Tales of the Gold Rush

Not so long ago there was a homeschool fair. It was called the Not School Carnival and kids came and set up booths to make a little money for themselves and for The Peregrine Fund and The Berkeley Humane Society (which coincidentally burned down the evening after the fair). There were Ball Toss Booths and Hot Pretzels and Ancient Mesopotamian biscuits and K'Nex creations for sale.

And there were the storytelling booths. Kids spread across the fair dressed as Gold Rush era historical figures, telling tales from their lives, and selling CDs of their stories. They weren't sure if anyone would want to listen, but when they counted the cash in the till there was over $80. They sold every CD and more than 40 people paid $1 to hear their tales.

Evelyn was Black Bart, infamous stage coach robber, and Clementine was Sam Brannan, the gold rush's first millionaire. Their friends portrayed the famous, the infamous and the everyday figures of the gold rush. You can listen to their tales below--the death of semi-legendary bandit Joaquin Murrieta, the rise to riches of gold rush entrepreneurs Levi Strauss and Domingo Ghirardelli, the biographies of rights activists Helen Hunt Jackson and Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, the escapades of Chilean miner Vincente Perez Rosales, the lives of writers Mark Twain and Dame Shirley, and the secret of Charley Parkhurst, stage coach driver.

Domingo Ghirardelli selling cocoa.

Left to right Black Bart, Mark Twain and Charley Parkhurst

Sam Brannan showing a vial of gold and announcing, "Gold, gold in the American River!"

CD cover art by the kids:

The kids told their tales 20 times or more each to kids and parents, to homeschoolers and parkgoers who just happened by.  They went home with $5 in their pockets and the fair raised $667.44 for the Peregrine Fund and The Berkeley Humane Society.  In a word--it was enriching.

Tentacles!

A friend and I took our 6 kids on a ferry trip and an octopus wrapped its tentacles around the children's heads. Entirely true. Read on.

And it was not the only monster to snare us.
We started off at Jack London Square. The ferry to San Francisco takes you right past the Port of Oakland where huge cranes drag cocooned cargo off ships like praying mantises snatching caterpillars.

Our destination was the Maritime National Historic Park. Yes. I am still stuck on the history thing. Trying to turn over all the stones right here.

Greta tried out her muscle against Rosie's.

First stop, a submarine, the U.S.S. Pampanito.

You can actually spend a night on this sub...but I'll pass. P.U. it still smells like 75 guys are living there for 80 days at a time without seeing the light of day...or a shower. Even though there was a shower. The Underwood typewriter was the only thing that really called to me.

Next stop Hyde Street Pier which has several historic ships. Even the bathroom has maritime facts like: sailors' time honored dislike of inside toilets and preference for answering the call of nature by hanging off the bowsprit remains a major cause of drowning at sea.

The Balclutha is packed with the cargo it used to carry and other engaging exhibits. I was a sucker for the old canned fruit labels and the story of California's second gold rush (exporting wheat).

This is when a monster ensnared me. Everyone was tired, my friend suggested we go home. But I couldn't stop--we had to do it all.

We fortified ourselves with the obligatory bowls of clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls and swam through the crowds to the Aquarium of the Bay.

I love the Aquarium of the Bay. It used to be a Tourist Trap called Shark Attack! You can still see a chewed up surfboard in the first room. But it was bought by a non-profit and hey, admission is half off if you have a membership with a reciprocal zoo or aquarium.

My favorite thing is the top right photo below. They've put a window in a skate egg so you can see the developing skates inside. The little skates have yolk sacs attached to their bellies. Greta loved the pink anemone decorated crab at top left.

Everything was going swimmingly...well, the kids were obviously tired and trying to stop the moving walkway by gripping the railings and pressing their feet against it...but still, things were going pretty well when...an octopus engulfed our children.

The octopus tank has a tunnel beneath it with a glass bubble. As the kids were looking the octopus came out of hiding and wrapped itself around the bubble. Greta was a little alarmed, then thrilled. Clementine saw the octopus's beak. A lady next to me oohed and aahed and said it was a once in a lifetime experience. Well, it was pretty great.

After that we had to go see the sea lions. Yes, even after the octopus released the kids I was still ensnared by a drive to do it all. Well, not really. I would have taken pirates up on the offer of a ride. But we had some time to kill before the ferry left anyway.

The ferry ride home was at least 10 times long as the one there, ok, maybe just 10 minutes longer. It had an extra stop. But it felt like forever.

To keep the kids from running all around the ship (because they'd already been reprimanded 3 times) we played 20 questions on things we had seen that day.
Greta did the skate in the egg sac, Ephraim, the torpedoes on the submarine, Evelyn, the bay, Yasha, a big paddle wheel, Clem the chowder.

Yep. We had seen a lot. Too much for one day.
Note to self: Know when to call it quits.
It'll still be there.

Gold Mine

It was Jan. 24 1848. One worker wrote in his diary, "This day some kind of mettle was found in the tail race that looks like goald, first discovered by James Martial, the boss of the mill."

I don't know about you, but I have a weakness for the days before spelling standardization. Mettle and goald add a glimmer of richness to the story. Even Marshall's name wasn't a matter for standard spelling. And why should it be? I've never understood why my 8th grade teachers objected to me spelling my name Psiouxsan. They soon found it wasn't a battle worth fighting. Unlike the miners. They kept digging and panning and hoping, though few struck it rich.

The museum at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park makes much of the horrible conditions endured by the miners who flocked to the American River. Scorching heat...frigid water....

which is exactly why we come here. The scorching heat, 100F last weekend, makes the frigid water feel pleasant...

...as we paddle the South Fork of the American River.

The kids have their own ideas about why we go.

High on their list are the blackberries. We eddy out and gorge on them many times during the 4.5 miles of class II whitewater. But there is also the one lane bridge that connects the campground to the heart of Marshall Gold Discovery Park.

The kids cram their pockets with a few dollars and cross the bridge to another time. They pan for gold, lick $1 ice cream, suck 5 cent candies, watch sparks fly at the hot as heck Blacksmith's Shop, and pretend to grind corn on a rock bluff overlooking bark dwellings.

(Go ahead, click on it!)

Stray kittens at the campsite added to the excitement. We can't have them at home (achoo!) so the girls thought it was heaven to put out dishes of milk for the scrawny beasts.

We arrived home late Sunday night and turned around the next morning to drive to Monterey. We usually go there to see the aquarium and this time was no different.

I love these barnacles attached to a glass buoy.

But because we are on a history bender we caught the 10:30am tour of historic Monterey.

Where we learned that when James Marshall spotted that nugget of goald California was not yet a state.

It had been less than two years since Commodore John Drake Sloat ran the American flag up this pole in Monterey claiming a territory 3 times the size of present day California for the United States.

The flag was a 28-star version.

When the United States staked its claim to California there were a few thousand non-native people here and half a million head of cattle.

For a time before the U.S. claimed California every single item imported to California passed through the Custom House in Monterey.

The lentils and beans and desks and tea kettles and soap came in...

...and the cow hides went out. See them stacked in the back there?
And what do you suppose they were used for?
Shoes?
Saddles?
Belts?
Well, yes, but not the kind that held up the pants of rancheros.

Big strapping belts like this...

...that turned the wheels of Europe's Industrial Revolution.

Of course, Monterey was not untouched by James Marshall's eureka moment. When word spread American soldiers, the sailors in the ports, the rancheros, basically everybody of sound body, ran for them thar hills with gold in 'em.
One Monterey resident griped that there wasn't a bowl left in Monterey to wash your hands in. They all headed northeast as gold pans.

Monterey's abandoned homes were bought or leased by whalers...

A kettle for melting whale blubber....

The bricks give you an idea of its size.

Whale bones lie about all around in Monterey. This sidewalk is even made of them...

..made of whale vertebrae cut into diamonds.

One of the things I like best about learning history is how it brings place names to life. I always wondered what was up with Placer County and Placerville. What is up with it is placer mining.
And I never stopped to wonder why we have a Portola valley.
But I feel so happy to know. It makes me feel connected to the past. It makes my everyday life richer to think about the people who were here before.

Sigh. History is such a gold mine.

Country Club: Vietnam

There are lots of way to travel. We're globetrotting at home with our homeschool co-op. We've created a Country Club.

No golf or tennis at this Country Club.

Instead we all put the names of countries we were interested in studying in a hat and drew several out. We do one country per week. Everyone learns a fact about the country to share with the group.

A fact-hunting trip to the Asian Art Museum turned up more information on Japan than Vietnam.

Everyone is invited to bring food or fun. It is pretty casual. After sharing our facts we read and acted out Vietnamese folk tales and the kids illustrated the folk tale The Man in the Moon. And we ate noodles and tropical fruit.


The idea is not to learn a whole lot, but just to bang a peg into our heads, so to speak. A peg to hang new information on, so that the next time Vietnam comes up, what is being said doesn't whiz in one ear and out the other, but instead gets snagged on that hook of familiarity and bounces around in there a few times.

I put together the kids and moms sharing their facts with a bit of music from the Sing 'n' Learn Vietnamese CD. Click the box to listen. You'll hear counting in Vietnamese first.

Reasons to Travel #2

“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” - G. K. Chesterton

When we landed in Oakland it might as well have been the moon. From the plane I had looked down on the brown California hills and after the lush greenness that threatens to overcome every road in the East they appeared to me, like the moon to Buzz Aldrin, a magnificent desolation.

On the drive home West Oakland's decrepit buildings leaped out at me. At home I could smell our home's smell, and see the high cobwebs, and Greta's pencil marks on the wall. It seemed to me that someone had moved the center island in the kitchen.

But also my morning cappuccino was delicious beyond all hope or memory. Before we even had time to get used to home we were off to camp on the coast just an hour's drive north. A friend who has been going there many years invited us. We almost did not go. But I thought about my resolve to cast off the bowlines and sail into the unknown.

I've lived in the Bay Area so long, 24 years, and yet this place was terra incognita for me. How could I have let it remain so for so long?

I suppose I just started to think that everywhere here was like everywhere else.

On our trip many of the people we met and stayed with said we were going places that they had never been. Of course. We all develop channels we flow in, habits we're comfortable with. It is hard to see them as ruts when we are flowing in them happily.

So despite being tired from our journey we set off to camp at a place so close we had overlooked it and there we found many things strange and wondrous to behold. The scrubby hills that seemed so desolate were teeming with life. Bunnies and gopher snakes and swallows that swooped along the paths to the campsites so that we surprised each other.

And though we made friends with the rocks and earth...

...I hope to preserve the feeling that all around us is terra incognita.

Reasons to Travel #1

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain



Every now and again I make resolutions to keep my car clean or do the dishes right after dinner, or make the kids pick up right away when they are done playing.

And yet I am sure that when I look back twenty years from now I will not regret that I didn't do the dishes.

At home it can be hard to put away the laundry list of to do items.

On the road, the visual clamor of items needing your attention--the dishes, the faucet drip, the falling fences, the cobwebs, weeds, unpaid bills, unmade beds, the junk boxes and book stacks, the papers and puzzle pieces and game pieces and toy pieces that need sorting--is silenced, allowing you to turn your full attention to your children and see and hear them.

On the backdrop of a messy kitchen, of a sink overflowing with dishes, a child dripping sticky watermelon juice can seem like just one more mess to clean up.

On a backdrop of sand and waves and roseate spoonbills she is pure joy. And my life, instead of feeling cluttered, feels unbearably and delightfully full.

A Month and A Day

To get a feeling for our trip over the last few days print out the pictures below. Don't look at them. Now go for a drive and hold them out the window and try to steal a glimpse at each one, while driving, before letting it slip from your fingers and blow away.

I want to hold on to all of them and can't. These last few days I fell into a trap I'd avoided the whole trip up to now. In a last ditch effort to see everything it seems like we saw nothing properly.

We are sorely afflicted, too, by a desire to go home (and by too much affected colonial speech).

And yet, every time I pass a brown park sign I feel a stab of pain at something we are missing. I pass by signs like that all the time at home but don't feel the urgency, because, hey, we live there.

Here I want to turn off and see that thing before we leave, who knows when to return. I actually did it today to see Walden Pond. But the parking lot was locked and the park service has put evil brown posts all along the road to prevent you from even pulling over to look. So I glimpsed flat water through branches at 40mph.

If anything this trip has given me a profound sense that time is short for the vast wealth of things there are to do and see in this world. I vow that when I am home I will not return to sluggish complacency. When I see them, I am going to turn off and follow where the park signs lead.

Once Upon Philadelphia

Our first day in Philadelphia did not wow the kids. We rolled in later than I had hoped, with not much of a plan. Everything was going to be closing soon.

So we did the closest thing: the Liberty Bell.

The kids were thrilled and moved by this symbol of freedom in America.

Mm hmm. Sure they were.

Being pesky little inquisitive things they kept asking why it was a symbol of liberty. The entire brand spanking new hall the bell is in is an elaborate self-justification, and yet even I came away thinking the bell story was cracked.

It was brought to Philadelphia in 1752 long before revolution was contemplated.

It is thought that it was rung (though no one knows for sure), along with all the other bells in Philadelphia, on July 8 when the Declaration of Independence was first read publicly.

Sure, it does say:
Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.

But really, its chief claim to being a symbol of liberty is that it has been used as a symbol of liberty. The only thing I like about the whole liberty bell thing is the crack.

The idea that freedom is fragile and we have to work to preserve it. The metaphor gets a little stretched here because really, wouldn't it have been better to just make the thing right in the first place?

Unimpressed, we hurried on to see Ben Franklin's house.
It is gone.

The white steel frame shows where the house stood.
Engraved stone circles mark his ice pit.

And privy pit.

Ok, I thought these were cool.

No one had complaints about dinner at City Tavern--one of those places where they serve you period food in period dress.

Ok, my mom was not thrilled with her pewter water cup.

But she was fine with her George Washington recipe porter.

Despite the good dinner, enthusiasm was low for our second day in Philadelphia. Clementine professed outright hatred for Philadelphia.

My mom had hopped a plane early in the morning so I'd be on my own with the dragging feet.
But there were too many things I wanted to see to cancel and go to the beach.

So we went. First stop, the Visitor's Center. You have to get there early to get tickets for Constitution Hall. We got there at 9:30am and got tickets for 1:30pm.

Then we dragged along to Ben Franklin's grave site. They were a bit interested in the graves.

Benjamin and Deborah Franklin's

As was I.

Imagine living to 74 and having 11 of your children die before you. That is a real nostalgia-for-colonial-days stopper.

But it was at Betsy Ross's house that the magic that brought the past to life really began.

Betsy was sitting out front, a stone's throw from her grave site. She was telling the kids about how she showed General Washington how easy it was to make the 5-pointed stars she thought would look good on the American flag. He'd had six-pointed stars in mind for the flag.

But with a few folds and one snip she made a perfect 5-pointed star.
Try it yourself. Betsy cut and handed out paper stars to all the children who wanted one. Greta wowed her with her Williamsburg curtsy and was rewarded with a small piece of Betsy's knitting that we hope to work into our quilt.

Inside Betsy's house we took the audio tour. Greta kept disappearing. I'd ask her to wait and she'd shout (because of the headphones), "But it told me to go down the stairs!"

Did you know Betsy Ross, when her upholstery business was suffering during the war, made musketballs in her basement?

But it was back out in the courtyard that we discovered something that would send us gleefully running back and forth across town all day.

A circular bench and this sign mark magic.
You just sit down and a fabulous actor tells you a story.
Don't get too comfortable because you'll be joining in.

You might steal stones from a construction site with Ben Franklin to construct a wharf at your favorite fishing pond.

Or you might be British navymen firing cannonballs at Captain Barry's ship (see the legs of his statue in the background). In that case you'll have to shout, "God save the king. KABOOM!"

Each kid gets a Betsy Ross flag. There are 13 story booths scattered around historic Philadelphia at various sights and monuments. After each story you get a foil star to put on your flag.

If you visit all 13 you get a free ice cream and carousel ride.
We only made it to ten.

But who cares? The real prize was the stories themselves, so well told, that instead of dragging feet, we had running feet all day.

They ran gleefully, knowing at the end there'd be a familiar circular bench waiting to rest on and a wonderful story to hear and participate in. These stories carried us to all the major sights and then helped us travel back in time to relive snippets of the lives of Patriots, Pirates, Heroes and Spies.