Traveling

I'm sitting at the Hartford, CT airport waiting for my flight back to Seattle. I've had a great trip east, visiting friends in CT and NYC, then 5 days with my family (and more friends) in upstate NY. Bob had to head back to Seattle early, due to family obligations in WY - so the upstate part was solo, but it all worked out just fine. We'll plan another visit soon that will allow him to join me in the delights of the Mohawk Valley!

Thanks to everyone who showed me such hospitality, it's always great to come back...Cheers!

Hello, Winter

Here's some video of what snow in Seattle generally means (it gets pretty interesting around minute 2:30):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhZCyQ3emQg

We were very grateful to have made it home a little early and without a horrible 5-hour commute, and spent a snug evening watching the storm out our front window...Thankiness abounds!

Here are a few things I spied with my little eye over the last 24 hrs

Monday 11/22 @ 4pm

Mon 11/22 @ 10pm:

Tues 11/23 @ noon (little birds galore tromping around the backyard today, 25F and sunny)

Thankful

It's snowing at sea level in the PNW, a rare occasion that never fails to delight...Nothing is sticking, but our Sunday morning walk was especially lovely today as a result. We've had a frigid system blowing through, and it's going to get much colder these next few days - it will be good training for our December travels to NY and WY!

The past month has been busy in the best sort of way - I can't begin to recount everything this late on a Sunday evening, but wanted to at least say hello and share some highlights of the things I'm grateful for lately...

Our harvest this year was bountiful, despite the cool rainy August/Sept we had. We raked in beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic and apples - and fall foraging filled our freezer with chanterelle and matsutaki mushrooms. We're eating well this autumn, often from the soil under our feet, which makes everything taste even better.

And though my sunflowers were late, their brilliant blooms were all the more cheerful upon arrival:

In October, I got to visit the North Carolina siblings - just a long weekend, but a welcome change of scenery and opportunity to see family I've been missing. Mere hours after my arrival in Durham, we headed DC to attend Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear - a once in a lifetime event that I won't soon forget! Scott, Alicia and Morgan handled all the logistics, and I gladly rode shotgun; we joined ~ 250,000 other reasonable souls for an incredible gathering on the National Mall.

While in NC, I also went to see Wendy, Mike and Dani in Wilmington for a quick overnight - it was good to see them and get another tour of their lovely coastal city. Wish it could have been longer, but we made the most of the time we had!

Back in Seattle, I've been taking a class on mindfulness and meditation based on a course that was developed at University of Massachusetts by Jon Kabat-Zinn - it's been really interesting and challenging. It's surprisingly difficult to be present with each of the moments that make up our lives, and I've been grateful for the opportunity to work on this with the patient guidance of our amazing teacher and some terrific classmates. More on that to come, no doubt...

Before I wrap up, I'll toss out a few films we've seen lately and liked - Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (the latest Michael Cera vehicle - fun!); Sweetgrass (a documentary about sheepherding in Montana); and CityIsland (set in the Bronx, with Andy Garcia). The last two are a great juxtaposition of the respective cultures that Bob and I come from - we found it amusing that we watched these next to each other, as we prepare to visit our families for Christmas. We've come a long way since we first met each other, scratching our heads in confusion much of the time...hee hee!

I'll try not to be so long in posting the next time, until then - Happy Thanksgiving!

PBS - A Murder of Crows

Last night on Nature, PBS aired a segment titled "A Murder of Crows" and I thought I'd share it with my 3 followers as a PS to my post this summer...

As you might have guessed, I have a fair amount of curiosity and admiration for crows - they are a constant of Seattle's city living, and the UW has a researcher who is doing really interesting work on urban crows...So - last night's segment featured the work of our local crow guy, and in general is just a really interesting look at these wily creatures. Check it out when you have an hour or so - who knew that baby crows had blue eyes?!

Time does heal - or 2 years later, still standing

Dates loom large in the imagination, anticipating this day for the past couple of months has been much harder than experiencing it - ironically enough. Funny how the feelings don't appear on cue, when they ought to, in an orderly fashion.

I've been spending some time this fall investigating myself, and working on being with whatever presents itself in each moment - it's a big challenge, but one I'm enjoying. At any rate, what do they say - where ever you go, there you are?

Well, I am here, and I'm doing ok. I hope you are, too. Wishing today of all days we weren't quite so far away - but I know you're here with me as I am with each of you, missing Eleanor.

Leonard Cohen

Got Bob LC's new cd/dvd Songs From the Road for his birthday, tonight we watched the DVD. What an amazing creature Leonard Cohen is - after watching his performances from the tour he's been on for the past 2 yrs at the age of 70+, I am in complete awe of his talent and generosity of spirit. In the extra backstage clip, he recites the chorus from Anthem:

So, ring the bells that still can ring,

forget the perfect offering,

there is a crack in everything -

that's how the light gets in.

I'll leave it at that, sending my love to those who are needing it this weekend.

Magical Mushrooms

Why, hello October...

How did September manage to completely escape me this year? Work has dominated the past couple of months, I guess - but my big push is finally over. As things calm down for me, however, they're just heating up for Bob as Fall Qtr gets underway - just in time for my favorite season...

This year we're determined not to let the academic calendar overshadow the lovely NW autumn. It's harvest season after all, and with that comes the emergence of...mushrooms! One of the biggest upsides of our damp mossy climate is the abundance of fungus everywhere you look: chanterelles, matsutakes, porcinis, lobster mushrooms - the list goes on and on.

Our brief forays into the forest were quite the contrast with noisy city life; while wandering amongst the trees I noticed a sound I didn't recognize, then realized it was the falling pine needles landing on the moss at my feet...amazing.

Here are a couple of photos, you can find more here...

Hope your harvest is bountiful...

Photo Shoot...

So, our old digital camera was stolen out of our car while on vacation in NM (sadly, with all our vacation photos therein)...I've been without a camera for the first time since I was - 15?

It has been interesting to be sans camera for a month or so - starting right off with being on the last week of vacation and no way to capture all that we saw. I noticed that I spent a lot more time looking at things with my eyes, and thus actually seeing what I'm often urgently trying to shoot. So - all of that is firmly captured in my mind (I even did a few sketches in our trip journal - Georgia O'Keefe I am not). But then we had friends visit from out of town with their 7-yr old son, complete with fun tourist activities and great meals - and no photos!

Thanks to my dear brother who is always willing to do the technical research on my behalf, I went out and got myself a new camera last weekend - Panasonic FZ35 (superzoom). I'm favorably impressed after playing around with it ever so briefly and looking forward to the chance to take it through its paces. The startling clarity and detail of the few photos we did take left me thinking the superzoom should be reserved for wildlife viewing, not closeups of the pores on my face!

See for yourself:

And here's Bob, to be fair:

And for good measure, Leota (check out her scaly leg!):

Pretty damn nice...Can't wait for the next vacation!!

So long, Mabel

We'll miss your pluck and zest for life - thanks for 7 amazing years of chicken delight...

Summer

Hello, it's been a while - hasn't it? Hard to follow a murder of crow, I guess.

It's August, and it finally feels like summer up here in our far-flung corner. The days have been delightful - marine layer in the morning, cool air that smells like saltwater and seaweed. Burning off in the afternoon to reveal a sunny blue sky, people are in a good mood and everyone's out and about.

We were away, vacationing in Northern New Mexico in search of the sun. We found it, it found us. Alas, no photos to share as our camera was stolen from the car in Chimayo - I'm sad to lose those pictures, but no matter. We had a terrific time, it was hard to point the car north when the time came.

Hope you're having a great summer too.

A Murder of Crow

A mellow (if cool and soggy) Memorial Day weekend was had here in Ballard...We finally had a respite this afternoon starting about 3pm, after several days of persistent rain and temps that couldn't break 60F. Taking full advantage, we dashed outside, fluffed up our sodden garden beds (having turned under the rye/fava bean covercrop several weeks ago to begin its springtime decomposition) and stuck our poor tomato starts into the ground. Tough love in these parts, we need to get things going!

This morning, however, was not very mellow. Continuing our Mutual of Omaha spring melodrama, we awoke at 6am to the sound of many, many crows cawing and shrieking - looking outside I could see them gathering in the top of the big pine by the shed and in the neighboring trees. The chickens were joining in here and there but not nearly as alarmed as the crows. I watched to see if I could spot the raccoon that most certainly was the source of the cacophony, and spotted him heading straight up the trunk - but he disappeared into the canopy where my view of him was obscured.

Climbed back into bed, thoroughly awake, and listened for another 20 minutes or so before getting up again and walking out to make sure there weren't any others lurking around. I found a spot on the patio where I could see the raccoon high up in the pine, and he seemed to be eating something in the crook of the branch. I went back in, grabbed the binoculars and watched from the bedroom window. Long story short, had a clear view of him eating a crow he had clearly just nabbed from a nest up in the tree. It was pretty gruesome, entrails hanging down, his sharp white teeth tearing pieces off (just as they were designed to do), and his very pink tongue trying to spit out the feathers.

The crows were absolutely ballistic, at least 50 of them hung around for an hour or more, sounding the alarm endlessly - but nothing to be done, alas. It was disturbing all in all, but I couldn't help thinking about the fact that he was just feeding himself, as raccoons and every other animal must do every day. I was grateful that it wasn't one of our chickens, and we'll remain vigilante to ensure they don't show up on the seasonal menu...

Later, we looked around under the pine (in our compost bin area) and found a leg and entrails that had dropped - so sad.... The crows have been hanging around all day, as if they're holding a wake and all the relatives are coming in for the memorial service. We'd had a baby crow hanging around trying to join our chicken flock (they were having none of it) - we fear it might have been him, he was so dopey maybe he wasn't wily enough to avoid the raccoon.

So, goodbye May - we're hoping for a sunnier June in all respects!

Seattle Soccer

Last night we went to see our first Major League Soccer game at Qwest Field (our first time there as well), courtesy of some season-ticket-holding colleagues of mine: an international friendly game between the Seattle Sounders and the Boca Jrs. I know very little about soccer, but the Boca Jrs are a world cup-league team, and it was expected that they would dominate Seattle.

It was really fun, first of all because we woke up to one of the dreariest days of May so far (which is saying something) and watched it puke down rain all day long. Thankfully that little system spent itself out by 7pm when we got to the open-air stadium, and it proceeded to clear off and warm up a little, ultimately presenting us with a full-moon spectacle as we made our way to the car after the match.

Second of all, they have glitter guns that they use to shoot out huge wads of 2" shiny metallic confetti whenever something good (like a goal) happens, which was a surprisingly lovely effect...I was entranced (they never have glitter at baseball games)!

Finally, Seattle kicked the Boca Jrs collective asses 3-0! It was very exciting, a high-scoring game for soccer, but clean and well-played - it reminded me of hockey, except when they send that ball flying down the field they don't have blades on their feet to help them keep pace. Those players ran their asses off for 90 minutes!!

I think we'll go again, for sure.

What we've been watching

Not much, to tell the truth - but last night we watched Good Hair, a documentary narrated by Chris Rock. Fascinating topic - the role of hair in the African American community and the industry around it.

May: Razor Clams, Alpacas, Mothers

I suppose if I posted more often I'd have better titles for my posts...But that's how I roll, thus the random listing of disparate topics.

Since my last dispatch we've been busy - Bob's about to open a new show at SU, it's been an intense effort to bring it to fruition. Thursday will lay that to rest, and the quarter will be over before we know it, his second year coming to an end! Hard to believe...

Last month we made a quick escape to the WA Coast for some razor clamming - had a great time with the Britt-Dunlaps, and hit our limit (15 per person) both days. There's something about the ocean that really soothes the soul - and the bags full of clam meat are frosting on the cake!

At the end of April, I took a solo trip to Eastern WA to visit some friends who grow peaches and raise alpacas. I'd never visited the farm where my favorite fruits come from, and it was a huge treat to finally see it after all these years (I met them in ~1998 when we were vending our baked goods from the Cafe at the U-District Farmers Market)...I camped in the orchard and got to hang out with the alpacas while Marilynn took clippings of their fleece for a friend of mine who spins and wants to buy some fiber to work with. It was a nice break from the urban rat race - sagebrush, open sky, sunshine...

In between all that, working in the garden and enjoying the unfolding of spring. We have a bushtit nest in our pine tree, American goldfinches are passing through (bright yellow birds of spring), the raccoons have visited a couple more times, but no harm has come to the chickens. Neighbors are emerging, blinking into the light - the days are longer and the air is sweet with pollen and the scent of flowers of all sorts.

It was Mothers Day on Sunday, and Eleanor was much on my mind...A co-worker's mom unexpectedly fell ill last week and passed away on Saturday, and my heart was heavy with his sad loss. At the same time, I have been thinking of my own mom quite a bit lately - but with much greater ease than at any time in the past year and a half since she died. My thoughts of her have been less and less about the illness and hospitalization that dominated in the months after her death, and increasingly comforting, springing up randomly when I'm in the midst of the mundane chores of daily life - laundry, dishes, changing the beds, cooking.

I realized this weekend that I often think of her when doing things she taught me how to do in her inimitable way - likely learned from her own mother and aunts and passed along. Ruminating on this epiphany while folding the week's laundry, it occurred to me that mom was a crafty sort in her own way, and wholly encouraged these tendencies in me from the beginning. I subsequently had a long train of reminiscences - with windows desperately needing a Walter Parry washing flung open to admit the spring breeze, birds chirping away in the back yard - starting way back with my earliest cooking adventures and meandering along through crochet lessons (granny square baby blankets for one and all!), mail-order craft kits, story book writing/illustrating, tadpole collecting, violin instruction, shop classes (wood and metal), foreign language study & international travel, photography, etc...

And I realized that, while I rarely saw Mom actively engaged in any such hobbies while growing up (her main endeavor during those years was raising her children), my love of working with my hands was deeply influenced by her unfailing support of even the most outrageous ideas (green tuna noodle casserole, anyone?). Last year, during my first visit home after the funeral I was distraught about how I still missed her so much one year later, and my friend Amy said, "But Carol, don't you know that she's right here with you, and you can talk to her anytime you need to?" - at the time it didn't feel that way to me at all, I was still so immersed in the loss.

But, with every month that passes my thoughts of Mom grow easier, and I can see that she is indeed very much with me every step of the way. I'm sure I'll never stop missing her, but I'll never be completely without her either. Phew!

One day chicken, the next day feather....

Fear not - the day of feathers hasn't quite arrived yet. Just a close call, one that gives you pause, and leaves you with a good story once your heartbeat returns to a normal pace.

It's spring in Seattle, which means many wonderful things - gardens bursting forth in preternatural shades of green, blossoms erupting in every nook and cranny, the scent of lilac permeating a sunny morning.

However, this time of year also brings some less pastoral moments: the emergence of roaming raccoons from the lingering night, which now departs earlier each day...

All of which is to say, we had a visitation this morning from an impressive specimen of the raccoon clan of Seattle, one who was clearly craving chicken fried steak for breakfast - thankfully, all he got was a fistful of tail feathers from poor Leota.

It was quite the Mutual of Omaha's Wildlife Kingdom morning, I think Bob took it harder than the chickens - but he bravely chased off this intruder with the garden hose and a blue streak that surely woke our neighbors.

As you can see, I've been rather silent thus far in 201o but all is well in the PNW. We've been working hard, but delighting in the arrival of spring. This weekend we'll try our hand at digging some razor clams out on the WA coast, looking forward to the change of scenery and a little fun on the beach!

Our Netflix choices of late have included Pirate Radio (a fun romp, Philip Seymour Hoffman is always a treat), An Education (good, but so uncomfortable!), and many discs from Spectacle: With Elvis Costello (love, love, love this show - Elvis is a sweet and thoughtful host, and interviews a terrific array of great musicians: RECOMMENDED! Tonight we are watching him interview Renee Fleming)... Highlights from the past couple of months include Where the Wild Things Are, Crazyheart, Coco Before Chanel, This is It, 9 (the animated sci-fi film, not the Fellini musical - which we haven't seen yet).

Hope this finds you all well...more soon!

c

Really? February?

Well, that was a plaintive start to my final post of 2009...I must say that 2010 has been great so far - I can't believe an entire month of it has already passed.

Had a great visit from Scott & Alicia, so lovely to have company and see them relaxed and having fun. They even brought some great weather along, so we all enjoyed warm temperatures and some sun (this turned out to be the warmest January on record)!

Bob's show opened on the 25th and has been running smoothly, we finished up the month with a super mellow weekend around the house.

Signs of spring are starting to show up - bulbs are emerging, leaf buds are forming, light remains on the horizon (on clear days) as late as 5:45pm...We are lucky here to get such early encouragement, despite the dark days of winter.

A movie to check out: 9

Blew our minds - it's gorgeous, if dark.

I'll try to post more this week - have been knitting a few cute things.

cw