INDULGE ME, PLEASE

Legion Color guard and bagpipers lead procession from
Bethel Church
to the Island Cemetery and School House Beach.

Washington Island, Wisconsin -

Memorial Day came and went, and how the past week has flown by.   I'd like to offer a few photos to show what's been happening, beginning with the procession to the cemetery following the program in Bethel Church.   Lt. Col. (U.S. Army, Ret.) Bill Nauta, an island resident and soon to be Legion Post Commander, addressed the audience of several hundred people, focusing on his Army career, especially his years spent on staff at the Pentagon.  Before Bill spoke, selected Student Essays were read by contest winners Sophia Hagen, Patricia Hansen, and Maren Schutz (shown below), each of whom provided excellent examples of thinking through the various probable answers to the question, "Is it the proper role of the United States to provide military support to emerging governments around the globe?"  

Enough With the Painting, Already!


Spring and getting ready at the Ferry Line are synonymous with painting and inspections.   (Two ferries will undergo U.S. Coast Guard annual inspections tomorrow, June 7th.)
We completely stripped the outer decks of the ferry Robert Noble this winter and primed them, then waited for several months for warm, dry weather to lay down the Sherwin-Williams non-skid. This product goes on nicely when temperatures are 60 and up, the likes of which we did not see until very late May, just a few days prior to Memorial Day Weekend, in fact.   Here Pete Nikolai goes ashore for more paint.  A huge job for five or six men over a two-day time period.  We hope this paint job will last 20 or more years, with occasional touch-ups here and there.

Nature Calls


Finer weather has brought out the finery of the woods, in this case a carpet featuring trillium in abundance. (They are now actually in the decline, as other plants and flowers vie for our attention.)   We've had several asparagus pickings, some rhubarb, but with the crunch of spring duties we've not yet prepared for or planted a garden.  May not get to it this year at the rate things are going, which would be a shame when late August and September come around, and we start to miss home-grown tomatoes and cucumbers and squash.

We did play a bit this weekend by taking a slow canoe paddle into the bayou.  Mary Jo thinks she saw several snapping turtles, just their heads poking out from under root masses in the back waters.  Minnows and bass nests everywhere, and carp in the deeper water just outside the bayou.  It was a fine time to look up close at nature.

And speaking of work that doubles as play, I spent most of Thursday and part of Friday (the part that wasn't raining) building a bike rack for the Northport Ferry Terminal.   To date, bicyclists have just leaned their bikes against the large stones, which I guess is alright if it isn't a $2000 model Trek.   Well, I'm pleased to have completed, along with special welded do-dad sculpture on top and a paint job to match, a bike rack that is nothing if not an original.   I copied basic dimensions from a commercial rack we have on the island, using iron, steel and galvanized pipe found in our metal pile behind the shed.  I'm proud to say, not one piece was purchased.  Most pieces were destined for the scrapper's pile, anyway.  A few nicks on the fingers later (I had lost my gloves temporarily and did the cutting, welding and grinding without any) and a few splotches of bright paint show as the final touches of paint are applied.

With that, my backlog of photos too good not to use, but not useful enough for a stand-alone story, is back to square one.

 - Dick Purinton