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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