I don’t like to wear sunglasses. I feel like I can’t see when I have them on. I have an sunglasses holder in my car and every once in awhile it will be super bright out (only about 3 days a year in this neck of the woods) and I’ll reach into the holder for sunglasses. Only there are never any glasses in there because I don’t wear sunglasses.
A few weeks ago it was really bright out and I reached into the sunglass holder and found these. We got them as a promo at a game last year but I don’t remember putting them in the car. They don’t really help with the whole, “I feel like I can’t see when I have them on” thing.
This morning I finished George Saunders. Then I picked up my Siskiyou County Historical Society publication.
With very little editing, the “Selected Entries from Military Notes from Fort Jones, 1852-1858″ could pass for a George Saunders story. It’s hard to find even a brief quote that conveys the dark hilarity of these letters. The gist of this particular exchange is that Fort Jones needs some cookstoves because they either have to cook outside or with some sort of stove that has chimneys made of mud and don’t draw well and all the food is sooty.
Here’s a tidbit from a letter from D.A. Rupell dated January 4th, 1855:
The condition of the chimneys, and the means now used for cooking, are a most serious annoyances to the officers, and a source of very great dissatisfaction among the men — and as the cost of material at this place with which to build proper chimneys would be very great, the length of time which must elapse before they could be completed, and the entire uncertainty of their being fit for use after they are completed, I think it would be a matter of economy, as well as justice for the A.A.Q.M. to purchase two cooking stoves for the above purposes if such purchase would be allowed by the Department.
Naturally, I have no sympathy since the letters also discuss one of the troops’ main purposes for being there: operations against the Indians. The book is called the Siskiyou Pioneer and Yearbook, 2012 and if you want to get your hands on a copy, try the gift shop.
