How can it happen here, local man asks. Could all those guns around just possibly be a factor?
We are doing our child care stint.
So exhausted! Only kidding. Our granddaughters are more grown up than we are
Terry found this aerial view of Maya Lin's amphitheater.
We are going to ignore the hoo ha this weekend. I highly recommend this to everyone.
I love tunnels! On the way from Seattle to the Washington Coast:
Our old friend Debby put us up for a couple of nights at her place on Long Beach. She is a treasure house of knowledge about the Pacific Northwest, with a strong interest in the history of the area. We took a picnic lunch out to Cape Disappointment (named as such by Captain Cook, of course) [No, apparently by someone named Meares] where there were a lot of rollers on the beach called Waikiki Beach.
Note: I was tired when I wrote this and forgot to mention the central role of Native Americans in the story of the west.
This blog has some information on the geography and history of the area.
Wouldn't Anselm Kiefer go crazy here, with so much driftwood to arrange!
We also visited the park at the end of the Lewis and Clark Trail. Debby was a little cool about the place, I think partly because she has brought visitors there so many times and also because she would like more facts and clearer interpretation about this historic location instead of what could seem like the rather obscure tribute to the explorers and pioneers of the west by Maya Lin, her Confluence Project. I'm a fool for Maya Lin, though. Part of my enthusiasm is because the story of the west is never settled in my mind by mere facts and figures or even "stories." Lin's indirect, "artistic" approach appeals to me, although I can understand why people like Debby, whose forebears were actual pioneers of the Pacific Northwest, would prefer something more direct in the way of a tribute to them. And yet I, at any rate, have an emotional response to Lin's work.
I was very pleased with her deceptively simple amphitheater made out of Trex, which turns a meadow area into a wonderful venue for outdoor performances, in the most economical way. I think this is very sophisticated! The ocean is in the background, lost in the glare.
On the way back to Seattle, we went by the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant that never went into operation; WHOOPS was the perpetrator of the fiasco that was the second largest municipal bond default in history.
Still there, never demolished. I hate the way we build big stuff in this country and just leave it there this way if we find no use for it. Maybe that's why I like Lin's work. It's modest. A walkway is useful. A shady grove is useful. A simple amphitheater is useful. A big old stupid cooling tower just sitting there is useless.
I can't believe how good the weather has been. This seems to be the best time of the year to visit the Northwest.
Uploaded from my phone! So easy! We are in Ocean Park, WA, on a lovely cool morning
We have been having some adventures in public transportation. Going to the Whitehead event, we shared the bus with a man who declaimed upon the subject of armpits. He exhorted us to join in a discussion as to armpit smell as compared to other bad smells. On the way home, as I mentioned in a comment, a couple of bros were harassing all the women on the bus. I asked my daughter if this was unusual, and she said no. She hardly notices such things, she says.It's just part of the urban scene. My friend Debby, who I just talked to, refers to this as the "underbelly of Seattle," the odd and sometimes crude or even dangerous behavior of people on the bus, that her son also observed when he lived here. She says Portland is not that way. Urban types know to keep their heads down and not to react, I guess. Anyway, the busses are usually packed, so obviously the oddballs don't stop normal people from using public transport. And of course oddballs need to get around, too.
Earlier that day we did some high end shopping at University Village. It's very nice, similar to Stanford Shopping Center. The salespeople were all dressed better than me and had better manners, too and were, of course, much younger and cuter. I do try not to be a hick from the sticks. A toy store and a clothes store painlessly extracted a fair but not excessive amount of money from me. I noticed that my daughters and grandchildren are so accustomed to all this fancy merchandise that they don't overreact to it. Even the littlest one was not too greedy.
Toy store and kid's hair salon:
A little boy was freaking out about his first haircut.
We finished off our shopping spree with lunch at an outstanding sushi bar: decor A, food, A, service: spotty but good natured; price, reasonable.
They even had starter chopsticks for the kiddies. We did a lot of damage here.
I must be frank. It is pleasant, every once in a while, to enjoy the emollient atmosphere surrounding affluent people.
I am reaching the finale of Whitehead's book, The Underground Railroad. It did seem to lose momentum in the middle, but it's picked up speed again. The characters are symbols, rather than people, and the tone of it is cool and distanced and intellectualized. There are good reasons for treating the subject matter of this book in such a fashion; it would be too hard to take otherwise. Will review seriously and have something by the end of the week about it.
Off to Long Beach, WA, for a couple of days.
This new book of his, The Underground Railroad, is a sensation. Really enjoyed the event this evening.
He sold out in L.A. too. This is one popular book and not just because of Oprah's endorsement. It is so original. More to say on Monday.
From someone's tweet
Terry went to one of those junky used electronics stores in Seattle that you have to fight your way into and found me a scorching fast reconditioned hp computer for $130.00 with Windows 7! Nice to have all this computer power here.
It is very pleasant and warm this evening. Nice fall weather. A welcome break from the unreal humidity Hilo has been having lately.
Hilo has just been hammered by severe thunder and lightning and pounding rain. It even hailed at Volcano Village! The storms are getting more frequent and ever wilder, as climate change accelerates, and the Pacific region has been hit very hard this year.
This "cloud cam" video is amazing!
This is supertyphoon Meranti. The tiny island of Itbayat has 3,000 inhabitants. Could they even survive? There is no word yet on their fate.
And it went on to pound Taiwan and Mainland China. And the season is not over until December.
The woman at the office where Fred the cat is being boarded called to inform me that he is OK. He has been ill but is now much better. She told me the storm was very bad and frightening to the dogs, with all the thunder, and that it was still raining.
