Claude Monet:
On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt (1868)

This One's No Exception
My first great-grandparents had an asparagus farm on what would become The Hanford Reservation. In 1940 or so, the War Department bought their farm and their neighbors' farms, even the nearby town. For my great-grandparents, this sale was a godsend. They bought a small house on Pine Street in Walla Walla and retired in greater ease than they'd ever imagined experiencing. My mother remembered visiting their tarpaper shack where only the parlor had proper wallpaper, the other rooms were papered with newspaper to keep out the drafts. Nobody was ever allowed in the parlor. Today, Richland, Washington, where The Muse and I stayed last night on our way to the State Democratic Party Convention, to which we've been elected delegates, is part of the third largest metropolitan area in the state, with over 300,000 inhabitants. My mom remembered before Richland existed when adjacent Kennewick consisted of a single gas station/grocery next to the ferry. There were no bridges across the Columbia River. The Army used those former asparagus fields to centrifuge the plutonium used to blow this world to kingdom come, leaving behind a permanent superfund site that fuels this city's continuing growth. When I was a kid, we referred to this place as The Dry Shitties rather than their formal name, The Tri-Cities. There were good reasons General Groves chose this place in the first place, perhaps chief among them, the preexisting desolation. It's growing like a weed because weeds always grew best here. Every prior generation secretly believes their world's headed for Hell without the requisite handbaskets. This one's no exception. Thank you for following along through my Fambly Stories!

—

Weekly Writing Summary

This Fambly Story follows me on an adventure to the Eastern end of my Oregon Trail, where I encountered one of my more prominent and permanent personas, ThePotWizard.

Randolph Caldecott:  A dainty dish. (Undated)
"Me, eternally ThePotWizard …"
—
This Fambly Story follows me as I resonate with my forebears' pioneer experiences as an UrbanPioneer.

Max Liebermann: Dutch Village Scene with Hanging Laundry (1890)
“Most immigrants were not intuitively gifted farmers, but unskilled workers.”
—
This Fambly Story finds me recalling my Dismemberment. My life has not progressed in continuous advancement. I've been torn asunder a couple of times for no apparent reason.

Meester van Antwerpen (I) (attributed to): Christus predikt over scheiden
[Christ preaches about divorce] (1485 - 1491)
"Some experiences just come to pass …"
—
This Fambly Story finds me recounting how I became an Entrepreneur and airs more personal dirty laundry than might seem reasonable. If reading history demonstrates anything, it shows that people do not necessarily behave in reasonable manners. Why should my story be an exception?

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Portrait of Monsieur Choquet (c. 1875)
"She remained a puzzlingly successful handful …"
—
This Fambly Story, the next-to-last story in this series, finds me describing my role as Protégé in this Fambly, and The Muse's role as my patron. This admittedly unconventional arrangement holds no shame for us, for it's as old and as dignified as art itself. I would not have been able to complete my twenty-eighth series I'll be completing tomorrow had it not been for her Noblesse Oblige.

Jacob Matham, After Hendrick Goltzius: Hendrick Goltzius, a famous Protégé  (1617)
" … this series comes to you due to the steadfast patronage of The Muse …"
—
This Fambly Story, the ninety-third and final installment in the series, finds me creating another RaggedBegending. A Begending serves as simultaneously a beginning and an ending and has become my preferred method of topping off one of my series. I might otherwise just run the sucker off the road. Thank you for following along!

Josua van den Enden: Kaart van het oude Gallië [Map of ancient Gaul] (1627)
"I might just have too much left to learn or too much left to forget …"
—
I thought it fitting that after spending almost a whole quarter discovering and introducing my ancestry, I focused the final week's writing on myself, on what became of that genome I tracked through 49 iterations. I was not a single entity, just like my forebears were never merely single individuals, for each evolved through several approximations of themselves, with none ending up anything like perfect at their end. Indeed, none of them has completely ended yet, as evidenced by my presence here. Theirs, like mine, were not forward evolutions but more like convoluted ones. They changed without necessarily improving. They kept moving, mostly west, with some serious side trips and stalls. I introduced my PotWizard, my Urban Pioneer, my Dismemberment, my Entrepreneur, and my Protégé before finishing much as I began with another of my signature RaggedBegendings. This series has been close to my heart and I anticipate a great absence as I complete this mission and move on and into whatever follows. I know for certain that something follows, something different if only to preserve the convolutions my continuing evolution requires. Thank you deeply for following along on this adventure!

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Fambly, #PureSchmaltz