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.
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.
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.
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!
On the last day of winter:
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
Turns out that I’ve lived in five states for more than a few months, which feels like very few. What about you?
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
