I adapted the many patterns I found on blogs, to make some simple channel pockets for the interior of the purse. 
I crocheted 2 pairs of wrist cuffs (above) using fun fur yarn for my two teenage granddaughters. 
And for a dual-colored purse, it was fun to put colors together and see the results. This is one of several I worked up using different color for outside and inside. Above is the black outside of the purse closed up. Below is the purse opened to reveal a contrasting color of orange inside pockets.
"Blue Star Families is a bridge between military families, the shapers of policy affecting military life, and our nation at large. Through outreach to our government leaders and local civilian communities, we strive to share the unique experiences of our military lifestyle and the pride we feel in our families’ service. By engaging our members and their families, we seek to gather our perspectives and opinions on all aspects of military life. We use this knowledge base as a voice of military families to inform the policy shapers and to support families, like ours, that have the honor of serving our country."
We do have in our little community what is called Bay Center Association. It is a service-oriented group comprised of willing volunteers from among the community of Bay Center. Residents of Bay Center are automatically members of the Association. The Association goes back to the early origins of the formation of Bay Center.
I’ve seen documents in the Association records that show the sense of community in advocating that males in the community donate one day a month towards helping with the heavy work in making improvements within the community. I’ve seen an old photo at the Dock of The Bay which shows what looks like a community dinner with long tables set up for a shared meal.
Since we moved here to Bay Center, in Nov 2002, my husband agreed to hold the office of President, when a neighbor was telling us as newcomers about the Association and the timing was such that it was time for a new slate of officers. We were too new to the community then to know much of anything about how the community works together. Both of us were employed at the time and I helped him where I could and we rather bumbled our way through that first year of holding office. At that time it was called Bay Center Improvement Association.
By March 2003, our country had invaded Iraq, and two from our immediate family who were active military deployed to Iraq; my son-in-law and my nephew. I left my employment to be more available to my daughter and her three children (my grandchildren) while her husband was deployed. Spending intense years in activism from 2003 through 2008 as a military family speaking out against the Iraq war, I did not get much involved in local region community, nor in my immediate community of Bay Center. (Not wanting this to be a blog post about Iraq war, you can see more about my activities if you are interested at my blog; Dying to Preserve the Lies).
With the winter windstorm (hurricane) in Dec 2007, my attention quickly was turned to the immediacy of living in our small community within this sparsely populated county. I began attending the different meetings of the different groups that are at work in our unincorporated village to get a stronger sense of how we interact as a community, especially in times of severe weather crisis situations and other crisis situations. I did attend some of the Bay Center Association meetings and like many groups or organizations, the heavy lifting is handled by the few who do volunteer for as long as they are willling to lift or until they say no more. Then the hunt is on for who else would be a willing volunteer.
And that is how I came to agree to take on the function of president for the Bay Center Association for this next year (May 2009 – April 2010). I agreed when two other new to the Association meeting attendees agreed to take on some of the other offices, which gives the Association a slate of ‘new’ and probably green officers. So it should be interesting to see what develops over the next months, and if nothing else, it will make for some material for blog posts here.
First thing I do is create a website for Bay Center Association… check it out! Content will likely be developed from the monthly meetings.
excerpts from article in Chinook Observer
BAY CENTER - The Chinook Indian Tribe has moved its office from the Sea Resources building in Chinook to Bay Center.
Tribal Chairman Ray Gardner said the move had been in the works for quite some time. "When you look back historically, it made sense to move to Bay Center because 90 percent of our staff live there and there's a very large volunteer group there."
The opportunity to move the tribe's headquarters north came last year when tribal member Zoe LeCompte donated her grandfather's home to the group. The house, at the entrance to Bush Park, had been empty for years and was in danger of being demolished. It has been rehabilitated with the help of Naselle Youth Camp crews and tribal members.
Now, after five months of work, Office Manager Jennifer Lagergren and office staff Beverly Buckner and her daughter Audrey Anderson are moved in and handling tribal business at their new digs.
The tribal office hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The new phone number is 360-875-6670.
Kathy Freston at Huffington Post
Excerpt:
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:
● 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
● 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
● 70 million gallons of gas--enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
● 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;
● 33 tons of antibiotics.
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:
● Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
● 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;
● 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;
● Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.
My favorite statistic is this: According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads. See how easy it is to make an impact?
I am not sure why I found myself agitated after reading the book, and in talking to my husband who has written and published his own book ‘And Should We Die’ on the same subject, I came to realize some of the reasons for the agitation. My husband, is a descendant of one of the ancestors of the Martin handcart company; Mary Crossley. He did not know that when he wrote his book, and the sensitive and tender manner in which he handled the characters and subject is one of his many attributes which attracted me to him.
In appreciating, respecting, and admiring that he has such a proud ancestral heritage and lineage, I began to feel like I needed to learn more about my own lineage. And I set about to do so, learning of a strong maternal Norwegian emigrant lineage and an equally strong paternal German emigrant lineage. But that is as far as it got for me – people’s names but not so much their stories. I have to admit I envied my husband who had actual accounts and stories of his emigrant English lineage in the Mormon migration under Brigham Young . Having learned of and read my husband’s book, I had a great empathy for the hardships the people of the handcart companies endured in their pilgrimages, with the Willie and Martin handcart companies enduring the unendurable.
Reading the later book by David Roberts, ‘Devil’s Gate, Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy’ I found myself in an uneasy place in recognizing this historical migration does not belong strictly to Mormon history but more appropriately belongs to American history. The unease for me, I think, comes in the efforts by the LDS Church to minimize the extent of the cruelties and hardships endured by the emigrant migrants in making their way from native countries to the great Zion of Salt Lake Utah by a means prescribed by one man – Brigham Young and adhered to by his ardent followers – the early Mormons.
Essentially I am struck by how it was conceivable in his mind (Brigham Young) that women, children, men should travel in approaching winter months across the Rocky Mountains with so little in the way of clothing and food; much less the tortuous manner of travel in the energy required to be exerted in pulling handcarts minus anything resembling conditions facilitating the necessary amount of sustenance required to do so day after day.
With an inaccurate record of the recorded deaths along the treks of both the Willie and Martin handcart companies, it is nonetheless considered by history to be one of the greater tragedies of the American migration westward, with an exceedingly high number of (un-necessary) deaths. The number of deaths from the combined Willie and Martin handcart companies could be put at approximately 200, exceeding the number of deaths on the historically famously known Donner Party pilgrimage.
In what appears to be a long term historical effort by the LDS Church to turn human travesty and needless suffering into a story of faith and testimony elevating the LDS Church and beliefs, at the expense of the real faith of those who suffered, I find that I have come to resent the presentation of this history that has been so guarded by the Church in a false belief that it belongs to Mormon history. As long as it is permitted to belong to Mormon history, the narrative of the story is colored by the agenda of the LDS Church. That I do not resent, but rather understand and permit that the Church like any other institution wishing to present itself in a more favorable light will write the narrative to it’s own agreeable satisfaction.
However, the history of the Willie and Martin handcart company does not belong strictly to Mormon history, nor does the LDS church have ownership of the narrative. It is a history that better belongs to the whole of American history, and not in the glorious form of hardy, valiant and persevering souls as is presented in Mormon history but to be added to the numerous tragedies that abound in the American history of westward migration.
I recommend the book and even taking into consideration that the author wished to compile the content in a way as to point to accountability and culpability of Brigham Young and his adherents in this fatalistic crossing, one cannot help but come away from the book disturbed with the mechanisms that fostered the horrific conditions suffered by the people of these two handcart companies who undertook the journey. Their Personal Faith is a testament to Faith with a capital F. I am not sure it is a testament or testimony to the belief set of the LDS Church or Mormon beliefs, but I absolutely know it is a testament of Faith.
How dare the LDS Church take credit unto itself for the strength and determination of the personal faith of those pioneering souls!They came and they persevered with an internal and personal faith beyond the comprehension of the LDS Church. I claim their courage as a testimony to human capacity of internal faith that fosters extraordinary human endurance in the face of great odds. I believe such faith rarely belongs exclusively to any Church but is unto itself the depth of which faith can help humans to persevere in the face of much adversity.
Well that is too bad, because we have a beautifully working library system here in Southwest Washington, one I rely on heavily, and hope the voters didn’t vote the wonderful library services into extinction.
Voters in five Washington counties rejected additional funding for libraries Tuesday
The library-funding proposition passed in Pacific and Mason counties, but was overwhelmingly rejected in Lewis, Thurston and Grays Harbor counties. – Chinook Observer
Relief to see that Pacific County where I live voted more generously, as did Mason County. The more largely populated counties, Lewis, Thurston and Grays Harbor were not feeling as generous.
Given the difficult economic times, and that these counties are mostly considered on a lower economic strata, it is perhaps understandable that some voters did not see the value in an additional $34.00 annual increase in taxes on $200,000 leverl homeowners. But then, for me it would be a bit like the pot calling the kettle black since I overlooked and forgot to vote on this special levy. I would have voted yes, had I remembered to fill out my mail-in ballot.
I use the library services extensively, and welcome that the services are available. I can order on my computer library account whatever the Timberland Library System has available throughout the system in Southwest Washington. My requests are couriered from other libraries in other towns and counties throughout the system to the South Bend Library, where I am given a courtesy phone call, and I can then pick up my requests at the library on the days it is open = 3 days a week. It has worked out well, served me well, and often times when I am into a research project, I might well have an order for 40 or more books at a time.
Timberland Regional Library has 27 community libraries, 5 cooperative library centers, and 2 library kiosks in Grays Harbor, Lewis, Mason, Pacific, and Thurston counties in Southwest Washington State – Timberland Regional Library website.
It’s too bad though, because from the parameters outlined for libraries, it looks like Timberland Regional Library was already fiscally responsive working well under the parameter guidelines; - under state law library districts can assess a tax of up to 50 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation. Currently, the district is collecting 32.9 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation – The Olympian newspaper.
The Army is expected to release a report later today revealing the highest number of suicides among troops in nearly three decades, according to CNN.
The network reported this morning that the Army will confirm 128 suicides in 2008, along with 15 suspected suicides currently under investigation among active-duty Soldiers and activated National Guard and Army Reserve troops. The Army also will announce a study of Soldier suicides and links to post-combat stress, CNN says.
read more at Military.com
U.S. troops in Iraq suffered electrical shocks about every three days in a two-year period surrounding the electrocution death of a Green Beret sergeant, according to an internal Defense Contract Management Agency report obtained by the Tribune-Review.
The 45-page document -- a high-level request for corrective action generated last fall -- found that Texas-based military contractor KBR Inc. failed to properly ground and bond its electrical systems, which contributed to Soldiers "receiving shocks in KBR-maintained facilities on average once every three days since data was available in Sept. 2006."
The agency determined that KBR "failed to meet basic requirements to identify life-threatening conditions on tanks, water pumps, electrical outlets and electrical panels."
The report adds that government search results of a KBR-maintained database revealed that 231 electrical-shock incidents occurred in the period from September 2006 through July 31, 2008 -- indicating that the activity continued long after the death of Sgt. Ryan Maseth, 24, who suffered cardiac arrest after stepping into his Baghdad shower on Jan. 2, 2008.
Records show Maseth was electrocuted when he turned on the water that flowed through metal pipes. The Army Criminal Investigation Division recently determined Maseth's death was negligent homicide, rather than an accident as previously reported.
read more at Military.com
WASHINGTON - Army Secretary Pete Geren has ordered the recall of more than 16,000 sets of body armor following an audit that concluded the bullet-blocking plates in the vests failed testing and may not provide Soldiers with adequate protection.
The audit by the office of the Defense Department inspector general, not yet made public but obtained by The Associated Press, faults the Army for flawed testing procedures before awarding a contract for the armor.
In a letter dated Jan. 27 to Acting Inspector General Gordon Heddell, Geren said he did not agree that the plates failed the testing or that Soldiers were issued deficient gear. He said his opinion was backed by the Pentagon’s top testing director.
Despite his insistence that the armor was not deficient, Geren said he was recalling the sets as a precaution.
Geren also said he's asked for a senior Pentagon official to resolve the disagreement between the Army and the inspector general's office.
read more at Military.com
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