Rainy morning in the valley

Sun breaks is the name they give to them. They are quite welcome when they come, but they also make you think the day is going to clear, but not so fast. Yesterday, the first day of Spring, was spectacular up until about 2:00. It clouded over and just when we were thinking about yard work after painting all morning....gloom set in. We walked for coffee anyway. It is like a five minute walk to one of two coffee houses the students at George Fox use, so it is a bit like sitting in JPs in the late afternoon or evening in Holland. I have to say, however, that while students are students, the locals here are different...very few blondes, and most are in pretty scruffy clothes. You don't get the dressed look here like in West Michigan.

It began raining about bed time and has not let up since...typical misty stuff. We were on our way to the Safeway when we saw blue sky coming in over the next hill and both of us said, "Look, a sun break." But if it happened, it came and went while we were in the store.

I got my painting clothes on yesterday...actually, they were my regular clothes that I figured I could get paint on, which is almost a given for me. Aleene actually has painting clothes. I rolled the dining room while the little one trimmed. Today she is doing white trim and I am waiting for the next rolling opportunity.

I got a one day job lined up for Thursday. This is through my budd in KC. The need is a small dental practice in Rainier, OR (up on the Columbia River) that is in distress so I am going to give them some mediation stuff. Hope it works.

Amy is pretty much finished with her school visits, so Aleene is not sitting today (yesterday was the last) although Amy teaches on Tuesday nights and we will keep the kids while she takes off until Bren gets home...about an hour.

One of our new church friends and his wife invited us for supper on Friday. He is a retired Mennonite pastor from St. Louis who has joined the UMC congregation here...which is a story in itself. Why are they here? Grand kids. Just like us. They also have a son in New London, Ontario, but their daughter is here (she teaches at Fox) with her family...you get the picture.

I spent some time the other day reading the diaries of two women who traversed the Oregon Train 150 + years ago. They are on line and the printing is small, but what fascinating stories they have. One was the first white woman to do the trail in 1836 whose husband was a missionary. One of their first concerns was that the young Indian women were not properly dressed...wow...times have not changed that much. They wanted to make long dresses for them.

The other was of a middle teen girl in 1858 (the heart of the migration) who settled in the Willamette Valley. These stories are important to me because of the way we will be making the trip in May...pretty much the same route from Nebraska on...with some significant differences. One might think this is boring reading, but to me it is fascinating. There are about thirty complete manuscripts from the time, which are considered to be authentic. There are some memoirs, but time erodes facts and the memory plays tricks so diaries are more reliable than memiors. However one memoir was written in 1925 by a woman who made the trip in the 1860s...and she had the advantage of telling about how things turned out for some of their fellow travelers.

In case you care, the migration in wagons ended when the railroad connected in Utah in 1869, although some poor folks slogged it out on foot well into the 1880s (Bonnie Beal (my maternal granma whom we all knew...even our kids) was born in 1882 so think about the connection to the past there.)

Enough history...I think Aleene needs me...but probably needs a sun break more.