Dismal Nitch (sic)

"About 3 oClock the wind lulled and the river became calm, I had the canoes loaded in great haste and Set Out, from this dismal nitich where we have been confined for 6 days…"
--William Clark

The husband and I had a terrific road trip this past weekend. The main purpose was participation in a "dinner in the dark" for Lutheran Blind Mission. However, since it was our 28th wedding anniversary, we added a few extras to this trip and revisited one of the historic sites from our very memorable honeymoon. (That's a great story in itself, but I'm not telling it now. It would scare Rufus to hear of our perils.)

Just before we crossed the Great and Marvelous Bridge to Astoria, we found this wayside rest area with a name too good to pass by. In 1805 as Lewis and Clark made their way westward along the Columbia, they reached this memorable place on a stormy November day.


Please refrain from cleaning fish in the restroom, and another sign requests that you limit your stay here to less than eight hours.

No problem!

I couldn't get over the name. Dismal Nitch. If you've ever found yourself in a dismal niche, I'm sure you did not choose to stay there long. This is a place to wait out the storm and move ahead as soon as possible.

But then, in the restroom, I found this not-so-dismal piece:

Just for you, Diane! Flowers to soothe the soul in a dismal place.

Just for Diane

I don't have a fetish for this kind of thing or these places. No matter what my friend thinks, I don't spend my days checking out new and unusual facilities. But...

In our quest to find non-automobile walking routes, Rufus and I took The Dad to a park in Seattle. We walked a 2.5 mile loop along the lakeshore and saw wonderful old vegetation and a panorama of civilization. At the beginning and end of the walk were these facilities for our convenience. I love old, unique architecture, so here they are:



This reminds me of the witch's house in Hansel & Gretel -- which is why Rufus was afraid when I disappeared.

And a detail from the other one:

Japanese Braille

One of the photos the guys sent from Japan features *authentic* Japanese Braille. I can read American Braille, so I pored over this particular photo to see what I could decipher.

Braille usually consists of combinations of up to six dots per cell, arranged like a vertical six-pack. There are different degrees of difficulty in Braille. Grade One spells out everything letter by letter. People who read this level only have to know the alphabet and punctuation. Grade Two Braille uses a number of short forms for common words or word parts. For example, "and", "the", "ed", "ar", "ing", and "for" each have their own distinct one-cell short forms. There are other signs to indicate "capital", "numeral" and each bit of punctuation.

So, what did I discover about this photo? The short answer is... nothing. The Japanese short forms are, well, Japanese.

But you get bonus points if you can figure out where they boys took the picture. You know, in general terms. Click on the photo to enlarge.