Mayor Says No to Dump in Georgetown

Oh, hurray.

Seattle announces ambitious recycling plan, scraps Georgetown trash-transfer station

After a trip to Vessel, we decide to celebrate at the Alibi Room.

Oh, look, there's our crazy friend Rob, who we last saw in Yakima.



He asks us if we're going to Head Like a Kite later. We say no. It's been a long day.



Then inside we see our friends Wendy and Kristian.



The wall outside the Alibi Room is full of gum.



I love Werner Herzog. And I love the title "Aguirre, the Wrath of God." That's an appositive, as in:

Grammar. a syntactic relation between expressions, usually consecutive, that have the same function and the same relation to other elements in the sentence, the second expression identifying or supplementing the first. In Washington, our first president, the phrase our first president is in apposition with Washington.

Pike Place Market.



Time to go home now.





South on I-5.



Pac-Med, the old VA Hospital. And I mean that in the appositive sense.



Tully's, the old Rainier Brewery. (But not the old old Rainier Brewery.)





Albro Swift is our exit.



Here we are.



This is the old old Rainier Brewery.



Corgiat Drive, the street that was just saved from the big dump!



It's still light out at 9:37 p.m.



Home.

Summertime

What are you going to do on the longest day of the year?

After work, I think I'm going to have a $12 cocktail at that fancy new bar Vessel. (I was about to mock their use of the Charles Eames quote "Take pleasure seriously" on their website until I noticed that they specified they do "generous three-ounce pours." OK, they earned the right to that quotation.)

Then I think I'll head to Fremont to see my friend Dave's band, Head Like a Kite. Last I heard, Anderson Cooper was using their music for the bumper for his CNN show, which impresses me. But I'm impressed by just about anything that results in a royalty check.

Here are some photos I took seven years ago -- June 21, 2000 -- at the start of the end of the dot-com boom, just days after I moved back to Seattle and was staying in corporate housing right at Seattle's waterfront, with this view of Elliott Bay. This would have been two days after I started working at the company that I'm still at and 11 days before I met the man I'm now married to.

Whoever's hand this is (and I'm not sure, because I tried to show that place off to basically everyone I had ever met) -- he probably helped me move the couch onto the balcony. In return, I probably offered him one of those disgusting Mike's Hard Lemonades, which I seem to remember being a staple in my fridge at the time.



And here's the view to the north.





And to the south.



Happy Solstice, everyone!

Georgetown Old Skool Carnival This Saturday

From the Georgetown mailing list:

June 23: Georgetown Old Skool Carnival, featuring dunk tank, cake walk, petting zoo, power-tool races and sideshows by Georgetown's Seattle School of Acrobatics & New Circus Arts, noon-11 p.m. at 12th Avenue South and Vale Street, between Airport Way and Bailey Street.

Sign up for a 15-minute time slot and be a part of the Georgetown Old Skool Carnival's Sideshow! Anyone can participate - just go to All City Coffee and claim your spot on the sign-up sheet.

Here are some examples of the kinds of performers found in modern day sideshows:
Burlesque Dancers
Magicians/Escape Artists
Ventriloquists
Sword Swallowers/Fire Eaters
Eating non-food items (worms, light bulbs, etc)
Fire performers
Jugglers
Clowns
Contortionists
Stilt Walkers
Balloon Animals

The sign-up sheet will be available starting tomorrow.

Update: The Paper Noose has posted a schedule of events here.

Acceptance

I get it. I get it!

Tony Soprano is dead. (So are Carmela and AJ.)

I've been denying his death all week. I've been telling myself that David Chase intended the ending to be ambiguous. But it's not.

As Bobby said in the final half-season's opener (a comment repeated in the penultimate episode), "You probably don't even hear it when it happens."

No, you don't hear anything. The episode ends in silence, a series first.

And yes, the onion rings were Eucharist wafers -- specifically, viaticum, the Communion given to a person dying or in danger of death. (By the way, "viaticum" is a Latin term meaning "provisions for a journey." Oh yeah.)

Too obvious? Compare Chase's visual onion-ring-on-the-tongue metaphor to this excerpt from Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage:

The youth turned, with sudden, livid rage, toward the battlefield. He shook his fist. He seemed about to deliver a philippic.

"Hell--"

The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.

Speaking of hell, that's where Tony is going, of course. Because even though he did take the last sacrament, he never repented or even confessed to his family the depth of his sins.

(And the final season foreshadowed Tony's trip to hell. In the 81st episode, "Chasing It," Carlo tells Tony about a Twilight Zone episode in which a dead gangster meets a guardian angel type figure, and finds himself unable to lose when gambling and able to seduce any woman or have anything else that he wants. Of course, he gets so bored that he begs the angel to send him to the "other place." The kicker: The angel tells him, "This is the other place!" Later, in the peyote episode, Tony bangs Christopher's lady friend and finds himself winning at roulette again and again -- essentially, Tony is doomed to succeed.)

So Tony, Carmela, and AJ die -- probably all shot by the Members Only -- i.e., Mafia -- guy coming out of the bathroom.

But Meadow, who did not take part in the Last Rites, lives. And we know from Carmela's comment about her changing birth control, she's carrying the Second Coming -- Tony's unborn grandchild.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Ciscoe's Yard Again

Today is Garden Bloom Day, and I'm supposed to show you everything in bloom in my garden. But I have a much better idea -- I'll show you what's in bloom in Ciscoe Morris's garden!







I was impressed with this place before in April and May, but it really shines in June.

































Looks like Cisco hacked back his giant rice paper plant. Maybe the fire department made him do it.

















After we stopped by Ciscoe's place, we went to my friends' house, where a mother robin scolded me for checking out her young ones.



Cute!

Upcoming South Seattle Garden Tours

Sunday, June 24 -- Beacon Hill
First Annual Beacon Hill Garden Tour ("Check Out Our Bloomers") will be Sunday, June 24th from 10 - 4. Begin at the Jefferson Community Center where you will be able to pick up a map. We have over 25 wonderful gardens ranging in style from professionally landscaped to native plants, family vegetable gardens, English and northwest perennials, and fun family yards and gardens.

Sunday, July 8 -- Georgetown
Twelfth Annual Georgetown Art & Garden Walk. From 10:00 am til 5:00 pm - With more than 40 sites, includes gardens, artist studios, live music, food and drink and tours of the Georgetown Powerplant Museum and The Communications Museum. Free maps available on the day of the walk at the Bank of America parking lot at 1112 S. Bailey Street. Corner of 12th Avenue S. and South Bailey Street, Seattle, WA. 98108.

Saturday, July 21 -- Columbia City
10 - 4. Tickets $6, including hot-dog lunch. On sale starting July 1 at Columbia City Parcel and Post, 3703 S. Edmonds St., 206-760-1617. Gardens in this Seattle neighborhood include flowers, fruit and vegetables.

My Friend Mari's Garden

It's actually my friends Mari and Andrew's garden in West Seattle. And I should have shown you photos of it weeks ago. I took these photos on May 28. The day was very bright, and I still haven't found the manual for my camera, so I don't know how to adjust the exposure. I hope to go back to their garden and take better photos later this summer. Anyway.

Andrew's a sculptor. He made all the containers in their garden out of scraps of steel that he welded together. They are my favorite containers in the whole world.



Andrew also designed the concrete forms for the patio area. It's not finished yet, but there's going to be a fountain and a fireplace.



I want an orange hose too. It looks great against this freshly blue-painted wall.



Bronze fennel.





One of Andrew's many sculptures. They're often military and/or industrial looking (though Andrew himself seems like a pretty pacifistic guy).









Andrew likes to sculpt guns and artillery out of rebar and wire. I'm not sure if I'm getting these terms right. My vocabulary does not extend very far into machinery and weaponry.



In fact, he has a whole arsenal of stuff like this.