the thing itself and not the myth

After a movie Saturday morning, I decided to take advantage of the sunshine and walk around Seattle a bit. I started in Pioneer Square, walked down the waterfront, and took the “Waterfront Street Car” back up to the International District.

More photos than anyone cares to see after the jump. Plus maybe a little history. Read the rest of this entry »

I haven’t posted about knitting since December! Can you believe it? Ridiculous.

Part of that is because December and half of January were taken up with finishing a crocheted afghan. You don’t get to see that, though, because there is no sunlight in Seattle in January, and so the few pictures I remembered to take were terrible. Seriously.

I do have pictures of a lot of other stuff, though, and they live after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight I went to see Tracy Grammer at the Youngstown Cultural Arts Thingamabobber, which was a good move on my part, even though it is in West Seattle, more or less, which might as well be a different country.

She was the second in a new series; Ellis Paul is going to be there next month, and my excitement regarding this cannot be textually rendered. The only way I could be more excited is if Vance Gilbert was coming with him. (Confidential to Vance: Seriously. Seattle. I know you know where it is. What is the deal?)

Tracy was lovely. She grows every time I see her. I saw her a few times with Dave of course, and at least once with Jim Henry after Dave passed. This is a solo tour, and it suits her. I just wish the audience had been more responsive. Oh Seattle. People who know Seattle audiences, take that experience and apply it to an audience where I easily was the youngest person (at least until you got to fourth graders). Dead silence huge portions of the time. I cheered into silence for Falcon Ridge Folk Festival and for Richard Shindell, and when she got to Townes Van Zandt, who merits the applause of those two combined and then some, I gave up and clapped quietly to myself. They got me, those passive fuckers.

She mentioned Townes because she closed with “Pancho & Lefty”, a song I am perhaps a little obsessed with. On the bus home I listened to Gillian Welch & David Rawlings covering it at a show that’s now ten years old. I thought of how much I love seeing them play, their awkward happy little banter & the way Gillian bobs when she plays guitar, and how they haven’t come to Seattle in ages. I would pay a ridiculous amount of money to see them, no lie. Speaking of artists I would pay a ridiculous amount of money to see, Tom Waits is planning a summer tour. Dear Tom. I saw you in 1999. That was way too long ago.

I need to be better about seeing live music, but it’s hard. Film takes over my life. Movies are easier to go to alone. There’s a lot of artists I’d like to see, but I’m uncomfortable going alone to late-night, hard-drinking bar shows. I try not to live in fear, but it would also be fucking stupid of me to, say, go to Gogol Bordello in SoDo. Or the Paperboys on St. Patrick’s Day. So it goes. But tonight was Tracy, next month is Ellis, and there’s the Winterpills in there somewhere. And the beat goes on.

…I seriously cannot believe I don’t have an “art saves me” icon on this account. What was I thinking?

Then we were off to London. Eventually. It took a crazy amount of time to get out of Oxford, and we wound up completely reorganizing the plan for the day thanks to transit in general hating us, but it worked out okay because I got to do two things I had failed at when I was in London in July. Plus one bonus thing.

First off, in July for some reason, the portrait of Richard III was not on display at the National Portrait Gallery. I do not know why. I suspected it was just to torture me, as I had gone to said Gallery solely to visit him. I attempted it again this trip and there he was, precisely where he was supposed to be! It was amazing. I have been a bit obsessed with him ever since I read Shakespeare’s take on him, but it was only heightened when I read The Daughter of Time, in which the main character is inspired to research him based on this portrait.

Perhaps the best part of visiting him was that there was a tour going around, and I got to hear the tour guide say that they probably knew Richard best from Shakespeare, and that said play was “high propaganda”. Oh my heart! I bought a postcard of Richard down in the gift shop. How could I not?

Also in July, I failed to find the marker for 84 Charing Cross Road. This is apparently because I am an idiot. I found it this time, no problem, though it was mightily depressing to see it on the side of an irritatingly trendy restaurant. Click through to read the text.

Finally, I had really hoped to see The History Boys when I was in London. They were only selling matinée tickets at the half-price booth, but I had my heart set on it, so we stopped by the theater box office, and since I was going alone I got a seat in the SECOND ROW OH MY GOD AMAZING. Happy birthday to me! I had an issue with the casting for Posner (too old, played it way too camp), but I think I actually liked this Dakin better, and though Irwin & Scripps had a lot to live up to, I rather loved them.

Other London things after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

Back in Oxford we walked down the canal and over to (flooded!) Port Meadow for a knitting photo shoot with bonus horses.

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I enjoyed some street stencil art (after the jump)… Read the rest of this entry »

In January, I went to England to celebrate my 30th birthday. Best. Plan. Ever. I realize that it was about ten bazillion years ago now and most of you have looked at the Flickr photos already, and the rest of you don’t care. Too bad! This is *my* poorly updated web diary whatsit! You can deal! In three parts, no less!

Here are some things that are important to mention in the order that I remembered them:

1. About an hour after I landed, a plane went off the runway, and we saw the fire trucks going to it as we left.
2. The subway in Glasgow is Lilliputian.
3. In Oxford I participated in my first ever pub quiz. And totally sucked. I do love pubs, though. Going to knit night at one was also awesome.
4. I love Innocent smoothies, jacket potatoes, elderflower anything, noodle bars with wheat free options, and flapjacks.
5. We got to see the boys choir at Christ Church and Will & Lyra’s bench in the Botanical Gardens.
6. We accidentally ran into a movie premiere. Very strange.
7. Kat & I Adventured on our own in Oxford, managing to run many errands and go to the Pitt Rivers Museum, and not get lost at all.
8. Our roommate in the hostel in London was insane. And possibly a lizard. Something cold-blooded at least.
9. And other stuff I can’t remember anymore.

After the jump are really quite a lot of pictures and possibly even a little description, but not much. As always, click through to Flickr to embiggen.

Read the rest of this entry »

The last week of January, the Decemberists played two shows at the Moore. I had bought tickets to their cancelled “The Long and Short of It” tour, so there was no question I’d catch both of these. I was up in the balcony for both shows, which is probably best as I had brought a cold back from London and wasn’t anywhere near the top of my game. The first night was a lot of fun, but the second was awesome.

First, the opener was much better. The Butchers & the Builders, who had a great energy and mad percussion action. See the toy drums, etc, at the front of the stage? They got handed out to the audience. I whipped out my camera at first for the totally busker-esque drum kit.

Then the Decemberists were just on, with a set that included the two songs I most wanted & thus least expected to hear - “The Soldiering Life” & “Sons & Daughters”.

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Yay!

In other seafaring news, I did a little damage over at Etsy recently, getting magnets & a necklace on the theme.

And finally, totally not sailor related at all, click through this photo to see my set of photos from International New Year, aka the Work Event That Prevented Me From Caucusing.

…I really am going at this completely backwards, aren’t I? Eventually I swear I will post stuff from England, for the one person who hasn’t prowled through my Flickr already.

On February 9th, the Washington State Democratic Party held its caucuses. The turnout was amazing. I didn’t get to participate because I was working; we had our annual International New Year that day. It happened to be at a community center, which was possibly a little overbooked.

They officially expected 100-200 people for 8 precincts. They got easily 600. I spent the vast majority of the afternoon directing traffic. “The bathrooms are that way, the gym is around the corner, no, this isn’t a caucus in this room.” Caucus participants lined up all the way down the street, took over our event spaces, moved precincts outside, and cast longing looks at the multipurpose room we were still using for our party. I got to see most of the caucus because one precinct was caucusing in the lobby in front of our room. It was energizing to see the turnout, the passion, and the process. It was exciting to watch so many people there, involved in politics and their neighborhood and the party. It was, basically, a hell of a thing to see.It still sucked.

See, the Washington Democrats choose their delegates exclusively via caucus, in spite of the fact that the State holds a primary for both parties. The Republicans caucus too, but they use both the caucus and the primary to choose delegates. If you’re a Dem, though, and you can’t take three hours on a Saturday afternoon, you’re out of luck. If you’re working, if you can’t stand up for that long, if you’re uncomfortable declaring your vote out loud and having to deal with someone trying to talk you out of it, if you didn’t understand that the primary is meaningless, if you’re out of the country, if your English isn’t that good, well, you’re out of luck. You can cast your ballot on February 19th, but it’s just a beauty pageant. A popularity contest.

I vote absentee. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past month thinking what I might do with my ballot. It has people on it who aren’t even running anymore. Should I do something strategic with it? Will it even be counted since it’s absentee? Hard to say. I decided in the end to not play games. It might be a popularity contest, but that’s no reason to not win it. I was sad to be denied the opportunity to stand up for my candidate earlier this month, and so I’m taking the chance now, no matter how meaningless it may be. I have the opportunity I’ve never had, to cast a vote for someone I was proud to support. I’m taking it. I’m casting my vote for Barack Obama.

The caucus may have been a powerful, energizing thing for us at this time. But with its record turnout it didn’t come close to the numbers a primary would have. I could look around the room, in a neighborhood I serve daily, and see quite clearly that only a limited demographic was there. I saw lots of people I work with. I saw no one who we serve. Even though I’m happy my guy won, it wasn’t representative. I hope the party puts due consideration into this in the next four years.

It’s the first of February, and I am decreeing this the official start of 2008. Happy new year!

I didn’t get anything done in January; the first half was dedicated to clean-up from 2007, and the second was dedicated to vacation and then the plague (thanks, London Underground!), so any attempt to start fresh on any front was doomed to failure. We’ll see if it goes better in February.

There will be vacation posts happening early next week, complete with more pictures than you could possibly want to see. In related housekeeping news, I’ve changed the RSS to pull the summary rather than the whole feed. I thought, since most folks read this on LiveJournal, it is kind of cruel to inflict a page full of photos. This might cause the feed to barf at some point today, and I apologize for that in advance.

In spite of the plague, I had a marvelous time. It is nice to be home, though. My bed is amazing, I saw two Decemberists shows this week, and my mocha at Monorail Espresso Tuesday morning was darn near a religious experience.

I hope you all are well.

(Why, there you are, blog!)

I got eaten by the holidays. This is my busiest time at work, so much so that I can’t take the time to visit family for Christmas. I suspect they had a better time that way anyway, particularly as at this point in December I am super-cranky from being tired.

I took a break from working mid-month to attend our first Posada celebration. The families had been working hard in the weeks leading up to it, making decorations, like these angel centerpieces…

…and some pretty amazing pinatas, including Dora the Explorer.

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Then it was back to holiday business. We run an adopt-a-family program as well as a gift closet. This year we served 200 children between the two programs.

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After the jump, more holidays, a little Seattle, and a side of knitting.

Read the rest of this entry »