EWGSI

There is so much history swirling around the town of Vicksburg, Mississippi! Doubt one could have time to read all the books that have been published about this river town through the decades.  One story concerns Teddy Roosevelt.  TR (1858-1919), was a politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist and naturalist and was America’s 26 th president. He was a cousin to Franklin D. Roosevelt. TR’s biggest love was anything outdoors and he especially loved the sport of hunting. Hoping to get some good publicity, Mississippi’s governor, Andrew H. Longino, invited Teddy on a bear hunting trip in 1902 near Onward, Mississippi. The hunting party went off in great spirits, but after several days they had not yet even seen a bear. One of Roosevelt's assistants, led by Holt Collier, a born slave and former Confederate cavalryman, corned and tied a black bear to a tree. They summoned Roosevelt and suggested he shoot it. Viewing this as extremely unsportsmanlike, Roosevelt refused to shoo...

  We here in the heavily timbered land of the Pacific Northwest have certainly seen and heard the name of Weyerhaeuser Company and know it has something to do with the timber and lumbering industry. We’d never have guessed that Frederick Weyerhaeuser (1834-1914) began his company in the Mississippi River town of Davenport, Iowa, but he did. The company was founded in 1900 by Frederick Weyerhaeuser who had emigrated to the U.S. from Germany when he was 18. He worked first as a laborer in Eric, Pennsylvania, where he met and married Elisabeth Bladel. In 1856, the young couple moved to Rock Island, Illinois (across the river from Davenport). Weyerhaeuser found work in a sawmill and lumber yard, eventually becoming foreman and arduously began saving his money. Weyerhaeuser was a workaholic and by the mid-1860s he had purchased the mill and was buying pine tracts in Wisconsin, expanding into Minnesota, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. By 1903, Weyerhaeuser owned more than 1.5 million acr...

  Here I stand between a nun buoy and a can buoy. I knew buoys (whether ocean, lake or river) came in red and green and that was about it. The plaque below reads: "Buoys are floating navigational aids that mark channels, hazards and prohibited areas and also help navigators locate their position. Buoys are coded by color, shape and numbers. They are moored to the bed of a waterway by chain or rope to concrete sinkers. Nun buoys are red with cone-shaped tops. They mark the right side of a waterway when entering a channel from the sea. Nun buoys carry even numbers.  Can buoys are green and are square or shaped like a large can. They mark the left side when entering a channel from seaward. Can buoys carry odd numbers." Capt. Kelly explained all this to us (a rapt audience) and then with a smile told of how buoys get "whacked" by ships or barges and float loose......... to end up on the sand or even up in the trees during high water. He said at one point there was a pro...

(Sign on lamp post in downtown Hannibal; it reads:  "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." )   I t was a really, really windy day when our cruise ship ported at Hannibal, Illinois. I put on every jacket and shirt  I had and out I went………could not miss the opportunity to visit Mark Twain.  I enjoyed the Mark Twain museums (there were two), touring the Thatcher home and just trying to "feel" being there.  I shall not go into his biography for I’m guessing that’s pretty well known. One of his favorite homilies was that he was born in 1835 when Halley’s Comet could be seen and held onto life until 1910 so he could go out with it. His personal life was a rather sad affair.  He married Olivia Langdon, who died six years before him. Their first child, Landon Clemons, died at age one. Their first daughter, Olivia Susan, died at age 23. Next child was Jane who passed the year before her father. Only Clara was lef...

  In Memphis, in a pouring rain, I went to see Elvis. The statue above is in the Memphis Visitors' Center.  Then the bus took us to Graceland. Elvis bought Graceland in the spring of 1957 when he was just 22 years old, paying $100,000 for the mansion and grounds. It was on the outskirts of Memphis then but surely is not today. Touring the mansion today is stepping back into a "day with Elvis" for the rooms are kept true to when he was there. (Want to see the rooms? Ask Grandma Google.) Elvis died there on August 16, 1977; he was only 42. Under the watchful eyes of Priscilla, the upstairs of the mansion is kept for the family to use and they do still come and have big family celebrations around the big dining room table that fills the room.  Elvis and Priscilla had one child, a daughter, Lisa Marie, born in 1968. Lisa Marie had been married four times:  (1) Danny Keough; had Danielle Riley and Benjamin Storm with him; (2)  Michael Jackson;  (3) Nicolas Cage;...

  Who hasn't taken Tums for the tummy?  On our bus ride from the boat to the Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis, and not in the best-looking part of town, we passed a 5-story red brick factory building....... the home to Tums for nearly 100 years.  Here's a bit from their website: Insomniac snacks, car crashes, tax audits, pink slips… Imagine all the gushes of gastric acid those Tums have neutralized. The brand leads the industry, selling more than 60 million bottles or rolls a year—almost double the total of its second-place rival, Rolaids. And 99.9 percent of those Tums, more than 6 billion tablets, are made right here. (The .1 percent? Wrafton Laboratories in England.) Now you're ready to be a Jeopardy champion! Here’s another bit of trivia for you:   When did hurricanes start getting named?  It was back in 1950 when the U.S. Weather Bureau began using the phonetic alphabet (Able-Baker-Charlie). In 1953, women’s names were substituted and in 1979 the World Me...

  You may have noticed that for a time, blog posts will appear oftener than the regular Tuesday and Friday. Why? Because I could not blog for a month? Why? I'd installed what I thought would be a good extension (Web Ad Blocker) and thanks to Julie Rosenoff and Connie Bunch who diagnosed the problem (I NEVER WOULD HAVE!) I'm back to work and catching up with posting. Clear as Mississippi Mud? Last October, 2022, I was blessed to take a cruise down the entire length of the Mississippi River...... from St. Paul to New Orleans. All the shipboard chatter was that the river was at a historic 40-year low. My first thought, ignorantly formed, was is this a big deal? The answer was absolutely this was a huge big deal. We were told that our ship drew 7-feet of water (a hotel atop a barge, really). The river was only 9.5-feet in some places!! We were told by the Corps of Engineers a couple of times to "pull over and tie up until further notice" because of dredging downstream. A ...

  It is now officially 2023 so why not treat yourself to a new book for the New Year??? One might guess that with eighteen books to his credit that Nathan Dylan Goodwin was running out of ideas. But nope. Book number nineteen,  The Sawtooth Slayer , adds another star on his story flag. The  Sawtooth Slayer  is set in April 2020 in Twin Falls, Idaho, where a serial killer is on the loose. (The Sawtooth Mountains are nearby; hence the name.) A nameless man is kidnapping young women from their own homes, taking them out of the city to kill them before returning their bodies to random locations around the city. The local officers in charge in frustration turn to Venator—an investigative genetic genealogical company—in hopes that they can identify the killer from his left-behind DNA before he kills another young woman. This book is definitely not another typical murder mystery. The  Sawtooth Slayer  is different in that DNA is featured prominently in the solving...

 Read clear to the end for my big announcement! I knew that my maternal grandmother, Clara Ann Joseph, was born on 14 Nov 1894 in the Mississippi River town of Ivy Landing, Illinois. By 1900, the Joseph family was living several miles inland which gives a big clue as to way I could never find Ivy Landing on any map. It must have surely washed away! In those early days, men’s attempts to control the Mighty Mississippi were puny at best. It was well into the 1890s that the Corps of Engineers began building dams to (hopefully) better control the river. In late October 2022,  I tool a cruise down the entire length of the Mississippi River. I was very surprised to see miles and miles and miles of empty sandy river bank looking much like the picture above. Was this where Ivy Landing was? I’ll never know for sure but I’ll bet it was a tiny town back in the trees along a stretch of river bank just like this.   Now for my big announcement:   On this recent cruise, I kep...