This artfully arranged group is drinking something to violin music.  All the posing is wonderfully worked out varied.  The subjects circle three in masks, and behind them  near the back is another masked character, at the table.   A few of them are holding or smoking something.  Some are pensive – those in the foreground – others seem to raise their glasses in unison and in a toast to something.  What are the couple on the left up to – I wonder.   Again – or typically – I know nothing about this odd stereo.  Perhaps it is not so rare – a kind of oft printed oddity.   Don’t know.  Hope you do.  Mummers comes to mind but that be only because the big cheeks of the masked trio are mumps-like.

(Click to Enlarge the Photos)

I have recently taken a liking to reading the messages on the flip sides of postcards.  Here’s a revealing example.

OAK HARBOR on Whidbey Island was named, of course, for trees like the one above, which the settlers discovered surrounding the town site.  The trading center was known for its Dutch influences and at least when the W.P.A. Guide to Washington State was first published in 1941, the Dutch language was still commonly heard on Barrington Avenue.   The message written on the back of the Ellis real photo card #3454 trumpets that Ralph, the card sender, is “having a wonderful time, working seven days a week.”   Not certainly, but most likely, Ralph is helping build the naval air bases – both on water and on land – that were first picked for Oak Harbor in January 1941.  Construction work began on the land-based Ault Field, about three miles north of the town, in March 1942.   Ralph’s postcard to his sister and Homer is postmarked from Oak Harbor on April 29, 1942.    He does not describe his work, and it may have been hush hush.  Below the flip side message are three military records copied at the National Archives branch here in Seattle when Greg Lange and I were scrounging for illustrations for the book Building Washington (It is included on this blog as a pdf file.).  The first one shows a rudimentary map of the seaplane base in relationship to the town, as proposed most likely in 1941.   It is followed by two aerials, both from Nov. 15, 1944 and so during the war.

Reflecting on the size of both the Seaplane Base, above, and the land-based Ault Field, below, there was plenty of work for Ralph to keep busy seven days a week.  Still we hope that he managed to get away to visit his sis and her Homer in Puyallup.

The 1941 W.P.A. Writer’s Guild to the Evergreen State notes that Oak Harbor got a shipyard in 1854, its first industry.  “The schooner Growler, named for its complaining builders, was launched here in 1859 and became one of the best-known boats on Puget Sound in pioneer days.”  The guide continues, “Hollanders began to arrive towards the close of the century, and the extremely fertile countryside was developed with characteristic thoroughness by the Dutch farmers who were attracted here.  Today [in 1941] the outstanding annual event is the Holland Days Festival; Dutch costumes are worn, old-country games are played; there are prize contests and a livestock show.”

Barrington Avenue is Oak Harbor’s “Main Street.”  Follows three looks into Barrington including the “now” that Jean recorded for our book, Washington Then and Now.

We conclude this visit to Whidbey Island with another real photo postcard from Ellis, the Arlington photographer who drove the state for four decades supplying its gift shops and drug stores with real photographs of state landmarks.   Judging from the numbers Ellis used, this card was photograph on the same visit to Oak Harbor as the one at the top.  Both Ellis cards are used courtesy of John Cooper.

A FORWARD to what FOLLOWS

On PRESIDENTS DAY, February, 15, 2010 we at Dorpatsherrardlomont are distressed at how poorly Americans – generally – know the chronology of their so-far FORTY-FOUR PRESIDENTS.  To do our modest something to correct this puzzling withdrawal from the history of our nation’s leaders we mean below to teach with rhymes for children.  Certainly, many readers will find it easier to memorize verse than mere lists, and that is what you get below: honest poetry for honest ends and not as difficult as many poems used in accelerated reading programs to help primary school children’s chances for entering one or more of the best universities.  When possible the rhymes have also been chosen for added patriotic meanings, which are also suitable for children. (Anyone who has picked up a book of rhyming words knows that there certainly are plenty of competing choices that are also proper ones.)

One final precaution: the poem begins with Warren G. Harding rather than George Washington.  As you will soon discover, we needed a rhyme for “spouse’s bidding”.

44 IMPERFECT PATRIOTIC RHYMES for 44 ALMOST PERFECT PRESIDENTS
Set in Chronological Order for Easier Instruction for Minors & Their Parents in the History of the American Presidency.

In the name of Warren G. Harding
Give us this day to play
And do our spouse’s bidding.
First we fetch a key to the pantheon
From the owner George Washington.

Now all together we will holler at the Talibans
From behind the shoulders of John Adams,
And then fix some things in the Constitution.
(All the changes will be signed by Thomas Jefferson.)
We may arouse the distracted James Madison
With a Stereopticon and a little canon,
And then play “Friend or Foe”
With the doctrinal James Monroe.
Let us laugh again at the Talibans
With the son, John Quincy Adams.

Now let us put some steaks on
For Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren?
Invest in a panopticon and another little canon
With William Henry Harrison,
Who died of a cold
When but 32 days old.
Let’s Run a quarter-miler
With John Tyler,
Do a somersault
With James K Polk
Whose manifest destiny
Lassoed Oregon territory,
Followed by a nap in the trailer
With Zachary Taylor.

May we please eat some more
With Millard Fillmore
And dip the chin and eyes lower
For Franklin Pierce
Who died of cirrhosis.

We will play hide and seek in the White House
With bachelor James Buchanan dressed as a mouse,
And perhaps little bo peep – such fun!
Then turn the vacuum on and run
To excite Abraham Lincoln.
Now put a chop on,
For the impeached Andrew Johnson.
Let us now dance ‘till we pant
With Ulysses S. Grant
And then press his pants.
Take in two or three costume plays
With the unpopular Rutherford B. Hayes,

But now stand far-a-field
From James Garfield,

Discuss ding an sich and things obscure
With No. 21 Chester A Arthur,
Show our pictures of Disneyland
To Grover Cleveland,
And count again the budget and  the bison
With “Billion Dollar” Benjamin Harrison.

Now Cleveland more –
He get’s his encore,
Which we break with a litany
For William McKinley.
Next get up and run about
With Theodore Roosevelt,
And this time ignore the fat
Of William Howard Taft.
Share some pheromones
With a Parisian Freudian
And Woodrow Wilson,
And pray for the pardoning
Of William G. Harding.

We open the fridge
For a thin Calvin Coolidge.
We may visit the Louvre
With Herbert Hoover,
And then fish in the West for smelt
With Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Or with Eleanor and him
And Harry S. Truman.
Yes, we do feel the military-industrial power
Of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Yet another litany
This for John F. Kennedy.
Now that’s no fun
So stuffed bears for everyone!
We’ll Visit Saigon
With Lyndon B. Johnson
And put a fix on
With Richard M. Nixon.
Next we may either continue
With west wing bourbon & shuffleboard
Or share a cheeseboard
With Betty and Gerald R. Ford.

Let us also share Coke and his brother
With James Carter.
And then entertain a gregarious vegan,
While White House guests of Ronald Reagan.
We are pleased to sit on our tooshies
Between the two Bushies
(George on the left, George on the right))
And in between them
Carve a soapstone billikin
With the handy Bill Clinton?

At last we will sit in our pajamas
With the Barack Obamas?

[ Click Everything TWICE to ENLARGE]

Jonathan Swift, 1667 to 1745, was one of the greatest of English satirist.  Some think him the greatest.  He is best known for Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal, And Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, A Tale of a Tub, but not so much for THE LADY’S DRESSING ROOM as such. This wonderful description of a woman’s boudoir is widely known as the Celia Shits Poem for its most memorable line.  I remember it from Dr.Clarence Simpson’s class in Enlightenment English Literature at Whitworth College in 1960.  Jean also “had” Clem nearly 20 years later when he attended Whitworth for fewer years than I.  Jean finished at the U.W..

When the opportunity of dedicating our book Washington Then and Now came up, we agreed that Clem would be a wise choice for he was often wise and we both liked him for it and his unfailing kindness.

I have learned that the Swift poem is new to Jean.  He remembers Clem for teaching medieval literature not Swift.  Not so long after our dedicatory lecture to Dr. Simpson and some other residents at the Des Moines retirement home where he then lived with his wife, Clem died, and she not long after he.  We print these valentines, the Swift poem and a much lesser verse by myself written a moment ago, all in honor of Professor Clem and his teaching, and also in thanks for the Irish-English satirist Swift and his exuberant example – the thoughtful or prudent use of a few naughty and/or bad words.

Reading the entire Swift poem is a delight – so go to it!  And please read it aloud.  Or will you instead surrender to the continuing decline of the West and return to the comforts of your home entertainment center, perhaps a Television choice that you agree is half-witted but sensationally so?

How so satire?!  What follows is a poem done in parody of those many verses that glory in the beauty of their own Celias – safely out of . . .

THE LADY’S DRESSING ROOM

By Johnathan Swift

Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)

By haughty Celia spent in dressing;

The goddess from her chamber issues,

Arrayed in lace, brocades, and tissues.

Strephon, who found the room was void

And Betty otherwise employed,

Stole in and took a strict survey

Of all the litter as it lay;

Whereof, to make the matter clear,

An inventory follows here.

And first a dirty smock appeared,

Beneath the arm-pits well besmeared.

Strephon, the rogue, displayed it wide

And turned it round on every side.

On such a point few words are best,

And Strephon bids us guess the rest;

And swears how damnably the men lie

In calling Celia sweet and cleanly.

Now listen while he next produces

The various combs for various uses,

Filled up with dirt so closely fixt,

No brush could force a way betwixt.

A paste of composition rare,

Sweat, dandruff, powder, lead and hair;

A forehead cloth with oil upon’t

To smooth the wrinkles on her front.

Here alum flower to stop the steams

Exhaled from sour unsavory streams;

There night-gloves made of Tripsy’s hide,

Bequeath’d by Tripsy when she died,

With puppy water, beauty’s help,

Distilled from Tripsy’s darling whelp;

Here gallypots and vials placed,

Some filled with washes, some with paste,

Some with pomatum, paints and slops,

And ointments good for scabby chops.

Hard by a filthy basin stands,

Fouled with the scouring of her hands;

The basin takes whatever comes,

The scrapings of her teeth and gums,

A nasty compound of all hues,

For here she spits, and here she spews.

But oh! it turned poor Strephon’s bowels,

When he beheld and smelt the towels,

Begummed, besmattered, and beslimed

With dirt, and sweat, and ear-wax grimed.

No object Strephon’s eye escapes:

Here petticoats in frowzy heaps;

Nor be the handkerchiefs forgot

All varnished o’er with snuff and snot.

The stockings, why should I expose,

Stained with the marks of stinking toes;

Or greasy coifs and pinners reeking,

Which Celia slept at least a week in?

A pair of tweezers next he found

To pluck her brows in arches round,

Or hairs that sink the forehead low,

Or on her chin like bristles grow.

The virtues we must not let pass,

Of Celia’s magnifying glass.

When frighted Strephon cast his eye on’t

It shewed the visage of a giant.

A glass that can to sight disclose

The smallest worm in Celia’s nose,

And faithfully direct her nail

To squeeze it out from head to tail;

(For catch it nicely by the head,

It must come out alive or dead.)

Why Strephon will you tell the rest?

And must you needs describe the chest?

That careless wench! no creature warn her

To move it out from yonder corner;

But leave it standing full in sight

For you to exercise your spite.

In vain, the workman shewed his wit

With rings and hinges counterfeit

To make it seem in this disguise

A cabinet to vulgar eyes;

For Strephon ventured to look in,

Resolved to go through thick and thin;

He lifts the lid, there needs no more:

He smelt it all the time before.

As from within Pandora’s box,

When Epimetheus oped the locks,

A sudden universal crew

Of humane evils upwards flew,

He still was comforted to find

That Hope at last remained behind;

So Strephon lifting up the lid

To view what in the chest was hid,

The vapours flew from out the vent.

But Strephon cautious never meant

The bottom of the pan to grope

And foul his hands in search of Hope.

O never may such vile machine

Be once in Celia’s chamber seen!

O may she better learn to keep

“Those secrets of the hoary deep”!

As mutton cutlets, prime of meat,

Which, though with art you salt and beat

As laws of cookery require

And toast them at the clearest fire,

If from adown the hopeful chops

The fat upon the cinder drops,

To stinking smoke it turns the flame

Poisoning the flesh from whence it came;

And up exhales a greasy stench

For which you curse the careless wench;

So things which must not be exprest,

When plumpt into the reeking chest,

Send up an excremental smell

To taint the parts from whence they fell,

The petticoats and gown perfume,

Which waft a stink round every room.

Thus finishing his grand survey,

Disgusted Strephon stole away

Repeating in his amorous fits,

Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!

But vengeance, Goddess never sleeping,

Soon punished Strephon for his peeping:

His foul Imagination links

Each dame he see with all her stinks;

And, if unsavory odors fly,

Conceives a lady standing by.

All women his description fits,

And both ideas jump like wits

By vicious fancy coupled fast,

And still appearing in contrast.

I pity wretched Strephon blind

To all the charms of female kind.

Should I the Queen of Love refuse

Because she rose from stinking ooze?

To him that looks behind the scene

Satira’s but some pocky queen.

When Celia in her glory shows,

If Strephon would but stop his nose

(Who now so impiously blasphemes

Her ointments, daubs, and paints and creams,

Her washes, slops, and every clout

With which he makes so foul a rout),

He soon would learn to think like me

And bless his ravished sight to see

Such order from confusion sprung,

Such gaudy tulips raised from dung.

(What follows was composed in nearly effortless admiration of Jonathan Swift and his Lady’s Dressing Room, but then it much shorter.)

I CANNOT READ YOUR HEART

I cannot read your heart

And that is just the start.

I cannot read your books at all

Your taste is so abominable.

I cannot read your eyes

As if my own had styes.

I cannot read your fashions

Your clothes should be on ration.

I cannot read your lips

Nor can I read your hips

(A horse seen from a cart)

I cannot read your knees

But my how you do sneeze!

Well!! And now I hear your fart!!!

Yet I cannot read your heart.

[Click TWICE to Enlarge Everything – especially the thumbnails that follow.]

“Hello Ednah Dear 7/28/14 Nothing like what is on the other side of this card in Albany for I have not seen any one here that would have the nerve to do such. Well dear we made our 11500 test [?] and no one hurt but I was just a little timid in making some of the moves but all over now. Gee I wish you were here now for this AM was trying on your family and everyone is so strang [sic] to me but my (W) B.B. [Top of card] Dear this is one lonesome day for me. How I wish I could see you to talk to you. Your’s forever B.B.”

An EDGE CLIPPING as BLOGADDENDUM – a Belated Valentine sans hearts but with fit sentiment and fit timing from February, 1908.

Below are several winter colors photographed this day, the 25th of January, 2010, on a short walk of five blocks here in Wallingford.  I have named none of them, for the reason, I confess, that I know the names of very few of them.  Perhaps you will help with a comment.  But  how can we indicate them?  If I can number them below I will. [Carolyn Honke has sent a few names this way from the Azores, where she lives, and we wil include them.]

[Click to Enlarge]

[Click Once and Often Twice to Enlarge]

Below is the “base.” It is a detail from a neighbor’s bush that was planted as a screen between the sidewalk and the small house, which is one of the few in Wallingford that has gone vacant because of the burst bubble.

The bubbles – on the leaves – where photographed on an afternoon in the first week of January 2010.  Above is a detail from the same plant – or long young hedge – which was chosen because of its “scar.”  I use it as a detail in the montage that follows in order to break the regularity of it all.  (I see now that I appear hugging my camera in the biggest bubble.)  When I learn the more sophisticated powers of “Photoshop Layers” there will be more and less regular opportunities for introducing asymmetry into these montages.

Over the past three years I have done scores of these.  Much more than snowflakes they are all very different.  And they are all in process – often waiting for irregular and pleasantly confusing layers.  In four years of walking the neighborhood almost everyday I have “collected” a large library of subjects that were “captured” for these purposes.  Most of the bases are natural and photographed as found, like this one,  but a few others I have prepared by arranging sticks and flowers and such with an eye to how they will multiply.  But this multiplication is so transforming that really anything will bring forth modest and always, I think, stimulating revelations.  As you will note below the more you multiply through successive flip-flops these designs the more they head march towards texture.  With one more generation below we have a fabric suitable for a men’s sports coat (at 16,276) and with two more (as yet not rendered) perhaps a formal suit for wearing in tolerant society (65,104).  All of them from rain-splattered leaves on an unidentified bush.

Below the scar are the multiplications.  The first is a quartet.   From there we flip and flop and  jump to 4, 16, 64, 256, 1,024, 4096 and 16,384.  All have been layered with an asymmetrical piece copied and itself multiplied or flipped (or perhaps flopped) from the detailed “scar” at the top.  No. 256, especially, may be imagined as a quilt or a ceiling.  Some of this shares the pleasure of making quilts and even knitting – although it is much quicker.  Perhaps 65,104 will follow in a moment more idle than this.  If it is brought up it will seem to be nearly pure texture in which the parts cannot be seen clearly and are imagined to be in a chaotic distribution rather than arranged.  I think.  “All will be revealed.”

1024

4096 /  This 4096 montage may serve as an hour glass for me – a “Time Remaining” calendar that encourages me to not waste time.  Now 71 I could treat the above as a check-off list for time left – if I live as long as my two oldest brothers Ted and Norm and my father Theodore.  All three lived to within months of 80.   If I count everyone of the gray “hour glasses” in the montage above as representing three days, then I may there both purview and preview the sum I have remaining for abiding here in this often enough happy veil of tears, but only if I am as fortunate as the others and do not stumble into some misery that I would rather escape than abide.

16,384

About 105 years of Christmas trees divide the two living-room scenes above.  The top Brown Home “set” – Brown was a skilled amateur photographer and almost surely designed his subject for his shot – can be compared to Bruce’s tree above, although in the latter the gifts have not yet been opened to spill their toys and such.  It will be worth your while to double click the Brown living room to examine the surely typical gifts, like a drum for the son (or daughter), an elaborate doll table with tea serving and sumptuous doll bed besides, a carving set for mom (or dad) and much else.  And also note the family photos on the wall, the variety of ornate framing then popular, and the painting of Snoqualmie Falls, upper left.  Hereabouts it was then a popular sign of the sublime.

Next.  When visiting my “just down the block” neighbor Bruce yesterday late afternoon and his family tree I was struck by the surreal qualities of its lights and compliment him on them.   Remembering the Brown set (above) I asked Bruce – known for his wit – to recount whatever decisions may have been involved in purchasing that tree and those lights.  Here is his response.  Enjoy with good will.

Hi Paul-

Sorry I didn’t get this to you last night… I fell asleep while putting my daughter down.  A common problem for me.

First something about the tree.  One of my favorite holiday traditions is the annual series of Christmas tree debates that ensues between my wife and I.   Most families simply have the traditions of procuring their tree, and trimming them in some sort of familial, time honored fashion.  But in my family’s Christmas traditions, there are three pillars that are the foundation for our holidays.  1.  What we did last year, or on any other year in the past, will have no bearing on actions taken this year.  2.  There will be much discussion, aka debate.  3.  And most importantly, I will purchase more, new and different Christmas lights each year.
As for the tree itself, my wife grew up in the South Pacific and as such always had a fake tree.  Please note the use of the word “fake” verses the manipulative term, “artificial” which my wife likes to use.   It was a necessary tradition born from the complete lack of any pine or fir being indigenous to the island where she lived.  Needless to say, my wife regularly advocates for a fake tree, stating unverified environmental benefits and ease of installation.  Of course I, born a Protestant Norwegian, need to remind her, born an Agnostic Swede, that if you don’t work hard and suffer for something, it is not worth doing.   As such, fake trees have less value because they are so easy to “pop up”.
Now because we have yet to settle this little matter and because we must return to the topic each year, the tree itself changes each season.  Do we cut from the forest, do we cut from a farm, do we go to a tree lot and if we go to a lot, which one, benefiting what organization?
In case you are curious, this year is a 7.5 foot Noble Fir from Hunters tree lot in Wedgwood.  No charity benefits from Hunters but they have really nice trees.

Similar, but more robust is the great Christmas tree light debate.  I grew up in a home in which the Christmas tree bore the warm glow of all red lights.  As a child I recall thinking it was like the glow of the fireplace fire illuminating our entire tree.  My wife… My wife… I actually don’t know what type of lights she had on her tree.  I only know that she is of the opinion that all red lights on a tree cast a brothel inspiring, red light district effect.   So the debate that ensues is simple but endless.  I would like to continue the traditions of old with a tree all in red and she…. Would prefer not.
The bi-product of this debate is my annual pilgrimage to the hardware stores looking for some new or better string of lights that I can hang in the hole left in my soul, from where the red lights used to glow.  My garage is a graveyard of old lights from Christmas past, large and small, ceramic and glass.  I have flame tip, berry, and gum drop.  Spanning from all white, to specific sequences to completely random color combinations.
This year I boldly grabbed the latest and greatest, the newest light technology, the L.E.D. (Light Emitting Diode).   They were billed as “jewel” tones that are safer, last 5X as long and use 1/12 the electricity.  They were also 3X more expensive and remind me of the neon colors, so popular in 80s fashion.  Interestingly, I’ve been advised by multiple people they simply have too many of the wrong color.  The problem is that if I were to add the colors that everyone has advised, I could simply buy another string of random bulbs.   So far it has been suggested I simply need, more green, yellow, white, blue, orange and yes of course, red.
Suffice it to say, while Christmas may yet be 4 days away, next years debate has already begun with my wife’s traditional first voile, “I want to talk about a budget for your Christmas tree lights”.  To which my traditional return sortie comes, “Don’t the red lights have an especially nice warm glow?”

This small collection of seasonal kodachromes were photographed by Robert D. Bradley, who at least for part of his working life performed as a professional photographer.  In the 1930 census he is listed as such, and in the 1938 Seattle City Directory (by Polk) he is listed living with his wife Hortense in the lower Queen Anne neighborhood and working at the Hart Studio, which is described as his.  It was located on Second Avenue, near University Street, the site now of Benaroya Hall.   In the mid 1960s the couple moved to the then nearly new Lamplighter Apartments on Belmont Avenue just south of Mercer Street.   Their home was on the 9th floor with a balcony view that swept from the north end of Lake Union to the central business district.  Bradlely took many slides off that balcony – lots of them sunsets.  The view above is an exception.  The subjects are the lights of his neighbor’s, the Millers, Christmas tree (we assume) as they are refracted through the glass giving transluscent privacy to  the two balconies.

Robert Bradley was generally good about naming and dating his subjects.  With both views above he has put his camera against the glass front door of Frederick Nelson Department Store to give us after hours “architectural views” (sans people) of the department store’s Christmas decors for 1957, top, and 1966, above.

On December 22, 1948 Bradley visited the intersection of Meridian Avenue and 45th Street in Wallingford.   He stood on the south side of 45th and looked west across Meridian.  Both streets – and so also the intersection – were “ordained” long before they were developed.   They were meridian lines for the first federal surveyors who dragged their “Gunther Chains” through the forests hereabouts in the 1850s.   Late this afternoon of Dec. 10, 2009 I repeated Bradley, and include that “now” directly below his scene.  The obvious change is at the northwest corner where Murphy’s Pub now takes what more than one retailer ago was Davison’s Appliances.  (It was there that Ron Edge – of our
“Edge Clippings” – discovered that the Zenith model 12s265 – the radio that started his now impressive collection of antique radios – was repaired.  It still has a Davison sticker attached.)  Not so obvious but still remarkable are the street Christmas decorations.   They were quite elaborate in the earlier view, but 61 years later hard to find.

Bradley also visited the University District on the 22nd and took the view directly below.  It looks west, again on 45th and this time through its intersection with 12th Avenue.  As with the Wallingford repeat above, my “now” was photographed this afternoon of 12/10/09 – moments ago.  (I live nearby.)  Respecting the traffic, I stayed on the sidewalk.

For the remainder of the Bradley Christmas tour we will follow closely to his own captions and attach them to their “picture frames” as he did to his cardboard slide holders.   Actually, he also indicated often the time of day, the camera he used, and both its shutter speed and F-stop.  With one exception below we will avoid those.  For the most part these are slides are submitted randomly, which means however the program that ordered them slip them to us.

We conclude our exhibit of Robert Bradley’s seasonal slides with two, above, of the Bon Marche’s well-loved stories-high illuminated hanging at the northwest corner of 4th Avenue and Pine Street.  The first of these two was taken on Dec. 19, 1956 when the “star tradition” was still a star-topped pagoda-style Christmas Tree tradition.  By Dec. 18, 1967, the date of the subject directly above, the full tree had given way to the star alone.   This more distant view also includes a peek into a Frederick and Nelson Window on the right, which may be compared to the interior F&N decorations included near the top.

We have pulled some more morphology from John Sundsten, the anatomist collector. John confesses that he does not know the names – neither scientific nor popular – for many of the trees whose barks he has recorded here. We admire his candor. “I am a good anatomist and a lousy naturalist. Some of them have names indicated with a brass plaque, but most do not. I just like bark. I like bark texture and bark color. You may write that barks are my friends. I shot them with my little camera last month while strolling around the lake counterclockwise in the early morning.” The U.W. scientist wonders, “There seem to be a lot of ladies with dogs and old couples at that time of day. Are there then two kinds of people? Clockwise and anticlockwise people, and what does their choice of walking around Green Lake say about right and left brain function, or no brain function, which is probably true for me. The barks go into folders, and I have a lot of other folders, ones with trees and animals and masks (mine) and oysters and such. It is like getting in the stuff for the long winter to come. And I presume some day it will.” John adds, “It occurs to me that I have a folder with about twenty Green Lake Park benches.” We may be seeing some Sunsten seats here soon.

John concludes, “I’ve included a long shot. It came out well, I think.”  And we agree.

May the tender prejudices of friendship be temporarily put aside for an unbiased look into the qualities of a close friend?  I doubt it, unless one stumbles into it.

Vinburd first visited my e-mail box snuggled between two opportunities: one that I help spend the good fortune of a doctor in Nigeria and the other a cheap deal on guaranteed Viagra from Sepulveda. While I wondered what qualifies as a Viagra guarantee, I did not read the gentle blogger named Vinburd until his or her fourth sending, and then I noted to myself, “Bill should read this!”  As I prepared to forward Vinburd to Bill I discovered to my surprise and delight that Vinburd was Bill.

With this blog’s introduction to Vinburd (as a buttoned link) and in line with full disclosure, it was Bill Burden who introduced me to Berangere Lomont – of this blog – in 1977.  They met, with full Mediterranean exposure, on a boat from Athens to Venice, as Bill was on his way to picking grapes in the south of France during the late summer of 1976, which some of you will remember, perhaps with no particular relevance, as America’s bi-centennial.

And it was I who introduced Jean Sherrard first to Bill Burden in 2001 and then to Berangere in 2005 when Jean and I visited her and her family in Paris. Bill joined us from Saudi Arabia where he was momentarily consulting on something and his daughter Caroline drove down from Germany with her two children.

The accompanying picture is proof of place for at least Jean, Bill and I, but not of our age now.  We were directed by Berangere to smile for her where millions of tourists before us have posed with their backs to the Sacre Coeur and on the steps to the top of Paris’ highest hill.  Grandfather Vinburd is at the middle.  (Although snapped only four years ago, to me we look uncannily young. But then I am currently negotiating my first mid-life crises with my first old man crisis at the same time – this week at the age of 71.  Bill is a few years behind me and Jean is still in his prime.)

I met John William Burden in the Helix (a newspaper) office during the summer of 1969.  The U.W. Grad student in Old English (think Beowulf) was doing public relations (long hair and all) for the “Mayor’s Youth Division.”  (Now I wonder, did he think that an “underground tabloid” like ours would have been a pipeline to Seattle’s youth?) We soon became friends and although he moved back to Southern California in the late 1980s we have never been out of touch.  He still flies north often, although by now it is as likely for funerals as weddings that we and many friends are reunited.

We lived together for two years in the late 1970s in an old asbestos faux-war-brick workers home next door to the Cascade Neighborhood playfield.  There every Sunday in summer we set out the bases for “artist league softball,” a warm tradition that survived for perhaps five years.  Bill was then working as an independent carpenter and late 70s hot tub hysteria was splashing his way. (Several friends had them and we were still young enough to comfortably strip with them and even strangers.)

When I met him Bill was married with two children.  I watched them grow up.  In those sometimes intuited “groovy times” Bill was already a generous and encyclopedic wit willing to use his vocabulary and allusions and so never boring.  Jean is the same.  One of my fond Parisian memories from 2005 is seeing the two of them side-by-side in animated conversation as they walked across the pedestrian Pont des Arts while we were all returning to Berangere’s Left Bank home from a visit to the Louvre.  That, dear reader, is spanning high culture.

I’m confident that many of you will enjoy following Bill’s reflections on a variety of subjects, both the eternally recurring ones and those that are more contemporary.  And here’s some more fan-mag-like twitter stuff on Vinburd. He has traveled almost everywhere.  He loves skiing and more than once chose his home site in order to be near the slopes.  He is an expert fly fisherman and for a time was a columnist on the subject.  This fly-fishing fits his Vinburd persona very well.  Of course, so does his wine making.  I love his Chateau Fou.  Now you may, if you like, imagine taking a walk with Vinburd, and with his blog, Will’s Convivium, you can, if you are so moved, have an invigorating conversation with the oldest brother of Lawburd, Newsburd, and Bigburd.

SOFTBALL PLAYERS IDENTIFIED (see above photo)

With help from a few of those pictured we will identify most of those players in the Artist’s Softball League who managed to pose together on a Sunday afternoon during the summer of 1978 in the Cascade Playfield with Pontius Avenue behind them between Thomas and Harrison Streets.  Many are missing including Philip Wohlstetter who helped with the identifications and who this weekend may have been in Paris, and Doug Barnett, who had the mightiest swing among us having slugged a softball from home plate over the fence bordering Harrison Street.

Bottom Row, Left to Right:  Who is the bearded man with the white shirt and in profile?  We do not know as yet. (Continuing)  David Mahler, Irene Mahler (supporting the bat), Bill Burden AKA Vinburd (supporting the other bat), Paul Dorpat.

Second Row, Left to Right: Bob Clark stands with glove and Paul Kowalski next to him has a glove too.  Annie Carlberg holds her glove aloft.  Judith Connor, with the striped shirt, soon after moved to Japan.  Barbara Teeple, with long hair, stands next to someone for now identified only as “Ann Rich’s boyfriend.” Billy King holds his hat. Man behind Billy looks a lot like the “Ann Rich’s boyfriend.”  Hmmm.  Norman Caldwell, who lived three feet from the playfield, separating it from Bill and my home.

Top Row, Left to Right: Norm Langill, who helped with the captions and played with style; Andy Keating, who hit with power and later moved to New York and Merilee Tompkins with her hands on Andy and David Rosen.  (This year David generously let me share his studio overlooking Lake Union.)  Next, Norm Engelsberg with the big hair and Lisa Shue in white.  Lisa played the cello and lived next door with Norm Caldwell.  Neither the dog nor man in striped shirt standing aside to the right are as yet identified.  This is more than 18 players – this Sunday enough for two teams and base coaches.  We used no umpires.

This conjunction of the apple tree on the bottom and the American Elm above and behind it is one of the 400-plus subjects that I have photographed most days since July, 2006.   Through most of the year their coloring makes it easy to distinguish between them, but here fall tinting nearly blends them.   The apple is on 42nd Street between Sunnside and Eastern Avenues, and the Elm with its twin – together they are listed as Seattle “landmark trees” – tower high above the northeast corner of Eastern and 42nd.

With toes centered on the same line and holding my camera high over my head as I remembered holding it the day before and may other days before that too, here is the same apple and elm on the third of April last.  You may remember we had a long winter and a late spring this 2009.

The top visit was recorded on Oct. 14, 2009, and the above “repeat” earlier on April 4, 2009.  Chosen from hundreds to show more changes, the four examples just below descending date from Dec. 23, 2008; May 1, 2009; July 4, 2009; and October 20, 2009.

The Red Tomato

so much depends

upon

a red to

mato

shining in a

soap dish

beside the white

window

I picked my first tomato this past week and thought – not necessarily and yet not unreasonably – of William Carlos Williams, the physician-poet from New Jersey whom I was introduced to in college in the late 1950s. Now I wonder if Williams is still read regularly in school, or if there are a few writers who are still “getting” his instruction that there be “no ideas but in things” as were poets Ginsburg, Olson, Levertov, and others. That, we were taught, was the lesson of his most anthologized poem, the poem I have lovingly parodied with my tomato.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

It is estimated that Williams delivered 2000 babies from the mothers of New Jersey in his more than forty years as a practicing pediatrician.

(click to enlarge photo)

Here at DSL (dorpatsherrardlomont) this may be our first Sports Report. We cannot be certain, for although we often do “look back” with this blog, just now we are not inclined to search our own archive.  (My how such contradictions continue to pester us!)

Whatever, this is the story of the annual “The Old Ball Game,” also known as the EEE for the “Eskenazi-Eals Extravaganza,” which the founder will explain soon below.  Actually, the beginning is remembered vividly.  “The Old Ball Game” it is still too young to have a myth of origins.  That requires time – three generations, at least.

Our First Sports Report starts with co-founder David Eskenazi’s appreciation for EEE’s “founder’s-founder” Clay Eals.  In this we use David to introduce Clay’s longer reminiscence, which follows.

Interspersed will be a variety of photographs – some of them with captions – snapped from this year’s game by Jean Sherrard.  And Clay is searching for scenes from earlier ball games as well.

The biggest illustration will be of the post-game player’s-pose last Sunday July 26 at the Alki Playfield.  We include with its annotated caption something revealing about the performance of every player.  Interspersed in this report are photos of David depicting recent honors that have come his way in his important role as Seattle’s baseball historian.

(…Please click for THE REST OF THE STORY…)

Number 60.  At least that is what the announcements for this year’s parade proposed.  The first photo shown here may well be of that first kiddies parade sixty years past. If someone takes the time to read through the tabloid North Central Outlooks for the summer of 1950 this may be confirmed.  Stan Stapp, long time publisher-editor of the Outlook and also Wallingford’s greatest public historian, loaned me a copy of this record of single-filed kiddies marching west into the intersection of 45th Street and Wallingford Avenue, the neighborhood’s signature cross-roads.

(Click to enlarge photos)

The rest of the photographs included are from this year’s parade, which like all others was promoted as “All About Kids” by Seafair and our neighborhood’s powers of concern.  All about kids – almost.  This year, at least, it was also about five old men with beards whom you see in the next photograph.  Unfortunately, I can no longer remember who stopped to take my camera and snap it.  I was in a state of high anticipation for the parade and very pleased to be posing with the complete retinue or cabal of the parade’s Grand Marshals near the front door of Al’s Tavern off of Corliss. (It was morning and the tavern was not open.)  It is there, north and south from 45th on Corliss that the parade’s parts were first staged and then one-by-one sent west on 45th for a six-block procession that took about 15 minutes to walk or roll.

We can pull an imperfect caption for the above photograph from the description made by the parade’s announcer or master of ceremonies from a stage in front of the Wallingford Center.  As we rolled by in our borrowed carriage, a 1961 Mercedes convertible coup, (and so only eleven years  younger than the parade,) this good humored although confused voice of Seafair described us in an order that also fits how we are posing here from left to right.

“First we have Dick Barnes, Wallingford farmer.  Wave Dick.  Then we have Pat Dorpat . . . correction.  Paul Dorpat, Wallingford walker and public historian.  Next is Dick [actually David] Notkin, 25 years at the U.W. [and now Professor and Bradly Chair of Computer Science & Engineering Department], then our very own Charlotte Trelease, their chauffeur.  [This is a mistake by half.  She may be theirs but Charolette can be seen to be also one of ours, the five guys with gray beards.]  And (finally) Nancy the tree lady.”  [That is Nancy “Appleseed” Merrill who is responsible for the planting of so many of our new trees along the neighborhood’s parking strips.  It was Nancy who produced our parade part, supplied the shinier beards and designed the identifying signs.  It was also Nancy who taught us how to wave like festival princesses with just a slight rotating – and not flapping – at the wrist.]

The Seafair announcer then concludes our part,  “Nancy wants to remind you to water your trees.  These are the Grand Marshals of the 59th Annual Wallingford parade.”  At was at this moment from his position on the trunk, David in red expressed for all of us, “I knew we would be great, but I did not know about the grand.”

We were liked – as we gently coasted down 45th, applauded and hailed.  Someone shouted to Charlotte, “Can I have your car?” And she called back, “It comes with the beard.” At another point the promenading Nancy walked boldly beyond the Mercedes and briefly in front of it and then return to her position beside its starboard side confessing to all of our great amusement, “I almost ran over myself.” At the intersection with Bagley my friends Sally Anderson and Jay Miller – who live up the block cozily side-by-side – were surprised to see me and shouted their good wishes, which I answered with an order that they kneel, which they did not.  In fact throughout the parade no one went to their knees or even bowed for these marshals.

But we were laughed at a good deal, and anything any of our quintet shared with the other four was thought to be funny, and may have been funny by some law of humor relativity in which feeling good encourages the comic vision over the tragic one.  At one point I turned around to David and Dick who – you can see – were sitting behind me on the trunk and noted, “Tomorrow this will all be a dream.”  David wisely answered, “What do you mean? It is a dream now.”   It was a Wallingford version for the Warholesque celebrity dream – this time twenty minutes or six blocks of fame while rolling by our loving neighbors.

Our part in this Kiddies parade was near its end in the concluding motorcade of odd vehicles including one with more Seafair clowns.  The parade pictures that follow in thumbnail can all be moused or clicked for enlargements.  Most of them were taken by Jean (of this blog) who took a break from his three weeks of running a drama camp at Hillside School in Bellevue.  Perhaps he was still buoyant from that other parade, which he so wonderfully recorded and exhibited here, the Fremont Solstice Parade.   Other photographers included Ray Burdick, Sally Anderson and myself.  If you don’t see these names you know Jean took it.

I nearly missed this parade.  Our part started without me for I was away – but not too far to find me – interviewing an old friend about the brilliance of his first grand daughter who was with him.  “Off the charts” is how he put it.  I also interviewed – and during the parade as we “Grand Marshals” waited to take out part – David, the uniformed actual marshal who was in charge of organizing the pre-parade line-up on Corliss and then releasing the groups one by one down 45th Street.

After he had sent one of the marching corps with his repeated advice “Enjoy the parade,” I approached him and asked, “How’s the size of this year’s parade?”  With the political grace of someone who knows to answer a question from both sides, he replied, “Actually it is pretty much similar to the rest of the years.  I think we have a couple more units this year.  It’s about the same size.  It’s grown every year.  I’ve only been a marshal for a couple of years now, but as far as I know this is one of the older parades that we do.  At last count there are about forty neighborhood parades.  They begin near the end of March and continue to the end of September.”

At this point David’s mother, who was also in a nautical Seafair uniform, came forward and embraced me.  I recognized her, and immediately thought – but did not ask – perhaps it was she who promoted me as a non-working marshal.   I asked her, “You are really in charge here aren’t you?”  She answered. “Oh no-no.  David and Kate are in charge. (I did not see Kate although I had corresponded with her earlier.)  I am in charge of their support groups.”  It seemed like quibbling to me.

So I turned to David again, and without asking he answered, “Mom is the HMIC, the Head Marshal in Command.”  Then someone – perhaps his mom – sent a signal to a small device strapped to his shoulder.  It was time to release the next group – Family Works was its name – down the promenade.  He advised, “You should be ready to go.  Have a great parade. Have a great parade.”

Will someone please respond with a review of “Forever Amber,” the film listed on the old Colonial Marquee.  (Click to enlarge.) This holiday recording was done by Seattle Camera Club member Horace Sykes on Dec. 22, 1949.  For the freshest among you, it looks north on 4th Avenue from Pike Street when passenger railroad service was still profitable for the old trans-continentals.  Note the illuminated signs.  Does anyone remember Gasco?  Some happy day we will put up a few score of Sykes recordings taken from his many camera adventures in the west, which prove that this orchid enthusiast was a master of the picturesque and knew how to compose a picture.

(Remember to practically always CLICK to enlarge – and then click again.)

An easy pleasure it is again to devotionally brag about  “The Mountain That Was God.”   The biggest volcano in the Cascade Mountains was sometimes wrapped in theology, a divine sublimation to escape the merely mundane controversy over what to call it.  The naming battle was waged for many years between the Seattle forces who favored retaining Capt. Vancouver’s name for the mountain, Mt. Rainier (Rainier was an admiral in the English Navy and fought briefly against the colonoists during the Revolutionary War), and the Tacoma forces whose name for it was considered by some to be the name or more like the name which the local natives used for it, which is Mt. Tacoma or Mt. Tahoma or something in that range.   Readers of this page from a few months past may recall that this was the point of view (from Wallingford’s northwest corner of First Ave. NE  and NE. 45th Street) we took of the mountain every day for a month last summer.  The camera that took this view of it, however, has a bit more pixel zip – 10mg worth – and a strong optical zoom as well.  Consequently, here the Holy Names Academy dome on Capitol Hill is almost crisp.  The cross atop it breaks the horizon between the big mountain (Rainier/Tacoma on the right) and the little one (Little Tahoma on the left).    The picture was taken in the early evening today, 5/15/2009, so the sun was from the northwest and set the north face glowing with pink smudges that may remind some of the early 20th Century landscapes of Eustace Paul Ziegler (1881 – 1969), an artist who was once very popular hereabouts and in Alaska.  [By a crow’s and Google Earth’s yardsticks it is 62 miles from the Wallingford corner described above to the summit of the mountain.]

When going out
Beware the snout.
First open the curtain
And be certain
No cloven hoof
Waits on the roof
Or tail that screws
Hides like the Sioux.

Beware that the fog
Brings no hog,
And flee all grunts
When out on hunts.
If you must plow
Avoid the sow
And little squealers
With your four-wheelers.

If offered pork
Put down your fork.
And keep all lard
From off your yard.
In place of ham
Pull cans of spam.
From friends with bacon
Be you forsaken!

So you are fine
And own no swine.
Still keep your digs
Locked to loose pigs.
Gourmand and glutton
Now gnaw on mutton.
As with birds before
So now eschew the boar.

pd

I have two requests of you blog users or visitors.

First the Camellia.

I am researching the Camellia, a flower we see in abundance hereabouts at this time of year.  I would like you to share with me any attitudes or impressions or old stories about this flower.

Second the Cat.

Please help me with a caption for this photograph of a cat on a porch.

Today was the first of the few days when petals rain from this Wallingford Landmark: the two rows of cherry trees that meet at the southeast corner of 46th Street and Corliss Avenue North.  At least when compared to 2007, this year the budding, blooming, and sprouting is about a dozen days later than it was then.   The top photo was recorded today – April 17, 2009  around 6pm.   The bottom one was also recorded on April 17, although two years ago.   In about five days the petals will have all fallen from these trees.  On this day in 2007 the trees were already well along in showing their leaves. (click to enlarge)

Walking through the Good Shepherd P-Patch last Saturday [April 4, 2009. I give the full date for future generations.] I came upon Blackie and Blondie.   Their three protector-handlers told me that these were not flying ducks but running ducks.  And certainly after a quick study it appeared that these elegant ducks with their long legs and long necks and generally lean compositions were not burdened by any thing – like big wings – that might inhibit running.  Although made for it, Blackie and Blondie still did not run around the P-Patch that Saturday afternoon, but neither did they waddle.  They kept near their tenders and were very graceful without exception – another quality of running ducks, I learned.  They stayed in the P-Patch watching for snails and worms but more often settling for grass as their tenders pulled up parsnips nearby.   Asking If I might take a portrait of their happy family in this peaceable kingdom, they allowed.  Asking further if they might write more revealing captions for these portraits, they agreed – that they might.  I have named the group of five portraits, “How To Carry Two Running Ducks Home” because that is where they were soon heading after our meeting.  They live near by the P-Patch.  I learned that running ducks are best carried backward.   But there is more to know about all this, like insights into a running duck’s intelligence – they are not as smart as chickens – which hopefully will be explained and the tenders named and so admired for their duck nurturing and handling.

With the sun watching I walked Wallingford for about three hours, again repeating the about 400 subjects I have chosen for eventual animation but also recording discoveries like these.

While walking the neighborhood this afternoon
I passed below the first bulletin of Spring
Blooming higher than the crocuses at my ankles.
They have been bowing to the sun for a week.

Now I remember the row of warm
And sometimes hot late Februaries
We thrived on in the early 1970s –
The first Fat Tuesday parade in our prime
From Pike Place Market to Pioneer Square
On a winter day at room temperature.

Walking further I came upon
Some withered leftovers of October
Protected in the green cemetery of a bush
Like a Coast Salish sarcophagus  in a tree.

About 9pm I walked to the corner of 42nd and Eastern and supporting my hand against a power pole took this streaked view of tonight’s wet snow, which I am told will be gone when I rise in the morning.  Kit-korner are two American Elms, which are listed as Seattle landmarks.

About fifteen hours later I revisited the corner and took the view below.

Another 15 hour lapse – one block west at 42nd Street and Sunnyside Avenue.

(Click to enlarge)

(Click to enlarge)

I have wondered.  How may I respond in variation to Jean’s grand accumulation, shown just below, of a year’s recording on one section of the Yakima River Canyon?   This leaf, lovely in color and form, I found near the intersection of 44th Street and Eastern Avenue on Dec. 13, 2008.   With little thought, I photographed it centered on twenty settings found between where I lifted the leaf from the gutter and where I live.   The naturalists among you – and there are several in Jean’s family – may be able to identify many of these settings by type(s).  You may also determine a fondness for one setting over the others, but why would you?

While searching, typically, for something else I came upon this heartening piece of Kodachrome from the winter of 1943.  The original 35mm slide has a caption written the flip side from the “Kodachrome”  stamp.  It reads, in toto,  “Jan. 43  Our favorite spot to rest in summer under trees on shore E. Green Lake Way. Beautiful in Winter as well!!!”

For the moment I do not know where this slide came from, although I think it was mostly likely picked (by me) from one of two large collections of slides.  One I purchased in a basement sale from a home near the east shore of Green Lake.  The other I got from Lawton Gowey, a since deceased friend, who shared with me many images, stories and enthusiasm for regional history.  Earlier he was given the collected slides of Horace Sykes, a long-time member of the Seattle Camera Club,  and Lawton passed the collection on to me.

Sykes’ work is often wonderful and we should show more of it in this blog and will.  But for the moment the image reminded me of Jean’s frequent early morning visits with his camera to this shore of Green Lake, which is also near his home, and the results that he has published here.  So this is my first “Jean Challenge.”

Can he – or rather, you Jean – repeat this shot with a “now.”  A warning through.  It may be more difficult than we think.  There have been some changes on the east shore since 1943.

JEAN GRABS THE GAUNTLET:

Here’s my best effort, slightly wider than the orginal, but pretty close I think.

I emailed the Sykes original to Kathy Whitman, Aquatics Manager for Seattle Parks and Recreation and she replied:

I can’t be certain but I think it is the northern shore of Green Lake looking across the west. West Green Lake Beach would be located just outside the area of vision to the left side the distant shore… the wading pool located to right side outside the area of vision.  It is on the shore about 2/3’s of the way toward the wading pool when leaving Evans Pool.

That had been my best guess as well, as this spot has always been a favorite of Green Lake strollers. As I recall, the trees in the ’43 photo were cut down and replaced by smaller trees, to general opprobrium, but I can’t recall why.  As can be seen, they’ve grown up a bit.

Back a few insertions or entries in this blog we put up seven, if memory serves, panoramas of Meridian Park from the same prospect as the one attached  here, and recorded this afternoon, 12/14/8.  In the now 28 months I have been walking through the Good Shepherd campus, sticking snow has been rare indeed.  This is the third time.  Another of the three is included in the mentioned group below.

(Please click to enlarge)

Paul writes:

In March of 2005, my oldest brother Ted celebrated his 80th birthday with a banquet for kith and kin at Ivar’s Acres of Clams.  It was a family custom that whenever the Dorpat boys returned home for a reunion or whatever, they would join with their father, a robust bass, in another singing of the song “What Will the Poor Birdies Do Then.”

We never knew the actual title for the song, but that may well be it for the line appears in all four verses, which follow and may be named for the four seasons. Ordinarily we began with the Winter stanza.

There are two important tips for the performance of this pathetic song.  First, whenever possible, Norwegian pronunciations are substituted for English – e.g. “Vinter” for “Winter”.  Second, with the singing of the same last line in all four verses, “…and put their heads under their wings”, the singers are obliged to do just that: bend or dip their head and crook their arm over it, as if protecting themselves from something falling from the sky.

So here, left to right, are Ted, David, Norm and Paul, the four sons of Rev. Theo Dorpat and Eda Gerina Christiansen Dorpat, singing in a kind of unison “What Will the Poor Birdies Do Then.”  It was the last time, for before they could meet and sing and raise their arms again Ted and Norm passed.  Actually, Ted never confessed to singing, and if you listen closely, at the beginning of this clip you will hear him announce, “I can’t sing.”

(For those planning to attend ‘Up the Down Chimney’ with Paul and Jean at the Good Shepherd Center on Monday the 22nd, please use the preceding video as a rehearsal tape.)

First, the last of these five recordings of the fall of fall looks up into some of the trees that border the Meridian Playfield in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood.  The park was once an orchard for the Roman Catholic Good Shepherd Home for Girls, and a favored few of the old fruit trees survive.   The panorama merges four images photographed on Saturday the 6th of December, 2008, around 3:30 in the afternoon  The center of the scene is to the northwest.  (Click the image to enlarge it.)

One month and four days earlier (Nov. 2, 2008) I recorded the several parts for this about 260 degree panorama that includes part of the P-Patch (far left)  and most of the Tilth garden.  At the center this pan looks northeast from a Tilth prospect that is near the southern border of the Good Shepherd Campus.  The home seen in part on the right is off-campus and faces Corliss Avenue at its campus dead end north of 46th Street.  The pan is a stitching of eight photos.

The trees that break the horizon above Tilth’s A-Frame greenhouse, left-of-center in the above panorama, appear again in the next recording which looks east towards the Good Shepherd Center and on the same second day of November, 2008.  My back is to the Meridian playfield.  The popular Pergola on the left supports and shelters several concerts during the warmer months, and below the tapping feet of the musicians several families of Rabbits have used the pergola as a hutch.   It is thought that these opportunists made their way to the campus from Woodland Park.

Wet leaves and the bouquets they make can be found throughout the campus resting in and beside the bushes.  This arrangement, however, was discovered a block off campus near the intersection of 46th and Corliss on November 11, 2008.

The last signs of fall included here are the reflections of an autumnal sunset off the west facades of the glass-curtain University District Building at the southeast corner of 11th Avenue and 45th Street – for many years the District’s unofficial mayor, Cal McCune, had his office there – and behind and above it the old corporate Safeco Building recently purchased by the University of Washington. It is the school’s first true high-rise and a symbol of sorts for many developments in the culture of higher education including grade inflation in the school’s undergraduate classes.  B’s continue to rise to A’s at a pace more relentless than global warming.  They are compassionately engineered by human forces in the interests of both comforting and complimenting the often anxious students and also avoiding their sometimes impetuous wrath.   The school recently replaced the insurance company’s banner sign with its own across the top of their new skyscraper.  The photograph was snapped while leaving Trader Joe’s with some pre-cooked brown rice and 73% dark chocolate in the purple wrapper on Dec. 6, 2008.

Jean’s Nissan parks almost alone on Raymond, Washington’s quiet First Street in 2005.  Once this was the main street of a smoking mill town that often went swimming when the Willapa River flooded the street to its knees.  Here on a rare hot day for the coast the pavement is dry as cured fire wood and hot too.  Jean recorded this scene looking south on First as I was either stepping into or out of my side of his gallant carrier.   We were chasing contemporary “repeats” for historical photographs that were then candidates for our book “Washington Then and Now.”  While Raymond’s First Street made it through the final cut and into the book, the repeat we used looks down the center of the street.  It misses the helpful signpost on the left but it is a more accurate “now” for the historical photos used – three of them.  (For Raymond see page 83 – in the book, not this blog.)

Traveling with Jean – the Sherrard of this blog – would be like riding with an ironic* Captain America except that he really has impressive upper body strength from frequent exercise.  He rows while watching the East Enders, the nearly 30 year old BBC1 soap.  And yet Jean is still more pumped-up for ideas of all sorts and for questions of taste and temperament too.   And he can drive like no body’s business, including his own for in truth he hardly makes anything from all his driving zest, including 10 thousand miles across this state pursuing historical sites in order to repeat them for our book Washington Then and Now.   (Visitors to this blog will know how often he flies to that curvaceous canyon on the veriform Yakima River.)

Jean also travels the world, loving the arroyos and scablands of eastern Washington and Ethiopia, equally.  I have seen him travel great distances.  For two weeks in the summer of 2005 I was his dependent as we flew first to London and then rolled by chunnel to Paris.  And there at the train station Jean first met Berangere AKA BB, the Lomont of this blog and I first saw her again since 1977.   I met Berangere that summer now more than thirty years ago!   The adventurous Parisian teenager was visiting my friend Bill Burden, whom she had met the summer before while picking grapes in southern France.  And here, right to left, are Jean, Bill and I posing for Berangere with a familiar landmark behind.

Next, another Parisian scene by Berangere – this one of Jean and I preparing  – with BB – to “repeat” with a contemporary recording the print I hold in my hand.  It is of Concorde Square, and I took it in the summer of 1955 when I spent two weeks in Paris.  I was sixteen and also still more sweet than sour.  Below it is Berangere’s repeat from 2005.  I was hovering over her shoulder.

Back in Washington while touring the state for our book and jobbing about for the book’s promotion, Jean has done all the driving.  I sit beside him in the passenger seat (As I do in the Good Shepherd’s stone grotto portraits also recently posted here.) of his all white Nissan, ready to yield whatever travel advice I have and, more important, listen to his stories.    My Captain is an insistent rapper about this wonder and that injustice and such a good storyteller that unless there is an emergency one will not mind hearing some of them twice because they are his classics.   And one should expect and accept cell phone interruptions from one or another of his many dependents.  Jean is admirably “up-front,” except for those instances when he will suddenly stop, jump from the car and exit around a corner for no announced reason.  Rarely gone for long, he still always takes the keys and a heavy Nikon (digital) about the size of a large chocolate croissant.

Here follow a few recent snapshots of travels with Jean – most of them my own through the Jeanmobile’s heroic windshield.   Jean is just to the left of these recordings, except when he is in them.

First, for the above picture choose one.  We catch Jean (1) looking for a phone booth (2) running around the corner and up the stairs of the Washington State Museum of History in Tacoma looking for proofs of our Washington Then and Now show that opens there in January next.  I take the moment to also leave the car and record this snapshot of the “leaning tower of Tacoma” – another Tacoma museum, for glass not history.

Rather than glass it is Tacoma’s old bricks that both Jean and I find most stimulating. Here is a splendid example on Pacific Avenue, long ago Tacoma’s “boulevard of dreams.”  The pentimento of the pink cream and green sign exhibited on the east façade of this brick block is one of the West Coast’s finest examples of worn mural art.  (While I have never visited a large sample of West Coast revealed murals nor know of any book about them, I still am confident that this is true or may be.   I’ll say that this is another Tacoma museum, one of one work and one wall.   A “drive-in or drive-by” museum you can enjoy, as Jean and I did, through the windshield.

A day after our appointment in Tacoma we were traveling again to responsibilities in Kirkland and Issaquah.  When we reached the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge Jean was feeling good – having a fine time.  Once on the bridge he pointed to “The Mountain That Was God” aka Mt. Tacoma, but officially named Mt. Rainier.  Two years earlier he had sat for most of an afternoon near Paradise Lodge, waiting for The Mountain to reveal itself for the repeat of a historical photograph of it he carried with him.  Now those two views – his and the historical  – appear side-by-side in our book.  Here from the bridge and in the late morning light The Mountain was stroked by dry-brushed clouds.  [Can some reader more familiar with the sky and its tricks explain first that slender but not lenticular, it seems to me, cloud that either points to The Mountain or springs from it, and still more mysteriously the shadow that in part repeats the banner-cloud to the left?]

Stopping for a light on East Lake Sammamish Parkway I used all 10X of the optical zoom advertised even on the body of my little Lumix.  (I purchased it on Ken Levine’s advice.) Jean pointed to the houses hugging the edge of the hill.  He explained that they are the front line of oversized and yet crowded residences built on the plateau east and above the lake.  Some of them he indication would qualify as McMansions.   Depending upon the film you remember, they resemble either a line of U.S. Cavalry or a line of bareback mounted Sioux, waiting to descend into the valley and stick it to a few persons without horses.  I have a different analogy for them born of my study of Classical Greek long ago.  For me they appear to be a phalanx of barbarian invaders.  These homes – Jean tells me for I have never given much time to real estate except the historical sort – continue for miles to the east from that edge of the bluff.  Jean explains that some of this work-in-progress is now stuck.

Ambitious plans on the Issaquah Plateau were popped along with the housing bubble. But then many of them were created together like raindrops on a windshield, or cookie crumbs on a counter, or McMuffins on a grill.  What, I wonder, difference will their mass production matter in a century – if they survive and gain some charm from time and the weather.  Depending upon one’s class sensitivities they now seem to either inspire resentment, remorse, weltschmerz, petty glee or indifference.  Not certain about how I feel, I can at least identify with that comely crow perched on the light standard upper right.  I may be smart about some things, but not about most, including this at once awesome, ominous and curious row on the ridge.  The crow soon flew away from its meditations to search for more scraps in the valley, and once the light had changed Jean continued to the Issaquah Costco where we were scheduled to sign books, which we were fond of telling those who purchased them increased the book’s value by twenty cents, or ten cents a signature.

Late in the afternoon we returned to Wallingford and Green Lake, where the next day I crossed paths with Seattle City Councilman Nick Licata.  I asked Nick if he had seen the young trio singing Bach’s a capella motet Jesu Meine Freude at the front door to the Wallingford QFC.  He had not.  I explained, “With three-parts of a four part Baroque motet they were promoting the social engineer Lyndon LaRouche’s political literature and asking for donations.”  I gave them a dollar for the 3/4ths of Bach.  I might have given 75 cents.   The photograph included here of an unidentified arm shows part of the Wallingford QFC sign beyond.

I told Nick about our trip the day before to the Issaquah and Kirkland Costcos and together we lamented how in the last quarter-century much of “book culture” – both the making and marketing – had been captured by a few heavy weight publishers and retailers – or in Costco’s prosperous formula, semi-retailers.  The Issaquah plateau also entered our little conversation about books and Bach, and the other Lyndon.   Nick confirmed what I had only incidentally heard about Chip Marshall.  The once famous 60’s activist at the U.W., Marshall later became one of the principal developers on the plateau east of Issaquah. Something like Ken Kesey and Abbie Hoffman, Marshall had made his own theatrical run several times from the law, which he offended with some brash objections to the war in Vietnam. What was so entertaining is that he would sometimes appear unannounced to speak in public, but then ditch away again before he could be nabbed.  It was the behavior of legends, and it helped that he was Errol Flynn dashing.  But now his story is a mixed report.  Unlike Kesey and Hoffman, and more like Jerry Rubin, Chip later joined “the man.”  And now, Nick revealed – and this from Chip himself – his old friend longs to open a night club in Seattle.

Returning to the windshield snapshot, Jean told me that the forested horizon behind the crow is Tiger Mountain.  I believe him, for he has been intimate with these “Issaquah Alps” almost since he was a child returning from Germany with his parents to live in Bellevue and eventually, in the early 1980s, to open Hillside School on Cougar Mountain, the little “alp” closest to Lake Washington.  Jean teaches drama, writing and video at Hillside.  His wife, Karen, teaches French and history.  Their oldest son, Ethan, teaches mathematics.   Just above is a photo showing Jean preparing his students for that night’s performance of Brecht’s play “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” staged last year at Hillside.

While on our way from Kirkland to Issaquah we stopped along the east shore of Lake Sammamish where, again from the comfort of the passenger seat, I photographed Jean preparing to take a photograph along the old Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad right-of-way (1889), which is now a recreation path – a controversial one, although not for those who use it.  Rather some of those who live to the sides of the trail imagine it as a conduit for urban thugs and liberal ideologists (for some, one and the same) who are carried to the east shore on light weight ten-gear bicycles from Seattle thereby interrupting the formerly fretless piety of the lake shore community and more recently the highlands behind it.   Jean is here visiting the now lost mill town of Monohon.  And that is spelled correctly with three O’s.  (Look it up on historylink for a thumbnail narrative of its substantial history.)

And here still at the abandoned depot site of Monohon, Jean shows the power in those shoulders and long arms as he lifts his heavy camera far above the path and over the heads of a cycling family perhaps returning to smoke-filled rooms in Seattle.  Jean has attached his heavy Nikon to his big ten footer and thereby brings its prospect to about knee-level on the third story of a typical office block.

Continuing on to Issaquah and moments before we stop for the crow on the lamppost (discussed above) I snapped this screen of trees along the east shore of the lake.   I figure that this may be an example of the kind of landscape that we are wired in our genes to enjoy and even long for.  On this possibility I included this scene’s easy pleasures for you to study in reverie.  This tentative insight of evolutionary psychology also adds to my hope that some of the garage sale art that I have purchased over the years is resalable.  Let this also be a fair caveat lector to this blog’s visitors for there are plans for using examples from my “Forsaken Art” collection on this site.

Issaquah is also the corporate headquarters of Costco whose employees seem to express universal gratitude for how well they are treated.  Here we take our place before a special black backdrop raised behind our signing table like an altar and pose with Angela who is our Costco hostess.   We ask her how she likes her employer and get that same response.  While I am happy for Angela and Costco I still feel ambivalent and think of Jean’s and my good friend Clay Eals, the author/historian who is such a champion of small stores and neighborhood culture.  We sympathize with Clay’s ideals but can we also afford them.   In Paris it is still possible, if one wishes, to visit a dozen different stores for a day’s needs and all within walking distance – like Wallingford.

Jean is taking French lessons at the Alliance Française.  He is justly proud of his pronunciation, although, as he describes it, learning the ways of French verbs requires the discipline, flexibility, sobriety and elegance of a ballet dancer in the Ecole Française.   A point that is perhaps mean to make, an instance of protecting my own interests, is this.  After studying his French for however much time he can give it, will he ever be able to tell a story as well in the language of Balzac as he can in the language of Dickens?  (In the accompanying photo directly below, two French-looking visitors admire some of the garden bedding on the Good Shepherd campus.  The Alliance Francaise is in the brick building to the rear.)

Come hear Jean read in English Jean Shepherd’s “Red Ryder and the Cleveland Street Kid” and “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” this coming Dec 22 in the fourth floor Chapel of the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford.  I will be backing him up as the amateur part of the program reading O’Henry’s “Gift of the Magi”, along with a poem that has profoundly shaped the culture of Christmas, yes “The Night before Christmas.” We rented this fine performance hall  – which you can study below in this blog in the many pictures included with Sally Anderson’s Ashes to Ashes review – so there will be a requested or suggested gate of $10.00.   Elsewhere in this blog is an announcement for this reading – and another at the Haller Lake Community Club –  accompanied by a photograph of Jean and I sitting in the Good Shepherd Center’s Grotto.  I am, again, on Jean’s right – left to you.  Here we also include at the bottom another example of a grotto – this one in the pavement near 42nd Street and 1st Ave. N.E. – and just below an abandoned Christmas nativity scene, or part of one, discovered half buried by untended ground cover and neighbor to other incongruous artifacts in a hidden Wallingford side lawn.

* As yet, we can’t quite expect a sincerely ecstatic post-ironic America with the new administration, although satire will now have to search harder for targets.   What we need is rather a post-iconic America, which is a nation dedicated to patrolling for dead metaphors in public speech and hysterically driven clichés like “iconic.”   This “iconic” is used much too often now as a substitute for thinking.   So stop it!

Chris and Mary Troth’s “plantation manse” in Wallingford (at the southeast corner of 44th and Meridian) has a pompon or citrouille or potiron coloring (all French terms that have something to do with Pumpkins and used in celebration of this blog’s recent turn to bi-linguil – or more often bi-focul – with the contributions of Parisian Berangere Lomont) and has been recently and wonderfully appointed with the attached row of pumpkins for Obama.  As far as I can determine there are only Democrat signs in Walllingford, and if America follows this neighborhood in the upcoming election it will surly be an Obama Landslide followed by an Obama landfill of signs and such, but not of these pumpkins.  The Troths are also avid gardners and almost surely have their own compost for this endearing political marker.  Mary explains that the colors of their Wallingford landmark are a golden-orange named “jubilation” (and may we so hope) by its manufacturer, white, and a dark read, which she explains acts like the home’s “eye-liner.”

(In celebration of the season I’ll add other pumpkins to this contribution – perhaps later in the day.  A suggestion: why not keep your Obama sign – not the pumpkins – as both a reminder and a part of Sustainable Wallingford?)

Four snaps from today, Friday the tenth of October.   The fly and the monkeys are from a porch on Bagley Avenue.  The flower from the Good Shepherd campus P-Patch.   And The Mountain from the corner of 42nd Street and 1st Avenue N.E. – all in Wallingford.  (All – or nearly all – may be “moused” for enlargement.)

Like most of the other subjects posted here since we changed our blog-programmer, these four panoramas of Good Shepherd can be enlarged with a tap of the mouse.  They were all recorded this Tuesday afternoon of October 7, 2008.  And they are presented in the order that I visited them as part of my regular walk through the Good Shepherd grounds or campus.  I was cheerfully told by two pedestrians that today was supposed to have been overcast and wet.  One used the word “dismal” and the other “nasty”.  Instead we were spared the rain and got instead performing clouds with sunshine between them.  I entered the campus at the Bagley Avenue entrance at about four in the afternoon and left it about thirty minutes later.

The top pan is of the Meridian Play Field, the most westerly part of the campus.  It is managed by the park department more directly than the rest of the campus.

The next pan is of Tilth’s workhouse/greenhouse, which has also a green or planted roof.

The third pan looks northwest from Tilth’s teaching garden to the same structure and part of the P-Patch attended to by Wallingford neighbors.  On the far side of the screen of trees is the Meridian Play Field.

The last pan shows the Good Shepherd Center against today’s playful sky.  Once a Catholic school for girls – many of them from troubled homes – the structure and campus celebrated its centennial last year.  The restored chapel on the top floor has become a popular concert venue with admired acoustics.

At the Wallingford corner of Eastern Avenue and 42nd Street stand two of the tallest American Elms in Seattle.  There are no witnesses to their age and neighbors hope that the rings may never be counted.  The trees can be seen prominently from the Ship Canal Bridge on I-5.  Together these twins are the largest green mass around.  A few years ago the twin to the east began to crack between its two high branches.  The owners then of the corner house had a cable run between them.  The sudden molesting wind that blew through the north end (at least) on the afternoon of Saturday Oct. 4, did not break the cable, but it did snap a limb from the east landmark and dropped it to the front lawn.  About one hundred feet away and heading for the trees to take my several daily photographs of them, I heard the snap and saw the limb fall.   If it had held on for a minute more I’d have been standing beneath as I do with the three photographs attached here in a row, looking up the north side of the west elm watching the limb approach me — and just miss me.  Find the hole or identify the missing limb when it was still in place in two of the three views.   The limb is missing, far right, on the afternoon of Oct. 4 2008.  It is in tact, at the center, in the afternoon of Feburary 28, 2007, and also intact, far left, on the afternoon of Oct. 1, 2008.  In a fourth photograph at the top the limb is lying on the front lawn of the  home at the northeast corner of 42nd Street and Eastern Avenue.

(Mouse the triptych to enlarge it.)

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.”

Recently, Seattle resident Sally Anderson’s sister Sharon, also known as Deedo, who lives in the highlands of Utah, was visited by a moose. Sally, who describes Deedo as a “moose lover,” had already worried about her sister’s expressed urge to meet face-to-face with a moose in peace.

The attached moose portrait, which said sister recorded through her bedroom window, while standing on the bed, suggests that her wish has nearly come true.

Sharon’s snapshot alarmed the prudent Sally, and with a few words of caution she admonished her sister that as cute and kindly as any moose may seem, it can also run faster than she.  “Sharon” Sally said, “be careful or you may get what you ask for!”

This moose episode, we know, is not a first for Deedo. Two years past, while she was resting in her bathtub, a (presumably) different Utah moose stuck its nose through the open bathroom window.  While Sharon was non-plussed, not so Sally, who has since worried that the next time the moose may try the front door.

Readers who are familiar with similar episodes in other parts of Utah are asked to contact the Utah Department of Parks and Wildlife and share their experiences through the UDPW’s official webpage, under the category “Moose Meetings.”  (This new category “Moose Meetings” takes the place of “Moose Sightings.”)

From left: Sarah Kuck, Emily Nuchols. Sitting: Natalie Brandon.

Emily Nuchols is a near-by Wallingford neighbor – about a half block leap from the back deck. On a recent weekend while on my daily walk of the neighborhood I was lured by bunting and balloons at her front door to make a donation at the back door. There hovering above the salads and corn on the cob on her own deck were a few of Emily’s friends who are supporting her part in the fifth annual “Summit For Salmon.” It is a group climb of Mt. Rainier scheduled this year for August 25. I gave the suggested donation of $20, and thereby joined in the “fight to save our wild salmon.”

Emily is the Save Our Wild Salmon’s Communications Manager, but she has done considerably more than “mediate.” For instance, she has kayaked through Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River, and been “swimming” about Seafair and other events in a well-tailored costume as Buster the Wild Salmon.Our linked sponsorships behave like a kind of pyramid scheme with a wild salmon on the top. This means having been reached I am now expected to find at least five other sponsors and so on until together we raise $5,000 – her goal – for supporting Save Our Wild Salmon by sponsoring her early morning trek up the 14,410 feet of Rainier, the hardest endurance climb in the lower 48 states.

Emily can be seen jogging around the neighborhood, seemingly with little effort. However, by the testimony of practically everyone who has tried it, climbing Mt. Rainier, even on the most fortunate of summer days, is extremely tough.

For my soft part I will stay below in Wallingford keeping a daily posting of what Mt. Rainier looks like – or does not look like – a few feet from Emily’s front door. I have practice, for it is a subject I have been photographing for more than a year, steadying my camera against a power pole at 42nd Street and First Avenue Northeast.

I’ve included here two examples, which I have dated. As every local knows, in any year there are only a few days “The Mountain” can be seen. But what — from Wallingford — will be revealed in the coming three-weeks plus for Emily? These daily postings of the “Mountain That Was God” begin on the first day of August and continue through the 25th, the day of the climb, and perhaps through the month.

When she returns we will ask for an interview.If you would like to help save the wild salmon by helping sponsor Emily’s climb you can contact her at Emily@wildsalmon.org or visit http://wildsalmon.org/donate/. Click “donate now” and then scroll down to “Summit for Salmon” and pick “Emily Nuchols” from the list of climbers.

August 1, 2008: Blue Angels approximate the line of Emily Nuchols upcoming ascent of Mt. Rainier. Photo taken in the early afternoon from the Wallingford corner of 42nd St. and 1st Ave. N.E.. (The dome on the horizon tops Holy Names Academy on Capitol Hill.)

Included as evidence that The Mountain is there. This Rainier was recorded on January 1, 08 and from the same Wallingford intersection (a few doors from Emily’s front door) as those that will be snapped through this month in a watchful accounting or count down to Emily’s ascent…

Looking at Mt. Rainier as if it were there on August 2.

Mt. Rainier twice on August 3. The top was taken around mid-afternoon with a few angels performing for Seafair. The above was snapped about 4:45 pm with the mountain revealed, in part.

Sunset – around 8pm – August 4. The Mountain reflects the color of wild salmon.

Around 7:30 pm – August 5.

Around 6:30 pm – August 6, a Wednesday.

7:30 pm – August 7 – Mountain lost behind miles of haze at the end of a clear but hot day.

6-ish and still beyond the purple haze on 8/8/8.

About one in the afternoon of 8/9/8, a Saturday, with The Mountain relaxing in the bleachers at a cloud rally.

Six or seven hours later after an afternoon squall brushed the north end a rainbow formed a complete semi-circle across the western horizon. As seen from Emily’s avenue in Wallingford its southern end did not quite reach the summit of The Mountain, which was, of course, still hidden behind the remainders of Saturday, 8/9/8.

Sunday, 8/10/8 around 4pm.

Monday, 8/11/8 around 7pm. Had Emily climbed this morning and lingered at the top of The Mountain she could have looked down at Wallingford in the late afternoon.

8/12/8 around 6pm on a generally dismal Tuesday that may have tested the good will of every dear reader.

8/13/8 – a Wednesday – around 5:30 and as clear as The Mountain snapped through the Interstate-5 atmosphere can get.

About 7pm on Thursday the fourteenth after the loitering contributions of this hot day.

A hot Friday afternoon, 8/15/8 – with The Mountain barely detectable on a “clear” day.

A hotter Saturday, 8/16/8, around 6:30 pm, with only the speck of a single crow heading east to the arboretum for the night.

Another clear day and yet impenetrable. 8/17/8

Gray Monday, the 18 of August, about 5:30.

Tuesday the 19th with clouds failing to shape themselves like The Mountain. About 5 pm.

Wednesday the 20th – suggestive of entropy about 6:30 pm.

Thursday the 21st – clouds acting like mountains but no The Mountain about 7:30 pm.

The Mountain shows herself on the afternoon – around 3:30 – of Friday the 22nd, 2008.

August 23, 2008 about 11:30 AM and so some part of two days short of Emily’s ascent of The Mountain. Living now in Portland – and so nearer the Wild Salmon of the Columbia – she will be approaching Mt Rainier from the south side, the side from which she will begin her ascent. We will be watching, sort of.

The day before: Sunday August 24, 2008 about 6:30 pm, and the day before Emily’s scheduled climb for Wild Salmon.  Today it rained and tomorrow is looking at least somewhat wet.  What will become of the climb in such stuff may be revealed tomorrow.

A moment after  the above photo was taken around 3:10 on the afternoon of Aug. 25, 2008 – the day that Emily was scheduled to climb and we assume reach the summit of Mt. Rainier – had The Mountain been in Wallingford, the Seattle neighborhood in which Emily lived when this count down began on the first day of August, it would have been pelted by an impressively heavy rain that flooded the gutters and drove cats to waiting beneath parked cars.  Tomorrow we will attempt to recount Emily and the Wild Salmon’s fate on what we hope was a climb that reached above these piling clouds.

The Mountain show her head around 3:30 pm on August 26, 2008,  the day after the Wild Salmon team was scheduled to reach the summit of Mt. Rainier.  However, no news as yet from Emily nor on the http://www.wildsalmon.org website concerning the success or, we may imagine from yesterday’s weather, gray rain away.  Of course, we hope for pictures soon as evidence either way.  For our part we will continue to watch The Mountain from Wallingford.

Looking towards The Mountain hidden from Wallingford on Wednesday, Sept. 27, around 4pm — and we have news from Emily.

“Thanks Paul.  We ended up getting stormed out. 60 mph winds and avalanche danger turned us around about halfway up Disappointment Cleaver (aptly named :). We were all bummed, but our guides were spectacular and we all had a great time . . . I’ll send you some choice pix tomorrow.  Cheers, Emily”

A Google for Disappointment Cleaver will bring up a great variety of slide shows taken by climbers that follow the route that Emily took, until her group was turned back by those winds.  If you compare some of these illustrated narratives you will soon get a confident impression of the route to the top that goes by way of Camp Muir, Cathedral Rocks, three glaciers and Disapointment Cleaver.  After the rock cleaver one reaches the last part of the climb, up the “big snowy top” of the mountain.

Towards The Mountain from 1st ne and ne 42nd around 4 pm August 28, 08.

August 29, 08 around 7pm with the day’s evidently getting shorter.

Saturday, August 30 about 4 pm.  The Mountain is hidden behind sympathetic clouds.

Last day of August 2008, the 31st, a Sunday and around 2pm.  When Emily Nuchols returns to her Wild Salmon office (now in Portland) and sends us a scene or two of her group’s attempt to climb The Mountain by the Paradise, Camp Muir, Cowlitz Glacier, Cathedral Rocks, Ingraham flats, Disappointment Cleaver, more Ingraham Glacier (I think), Emmons Glacier to the top route, only to run into 60 mph winds while on Disappointment Cleaver, and there be turned back by their guides, we will print them.  Otherwise, this concludes the August record of Mt. Rainier as seen – and not seen – from the northwest corner of the Wallingford intersection of 1st Ave. Northeast and E. 42nd Street, with the camera steadied about seven feet up on the street sign post.  And may more wild salmon make it to Idaho.

Sponsors at the back deck benefit – July 12, 2008. From left: Rachel Kuck, Leigh Newman-Bell, Sarah Kuck, Sherry, Emily Nuchols, Mike Cooksey, Rachel Cooksey, Val Heer. Sitting: Natalie Brandon, Dan Ritzman.