[PLUG-TALK] Happy Mt St Helens day to all who celebrate!

[kenjen at tuta.com]

I didn't even exist as genetic material, but it was something I was aware of from over 3000km away. I am still amazed how many people I meet here who have forgotten it, or know nothing of it.
Thanks | おおきに / ありがとう | Kiitos | Merci | Gracias | Obrigada | Grazie | 谢谢 | Danke | Wado,
賢進ジェンナ「Kenshin, Jenna」

"You should be as alive as you can until you're totally dead!" - Dylan Moran



2025年5月18日 21:20 差出人:  russell at pdxlinux.org:

> I was kind of distracted today, due to the Clinic, but I thought I should acknowledge that today was the 45th anniversary of the big eruption at Mt St Helens.
>
> I'm interested to hear people's memories of the event, if you have them.
>
> As for myself, I was just graduating high school that year, and had recently landed a job as a "Station Master" at the Washington Park & Zoo Railway, as it was then known and operated. I recall the excitement about the volcanic activity as it started that March and the uncertainty about what it all meant. I recall a group of my classmates and I driving up to Pittock Mansion that spring and seeing the east side of the St Helens cone black with ash, while the west side was still pristine white.
>
> The day of the eruption, I was on duty at the Zoo station. I am pretty sure I heard the reports before I left for work, probably starting at 10am. We'd heard no sound of the blast in Cedar Hills, near 217 and US26.  Ridership on the train that day was pretty light, as I recall, and I spent most of the day listening to the news on the radio in our ticket booth. The engineers were going down to the Washington Park station, overlooking the Rose Test Gardens, and would also bring back reports. Late in the day, as work was slowing down, I rode down on one of the trains and watched for the 5 minute stopover what I recall as a towering column of ash ascending above the mountain and blowing off to the ENE. Pretty freaking amazing.
>
> The very next Sunday, May 25th, there was another eruption, only this time the ash was blowing towards Portland. I was back at the Zoo station and I spent the time between trains collecting the air-fall ash off of smooth surfaces. Maybe a measuring cup-worth, which I still have in a sealed glass jar. It is super-fine powder.
>
> A few weeks later we got another shot of ash at night time, and I recall aiming a light up into the sky and seeing it all rain down. I think it rained shortly after and it all became a muddy, gritty mess.
>
> Later that summer, July, I think, I was hanging out with a friend or two near what was then Cedar Hills Elementary School (now a rec center at Cedar Hills Blvd and Parkway) during a little league game and watched another gigantic tower of ash ascend to 70 thousand feet or something, visible even over the west hills, and very stark against the vivid blue summer sky.
>
> In 1990, 10 years later, some of my cousins and an uncle and I climbed to the rim on the south side, on the Monitor Ridge route. We'd tried in the spring on snow, but the weather wasn't good, so we turned back. We finished the job in late summer, I think Labor Day weekend. The weather was better then, but it was still a little cloudy and scrambling over the boulders and then the last 1000 feet or so of loose sand was a bit of a slog.
>
> There is an excellent program broadcast by KPTV for the 10th anniversary, produced by Lars Larson, available now on youtube:
>
>   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00wzeeKTz5w
>
> -- 
> Russell
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