An arson-set fire in the summer of 2023 at the Seattle Betsuin Buddhist Temple near the Chinatown International District in Seattle destroyed historical archives going back more than 120 years.

This is a disaster which should affect all genealogists  and not just Buddhists. 

The article in our Spokane paper was from Greg Kim of the Seattle Times. Kim wrote: “Just outside the room where the fire began were the temple’s physical archives dating back to 1901 when the temple was founded by first-generation Japanese Americans. The current location was built during World War II in 1943. The destroyed archives contained documents from when temple members were detained in incarceration camps.”

Alex Sakamoto, a temple board member, said “By losing this, we’re losing knowledge and history. Even if people in the community don’t belong to our church, or even if they’re not Buddhist, this has really been a gathering spot in the community…because it has stayed in the same place and remained unchanged for so long.” 

Could a similar disaster happen to “your” archives…… the place where historical records pertaining to your ancestors’ lives are housed? Yes, it surely could. 

 I’d bet a nickel that there is a museum to just about anything you can name. I’d also bet that you’ve visited a good many museums for that’s a “genealogy thing.” But I’d bet that you’ve never heard of these three museums that I just discovered.

Wikipedia tells us that there are some 4500 species of crab scattered in the world’s oceans. In Margate, England, is the Crab Museum where inside is a diorama featuring all things “crab,” real and fanciful. The museum aims to teach visitors about crab anatomy, mating habits and their importance to marine ecosystems, including environmental threats. Their website is both fun and informative and you can sign up for their newsletter for free. 

The Museum of Failure first began in Sweden as a traveling exhibit and now is located in Malaga, Spain. This museum highlights digital disasters, medical mishaps, bad taste things, Failure in Motion, Failure to Innovate, “What WERE they thinking,” and “So Close But Yet So Far….”  The museum has over 200 new items and artifacts added every year because “innovation needs failure. All progress, not only technological progress, is built on learning from past failures and mistakes.” 

Last of all, a museum in Reykjavik, Iceland: The Iceland Phallogical Museum. This eclectic museum purposes to “collect, study and preserve some 200 phalluses of land and sea mammals (including man).” I visited this most unusual museum and to be honest found it to be most interesting. The gift shop offerings were definitely “something else.” 

Cowboy Clark Stanley was down on his luck when he heard a tale that the Chinese (back in China) made a medicine or treatment from snakes. Immediately a get-rich-scheme formed in his mind.

At the 1893 Columbian Expedition in Chicago, Stanley came onstage with a live rattlesnake. He slit open the snake and dropped it into a pot of boiling water. Skimming off the fat from the surface, he told his eager audience that this was the “gen-u-ine” cure for what ailed them. People believed and his Snake Oil Liniment was sold for 24 years. 

So called “snake oil medicine” wasn’t only the “medicine of the west.” Similar schemes abounded in the 19th century. Wikipedia defines this as “any worthless concoction sold as medicine.” 

A bit published in the Georgia Gazette on 29 Jun 1774 proclaimed a “Miracle Medical Cure!”  Some 46 men signed their names as testimony that the stuff worked:

“We the under named subscriber of St. George’s and St. Matthew’s parishes, think it our duty to publish the following CURES perfected by Dr. John Patrick Dillon, for the good of the poor afflicted with the same, they they may know where they may expect remedy, as we have had, and affirm the same subscribing jointly that we have been CURED by him of: cancers of all kinds, fistulas, hysteric afflictions, rheumatisms, consumptions, fluxes, dysenteries, convulsions, epilepsies, apoplexies, hypochondrias, caries*, malignant ulcers, pleurisies and gravels**.” 

( Caries is tooth decay/cavities. Gravels is kidney stones.)

QUESTION: Are “snake oil” cures still being passed off today as worthwhile medicines? 

Did you realize that rhubarb is classified as a vegetable? 

And while we eat the stalks the leaves are quite toxic?

 Did you know that Washington State has 175 acres of rhubarb cultivation? Some 92% of those acres are in Pierce County. Sumner boasts to be the Rhubarb Capital of the World. 

Who remembers sitting on the back stoop eating a stalk of fresh rhubarb dipped in sugar or honey? I surely do, as do my children. 

The Chinese called rhubarb “the great yellow” and have used it for medicinal purposes for nearly 2000 years. Yes, this hardy plant has been around for a long time. Bet you have a patch growing in a corner of your yard.

Rhubarb was used medicinally as a laxative. Back in the day, purging one’s system was a common component of many treatments…. riding the body of ill humors it was thought.

Rhubarb was harvested in Scotland in 1786 and came to America in the 1820s through New England. Rhubarb grows best where there is a few months of cold weather. 

Whether your favorite is rhubarb sauce or rhubarb pie, my guess is that rhubarb has a love-hate relationship with most people.

There are dozens of YouTube videos, and several websites, teaching how to grow, harvest, cook and prepare those delicious red stalks. 

During the long history of Egypt, many millions of people (and animals) were mummified. “Far rarer are mummy portraits…detailed paintings of the living, buried with their mummies when they died.” (Thanks to National Geographic Magazine bit by Daniel Stone and photos from Google.)

The portraits were mounted on bands of cloth used to wrap bodies (mummies). Some 1300 mummy portraits are known to exist and most have now been removed and placed in museums. 

Egyptians spent up to a year’s wages to arrange funeral ceremonies and goods, often including portraits. Such portraits reveal the melting pot of cultures living in Egypt between the 1st and 3rd centuries. This was when Roman culture predominated and this is reflected in the portraits. Some of these portraits are identified!

Imagine having an image of your ancestor’s face who lived 2000 years ago???

For more information, click to:

BritishMuseum.org/blog/depicting-dead-ancient-Egyptian-mummyportraits

Just a piece of tin, lying in the dirt.

To the finder it meant nothing, to a family, more hurt.

For removal and return proper steps were to follow.

To a community back home more pain, grief and sorrow.

A journey of  time and in decades lost

Of a round trip in miles and of the thousands it cost.

Of the man who had worn it so many of us knew,

A young man on our streets just like me and you.

Of a life never lived, or adventures untold

Of one life to give, a young never to grow old.

Just a piece of tin, lying in the dirt.

I photographed this  poem framed and on the wall in a museum back east while on a trip. It was penned by Charles Stage, 30 May 2016. It quite touched my heart and I saved it to share with you in our “memorial month.”  

Ask Google if you’d like to know more fascinating history of U.S. military dog tags. 

****Bet you didn’t know this “dog tag” trivia: People in the 1950s lived under constant threat of nuclear war and had tags made for their elementary age school children in districts across the U.S. New York City was the first public school system to issue the “identification tags” in Feb 1952, spending $159.000 to provide them to 2.5 million students. 

We eat wheat most every day in some form or another. And mankind has been eating wheat for thousands of years. (Did you have toast, bagel or cereal for breakfast?)  How many types of wheat are there, would you guess? How many types are grown in Washington? Well, there are six main types or classes of wheat with many sub-categories under each of the six.

Wheat was first planted in the U.S. in 1777 and is still today the primary flour for U.S. grain products. Wheat is grown in 42 U.S. states with Kansas as the largest producer. Our own Whitman County produces on average 32 million bushels of wheat annually. Lincoln County produces 22 million bushels. (Need I remind you that many of our ancestors came to Eastern Washington back in the 19th century primarily to grow wheat?)

What’s the best wheat for what product? 

Hard Red Winter wheat: general all-purpose

Hard Red Spring wheat: breads, rolls, croissants, bagels, pizza crusts

Soft Red White wheat: cakes, pastries, Asian noodles, flat breads

Hard White wheat: Asian noodles, tortillas, flatbreads

Durum wheat:  with a high protein content, perfect for pasta 

It’s a real science to today’s wheat farmers to know what to plant, where and when. Which type is best for their fields; which types best resist disease. Each farmer has to make a decision, sometimes field by field, about which wheat variety will work for  them. 

**Amazing wheat factoids: In 2022, the U.S. shipped 205.3 metric tons (about 250,000 pounds) of wheat overseas; this wheat export had the value of $7.3 billion; and the U.S. is the 5th in the list of wheat exporters. There are about 100 different varieties of wheat crackers to be found in your favorite supermarket.