Wild in Winthrop

A special trip over the North Cascades to catch the wildflowers in bloom...and we hit it just right! Whole hillsides of lupin and arrowleaf basalm root shining, shining, shining in the sun. Scent of lupin and sage on the breeze.

Another Roadside Attraction?

Melanie's friends alongside I-5 coming into the Valley.

Work work

We drop by the Graphic Design room late Sunday night and find Spencer there all alone with only a box of crackers to eat. Good thing we'd brought him some Viet Namese noodle soup!

Croatia Fest -- Anacortes

The annual Croatia festival was the inaugural event in the new Croatian community center in Anacortes. Yummy salmon. Great music, enthusiastic dancing. And I won a six pack of Karlovacko in the raffle!

God et al

I think some of the world's religions make altogether too much of the Creation .. . I favor some of the Native American and African myths that feature a little bit of mud brought up from the bottom of the great sea of non-being . . . but even that, I think, is too active a role to assign to the divinity...it's the Trickster that pulls off that creation. . .a minor supernatural being given to foolishness and urges . . .the creation to me is like a fragment of divine DNA - - a strand of hair, a patch of skin, a piece of spittle -- unconsciously left behind at the scene of an accident or crime . . .

Perspective in WInthrop

See that little black dot in the middle of the grassy meadow, center bottom? C'est moi.
(Click on photo to enlarge.)

World Class Snooze

Sun in the high lands....warm spring sun....wind in the tree tops . . .

Passover

Reading the Haggada.

Room view ... passover

Peeping. joyce

But is it ART??!!

Kyra at work

Kyra before the ICU doors at the UW Medical Center.

Slavko Says "Spring & Love!"

I am puzzled by the book, women just love it so I will try to do some more with it, <<>> sorry for not having time to translate some poems (I will, promise).

For the last few days I've been painting the pastry shop(where Julia likes to buy sweets and ice cream), spring is in full bloom, but the sun is just about to explode in all it's brightness, it feels like a woman before delivery, something that will happen most certainly, matter of days...

Did You Know: Food Riots?

Food prices soar . . .poor riot . . .bigger emergency than collapse of capital markets ...40 countries affected...cash crops, biofuels, dismantling of oversight bodies, and economic imperialism to blame . . .

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41976#share

Dream

You turn your head and
start to wave, when
a hole opens in the floor
and you fall in!

She pauses, her arm half-raised,
and frowns, looking down
that long, long hallway.
Who or what on earth
was she looking for?

Lynne Says "Things Look Funny in the Rear View Mirror"

We left around noon on Friday to head to West Chester . . .

traffic was pretty bad on the Schullkill expressway so we let our GPS find an alternate route, very pretty but very circuitous through the hills around the river, fancy residential areas of Galdwynne, lots of curves and hills, by this time Byron was getting car sick, and we did not get to the museum until 6 and by the time we went to park the car was sounding like a jet landing, Tim said he could barely make it up the driveway to the museum and the lots were full and he did not know if we could drive the car any further. 

Well needless to say we were not feeling too good about this time after 6 hours of travel running late and now faced with the possibility of the car needing to be towed  to some  inner city Phillie garage and us being over 20 miles from Byron's college and our motel. We managed to get the car down the hill of the museum to a lot in the center of a traffic circle and gave up and went to eat, we had not eaten all day,(since I was on high alert mode all I managed was half a salad) and do the museum and deal with it when we came out.  As Tim would later say the museum was a blur, finally about 8:15 I said I had had it, was too anxious about dealing with the car and wanted to see if we could make it back to West Chester.

 

We did manage to leave the museum just at twilight, the rain had stopped, the clouds had lifted, the birds were singing in the trees by the freeway.  We wandered back to the parking lot and got in and discussed if we should try to limp back on surface roads or the freeway, Tim wanted to go on secondary roads I just wanted to get out of the city as quickly as possible and we ended up deciding on the freeway. Well the car had sat for 3 hours and the wheels had cooled down so when we backed up the grinding noise was bad but not awful so we decided we would try the freeway because Tim said if we broke down they could find us easier.  Joy, joy.

 

Remember we do not have a lot of luck on these day trips a few years ago when we went to Atlantic City for Tim's birthday another car's steering wheel caught on fire with an electrical short and we were towed to a hole in the wall garage there that was very inner city but we survived that and limped home from that one.

Anyway we did make it back to West Chester to the room around 10 and collapsed ate crackers and drank ginger ale to settle our nerves . . .

Yet Another Sam Sighting

Sam Green is a BUSY man these days, but we caught him at a reception in his honor in Anacortes this last Saturday.  A beautiful, sunny ,warm evening, lots of poets and dignitaries, a harpist on the stairway, and -- as is proper for a poetry event -- the wine flowed free and plentifully.  Elegant waitpeople carried silver trays laden with shrimp through the crowd and the hors d'oeuvres were luscious.   (I especially liked the garlic-filled mushrooms.)  They did this right for Sam!

35 year time warp

Chainsaw oil, sharpen, start: cut, split, pile. Takes me 'way back. But, ah, the sweet alder.

Mr. Big Shot Says "How I Survived High School"

1966. That’s the year I started High School. The sting of the Principal’s speech to my class on our graduation day bothered me all summer as I began to build my expectations for the coming year. As I was coming of age, great local heroes were firmly embedded in Omak High School lore and I was uncomfortable with the thought that my class was entering high school with this shroud of under achievement, or even worse maybe our class had the inability to achieve at all. The principal’s speech put such doubt in my mind that I dreaded the first day of classes and facing our collective ineptitude. I had always schemed of my place in high school history. I guess I was dreaming of some sort of glory or golden days spent on the stage of my home town, and being a high school legend was the way to achieve that goal in Omak . . .(continued)

Daffodils in the Skagit Valley

The family place is in the background slightly right of center.

R.I.P. Kitty

Katy died in her sleep today. She was 22 years old. She has been with us since Spencer started kindergarten.