Thursday, April 06, 2006
Oral History
A few years ago, I went with my mom and Veltha Coleman to videotape an interview with Irene Stapp out in Hettenshaw Valley (that’s in the southwestern part of Trinity County). One of Irene’s great-grandfathers opened the first store in Blocksburg, while another, as legend has it, battled a grizzly bear with a knife by shoving his arm down the animal’s throat and stabbing it from the inside. Grizzly Mountain is named for the incident, although Irene says that isn’t where it happened. Anyway, I just got around to putting up this Quicktime clip, where Irene talks about her Wailaki heritage and Lucy Young, who lived through the massacres of the 1860s and provided anthropologists with much of what is known about Wailaki life before the arrival of white settlers in that region.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
1950s Footage of San Francisco
A couple years ago, my aunt gave me a bunch of 8mm film that my granddad shot in the late 1940s and ‘50s. I was going to transfer it all myself, but after researching the process, I decided it looked like too much work. Last week, Pat took three reels to Digital Pickle. They cleaned it all up and transferred it to MiniDV and DVD for me. This is a short Quicktime clip taken, according to my mom, at a ranch “in San Francisco.” She is pictured on the horse. I don’t know who the little boy is.
Added April 7, 2006: My mom says the little boy’s name is Herbie Brenjolson. Are you out there, Herbie?
Bridgeville for Sale (Again) on Ebay
This is somewhat embarrassing, but several of my friends have written to alert me that they saw or heard actual news stories that Bridgeville, the “town” where I attended kindergarten through the eighth grade, is for sale again on eBay. I am perplexed as to why this is deemed news, but even TIME magazine has a story, complete with a quote from Robyn Samuelson, who grew up on a ranch a few miles from me. It’s been a while since I’ve been through town, but I have heard the current owners have done a lot to clean up the place. It’s hard to imagine, even with the improvements, that they will get their asking price of nearly $2 million, though.
Children from Our One-Room Schools
I helped my mom and some other people from my hometown publish a local history book about what it was like to attend the one-room schools in that area from 1880 to 1955. People who live or have lived in the community wrote their own stories (some of them are pretty funny) and donated a ton of photos for the book, which is being sold by the Blocksburg Town Hall Association as a fundraiser. The Town Hall will use the money to maintain the historic church and school house. I think some of the money also goes to the scholarship fund.
I haven’t worked in print since my days at my college newspaper, so I got Frew to help me with the templates for the book. He also designed a beautiful cover from photographs of a 1930s-era quilt that had been given to a teacher at the Blocksburg School. It went down the Eel River in the 1964 flood, but someone miraculously found it, cleaned it, and pieced it back together.
Boot Camp
I made a short film last year for the Western Folklife Center about my friend and bootmaking teacher, Jack Rowin. It showed at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in February, and now it’s online, but if you go there, you’ll have to scroll down the page a little bit. I know that might sound like a lot of trouble, but would you be tempted to watch it if I told you the movie also features the musical magic of Matt Margolin? Of course, you would.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Evany Says I Need a Website
Evany says she is tired of linking to my blue page on Windbigler.com. I’m worried she might not write about me anymore in her diary if I don’t put something up.
