History and renovations fill my days
After the very long, very warm spell of weather, we’ve started to drop back down to normal temperatures – it’s currently -15°C (+5°F), a nice mild day in a normal January. We have a lot of sunshine forecast for the next week, and I hope to be able to get out and take advantage of some of it, but right now, history-related projects and house renovations are keeping me busy all day, every day.
This photo that I shot in Dawson City in July 192 was one of the spurs to write up a history of all 5 of the DC-3s and C-47s that Air North operated until 1998. As part of that, I was also busy on eBay and other sites, buying photos of the aircraft from Great Britain, the Czech Republic and a couple of places in the States. You can see the result at Air North: the DC-3 / C-47 Era.
Old newspapers are very difficult to store, so I have very few in my collection. This copy of the New York Tribune of September 14, 1883 is so fragile that I don’t even know how to deal with it – photographing it seems to be the only option. Part of the article that I bought it for 20-odd years ago, about the attempted rescue of the crew of a steamer wrecked in the Arctic, is missing. I’ve recently signed up for an account with Newspapers.com – they’ve posted over 220,000 pages from historic Alaska newspapers alone, and more are being added all the time.
I did finally deal with a scrap of newspaper from 1937 that had the dramatic headline “9 LOST ON AIRLINER – Plane Missing on Hop Over Alaska”. That article can be seen here. And a different and more complete 1937 paper that I’ve been posting articles from for quite some time yielded a history of Circle Hot Springs, Alaska.
Yesterday I started another big renovation project – the complete rebuild of the main bathroom. The black tile and black vinyl floor have been allowed to live here for far too long! It’s a fairly complicated job, and I have my heating contractor in today to take advantage of the gutted bathroom to run new vents to improve the return air on the new furnace.
Getting this bathroom finished will also get my garage cleaned up so we can get both cars in. Cathy has been scraping frost off her windows for quite a few weeks, since a good sale on the tub/shower we wanted took her space in the garage. Yes, I offered to keep my car outside, but she declined.
Okay, that’s enough diddly-dallying – back to work! 🙂
About The Author
