I can't assume that everyone necessarily knows about / remembers the eruption of Mt. St. Helens (in southwestern Washington State, USA), but I hope you can read the print on this post card. Maybe your browser will let you either zoom in on it or click on it to get a larger image. At least that's what I'm hoping...
When Mt. St. Helens erupted Seattle got very little of the ash, despite our relative proximity to the mountain, because the winds were going easterly. But my youngest brother was on a trip with the school band in eastern Washington and they ended out being stranded there because the ash got into engines making driving virtually impossible. So I mainly remember that a school put them up in the school gym. So as far as excitement (if that's what you want to call it) goes, he was the main one in the family to be affected by the eruption.
One thing that the eruption did, though, was put Washington state on the map. This was before Starbucks and Microsoft, you understand, so a lot of people didn't know much about the state or about Seattle. So a couple weeks after the eruption when I went on a summer mission trip (this was after my sophomore year in college) back east to work with Russian emigrants, they knew something about Seattle, and wanted to know about the eruption from the standpoint of someone closer to it. So that's mainly how it affected me.
This post card is one that was actually sent to me, not one that I bought specifically for my collection. On the back mom writes to me in Russia suggesting that I could maybe use it (the post card) in my teaching. She knew that I sometimes used my post cards as "realia", real life teaching objects, in my English as a Foreign Language teaching. One thing I sometimes did was give students a few (2 to 4) cards and then ask them to write a short story based on something they imagine in the post cards. Or, for more beginning students, I might give each of them a card and have each one write a sentence about their new post card, then pass the card on to the next person so they each wrote something about each post card. Other times I might use them to teach vocabulary, such as building types, professions, animals, etc. I'm not sure whether I ever used this particular post card or not, but it was nice that mom thought of that.
Another thing, though, that I remember that is sort of distantly related to the eruption is that in 1981 I selected a glass ornament with Mt. St. Helens ash as one of the hostess gifts for the family that I stayed with during my trip to Nantes, France as a member of the inaugural Seattle-Nantes Sister City Association citizen exchange. I'm getting ahead of myself here though.
I guess that's enough for today, and you're gradually learning a little about who I am, and hopefully you might be learning some other interesting tidbits as well.
Mt. St. Helens didn't affect Seattle too much, and Tropical Storm Bonnie seems pretty tame from where I am today too. I hope things are okay where you are, as a bad storm or volcano eruption aren't things you even wish on your worst enemies.
~ Meg
