Every year on Memorial Day my Mom visits the Cottonwood Cemetery
where her parents and sister are buried. This year I invited myself
to go along. She'd been there a few days earlier to place potted flowers
around the graves, so on Monday we went together to pick them up, refresh my
fading memories, and take some pictures.
I first went to the Moscow Cemetery, hoping to catch the
flag-raisers. Seems like they didn't have as many volunteers this
year, which made me realize that next year I should help out instead
of just wandering around with a camera.
Next we went to Cottonwood where four generations from my Mom's
family are buried. Then we drove through the town to have a look
at the old family house. We talked about how there are no direct
relatives living there anymore, how Cottonwood is changing, where
the City Electric shop used to be, and so on.
Then we visited Dad's hometown of Greencreek. I enjoyed hearing
about how, back then, it was a big deal to drive all the way
to Cottonwood (about 7 miles away). They might see each other only
once a week when dating. After seeing the Wessels relatives in the
Greencreek Cemetery, we drove past Harry and Tillie's old farm house
before heading home.
I'm trying something different with the pictures this time. You can click on them to enlarge and then use arrow keys to go back and forth.
This is at the Moscow Cemetery. Not a relative, I just like the looks of this old headstone in the morning light.
My Aunt Carole's headstone.
Grandma and Grandpa, Stan and Bertha.
Great grandparents, August and Lena.
Great-great grandparents, August and Mary. The first Kopczynski's on the Camas Prairie. They were both originally from an area that is now Poland, met and married in Chicago, moved to Kansas, and then eventually to Cottonwood.
Idaho soldier William Bies at the Cottonwood Cemetery.
Mom remembers that her great grandfather, Georg Seubert (Lena's father), donated the original land for the Cottonwood Cemetery. It appears to be carved out of the adjacent field.
Grandparents, Harry and Tillie at the Greencreek Cemetery.
My Dad's brother, Teddy, drowned at age 22.
Great Grandparents, Herman and Bernadine.
The Greencreek Cemetery has a wonderful view of the town and surrounding area.
This large sign in Greencreek shows the names and distances to the surrounding residents and their farms. The top board difficult to read, but it says Elmer Wessels. He is my Dad's cousin and has a house just across from this sign. I've written about Elmer and his family's honey before.
St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Greencreek, ID.
This is the little farm a few miles out of town where my Dad's family lived for many years. I do believe I found it on google maps.
You'd think that by my third visit to Philadelphia I'd have managed to find a way to get to see the Liberty Bell. I was there last October for a conference, but it left me no time for sightseeing. On this trip I thought I would have time. My flight landed about 3:30 and I took the train heading downtown. Emerging from the subway I was distracted by the giant well-known LOVE sculpture:
Then I walked to the hotel, checked it, and headed back out to see the bell. But to my surprise, the center was closed by the time I got there. Had I bothered to check, I would've known that it closes by 5pm. My only option was to attempt a photo from the outside looking in. You can't see the famous crack from this side.
Independence Hall is right next to the Liberty Bell Center. The bell was originally installed in the Hall's tower, and of course it is famous for being the place where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated and adopted. I recognized it from one of my favorite coins, the bicentennial half-dollar:
I also learned that George Washington's "White House" was located here from 1790 to 1797. Nearly all of that structure was demolished, although you can see some of the foundation below the current street level. Across the street from there is a modern Federal Courthouse building with this nice large flag in the corner:
The real reason for this trip was to attend an invitation-only meeting of people in the DNS business. Our meeting was hosted by colleagues at Comcast, who gave us a tour of their lovely building and later took us to a minor league baseball game. We watched the Camden Riversharks play at the Campbell's (as in the soup) Field across the river in New Jersey.
The Comcast guys showed us their "lab," which is really a data center. Those racks and racks of servers on the 30-something floor have one of the best views in the city. They enjoyed telling us about the curse of William Penn. As the story goes, for many years it was not allowed to have a building higher than his statue at the top of City Hall. In 1987 a taller building was built, which happened to be around the time the city's various teams began losing championships. When Comcast's building was completed in 2007, workers attached a small William Penn Statue to the final beam, enabling the Phillies to win the World Series the following year. This picture, taken from my hotel room during the October 2011 visit, shows the original statue atop City Hall on the left, and the Comcast building on the right:
The students at Moscow Charter School studied water this year, and their year-end play is called A Lifetime of Water. Colin's class, the 2nd-graders, played scientists who explained the water cycle. You know: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and so on:
There were other water lessons from cavemen, Chinese storytellers, pirates, and Lewis & Clark!
