Free "Vanished" Exhibit at BHSU

We’re a bit late in posting this item, but it appears to be well worth pursuing for Yellowstone Place residents who can visit this exhibit.

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Most of us are aware that many Japanese-Americans were interned in camps across the country during World War II.

Less well known is that fact that the U.S. Government interned some 15,000 German-American civilians, including citizens and 4,058 Latin-American Germans brought here and later exchanged for Nazi-held American citizens. Perhaps the least known chapter of American WWII history, its legacy has implications for today. Housed in a school bus converted into a mobile museum with its own 21-seat theater, VANISHED illustrates this unknown story through narrative texts, artifacts and multi-media.

The exhibit will be in Spearfish – near the Black Hills State University Student Center, I believe – from 10 a.m. to 1p.m., tomorrow (Thursday, April 24th). It’s open to the public free of charge.

Storm season is here

This week (April 21-25) is Severe Weather Preparedness Week – a good time for all Yellowstone Place residents to consider what they would and should do during times of severe weather.

If you don’t have a NOAA Weather Radio, they’re available at most retail electronics stores, and prices have come down markedly in the last few years. These are excellent devices that can wake you up in the middle of the night, if need be, to alert you to impending severe weather.

If you’re at home when severe weather strikes, here are a few suggestions offered by emergency management folks:

· Go to the basement or small interior room on the ground floor, such as a closet, bathroom or hallway · Get under the stairwell or a sturdy table and cover yourself with pillows or blankets · Avoid the corners and exterior walls of the house · Stay away from windows and do not open the windows.

A few web sites worth visiting for further information include the Rapid City office of the National Weather Service, and the South Dakota Office of Emergency Management, as well as the South Dakota Department of Health.

If you have questions or desire further information, you can call the Lawrence County Emergency Management office in Deadwood at 605-578-2122.

Our Neighborhood Handyman?

We thought, because of her invitation to be a member of the Handyman Club of America, that we might enlist good neighbor Lorraine Collins to be our YPA "handyman." Perhaps that might be a bit premature, as Lorraine suggests in her recent column for the Black Hills Pioneer, which she has also graciously allowed us to re-print in our Black Hills Monitor blog site. As you might expect, her narrative contains a good message!

Board Meeting Reminder

No April Fool's Joke!

There was a bit of excitement Tuesday morning (4/1/08) when suspicious animal tracks were spotted in the neighborhood. We found them behind #309 and suspected they were made by either a very large dog or a mountain lion. We snapped a few photos, looked on-line for a bit of guidance, but finally took the photos to the nearby U.S. Forest Service office.

That’s Karen Miller (below right) looking at the tracks behind the Riley residence at #313. The tracks (below left) measured six inches across and eight inches in length.

The Forest Service biologist indicated that the tracks could have been made by a mountain lion, but the photos were not conclusive. Upon returning to the neighborhood, we spotted a couple of local Spearfish police officers inspecting the tracks – and they had no doubt that these were mountain lion tracks.

We followed the tracks from lots just west of Yellowstone Place, crossing the walking path to the front of Chesnuts, in front of the Garhart and Jones residences, and then heading west along the irrigation canal and out of the neighborhood.

If you'd like to know more about identifying mountain lion tracks, we found Cooper's Rocky Mountain Lion Sactuary site among the best.

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We often have deer wandering into our yards – and into the field just north of Yellowstone Place – and that fact apparently wasn’t lost on the mountain lion. Let's hope this is a rarity!