I heart Seattle

Yesterday i went for Vietnamese fusion, at Made in Kitchen. All except for the name (where else might the food be made? in "bathroom"?), it was spectacular. Affordable, veggie options, many choices of bowls that become rolls. Perfect Jasmine Green tea served with the meal. It was sunny and lovely, and just then it was time to go see the Dalai Lama speak. HH Dalai Lama was visiting Seattle for a few days, and there was a ceremony and speech at the football stadium. Despite being in a stadium of 50 thousand people, i had the peculiar sense that i was sitting there, listening to the Dalai Lama in a dharma talk, not a few feet from him. He has a way about him that makes his messages so comfortable, so understandable. He comes across as the sort of guy you just want to go have tea with, and sit and talk for a spell.

After the visit with the Dalai Lama, i went to other locations downtown, including CyberDogs. Cyber Dogs is the most hilarious, fantastic thing since sliced bread. Its a vegetarian hot dog place, so you get these veggie dogs (more like big soysages - they're large) piled with toppings. And they have lots of fun names for the sandwiches and creative toppings. Incidentally, there's one called "The DoggiLama", which has Sag Aloo and an Indian curry leaning, and signs posted at the entrance of the restaurant taught me that if the Dalai Lama had turned up at Cyber-Dogs, they would give him a free DoggiLama. I also learned that if Bill Gates turns up at Cyber-Dogs, there are no freebies; instead HE must pay 3 times the amount for any item. This is why i love Seattle. Be warned: whatever clean, chic yuppie feeling you might get from the website is entirely absent from the actual restaurant. Its small, gritty, and glorious.

Also, you must check out Nanda acrobat and performance group sometime. If they perform in your area, it will be worth it. Its like kung fu fighting style, meets Bozo the clown. You will not be disappointed.

Lots of reasons why i heart Seattle, but one sunny, full day of Seattle goodness can seal the deal.

My favorite cafes

More Seattle is cool - i just moved to a new neighborhood. I have learned that this town does overfloweth with awesome coffee shops. Here's my brief list of favorites, so far. Also on this list are Josh's favorites (thanks JZ!):

Ballard Seafood Festival
The Stranger - (true, i should have said that one right off. move it to the top of the list!)

Cafes:

• Cloud City Coffee - maple leaf 4 life. my favorite drip coffee in town. and inexpensive!
• Cafe Zoka - free wireless, best working environment in town. have a Clover coffee brewer, and gajillions of amazing artisanal coffees.
• Victrola - classic. they are, along with Ritual in San Francisco, part of a consortium training coffee growers to cup their own coffee, empowering the farmer and cutting out middlemen (who usually take most of the profits anyway).
• Firehouse Coffee - in Ballard. accessible, have a drive thru.
• Cafe Fiore - Ballard locations. Organic, fair trade. Beautiful. Nice lighting in the shops.
• Fuel - lots of amazingly convenient locations. good name. good coffee (i've generally gotten espresso there).
• Cafe Trabant - was there a while ago, but its a cool dig in the u-district. very young, very angst.
• Cafe Verite - Ballard. what's not to like: cupcakes (Cupcake Royale operates out of here too), dang good coffee (i recommend the latte) and a good amount of seating.

There are more. I will tell you about them soon. But basically, i get excited that i live in a place that loves coffee so much, and has so many options to choose from. Good coffee, good food, free wireless. See this blog which is dedicated to the very topic.

Species list for the weekend

Nisqually Wildlife Refuge, Saturday
Rainy. Cool. Spectacular.

Bald Eagles (2)
Mallard Duck
Canada Goose
Black tailed deer
Northern Flicker
Northern Harrier
Osprey
Bufflehead
Snow Goose
Common Loon
Steller's Sea Lion
Dark-eyed Junco
Great Heron

Golden Gardens (Seattle City Park, Sunday)
Partly cloudy. Cold. Teeming.
American Widgeon
Brandt's Goose
Barrow's Goldeneye
Common Loon

It was a good weekend.

Randomness and chaos

I wait at the photo section of the store for a few minutes. No one comes. I fidget, look around, find other things to purchase. I check my watch. Finally, the clerk comes along, takes my film and my information, and sends me on my way. Then, i peruse the greeting cards for a while, and finally, i am ready to check out. I count my change, and make my way out the door. I walk two blocks to the bus stop, and find out that a bus is due to come soon. I stand back to wait, and just at that moment, someone calls out "Hello!". I look up, surprised (i don't know hardly anyone in this town, so i am never expecting someone on the street to be talking to me) - it is Peter - one of the ten people i know here! After we have a conversation, my bus comes and he goes on his way.

After this encounter, i realise that it is utterly amazing and beautiful to me that i can run into people i know, at all. It seems so unlikely that things would work together in just such a way, with just such timing (what if i hadn't have taken as much time in the greeting card section? what if i had driven to the store that day?) that i could see someone i know in a city of 3 million people. In fact, the knowledge that anything works at all, simply amazes me. The buses run, pick me up at relatively the right time (and i somehow made it to that place to catch the bus, pay the fare, and ride to my destination). So running into someone, in this world of seeming extreme busy-ness and crowded schedules, chaos and randomness, seems to serve as a prescient reminder that there is always the possibility of synchronicity and happy coincidence.

good sign

good sign
Originally uploaded by n_yoder

Another reason Seattle Is Cool. This sign was posted in a copier room.

Why Seattle is cool

I'm starting a list of all the cool places and things in Seattle. All the reasons why Seattle Is Cool.

Farmer's markets (year-round, marked with street navigation signs)
Vegetarian + local food restaurants of all ilks
Cinerama - huge movie theater, plays sci-fi geek movies
Bumbershoot - "how can you not?"
Shorebirds aplenty
Green Lake
Uwajimaya (largest bestest Asian supermarket)
Good beer
Good wine
Good coffee

This list will keep expanding.

Dungeness Spit, Thanksgiving trip day 1

driftwood
Originally uploaded by n_yoder

22 Nov 07 (Thanksgiving holiday)

Species list (MANY of the birds are new to my life list):
Harbor seal (2)
Bald Eagle
Hooded Merganser
Bufflehead
Surf Scoter
Western Grebe
Hooded Grebe
American Widgeon
Brandt's Goose
Dunlin?
Sanderling?
Kingfisher (Belted Kingfisher?)
Great Blue Heron
Common Loon
Yellow-billed Loon

Imagine: miles, and miles of pebbles, sand, kelp, and driftwood. This expanse, this hodgepodge of earthforms, only 20 ft wide (less at high tide, i'm told), extending for 6 miles into the ocean, into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. This was a good initiation, into the world of Puget Sound. I've been here before, but its been years and not since i started a new job where one of my tasks involves examining the Puget Sound ecosystem, including the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I arrive at Dungeness Spit, with seemingly new eyes. For an uplander - an inlander? - this is like a foreign land. Salt spray, wet stones, kelp and driftwood - everywhere i look i find things i like to look at and examine closely. The icing on the cake - which was to be the case for the rest of the touched-by-angels trip - was the sunny, perfect weather. There was chatter all throughout, about how unusual and amazing (read: sunny) the weather was. People smiled, downright beamed at each other as they passed walking, as if to say, "did you SEE the sun? did you notice?!". So i noticed, and i gave thanks.

I like Sightline

I got a free book (yay for free cool stuff!) from our local Seattle coupon book, the Chinook book. Its from Sightline Institute, which is a Pacific Northwest-centered think-tank for sustainability. The book i'm reading is called "Stuff" and its about...well...the life of stuff! It follows a middle class average North American through their day, and profiles some of the commodity chains that led to the products encountered and consumed on the day. Its easy to read, which is good because it feels like entertainment but bad because there are very few sources listed for the information. Anyhow, they've done a nice job of putting thought into the complete life of a product, much like what i tried to do for a project involving what's required to make a loaf of bread. Its quick, and interesting, and recommended.

Up next: trip report from the Olympic Peninsula. Stay tuned!

Golden compass: my daemon

ok people: the new movie is coming out soon! in my duty to participate in the entertainment frenzy, i've created my own daemon on www.thegoldencompass.com! please take a moment to comment so he can settle.

A couple of good things

Any place that has a front page, above the fold article about how to make public school lunches with local ingredients is a good place, in my book.

Also, check out my new legislative district, and say hello to its newest Precinct Committee Officer (me). Ironic how much that title sounds like a prison employee...

More soon!

Moving cities, moving blogs

Two items of business.
One) I have moved. I am no longer in England, or in St Louis - so i've summarily changed my blog address (ahem, a bit late, i know)! Please find the new blog, here. Enjoy, and thank you for reading!

Two) I am helping to re-capture that momentum from all the creative and inspiring people in my course at Oxford, and starting a blog with posts about conservation, science, and policy. What, you say, ANOTHER conservation blog? Well, it might be lost in a sea of relevance, but you'll just have to make that conclusion yourself by checking it out: http://triumphofthecommons.blogspot.com/

Moving across country. Again!

Leaving St Louis for Seattle. Thoughts on the road. Leaving St Louis
was like a kick in the stomach. It hurts at the time, but you'll recover. Its not like going on a trip, where you're wondering if you packed everything (and there's this incredible knowledge that you'll be back). Its like, "if i didn't pack EVERYTHING, i'll never see it again". Eerie.

Then, leaving the bottomlands of Missouri, where the great mighty rivers Missouri and Mississippi collide, the scenery gives way to rolling hills and grasslands, yellow tan fields dotted with occasional trees. I see antelope scattered across the fields, like jacks thrown motley onto the carpet. These sights ease the tension and sorrow of leaving, tell of a new place with new inhabitants, waiting for me to discover. Its a good trip, but long and not over yet.

Summer time, livin easy...i think

I'll tell you whats strange (aside from this inescapable fact that my blog only gets posted to once a month at best, ach). Its strange how some days are friendly, welcoming, while some days are out to get you. Some days you wake up feeling grumpy and antsy and irritated from the getgo, and some days you wake up fresh and new. And once a bad day starts, it sort of feeds itself. Why? Is this because i BELIEVE (after the 4th thing gone wrong, say) that its a bad day, so then it attracts all the bad crap that supposed to happen for the week? And i'll tell you this: pretending that its NOT a bad day doesn't help. That only usually makes me end up crying because i'm so wrong and disappointed.

But then there are good days, and sweet moments. How do we have these vastly different experiences, in a moment, in a day, in a week? Sometimes i think its all controlled by what goes on in my dreaming life. I mean, i spend a third of my life (if i'm sleeping well) asleep - so maybe all that time dreaming and sleeping is actually where everything happens. I say this in part because i don't understand waking life, or dreams, but partly because sometimes i'll wake up with the taste of a dream, and it flavors my day. Like last night: i had a dream that i was being hunted down. Even if i didn't remember it, it sort of gives me the willies to know that i was experiencing some reality of fear and escape. And i carry that with me into my day. Maybe that's why i had a good day today? I was so glad to not be being chased.

I don't really understand how we can be so complex and varied in our experiences of life, time and space. Its even difficult to describe why i don't understand it. This is a strange world we live in. I've got to go prepare myself for another entrance into my Other Life. I am increasingly prone to believe in parallel realities, as a result of noticing these oddities.

Happy Solstice

The half-moon shone, hazy, through the film of clouds. The air hung around my neck and hands, moist, warm and exhausted from the day's heat. The cool air from the water in the park drifted up to greet the hot damp, and calmed us all.

I crossed the bridges over the speedy Parkway and the empty train tracks, descending into the grassy median between the arms of the canal. This place is still in the city - its only minutes from my house! - and its entirely man-made, but it still feels like a wild refuge to me. Here i can smell the grass and the damp earth, i can hear a breeze rustling leaves, i can see birds and bugs and other various creatures. This is Forest Park. I pay homage to this refuge in the city, by coming here for a solstice celebration. It is a time of massive changes in my life, and somehow this ride to the longest day of the year has coincided with a building unrest and momentum that seems to culminate together. It is a good place to mark time, since things change fast and i am acutely aware of these parallel tracks: my life and the rock i live on as it hurtles round the sun just so.

I settle on a broad flat sitting rock, placed ever so pleasingly with the base half in and half out of the flowing water. As i envision what i want for the coming months, for the descent into the shortest day of the year, a night heron beats a wing and seemingly out of nowhere glides above me. A passing fancy. I continue on with my envisioning, pouring my hopes and fears into a tray as salt and sugar, mix with water, taste. Then finally i throw it all to the river and the wind, and come what may. As i walk out of the park, toward the neon lights of the hospital complex just across the street, i notice the tinkling lights of the fireflies. Normally, i see a few fireflies flitting around lighting up my yard, but here: there are hundreds of them. They are in the bushes, in the trees, in the grass. Its like delicate fireworks or tiny Thai parrafin lanterns, all chaos and blinking. Its so beautiful, like Annie Dillard's descriptions of blind people who have recently been given their sight - like a tree, a forest of twinkling lights.

I don't know what will happen next, whether all my plotting and planning will be of any use, but i hope i get to keep this up, this arriving in time for the show. Happy Summer!

Tower Grove Park, 22 May 2007

God bless the Spring (bird) Migration, and our ability to witness it right here in St Louis, MO. Here is what we saw on Tuesday morning:

Ovenbird
Red-eyed Vireo
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Gray Catbird
Swainson's Thrush

And all this despite the large tractor-mower making a raucous and a drizzle of rain. Next i'm going looking for some warblers - they've been rumored to be around these parts.

Chinese drum girls rule

Chinese Culture Days at the Garden

My favorite part of the performance today was the girls' drum ensemble (from the New Shanghai Circus). About 15 girls, appearing to be no more than 12 years of age, performed in stunning accuracy, timing and agility. They have such a honed sense of the dramatic, and such incredible attention to detail that i found myself somewhere about 30 seconds into the first piece grinning, mouth wide open in disbelief.

The first piece was the most elaborate - drumming as well as costumes. It was the "preparing to fight" piece, replete with quick rolls on the drum and a little snare kit to get the high, tight tones. They would drum roll (so fast you couldn't tell it was sticks that were pounding and not a recorded hum) and then a pause - and SNAP - a stare straight out into the audience. Every beat sequence was like this: a look in a certain direction, a hand thrown in the air at just a height, just an angle as to all be in perfect synchronization. And they dance, all these girls with brocade costumes and huge, long pheasant feathers protruding like fire out of two horns in their headdress. They bob their heads in unison, and the feathers sway wildly, in response, not in unison but in chaos. The next piece - "getting ready for the harvest of pecans" - the girls wear schoolgirl clothes, matching, and hair in pigtail braids. As they beat their drums and rattle the rhythms out, they cock their heads to one side, and smile, broadly. I love the skill, the incredible speed with which their hands move. But i also love that these are girls, playing and so coordinated with such a training as to impress theatrics and pouring oneself fully into every detail. We don't see that very often in western culture, and i like that about it too.

I saw dragons too - which i've heard is a sign of good fortune, so i think overall it was a good day in St Louis.

Mich vs Miss

It was a potentially very awkward situation. I was attending a cosy acoustic folk concert, put on by my dear friend's boyfriend. I had never seen him play before, never met him before this. So our first introduction, and what if i don't like the music? What if its...not my style or it just somehow doesn't click? You're supposed to lie, to say its great - no matter what? Yes, i say to myself, just sing his praises no matter what you really think.

Fortunately, Peter didn't give me the chance - he was excellent! The music was fabulous, and i watched this person become a musician in front of my eyes. Its striking to me how musicians work. There are so many components to this performance, the performance that the audience hears. There is the composition of the lyrics, the music, the tinkering with the right sound, the mood of the musician at the time of performance, etc etc. Its just like life: every moment is potentially different depending on all the related factors. However, musicians are also impressive and mark a certain point in time with a performance - which is unlike the rest of life. Its a ritual, its multifaceted, its emergent. There is this emergent quality where people i know that play music walk up on stage, after standing there in the room talking to me, and go play a song and perform, and they are transformed into....a performer. Maybe its my childish admiration for musicians, but i think there is also some quality of making intentional music that is transformative.

Unrelated, but also interesting: We got to talking about the difference between Michigan (where Peter is from) and Missouri. Apparently, the word on the street is that Missouri is the redneck version of Michigan. Good to know - put this in the list of characters that define this place, and the Midwest. Now, where does that put Minn(esota)? To be continued, as more information becomes available.

Rachmaninoff movements move me

There's nothing like the symphony, to make me in love with life again. All of these people, on a stage, playing their hearts out, playing like it's their last day on earth. It makes me feel grateful. Even when i don't understand the music, there's something going on that's fascinating: strange and beautiful instruments (tubular bells? and putting a cymbal on the tympani, to then play the cymbal!). There is a gong, and three sets of xylophones, metal and wooden, plus horns and strings and woodwinds. Its...glorious.

I like the bassoon best, i think, as a long, slow, sweet lingering note comes out of them, and i feel at peace, comforted somehow. But then the strings! The strings start up, and they are furious, and in their fury they still manage to bring out melodies and music! And watching all the bows twitch and skither, oh, i love them too! But what about the horns? This tuba has a massive cork (er, well a muffler, if you like) that is so extraordinary! They are so regal, the horns, and so diverse in sound. But i do always come back to the bassoons. I think they all work, together, and i do love the pieces with some bassoon highlights.

This piece by Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, op 43, though - this piece features a piano. The pianist is amazing. She's married to the conductor, we discover from the ever-helpful programme. She sits at the piano bench, piano and bench chosen specifically for her. She lays her hands on the keys, and fingers move so quickly you can't keep track, can't see, but she IS producing that lovely music that leads or carries the piece along. She pounds keys, the keys jump out at her, and artist and instrument meld into magnificence. Sometimes she tinks lightly at the keys, other times she seems to throw herself to the hammers in the piano. At the end of it all, she stands up, exuberant, and to our thundering applause falls into full embrace with her husband. I can't wipe the screwball grin off my face.

Every time i go to the symphony, i am stunned. I just cannot wrap my mind around composers, conductors, or how any of this works. These people on stage are playing their instrument, their role, and somehow, it all comes together into this...soundscape. I just can't grip what a composer must do. I think its one of the arts that is quite particular: either you KNOW you are a composer, or you aren't. Its not like playing the violin (you can learn, and probably, if you work at it and aren't that gifted naturally, can get quite good) - you can't just "get good" at it. You must organize things in a way that you hear music, you hear things and thats how you express yourself. I am just eternally grateful that there are and have been people that do this, and produce pieces that evoke emotion, that create a story without words, that create a type of consciousness.

Its good to be alive. The St Louis Symphony goes on my list of favorites, too now.

Update of favorite things

Its time to stop being so hard on this place. Here's a starter list of my favorite things, so far:

• Home Eco - green general store! Eat your heart out, Boulder! wow.
• Terrene - ecotarian restaurant. yummy. good for you. nice people.
• Riddles - source local ingredients, longtime community restaurant
• Black Bear Bakery - worker owned local bakery - $1 day olds!
• Missouri Botanical Gardens - yep, its cool (also Earthways House Conservation Center)
• City Museum - haven't been yet, chomping at the bit to go
• Scott Joplin House - state historical site and site of a tribute to spoken word in St Louis last weekend
• Shangri-La - you've already read about this one. good VEGGIE food!
• Farmers Markets
• Schlafly Brewery
• Left Bank Books

The list is growing, i am happy to say. And, as spring arrives, so does more local produce and farm goods. See? Its not all gloom and doom!

News update: Area Camel's Back Broken by Final Straw

It finally happened. I have discovered something more onerous, more outrageous and frustrating than opening a bank account in England. This something takes the form of the Department of Motor Vehicles, lovingly referred to hereafter as the DMV, in Missouri (and in the city of Saint Louis in particular).

I challenge you to go search for how to go about registering your car, and obtaining Missouri license plates (which are of course, mandatory on all vehicles). One of the first things you might notice is how difficult it is to find 1) where to go to pursue this activity, and 2) what particular documents and bits of lifeblood you might need to produce once you get to the appropriate office. Now this would all be relatively normal (!) for most DMVs that i've ever done business with - in an of itself a sorry statement. However, i would be extremely more forgiving, understanding even, and exceedingly patient, if there weren't an absolutely astronomical fee attached to providing this (dis-)service.

I discovered yesterday, on my 5th (FIFTH!) attempt at obtaining license plates, having been turned away each previous time after waiting in a queue for up to 2 hours, that i needed more documentation - that i would be asked to pay a small fortune - MORE than the price of a plane ticket to the Philippines - to the city of Saint Louis, and the State of Missouri in order to gain the incredible service of being allowed to operate my vehicle here. The woman who was helping me with my extraordinary task of registering my vehicle, after handing me the list of fees associated with my registration, then politely informed me that i would owe another $50 as a penalty fee for being late in registering the car. I burst into tears - and i don't remember any of my dealings in England being so stressful as to reduce me to a sobbing heap - so this event (required by law, i remind you) suddenly gained new position on the list of Most Frustrating Attempts at Trying to Conduct Normal Legal Business. It wasn't enough that i had paid for and carried out express return shipping on my car title back to the seller to obtain his signature, or that i had already taken what amounted to two days off work to try to acquire the papers? No, instead, they would like to PENALIZE me! Fortunately, the woman who was helping me, albeit in her scattered way, took pity on me and my blubbering and helped me submit the paperwork (MORE paperwork) to waive the penalty. One point for me, one thousand for the City State.

In conclusion, you see my sincere and utter frustration with the DMV, and their new honorary role as top of my List, but there is a bigger issue at work here. I can't imagine what the city (or the State) thinks they are doing by charging such exorbitant rates for new vehicle registration. Since the city has a significantly lower standard of living than Denver, shouldn't the taxes and fees associated with that location reflect that? And the money CLEARLY doesn't go into streamlining or usability of the registration system. So, my question is, where is all that money going? Mayor Slay, care to respond?