Tulips and the Release

It is so hard to believe that we have the book done. It was such a whirlwind and time pressure cooker to make our deadline. But now, a few weeks after submission, we are looking around and realize we have to wait! We hope to have the book proofs back sometime in December and the book is scheduled for release in the early spring.

So in honor of the big release, which should be near the Tulip Festival, we thought it appropriate to post about some other photos that did not make it into the book.

This one was especially heartbreaking because it is such a great photo. We first came across it while in Karl's Paint store. The photo is large and professionally framed, hanging on their wall. We asked if we could borrow it to scan for our book and without hesitation they agreed to let us take it home to scan. But before we could scan it, they had to remove it from the frame. Talk about helpful! According to them, it had been in the building when they moved in years ago. As we were leaving with the photo, they also mentioned that it might be from up north in Lynden.

Not thinking much of this Lynden comment, we were so excited to have a photo that might illustrate the Mount Vernon tulip festival. However, with a little research it turns out that the style of the dresses certainly do not match up with the history of tulip festivals in Skagit Valley. This is from a much earlier time when there were tulip festivals in Lynden and before tulip growing moved south to our neck of the woods due to the constant threat of frost up north.

Later, after meeting with the WSU extension office, the ladies showed up again!

Still lovely as ever. It was like they were taunting us about NOT being able to use them in the book.

Nonetheless, they are both great photos and they make us look forward to April!

Bonus Picture Tuesday

We promised a post this week, so figured we had better get on it! A true testament to the quality of photos IN the book is the quality of photos that got left OUT of the book. We were fortunate to get some really wonderful items from so many sources.

This photo, courtesy of the Mount Vernon Mayor’s Office, is one of our earliest scans.

It is a great picture, but there is the double whammy of “Are we *sure* this was Mount Vernon?” and “What story would it bring?” There is no doubt that it could be from here—the area had plenty of giant trees like this. But the sign on the left, which is difficult to make out, seems to be saying something about “Blaine”. Too much uncertainly for our taste. But it is still a wonderful photograph from 1899!

Can you read the bottom? It says “This tree was used to shelter 12 head of cattle”. Wow, lucky for those pioneers that lightning is a rare occurrence around here!

Believe it or not we are Verbose

Sorry for the scant blogging of late, but the writing process for our book has been all-consuming the past few weeks. It has been exhausting and sometimes frustrating, but also very satisfying. The entire book has been like a giant puzzle—where to put what, what to include, what to leave out, how can we tell a certain story, etc. Every caption has a word maximum and time and time again we would go past that, it felt like we spent more time cutting than composing! And in the end there would be this great caption, but we would feel kind of sad about what had been omitted. Sometimes we would have the greatest story in mind but no photo that we could use to bring that story to the book. Conversely we have some amazing photos that we simply don’t know anything about. Like this one:

Adorable right? Look at the bell on that cow! But what story would it contribute? Who is that? When was it? So onto the cutting room floor it went so to speak.

But now we are super excited about our blog’s role! This is the place! The place for all the great photos we couldn’t include. The place for the long babbling stories we couldn’t cram into our limited text. The place to expand upon things that ARE in the book. We might have finished writing the book, but we are just getting started here on the blog. The ultimate companion to what we think is going to be an incredible book.

But first, perhaps a small break. We truly are exhausted. So look for a post next week with a fascinating story or at least another great picture!

Eugene, Eugene, Where are You Eugene?

We got a great selection of photographs of former Mount Vernon Mayors. Sadly, the pictures came with no information (the story of our lives). Today we met with longtime lawyer Bud Gilbert and got some great information about most of the former mayors. The one glaring exception was nothing about Mount Vernon’s perhaps most dapper mayor (and a personal favorite of ours from a visual standpoint), Eugene J. “Euge” Harris.

Who was this guy? What did he do? What was is administration like? We really wish we knew so we could come up with a caption for this gem of a photograph!

Mystery after Mystery

We are getting down and dirty going through the hundreds of pictures we’ve scanned over the past year. Here is one we really like, but is a complete mystery:

Well, perhaps not complete, I mean, you have to assume it is a group of teachers. Right? And probably from around the 50s? Maybe? But what school, who are they, what are they doing? AHHH! Anyone out there know?

A Great Day

We keep saying, “We need to pull the plug.” “We need to stop running all over acquiring photos.” “But…” It is that “But” which always seems to keep us going. One more picture, one more gem, one more discovery… What might we find? What might we learn? How might we be amazed? Thus we crammed two meetings in yesterday.

The first was with Ann Basye and her mother Mary Alice Johnson Basye. We met them in the family’s over one hundred year old farm house. If that wasn’t perfect enough, workers were outside busily restoring the accompanying barn. Pictures, stories, wonderful people, all reasons we keep not stopping! It was a fabulous meeting and we got some great pictures. But one of our favorites has to be this one:

Guess where that is. It is inside the Carnation Creamery! The perfect accompaniment to our cover photo! We also got some great family and farm shots. We can’t thank the Basyes enough for inviting us into their home and being so warm, welcoming and generous.

Next we dashed over to Concrete to meet with Skagit County Historian Dan Royal. We got to swap stories about the struggles of book writing/compiling. He recently worked on “Bridgeside: Selected Stores of Dick Fallis Skagit County Historian” (we happily purchased two copies of our own, if you are interested, the book is being sold at the Skagit County Historical Museum in La Conner) and is currently finishing up a MASSIVE Skagit County genealogy project that will be a two volume collection. It would have been worth the trip simply to meet Dan and get copies of his latest book, but we got a few nice photos from him too.

To sum up, a great day! But at some point we simply must curb our obsession.

That Wasn’t Two Weeks Already?

Just noticed that the last post was over two weeks ago! As our final deadline approaches time is apparently speeding up exponentially! Sadly, no information came in about our mystery folks. But we have had some successes of late. We had a great meeting with Mike of Mike and Jean’s Berry Farm. There was also a lot to be learned at the Skagit Valley College Library. And tomorrow we have two meetings set that might be amazing—keeping our fingers crossed.

There has also been a flurry of writing. The book introduction and intros for chapters 1-5 have been penned and sent to our publisher. We are praying they are good enough to not need many edits.

Meanwhile the PR wheels are spinning. We might be making an appearance at an upcoming event in downtown Mount Vernon, but before committing we want to see if Arcadia’s PR department can help us. If it all comes together we’ll be sure to make an announcement!

Long story short, the book is our paramount priority. We’ve got a hard push before us, but once it is over it is over. Then we can get back to fun blogging.