With the last posting (directly below this one) I promised a return with evidence that like this year’s spring, so this fall is late by a few days.  The comparison below of the blossomed cherry trees at the southeast corner of 46th and Corliss were taken one year apart.  The top of the two on March 27, 2008 and the bottom of the two one year earlier, where the budding is further along and the petals are dropping.   This flowering comparison is followed by another from Sept 27, 2008 (on the top of the bottom two) and at the bottom, one year earlier.   The difference here is subtler than with the blossoms, but real enough in the reds of the turning leaves.  I will not name the types of several trees that appear there at the northeast corner of 46th  and Burke in hopes that a reader will respond with their names.  Another reason is that I don’t myself known the names.  So, if you can, please help both nature and me.

(Tapping these pairs with a mouse will make them bigger.)

One day more and I returned to the northeast corner of 44th Street and Wallingford Avenue to repeat a tree I first notice many years ago for its brilliant fall color.  I tagged it the “Flame Tree.”  However, today, Monday Sept. 29, 2008, it was still in the summer greens seen here direclty below.  Below it and two years ago, on Sept. 27, 2006, the Flame Tree was far into its fire.

I found this tender sign of fall at my feet late this afternoon while shuffling from my car seat to the slabs of granite that pave our front walkway off the street.   Folks, this year’s fall is late.  And I can prove it – but not tonight.  Tomorrow perhaps.  Since I have been walking that same Walllingford Walk for more than two years I can bring in last years pixs from this day – or tomorrow – and show examples of a landscape that has knitted for itself an autumn dress about a week more developed in 2007 than now.   This was true of Spring as well.  Our cherry trees were a about a week late with their blossoms this year, when compared with 2007.  I may have proved that one earlier with this blog.  For now I do not remember if I did, but will check it out soon for you casual readers.  If I did not put the blossoms of spring – 2007 and 2008 – in earlier I will include them as well – with the “fall” preview – probably tomorrow.

(To enlarge the photo tap it with your mouse.)

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A good number of Walt Crowley’s friends formed a circle around his memorial headstone – a flat and yet risible plaque lying on the grass –  this afternoon (9/21/8) to share memories of Walt and scatter a few of his ashes in the vicinity of the plaque.  Some of Walt probably drifted near the Thomas Prosch plaque, which rests so close to Walt’s that they are bedfellows now for eternity.   This was meant to be, and it was historylink historian Paula Becker who first envisioned it so last year and then suggested to Marie McCaffrey, Walt’s widow and now his successor as head of Historylink, that it would be most appropraite to put the two of them near one another.  Since Prosch could not be readily moved this meant putting Walt – his plaque – near to Thomas. And so it was done.  Thomas Prosch was another historian/journalist whose typed 1901 manuscript “A Chronological History of Seattle” was a most important source for the construction of historylink – its many earliest essays on subjects of Seattle history.  Jean (of this blog) took photographs of all those who said something and he has included some of these directly above.

After the memorial while returning to the car, I noticed Jean’s shadow on a headstone and so recorded it, and then also turned the camera left for a few more shots that fit into this panorama.  It includes a few degrees more than one-fourth of Lakeview Cemetery.  The center of the pan looks to the northeast.  The cedar tree, in the shadows on the far left, is at the cemetery’s summit.  Pioneer Doc. Maynard is buried at its base.  I might have investigated the name on the far side of the big stone on which Jean’s working shadow was caste, but I did not think to do it.  By late afternoon this Sunday, Lakeview was showing the beauty that lured Victorians to cemeteries for their weekend leisure and reflections on mortality.  The site of Walt’s and Prosch’s plaques is about fifty or sixty yards directly behind me.

Walt and Marie’s plaque reads brilliantly, “Walt Crowley 1947 – 2007 Husband of Marie McCaffrey  Co-Founder of Historylink Citizen of Seattle To learn More Visit, http://www.historylink.org ECV  Marie McCaffrey 1951”  A close-up of the plaque is included with Jean’s photographs printed above.

(Note to reader:  What follows is a response to Berangere Lomont’s photos of the Pope’s visit to Paris, especially the one (reduced above) that shows the Pope looking towards her through the green glass of the Popemobile. You can now find this view and her other photographs of the Pope’s visit full sized below, or later in this site’s archive. )

Dear Berangere,
Like Celeste of the Women’s Century Club, here in Seattle, I also love your Pope and your Paris.  While the German Pope is relentlessly strict in his orthodoxy, it is claimed that he writes a good dogma. And this Pope is a little less forbidding under the City of Lights, although his walking guards throw some shadow on that. They seem to be worrying like stooges working their way through purgatory. But that can’t be helped, for the world is not so perfect as the Popemobile.   And the Pope certainly looks fit in his Popemobile.  With the fold-out curbside video screen in your photograph one can see the Pope coming and going — omnipresent.  How many of these devices did they use in the 5th Arrondissement alone? It may help us wonder what compensating attractions they used in medieval processions, not having these curbside Deus Ex Machines? And it occurs to me that anytime the Pope does a mass in an outdoor stadium they may be useful – fourteen of them – as Stations of the Cross.  Whether ex cathedra or inside the cathedra, I think what distinguishes any Pope from the rest of us is something more clinging.  They dress the best.  How long do you suppose the Vatican has been filling its pope closets with the nonesuch of outfits made from surpassing fabrics by the ruling class of seamstresses and tailors?  For centuries.  Take off any Pope’s clothes and there is probably not much to prefer. But without the evidence of a Pope with no clothes who can know? Writing now about myself only, as humble as my wardrobe is, every part of it is clean, machine washable and stamped with a free pass to paradise, which I’ll use only if I cannot make it back to Paris.
Paul

Yesterday in broad sunlight I came upon this long-legged beauty sunning on a big leaf. Something, perhaps the sound of my simulated shutter, sent it – yes – flying.

Emily Nuchols, our champion for the Snake River sockeye salmon that, she notes, “travels further and climbs higher than any other salmon in the world,” has sent two glimpses of the conditions at Camp Muir, at 10,000 feet, which is the jumping-off place for most early morning attempts on Mt. Rainier.  Throughout August we posted photographs from Wallingford that looked in the direction, at least, of Mt. Rainier from a corner that was a few houses from Emily’s – at the beginning of the month. We did it in support and anticipation of her climb scheduled for August 25-26.  During the month she moved to Portland, perhaps to be nearer those wild sockeye, for Emily is the communications manager for “Save Our Wild Salmon.”   (You can find and/or review that daily Mt. Rainier watch in the archive of this blog, as well as other pictures of Emily and some of her supporters.)

The two snapshots included here show, above, Emily with her climbing team – she is behind the red section of their banner – and, below, Emily alone with the wind and the Cowlitz Glacier.  Emily explains. “When we left Camp Muir at 2 a.m. and started our first traverse across the Cowlitz Glacier the wind was blowing so hard we had to brace ourselves with our ice axes at each step.”   In the dark the Salmon team made it over that ridge behind them – Cathedral Rocks – and beyond that over Ingraham Glazier as well and then onto the rock cleaver so appropriately named  “Dissapointment” for so many.  There, still in the night with flashlights (on their heads I assume) and 60 mph winds pushing against them, the guides put a stop to it, and turned the team around.  Still their effort raised $20,000 for Save Our Wild Salmon.  Our congratulations to the Salmon for having friends like Emily and her team.  And our apologies to the Salmon, for they are still for eating.

From left to right: Bob Connell, B. Bhartik and partner, Jun Akutsu, Cathy Tuttle, Kathleenn Cromp, Michael Kucher, Treb Connell, Christina O’Leary, Michael Courtney

This coming Saturday, Sept 13, from 10 to noon the “ring of illuminated concern” called Sustainable Wallingford – and I’m a member – will meet almost at the Mosaic Community Coffeehouse at 4401 2nd Ave. NE.  That is the landmark.  The meeting itself will be just around the corner in the First Church of the Nazarene fellowship hall.  You enter on 2nd.

Early last month, August 9th, an afternoon squall ran through Seattle scattering picnics to the nearest shelters.  The picnics that Saturday included one for Sustainable Wallingford at the Good Shepherd campus.  The attached group portrait shows a few members illuminated in the reflected glow of an afternoon sun that followed the storm.  They are perched, of course, in the park’s pergola.

Why investigate this circle of concerned Wallingford citizens?  One reason is that they are also meeting in Wallingford United Kingdom.   Here follows parts of Sustainable Wallingford leader Cathy Tuttle’s latest correspondence to members.  It begins with a request you may wish to take time to examine and respond to.

Please take a survey, What Do You Really Think About Climate Change? We will only be collecting survey data until October 25th, so please try to answer soon! Our friends in Sustainable Wallingford UK contacted us last month at Sustainable Wallingford US, to see if we could ask our townspeople the same questions at the same time. We want to see if we have similar interests, knowledge, and concerns in both countries. Wallingford, UK is a small town of about 10,000 people, located 47 miles (75 km) west of London. Wallingford, USA is a neighborhood of around 20,000 people, located 4 miles (6 km) north of Seattle. Please pass along this survey to your friends! We will publish survey results on our website, and in local newspapers. Thank you!

The remainder of Cathy’s bulleted correspondence includes other clues on why one might want to show up this coming weekend or visit the group’s site.

*   CoolMom Wallingford meets at Mosaic 4401 2nd Ave NE this Tuesday, Sept 9 at 7 pm with Kerri Cechovic from Washington Environmental Council. More info about CoolMom Wallingford from Anne Marie 206-522-5034

*   Active Sustainable Wallingford member Mike Ruby received $15,000 from the Dept of Neighborhoods Matching Fund to help plan a Wallingford Community Center He invites folks interested in the project to the Good Shepherd Center room 122 this Wednesday, Sept 10 at 7 pm.

*   If you haven’t seen the Sustainable Wallingford wheelbarrow drill team, click.

*   The great Sustainable Ballard Festival on Sept 27-28 has a variety of must-see events including two Wallingford-based Spokespeople rides at noon to sustainable sites — so ride your bikes to the festival!

*   Spokespeople will also link houses on the Wallingford home tour on Oct 5.

*   Click for more info about Sustainable Wallingford or call Cathy at 206-547-9569

My one-of-a-kind Sustainable Wallingford button

While walking Wallingford this week I’ve come upon two examples of what will most likely soon become a great commonplace of public giving.  As we approach the grand opening or first day of the new federal requirement for high definiton TV and this new age of entertainment and education becomes the right and responsibility of every citizen in their pursuit of happiness and verrisimilitude, more non-complying televisions will be given up by citizens who ask no thanks.  The single set shown here (below) was found gently resting on its face in a driveway on Meridian Avenue near the Tully’s parking lot off 45th Street – Wallingford’s “Highway to Ballard.”  The two sets (above) were neatly set at the edge of another parking lot, appropriately that behind the Hollywood Video, also on 45th.  Look for much more of this curbside philanthropy in the weeks ahead.  While one may check set labels for expiration dates, there are none.  Sometimes the once warm boxes do include their year of origin.  The attached label from the Meridian Ave. set – a Sharp Model 19np58 – reveals that it is barely twenty years old and so probably eager to turn on for someone these last few weeks.

This is not a revival of the Wild Salmon countdown run earlier through the month of August (see the archive), but an instance of an insistent Mt. Rainier.  The reflected sunset this evening (Sept. 2) around 7 pm gave this command performance above Seattle’s Capitol Hill.   Again this representation, like the others below, was snapped with the support of the street sign at the northwest corner of 42nd Street and 1st Ave. N.E. in Wallingford.  (It is one of the about 400 scenes I have repeated most days for the last two years for art and exercise.)  The expression “The Mountain That Would Be God” got considerable play during the long early-20th Century contest between Seattle and Tacoma promoters over how to name Mt. Rainier/Mt. Tacoma.   For some “The God Mountain” was a glorious compromise, although ordinarily this almighty allusion was expressed differently, using instead the rhetorical banner just noted in sentences like “Dear, do you suppose uncle Knud from Bismark would like a drive up to The Mountain That Would Be God?”  And the answer, “Dear, I believe that the  proper name is ‘The Mountain That Was God.’ not ‘would be God’.  You may have thinking of the The Man Who Would Be King a short story by Rudyard Kipling.  Have you read it?”  “No, but I did get started with his novella, The Man Who Would Be Kind.”