Fennel seeds and Blackened Trees

We've now seen the Sonoma Valley Regional Park, which was hard hit by fire, in all four seasons as the one year anniversary of the fire is coming up in less than a week. There have been a lot of articles in the paper this weekend about how the people and the town of Santa Rosa are managing to rebuild.  We decided to take the dogs there this morning and the lack of color caused the big fire scars to stand out in stark contrast to the parched grasses and burned trees, many of which have new shoots coming up from their bases.

When Anne and Harold were here last week they brought a recording of a PBS documentary on the way the town of Albany, Oregon raised itself from another kind of economic crisis. When the local lumber mill closed, the main source of employment for the town was gone and the town fell on hard times. Many people moved elsewhere in search of employment leaving behind the elderly and retired. A local woman came up with the seemingly far fetched idea of building a carrousel because she remembered riding on one as a child. Anne and Harold brought us the DVD* because we had been with them to visit the workshop in Albany where the local woman's vision was realized.

Anne and Harold's friend and neighbor, Carl, was the head engineer for the daunting process of reassembling the mechanism, built in 1909  from a random pile of rusting and rotting parts. He said it was like doing a puzzle with no picture. Machinists, builders and engineers were found to work from Carl's drawings to restore the original mechanism to turn the platform and cause the animals to go up and down.

 A carver came forward to carve many of the animals and train other volunteers to help. A designer, working with individuals who paid to sponsor an animal helped them design it and oversaw  its painting. Looking at a group of women sitting around a table working on the intricate painting of each animal,  I thought that many of them would have been sitting alone and lonely with nothing to do without this project. Now, together, they are creating truly unique and wonderful works of art.

The group also raised enough money to build a building for the carrousel, workshops and a museum. They opened to the public with 30 of the total of 52 animals being produced. As new ones are finished, (the process for each animal takes a year and a half) they will be added to the carrousel.

The vision of one woman has not only resurrected a  town which had lost its main industry, but also brought a whole community together. It is quite a story, and a wonderful example of thinking outside the box....

*In extras is a picture from the cover of the DVD of just one of the animals.