As a historian I’m the first person to admit I can start a project writing about one planned topic, influenza in Mendocino County in 1918, and get totally sidetracked and end up writing about how…
Posts published by “Katy Tahja”
Research Rapture? It’s what happens when a history mystery is handed to your historian correspondent and time and resources allow hours of delving into facts and figures. I was given a typewritten list of 114…
It started out as a simple enough road trip plan. We were going to drive to Oregon to ride on two tourist excursion railroads we’d never ridden before. It ended up being a 2,100 miles…
Brandenburg’s Concerto Number 3 being played by a live orchestra is not the kind of music you would expect to be performed at Burning Man, but then again nothing surprises me there. Instead it delights…
As drought lowers the levels of man made reservoirs all over California amazing things have been popping up in the dry lakebeds. At Folsom Lake the remains of the settlements at Salmon Falls and Mormon…
As a bookseller at Gallery Bookshop I recently had the pleasure of selling a 60 year old but ever-wonderful picture book called “The Biggest Bear” by Lynd Ward. As the grandparent buying this classic and…
So an older man asks “My great-aunt told me years ago that when she was a kid she went to the Hiawatha and Minihaha schools in the north county. This was 100 years ago. Was she being truthful? Did these schools really exist and how did schools get named for poet Longfellow’s narratives?”