Hattie's Web

Feeling at home in our second home on Leary Street, Ballard, Seattle

This is one of the banners on the senior home across the street. This woman seems quite happy in spite of the fact that half her body is missing. I tried to take more pix out my window yesterday, but there wasn't enough light for them to come out well. Cafe Fiore, also across the street,  was very busy, with bikers, moms with babies in strollers, dog owners and dog walkers seated outdoors, runners, skateboarders and other urban denizens enjoying the ambience. Fun to sit at my window working on my new computer and refreshing my eyes from time to time with the passing parade.

Yesterday was kids, kids, kids. We went to Golden Gardens, a close by beach which the girls love. It has a playground, too, but the major attraction is the ice cream stand. I'm glad they enjoy this place and have not been spoiled by trips to Disneyland and other such overpriced attractions for the young. They love to draw, paint and write stories. They think Terry and I are very funny.

The grandson has settled down a lot, and we have really been enjoying his company. He likes to sit and snuggle, and you don't hear me complaining about that. And the baby is trying very hard to walk. She is quite ambitious.

So it's a full grandparently experience. Four grandkids. I never thought we'd have grandchildren at all, so we are beyond thrilled at how wonderful they are.

I think the grandchild who did these pictures has talent.  (They all do, of course. Not picking favorites here.)  She is six.  I love the flowers, and her portrait of Martin Luther King  is very expressive.  She and her older sister are getting good educations at a  public school, even though the classes are very large and the facility is in need of paint and repairs. It is a comfortable and friendly place for them. On Tuesday there will be a music recital at the school, which I'm looking forward to.

Place making, the new thing?

 

To clarify, quickly: No one born in the 1980s or since wants a pension. We don’t want to mess with the pressure of working at one place long enough to earn one.

What we do want is to work in an interesting city with cool things to do, beautiful neighborhoods and a vibrant downtown. But you know that. That is, if you have eyes, ears or follow the news, you’ve heard that Michigan is super obsessed with place-making.

 

From Nancy Nall's Facebook page.

And not a word about racial injustice or the ongoing wars and the security state. Which she, personally, is not responsible for, of course. It's just that I think she has been sold a bill of goods and is losing out on the real advantages of being young in favor of being a wage slave with no security. Of course she is worried about her future, but she has been propagandized out of demanding her basic rights as a worker.  If she  were a true free spirit she would be out there taking real chances in life, as only very young people can. 

I really admire Tiffany Edwards, for instance, who has settled in Puna, runs a news blog  and is publishing an alternative newspaper, helping her husband run his dive shop and bringing up her two kids.  She fights for her community every day of her life.  It is not easy. She has made enemies, been in danger even, been sued, but she is a real stand-up person.

So what about place making, anyway? This is the first time I've heard that expression.

 

In Seattle: Reuse, refurbish, recycle!!!

It seems like more and more exclamation points are called for these days. Vehicles are always pulling up at the old folks' home across the way (Is it even PC to say old folks' home? Well, what else is it? Old folks live there, many even older than we are.) Some vehicles are labelled as food trucks. Others are not labeled. I see men carrying out large boxes and loading them into their vans. In this age of recycling, I have my suspicions.

Terry is watching the trucks come and go as he installs software on a refurbished desktop computer he bought for us to use at the condo.  It was only $170.00 and is a nice looking machine!

One thing we have learned in our long, long lives is that you have to be really nice to office workers  and receptionists, because they are the ones who run the place. The receptionist at our condo was being a little cool to us, so I engaged her in conversation about a relative of hers who had some odd adventures on the Big Island. Terry gave her a pound of his hand-picked and roasted special blend coffee. Now she buzzes me in with a friendly smile, and she let us borrow a dolly to bring the computer up to our apartment.

I have got to say that the dreariness around old age chaps my hide. Come on! It's like you have to whiten your teeth, bungee jump  and have sex every day or else just shoot yourself. In other words make a horse's ass out of yourself with strenuous attempts to do what young people supposedly do. Alternatively, you can live for others. Whoopdie doo! If proscribing pleasure and that much maligned word, fun, for women of all ages is the general notion, it's worst for old women. The local alternative rag I'm reading is full of complaints about older women in public places hanging out,  laughing and talking, instead of what? Cleaning the toilets? I reserve the right to please myself and even be downright useless in my old age.  No one makes Soylent Green out of me!

Now to go and check out my "new," lightning-fast computer!!!

 

The latest sound-Daft Punk - Get Lucky

A nice retro Euro disco 80's groove, which I really like. It soothes these old ears instead of assaulting them,  and it is becoming a huge hit.  This will be a big favorite with my grandson, too.

Warning: Don't listen to it more than once, because it is an earworm.

 

Those disco days in Europe were so much fun! 

Doing last minute stuff and then it's out the door and on my way to Seattle.

Messing around on the internet

The legacy of Tailhook

Also in Video »

• Small-batch pulled pork
• Artfully chic in Chelsea

Does anyone at the New York Times edit nonsense like the above and give some thought to how it looks, or are online readers simply supposed to block senseless juxtapositions out of their consciousness?

A friend of mine is pulling out of Facebook, because she is getting bizarre ads, and her friends are upset, thinking she is responsible for them. I just got a message from the late Helene Hale, requesting that I look at a Fox News program. Helene, in addition to being deceased, was a progressive politician.

I am annoyed at a lot of the Facebook and Twitter stuff, which is why I keep my contacts few and select. I'm always getting friend and follow requests that I ignore. These are good services if you keep them under control.

And my blog spammers might as well know that I am not in the market for handbags, cosmetics or  Viagra.

But I have to say it is wonderful in Hilo, with the vog gone, as the strong trade winds  have returned and blown the stuff away.

 

Various matters

One thing about doing ceramics is that whether they are good or bad you are stuck with them.  Luckily, I have enough yard space to put some of my failed pieces around, where they seem to fit in and add something to odd corners of the yard, such as this spot that gets very little sun.

We are heading out for Seattle again. Can't wait to see those grand-kids.  I bought these for the youngest, who is cruising and may even progress to toddler status while we are there. Remember when people used to bronze baby shoes? Would that work with Crocs? Anyway, I could not resist the allure of Mary Jane style Crocs.

My son in law's sister is in labor right now, so there is a lot of family excitement in the air.

And I have been thinking very hard about a brilliant article in the new Nation Magazine by Corey Robin, Nietzsche's Magical Children,  that explains the ideology of the right better than anything else I've ever read.  It names the culprits and shows how they are able to rationalize every kind of cruelty towards others as long as they feel it serves their purposes, which they confuse with higher, universal truths. Theirs is a well-thought out system of logic, really sophistry, based on the work of Nietzsche, Hayak, and others. At the heart of it is the idea that the world and its goods belong to a special ultra-creative and individualistic class of people, most of them of superior intelligence, often very physically attractive as well. The weak must serve these strong, exceptional beings or else go to the wall. "The working stiff is a being of limited horizons, perfectly content to let things be as they are," instead of reaching for glory as his superiors do. Their labor will be guided by the "know how" of these demi-gods. This is a BELIEF system which warps reality to such a degree that many have bought into it, indulging themselves in self-hagiography or agreeing to accept their lowly state. What a perfect ideology for a society divided into an upper and a lower class of people, the way Romney would like it, for instance.

So: off to take the cat to the kennel and get myself a haircut. 

Aloha for now.

 

Orchids

Here are some of mine. Don't know much about species, except in the most general way. This is a cattleya alliance hybrid, I am pretty sure. The flower  shape is especially pretty, and I like the way the top sepal stands up. I have looked around for a pic of it in my orchid books and on the internet and can't find it. I buy orchids I think are pretty, and often they are unidentified, like this one.

These are full sun-loving vandas. They are "terate," which means that their leaves are thin and pencil-shaped. Enlarge to see the reflective surface of the petals, which is what gives orchids their magic sheen.*

And these are epidendrum alii orchids; they like full sun, too.

*On my blog you can enlarge the pic and then you can use the circle -and- cross cursor to examine details. That's why I stick with Type Pad. They let me put full-size pics up and as many as I want. If anyone should want to use any pics on my blog, go ahead, but inform me and give me credit.

Hostages to fortune

My sister posted this  essay by Lewis Lapham on Facebook.  It explains why I do not celebrate Mother's Day (or Father's Day). For us to romanticize with an overflow of emotion the dire atmosphere of our family would be a disservice to ourselves. And at my age who is alive to care what we say anyway?

Talking to my oldest friend yesterday, we reflected on the way our peculiar parents tried so hard to do the 50's mom dad the kids and dog thing and just couldn't manage to pull it off. That way of life was only bearable with large amounts of alcohol and adultery.   A lot of us had been born by accident, and our parents resented the restrictions we placed on their freedom by existing. They felt trapped. Of course we had to rebel. And we were so happy to get away from them and become independent, as we already were in our early 20's. No matter how hard it was, it was duck soup compared to our growing up years. They were happier too, once we were gone. They got divorced and my father remarried and my mother made a new life for herself.

I think one of the reasons parents are better than they used to be is that, for the most part, these days children born are wanted children. I never felt that my father, in particular, got much out of being a parent. Perhaps if we had been more compliant...A man had to have a family then, but the role restrictions on wives and children were severe. My mother and we girls weren't up to it.  I laugh when people say families used to be better than they are today.  Not my family!

Chris Hayes is powering up, getting stronger and stronger. He had Nancy Pelosi on tonight.  I do think Obama re: Bengazi should have refrained from saying "There's no there there." That is what Gertrude Stein said about her home town, Oakland, California. The citizens of Oakland could be offended (only kidding).

Great weekend

After an absence of a few years, I re-joined the Hilo Orchid Society. It seemed more friendly, with fewer of the professional and semi-professional orchid growers and more of my favorite kind of orchid fanciers, the talented amateurs. A friend of mine was there, too, a League of Women Voters member that I like a lot, and she was glad to see me.

One of the members gave an interesting lecture on the native habitats of species plants. There are three main growing areas here on the Island: tropical (where I am, at sea level), intermediate, and cool zones, depending on how high up the mountain you go. I'm in the tropical zone, Mountain View is in the intermediate zone, and Volcano at 4,000+ feet  is in the cool zone. The speaker talked about hybridization, too, and how that has extended the range of some orchid species.

I knew or had discovered some things on my own that he was talking about and was glad to extend my knowledge. I asked him two questions: One: was what the best way to fertilize orchids? He said every week with a weak fertilizer solution. It does not matter what kind of fertilizer you use, he added. They like a constant small supply of food, because that is how they nourish themselves in the wild. Two: Will old plants bloom well, or do they have a finite life span? He said they will bloom forever if you take proper care of them.

I am inspired to take better care of my collection now!

Thanks to proper treatment of my heart condition, I am back in the swing of things. Yesterday we went up to Volcano with cuz and her husband and met our friend, Marta, up there. We did a hike through the bird park, which was full of twittering native birds. They have been doing a lot of pruning, removing invasive species, cutting down dead trees and rotten limbs, and planting samplings of native trees and plants.

We found this strange green tree fungus. Marta says that must be its color, ie it isn't something growing on the fungus.

We saw some very bad vog damage, too, in the bird park. Volcano Village is above the eruptions, so when the vog does come through it's at ground level and can scorch plants, so a lot of plants in Marta's yard got scorched, too. 

Marta had some beautiful orchids blooming in her house, and I took this pic of one which was sitting on a table that was covered with a pretty shawl.

This inspired me to take a photo of a magnolia blossom that Robert gave me. It has a wonderful lemony/sweet smell.

When I posted a pic a while back of the Mauna Loa weather station, I was quietly wondering to myself if the vog was affecting the readings of CO2 up there. The volcano pumps out tons of the stuff. I don't know how high it rises. I wasn't going to mention this, because climate change is a reality, but Marta mentioned this, too. What if some clever climate change denier decides they have been exaggerating the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere? I'm assuming everyone knows that measurements of CO2 up there have passed the 400ppm milestone. You can see that it doesn't exactly look clear up there.

(Embiggen for a better view of the station.)

I figured out about the spam filter, so now everything works, goddess be praised. Comments may be routed into the filter, but I can just go through and post them now.

Vog is gone!

In celebration, I offer this:

 

I never said I was worthwhile!