How Sultan got its name

It must certainly strike out-of-state readers as odd that we live in a town called Sultan. How did that happen, here in the midst of all of these Scandinavian timberfolk? Well, there are a couple of different answers to that.

First off, it turns out that Washington State has almost as many weird town names per square mile as Texas does. My personal favorites are Vader, the sister towns of Sappho and Beaver, and (of course) Humptulips. There's also a town called Zillah, which only counts because the local First Church of God decided to stop fighting the snickers that inevitably occurred whenever anyone referred to them as "First Church of God, Zillah." The church now sports a large metal mutant lizard statue bearing cross and Bible. But I digress.

When white settlers started moving into the Skykomish River valley, they encountered a Native American by the name of Tseult'd. The only problem was that none of the white settlers could actually say "Tseult'd," so they used the closest pronunciation they could manage. Then they tossed in a Christian name for good measure, and Tseult'd became known as Sultan John.

The river where Sultan John did most of his fishing became known as the Sultan River by association. Later, when a logging town was put in where the Sultan and Skykomish Rivers met, the town was named Sultan after the river. So there's no connection at all between the town's name and the Middle East. Nevertheless, the city limit signs are written in mock-Arabic script, and the local high school's sports teams are known as the Sultan Turks. I myself have referred to the hydroelectric dam up the Sultan River as "where the Sultan's turbines are kept."

In a town park, about fifty or sixty yards from the Sultan River, stands a bronze statue of Tseult'd. It's clumsily done, certainly, but at least they got his name right.

The New Era Dawns

Hello, and welcome to the blog!

In 1996 or so, I published my first personal Web site. I'd seen a few such sites posted by others (notably Harry Nilsson's son Zak) and decided to give it a try myself. In my case, the personal Web site would be a place to share my photography with my friends and family without the unpleasant side effect of burying them all in unwanted prints. In addition, my site usually had a comment or two about whatever was going on in my life.

The site suddenly became an important tool of communication when my wife Kim became pregnant. Posting ultrasound pictures was a new idea at the time, but one that I co-opted gladly. This gave the out-of-state component of our families (all of them, that is) to see what was going on and read our reactions. Finally, when our daughter Anya was born, I made sure that first pictures were posted to my Web site as soon as I could get them ready. (While I was completing the posting, I got email from my Uncle Mike asking why my site wasn't working properly—seems he had my mom at his house and they assumed I'd be putting up the pictures.)

Shortly after Anya was born (Spring 1998), I restructured the Web site for easier navigation—and easier maintenance, as I was updating it frequently with baby news and more pictures. In the new edition of the Web site, there was a separate Personal News page (alias Message of the Day) where I would communicate the latest information and images. I kept the Personal News page updated regularly for about four years and have updated it sporadically since then.

So why the history lesson? Well, blogging wasn't widely known (at least not under that term or in its current form) in 1998, but I was doing it without knowing it. Unfortunately, in recent years, I haven't been able to maintain the Personal News page as often as I'd like. So ... effective immediately, the Personal News page is retired. It will carry a link to this blog, and that's all.

Why the title? Well, when Anya was two and a half years old, we bought a house in the town of Sultan, Washington. We found out pretty quickly that most people who don't live in Sultan don't know much about it, and out-of-state readers of this blog will know considerably less. So I'll be adding a few posts to fill everyone in as we go.

I hope you'll check in from time to time to see how things are going. So once again, welcome, and as I was fond of saying to close the Personal News page ... watch this space!