The Blaisdell Blog

        Everyone has a favorite tradition associated with Christmas.   Do you need to come home for Christmas?   Do you have a special food that must be on the table?   Is it the tree? The decorations?   Evening church?   The carols?   With me, my favorite part of Christmas is the holiday cards.   I spend more care picking them out than I do with most gifts.   I send them out with joy and receive them with eager anticipation.   I would rather get a card than a gift.   The cards are torn open, scanned for happy family news and put on display where they can be seen hourly.   In the year of our Lord, 2008, I found myself making a curious observation.   No, it was more than curious; it was astounding.   There they were, from one end of the entertainment center to the other, cards that celebrated the color pink!   2008 was the year of pink cards, bright themes that repeated pink, cartoon animals in pink.   I even had Nativity scenes that were on a pink background.   Light-hearted, happy,

  Thanksgiving has always been my favorite secular holiday.   As a child, I loved the food and family gatherings.   Most of all, I loved the story that my mother would share on Thanksgiving—the story of her father’s family and their journey to America.   They were a family that literally arrived on the wings of a storm. On the morning of August 15, 1635, off the coast of Pemaquid, Maine a ship thrashed at anchor. The 250-ton Angel Gabriel was a big ship with heavily gunned decks and a reputation for successful transport of immigrants and cargo.   It had arrived at one of the most beautiful harbors on the east coast of the New World the day before.   While those with a weather eye may have known that trouble was brewing, none could have guessed that the Angel Gabriel was about to be set upon by a storm that history would call the “Great Colonial Hurricane.” That hurricane was the first great storm recorded by the Europeans who were steadily populating New England and the Mid-A

  There is a photograph on the wall of my sister’s home that is both precious and haunting to me.   It is a restored, blown up and framed photo of my father on his way to the South Pacific during World War II.   It was taken by an Army photographer from a small tender craft as my Dad’s ship, the S.S. Monterey, left harbor.   In a happy accident, the picture was taken with a close up of Pfc. Frank G. Yatckoske front and center.   He is in the midst of a host of soldiers leaning over the rail, all smiling and mugging for the camera.   My father is leaning out from the rest, his arms braced on the rail of the ship, his smile—a straight, wide grin filled with mischief—is set in a young, lean, handsome face.   Every man on that ship seems filled with enthusiasm, bonhomie, even a sense of adventure. Those poor young men didn’t have a clue.               I don’t want to contemplate what happened to most of those men.   I know that “I” Company of the 63 rd Infantry, 6 th Division went

  Nine thousand years ago a man died along the Columbia River.  About 40 years old, he stood 5 feet 7 inches tall and his 160 pounds were all lean, compact strength.  He was no stranger to injury.  In his life, he had skull injuries, 5 broken ribs and a spear point lodged in his pelvic bones.  In each case, he recovered, which means he had someone to care for him.  At the time of his death, cause unknown, he was buried with dignity.               He is called Kennewick Man.  He came to North America long before the peoples currently called Native Americans arrived.  DNA evidence proves he is not related to them.  If there is a real, “first” American, it is this man, most closely related to two far flung groups: Polynesians and the Ainu of Japan.  If you are a Native American, and think you have an historic right of ownership to North America, look over your shoulder.  Kennewick man not only predates you, but he did not even come via the Berengia land bridge.  He is part of a seafar