Craft Knife

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Want to Have Nightmares for a Week? Read This Book about the Johnstown Flood

Last December, the big kid and I fulfilled her childhood Junior Ranger dream of stopping by the Johnstown Flood National Memorial on the way to pick her little sister up from college. The sun was setting as we walked around the site of the former Lake Conemaugh, just east of the former South Fork Dam. In the distance is the former Unger homestead, with the national park site's visitor center next to it.

The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Johnstown Flood was an absolute literal living nightmare OMG. This book was so scary that I actually had to put it down for the night a couple of different times, because reading about such abject terror and such mass destruction does not make for easy slumber.

McCullough really leans into the terror, too, with lots of retellings of harrowing first-person accounts--I just wish that he’d included footnotes, because I’d be interested in sourcing and reading some of these for myself as a way to honor the victims.

The Johnstown Flood National Memorial Visitor Center contains this terrifying display of what flood survivor Victor Heiser experienced. At just sixteen, his last memory of his father was him standing in their home's second-story window, gesturing for Victor to get back in the barn. Victor obeyed, and climbed through the barn's brand-new trapdoor to the roof, an innovation that his father had recently installed for no particular reason. From his viewpoint on the barn roof, he saw his family home crushed by the flood, and then the barn came unmoored and Victor had to stay on top of it while it raged down the river. He was his family's only survivor.

I love that McCullough especially highlighted the heroes of the story--the train engineer who essentially raced the flood, blowing his whistle to give the residents the only warning most of them were to get, the people who stopped in their flight to help others, the rescue and aid workers and private citizens who helped with the cleanup and recovery. I’m still thinking about six-year-old Gertrude Quinn, and the total stranger, Maxwell McAchren, who jumped into the flood not even because he had a way to rescue her, but literally just to be with her. They floated down the raging river until they got close to a house that was still standing at the edge of the water, with other total strangers hanging out the window trying to rescue people. One of the strangers shouted at McAchren to “throw them the baby,” he somehow did so, and a guy named Henry Koch managed to catch her by lunging so far out the window that another guy, George Skinner, had to hold him by the legs. McAchren continued floating down the flooded river alone, but happily he, too, survived.

The sign in the foreground states that we're at the approximate level of Lake Conemaugh before the flood that broke the dam, and to the left is the top of the former South Fork Dam just a few feet higher than the lake level. The dam was also allowed to wear down and sag in the center to make a weak point, and a former owner had disassembled, removed, and sold off the pipes that were previously used to lower the water level. Add to that the fact that the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club blocked the spillway by installing both a bridge and fish guards to keep the fish they'd stocked in the lake from escaping, and the break seems completely inevitable.

Okay, I just discovered that Gertrude Quinn Slater wrote her own book about the Johnstown Flood! I am currently trying to get Internet Archive to generate an epub of it as I write, but I’m sorry to tell you that it’s not going well.

There were a lot fewer flood artifacts than I thought there would be, but this was one of them.

At first, shortly after finishing the book, I was irritated that McCullough didn’t write more about the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club and the consequences the members faced, etc., but I finally got it through my head that this is because… there weren’t really any? They just kind of all… got away with criminal negligence? So much for Eat the Rich, I guess!

Here’s the thing that I REALLY do not understand, though--why does everyone not know about this? Why didn’t we study it in school? It would have been a terrific addition to the unit on American Industrialization and the development of factories and classism in the 1800s, etc. I only knew about the flood because my older kid was flat-out obsessed with earning Junior Ranger badges when she was little, and the Johnstown Flood National Memorial was a badge she could earn by mail, so we did our own DIY unit study of it (including a trip to visit our own local dam and spillway--they look sturdy and sound, thank goodness!), and what we learned during that study was so ghastly and shocking and downright bonkers that we’ve never stopped talking about it. And I do not understand why EVERYBODY is not constantly talking about it! It was so famous at the time, and now it’s just… not? In 2137, if we’re not in our full on zombie apocalypse Mad Max era, are people no longer going to remember anything about 9/11? Crazy how the memory of human suffering can just dissipate like that.

We're looking across the former Lake Conemaugh, with the former South Fork Dam to the left. You can also see the creek that was dammed there in the middle.

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Monday, August 25, 2025

If You Didn't Go to a Mumford and Sons Concert, Was It Even Summer?

Spoiler alert: no.

I think that loving music must be at least partially genetic, because both my younger kid and I LOVE music. LOVE it, which I used to think was the default setting for all of humanity, until I met my partner, who has never once purposefully listened to a song for pleasure. And our older kid is the same. When she was little I thought that she did love music, because she was all about They Might Be Giants and Victor Johnson, but what she was actually doing was listening over and over again to the They Might Be Giants album Here Comes Science, which is all about science stuff, and the Victor Johnson album Multiplication and Skip Counting Songs, which is all about math.

But to be fair, if you've ever listened to that Victor Johnson album, you'll understand that all the songs on it are indeed bangers!

Oh, and this obscure 2002 SteveSongs album. We still put this on occasionally and we all STILL know all the words!

Anyway, I think that happy willingness to engage in a non-preferred activity must also be genetic, because both the younger kid and I pout our heads off if we're not doing exactly what we want literally every second of every day, but my partner and older kid are happily willing, even if they don't give a flip about the music, to simply pal along with me and the younger kid to all the sweaty, rainy, uncomfortable outdoor concerts that, in my eyes, define summer:

Thanks to getting there super early and standing in line forever, we got lawn seats right at the front for this Mumford and Sons concert. We spread our butts out as much as possible to hold our ground, but people didn't really cram in like they should, so after the opening act, when I saw a couple meandering down the aisle in front of the lawn section and peering into the crowd, I was all, "Those two are about to bogart themselves a spot. Do NOT let them push you back!"

Indeed, the couple pointed at us and then made a beeline over, and ended up squeezing themselves into the six square inches between our blanket and the blanket behind us. It's definitely one way to avoid having to get to the concert early! Anyway, we're pretty mean and judgmental when you can't hear us, so we have discussed this couple numerous times since then, and there's always something new and rude for us to chew over. So I guess they did in the end pay the mandatory emotional fee for sitting next to us! The family on our left put the younger kid with them under their own giant umbrella when it began to bucket down rain, and the couple on our right gave the older kid their spare pair of Loops because she was in such obvious discomfort by the third song of the opening act. So see, getting roasted in absentia for two full months is practically nothing!

OMG that rain. In all my outdoor concertgoing life, only once has it ever not rained on me! Last year, when we got evacuated to a storm shelter over a mile away on foot, was absolutely the worst, and at least this time we didn't have to leave the venue, but omg did it absolutely pour.

Whatever. I will sit on a blanket hunched over like a dog suffering through any amount of rain, as long as afterwards, Mumford and Sons plays for me!

My partner took all the photos and videos so I could enjoy the concert, and he happened to be filming during "Ditmas" when Marcus Mumford left the stage, ran through the audience right next to us, and I lost my mind with happiness:

I love it when musicians make an effort to give those of us with the plebeian tickets something special, too, and this was honestly one of the coolest concert moments I've ever experienced. Like, I don't think he even had a path set out ahead of time, or a plan--he was dodging picnic blankets and slipping in the mud and I don't know how his lighting and security guys kept up with him. It was the BEST.

After the concert, a kind stranger saw me struggling to take a family selfie and offered to take it for me. I LOVE how it turned out, even though you can't see us at all, lol:

Because if you don't take a terrible family photo while you're all soaked and bedraggled from sitting outside during a rainstorm, muddy from standing in a wet field for four hours, and anticipating the midnight fast food stop in your immediate future, was it even summer?

Friday, August 22, 2025

When in LA, You Must Observe an Octopus and Eat a Doughnut

At least, that's what you must do if you're in LA with me!

Aquariums don't photograph well, so I have to make memories with my brain and not my camera, ugh. Not that there's room in my brain for additional memories what with all the 1980s TV theme songs I've got memorized, but whatever. I did my best!

Nevertheless, I did get a few good shots at the Aquarium of the Pacific:

The kids and I were ALL about these embossing stations for our aquarium guidebooks. It was like a little Junior Ranger activity!

We were OBSESSED with the octopuses. They're so beautiful, and they always seemed so busy!

This kid will NEVER pass up a toddler activity.

There's her axolotl swimming around on the big screen!

I was also personally pretty obsessed with this Giant Japanese Spider Crab. Its legs are so spindly, and it can grow to be 12 feet!

The only thing the big kid likes better than a toddler activity is a touch tank.

This is the first time that I have EVER encountered a jellyfish touch tank! It was even kind of tucked away in a back area away from the crowds, as if a jellyfish touch tank isn't the coolest thing in the zoo?!?

We touched ALL the jellyfish.

I've only ever seen sand dollars washed up on the beach. I had no idea that they're fuzzy!

We spent most of an hour watching this California Twospot Octopus bop around busily in its tank.

Considering that we'd gotten to the Aquarium of the Pacific right when it opened, leaving mid-afternoon was a pretty good run, but still, we were only able to convince the big kid to come away with us by reminding her that the next item on our agenda was a DIY food tour of the Long Beach area. I didn't keep track of everywhere we went since we were navigating by committee, but check out my delicious spicy machaca burrito with endless pours of jamaica on the side:

Parking in Long Beach is MISERABLE, but we found a doughnut shop where we could park at a laundromat down the block and sneak over in case there are, like, laundromat parking police--which I'm sure there are! You can't tell by the look of it, but each of us ordered one single doughnut at this shop:

I don't know if they were about to close or the doughnut dude was just overstocked or what, but for each of us, he put our doughnut in its baggy, then literally poured doughnut holes in until each bag was crammed full. They only don't look crammed full in the above photo because we'd been stuffing ourselves with doughnut holes as fast as we could before I remembered that I wanted a photo.

Did we leave room for In-n-Out?

Nope, but we still did our best!

Is the most cliched California experience spending sunset on the beach, your tummy full from In-n-Out?

Probably not, but that's what feels the most like California to me!

Don't worry, because we DID follow our tradition the next day of having the most miserable experience traveling home from vacation. Why does flying home always suck SO badly and in such unique ways? I had a panic attack on my first (and last!) Southwest flight when people kept telling me the seat next to them was saved for literally every single available seat--apparently, you're just supposed to sit down anyway because you can't actually save seats on Southwest, but I did not know that so I just wandered up and down the aisle having flashbacks to lunchtime at my first day in junior high, when I ALSO couldn't find anyone who'd let me sit with them. AND you don't get movies, which I guess is fine because I had my nook but I wanted to read my nook AND watch a movie. But then there was bad weather at our layover airport so we had to go to a different airport, but there wasn't actually room for us at that airport so they wouldn't let us off the plane and we just sat on their runway for two hours. You know what would have made that way more bearable? A movie! After that, we waited another hour to refuel and then flew back to the now super crowded layover airport where we thankfully got squeezed onto the last flight of the night, which was a redeye, so instead of getting home at 8 the previous evening we got home at 6 the next morning and we all went straight to bed.

Each vacation's uniquely miserable return experience is probably the universe's way of making sure I'm happy to be home!

And here's the rest of our trip!

Monday, August 18, 2025

I Did Not Jump into the Tar Pit and Wallow Around in Tar While Screeching with Joy, But It Was a Close Thing

Do you ever get pissed that you can't visit every place in the entire world and see every cool thing that there is to see?

There are so many exciting wonders to experience, and we're missing almost all of them!

Even though I'm all the time, nearly constantly, missing out on nearly every magical thing to see and do, it IS satisfying to see just this one magical thing that I've longed to experience since the first time I learned about it.

Welcome to La Brea Tar Pits!

The website is really confusing because it makes it seem like you have to pay the admission price just to see the tar pits, but when we got there it actually seems like the admission is only for the museum and the tar pits are free? Or at least there was nobody to take our money at the kiosks around the perimeter of the park, only at the museum. That actually makes the museum kind of shockingly expensive for a family of four, but at least the kids could pull out their student IDs to knock a couple of bucks off.

Tangent, but ever since my kids have grown up enough to be considered "adults" for the purpose of most admission tickets, I've realized that Adult admission to places that encourage you to go as a family, like museums and zoos, is a fucking RACKET. I swear they bump the price to make the Child ticket at half the price feel like a deal, and it's not even so unreasonable when you split the difference, but those four adult tickets stacked on top of each other are a LOT. I think multiples of adult tickets should get some kind of puny discount, because otherwise we're going to have to start drawing straws to see who gets to go into the cool stuff and who has to sit in the car.

Ah, well. What even is money on a vacation, especially not when there are mastodon bones to look at!

And ground sloths!

Antique bison!

American lion!

The tar pit stuff is all crazy interesting. Check out this little bone that a rodent was once upon a time eating on!

And this knife blade that was purposely coated in tar!

This camel that died with stuff stuck in its teeth!

The two most superior animals to ever have fallen in the tar pits are OBVIOUSLY dire wolves and saber-tooths.

We're at the point in family life where when I tell every family member to go and pose dramatically with the saber-tooth recreation so I can take all their photos, even the most unenthusiastic family member just sighs and obeys.

Guess who the most enthusiastic family member is, though?

Ahem.

This is my favorite exhibit:

Check out 404 dire wolf skulls! I was only sad because the display goes up so high that I couldn't get the best look at half of them:

This is me looking straight up.

Here are the best dire wolf skulls:

The bones are so cool that it kind of makes you forget that starving to death while being stuck in tar is a horrible way to die, and actually suffocating to death in tar is even more horrible. The museum had an interactive display to demonstrate how hard it is to pull yourself out of tar:

Yeah, I could have NEVER.

Outside the museum, there's a park (that may or may not be free?) that encompasses many of the extant tar pit sites:

Didn't pack bug spray, oops:

The lake pit looks the most tar pit-ish to me, but I think it might actually be the least accurate looking:

The "lake" is groundwater and rainwater that's collected in an abandoned asphalt excavation. Tar and methane do bubble up through it, but I *think* the proper tar pits that trapped all the animals were actually pretty shallow.

This is more like what I think the tar pits would have looked like, if you can imagine secret tar also under all the dirt and leaves around the puddle of visible tar:

There aren't any current active excavations of the tar pits, but as you walk around you can see photos from old excavations, and an open pit that looks like the workers just stepped away for a lunch break:

The current and ongoing project involves going through a huge amount of material collected via rescue paleontology during the construction of the LA County Museum of Art next door:

Papped a paleontologist!

I was having so much fun peeping through fences to look at all the named tar pits--

--that it actually took me a long time to notice that there was tar bubbling up EVERYWHERE! Little puddles and sticky bits were all over, sometimes marked--

--but often not. Since it's not a national park site or anything, the big kid helped me collect a little souvenir:

My little tar stick is my favorite souvenir from this trip!

I could have stayed for the rest of the day, just rolling around in little tar pits and poking around looking for bones, but there was not a speck of shade, and I had long ago worn out the patience of our least-enthusiastic participant, ahem, so I reluctantly allowed myself to be dragged out and into the awful LA traffic.

I had a few ideas for other places to stop at, but omg the traffic was so horrible that the only place we ended up visiting was Milk Bar. It's crazy expensive but I'd heard it was absolutely delicious--

--and it was!

I was especially thrilled with my pint of soft-serve ice cream layered with cakey parts and fudgy bits and crunchies. I also brought my pint jar home as a souvenir, and I fondly look forward to building my own layered ice cream creation and eating it with a wooden spoon.

But that's for later. Tomorrow we go to the aquarium and make up our own food tour!