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From Lewis and Clark, to AFS in Ghana Pair of unique Christmas gift ideas
By some standards it’s early yet, but I would like to toss out a
couple suggestions for Christmas presents of a unique nature that would
be perfect for the “hard-to-please” gift recipient on your list.
Neither will require fighting the holiday crush or battling over the
latest and greatest hot item of the season that might crash your
computer or dull your senses.
The first idea comes from a summertime experience, this one in
the San Juan Islands and the chance meeting of a librarian with an
outlook that “Everything old is new again” and it fits very well
with the idea of battery-free, low tech gift ideas.
How about an alternative to the X-Box madness of this holiday
season? Can you remember those days when the View-Master 3-D photo
viewers were the rage with their historical, scientific and
travel-themed 3-D slide reels? The pictures would rotate as you manually
clicked the lever on the side of the viewer. The View-Master has been
around since 1939, as a successor to our great-grandparents’
stereopticon, the first real three-dimension viewers, now found only in
such places as the Bothell Historical Museum or at an antique store at
Country Village.
For the children on your gift list, how about celebrating the 200th
anniversary of Lewis & Clark’s arrival in what is now Washington
State by giving them a View-Master, along with the educational and
fascinating Lewis & Clark Collectors Set (a bargain at $20), which
includes four new three-reel sets of their “Trail of Discovery” from
St. Louis in 1804…to the Pacific Ocean at Cape Disappointment in
Washington in 1805…along with their Fort Clatsop winter camp…and
return trip to St. Louis in 1806.
This set also includes an historical reference album, complete
with the maps which were used in the Ken Burns PBS Lewis and Clark
television documentary, “The Journey of the Corps of Discovery”, as
well as color illustrations of all 84 of the 3-D Lewis and Clark slides.
I asked our 8-year-old grandson and a 15-year-old visiting French
student to review this set of disks on the View-Master. The French
student, Pierre, said, “I think kids would like to have these in their
school library and at home. My father is crazy about Lewis and Clark.”
The 8-year-old said, “I liked the Lewis and Clark 3-D pictures
and book with the maps that tell the story. You can buy a calendar of
Lewis and Clark to put up in the school library.” Turns out this Lewis and Clark collectors set was a labor of love by master photographer Charley Van Pelt who spent years researching and photographing all along the Lewis and Clark routes. The collectors set and individual reel sets are available for purchase from Charley Van Pelt, 1424 East Mountain St., in Glendale CA 91207. To get high tech, but only for a moment, you also can find the set at www.charleyvanpelt3d.com. The Lewis and Clark sets may also be available at toy stores where View-Master viewers are sold. What
did you do on your summer vacation?
Last summer I learned that Amy Phillips of Lake Forest Park and
Cooper Eaton of Kenmore were busy raising money to pay for a trip to
Ghana as participants in an American Field Service month-long stay in
the capitol, Accra, to work with young children at the Good Shepherd
Orphanage. Amy is a senior at Shorecrest High School and a running start
student at Shoreline Community College and Cooper is a senior at
Inglemoor High School.
Half of each day, along with 27 other AFS travelers, they would
teach Ghanian children from pre-school age through about 16 and the
balance of the day would be working on construction of an outdoor
latrine to replace an open ditch system used since the orphanage opened.
A typical day for Amy was to rise at her host family’s home in
suburban Accra, take a “bucket shower” and then an hour’s trip to
the orphanage with her host father who worked nearby for a Catholic
relief agency. Her host mother was a professor of nutrition at the
University of Ghana.
Amy said she felt safe during the month she worked at the
orphanage. After all, Ghana obtained independence in 1957, is a
profoundly religious society and all the children and staff were quite
taken with those American teenagers who had come from all walks of life
and regions in the U.S.
As they arrived, Amy and Cooper brought plastic bags of drinkable
water to the orphanage, a scarce item appreciated as much as the
personal items they brought to share with the children – t-shirts,
sandals, books, hygiene items – you name it.
“We had to write the child’s name in each book or they would
disappear to be sold,” she lamented. Water was precious, she noted,
and a real concern became her awareness that the limited formal
education provided the children ended at the fourth grade level. The
orphans are then relegated to jobs around the orphanage in hopes they
would learn enough life skills for when they were turned out on their
own at age 16.
The oppressive tropical climate and daytime temperatures from 95
to 110 did not dampen the spirits of the AFS volunteers and many
personal attachments were formed during that short month. Amy missed
chocolate milk, a shower and air conditioning the most, she admits
today. But the experience of being constantly stared at by children in
need of love and affection will remain with her not only during this
Christmas season but the rest of her life. My second Christmas present idea would be to let a hard-to-please Uncle Dale know that you have made a contribution to American Field Service in his name so that yet another Amy or a Cooper will be “akwaaba” in Ghana. The website is www.supportafsusa.org where a contribution will lead to hope for other children in need who live on the West Coast of Africa or in other regions of the world where water, books and learning are considered luxuries. You’ll roll out the mat of welcome (“akwaaba”) for more AFS ambassadors like Amy and Cooper.
Hugo
and Mayor-for-Life Terry Jarvis (425) 482-4076
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The Previous Columns
for November 23, 2005
for November 9, 2005
for October 26, 2005
for October 12, 2005 for
September 21, 2005 for
September 7, 2005 for
August 17, 2005 for
August 3, 2005 for
July 20, 2005 July
6, 2005 June
18, 2005 June
4, 2005 May
18, 2005 May
4, 2005 April
20, 2005 April
6, 2005 March
16, 2005 March
2, 2005 February
16, 2005 February
2, 2005 January
19, 2005 January
5, 2005 December
15, 2004 December
1, 2004
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