Skiing sillyness

I often like to tie my posts into larger research or historical contexts, or to publish a post on a significant anniversary that the post discusses. Sometimes I’ll take a deep dive into a mystery photo or object to see if I can discover some previously lost context. And then there’s today’s post. I suppose this can be a new category of post—silly things that make me laugh.

Without further ado, here’s the photo that made me laugh today:

Yep. That’s my grandmother Dorothy dressed as a South Seas skier. I don’t know if bamboo poles were standard back then, or whether she went the extra tiki mile for this outfit.

This photo was taken just a few months after Dorothy married Vernon Black on December 18, 1940.

Mt. Rainier Olympia Ski Club costume race, 1941.

Dorothy Black, Harry + Nell Mawson

Sure, I could try to make this into a post on the history of recreational skiing on Mr. Rainier, or on early mid-century Polynesian cultural appropriation. But I’m not going to do that. Some things are better left as they were found.

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