Benefits of a Bloggin' Birthday Boy

Raymond Pert celebrates his birthday today. Happy Birthday Big Brother!!

A few years ago, I didn't even know what blog meant.

Then, one fall, I receive an email from my brother, inviting me to read his blog.

I found out a blog is a web log, a kind of diary or journal written on the Internet.

On Sunday, October 1, 2006, www.kelloggbloggin.blogspot.com was born.

The first post that day was titled, Kellogg is my Paris.

In his post, he writes about what he wants to accomplish through the writing on his blog.

I want to pay homage to this town, this valley, but I do not want to romanticize it. Even though my best friends are from Kellogg and even though I love this place like no other, I know that it was, in its heyday, a place of criminals, abuses, corporate heartlessness, poverty, and recklessness. It was also a place of honor and unpretentious love, without self-congratulation. I am going to tell stories, write poems, review books, write essays, publish pieces I've already written, explore life as I understand it. I will try to understand the world through my exploration of the place that, for me, is the world: Kellogg, Idaho.


As my brother, who goes by the moniker Raymond Pert (our father's name) has written and shared his writings over the past two years, he has not only paid homage to our hometown, and explored his world, but has also opened up his world to me.

My brother has always been a bit of a mystery to me. With a nine year age gap between us, it didn't seem like we ever shared that much in common. Through my little sister eyes, he was the big brother who always teased me, called me names, and gave me a hard time.

When I was eight years old he graduated from high school, and the following fall went to college. In my eyes, we were in living in two combined, but very separate worlds.

A few years later he married, and eventually moved to Oregon.

After the move, we were lucky if we saw one another once or twice a year.

From a distance, I saw my brother marry, divorce, date, break up, marry again, divorce again, and marry again.

I saw him go through many transformations throughout the years. He was college student, grad student, purple-clad vegetarian, college professor.

He was always a bit of an enigma to me.

Then I watched as our father's death shifted his way of thinking, and brought him back to his roots.

And, through his writings these past two years, I have come to understand we have much more in common. Through years of being separated by age, geography, time and space, these are no longer barriers to our relationship.

I have come to understand what makes my brother tick.

I have learned his strengths and his weaknesses, and how he is able to write about both.

His writings about his struggles with depression have helped me better understand the struggles I have gone through with depression in my life, and the lives of my loved one.

Seeing our family through his eyes has opened my own eyes.

By the one small act of making the decision to start a blog, Raymond Pert changed the dynamics of our family forever. Raymond Pert, Inland Empire Girl, our mother and myself are closer than we have ever been.

The following February of 2007, my sister and I created our own blogs. And through the posting of our thoughts on our blogs, it has made it easier to laugh together, cry together, and come to understand one another in a fresh way.

We have come to understand and appreciate each others view of the world, our different talents, and our occasional tirades.

The fact we are separated geographically in three different states is no longer a barrier to our relationships.

Because the written word has drawn us together, and we are learning to share who we really are, and are being loved and accepted by one another. And this is very liberating for all of us.

This reminds me of a quote from my favorite author:

"Wherever there is unity in diversity, then we are free to be ourselves; it cannot be done in isolation; we need each other."
- Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

Happy Birthday, Raymond Pert!! Thanks for continuing to share yourself with each of us, and helping bring each of us out of isolation to learn to need each other.

Interstate 90

Tonight I am going to share some thoughts about Interstate 90. It may seem odd to write about a road, but this highway has played a very important role in my life and has taken me to some very interesting places.

I-90 has been in the local news lately. I think there is a type of "Bermuda Triangle" between the two exits signs in Wallace. Two times during the last two weeks, there have been semi truck accidents that caused that stretch of highway to be closed down. Both times we were having play performances in Wallace, and knew something was up because of the backlog of semi trucks around Wallace.

Here is a funny story my husband shared regarding some of his students last week. On Friday, Kellogg students were put in lockdown because an armed robber was on the run after holding up the Wells Fargo Bank uptown. It had been explained to my husband that the schools were in lockdown because the robber could be fleeing on Interstate 90, and most of the schools were close to the Interstate.

So he tells his students, "You know, I-90 goes all the way from Seattle to Boston, and he could be anywhere along the way, so this may take a while."

"Really?"

Yes, some actually believed they were going to check all along the highway from Seattle to Boston!!!

The Idaho State Patrol have sure been out in force this past week, at least between Kellogg and Wallace. Almost every time I travel east toward Wallace, I see someone pulled over for speeding. I make sure the cruise is right at 75 mph.

I have no memory of there being something other than I-90 traveling through Kellogg. I do remember when it wound its way through Wallace, and you had to stop at the stop light.

We traveled to Spokane a lot growing up, because my Grandma Woolum lived in Spokane. I remember when the Fourth of July Pass was a lot closer to the lake, and you traveled right by Tony's, not above it. You also went by an old run down A-Frame building, but I'm not sure what it was. Then there two different motels. One was pink and set back on the right as you traveled west, if my memory serves me right. Then there was the place with the little cottages. Now it is called the Bennet Bay Inn, or something like that. Oh, what was it called before. Can anyone help me with that one? I do remember hearing a wierd rumor in high school that they hid movie cameras in the cottages and taped the guests. So my senior year, when I was in pep band and we were traveling to either Coeur d'Alene or Post Falls for either the district or state basketball tournament (with them both in North Idaho that year, we traveled I-90 a lot that winter) and as we headed up the pass, I REALLY had to go to the bathroom. I believe Mr. Taylor, our band instructor, sensed the panic in my voice as I told him I NEEDED TO GO TO THE BATHROOM. So we stopped at this little motel with the cottages, and I ran out of the bus, and asked the first person I saw if I could use their bathroom. But, of course, all the time, running through my mind, as I was in one of those cottages using the bathroom was, am I being taped? But I really didn't care at that point.

Remember when I-90 took you through State Line, not past it. You would travel right by "The Slab Inn". The outside really hasn't changed that much in 30 years.

Traveling to Spokane to Grandma's house changed over the years. I remember when I was really young, we would always take the Argonne exit to go the her house. As soon as I saw the water tower, I knew we were close.

Then the route changed, and we took the Freya exit. Then we took the Hamilton exit, which turned into Nevada, which intersected with Bridgeport, the street where Grandma lived.

I traveled I-90 to get to my first job interview after I graduated from college, and I-90 got me part way to my first job in Glendive, Montana before I veered north on I-94 by Billings.

I-90 also brought me back to my safe, secure, closed-in little valley when I lived in the "Big Sky Country". I think it was when I got to Frenchtown, Montana, and the valley would begin to form that I knew I was almost home. It was a very comforting feeling for me.

I walked over I-90 almost every day when I attended Kellogg Junior High school, because that was the way to and from school. One game my friend April and I liked to play was waiting for the semi trucks to go under the bridge. There was a certain excitement while you stood there on the bridge and they would speed below you.

While growing up in Kellogg, I never thought of I-90 as a menacing presence, one that would bring all kinds of scary people into my little community.

But, I hear that a lot now. People referring to I-90 as a way for undesirables and criminals and heaven knows what else to pull off the highway and invade our small town and violate our peace and quiet.

I guess that attitude comes with the times, maybe, or with growth, or the way the world is changing around us.

It is too bad.

Who could forget the taste of smelter smoke?

My brother RaymondPert posted this yesterday, titled "Bringing Reality Into Being: I Grew Up In Miasma". He wrote about the pollution we lived with growing up in Kellogg because of the emissions from the Bunker Hill smelter.

I didn't know what it was like not having the smelter smoke in my life growing up. My strongest memory is playing on the playground at Sunnyside Elementary. Especially morning recess, because that is when it seemed the strongest. While running on the playground on a cool, crisp morning, you would see a dark cloud of smelter smoke hanging over the hills around Kellogg like a large smoke ring decending upon our town.

And you just took it for granted there would be a burning sensation in your throat as you played tag, or keep away, or hopscotch on the playground.

I was never really that physically fit as a child, but I do remember the one year I received the President's Physical Fitness certificate (no I didn't earn the award, just the certificate), and it was one of those cool, crisp valley mornings when I had to run around the field on the west end of the playground to get my time for the physical fitness test, and my throat really burned that morning.

It's funny the things you remember.

But it was just a part of my life. I grew up sitting in the chair in front of the big picture window in our living room on Cameron Avenue, and daily seeing, first the small smoke stack, and later, the two larger smoke stacks spewing forth the smoke that caused the hillsides to cease to produce anything green, and my throat to burn, and my valley to be assaulted with poison.

I remember dad joking about one of the Bunker Hill P.R. guys insisting it was just steam coming out of that stack.

My youngest daughter, Kiki Aru, is working on a documentary for History Day competition on the reforestation of the Silver Valley. She interviewed Ed Pommerening, who was the force behind the reforestation project.

He described the conditions that stunted the growth of the pine trees in the valley. He said when the smelter smoke would combine with the moist air, the two would combine to make a substance similar to battery acid. This would get on the small pine cones, and would destroy them so they couldn't reseed.

Even though the stacks have tumbled down, and "steam" no longer spews forth into the atmosphere, there are reminders. Last year, PKR took our dog for a walk up by the mine, and said he kicked up some dirt, and he could smell and taste the smelter smoke in the dust of the ground.

The EPA hasn't completely stripped it all away, from our landscape, or, more importantly, from our memories.