La Canada, La Crescenta evacuation information posted

Posted on 20. Jan, 2010 by kchristieh in history, local news

It’s never a good sign when you see that the Red Cross has set up an evacuation shelter at your child’s school. Click here to see the official LA County Department of Public Works evacuation information page. It includes a link to a January 19th letter explaining evacuation details, and a link to a pdf that shows which addresses are being evacuated. La Canada addresses start on page 11.

My father called yesterday to see if we were doing well. He knew we were, because the mud would have to flow all the way down the mountain and fill up the huge, below ground level 210 Freeway to reach us. He just wanted an excuse to call, and was impressed that Al Roker was reporting for the Today show from our fair but beleaguered city. It’s like when he calls when there’s an earthquake: even though I’ve told him not to call unless it’s a 5.0 or above, he calls anyway.

The picture above shows debris that came down the mountain in the 1934 Montrose flood. It came from the (currently broken) Crescenta Valley Historical Society website. Click here to read more about that flood, and click here to see more pictures.

Did my ancestor need to apologize to the Indians?

Posted on 29. Nov, 2009 by kchristieh in history, religion

If my kids were to construct a physical family tree to reflect what we know of their ancestors, it would be incredibly lopsided. My husband can barely trace his ancestors back to his great grandparents, whereas I can trace at least one branch of my family tree back to the late 1500’s. One of my more famous ancestors was Everardus Bogardus, who was the second minister of the Reformed Dutch Church in New Amsterdam, which we now know as New York.

So it was with great interest that I read that Rev. Robert Chase from Collegiate Church, which is the current incarnation of the Reformed Dutch Church, Indians for the church’s role in their massacre and displacement. (see the to the right)

“We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarded your culture, along with your dreams, hopes and great love for this land,” the Rev. Robert Chase told descendants from both sides. “With pain, we the Collegiate Church, remember our part in these events.”

As a center of the new colony, it’s not surprising that the church would have played a role in persecuting the Indians. Still, it was disappointing to envision an ancestor of mine playing such a big role in it. Fortunately, I found an article about Everardus Bogardus that says that he actually was kind to the Indians.

Before arriving in New Amsterdam in 1633, The Dutch minister had served as a ‘ziekentrooster’ (comforter of the sick) on the Guinea coast. While there, he developed a concern for the spiritual condition of Africans that carried over into his dealings with New Amsterdam’s West Africans. In 1636, Bogardus pleaded for a schoolmaster to be sent from Holland. As New Amsterdam’s minister, he routinely married African men and women and baptized their children, and made a great effort to welcome Africans into New Amsterdam’s Reformed Protestant Church.

…

Everardus Bogardus was a controversial figure in more than one way. He was at odds with one of the settlement’s first leaders, Willem Kieft. Bogardus denounced Kieft from his pulpit due to Kieft’s decisions to initiate wars with the local Indians.

I wish I could meet my ancestors. It’d be amazing to see firsthand what their lives were like and why they made the decisions they did.

I found a website dedicated to tracing descendancy to Everardus Bogardus and his wife Anneke. It says there are probably a million people who can claim them as ancestors. I wonder if this is true. If so, it shows that many of us are more related than we ever imagined. The website also puts to rest rumors that Anneke was descended from King William the Silent in Holland. I always wondered how I could descend from someone who was silent. Instead, it turns out she was born in Norway. That adds yet another country to my list of Northern European countries I descend from, so that’s cool.

Take the flood and mudslide warnings seriously

Posted on 15. Nov, 2009 by kchristieh in history, local news

It’s not surprising that I missed Thursday night’s rainstorm; according to the Pasadena Star-News, the storm covered only a few blocks, but it dumped between 1″ – 2″ of rain in about 20 minutes sometime after 11 pm.

It served as a mudslide test run and a warning to people who live in the projected path of the post-fire mudslides. Mud flowed over barriers, and one man wound up with 5′ deep of mud in his backyard. A friend of mine who lives at the top of Palm Drive said the ground under her house shook when the water rushed by in the canyon below her house.

Here are some pictures I found online from the Montrose Flood of 1934. The Pickens Fire in Angeles Forest had burned 7,000 acres that fall, and torrential rains caused 20′ tall walls of water and mud to flow down the mountain. It killed over 100 people, and was memorialized in a Woody Guthrie song you can . Back in 1934, there weren’t the concrete basins to channel floods, and there were many more houses between the mountains and the valley. But still, these pictures are very sobering.

Montrose: In this view, the photographer is standing where Mayfield Ave used to be, looking down toward the intersection of Rosemont and Montrose. The flood had spread out at this point, creating a wide moonscape where houses and streets had been the night before.
Photo and caption: Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley.

Photo and caption: Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley.

Foothill Blvd. the morning after the huge flash flood of New Years Eve, 1934 was swept clean by the torrent of the night before. Right here, at the intersection of Foothill and Briggs is where Pickens Canyon crossed under the boulevard. Pickens Canyon was one of the main funnels through which poured tons mud and debris down from the San Gabriel Mountains onto the valley floor during that tragedy. It was at this point on the road that witnesses that night reported seeing a 20 foot high wall of water, rocks and mud blast across Foothill Blvd.
Photo and caption: Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley.

Shortly after Midnight on New Years Day of 1934, a sudden cloudburst in the San Gabriels sent a wall of water, mud and rocks crashing down Pickens Canyon. When it reached the American Legion Hall at Fairway and Rosemont, it punched through the back wall and filled the building, killing 12 local residents that had taken refuge there from the deluge. Here the Legion Hall, at what had been the intersection of Rosemont and Fairway, can be seen after the disaster, seemingly intact. In reality a portion of the back wall is gone and the interior is filled with debris. Rosemont has become a rockstrewn gully. Dirt stains on the walls of the building attest to the height of the mud flow.
Photo and caption: Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley.

The combination of late summer hillside fires, followed by a rainy winter has historically doomed foothill communities to mudslides. In 1933, November wildfires in the San Gabriels, chased up with a couple of weeks of heavy rain in late December, and topped off with a cloudburst on New Years Eve, caused massive mudslides in CV just after midnight. Scores of people died and hundreds of homes and businesses were destroyed. This is the view on New Years Day 1934 looking up Verdugo Road from Glencoe Way, looking toward Ocean View. A couple of feet of mud has obliterated the roadway, burying the car in the foreground past its axles. The line of telephone poles marks the center median of Verdugo Road.
Photo and caption: Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley.

What is this in the back of the pickup truck?

Posted on 30. May, 2009 by kchristieh in history

As seen around noon today on the 210 Freeway by Seco St. What is it? It looks like an antique jail on wheels.

Amazing close-up view of inauguration

Posted on 04. Feb, 2009 by kchristieh in cool websites, history, politics

No matter how you voted, you should check the amazingly detailed Fullscreen Gigapan View photo of the inauguration. You can click on the upper lefthand side to zoom in or zoom out, and then drag the picture as you wish.
What an amazing view of history!

The stitching errors are a bit spooky. It looks like Aretha Franklin has a ghost on her lap. She’s in the upper lefthand corner of the second picture I cropped below. You can get MUCH closer than this picture shows.
Today I saw someone who swore she saw me on television at the Neighborhood Ball. I had a hard time convincing her that it wasn’t me, although I wish it had been. She must have had me confused with Shakira.  :)
I’m often confused with other people that look like me. I wish I could meet one of these lookalikes sometime!

Who needs a time machine when you have Photoshop?

Posted on 18. Aug, 2008 by kchristieh in art, cool websites, history, my life

When my sister’s mother-in-law died five years ago, my sister assembled a slide show to show at her funeral. She scanned lots of old pictures, but one was problematic: it showed the unwelcome ex-husband of one of the relatives.

I was called in to help. I used either Photoshop or Fireworks to eliminate the man from the picture. It wasn’t a completely professional job, but it did the trick for a fast-moving slide show.

I did the opposite this year when I pasted a few girls into a team picture that they’d missed earlier in the season. We wanted to show the whole team for a schedule poster we distributed to local merchants.

Apparently I’m not the only one who does this. Yesterday’s NY Times article, “I Was There. Just Ask Photoshop.” notes that not only do people delete others from photos, but they create events that never happened by pasting people into photos.

After her father died several years ago, Theresa Newman Rolley, an accountant in Williamsport, Pa., hired Wayne Palmer, a photographic retoucher, to create a composite portrait of the two of them because she had no actual one of them together.

That photograph — of a moment that never happened — now hangs in her living room. It still brings tears to her eyes, she said.

“It’s the only picture of my dad and me together,” Ms. Rolley said, adding, “If the only reason I can get one is cropping it in, it still means the same to me.”

I read a story once about someone who does this for the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It gives them a lasting way to remember their loved one.

On a sillier note, you can do this to your own picture via Yearbook Yourself. Just upload a picture and see how you’d look in yearbooks every two years from 1950 – 2000.

My favorite is 1960. I think I look like my mom. (Hey, Mom, are you reading this??)

UFOs seen over Red Bank, NJ

Posted on 31. Jan, 2008 by kchristieh in history

I grew up thinking that UFOs were a Western phenomena, perhaps because of Roswell, NM. The recent sighting of UFOs in Stephensville, Texas confirmed that theory. I had no idea that UFOs had been spotted in my own (former) little corner of New Jersey, near Red Bank, on March 15, 1950.

I discovered this when I was poking around on Footnote.com. This site allows people to upload original, historical documents, adding them to an already existing archive of public and private collections. It’s searchable, and there are discussion forums about various topics.

My first searches centered on names. I quickly found some of my stepfather’s ancestors, but I haven’t found mine yet.

When I started typing in names of places I’ve lived, I quickly hit paydirt. A search for “Fair Haven” directed me to this 13-page document from the National Archives. It includes interviews and the results of an Army investigation into a UFO sighting by at least five people south of Red Bank, NJ. The people interviewed came from various towns and professions, but each claimed to have seen three flying objects with trails behind them. Several people said they looked round. Mrs. Lewis Prentiss of Rumson said she saw the following while driving on Ridge Road in Fair Haven:

Three port holes with lights behind them, or lights that might be viewed through a fog. The weather was very clear and early evening daylight. Around these three luminous round forms there seemed to be a density of ’sky-blue’ colored gas. The objects were not disc-like in form.

The Army concluded that the people probably saw contrails from high-flying aircraft.

Maybe. But it seems odd that they were round. I wonder what they really were? I wonder if they had a utopian vision of the future?

The oldest thing I own: photo book published in 1892

Posted on 20. Jan, 2008 by kchristieh in art, books, history, international

Many years ago, my grandfather asked me whether there was anything of his that I’d like when he dies. I told him I’d love to have some photographs, and would be happy to scan them for everyone else. He laughed and said I’m just like my mother.

Perhaps that’s why, despite moving nearly twenty times in my life, I’ve somehow managed to hang on to “Glimpses of the World: My Portfolio of Photographs, Prepared Under the Supervision of John L. Stoddard.” It was published in 1892, and my copy says “Lizzie J. Brown, 1894″ on the cover page. To the best of my knowledge, it’s the oldest thing that I own. What a testimony to the fleeting nature of possessions.

This 549-page book is entrancing. It has photos from all over the world, and under each one there’s a paragraph describing the picture. The explanations are just as fascinating as the photos, as they reflect the author’s perspective and biases.

This book is pretty big – 11.5″ x 14″ – so it was hard to scan without breaking the binding. Here are a few of the most fascinating pictures and descriptions from the book. If you click on them, you’ll see larger versions and be able to read the text.

Here’s the “Royal Palace, Honolulu, Sandwich Islands.” The caption talks about how much progress has been made in the islands since Honolulu harbor was “discovered less than a hundred years ago.” The picture includes King Kalakua, his wife, his daughter, and Col. Judd, his Secretary of State. At the time, Honolulu had a population of 14,000.

Here’s a picture taken in San Francisco’s Chinatown. According to Stoddard, “a trip to Chinatown” was “an essential feature of a visit to the Pacific coast.” Click on the picture to see the caption. It’s completely politically incorrect for our times.

Here are some straw cottages in Salamanca, Mexico. The author was more sympathetic towards these Mexican villagers, though his analysis again errs on the side of political incorrectness. “These Indians are said to be generally happy and contented, but it is hard to believe it in view of their condition. Many of them certainly have a hopeless and even timid look, like that of a well-meaning dog that had been beaten and abused.”

No photo book would be complete without some Yosemite pictures, and Stoddard obliges. It’s mind-boggling to think that these pictures were taken before Ansel Adams was even born! Here’s a horse drawn carriage driving through a tree in Mariposa Grove. I think I’ve seen postcards with cars doing the same thing.

I think this book was pretty popular in its time. My freshman roommate had one at her house, and there are some available for sale on the internet. It’s no wonder people have kept them: it’s a window into another time and many other places.