggressively how I got into the warehouse and started asking me a bunch of questions when I told him I was hit by a forklift.

He said we have cameras everywhere, implying I was lying and said we had to go to his office and discuss this. I told him that would be fine and for him to go look at his cameras while I went to get a coat.

When I came back, he was a different man, totally apologetic and humble. I told him that the forklift driver dropped three boxes of watermelons and did not want to sign my bill of lading and have to admit dropping about 120 watermelons so he hid April 2021 | The Good Life

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Spilling watermelons across the nation I

by Bill Landsborough

am a retired, long haul, owner-operator truck driver.

I have hauled every commodity known to man from pipe to onions, military tanks to dog food, smashed cars to logs for custom homes and everything in between.

However, I have only hauled watermelons twice. Both times resulted in complete disasters that I paid dearly for weeks after.

The first time was a load of watermelons out of Nogales, New Mexico.

Right on the Mexican border, the plant actually received the watermelons on the Mexico side and shipped on the U.S. side of the building.

The weather was very hot

there as they loaded 72 cardboard boxes that were 4 x 4 feet wide and 4 feet tall full of watermelons onto my 48-foot, flatbed trailer.

The boxes were flimsy considering the weight they held.

And to secure the boxes to my trailer I had to strap them pretty tightly but not too tight to crush the boxes or the watermelons.

I was told that I should probably put my heavy tarps over the top of the load but being it was over 100 degrees and climbing up on top of watermelons at over 13 feet high from the ground did not appeal to this 65-year-old man.

So off I drove headed towards Spokane with my watermelons.

Everything was fine for several miles but I got into southern Utah and hit strong winds blow-

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| The Good Life

ing between the hills.

All at once this massive wind hit me from my left and blew my truck dangerously close to the right shoulder of my two lane highway.

I corrected and recovered OK but when I looked in my right mirror my heart just skipped a beat. The wind had blown the entire load about two feet to the right. The top of the load was dangerously leaning towards the side of the road which already sloped to the right.

I quickly pulled over and stopped on a right turn lane to assess the damage. It was very bad and I had no way to correct the problem by myself.

Just then a Utah Highway Patrolman stopped and we discussed my dilemma. He told me he would contact someone with an off-road forklift to call me and I had to move off of the roadway.

Since it was Saturday late afternoon I felt lucky to have someone call me at all but a nice young man said he could come tomorrow and help me. So I curled up for the night on the dirt shoulder of the road and waited until morning.

The next day, the man came and together we tried to move the cardboard boxes back to where they were but they were broken and weakened by the shift so anything we did brought a landslide of watermelons down onto us and the road.

Also the forklift continued to damage more boxes as he tried to make things right. Finally I paid him, scooped up the dozens of broken watermelon pieces and tossed them off the roadway and headed north.

Well, every turn to the left shifted my load just a little bit so I was constantly retying my straps to keep my now very damaged load intact. It was a

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April 2021

living nightmare!

I ended up driving over The Fourth of July Pass in Montana and every turn to the left put a dozen water- Bill Landsborough melons onto is still retired and living in the road and Wenatchee. the shoulder.

Truck drivers behind me were watching and commenting on their CB Radios, “Watch this Joe, there a dozen more watermelons go!”

I had used every strap I had and the load was still moving. I got to Post Falls, Idaho and parked for the night when this massive rainstorm came through and was soaking my cardboard boxes into mush.

Reluctantly I put on my rain gear and headed back to try to put my tarps on but as I headed back I realized that me climbing up on that load in the heavy rain would be close to suicide so I took off my gear and waited till morning to deliver my load to Spokane.

I pulled up to the cosigner’s dock and walked to the first person I saw who was a lady and she had already called out the entire executive branch to see this disaster. They would not even talk to me. My load was refused.

They worked out the details with my company that I was leased to, Atlantic and Pacific Freightways out of Vancouver, and I was told to take my fragile load to Tacoma and have every watermelon repacked in new boxes.

I told them that I would but they had to help me stabilize the load or I would lose another

}}} Continued on page 33

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