Tropical storm woes

Barely into the hurricane season, the Tampa Bay area has been slammed with the most rain we have had in a long time by Tropical Storm Debby.  So far, this area has experienced the worst part of the storm.


At the moment, we are in Tropical Storm Warning/Watch mode, in and out of tornado watches/warnings and severe thunderstorm watches/warnings have become normal.  The forecast calls for a couple more days of more of the same and we have already had 10-15 inches of rain throughout the area.


The photo comes from our local cable news channel, Bay News 9, who have provided awesome 24/7 coverage of the storm.  Bayshore Boulevard is virtually unrecognizable . . . they describe it as "non-existent" . . . I'd hate to live in that area right now!  I've posted photos of that area before . . . this is what it looks like on a normal day . . .

Many areas of Tampa are flooded, making a drive in traffic a nightmare!  There are stalled vehicles all over the place!  I wonder how many people are having a "mental health day" from work?

This photo comes from WFLA Channel 8, a local network affiliate . . .

Tropical Storm Debby looming, before the flooding.

Although the weather service has deemed Tropical Storm Debby unimpressive, those living in the Tampa Bay area will disagree!  

Normal life has been majorly disrupted!  How about the owners of this home?  OMG it is one of my nightmares with all the trees on our property!

Photo source:  Bay News 9

Even the local gators are enroute to safety . . . at least this one is using the crosswalk!

Photo source:  Bay News 9

For more photos . . . click here

Last night's sleep was intermittent . . . I kept waking up to the sound of fierce winds whipping through the trees with the heaviest rainfall I've experienced in a long time.  We slept with the television fixed on the 24/7 storm coverage.

With the storm stalled out in the Gulf pounding areas of Florida, there are many more stories yet to be told.  Let's pray that it weakens and goes away soon!

This is just the beginning of hurricane season . . . the one reason I hate living in Florida!

A Home That Used To Sit 1,000 Metres Above Sea Level

can be found at Shikoku Mura, donated by Eitaro Shimoki. The house's original location was at the highest point of the mountain village of Itchuson Kijiya, 1,000 metres above sea level.

In the entrance-work area are a clay threshing floor and a mortar for hulling wheat and barley. The clay oven  and pot was used for boiling a teburous root to make konnyaku.

Talking about hulling, here's a hut with a water driven mortar for hulling rice. Cool, right?

Such device was still used in Shikoku to hull rice up to the 1950s! By the way, it's a pity that we somehow missed taking photos of the interior (and the mortar inside) of this hut. Ah well...

By the way, have you read my rather rambling posts on a few other exhibits in Shikoku Mura?
A few homes here and here. A place where they made sugar and drink tea here. Paper was made here. The path you can take to walk around the open-air museum here. Lighthouses and the keeper's home here.

A Place Where They Make Paper

This is a bark steaming hut (kozo moshigoya), among one of the exhibits you can find at the open-air museum, Shikoku Mura. The hipped ridge roof is thatched with reeds. Reeds over bamboo frames are also used for its walls. There is a reason for the huts to be built with reeds. It is plentiful in the region compared to clays. Also, it provided better ventilation.

Tosa (modern day Kochi) was known as one of the best papermaking regions in Japan and this hut came from heart of the region.

The first step to making Japanese paper was to steam the outer bark from the paper mulberry (kozo). 

The bamboo barrel that you see hanging in the photo above would be lowered over a bubbling cauldron filled with mulberry branches to form an efficient steam box. Anyways, remember my post about a farm house of the Kono family? They owned a bark steamer too. Right beside their living area!

If you ask me, those bubbling cauldron looked like a torture device. Heh heh

The next step was to remove the white inner bark, pound it into a paste and float it in trays of water to form sheets of paper which were then drained and dried.

Cute photo of son (if I say so myself) for size comparison reason. hihi

Handmade Japanese paper (washi) is famous for its strength and durability. It contains no chemical and as a result it won't discolour or decompose with age. 

Way back when, Japanese merchants kept records with the washi and the accounts books can be thrown into a well in case of fire (or if you ask me, to hide precious record from being seized too) and be retrieved later without any damage. How ingenious!

I do seem to go on and on about the exhibits in Shikoku Mura, don't I? Bear with me, please.

I just feel that those exhibits are so interesting on their own that most (if not each) of them deserve a special post about them. Individual or being grouped. Also, learning a bit of background about them makes me appreciate things that I take for granted in modern daily life. Paper in this post. Sugar in previous post.

Exploring Massachusetts' Coastline in Spring! OLA

a blue and yellow gingerbread cottage in Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard

nice  Cape Cod welcome!

It should be fall! But we have to be in Nova Scotia in July so we are here at springtime instead. And the long coastline, cute lighthouses, fresh seafood and a multitude of pretty flowers are so refreshing in these parts of Massachusetts we had not yet explored. Bill and I have each been to Boston several times but not Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and New Bedford! The Gateway to Cape Cod in Rochester, Massachusetts where we were camped made all within our easy reach!

The Bared and Bended Arm of the Sea

Plymouth Rock, marked 1620 when the Pilgrims came

Cape Cod

Heralded as The Bared and Bended Arm in the Sea, Cape Cod was formed as the recessional moraine of a glacier, resulting in a peninsula in the Atlantic Ocean. But in 1914, the Cape Cod Canal was cut through the base, forming what may be loosely termed an island. Unofficially, it is one of the biggest barrier islands in the world, shielding much of Massachusetts, including Boston, from North Atlantic storm waves but also suffering erosion of its cliffs, at the same time.

Mayflower II, the ship that carried the Pilgrims to our shores

the John F. Kennedy Memorial in Hyannis

At its shoulder is Plymouth where the Plymouth Rock and a replica of Mayflower II are well-known tourist attractions. The Monument to our Forefathers, on the other hand, is a hidden gem!  In the middle of the upper arm is Hyannis where the Kennedys maintained a compound, now donated for government research, though still closed to the public. The city also has an elegant JFK Memorial and a simple JFK Museum surrounded by Rose Kennedy’s roses.   Harwich, Chatham, and Brewster counties form its elbow. There, at the Stony Brook Grist Mill, we saw a herring run.

where the herring ran, beside the grist mill at Stony Brook

remnants of the Marconi's site for the US station
in the first transatlantic wireless transmission to the UK

The Cape Cod National Seashore is its lower arm. Near the Salt Pond Visitor Center are Captain Penniman’s House and the oldest windmill in the US. Near its wrist, at Wellfleet, there is only a mile of land between the gulf and the ocean. Marconi chose the site for the first transatlantic wireless transmission because it had an undisturbed line of sight to Cornwall in the UK.  Along the beach is also where I savored my first bowl of New England clam chowder! Finally, Provincetown, where the Pilgrims first landed before proceeding to Plymouth, makes its fist. A Pilgrim’s Monument and four small lighthouses are highlights of the area, beautifully dotted by flowers that thrive even on its sandy soil.

getting some rest from the sun at a seafood place on the beach at the Cod

Martha’s Vineyard

Steamship Authority ferry to Martha's Vineyard

One sunny day we took the one hour drive to Woods Hole at the Cod’s armpit and rode the 45-minute Steamship Authority ferry to the island called Martha’s Vineyard. The captain who discovered it named it after his daughter Martha and the wild grapes he found growing there. With a land area of almost 90 sq. mi., it is the largest island not connected to mainland US by a bridge or tunnel. The year-round population is about 15,000, swelling to over 75,000 in summer. A study found that cost of living on the summer colony is 60% higher than the national average; housing prices are double.

Tabernacle in the middle of the Camp of gingerbread cottages
 Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard

Ricky and Megan with us at Coop de Ville harbor resto

We docked at Oak Bluffs and immediately proceeded to the well-known pretty gingerbread cottages which surround the Camp whose center is the giant Tabernacle. There were all kinds of pastel colors and designs but I favored those that had yellow, of course. A real estate listing showed that one such small cottage is available for upwards of $350,000! At the Harbor’s Coup de Ville restaurant, not only was my second bowl of New England clam chowder waiting for me but also Ricky and Megan, a lively newly-wed couple of three days! We had a blast!

the island of Chappaquiddick with its ferries

found my spot of yellow daisies
at the end of North St. in Edgartown.

Then we took a 15-minute bus to Edgartown to which the small island of Chappaquiddick (where former Sen. Edward Kennedy’s car accidentally went into the water and his young female companion drowned) is connected by a small ferry.  But the best part of this town is walking along North Street which runs parallel to its coast. It is lined on both sides by beautiful homes, one side enjoying the waterfront at their backyards. But all the front yards are adorned by pretty spring flowers and verdant greens. I found my spot at the far end on a field of yellow daisies with a small lighthouse at the background!

a North St., Edgartown home...with yellow flowers!

New Bedford Whaling Museum

New Bedford

New Bedford was once the richest city in the world; it was the center of the great whaling industry and now its Whaling Museum is the largest in the world. Beside it is the the Mariner’s Home next to the Seamen’s Bethel (or church. At its Harbor, the old Schooner Ernestina is still docked as another reminder of the whaling days. There is also a memorial to those who lost their lives at sea and a Fisherman’s Memorial fronts the fishing boats. Downtown there is a Whalers’ Memorial which reads, ‘a dead whale or a stove boat’ beside the statue of Lewis Temple who invented the harpoon tip.  But the affluent times are best memorialized in the large mansions and lush gardens around town.

Downtown Bedrord's Whalers' Memorial

flowers on the sandy shores of Cape Cod

Although I felt that the Outer Banks of North Carolina are still better than Cape Cod, the totality of the coastal communities of Massachusetts…the Bare and Bended Arm, Martha’s Vineyard, and New Bedford…offered more variety for everyone’s notion of beauty. New England is truly lovely…and, I can now say, not just in fall! Sigh…our children are all in the west so that is still where we will probably settle! Maybe, just a gingerbread cottage for summer, Bill?

a lonely biker during low tide at the Cod

For more pictures, please go to my albums on our facebook account named billncarol colborn!  
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A Stroll By The River

pretty
beyond the smudged pot smoke
Sumida River
                                          Kobayashi Issa      

Why did I chose this haiku from other haikus on Sumida River? I'm celebrating the arrival of summer and also the mozzies too! ^^

harvest moon
Sumida River thick
with mosquitoes

Early morning view of the river. Taken when I went for my solitary morning jaunt when we were in Asakusa last year.

And these, by Zaini when we took a stroll by the river and ended up in Kinshicho the day before.

Now tell  me it isn't nice to take a long, leisurely walk by the river?

p.s. Zaini doesn't seem to be against a June trip but that trip will have to wait. After all, we are already in mid-June now!

6 Hocking Glass Canisters 1940's

6 Hocking Canisters mid Century Like New

 So I guess I should start at the beginning.  After my Mom passed away in NY we inherited the house and all the contents.  By the time we were done sorting stuff we found over 500 drinking glasses. So to say there was alot of stuff is an understatement. 

We were lucky enough to know an appraiser who came and spent a whole day going through all the stuff, while he talked and gave values, his wife was going through drawers and cabinets!  There were no big treasures but we wanted to know the values so we could yard sale alot of it before we moved back out west.


Our garage here was jammed packed and are determined that this is the year we really make decisions about it all.  We had taken these canisters out and they were waiting to be photoed for eBay.  Our good friend Danna Crawford was here, saw them and said I really needed to get them listed 

I had no idea what they were until one day I was on Pinterest and saw a jar like mine that said Jadeite / Jadite.  That day became one of research and alot of discussion on a Facebook group. One gal has a friend who is an expert on Jadite and gave me alot of very helpful information.  The Green Color is flash on or fired on over clear glass.

 

 

Flour Shaker

There was some discussion that they may be reproductions because they are in such good condition.  I wrote in the description that I really think they were a wedding gift to my parents who married in 1941.  Mom's kitchen was always blue and Grandma (who lived in the same house as us) - was red.  There was no way either of them would have put anything green in either of their kitchen. 

See more photos

BTW - Prior to the early 1940's Hocking was the Glass company. Anchor was the company who did the lids and after they merged they added the Anchor logo. My canisters do not have the anchor logo!!!