Monday 9 November 2009: Chilly Willy

When you’re really pregnant, I mean maybe days away from the big event, your feet still look the same in shoes.

 

Friday 6 November 2009: Buy Olympia

Buy Olympia’s office/warehouse space in Portland:

Thursday 5 November 2009: Rush rush

“Getting a swine flu shot,” dad says, “is turning out to be harder than getting you a Cabbage Patch Kid for Christmas in the 80s.”

Wednesday 4 November 2009: Transubstantiation

Some Christians say that Christ mysteriously hovers around the bread and wine (if you’re not, say, Catholic or Lutheran or Episcopal or Eastern Orthodox) but doesn’t embody it. But if you are Catholic or the like, you probably believe that Christ actually hops into each loaf and bottle after being blessed, literally embodying the elements.

I went to a Lutheran high school and got in a fight with Mr. LeBow, my history teacher, in the middle of class one day about this. Why shouldn’t any true believer be allowed to take communion with any church body? That confused me to pieces. It’s because, according to Mr. LeBow, if I did I might be damning myself as an unconfirmed member of his church that believes Christ isn’t a symbol in the wine and bread, but the actual bloody wine and fleshy bread. When he said that my cheeks turned red hot. I was an outsider right then, at that school, when the whole reason I took Jesus in my heart is because I believe he wants everyone in his.

And I still believe that if Jesus is real, of course he can swoop over thousands of stale loaves, millions of tiny pale biscuits each Sunday and make them body. And even though I’m sure he prefers turning wine into blood he can do it to tiny plastic grape juice cups, too. It’s like every Sunday a million miles of his veins and skin covers the whole planet, turning us into something else entirely cooler and more hopeful than we realize.

Tuesday 3 November 2009: Magpies

Well done video on Nikki McClure:

*Thanks for sending Elle*

Monday 2 November 2009: MississippiAlbinaAlbertaBurnside

Drove through all kinds of weather to get to Portland Saturday. Once we arrived it was tame and gentle outside, quite right for hot chocolate, then even warm Halloween night.

Friday 30 October 2009: Almost Already November

Almost time to buy the 2010 Nikki McClure wall calendar…

Thursday 29 October 2009: Trick or Treat

Off to Portland for the weekend with high hopes of stopping at Sweet Pea for banana bread, brunch, something or another:

Wednesday 28 November 2009: H1N1 Fever!

Being pregnant and considered “high risk” for catching swine flu and it, you know, killing me, my parents are so worried that I’ll contract the virus–the “high-knee” as my dad calls it–it’s become completely nutty. At dinner last night my dad changed his shirt after riding the bus, even though he had a coat on, washed his hands three times before the meal, and made everyone put a napkin over a loaf of bread before cutting.

It’s these sorts of antics that convince me I’m a goner. That irony will win, that of course the high-knee will be mine. Which makes me really, really want a blue knee high right now. Five weeks and counting.

Tuesday 27 October 2009: Not Steven Patrick!

Have you heard?

British singer Morrissey was hospitalized overnight after reportedly collapsing on stage during a concert, medical officials said Sunday…

Monday 26 October 2009: Greengray

Signs of life in Upper Queen Anne:

Friday 23 October 2009: Lemon

I dreamt D left last night– don’t know why, probably reacting to recent news that friends are sick or displaced.

I was in my old house, in the little pink bathroom, crouched below the sink. I put my toothbrush in this plastic cup with a circus dog face molded on the front and felt, more clearly than most times in waking life, a thick blanket of abandonment and futurlessness.

When I woke up and felt D’s back next to me it was warm, moving away from me and close again.

Thursday 22 October 2009: Very Pregnant

A kid working for Greenpeace tried to stop me on the street today by saying, “You like babies! Do you like baby seals?”

A little while later, a cop mumbled, out of the blue, “congrats, maam” as I walked by.

Signs that, in case I’m in denial some days, it’s clear to everyone that I am muy prego.

Wednesday 21 October 2009: Goodish News

I thought Daylight Savings had to be this weekend, but it turns out we have a little bit longer until, presto, it’s dark in Seattle at 4:30. The fun begins Sunday, November 1 at 2 a.m.

Tuesday 20 October 2009: Killer Slayer Art Show!

Went to the Old, Weird America exhibit at the Frye this past weekend and completely loved it. The show originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston and is on its final stop, in Seattle through January. Better yet, the museum offers free admission.

(I almost wrote next, “Killer way to spend a rainy Saturday.” Who am I kidding? I’ve never called anything killer before, but it naturally came out of my head. Next I’ll be saying, “That slayed me.” But truthfully, the show kind on was, well, killer. Ouch.)

Monday 19 October 2009: Vino Rojo

Thursday 15 October 2009: Saw him at the market, buying tarragon

I bougt my mom a bottle of tarragon-infused vinegar from Pier 1 in the late 80s. She kept it on the counter as a decorative display for maybe a decade without ever opening it. It’s all shock and awe to me that you can actually make tarragon vinegar that looks this fresh and aromatic:

photo Misty Martinez

and knowing Misty at Lemon Spring tastes even better.

That’s it. I’m headed home to make a batch and next week I’m dousing it over a mound of crispy yukon golds straight from the broiler.

*I’m taking a vacation day Friday, more Weatherspoon Monday!

Wednesday 14 November 2009: Clearwater Revivial

A few years ago, I peeled a star anise into shreds by the same Indiana river

I used to dream as a kid would swallow me up in a bath of chocolate milk.

Sitting down to dinner tonight, I fixed a salad, plucked mint from its stem

while you set the knives together so they touched at the tip.

If family is a bridge from myself to my mother’s mother, let’s be bridge builders in reverse

so all-of-a-sudden the water moves backwards, turns to spiced milk at the bed where we meet for a stiff drink.

Tuesday 13 October 2009: Boring

Coffee break:

Monday 12 October 2009: Places you should go in Europe

From McSweeney’s: The Door to Hell: Paris, France? Shaken, Not Stirred: Monaco? Tell me more.

Friday 9 Obtober 2009: Whole Ranges

I drew this a couple of years ago, imagining how I’d feel when I had a baby someday. But at the time it seemed silly, grandiose.

I’m less than eight weeks away from having a son, and coming across the drawing again I’m surprised at how well it matches the optimism and anticipation I feel just before meeting this person my body made out of feathers and threads.

Thursday 8 October 2009: Summerfall

Wednesday 7 October 2009: Dust Bowl

D just missed a huge dust storm in Eastern Washington while he was driving from Seattle to Idaho Sunday. Cliff Mass explains conditions for the storm. Reminds me that we live in the Wild West!:

Extraordinary winds struck eastern Washington on Sunday, with 30-40 mph winds being commonplace, with gusts reaching nearly 60 mph around Wenatchee and vicinity. The result a major duststorm that closed down I90 for a while and resulted in numerous multicar accidents, sending 11 people to the hospital. Visibilities had dropped to less than five feet at times and the powerful winds knocked down many of the apples still on the trees near Wenatchee. It was reported that the ground at some orchards had turned red with apples.

Image via NASA MODIS satellites

Tuesday 6 October 2009: Rest and Measure

Eight weeks till:

Monday 5 October 2009: Metal Heart

Reading Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America. She used a word in one of the collection’s early stories that melted into my head and keeps repeating: homefulness

Friday October 2 2009: Genius of Water

On Friday nights in high school I’d drive to the Lutheran seminary in my hometown and listen to R.E.M. tapes with my friends. We’d sit around a big, empty courtyard near half a dozen little fountains lit by yellow spotlights.

Voices talking somewhere in the house, late spring and you’re drifting off to sleep with your teeth in your mouth.

A big lake sat next to the grounds near half-empty dormitories. “That’s where the lonely seminarians live,” my high school boyfriend would say.

A security guard on hourly rounds walks by and we stop the tape until he passes. Sit still in the middle of everything, surrounded by fountain and dorm lights and all that water.

Thursday October 1 2009: Jubilee Farm

October is officially here. That means it’s time for a winding, back road drive from Seattle to Carnation during pumpkin season at Jubilee Farm. There are a ton of U-Pick pumpkin patches, hay mazes, and farm stands selling gourds and squash in a stone’s throw from downtown Seattle, but I’ve been a regular at Jubilee for years. It’s the sort of farm where you want to help clean carrots and pour cider just because. Plus, the hourly pumpkin throw is cooler than cool.

Here’s pumpkin cowboy Miles Ellenwood at Jubilee last year:

Wednesday 30 November 2009: Run Vera Run!

My friend Kristen has spent the last many months helping to organize Run Vera Run, a 5 k run/walk on 10/11 to benefit the Vera Project, Seattle’s all-ages music and art venue. You should do this!

Run Vera Run includes:

A lovely loop around Seward Park, starting and ending at the main lawn at the base of the park.

The Official Run Vera Run Warmup: Before you run for Vera, warm yourself up with Vera co-founder Shannon Stewart, aka Inga the Ringa. Fresh off the streets of Budapest, Inga will bring you twenty minutes of the latest European aerobics fitness crazes (minus the smoking of course).

Live music by local band The Maldives

A graffiti wall painted live on-site by local artists

Complimentary massage for participants by Dr. Kristi Smith

Prizes, food and refreshments, including coffee by Caffe Vita

If I wasn’t so very pregnant I’d be the first one to sign up. Watch out for me next year!

Tuesday 29 September 2009: National Treasures

Who knows how this study can really be accurate, but it’s interesting if nothing else. A group of researchers at Kansas State University released a map of national vices, charting which parts of the country are the most and least steeped in each of the seven deadly sins.

Looks like Seattle is leading the way in greed (thank you Microsoft), envy (thank you gentrification), and pride (thank you moderate climate, excellent coffee and very tall mountains).

Monday 28 September 2009: Cooler than Cool

Women in their 50s in Columbia are earning a living making arty maternity dresses that grow with you, courtesy of Marisol Rodriguez:

In Skin, her limited-edition line of stylish, expandable clothing for pregnant women, she applies origami to organic cotton to break the hide-the-bulge mold of most maternity wear.

How do I place my order?

Friday 25 September 2009: Vintate Vantage

Favorite finds from my lunch break (from L to R): dental sample kit, Bakelite bangles and turtle pin, Bakelite adding machine with mint buttons, watch circle from the 50s

Thursday 24 September 2009: Sparky, Audrey, Russ

Wednesday 23 September 2009: Two Hearts Beat as One

When you’re pregnant you think about all of the women in the world who are pregnant at the very same time. You wonder how many women are due on the same day you are, how their pregnancies are going, and if they’re in the Third World how that might mean sporadic or non-existent medical care. Then you think about how crazy it is to live in the States–it’s not Canada, but still–to live here and to see the doctor every month, to hear your baby’s heart.

The sound of it is like eating Cream of Wheat on the first snowy morning or jumping into a pile of towels straight from the dryer. And you want every pregnant women everywhere to hear her baby’s heart, too.

I was surprised to read this on the Design Observer, but it seems like that may begin to be possible thanks to a new hand-cranked Freeplay fetal heart monitor:

…a fetal heart rate monitor whose robust form and hyper-simple interface are combined with sophisticated Doppler ultrasound technology that allows rural healthcare workers to track the cardiac response of babies in the womb and during birth. One minute of cranking by hand generates enough battery life for 10 minutes of use. A numerical display indicates the fetal heart rate, while an audio component amplifies the actual sound — a double indication of whether or not the baby is in distress.

Read all about it here.

Tuesday 22 September: Foxfire

Have you seen the Worst Case Scenarios Basic Survival Guides? How to survive nuclear fallout, how to catch a fish without a rod, that sort of thing. They’re fun and sort-of useful, maybe like watching Man vs. Wild.

I was leafing through Foxfire 4 on Sunday night with its hand-drawn illustrations straight out of Appalachia about how to make your own bread knive, berry basket. I love how earnest and slow food the Foxfire books are. How back-to-school. Maybe if I collected the whole series of 12 Johnny Appleseed would come a-knockin’.

Monday 21 Septeber 2009: Meaning meaning

We made a mobile for baby this weekend, foraged for leaves at the Arboretum and went to the art supply store to buy fishing line and dowel rods and paper-thin pieces of plywood.

Then we went home, traced the leaves and cut them out of the plywood, drilled holes near the stems and cut out the shape of a tree with an exacto knife for the center. We colored the leaves with pastels, laced thread through the h0les, and tied them to the dowel rods, then balanced the pieces. It was the first time since college we’ve ever made anything together. Besides this baby I mean. We’re both stubborn, horrible in the kitchen together, impossible at team games. But yesterday we were golden.

Friday 18 September 2009: Hearts of Space

Found these letters in the window of an antique shop in Georgetown, which of course reminded me of Hearts of Space, the best music show on the planet.

Thursday 18 September 2009: Little Time, So I List

The only cities/towns in the States I’d live in besides Seattle:

Cincinnati, OH; Providence, RI; (weirdly) Pittsburgh, PA; Bloomington, IN; Savannah, GA; Astoria, Queens; New Haven, CT; Ithaca, NY: Portland, OR; Portland, ME; SF, CA; Flagstaff, AZ

Wednesday 16 November 2009: If I carry an umbrella, it won’t rain

Outside, it looks like blueberry pie smashed on Nathalie’s dad’s rich face in that party crashing scene from Girls Just Want to Have Fun:

Tuesday 15 September 2009: True Sleep

I couldn’t sleep one night last year and all of a sudden this very worn rug came into my head. I couldn’t place where I’d seen it, thought about it until light broke. Then I went to Vashon Island a couple of months ago and there it was. In this old general store. I almost looked past it.

It’s the same as easy-to-forget TV shows like Dolphin’s Cove or Brooklyn Bridge. Everybody remembers stuff they can’t find on YouTube. Which is good way to check and see if you’re alive or a ghost of a ghost.

Monday 14 September 2009: S+H

The shipping guy left at my job. I’m the image librarian. The marketing person. And for now I’m the shipping guy, too. Which means I convey e-mail messages like this:

The labels that stick on envelopes should be printed black + 2 Pantone colors (matching your supplied sample logo) 1000 sheets of 68 x 102mm 8-up sheet (1,537 this time plus future mailings). Then black addresses on the logo label for this 1,537. One label stick on one envelope. Sticker paper sample and blueline will be sent to client in Paris for the 8-up label for approval. All additional catalogues and invitations sent directly to NYC and London will also need to be placed in envelopes and stickered with blank mailing labels.

It may sound nutty, but there’s something surprisingly gratifying in writing bullet-point messages about quantity and carton weight, sending PDFs of destination addresses, requesting quotes, that sort of thing. It’s the part of me that wants to be a tax preparer, the part that aced algebra in high school and logic in college.

In general I consider myself to be floaty verbal communicator. Somebody who thinks about vintage birds sailing on a string of balloons or pickled beats with licorice arms and legs dancing in the streets.

But this shipping stuff, I could really do this. Because it’s like every day is a post-it note, and you cross it off. You go home, wash your hands, make dinner, roll up your sleeves, tie on a bib, and dig in.

Friday 11 September 2009: Looking Forward to Looking Back

I was living in a big, old wooden house in the middle of Indiana on 9/11. My friend Karin, who I’d been in NYC with the summer before, came over. We sat cold, surrounded by farm roads, and watched the towers come down in replay after replay.

The TV in my house didn’t have an antenna, so we mostly watched snow, then saw rough outlines of buildings falling. It all seemed more fantastical than real, like a horrible Jenga cube or icicle falling off a gutter.

Thursday 10 September: Finally, a really good day

Off to eat linguine and shrimp, but I wanted to show you my new “home office” first:

9 September 2009: Serious Funghi

Apparently in Australia, they take their mushrooms very seriously.

Ever heard of the mushroom tunnel? Didn’t think so.

Tuesday 8 September 2009: Grain Edit

Had a true, long weekend, and I fell into it face-first. Long sleeps, mini-naps, re-arranging bookshelves, watching Netflix and eating chili.

Which made coming back into the world today especially difficult. Honestly, it’s left me without clear thoughts or ideas. For me, borders between the work week and weekend are more defined than ever these days.

I’m waiting for the double-cure. White wine and red. Clean hands in gloves. Babies in arms. Jesus and Mary.

Friday 4 September 2009: Hearts of Palm

Four more from California:

L to R: Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack in Bernal Heights, Palm Tree at Indian Springs; Exterior of Ritual Coffee on Valencia, Living Room at Chateau de Vie

Thursday 3 September 2009: If this doesn’t make you feel young, nothing will

I heard this old lady say, “I’ll die the day my gobbley neck scrapes the sidewalk. That’s when my pillowey ass is more likely than ever to betray me.”

Wednesday 2 September 2009: We Tell Stories

Penguin’s digital fiction project “We Tell Stories” is a collection of tales based on six classic works by six different authors presented digitally in six different ways. Kindle I can take or leave, but the idea of reading such an imaginative, visually interesting series on screen is actually pretty appealing. Check it out.

Tuesday 1 September 2009: Orange Crush

Recently, I was in California:

L to R: Bi-Rite grocery on 18th and Guerrero, Indian Springs, Hotel Rex lobby, Tartine Bakery

Monday 31 August 2009: Dad’s weekend/food diary

Friday night:

Ate steak frites at Cafe Lago; gave wife birthday gifts–charm bracelet and Seahawks v. Bears tickets; Ate cake; Looked at Italy photos; Asked wife to hide keys to balcony so I didn’t jump off, almost caused scene.

Saturday night:

Had burger and fries at the Red Mill (noticing a theme in diet); went to bed.

Sunday:

Got up, went to church; Went to Bluwater (wanted a burger and fries) but Sue wanted pizza. I ordered a half-sausage and half-cheese with half the normal amount of sauce. It comes out will full sauce, tomatoes on all parts. By the time Sue got done taking the tomatoes and sauce off she ends up picking through the thing and barely eating it. Oh, and I had a mai tai with extra cherries. You know, maraschino cherries instead of fruit. The waitress asked if I wanted grenadine in it, too. I said sure, I want the grenadine AND the cherries. So I’m halfway through my drink and see a black speck in the bottom, spend ten minutes trying to get it out. The waitress noticed, and instead of getting me a full new mai tai she gives me half a drink in a tumbler without the speck in it. Which was good enough for me.

Then we walked Greenlake and noticed how many dogs looke like their owners.

Friday 28 August 2009: The birds and the birds

I love him.

from a Marc Jacobs ad?

Thursday 27 August 2009: The bees and the bees

I love her.

Wednesday 26 August 2009: Violet-banked approaches and pine-scented lounges

I went to SFMoma in San Francisco last week and, out of everything, found a sure favorite detail from Joseph Cornell’s photo repro “For Sale” circa 1957:

Tuesday 25 August 2009: Three Fish

When I was small I found three dead fish under the tree next to my window and felt spectacularly unsafe and alarmed. Some boogeyman fisherman crept to the tree the night before. Then he took out a protractor and compass and did the most complicated geography to somehow get the fish to lay perfectly straight.

The creepieest line-dead fish ever, because they were mathematically dead. I never left my window open at night after finding the fish, for years and years and years.

Monday 24 August 2009: Like warm milk late at night

I’ve spent so many Sunday nights taking the same little walk with D. The route is the same–up the hill, past the bodega, the pub, the bar, the doughnut place, the rummage shop. Down the hill, past the tree that smells like moth balls and the crazy guy that cooks with too much garlic’s kitchen window. He’s got old tikki torches and tin cans growing weeds all around his door, which makes me swear I really live in Athens, GA and not Seattle, WA.

I come upstairs after, belly growing week by week, and wash my face, pluck my eyebrows, put on pajamas and settle in. It’s the most personal, universal, everyday end-of-the-weekend routine.

Friday 14 August 2009: Out of the Office

I’m officially on vacation and off-line for the next week.

See you back on Weatherspoon Monday, August 24.

Thursday 13 August 2009: A Total CF

I’ve always wanted to feel more than I sometimes naturally do in certain settings, like by feeling more the situation will be heightened enough to become memorable. Which I’m realizing is total crap.

Some people I care about are losing their jobs today, and I’m sitting here near the end of a day that feels more like November than August listening to Elliott Smith. Baby’s kicking, E. Smith sings, “I’m never going to know you now but I’m going to love you anyhow.”

You don’t realize how much time you spend with co-workers, how big a part of your life they are, until they leave town or something. And then there’s this huge space that’s not actual intimacy lost, but commonality. Shared Mondays, bus rides, pet and kid updates, the sort of things people say around the office that they don’t say other places. Like, “That job is a total clusterfuck.” Nobody else says clusterfuck. And that’s over-sad.

Wednesday 12 August 2009: Sweet Spot

When you’re pregnant you have twice as much blood and water, a holy mixture, swishing around your body. And now I have mosquito bites all over my arms and shoulders to prove it.

So when I lay in bed I imagine that my whole pregnant body looks infrared to mosquitoes, or that I’m ecto-green under the sheets. And for the last few mornings I’ve woken up covered in fresh bites after some lucky mosquito has had a very large meal.

I was up and down all night last night, and just before dawn I imagined charting out each bite. I started associating them one by one with particularly consuming or important parts of recent life, color-coding the bites into general categories like work, pregnancy, God, family.

I was about to get up and sketch the whole thing when I heard a buzz in my ear. Then I sort of lost it, woke up D and croaked, “A mosquito is eating me alive. DO SOMETHING!” I can’t see without my contacts, so he turned on the light and I burrowed into the sheets. He found the mosquito on the wall–this little thing gorged with my blood that had done so much damage–smashed it dead.

And then I was asleep, like that.

Tuesday 11 August 2009: Buzz Clips

I spent too much of every summer in high school watching MTV when I should have been reading. The things I loved more than anything were buzz clips, little promos that showed a few seconds of “alternative” videos. And prime-time MTV really played videos then. Good ones, too, meaty singles like Morrissey’s “The More You Ignore Me,” Radiohead’s “Creep, ” Smashing Pumpkin’s “Today”. But my very favorite was J.Buckley’s “Last Goodbye”:

Monday 10 August 2009: I Heart Seattle

I walked home from yoga in the rain, passed under a red bird feeder next to a brick building with wooden shudders, and thought about my parents, visiting the muggy midwest, bloating up after a family barbeque. Then I went home and had a steak and tomato salad, equally hearty but a lot more earthy.

Friday 7 August 2009: The Worst Thing About Social Media

Is that people start putting up pictures of themselves that look a lot like this.

Thursday 6 August 2009: Re-imagining a Very Sad Thing

The brother of the woman that was drunk and high and drove down the highway for miles outside of New York City on the wrong side of the road said she wasn’t an alcoholic, and I believe him. She crashed and killed herself, and her and her brother’s kids, and the people they hit, all in a second.

Maybe it’s just that it was July, and she had all these kids in the car, and it was rainy, the kind of day that felt like everybody should be cleaning bathrooms, or napping, or making coffee. But not driving in traffic and worrying about a lump in her leg. So let’s just say she started drinking scotch until everything smelled like Mr. Clean, smoked a joint from a little sardine tin rolled in a sock in her dresser drawer, and kept moving. Everybody keeps saying she had a stroke, then drank, or that something spectacularly medical happened. Diabetes, heart attack, stroke, and aneurysm have all been ruled out, says a county coroner.

But me? I think there’s something annually reckless about late July, because we’re on the cusp of everything falling.

Wednesday 5 August: Busy busy busy

Tuesday 4 August 2009: Fordlandia

Today on Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan reviewed Greg Grandin’s new book, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City. I can’t believe I’d never heard about the overly ambitious, culturally unaware, ecologically disastrous, over-the-top antics of Henry Ford, especially his failed all-American town called Fordlandia reconstructed deep in the jungle of Brazil. The book highlights the culture clashes that ensued between Ford workers living on a Main St. built 18 hours from anything resembling civilization:

Things went bad over simple stuff, like serving food. “Ford had very particular understandings about what a proper diet should be,” Grandin says. “He tried to impose brown rice and whole-wheat bread and canned peaches and oatmeal — and that itself created discontent.”

But when a Ford engineer changed the way food was served — from wait service to cafeteria-style service — the workers rebelled. Angry workers destroyed the mess hall, pushed trucks into the river and nearly ruined the whole operation. It cost tens of thousands of dollars of damage, Grandin says.

But Ford didn’t just want to tame men; he wanted to tame the jungle itself — and therein was his next failure.

It’s like the jungle itself inevitably made people really wild, made it impossible to live in an assembly-line fashion.

Listen to Corrigan’s whole review here. If you think about it, the failings of Fordlandia actually make modern-day Detroit all the weightier.

Monday 3 August 2009: Work Fridge

Friday 31 July 2009: A New Materialism

Thursday 30 July 2009: Recycle LACMA

I just posted about this over at marquandblog.com, but it’s such a cool project I want to post on Weatherspoon as well. There’s an artist from Los Angeles called Robert Fontenot. After hearing that LACMA was deaccessioning more than 100 costume and textile collection items he bought up about half of them and is wonderfully re-imagining the objects. From Turkish textile to wastebasket, coat to kite, and skirt to dog bed, he’s about half-way through the project. You can follow along on Fontenot’s blog, here.

By the way, I have little desire to live in LA, except that I’m pretty sure that everything LACMA does is brilliant. Their ask a curator series, blog, and Twitter page are all addictive. My company just produced a book for a LACMA show up now called Your Bright Future profiling contemporary Korean artists, and the whole exhibit looks so interactive and interesting that I’m tempted to pop on Virgin Air this weekend and fly to LA just to go to the museum.

Wednesday 29 July 2009: Want to go to a movie?

It’s the hottest 29 July ever recorded in Seattle–reached 102 degrees a while ago. Can’t believe I’m pregnant.

	Sea-Tac	Everett	Olympia	Bremerton
7 a.m.	75	79	68	79
8 a.m.	82	83	75	81
9 a.m.	88	86	81	84
10 a.m.	93	89	83	90
11 a.m.	90	93	86	91
12 noon	93	95	90	93
1 p.m.	96	96	95	97
2 p.m.	99	98	98	99
3 p.m.	101*	98	101	100
4 p.m.	102	98	104	100
Source: National Weather Service
* Sea-Tac recorded 102 degrees between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Tuesday 28 July 2009: We may be in a heatwave, but I’m still hungry

I’m ignoring the heatwave in Seattle, even though I’m pretty sure my swollen feet and snotty nose aren’t. To cope, I’m listening to a lot more radio stories this week.

I’m usually uninspired by Bob Mondello’s film reviews, but I loved today’s piece on All Things Considered called Food On Film: The Famished And The Fabulous. I think I’ve seen all of the movies he mentions at least once. Have a listen.

Monday 27 July 2009: Dining Room

I don’t want to be rich, I just want to live in a house with a really big dining room that fits a table like this:

Friday 24 July 2009: Kind of Serendipitously

If you haven’t, please watch I Like Killing Flies, the 2004 documentary on Shopsin’s, the famous NYC diner beefed up by loud-mouthed, warm-hearted, made-in-Manhattan owner/opinionator Kenny Shopsin.

Here’s the man himself making mac and cheese pancakes for the NYT:

As if Kenny isn’t cool enough, check out his graphic designer daughter’s on-line store, Novitas Aetatem. Can somebody buy me the bacon scarf, please?

Thursday 23 November 2009: Beer me

Warm water and butterscotch cake. My father in law fell asleep on the couch until his daughter told him how much her chiffon wedding cake costs.

Wednesday 22 July 2009: Handshake with Herb

My parents were a day away from buying a house on Quail Canyon Drive. This was northern Indiana. No quails or canyons naturally existed for hundreds of miles, mind you. The house is lassoed in blue below.

A few years later, when I was a senior in high school we almost bought this other place on Sweet Blossom Court. My dad had an official handshake with Herb, the subdivision’s builder, as an unwritten expression of the deal. When my parents pulled the offer later, dad got a very tart letter explaining that the arrangement was legally banished. Including the handshake with Herb. This other place is in yellow below.

I found these almost-homes on Google maps, even though I had no good reason to go looking for them and I’m glad we never ended up in either place. My real street had a real name that had to do with trees, which we really had.

Except that it’s still new to me–seeing the tip tops of places I’ve been inside of, known the smell of–whenever I want.

Tuesday 21 July 2009: Waterloo

Bad: How Ricki Lake can be the earthy, intervention-free birth advocate we see in The Business of Being Born one minute, and the US Weekly bikini body, host of VHI’s Charm School the next.

Worse: How I justify watching Charm School like once a week on average, because it’s 3 p.m., and I’m at the gym, and the tv’s giving me three options–sports, Wolf Blitzer, or Go Ricki.

Monday 20 July 2009: Face Like a Blessing

I love Jasmine Park from Pike/Pine’s new blog, Face Like a Blessing. It’s such a simple and humanizing idea, photographing interesting, memorable faces.

Friday July 17 2009: Indiscreet Discretions

Thursday 16 July 2009: Baby Makes Three

It’s a boy!

Please tell me you have some good name suggestions, I’m plumb out of ideas.

Wednesday 15 July 2009: Noctilucent Clouds

Cliff Mass explains that last night, Seattle did dishes and walked dogs under the highest clouds in the world:

These are ice clouds that form on dust, probably produced by meteors. Such clouds often have a silvery or bluish color, and a ragged look. So on the next few clear nights take a look during twilight and see if you can spot them.

I’ll be on the look out for more noctilucent clouds tonight.

Tuesday July 14 2009: Truly Truly Truly

This Thursday, my dear friend Gala Bent is in a group show at the SAM Gallery. An example of her work–all of which I’m pretty sure is a purple heart perched on a lamp stand, only truer–is featured on the flyer:

Summer Introductions: Seattle Art Museum Gallery

Opening: Thursday, July 16th, 5-7pm / Hours: Tuesday through Friday 10:30 am to 5 pm
Our annual Summer Introductions show features eight artists who are new to SAM Gallery. This summer’s artists are Gala Bent, Mary Margaret Briggs, Andrée B. Carter, Garek J. Druss, Grant Hottle, Jason Larsen, Andrea Schwartz-Feit and Liz Tran.

Located east of the Seattle Art Museum at Third Avenue and University Street in downtown Seattle.

Monday 13 July 2009: Vashon Island

Here’s one way to spend Friday afternoon. Head for the ferry from downtown Seattle at noon, to Vashon by 1. Lunch at the Monkey Tree, beach-combing, coffee, lavender farm. Back in the city by five.

Friday 10 July 2009: Heart of my own Heart

Thursday 9 July 2009: Make it a Double

I can’t go back to the midwestern house I grew up in, but I can go to my parent’s condo for dinner every week in Wallingford. Which is sort-of the same, only without the our-house smell, and without my well-preserved old room, and without a yard.

I’m certain my mother has read more about my pregnancy than I have. Being a mother, she’s also very aware of anything that might not be good for the baby. Like booze, for example. But the thing is, I tell her, when you cook with booze for an hour or so, the alcohol cooks out and the flavor sticks around.

“But you can never be too careful,” mom says.

She went to the store after work recently and bought ingredients to make spinach lasagna for our Tuesday dinner. Everything was assembled and saran-wrapped in time for the 10:00 news. But before she could sit down, the story goes, she gasped.

“I used vodka sauce for the lasagna,” she told me over the phone. She started imaging the baby drowning in a saucy, eye rubbing mess. So it was back to the store, then up until midnight making another lasagna with plain red sauce. She never baked the vodka lasagna.

I can see my dad plopping this perfectly good casserole in a trash bag, then holding the hot plastic at an arm’s reach and grumbling all the way to the trash bin.

Even so, I think my mother has a good shot at being a better mother than I’m ever going to be. Because she thinks of everything, in case. Even if it’s ridiculous.

Wednesday 8 July 2009: Black Swan Green

Seems like I was asleep more than awake for the first few months of my pregnancy, so my regular reading pattern slipped. But a very cool thing happened last week, one that hasn’t for a long while. I started reading Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) and I couldn’t stop turning the page.

I don’t really want to tell you what the book is about, or why it’s worth you reading, because all you need to know is that this is the sort of book that you don’t have to make time to read. You’ll think about it before going to bed at night (especially if you grew up in the 80s, when dads seemed much more grown up than 2009 dads) and you’ll want to hold off on making dinner to read another chapter.

Whenever I finish a paperback I slam it on the ground really hard. Just to say that what’s done is done. But sometimes, and in the case of Black Swan Green this will certainly be true, it’s because I really loved reading it, being in a certain world for a little while, and now the holiday’s over.

Tuesday 7 July 2009: Seven Seven Seventy-Seven

Monday 6 July 2009: Baked Alaska

Mount Rainier has been out lately, and seeing it so often has got to be the best by-product of spending summer in Seattle. Driving to the airport last night I waited for the one turn on I-5 when the mountain appears out of nowhere and takes up the whole sky.

The first time I ever saw the mountain was around this turn towards driving towards Sea-Tac, and it was more of a monster than a trusted friend. I screamed. Everybody in the car did. It was a huge baked alaska, oozing toasty marshmallow and runny ice cream towards the car.

I flew over Rainier at night once, and the whole thing was like a glitter ball, silver-spooned and firey. That’s when it turned into something supernatural–the real and honest truth that God’s got to exist. I’m pretty sure the mountain started floating with the plane and turned more Everest than Everest, a petrified forest and a candied anti-Hades all at once.

Friday 3 July 2009: Lux Perpetua

I took this fuzzy photo last night from my phone and wanted to post it, just to show you hard evidence. There’s still light in the sky in Seattle on July 1 at 10:20 p.m.

Wednesday 1 July 2009: Three Dudes Named Carlos Save the Day

We just bought a car from a guy named Carlos. He has a son named Nacho and owns a taco truck. His brother Carlos was there, too. He owns a hotdog stand. And their dad Carlos Sr. was in the car. We met to take a test drive of their Toyota yesterday in the parking lot of Dick’s burgers on Broadway.

I hopped in and saw a half-eaten hot dog on top of a newspaper in the back seat. Which I actually found refreshing. I know that sounds crazy, but I’m bone dry from a weekend of haggling with used car dealers in sad white show rooms. So this, this meeting of the Carlos men and Nacho was genius. Real material.

The car must sound horrible when you read about it, so greasy, all of this imaginary carnival food caked inside. But the embarrassing part is that the car is actually a lot cleaner than our old car. I’ve promptly scheduled a full interior soaping of the Carlos car for Friday in case.

By the way, I’ve been listening to Ani DiFranco on a co-worker’s playlist, all nostalgia. I still can’t get over her line, “Some crazy f-er just carved a sculpture out of butter and propped it up in the middle of the bonanza breakfast bar.” Very fitting for tonight, when we’re picking our new car up at Carlos’ place before dinner.

Tuesday 30 June 2009: Indiscreet Discretions

Has anyone else noticed that when the Air France plane crashed into the Atlantic a few weeks ago it was the head story on NPR, the Huffington Post and CNN, for days, but yesterday’s crash of a Yemeni plane killing 153 people is almost being treated as a minor story?

It’s updated on the seattletimes.com after something about Gas Works fireworks and a reminder that amnesty for parking tickets ends today.

Monday 29 June: What You Look at When You Look

Friday 26 June 2009: Here I Dreamt I was an Architect

Having deep-dug, primary, pregnant dreams these last weeks.

I’ve been dreaming about math, running marathons, writing essays for the S.A.T., sketching water and wind-flow plans for imaginary three-story houses.

Big, meaty dreams that should wear me out but somehow end up being restful in an unusual way. What could they mean? That I’m growing a to-be brainy, limber architect or tweedy professor or mountain man?

Thursday 25 June 2009: I’m never wearing a single glove again

Wednesday 24 June 2009: Geography Bee

On especially slow days at a former job I’d arrange geography bees for my co-workers, printing maps with random unidentified countries. We’d sit at our desks and see who could locate Madagascar or Zimbabwe the fastest.

Puget Sound geography has ridiculously fewer bodies of water and islands to identify than, say, the world. And I’m ashamed to say I can’t name a lot of the areas reachable from Seattle by ferry, and I’d bet I’m not alone.

But today, that’s going to change. I’ve modified the map below, adding colors and lines. Numbers match names. Time to cram before I mail you a pop quiz!

1=Orcas Island 2=Deer Harbor 3=West Sound 4=Shaw Island 5=Friday Harbor 6=Lopez Island

Tuesday 23 June 2009: You’ll Shoot your Eye Out

For some reason my dad really wants to see this movie from the 90s called something like All in the Family, a straight to video sequel to that shoot-your-eye-out Christmas movie.

He had the day off today so we met for lunch. “I found that movie at Barnes and Noble for five dollars,” he said as we walked to Mae Phim, sliding a disk out of his pocket.

“Dad, what did you do with the case?” The disk was already scratched and smudged. “Oh, it was too bulky, so I threw it out,” he shrugged.

I work with DVDs every day at my job, and a real fear is scratching up a museum’s only disk of cover art. It’s never happened, mostly because I’ve learned like a lot of us to be careful to keep disks in their sleeves.

We kept walking, and I started to hear a weird jingling. “Dad, did you just put the DVD back in the same pocket as loose change?” He looked at me sheepishly and asked, “Are you going to put this on your blog?”

So dad, this one’s for you and your very scratched Ralphie movie. And no, I’m not going to try to watch it with you for all the tea in China.

Monday 22 June: 5:00

My walk from work to the Hill:

Friday 19 June 2009: 49 Reasons Why

Valencia St., SF

Thursday 18 June 2009: Muncie is Coooooler than Seattle

Wednesday 17 2009: Lemon Sprig to the Rescue

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had about enough of Orangette. Heaping thanks go to my dear friend Misty for saving us all from the lip-smacking, finger-licking diaries of la la land foodie bloggers. I want to read about food! How to make it better. Anecdotally, seriously. The way Misty writes about it.

Misty recently started posting on Lemon Spring, and I’m pretty sure I have to stop reading it in the afternoon, before dinner, when my stomach feels like it’s carved out of my body. Lima beans with parsley, pumpkin and green onion? Tofu slabs with succotash salsa? I know what I’m making for Sunday dinner.

Tuesday 16 June 2009: Harry Potter Reimagined

I just borrowed a friend’s old, beaten up Breakfast of Champions in paperback and loved reading it so much more than I would have if it was brand new. It’s from the 60s, yellowed-out and held together with a rubber band. Its delicate state is living proof that a handful of someones navigated the copy before me. Which is comforting, like listening to pop radio or wearing an old western.

Graphic designer and illustrator M.S. Corley re-imagined the Harry Potter series to wild acclaim, I think for similar reasons. The aesthetic is classic, not-just-for-kids, and would look as handsome spread across a teenager’s floor as they would stacked on a cedar bookshelf in a house featured in Dwell.

Cover design by M.S. Corley

Monday 15 June: Damned Limes

I put two limes in a wire basket above my refridgerat0r last week. A few days later I noticed a few fruit flies hovering around the limes, so I threw them away.

Sure, I know how to reproduce, but not like these guys. The day after I threw the limes out my kitchen was swimming in fruit flies. They were centered around the sink, so I acted fast. I put a shallow skin of balsamic vinegar in a little cup, covered it with saran wrap and poked holes with a push pin on top. Left the house for a few hours and returned to find dozens of fruit flies dead in the vinegar without a trace of a living fly anywhere.

Then I opened the blinds and saw a fresh horde–hundreds of tiny bugs on the glass near the rosemary in my window box. And that’s when I lost it, started smacking the glass blindly with an old newspaper, making countless blots. And this morning, they were back, the defiant little gits.

But I’m ready. I’ve got fly paper, fresh vinegar cups, a stack of old New York Times, and a big bottle of Windex. And since our TV doesn’t get basic cable anymore I don’t have any distractions.

Friday 12 June 2009: Zoka destroys Stumptown

It’s official!

photo courtesy of Wright Eats

Thursday 11 June 2009: New/Newish places to eat in Seattle

Food Trucks: Maximus Minimus–BBQ Pork truck shaped like a pig! Marination Mobile–Korean/Hawaiian deliciousness

SoDo: Hudson

Captiol Hill: The Lookout (formerly Artemis) Anchovies and Olives

West Seattle: Fresh Bistro

Fremont: Sinners and Saints

Seward Park: Flying Squirrel Pizza

Belltown: Bedlam Coffee

Wednesday 10 June 2009: Jesus and Mary

I’m too write to tired anything today.

Tuesday 9 June 2009: Thank You, Monsieur President

President Barack Obama tours the Centre Pompidou modern art museum in Paris with his family June 6, 2009. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

Monday 8 June 2009: The Rest in Restroom

Restrooms in ritzy department stores aren’t just filled with rows of stalls and sinks. The best have actual sitting rooms with names like the Powder Room, Ladies Quarters, or simply the Women’s Lounge.

The downtown Seattle Macy’s restroom has a grand lounge. Next to the vintage stalls and sinks there’s a circular room filled with a string of arm chairs. Some days almost every spot is occupied with old women, sitting with both feet on the floor, nodding off or knitting.

I was in the Nordstrom restroom over my lunch break on Friday. Walking towards the exit I noticed a sign that said “Mother’s Lounge” next to a doorway. I peaked inside—the room was quiet and dark with a changing table and purple velvet couch. I’m four or five months away from motherhood, which I figure is close enough to earn access to the mother’s lounge. So I went in and sat deliberately and quietly with both feet on the floor.

I closed my eyes and opened them slowly, wishing for motherhood to feel much more like the Macy’s grand lounge–a big circle of a room full of grandmas passing baby from knee to knee.

Friday 5 June 2009: Hot Air

I don’t know who these people are or where I found this image, but I’m pretty in love with it. Can anyone help me identify? They might be crafters somehow connected to Etsy…

Thursday 4 June 2009: Tampa to Phoenix to Seattle

In Seattle you need a fan to sleep well for less than a week a year, so the past two stuffy nights are making me wonder if we’re in for a hot summer or maybe just a false start. But for whatever grand reason I wore a tank top and jeans out the door at 8 last night and walked with D to the new custard place on 13th and Pike. Everybody was in the park, kids in the fountain. I mean the place was really alive. Basketball, baseball, soccer and kickball and kung fu all at once.

I got a cherry sundae, D got a rootbeer float, and we sat in the bleachers and watched a bunch of guys with beer bellies play kickball. The sky was pink, what we could see of downtown was pink, Mount Rainier was pink. It was so Tampa, so Phoenix.

The park was a watermelon, a slip-and-slide, a popsicle, sidewalk chalk–all the best reasons for summer to exist. And the fact that the sun can leave so fast around here made my ice cream, which really tasted the same as Dairy Queen, like frozen manna or something.

Wednesday 3 June 2009: Doing the Unstuck

I piled every movie I’ve ever watched that was a waste of time in a grain silo in southern Oregon, near the California border. The stack reached the very top. Then, as another exercise, I put all of the books I’ve ever read in a neat pile next to the movies and hung my head. The book stack wasn’t even half as high.

I’ve decided to organize a work party this weekend. All of my friends and family are invited. I’m going to buy a very tall ladder and unstack Beverly Hills Cop, Kindergarten Cop, all of the Police Academies, and so on. I’ll pass each movie down, hand by hand.

And we’re building a huge arch with the cases, unrolling all the tape on the VHS spools and making a giant pool, a figure 8. Then we’re all going swimming.

Tuesday 2 June 2009: Summer Reads

Just posted summer reading picks from my co-workers at Marquand Books. There’s so many good food/cookbook and travel/non-fiction picks I have to share the list:

Food:
Sara: Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine, Bryant Terry (Da Capo)
Keryn: Simply Delicioso: A Collection of Everyday Recipes with a Latin Twist, Ingrid Hoffmann (Clarkson Potter)
Marissa: Under the Table: Saucy Tales from Culinary School, Katherine Darling (Atria)
Keryn: A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines, Anthony Bourdain (Harper Perennial)
Zach: Well-Preserved: Recipes and Techniques for Putting Up Small Batches of Seasonal Foods, Eugenia Bone (Random House)

Non-Fiction/Travel:
Jeff: New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City, Andrei Codrescu (Algonquin Books)
Zach: Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings, James Elkins (Routledge)
Jeremy: Emergency, This Book Will Save Your Life, Neil Strauss (Harper)
Keryn: Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure, Sarah Macdonald (Broadway)
Marissa: 90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry, Henrik Lange (Nicotext)
Adrian: Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It, Geoff Dyer (Vintage)
Keryn: My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who’s Been Everywhere, Susan Orlean (Random House)
John: Pictures from Here, Sunil Gupta (Chris Boot)

Monday June 1 2009: What I got out of it

My friend Michelle took this photo Sunday evening. She was in town from LA for SIFF, where a short she produced called Short Term 12 got the grand jury prize late Sunday night, best in show. D and I tagged along to the awards ceremony and ate sweet potato lasagna at midnight to celebrate her victory. Check out the trailer here.

Friday 29 May 2009: What I want out of a weekend

Thursday 28 May 2009: Pie-in-the-Sky

Here’s a new way to dream about building better cities: by cloudscape. Certain climatological researchers claim that cloud formations change with land use (think shifts from deforestation or flooding) and also by the development of urban areas.

The idea has architect/design bloggers brainstorming about fantastic cities zoned and grown around cherry-picked cloud types.

From BLDGBLOG on retrofitting pre-existing structures:

Atmospheric retrofitting comes to mean attaching bizarre cantilevers, ramps, and platforms to the roofs and walls of existing houses till the clouds above look just right. All new buildings have to be cleared with a Meteorological Bureau to ensure that they produce the right types of cloud.

Read BLDGBLOG’s entire excellent post here. And watch out for the cloud vandals!

Wednesday 27 May 2009: School of North

Being pregnant is like introducing a pigeon to a sparrow. You face both birds towards each other, breast to breast, and somehow what’s really common becomes curious, the color of every possible iris, a bowl of gooseberries and figs.

Tuesday 26 May 2009: DOA

When my friend moved into an apartment by the 7-11 between Fremont and Wallingford, he inherited a spider problem. He kept a can of Raid next to him on the couch in case, which was where he fell asleep watching TV most nights.

One night he work up and felt a fresh web connecting his face–half of his cheek and chin–to a guitar and table lamp. He jumped up, reached for the Raid and started spraying the web, still connected to the lamp and guitar. And there under spray, fifty tiny spiders hatched and started heading for the floor in droplets.

What a way to come into the world, light and water poking all of your eyes out, that close to shag carpet and wall cracks and crumbs.

Friday 22 May 2009: Nesting

Thursday 21 May 2009: Furniture row….

The best spam I’ve read:

Ashley furniture. Broyhill furniture. Bedroom furniture. Sex furniture. Furniture stores.

Wednesday 20 May 2009: Short-ribbed

I have a secret. There’s this song by the Pussycat Dolls that comes on every time I’m at the gym, and beyond reason and good sense I think I’ve started to like it like it. The singer goes, “I can’t take it any longer. Wish that I was stronger. All we do is linger. Wrapped around my finger.” Something pink champagney like that.

It is so wretch, so below the belt, but I can’t get the song away from me. Quick, someone think of another song and send it to me to help me clear my head!

Tuesday19 May 2009: Baba

I visited my grandparents in Indiana last month. One morning I walked their land with my grandpa. We checked birdhouses for nests and searched for signs of rabbits and moles burrowed in the yard. We ended up at a small lake where I recorded bits of our conversation and photographed everything I could. Baba’s been fiercely sick over the past ten years, but I think his farmer’s heart and a bit of grace have kept him living well.

Monday 18 May 2009: Mountain Man

29 years ago today, Mt. St. Helens did this:

Courtesy United States Geological Survey

Friday 15 May 2009: Trimpin

I’ve seen a lot of recent installations by the sound artist Trimpin, which is why I’m anxious to watch Trimpin: The Sound of Invention at this year’s SIFF. I just posted more about the documentary on the blog I maintain at work.

Thursday 14 May 2009: Food Fight!

I always dreamed I would be in a real food fight in school. For a girl who never got a detention, expulsion for hurling a piece of coffee cake sounds outrageously stupid, and pretty irresisbtable:

King said a flying tomato slice stuck to his face. He spotted a friend across the cafeteria and hurled a Tater Tot. It was a perfect strike. He was nabbed by a teacher when he raised his arms triumphantly.

Prom is delayed! Tons of students are suspended! A whole relish tray is dumped on a student’s head! Get the whole scoop on Jackson High School’s food fight here.

Wednesday 13 May 2009: Wish You Were Here

We’ve had better days.

Tuesday 12 March 2009: Weaves, Buttons and Latches For Sale

I can easily argue that the traces of cafes, bars, and parks that fill up my memory are best left alone. But in practice it’s irresistible to search out these places on Yelp or similar sites. Is Kaldi’s in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine still around? To me, it’s stuck in the 90s. There’s a bald jazz drummer that’s really locally famous playing near the bar, and I’m wearing a baggy black turtleneck. What about St. Theresa’s Textile Trove, where we bought the fabric for bridesmaid dresses? Creaky, wooden, with big bins of exotic weaves, buttons and latches for sale.

It’s the common question everybody’s blogging about in a slightly different context: do you loose or gain by really knowing outcomes–not just of people a la Facebook, but also of old haunts? The purpose of being connected to the Internet, sad but true, is to become easy researchers. So I say tell me more.

Monday 11 May 2009: Washington State Unemployment Rate, Per 100 People

Friday 8 May 2009: Cubanga!

Took this in the East Village about ten years back with an old Lomo. One of my favorites.

Thursday 7 May 2009: The Genius of Water

Last night I drove past a woman smoking, flicking ashes from her apartment window onto an empty Seattle street. They fell like a water gun sparking wintergreens, hitting this street everybody drives around but nobody walks through.

It reminds me of Fountain Square in downtown Indianapolis. It’s like always the early 80s there, and the fountain is never turned on. Everything is black and white, and the diner stays empty during the day.

If I look at it a certain way, quiet neighborhoods in the heart of big cities are comforting, especially when they’re in solitude. Which really could be more about silence than abandonment.

But if I look at in another way, my whole heart splits imaging everybody sleeping the heat of the day off inside brick houses around the square. And the best way I can cope with the weight of that is to imagine impossible ways for places to change. What if one day everybody just started talking, and the neighborhood became powerful, magical.

Pea patches send tender vines over fences, the diner starts passing out free coffee, and fountain water flip flops all over sidewalks every June and July.

Wednesday 6 May 2009: Buffalo Trace

It’s First Thursday tomorrow, and if you’re in Seattle you better be at Zack Bent’s opening at 4Culture: Buffalo Trace.

Contusion, Zack Bent

Tuesday 5 May 2009: Nerds

My dad gets kidney stones, like, all the time. Once when I was a kid he called me in the kitchen and asked me to hold out my hand, then poured what looked like a jet black nerd candy out of a dixie cup and into my palm. A 4 mm kidney stone that had been in his body the hour before. He was almost proud to show me, and once I realized what I was holding I squealed, threw the thing in the air and ran outside.

I called him this morning to say hello, and he answered the phone sounding stuffed up and half-asleep. “Hello, dad?” “Yeah.” “How are you, how was your night last night?” “Oh, I’d be fine. If Seattle didn’t hate me.”

He went on to tell me about how since he’s moved here a year ago only bad things have happened to his body. His allergies are worse. He pees a lot more than he used to. He has a deviated septum. And now he has another kidney stone.

He moved to Seattle from Indiana, the land of the deep fried fill-in-the-blank, the chili cheese dog, and the Chinese buffet. Everybody eats well here, and the truth is he eats better now than ever. But the city is an easy scapegoat for any ailment–the perfect answer for why we’re lonely, or broke, or allergic.

Monday 4 May 2009: Cake Me

Before I turned thirty I drew a seven-layer birthday cake, something I knew was too grand to really exist:

And then, hope against hope, my dear friend Misty began making me cakes. Different, single layers would sporadically appear. First chocolate, then spice.

Last week something amazing happened. I was back home visiting family and spent a day with Misty. And she surprised me with mini lime, cherry, carrot, and plain cakes with lemony icing. They were completely delicious and I ate almst everything. Let me tell you, nobody bakes like Misty Martinez. Watch for her food blog, lemonsprig, coming soon.

Friday 1 May 2009: Little Mouth/Winter Lungs

I found this clip through my friend Michelle a couple of years ago–Sufjan Stevens playing on a roof in Cincinnati, a city with an excellent heart where I’d love to live someday.

Shot by Vincent Moon, the video is part of La Blogotheque–start poking around this site and you’re done for the evening. I’ve watched so many of these clips and this one of Sufjan covering the Innocence Mission’s Lakes of Canada is still my favorite.

I drove through my old college campus last week and easily became everybody reading on the lawn, all the girls running the loop, all the boys with bedheads playing ultimate frisbee. Even though when I was a student there I never, ever did any of these things. Man, nostalgia, even if it’s a fake-out, comes easy.

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Thursday 30 April 2009: A Perfect Circle of Acquaintances and Friends

My dream dinner party of actors, commentators/politicians, musicians, and fictional characters, by color classification.

Wednesday 29 April 2009: 100 Days

Things I did during Mr. O’s first 100 days in office:

Washed pillowcases

Roasted potatoes

Went back where I came from

Walked on the greens of a golf course at dusk

Watched Step Brothers

Hoped the light was on our side

Tuesday 21 April 2009: Possible Mouth Breather

Flying to visit family this week. I’ll be back to you next Tuesday!

Monday 20 April 2009: Synecdoche, New York

On Friday I watched Synecdoche, New York. It must have perfumed something chemical off the screen and onto my skin, because I left the film with less identify and patience, feeling unraveled and wanting steam from a shower.

I hate and love the power a movie gains when it makes a whole world—a completely different and strange version of Pittsburgh or London. It’s like dreaming about a familiar place. And you can’t explain it, but in the dream your old house feels like another planet—the color, quality of light, weight of the room. Then you wake up and the feeling sticks.

Friday 17 April 2009: A list of lists

Things to do this weekend:

Walk hills in a brass knuckle pattern
Mash potatoes
Turn somebody beet red
Read A Circle of Quiet
Eat roasted chicken at Presse
Make a list of lists
Peel an apple so its skin is one long loop
Take communion
Sleep with the windows more open than shut
Pluck my eyebrows into little moons
Pass out popcorn from a floss string
Photograph people photographing people
Watch punks in the park play polo on bikes
Hold on to the rail
Think about iced mochas
Think about running the lake
Snoop for snails in the garden
Burrow into my husband’s back

Thursday 16 April 2009: Clue the Movie?

If I don’t see Clue the Movie every other year or so, I get this tingly feeling. My head starts handing, my hips stop bouncing when I step, and my left eye begins to cross. It’s like a vitamin, I swear.
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Wednesday 15 April 2009: Or-ee-Gun!

Tuesday 14 April 2009: The House Near Lemon Hill

There have got to be more lakes in Northern Indiana than pores on skin. So like a lot of people my grandparents bought a lake house, just off Lemon Hill near the Michigan-Indiana border. There was wicker everywhere and a creaky swing in a screened-in porch with fishing poles lining the wall. We’d sit whole watermelons to chill in an icey-cold brook that ran next to the house. Inside, there were Dixie cups in the bathrooms with vintage cartoons printed on the sleeve, stored inside closets filled with antique quilts and afghans.

I was conceived here, in this house in the late 70s, in what everybody called the George Washington room. That was thanks to its blue-and-white wallpaper playing out colonial scenes–tiny cannons next to scrolls held by men with powdered wigs. Looking over the lake, the room was small—there was the four poster, a night stand, and an old pump organ with a pink velvet backboard sitting above yellowed keys.

I spent a lot of summers at the lake growing up, so the place easily became an indispensable part of my identity. But knowing that I was actually made there sort of elevated the house in my head—especially after my grandparents moved away.

I’m traveling to Indiana to visit family soon. When I get there, I’ll ask my grandpa to drive me in his red truck to the lake. I’ll take my shoes off and walk down the brook to the front of the house. I’ll find the window of the George Washington room and think about beginnings, and growing older. And I’ll jump, being almost certain that I saw my kid self in the window, squinting out over the water.

Monday 13 April 2009: Broken Compound Hyphenated Adjectives

Over the last couple of weeks, micro-earthquakes have been happening all around Seattle. Earlier today, a 2.5 magnitude mini-quake occurred a few miles north of the city, digging down for 17 miles–a hairline fracture on a very long femur.

I missed Seattle’s 2001 Nisqually Quake. That February I was back in the flattest place on the planet, driving around state highways pretending corn silos were tiny mountains.

A friend who went through that quake was downtown, eating lunch outside when it hit. All of a sudden there were rolling, slender buildings shaking bits of glass all around her. The city was a huge Jenga puzzle, but miracle-on-miracle, no one died.

Friday 10 April 2009: Halo Eggs

Thursday 9 April 2009: Rum on my Wrists

Oh lord of lovely hula hands, be with naked, seasoned women at day spas. And be with young women with tattoos on their asses padding across the tile floor. Me, I’m trying not to think about tiny, invisible mushrooms that may very well be sprouting in the grout between tiles as I head towards the plunge pool.

I walk past a line of women tipping big soup bowls full of herbal tonic over their shoulders and heads–a natural vapor that’s got to make everybody somebody.

Wednesday 8 April 2009: Slept in Beds

I’ve been told to try all sorts of goose-chased remedies for my occasional insomnia; homespun cure-alls like sipping valerian root tea or wearing frozen cotton socks under thick wool ones before bed. I have my own peculiar methods of inducing sleepiness, too. Sometimes I imagine that my bed is a giant seven-layer cake. Each pillowcase, sheet, blanket and afghan oozes into a different flavor and color. Other times I think about all the beds I’ve slept in for more than a month’s time. I’ll picture a classroom globe, then zoom in and connect sleep cities with an unwinding ball of yarn, stopping to tie a knot at each of the places I’ve lived.

I start on the east coast, at an NYU dorm in Union Square with a vinyl mattress that must have been an inch thick. Next there’s that squeaky twin bed in the loft of an old theatre in Muncie, Indiana. The place smelled like must and wet brick and cost $187.50 a month. There’s my aunt’s walk-up in Chicago where we slept in a shagged room in the basement. And there’s the bed stuffed in the corner of an old brothel-turned-guesthouse on Lower Haight in San Francisco where I spent a summer. I used to spook myself before falling asleep, pretending to hear ghosts of burlesque dancers rattle the doorknob to my room.

Sometimes I skim over certain hotel rooms I’ve stayed in, ones that felt both like no-one-has-ever-slept and the-whole-world’s-slept here all at once. Which is very much how it feels to look at Nick Zinner’s photographs in Slept in Beds.

Evil Twin’s small batch, cult classic picture book Slept in Beds (2003) is a collection of travel images by Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) with prose by Zach Lipez. Zinner’s photographs of unmade beds from different hotels he stayed in on tour several years back fill the book’s 38 glossy pages. Twin sisters Stacy Wakefield and Amber Gayle pressed and bound a precious 1,000 copies of the title, and as a sweetly done detail they even snipped the last page of the book out of a bed sheet.

Zinner’s photographs serve as strange comfort for the insomniac. It’s like listening to the radio–most of the time the song is sallow, but sometimes it turns brilliant, becoming the very thing that connects us. Zinner does the same thing with his pictures. It’s the best sort of sleeping pill, seeing places after people rest.

(from Asthmatic Kitty’s sidebar)

Friday 3 April 2009: Bedheaded Birthday

Going on a little holiday for my birthday, and I’m very much hoping to catch up on some sleep. Be back with you next Wednesday, fresh from the land of milk and honey that is Oregon state.

.

Thursday 2 April 2009: Overgrown

Ship for Fools detail, Gala Bent

Tonight, the frightening talent and truly true beauty of Gala Bent’s art (and Gala Bent proper)
can be found at 4Culture Gallery in Seattle, a part of First Thursday:

Gala Bent
Overgrown
April 2 – May 1, 2009

reception April 2, 2009, 6 – 8 p.m.

Gallery4Culture is delighted to present Overgrown, an exhibit of new drawings by Seattle artist Gala Bent. In a dozen or so works on paper, Bent has produced an enchanting primer on the role of imagination in our understanding of reality. With graphite and gouache, she transports the viewer into an imaginary world populated by benevolent creatures amidst swirling air, water and hair. In these works, visible and invisible meet one another and react. Bent’s work strives to address human’s yearning to know the natural world and to understand that which is invisible.

Wednesday 1 April 2009: Is This a Joke?

Cliff Mass reports on his excellent weather blog the sad truth about the very chilly Seattle weather we’re still in the middle of:

During the last month only 3 days have reached or exceeded the normal maximum temperature, while over half the days have had minima below the normal lows. We should have highs in the mid-50s now.

But chin up. Saturday looks like it’s going to be warm and sunny enough to pacify even frosty, rain-booted me.

Tuesday 31 March 2009: Moving Closer

My husband is flying from Nicaragua to Seattle today, and I’ve been tracking the whole thing on Delta’s website. He was 36,000 feet above Cuba while I was eating cinnamon bread this morning. And there he goes, right over Bushnell as I go to the gym, then past the St. Louis Arch, just south of the Badlands as I walk home after work. He’s over the Cascades when I eat dinner, and home just in time for late night happy hour at Brouwer’s.

Monday 30 March 2009: The Wind that Swept the Lettuce Off Her Plate

I used to get earaches every other month as a kid. My parents were very pro-antibiotic, so the infections never got far. But I’ve met a good handful of people who’ve had middle ear infections so bad that they woke up in the morning with a tiny puddle of blood on their pillow, hearing a hollow sound in the whole of them. Windy waves of chutes and ladders.

I had a pretty bad sinus infection last week and, just for a night, my right ear didn’t ache so much as kick and scream. And right then I wanted the whole thing to pop. It would have been a heartbreaky release, but a release all the same. And think about the sounds I could have heard–good evidence of my body working.

It’d be like listening to the conch my dad had in his office when I was a kid. I’d jam my ear next to the shell, tilt my head and nod as it swooned, the way I still do when someone tells me a secret.

Monday March 23-Sunday March 29: Reading Week

Having historically spent spring break during college in Midwestern bookshops, drinking Mr. Misties and doing doughnuts in church parking lots, I’m officially declaring that this week is spring break for any and all non-students.

So that means staying put in Seattle. Instead of daily writing on Weatherspoon I’m planning to do a whole lot of daily reading. I’ll be back here next Monday, fingers-crossed fully recovered from a wheezy cough, with wild tales of peeling tangerines, painting gourds with cat eyes, making paper mache dinos, and reading until my pinkies freeze.

Friday 20 March 2009: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

It may still be cold and rainy in Seattle, but it is officially not winter anymore. So if you’re in Seattle, go grab some free flowers on your lunch break already!

Thursday 19 March 2009: When You Have a Fever

On the last day of winter:

Wednesday 18 March 2009: Two Thousand Bodies of Water

I can see the Washington Mutual Tower from my desk. Around here the skyscraper, on First and Union in downtown Seattle, has become a symbol of what’s gone wrong–a part of the reason why the state’s unemployment rate is the worst its been since the mid-80s.

But today the building looked beautiful. It’s cloudy, and from my seat the windows were two thousand bodies of water. The office lights, I swear, were tiny clouds. Seagulls were circling the building, and the tree right outside my window, just beginning to think about budding, fanned out across several stories.

The way things grow so quickly remind me why I don’t believe the end is the end.

Tuesday 17 March 2009: Coffee and Pastry

Follow my map to favorite Seattle cafes:

1 Top Pot Doughnuts, Capitol Hill++

2 Victrola on 15th, Capitol Hill**

3 Cupcake Royale, Madrona++

4 Presse, Capitol Hill++

5 Zeitgeist, Pioneer Square >>

6 Umbria, Pioneer Square >>

7 Gelatiamo, Downtown++

8 Macrina, Belltown++

9 Fiore, Crown Hill >>

10 Zoka, Greenlake** ++ >>

KEY:

** = Coffee done right ++ = Go for pastries and treats >> = Go for ambiance/location

Monday 16 March 2009: Moon Corn Whiskey and Wild Turkey Bourbon

After months of speculation, it’s official. The Seattle P-I will produce its last print edition tomorrow, after 146 years:

After the closure announcement, breaking news editor Candace Heckman pulled bottles of Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey, Wild Turkey bourbon and George Dickel Tennessee Whisky out of a bag and set them out at her desk.

“I’d been saving that for a while,” she said. She’d just sent a “farewell” e-mail to the staff that said, “Come by the city desk for a drink: bring your own glass.”

Make it a double.

Friday 13 March 2009: My Portable Television

Thursday 12 March 2009: Gusty High-Hums and Midwestern Sighs

I grew up as the youngest cousin in a very loud Italian family. On my mom’s side, everybody talks over everybody until there’s this gusty high-hum. When this would start to happen, sometime between gnocci and pie, I’d go in my room, stuff a towel under the door, and open a window to keep away fumes from my Uncle John’s smokes.

This was always my favorite time, hearing muffled laughs from the living room and kitchen from my bed. I’d listen to music or nap, or float someplace in between.

But I could never shake a certain loneliness. A particular quiet goes along with being young in the Midwest, in the middle of field on field. For comfort, I’d imagine a grid of all the driveways between me and the ocean, dream up all the other kids waiting to move north and west.

Wednesday 11 March 2009: The Rubber Room

In case you missed it: This American Life recently aired a brilliant radio story on “rubber rooms” peppered across each of NYC’s five bouroughs. While on probation, The New York City Department of Education send teachers to a “reassignment center” sometimes for several days or weeks, but in many cases for months or even years.

It’s a territorial, segregated, incredibly tense envorinment where, at their worst, teachers fight over chairs or who stole jelly out of the fridge. They sit for seven hours a day, receiving full salary while under investigation.

Some teachers are guilty as sin, either abusive or crazy. But others are banished to the rubber room without knowing why–a superior may hold a grudge or a student may falsely accuse a teacher of misconduct. So while the school system sorts out a lot of he said she said, there’s more than 500 teachers at a time waiting out their fates in the rubber room every day of the school year.

Some play cards, take Spanish class, gossip, or read. Some bring pillows and sleep.

You really have to listen to this story, it’s something else.

Tuesday 10 March 2009: Winter Therapy

It won’t be long until I loose any and all desire to eat soup. Even though it snowed in Seattle yesterday (ouch!) we’re quickly moving away from the shortest days of the year. So while it’s still the season, I requested matzo ball soup from my mom at our Monday family dinner last night, which she made beautifully. And a few days back I made a favorite recipe I found last year and modified a bit. It’s the fastest meal I know how to make:

Lemony Soup with Rainbow Orzo and Chard

Rainbow Orzo: one big handful per person

Rainbow Chard: two chopped handfuls per person

Fresh Lemon Juice: from 1/2 lemon per person

White Beans: rinsed, 1/2 cup per person

Veggie Stock: 2 cups per person

Garlic, Salt, Pepper: to taste

Parmesan Reggiano: if you wanna

1. Sautee garlic in a little olive oil

2. Add chopped chard, sautee until tender

3. Boil orzo al dente, drain and set aside

4. In a big pot, heat white beans, chard, sautee, veg stock, lemon juice

5. Serve with a dust of parmesan, salt and pepper, and good bread. Yeah!

Monday 9 March 2009: The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings

I’m charmed by many of the books Princeton Architectural Press publishes. A recent PAP favorite is The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings.

Photographer Kaylynn Deveney struck up a friendship with the then 85-year-old Albert Hastings after becoming his neighbor in Wales. She began to photograph his simple daily acts, asking Hastings to write captions under each of her pictures.

With so much bad news these days, there’s something surprisingly heartening about the pictures that fill this book. It in essence looks at the often lonely life a widowed man living hand-to-mouth, sure. We see Hastings claiming his pension check and filling in a handmade chart of TV programs for the week ahead.

But it’s also comforting to see someone living well who is also living very simply. In one photo Hastings takes homemade scones out of the oven. In another he discusses a book with a friend

This cheeky shanty by Hastings gives the finger to the nightly news. He penned it before his death in 2007 at 91 years old:

Death of a Cynic

Not an awful world I’m leavin;

Let it be short quick and sharp.

Then I can go up to my Evelyn

an’ learn to play me bloody ‘Arp.

Then I’ll see our Dear Savior

Oh, how happy I will be

I will clap my hands saying

To Hell with Radio BBC

Friday 6 March 2009: Walking to Work, Rain or Shine

Thursday 5 March 2009: Yes We Can…Buy Obama’s Face on Bread

Obama-inspired food and drinks are really starting to get on my nerves. It all started when a coffee place by my office started pushing an “Obama Blend” of beans sourced from Hawaii and Kenya. Then Obama cookies, and cupcakes on exhibit at a very good museum. And now his face on bread.

I watched Obama’s New Hampshire speech recently, when he conceded the state to Clinton in the primaries. I wanted to remember how far we’ve come since last January, when the “Yes We Can” he’d been using in front of smaller crowds for years really caught on as a part of his national campaign. It was just as good to watch in hindsight, and very much a picture of the man, even the politician. But not the damn cookie.

Wednesday 4 March 2009: Standing in a Circle of Quiet

I read Madeline L’Engle’s A Circle of Quiet around the same time as C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed and Sheldon Vanauken’s A Severe Mercy, and putting those writers together–all orthodox Christians, in older, reflective postures, flavored how I read L’Engle’s thoughts on family and creative life. I’m re-reading A Circle of Quiet this next month—a book club choice–and am ready to pick it up being ten years older and in a different phase of life.

In the book, L’Engle describes setting up a writing space above her garage. I’ve lived in small spaces or with other people for the past many years, so it’s not yet been possible for me to have a my own space, even though I’ve tried desks (too rigid) fluffy chairs (too sleepy) and tables (too studious). So for now I’ll keep up my most productive pattern, which is writing on my laptop or journal in cafés around Capitol Hill. But someday I’ll have my own closet or attic, and I’ll make the thing a livable junk drawer with clusters of photos and sheet music on the wall, a thick narrow rug, bowls of beaded fruit and pools of blue pens.

Tuesday 3 March 2009: States You’ve Slept Through

Turns out that I’ve lived in five states for more than a few months, which feels like very few. What about you?

Monday 2 March 2009: Where Have Sizzling Steaks and Griddle Cakes Gone?

Found a treasure trove of vintage menus on the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections website from long gone Seattle-area restaurants. I’m dreaming of a $1.00 dinner of fruit cocktail, fried chicken, vegetable, potatoes, biscuit and honey, pie and milk at the Big Tree Inn. Some favorites:

Broomies:

http://content.lib.washington.edu/u?/menus,219 Property of MSCUA, University of Washington Libraries Photo Coll 617

The Cloud Room:

http://content.lib.washington.edu/u?/menus,190 Property of MSCUA, University of Washington Libraries Photo Coll 617

Big Tree Inn:

http://content.lib.washington.edu/u?/menus,226 Property of MSCUA, University of Washington Libraries Photo Coll 617

Friday 27 February 2009: Brunch Brunch Brunch

Beast, PDX

Thursday 26 February 2009: Portland’s Beast Destroys Brooklyn!

Went to Portland this weekend, and while my trip ended with a bad case of influenza, I found a very bright spot Sunday over brunch at this little place north of downtown called Beast. Everything is local and lovely, in four courses served to two communal tables.

An article ran in the NYT yesterday called Brooklyn’s New Culinary Movement. I’ve eaten all over Portland and found one place better than the next, and every time I shop for the week I find more homegrown, artisanal goodness in Seattle. I’m proud to live in a part of the world that’s been producing a lot of the specialty foods mentioned in this article, with less fanfare.

They’ve got Prime Meats, we’ve had Salumi. Brooklyn’s Mast Bros. Chocolate roasts from cacao beans, Seattle’s Theo has been doing that for years.

But then again I have to ask myself, why the food fight? Truth is a lot of us are buying locally sourced blah blah, and the more the merrier. Plus, out east there’s a guy who owns a business called Cut Brooklyn. He spends more than an 8-hour work day making one knife, turning out a handful a week. Game point Brooklyn.

Wednesday 25 February 2009: Rocaterrania

I became interested in folk and outsider art after working on a couple of related books at my job, so this article from the Sunday New York Times caught my eye. It’s about Renaldo Kuhler, a Raleigh, N.C.-based artist who, like Henry Darger, has created an imaginary world called Rocaterrania. He’s cultivated the place for the past 60 years, inventing a love interest, a language and an alphabet. The 76-year-old Kuhler has dressed like a Rocaterranian (pictue Sherlock Holmes meets a very hip elf) since college because, “It’s better to be a minute entity than a nonentity.”

[Kuhler drawing, courtesy brettingram.org]

That’s what makes Kuhler such a bad-ass. He a brilliantly gifted illustrator, sure. But even better, he’s never stopped, or maybe didn’t know he started, living very certainly in a glassy-eyed reality. Which happens to sound pretty terrific, especially these days.

[Kuhler's map of Rocaterrania, courtesy brettingram.org]

Kuhler’s work will be featured in a group show at a American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore this October, and the documentary Rocaterrania starts the festival circuit this spring. Check out the trailer here.

Tuesday 24 February 2009

A few favorite blogs, two by friends, and two new finds suggested by my friend Sarah:

The Penn Forest Oracle, a visual blog inspired by life in Central PA by artist Sarah Noble.

Drifts and Scatters by Gala Bent, featuring her work and other fresh picks from people moving in creative spaces.

Anonymous Works, using folk and outsider art as a starting point to explore lovely visual things.

Accidental Mysteries “Finding magic in everyday things.”

Monday 23 February 2009

Who would guess that force-feeding birds through a metal tube could cause such an unspectacular spectacle in Seattle?

The woman inside the duck costume danced by the window, feet squeaking with every step, waving a sign at diners that read: “I need my liver.”

But they kept eating and laughing, and only occasionally glanced at the dancing duck — the elephant outside the room.

Friday 20 February 2009

My desk, Friday afternoon.

The sweetest decline.

Thursday 19 February 2009

Seattle’s favorite meteorologist Cliff Mass says spring is finally here. But for me, a walk through the Arboretum before work this morning sealed the deal. Things are really in bloom. The new season is a tiny anecdote to the bitter pill we swallow listening to the news these days, but a true healer all the same.

Mass predicts rain in a few days, but who cares? We’re at the start of a trend:

On Sunday our luck runs out and showers and clouds move back in. But after the warmth, it won’t seem the same. My grass is already growing.

Check out these surface temperature charts and take heart. We’re through the worst of it, love.

Wednesday 18 February 2009

How to share through a recession, in chicken scratch:

Tuesday 17 February 2009

I’ve been avoiding terms like “mini-me” “OMG” and “staycation” out of habit. But really, the only way to describe my President’s Day away from work is that it was indeed, well, a “staycation” in the very best sense of the term. I went to a spa in Capitol Hill yesterday, a mile from my place, called Hothouse. It was a clean, silent and really simple space run by women where you pay ten bucks and stay all day. I spent the afternoon in a circle–a hot tub to cold plunge to steam room to dry sauna rotation.

I imagined my that my pores were really blooming tea, held together by microscopic strings in the dry sauna that jumped apart in the cold plunge. This moving from hot to cold is supposed to improve circulation, scientifically speaking. But after an hour you’ll feel like a cowbell at the edge of a very open field, one dip of wind and what you thought were mechanics was really skin all along.

Friday 13 February 2009

Dear Facebookers,

Become a Weatherspoon fan! I finally started a little page. Find it here.

Talk to you again on Tuesday,

Sara, Chief Atmospherologist

Thursday 12 February 2009

If I decided to get a Master’s degree, I’d happy delve into any of the following:

1. Field Studies, using Audubon’s Birds of America as central text and the Arboretum as my classroom.

2. Fertility, so I could seriously consider mythology, with a dissertation explaining why babies and corn and the sea are sort of the same.

3. Spiritual Writing, so I could mix a. structure, b. solace, and c. Jesus up in my mind and set the thoughts out to dry on thousands of paper towels and napkins, watching tiny stories grow into trees, fiber, oats, and night.

4. Museology, to spend days in lit by light rooms, wide, clean spaces far away from my closet and the trunk of my car. I’d study inri, netsuke, and Outsider art.

5. On that note, Folk Art. I’d get the degree before moving to Athens, GA and meeting the ghost of Howard Finster in a filling station. Then I’d buy a wooden house and deck out a room with robin’s egg blue walls, a very red rug, a thick old desk, and lots of empty gold picture frames.

Wednesday 11 February 2009

A new book of old, becoming-too-familiar stories called First Person America reminds me of the haunting Depression-era recordings Studz Terkel produced for his Hard Times radio series. Ira Glass featured snippets of Terkel’s interviews on a recent TAL.

Ann Banks edited the collection after sifting through stories penned during the 30s-era Federal Writers’ Project, now stored in the Library of Congress:

The inhabitants of those file drawers told stories about how they got by using a mixture of ingenuity and guile. They hawked lucky charms and patent medicine made from “roots and barks and good raw whiskey.” They peddled cake flavoring and cased sausages, they auctioned tobacco, they fished and smuggled rum—and sometimes aliens—from Cuba to Key West

Read the full Newsweek article here.

Tuesday 10 February 2009

Meet me at the Doug Fir near Canada…

Monday 9 February 2009

Four cafes for Sunday morning in Seattle, if you’re the only one awake and you want to go someplace to write for an hour or two:

1. Lighthouse: Because you feel like you know everybody here, even though you actually don’t know anybody. You can be incredible productive, I’ve learned, being unfamiliar within familiarity.

2. Volunteer Park Café: Granola with dried cherries and flax, lavender honey and fresh pineapple and blueberries with yogurt. In the winter. On a particular morning, I arrived just after 8 and was the first customer of the morning. The three guys running the counter were warm and smiley, singing Simon and Garfunkel, which really only works on Sunday mornings.

3. Flying Apron: This place used to be Café Bouche, a crepe joint that hired an unfunny Russian magician who would wander the tables on Saturday nights. He’d do this card trick, somehow making a Queen of Hearts vanish. You’d look up and see all these playing cards like dangling knat wings sticking to a bloody red ceiling.

Flying Apron looks like it was there hiding through the Bouche phase the whole time—creaky, wooden with a communal table and little lamps and a pastry shelf that stretches the whole side of the space.

4. The back room at Café Prese: It’s cheap, they keep refilling the coffee, and nobody tells you to leave.

Friday 6 February 2009

Meet me in California.

Thursday 4 February 2009

I was in a yoga class a couple of years ago with an older man who would hack and rattle cough all over his mat, from Ojibway breaths straight through Namaste. During one of these classes, in an all-too-rare moment of silence, the instructor told us to stop and be present. To breathe and focus on the very moment.

I made myself try, fluffy as it sounded, to feel instead of think through what being present meant. My ass was sore from downward dogs, my mouth was dry, and I was very sure that coffee would only make it drier but I was craving a cup anyways. Then, out of nowhere, I started to record exactly where I was, like I used to as a kid.

Growing up, I would make myself really take note of random moments. I went cross-country skiing in middle school and memorized a particular pine tree I slid past. I put shoes in our front closet and breathed until I could remember how the house smelled, like a mix of toast and carpet and Mr. Clean. I told myself to remember what that one tree looked like, what it was like to live in the house I grew up in. And I sort of do.

Wednesday 4 February 2009

During my senior year of college I hiked for a week at the South Sister in central Oregon. After the trip, home in Indiana, I imagined returning to a certain part of the trail at that mountain so often that it might as well have been the moon, both familiar and inaccessible.

Last night, I fell asleep on the couch watching Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and woke up around midnight. I’m planning a trip to Bend in a month or two, which I reasoned is a 7 hour drive from Seattle. I checked Google maps and found out that where I’m staying is twenty miles from the South Sister.

I was wired, up forever then. I started wondering if you could see the South Sister at night from Bend. And maybe then on a really clear night from my inn I could look out and see the mountain across a big dry field. How mythical that would be, lying down on flannel sheets and looking at this mountain.

I love the part of Winesburg, Ohio, when the storyteller describes lying there in bed, stepping up into it, being old and looking out.

Then I thought about growing old and hiking to the top of the South Sister and dying there. Or maybe even spontaneously combusting, just bursting into flames but not really dying. I wondered what it would feel like to be Moses or Elijah on the mountain then, until it was too late to think.

Tuesday 3 February 2009

Drum roll, please. This Monday Google Earth meets Oceana, seabeds, the coast off of Galveston, and Cousteau films. From the New York Times today:

By choosing among 20 buttons holding archives of information, called “layers” by Google, a visitor can read logs of oceanographic expeditions, see old film clips from the heyday of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and check daily Navy maps of sea temperatures.

The replicated seas have detailed topography reflecting what is known about the abyss and continental shelves — and rougher areas where little is known.

Monday 2 February 2009

Second only to stories about rats in the walls, there’s nothing better than trading “where were you when the earthquake happened?” accounts at parties. Having spent only a fraction of my life on the West Coast I’ve never had a very good answer to this question.

I was in a small earthquake in 1998 in San Francisco. It tilted my bed towards the ceiling and back over a series of three broad waves. That was that. The mattress felt like a gigantic version of one of those Brookstone chairs at the mall with roving back rollers. 

Like most people, I kept sleeping right through the 4.5 magnitude earthquake that hit around 5:30 last Friday morning. I’ve lived I Seattle for five years without experiencing a tangible earthquake. Which I’m thankful for, especially since I can almost see the viaduct from my desk at work.

This seismograph shows just how many tiny earthquakes we have in the Puget Sound all the time. To be safe, I’m not ever keeping my wedding rings on the shelf about the toilet before anymore.

Friday 30 January 2009

A cloud of words for Weatherspoon:

wordle.net

Thursday 29 January 2009

I found out that we were in a recession when I was a kid in 1988 because Heather on my bowling league said so. We were eating fried cheese sticks between frames when she whispered, “Did you hear?” I thought she was going to tell me about Burke and Kim making out behind the video games again. She had the same devious look in her eyes. “We’re in a recession!” she squeaked. “Yeah, my dad said something about that,” I said dryly, dipping my cheese stick into a side of marinara.

Everybody was talking about layoffs in the café I sat in at lunch today, and this time I was all ears. In fact, I may be far too up-to-date on the situation. It’s sort of cathartic I suppose, to recap with co-workers by ticking off statistics if you’re not a part of the number. “Starbucks layed off 6,700 people, and Boeing’s cutting 10,000 jobs,” a balding business-casual huffed to his friend at the table next to me.

Phrases including “all bets are off” “completely wiped out” and “it’s a sign of the times” followed. As a casual listener, it’s completely unnerving to hear this sort of banter. D and I both work for small companies, and we’re hedging our bets that we’re in the best places we can be right now. And, hands in the air, we’re ready for bad news any day like everyone else.

But really, I can only ponder the not yet so much before I start drawing birds with four legs and graphs of imaginary weather trends. It’s not that I’m especially out of touch. Just coping.

In the car last night, we were listening to M83, to the song Graveyard Girl from the Saturdays=Youth album. A girl has this little monologue around the bridge and says, “Waiting for somebody to love me. Waiting for somebody to kiss me. I’m only fifteen years old, and I feel it’s already too late to live. Don’t you?” It’s so tender, almost too tender, but there’s this lovely resolve. The music becomes hazy and endless, and then you feel fresh, teenaged hope.

Wednesday 28 January 2009

I’ve drawn a line graph of how average weather feels month-by-month in both Seattle and Chicago. Nothing based on actual averages, but more of a resident index. Me? I’m sticking around the Northwest. Thank you, mild winters.

Tuesday 27 January 2009

Where I grew up as a kid:

Where else I grew up as an adult:

Monday 26 January 2009

In 1996, a group of friends including Michael Stipe and Grant Lee Phillips got together in a hotel room and decided to write a haiku a day for a year. Soft Skull published a book of favorite haiku from the experiment called The Haiku Year. Thanks to Google, you can sample it here.

I used to write a lot of haiku in college. Western style, so I never worried about the 5-7-5 rule. And I’m realizing that journaling, freelancing, and blogging don’t fill the same space as writing haiku. I’ll yawn and stretch and try a few now. It’s been years since I’ve done this, so I’m pretty rusty, but here goes.

If you’re so inclined, try writing three short, descriptive lines about your day today, and send them to me in a comment.

*

Not eating much of anything
except everything
Waiting for his test results

Can’t lift my arm high enough
to grab a sweater in the closet
Damn tetnus shot

Buttoning my flannel shirt
with the lights off
like I’m back high school

Sitting on the couch
eating salted almonds
Feels like vacation

Friday 23 January 2009

Has anyone noticed? The lights stay on until 5:30 now. Almost a whole hour ahead of where we were a month ago. It may as well be lux perpetua.

Tonight I’ll be with friends at a bar. Looking out back, here’s what we’ll see, sitting around while the planet keeps on deciding to move a little closer towards ceaseless light:

Thursday 22 January 2009

In case you’re hungry, a post I wrote on food finds during a recent trip to Prague went up on Asthmatic Kitty’s sidebar today.

Starting in the next week or two I’ll be doing a regular food column for AK. I’m looking for foodies to contribute posts, so if you’re a Weatherspoon reader living in another part of the country and are interested in writing about food issues in your city, review restaurants, compile lists of the best places for coffee or microbrews, etc. for Asthmatic Kitty, be in touch.

*

Also, the company I work for just launched an excellent Etsy site featuring letterpressed and handmade novelties, including the coolest door hangers on the planet.

Wednesday 21 January 2009

My house meets the White House.

Tuesday 20 January 2009: Hello, Mr. President!

Monday 19 January 2009

Besides hoping the ceasefire sticks and listening to a few Dr. King speeches, I can’t think about much today except for the inauguration.

Like a lot of people, I slid from checking the news every dozen minutes before the election back to my usual Morning Edition, All Things Considered loop. And now I’m back where I began, popping around the internet for any news, images, or video clips of Obama speaking about this or that.

A favorite find, thanks to the New York Times.

Friday 16 December 2009

wintercraft.

Thursday 15 January 2009

I don’t know about you, but the holidays left me restless, needing a good many walks. I spent my lunch hour today walking down First Ave. from Pike Place Market to Pioneer Square, towards Elliott Bay Books. I like this particular walk the most in summer. Pioneer Square is more cobblestoned and mortared than most any other part of Seattle. On the few days that the sun really bakes the city, why not stand in the very heart of all that heat?

The best walking is done outside, and books are on shelves inside. But there’s something about going into Elliott Bay that makes me feel like my heart and lungs are outside of my skin, that the slim wood floor is a very soft ceiling. This store could be a whole galaxy, the way it can float you around and spin time.

They recently remodeled the café into a space that looks so typical Seattle—light wood, clean lines, cupcakes in glass display cases. But the cool thing is that the café is in the basement of an ancient brick building, so all the new that could be bland becomes careful and balanced.

Instead of sticking around for coffee I browsed for books, then headed toward my office. On the way, I spotted a newish café called Stella on First and University.

The couple who own the place, Rob and Josie, were working the bar. The long, narrow space has big windows, imperfect original tile, a chandelier and a tin roof. I ordered an americano and bantered with Josie for a few minutes. Sitting down, I watched as Rob called customers bella in this very unsleazy way. A heartened bella. He waved at dogs and babies and made jokes with his wife about her persnickety Italian parents.

I am head over heals for Stella now. For a sometimes cold and often damp city, Rob and Josie are the perfect transplants. They’re from a warm place, and that warmth still hasn’t worn down. If you live in Seattle, make plans to meet a friend at Stella, and I’ll put money on it. You’ll both be charmed.

Wednesday 14 January 2009

It’s like closing up a summer house, when the stillness of winter washes over cities. The snow Seattle was handed around the holidays made the buildings downtown look like they were covered with old floral sheets, windy across what could have been wicker chairs and wooden tables post-Labor Day.

My grandparents used to have this table at their lake house in Michigan with open-mouthed lions perched stately on each of its corners. I used to feed the lions bits of hot dog or spaghetti at our last dinner just before Labor Day. When the snow melted and we’d return in the Spring, I’d run into the house right after I arrived and check each lion for dried up bits of food, my mark from the year before. What I’d left waiting all winter for a warm hand.

Tuesday 13 January 2009

I didn’t grow up rich, but as a kid I used to stay in rich-people hotels in Chicago with my parents. Why we did this is another story entirely involving craps, the band Megadeath, and a horrible craving for Ritz burgers.

No no no, don’t get the wrong idea, that I had a wildly privileged country club youth. I was then and am now firmly middle-class, and the Ritz Carlton has faded into a fuzzy, somehow embarrassing part of my childhood.

So all I ever wanted to do in these rich hotels was swim. And the Ritz has this palatial, dome-roofed lap pool. To get there, you have to walk through a locker room filled with wet saunas and Q-tip jars on vanities and hair blowers.

Inevitably the locker room was also filled with old, crinkly women completely in the nude, just hanging out after water aerobics. Hordes of them prancing around from the wet sauna to the shower, diffusing hair or putting on earrings. Nobody wore a towel, I supposed because these women were filthy rich. I reasoned that, when you very likely had bathtubs full of money back home in Aspen, why would you need to hide behind terry cloth robes with embroidered lions on the breast?

Today at the gym, I walked in the locker room and right in front of me there was a woman, naked and sort of prancing between the lockers. In the locker room, women are naked all the time. And it’s a really beautiful thing. All this skin of all these colors come in different shapes and moves differently. We all become one woman somehow, which feels very honest.

But this lady today, the way she was arched and fluttering around put my mind back into my body as a kid. I’m at the Ritz, wearing a bathing suit with a big pineapple on the front, trying to tip toe around a happy-sad parade into cool, deep water.

Monday 12 January 2009

Friday 9 January 2009

Man, I’m ready for summer.

June 2007, near Tieton, Washington:

Thursday 8 January 2009

People are burning leaves, ironing pants, peeling vegetables–really existing next to the abyss. Turns out that the tallest part of the ocean is devastatingly close to big, weighty cities like Tokyo and Manila.

At thirty-six thousand feet, the Challenger Deep in the Pacific is the darkest, deepest part of the ocean.

If you sliced Mt. Everest off its base, flipped it on its back and pegged it into this oceanic trench, water would still cover the mountain’s peak by a mile.

Which I used to not be able to run as a kid. I mean, the first time I ran a mile I went out for margaritas. It was a big deal. And one mile is just a pinch of salt on top of all that earth and water.

Wednesday 7 January 2009

Tuesday 6 January 2009

When did the weather get so precious?

Monday 5 January 2009

Wow. Kansas really is flatter than a pancake.

Friday 2 January 2009

I propose a toast to the thousand souls that ran for miles and plunged into Lake Washington. Man. I’m bewitched.

Count me in for twenty ten.

Friday 1 January 2009

Growing up, my dad used to floss in our car while driving home from dinner. Over time, our windshield would become peppered with bits of steak and broccoli that looked like tiny neon bugs splattered across the glass.

I would watch him floss in the rear view mirror. He’d be at the wheel and I’d be in the backseat. Once, I remember his fingers being wrapped so tightly around the floss that they turned bright pink, plumping out around the string. I stared at his hands, then eyes in the mirror, and for a second our faces looked the very same.

That’s how I feel about the new year. There’s this strange mix of familiarity and tension, especially now–with the whole world flipping, flopping, and boiling down.

But more than that, I feel resolved about the tough and sweet year that’s passed. Went for coffee today with D and month by month we wrote out everything notable that happened in 2008. Things like friends losing parents and gaining children, where we were on election night, travels to Prague and Vashon, playing pool on my birthday.

Thinking about all the weather that will travel from west to east this year, starting close to Capitol Hill and hitting the places I’ve lived and the people I love across the plains, over the Smokies and to the Atlantic makes everything that’s to come, scary and tenuous as it may be, seem beautiful, messy, and really really close.

Thursday 31 December 2009

The Space Needle, hiding out before midnight fireworks.

Happy New Year.