There’s an emergency! Skip this multi-cultural history and go right to the last paragraphs!
A rewarding Island volunteer activity is being a docent at one of our museums. People visit from everywhere! While our historical museum’s focus and mission is within barnacled shore boundaries, yet it’s usually easy to find global connections with visitors in our ever-shrinking world. “Our Island” is also a sphere.
Philippine navigators aided Spanish ships getting to Asia and Central America. Spaniards later brought Makah, S’Klallam and Suquamish potatoes from Peru who sold them to Brits who shipped them to Russians in Alaska. In 1824, Hawaiians or “Kanakas” with an equal number of French Canadian trappers voyaged our waters in longboats in Hudson Bay Company’s first visit. Canucks couldn’t swim: Hawaiians could if needed to rescue Canucks in a capsize. Port Madison ship captains, after hauling timber to Chile, hauled nitrates to China. Hawaiians, Italians, Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Scandinavians, Africans, Portuguese, coastal natives and Nova Scotia Canadians were among diverse ranks of Blakely and Madison Mills’ workers. Port Blakely “toothpicks,” like the giant one hanging from the ceiling of IslandWood’s Grand Hall, made their way to Chile, Australia, Japan and even Westminster Abbey.
An Eskimo visited the museum one winter and found a 1930 film of a Hall Brothers’ schooner crew provisioning his village and relatives in Barrows, Alaska. It was Capt. Backland from Manzanita. Umiaks helped load his ship. Canadian Indians from Vancouver Island or Fraser River, British Columbia, find photos and home movies of relatives picking, singing and playing slahal in barn shade after harvests. American Indians do, too. Indian Americans can find stories of wood conservationists at Creosote building railroad trestles for India or Arab Emirates. Treated fir found its way to Alaskan piers, Panama’s Canal, Mexican harbors, the largest port in Asia, and throughout Pacific Islands.
Steel-hulled tall ships Monongahela and Moshulu went from Eagle Harbor to haul grain to Finland where they anchored in the front yards of folks who years later came here! The Hall Brothers’ schooner Bainbridge hauled cargos to and from Africa before ending her days on a stormy North Carolina shore. Former Review editor Verda Averill was one of first women journalists into post-Maoist China. Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Russia, Yugoslavia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Tlingit Nation and the list goes on and on of peoples and places known to Island folk and from which we receive visitors.
We are blessed to live near important ports so that as Gandhi urged, “We can leave our windows open that the music of the world might flow through our homes.”
The first Nepalese who came here (of whom I am aware) came to Island Center Hall before we had a park district.
Alaskan musk ox farmer, John Teal’s daughter, Nunavik Teal, brought the conductor of the Royal Nepalese Orchestra along with their nation’s finest tabla and sitar players and dancer — a warm up for their concert the next night at the University of Washington’s Meany Hall. Though impromptu, ICH was justifiably packed. The music still echoes.
Years later, Eagle Harbor Books filled to greet Jamling Tenzing Norgay, son of Nepal’s most famous sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, who stood atop Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary.
Many have trekked to Nepal. And today we have Nepalese helping you and me in well-run local businesses and annually helping Bainbridge High. Among them is compassionate Usha McCollum who you may have met. Just three weeks ago, the high school’s reader board alerted us to Spice Route Restaurant donating half of the day’s proceeds to BHS – for the fourth year!
Now news of earthquakes’ devastation in Nepal shakes our world! It reminds us of our interconnectedness with humankind and Nature in our ever-changing biosphere.
How can we help Nepal relief?
BHS student leaders have a good idea. It’s time to give back, to say ”thank you” and to help Nepal.
Ramesh Kumar, Spice Routes’ owner, is willing to do the same for the Nepal Relief effort as for BHS. If you go to Spice Route (second floor, Bainbridge Cineplex) for lunch or dinner any Monday in May, then the restaurant will donate half the day’s proceeds for the cause. Its full of good karma and food! Bring a friend!
Other ways to help:
• A local Nepalese is helping her homeland’s most needy through her family and Nepalese American Prabul Gurung. See: www.crowdrise.com/nepalearthquakefund
• CBS News lists international agencies. Facebook is matching donations up to $2 million!
See: www.cbsnews.com/news/nepal-earthquake-how-to-help-the-victims/
Or see: www.donate.worldvision.org/nepal-quake or call: 1-888-511-6548
• World Vision in Federal Way has long identified quake hazards of Nepal. They have taught and engaged in quake preparedness there. They are already on the ground.
Visit www.donate.worldvision.org/nepal-quake or call: 1-888-511-6548.
