A ghost unmet

 Lurching off-topic for a moment:

Four years ago (Was it that long? Time just flashes by!) I wrote a series of posts about summers spent on Ferrer Point, in an abandoned WWII radar station, back in the early 1950s.

Here's a list:

• Out on the edge of the world.
• Sand delvers.
• And there was no coffee.
• View from the tower and burnt bras.
• And a bit of background history: Some old photos and personal history.

Today, someone working on a history of the area asked me for some more information, and wondered if I had any other photos of the site. (Yes, a few.) And digging through old file boxes, I found something else; a black, fuzzy paper album page, torn and falling out of an album I'd carried around since I was little, with an old, faded newspaper photo of Zeballos glued on it. (Population, these days: 107, back then, a few more, not many.)

Zeballos Hotel and Hammond Grocery, Zeballos

I cut this out of the newspaper in 1986, but the photo dates back to the 1940s or maybe '50s. It's a bit newer-looking than the way I remember it, in 1955. And check out that cool car! Brought in by boat; there were no roads to Zeballos in those days. Even today, it's 40 kilometres of gravel off the paved highway.

About Zeballos: I wrote about this, too: View from the Zeballos dock.

Oh, the ghost? She was still around when I was there. Susie Woo was a laundress for the hotel, and died in her room there, in the 1940s. People said she kept coming back and moving things around. I never met her, though. 

Zeballos is still on the list of BC's Haunted Spots. There's a more recent story, here: "A Haunted Tale ..."

Must. Go. Back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cambiando de tema por un momento:

Hace cuatro años — y parece que fue ayer — escribí una serie de posts hablando de los veranos que pasaba en los años de mediados de la década de medio siglo 19, en un campamento en lo que había sido un puesto de vigilancia de radar durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, ya abandonado. 

Aquí hay una lista de la serie:

• Out on the edge of the world. (En la orilla del mundo)
• Sand delvers. (Los que excavan en la arena.)
• And there was no coffee. (Y no había café.)
• View from the tower and burnt bras. (Vista desde la torre, y brassieres quemados.)
• Y un poco de historia de fondo: Some old photos and personal history. (Fotos viejas e historia personal.)

Hoy un arqueólogo que estudia la historia de este rumbo, me pidió más información y preguntó si tenía otras fotos del sitio. (Si algunas.) Pero buscando entre papeles viejos, encontré algo más; una página de un album viejo, que he guardado desde que era niña, una página de papel grueso, negro, con los bordes desbaratados. Y pegado en esa página, una foto vieja, cortada de un periódico, mostrando el hotel y una tienda en el "pueblo" de Zeballos. (Población ahora: 107 almas, en aquel entonces, algunos pocos más.)

Foto: la página del album, con la foto de Zeballos; el hotel y una tienda de comestibles. La leyenda dice — Una foto vieja del hotel Zeballos, el hogar del espectro que siempre regresa, Susie Woo.

Había cortado esta foto del periódico en 1986, pero la foto viene de los años entre 1940 y 1950 más o menos. Se ve un poco más nuevecito que cuando yo lo veía, en 1955. ¡Y mira ese coche modernísimo! Lo trajeron en barco; en esos años no había ruta sobre tierra para llegar al pueblo. Aun hoy, el camino es de grava; 40 kilómetros de grava a partir de la carretera pavimentada. 

Acerca de Zeballos: describí algo de su historia: View from the Zeballos dock. (Vista desde el muelle de Zeballos)

Y el espectro? Seguía en el pueblo cuando yo visitaba. Susie Woo fue una lavandera que trabajaba en el hotel, muriendo allí en su cuarto, en la década 1940-50. La gente decía que seguía allí, moviendo cosas en la noche. Yo nunca la ví.

Zeballos sigue en la lista de los sitios embrujados de Colombia Británica. Y hay una historia más reciente, aquí: "A Haunted Tale ..."

New old find

The wind howled. Rain spattered my windows with flying mud. Dawn - a watery, grey sort of dawn - to a greyer dusk gave us barely 8 hours of muted light. No day to take the camera and go looking for kelp. I spent the day re-caulking the new leaks around the bathroom window,  and sorting 10-year-old photos. It seemed a good day to make drastic cuts, leaving the remainder easier to organize and, later on, find.

I found a new candidate for next year's Arachtober; a ten-year-old photo I had filed on the basis of a quick eye-balling under "Land snails".

And yes, I had included it in a blog post back then, but today it was a "new" find. Look:

Grove snail with patterned shell. And a busy mother spider.

And here's a second photo of the spider alone, cleaned up a bit.

Spotty mother, with pinkish egg case.

 

And for today, they're promising us sunny breaks. Interspersed with rain, of course.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

El viento aulló. Gotas gordas de lluvia, llevando lodo levantado por el viento, salpicaron mis ventanas. Desde el amanecer — un amanecer tenue de color gris — hasta una puesta del sol aun más grisaceo, apenas tuvimos 8 horas de media luz. No era un buen dia como para salir con la cámara en busca de kelp. Me pasé el dia calafateando las nuevas grietas alrededor de la ventana del baño, y luego revisando y recortando fotos que tomé hace diez años y más. Parecía un buen día para eliminar muchas, dejando los que quedan más fáciles de organizar y encontrar.

Y en eso, encontré una foto que servirá para empezar mi folder para Arachtober del año que entra, una foto de 2010 que había puesto a base de un rápido vistazo, en el folder de caracoles terrestres.

Si, hay un caracol, pero ¡mira la arañita que lo acompaña! Una araña con su bolsita de huevos. ¡Tan miniatura! El caracol mide apenas 15 a 20 mm.

Y para hoy, nos prometen unos momentos de sol. Entre las lluvias, claro está.

Some old photos and personal history

Something a bit different today.

I always keep myself busy. Pandemic or no pandemic. I've not been working since the schools closed in the early spring. When they opened again in September, I chose not to return; I'm in a couple of high-risk categories.

And after a couple of falls on slippery seaweed, I've been slowing down. Walking can be painful and I tire early. The years are catching up to me.

But I've still kept busy. Up to now, I've been systematically emptying and cleaning every cupboard, every container, every storage bin, every file or photo album or bookshelf, downsizing as I go. That's done now, except for routine upkeep. So I've turned to the digital stash; everything I've been putting off sorting and curating. Document files are done. Now the photos; a complete hard drive full of photos.

A year ago, my brother sent me a few files of photos he had scanned from Dad's old slides, photos taken in the 1950s. I looked them over and stored them for later; they were messy and faded. No wonder: Dad's photo box had gone through one house fire, several earthquakes and a tornado, besides dozens of moves. The  slides were scratched and dusty, discoloured with age. They needed careful recovery work.

I've started on that now. And I think these may be of interest.

I've mentioned before now that I grew up in the woods. Here's where I spent my childhood and my early teens.

Esperanza General Hospital. Mom was nurse, Dad bookkeeper. Pop; about 25.

A couple of years later. Then they built a one-room school and a house up on the hill. We lived in the house for a while.

Loading the raft for summer camp. About this time we moved across the channel to the settlement at the upper left. The main body is an abandoned fish cannery; there were two habitable houses. Ours was the one on the far left. Population, with a temporary floating logging camp, 14.

The view from my bedroom window. Although it was raining more often than not.

Photo from my old box camera. All transportation was by water or air. This was the Lizzie, our school boat.

The weekly mail.

Random shot on the wharf. One of the nurses with discharged patient, and the plane that will take them home.

I think this settlement is what's left of Ceepeecee after the cannery burnt down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mi hermano me mandó unas transparencias que había tomado mi papá por los años 1950 a '60. Estaban muy mal, llenas de polvo y rasguños, con los colores todos cambiados. Con razón; esa fotos habían sido transportados de un lado a otro por 50 años, habíaan sufrido un incendio de casa, un tornado, y varios terremotos. Necesitaban mucho labor antes de poderlas ver claro.

Eso he estado haciendo, ahora que estoy más o menos encerrada. Pensé que estas podrían ser de interés.

He mencionado antes que crecí entre los bosques. Aquí es el lugar, en la costa oriente de la isla de Vancouver. El primer pueblo, un hospital con casas para los trabajadores tenía una población de 25 personas. Luego, nos mudamos al otro lado del agua, y nuestro "pueblo" contaba con 14 personas. La cuarta foto es la vista desde mi recámara.

Toda nuestro transporte era por agua o aire. La foto en blanco y negro de un barco viene de mi antigua cámara. Es el barco que nos llevaba a la escuela atrás del hospital. (Una escuela con una sola maestra y un solo salón de clases.)

El avión es el que nos traía el correo una vez a la semana.

Y la foto en el muelle muestra el avión que va a llevar unos pacientes del hospital a su casa.

Old favourite

Roadside pearly everlasting:

aka Anaphalis margaritacea. Perennial, in two meanings of the word.

I have an old photo of my Mom, taken after a hike through the coastal bush. She's carrying a bouquet plucked on the trail; salal leaves, Indian paintbrush, and pearly everlasting. It's a sampling of the different terrains her hike took her through; deep shade, wet cliff faces, mossy thickets for the salal, damp meadows and tidal marshes for the Indian paintbrush, and then, coming out into the sunlight and dry, stony slopes, the pearly everlasting.

Mom, 1955, Ferrer Point

Pearly everlasting was one of her favourites; mine, too. It holds its shape and colour as it dries, and lasts for years. (That's where it got its name.) In the long, wet, grey winters on the wet coast, that handful of everlasting was a reminder of the summer past, the warm summers to come. A vase on my bookcase holds last years bouquet, still looking fresh; this year's crop is drying, hanging upside-down on a hook in my hallway.

It grows thickly at this time of  year on gravelly roadsides, dry hillsides, and even bare rock:

Everlasting and its shadow, on a rock face.

Mountain peaks on the flats

More oldies dug out of the hard drive. Just because.

Worm poop mountain, Boundary Bay beach.

And barnacle peak, White Rock beach.

Ant rescues sugar, I rescue ant photos

Ant with sugar cubes . . .

Trying to get a grip on it to haul it home.

This one was too big.

What a difference a bit of software makes! These photos were taken with the old Canon A720, back in 2008. I was using Piknik, if I remember correctly, to crop and lighten up, but that was it. The photos turned out dark, noisy, and brown, except for the one where the lighting was ideal. I found them tonight (looking for sky photos for Skywatch, but I'm always too distractable) and thought I might have a look at what Photoshop Elements could do. A few basic tweaks: levels, saturation, spot remover, and sharpening: and they're totally different!

Not a Skywatch post. Our skies these days are hopeless; grey on grey, with overtones of grey.

Rainy day sampler

I have a hard drive full of old photos, most too bad to be used, some with possibilities; but these get lost in the undergrowth. Following Ted McRae's example, I've been sorting them out and rescuing those I can, now that I have newer software and am slowly learning to use it.

Here's a random assortment of the most recent recovers, in no particular order. (Blogger's choice, and I didn't interfere.)

In a dry summer, an angel dreams of days when her pool was full. York Road, Campbell River, 2009.

Is that a ... turtle?!  Photo from Laurie's old film camera, pre-2006. Boundary Bay.

Rotting ball, White Rock beach, April 2009.

I posted this on the blog in August of 2010; I think it's a feather duster worm. The photo was messy and dark, but a few quick tricks with Elements (Ted's first two) brought it to life.

Same worm, clearer pose. It's about an inch and a half long.

Lion, in the jumbled entrance of a house in Finn Slough. The background camouflaged the lion in front; a pity, because I think he's beautiful. I finally figured out how to use the selection tool, masked the lion, and blended the mess. Simple, now I know how. October, 2010.

Signs in the corner of a store window in Strathcona. April, 2011.

1980s photo, taken with one of those little Kodachromes, much faded with age. Scanned and cleaned up, it's passable. This is my younger son rototilling a patch of swamp land we were draining and reclaiming. Wonderful soil! That first year, I had 7 boxes of tomatoes to can.
Firvale, the Bella Coola valley, BC.

Straw "painting" I brought back from Mexico in the 1970s. Cheating here; I threw out all my old photos, and took a new one now that I have a better camera and a decent flash. For the first time, the straw came out as straw, and Elements cleaned up the edges nicely.

I've done a batch of scanned family photos, which I've uploaded to Facebook, and umpteen worm photos; these I will store for reference material for the next time I find another. The weather people threaten us with two solid weeks of rain: I don't care; I'm having fun!