Friday Tidings

Sometimes I just need to pause and imagine what it feels like to be someone else—to imagine how it feels to suffer the pain they are experiencing. Ever since I met Betsy Schultz, I’ve tried to imagine her grief—losing her only son. In the instantaneous flash and explosion of a road side bomb in Afghanistan, Betsy became a Gold Star Mom. A title none of us moms want to have. I think about losing my own son, and how devastating that would be. Yet, within days of her son Joseph’s burial in Arlington Cemetery, she was formulating plans to help others like her heal from wounds no one can see or really feel. In the Bible it says that for those in sorrow, God will give a crown of beauty instead of ashes. Captain Joseph House exemplifies this. From extensive remodeling of a 1912 home Betsy donated, to the lush gardens that are being tended, this will be a place for hurting families who’ve lost loved ones. As they say, they paid the “ultimate price” for their service to our nation. Within t...

I’ll always remember the look on my mom’s face. In her excitement, that she hoped I’d share, she’d taken me to a remote archeological site on the North Olympic Peninsula to see scientists-in-action. Mom used her string-pulling ways to get permission from the lead archeologist to come and see for herself where a tremendous trove of artifacts were being carefully extracted. A team of archeologists, along with the blessing and partnership of the Makah Tribal Council, slowly unearthed an ancient Native American village. It was amazingly well-preserved by virtue of the mud that had buried it three hundred years earlier.   From Makah Museum photo collection Mom was enthralled as the scientist led us to various tents showing us some of the treasures. Mom had a thirst to know more about these people, their lifestyles, and their cultural ways. I cared about getting home and out of the rain. As a teen, I was too wrapped up in my current life to care much about what life was like before me....

Beach Time Circa 1996 Long before our cell phones connected us to everything, it was so much easier to disconnect. Imagine going somewhere without your phone now… That’s why it was so unusual to see two teens without phones. I heard them before I saw them.  I was on our trail that heads down to the beach—doing my spring time clean-up of the foliage overgrowth. It was a Saturday—full of sunshine and promise. Normally, it’s quiet, except for the sound of the waves and the birds. But there was the unmistakeable sound of voices. I peered through the forest and tried to glimpse who was coming. It was coming from the creek. The creek is mostly shallow this time of year—but it’s like an avenue to the sea. When we first came here it was a place lots of neighborhood kids loved to play. That was long ago. The voices carried over the water so I could hear excitement and laughter. Then I watched as two boys made their way to where the creek meets the sea. They had their shoelaces tied tog...

April 1945: A group of American WWII soldiers made a most unusual and notable rescue along the German-Czechoslovakian border. A regiment of enemy German soldiers knew they were hemmed in and faced eminent attack. But they were also caring for the highly valued and rare Lipizzaner horses—that had been seized by the Third Reich. With the Red Army advancing, and the anticipated annihilation of both men and the prized horses, the German leader surrendered to the Americans and asked for their help in saving these tremendous horses. Thus a group of GI’s, along with some emancipated Allied POW’s, and the surrendered Germans fought off attacks by the Waffen-SS troops as they made the rush to safety. May 1952: An American teen girl had been forced to miss her senior year of high school in order to accompany her diplomatic father as he completed a project in post-war Germany. She’d left behind her friends and the excitement a senior year holds, to go to a country that meant little to her. Ev...