Voyages of Starship Arrowstar

Voyages of Starship Arrowstar
Starship Arrowstar and Shuttlecraft Maxwell

Friday, July 22, 2016

Captain’s Log - Stardate: 20-16-07-22 – Mission Day 16



Captain’s Entry:
 
We visited Historic Fort Humboldt in Eureka today. The stories about how the Native Americans were displaced and killed there back in the 1860’s really got to me. I should have found a seat on a picnic table and waited while Frank toured the grounds, rather than reading all the story signs that upset me.  In the meanwhile, Frank spent his time looking at and reading about “ancient” logging equipment displayed on the Fort’s property.

Fort Humboldt now overlooks Bayshore Shopping Mall, the same land where Native Americans used to live, surviving on the bounty provided by the Pacific Ocean. There’s blood on the earth under that mall, both Native American and Anglo. It was on that same strip of land where working men killed each other over low wages paid in the lumber mill that used to be there.  I’m having trouble understanding why that parcel of land was never considered hallowed ground out of respect for those who died there. 

A Happy Note: I haven’t mentioned Anne and Charles Lindbergh in awhile because I finished reading North to the Orient a week or more ago. However, I’ve been looking forward to sharing with you Anne’s observations as she and Charles left Japan on board a ship that would take them and their crippled airplane back to the U.S.

“Our real good-bye was not until the boat pulled out of the dock at Yokohama, when the crowd of Japanese learning over the rails of the decks shot twirling strands of serpentine across to those they had left behind on shore – a rain of bright fireworks. One end of these colored paper ribbons was held in the hands of those on deck, the other, by those on shore, until a brilliant multicolored web was spun between ship and shore.”

Anne said she heard Sayonara repeated over and over as the ship pulled away and the ribbons snapped between ship and shore. The translation of the word Sayonara, according to Anne, is “Since it must be so.” She muses that “Sayonara says neither too much nor too little.” 

I agree with Anne, Sayonara is the perfect way to say good-bye. 

Sayonara Anne and Charles since it must be so.
 
End Captain’s Entry

First Officer’s Entry:

Oh my poor, liberal, bleeding heart, pinko, communist, wife/captain.  I do love her so.

We are in Eureka, CA, a very forgettable not so little town.  Perhaps I haven’t seen the better parts.  Maybe the whole town isn’t scruffy.  Maybe.

Yesterday we visited the “Joss House” in Weaverville.  “Joss” is believed to be a corruption of the Portuguese word “Deus”, meaning “God.”  So the Joss House is a house where the Chinese gods were kept. Chinese miners built the first temple in 1853. It burned in 1861, and that one burned in 1873. In 1874 the present temple was built and has been in use ever since. From the outside it’s not so impressive, just a simple gray house with some fancy wood trim on top.  Boy Howdy, when you step inside it’s a whole ‘nuther story!  It is beautiful!



Everything inside the structure is original.  I was my usual doubting self and asked the ranger specifically. She said that the building is solid with no windows, so all the statues, banners, gongs, drums, and costumes have always been protected from the elements.  The house is the oldest continually used Joss House in California, and although the state made it a State Park in 1956, people still stop by to ask favors and protections from the eight gods housed there.



Today I REALLY enjoyed Fort Humboldt.  There were about 15 steam “Donkey” engine slack-line log movers ranging from really small prototype units to a massive 20 foot tall monster.  I love these old machines and wish I had thought to get involved in their restoration way back when I was younger.

Sigh.  That’s just another road not taken.

Gold mining in this area was brutal. Miners destroyed whole mountains to get at the gold.


End First Officer’s Entry

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