cascadian telegrams

happy birthday cousin linda

it is my smart and talented cousin Linda’s 50th birthday today.  This is what she looks like now (from her facebook profile)

and here she is 47 years ago with her dad (my Uncle John)

Her father John was my mum’s brother

Linda was always the most creative of us kids.  She was artistic as long as I can remember.  When we were kids, she’d produce skits and programs with a tape recorder and give us kids parts in it (“starring Betty Grable and Clark Unable… “… or something like that).  We cousins were bit actors in these skits but still enjoyed the game.

The first time I heard Tom Lehrer (Poisoning the Pidgeons in the Park)  was when Linda brought over the LP;  she ‘got’ subversive humor well before the rest of us could understand the sly wit.  And my life-long abiding love for Beatles music is – at least in part – due to her good taste in music, although I’m not sure she’s ever forgiven me (or her kid sister, my cousin Susan) for drawing moustaches on all the figures on the cover of  her treasured George Harrison double-album All Things Must Pass… an album I enjoy to this day.  Sorry about that!

Linda parlayed her art into Studio Wasabi where she presents and sells her artwork online and also teaches art at Imago Dei Middle School in Tuscon, where her students (largely from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds) recently won third place in a School of the Future design competition!   So she’s still sparking creativity and ideas in others, just like when we were kids, but now she does it professionally and for the kids in our society who need it most.  Skål to that!

Here are a few snaps taken over the years – mostly by my parents – of Linda and her (naturally) creative and smart kids.  Happy birthday cousin!

  

the memory table

well it took 3 attempts – our builder friend Greg Nilan tried twice to get get the liquid fiberglass to set in our too-cold garage, and finally, Jesse and Mark used liquid epoxy and set it up in Mark’s apartment (cheers Mark!) but we have our ‘memory table’ in the kitchen cubby.

It’s mostly people and places from our time in Europe over the last 3 years… we didn’t want any more wood in the kitchen (it’s black-stained cherry) and we wanted something to personalize the space… et voila.  Clicking on the link on the tabletop above will take you to the Flickr photo page, where you can click on each photo to see it in detail and learn what the picture is about.  Some of you will find yourselves immortalized in there ;).

As a fringe benefit, it’s an easier cleanup for a messy six year-old boy than our formal dining table.

happy solstice, snowed in again

we’ve got ~6 inches of snow on the ground now, and another 5-6 inches expected today and tonght… very unusual for Seattle!  But we’re enjoying watching the snow come down in front of the fireplace and watching the cross-country skiers ski past, the runners honoring their daily routine jogging down to the lake, the families with kids, sleds and dogs, and the almost-complete lack of cars and buses rolling by.  It is lovely and quiet.

   

 

Also beautiful to look out at the bamboo plants and fence against the falling  snow… very serene and calm

I had to shake all of the ice from my fledgling bamboos this morning as they were bent to the ground with snow and ice… hopefully no permanent damage.

Hygge continues as Susan made a delicious peking duck last night.  Our x-town friends Susan and Alex couldn’t make it due to the horrible roads but nearby friends John and Jacki came by.  So we drank, ate, chatted and sat by the window with the fire going, mesmerized by the falling snow and the lights, while Malcolm absorbed himself and anyone who would participate in assembling his Christmas legos.

The duck was accompanied by a few fine Rioja wines delivered Saturday afternoon by Catherine of Queso i Vino who hand picks delicious Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American wines and home delivers them at very good prices.  This is our first case from Catherine and the first few bottles were great… can’t wait to try the rest!

Happy winter solstice to everyone.  The actual northern hemisphere solstice for 2008 was 7:04 am EST today. Where I live this means sunrise (if you could actually see the sun) was 7:55 am and sunset (ahem) is 4:20pm or about two hours from now.  Light your candles and enjoy.

merry christmas to us: obama announces the science ‘dream team’

I could not be more pleased with this Obama’s appointments this week for science advisors, running NOAA and more.  In his weekly radio address, Obama said:

…science isn’t just about providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States—and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.

 

From ScienceDebate2008’s Shawn Otto::

In addition to Steven Chu, John Holdren, and Jane Lubchenco, we would like to congratulate Science Debate 2008 supporters Harold Varmus and Eric Lander on being named co-chars of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.  A 1989 Nobel laureate in medicine, Dr Varmus is former director of NIH and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and has been one of our closest and strongest advocates throughout the last year - we are very pleased and proud of his appointment.  Also an early supporter of Science debate 2008, Dr Lander is the Director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; the first author of the Human Genome Project, and one of TIME's 100 most influential people of our time (2004).

America was founded by scientist-statesmen like Jefferson and Franklin.  It has always been an important part of our identity and success as a nation.  We are hopeful that with these appointments, the American destiny with science can be reengaged to tackle our most pressing challenges as a nation, nearly all of which revolve around questions of science and technology.   Now, the next step for the new administration will be successfully communicating this agenda to the American public, and reengaging the American media on these questions which are so critical to our ongoing success as a nation.

This is fantastic news for all of us who have lived under administrations with theocratic and dogmatic leanings, and it is great to see President Obama putting science and reason front-and-center.  This is why I voted for him.

My only complaints with the appointments thus far are the appointments of Tom Vilsack of Agriculture Secretary (like Michael Pollan, I wanted someone who would revolutionize the way we produce and think about food, not an ag-advocate) and Robert Rubin, who at CitiBank presided over the current catastrophe.  He does not deserve a place at the table.

the hygge season cometh

very Christmas-y right now with snow on the ground, visits with friends and a desire to get all hygge (roughly translated: cosy) @ home.  Here’s Malcolm decorating gingerbread cookies that Susan made

and making a snow-fort in the yard

he and Susan went sliding in the park today… fun!  But I had to work, alas, and watched from the window near my desk, like a pet in a petshop at springtime.  But there’s more fun to be had yet this season!

brunch with fc krush alums

a belated post on a lovely brunch at Volterra from Sunday 12/7.  Pictured above are Malcolm (our chimpanzee, who wont’ sit still),  Mike and Jackie’s daughter Anna and Susan and Alex’s children Charlie and Clara.  Mike and Jackie just moved to Boulder and were back in SEA for the weekend, and while Susan and Alex still live in SEA we don’t seem them often enough, alas :(.

There are a group of us (including Andy and Tracy and their two boys.. not here this time) who lived in Capitol Hill circa 1999-2000.  The ‘glue’ was our Seattle City Soccer League team, FC Krush (NB FCK in Copenhagen :)) .   I was hopeless as a footy player but it was how my then-coworker Mike Gilbert and I met Andy and Alex and we all became fast friends. 

Coincidentally we all had kids roughly around the same time, which was nice in that it made our bonds even stronger, but bad in the sense that each of us, in turn, moved from CapHill in search of a more kid-friendly (and affordable) place.  Still:  Nice to see them, every periodically.

As for Volterra:  A nice place for brunch, supposedly good Italian food but will have to go back and try dinner here….

thanksgiving in portland

ah I love Portland and Powell’s Books.  I’ve been down to PDX many times (we nearly accepted jobs there instead of Microsoft/ Seattle back in ‘99) and I admit I’m a bit jealous of the place.  I like the scale of it (like Europe), the “tram” which we rode from Beaverton to downtown on Friday, the funky neighborhoods and bike-friendliness, and the vibe.  There are more junkies and strung-out people then I remember from last time, though.

Powell’s is great.  I’m ashamed to say I’d never actually been in their ‘flagship store’ before this time, although I’ve bought books from them online.  This time, we found some great used Tom Swift books for Malcolm, copies of 1491 both for us and my brother Dave and his girlfriend Marti (appropriate as we watched Apocalypto the night before) and a cheap used paperback copy of Kite Runner for Susan (saw and loved the film, looking forward to the novel). We had a bite and Malcolm and I played several rounds of old-school pinball in Rocco’s Pizza across the street, a very punk rock pizza joint.  It takes me back.

Anyway… where was I?  Oh yes.  We drove down to my brother Dave’s place Thanksgiving morning (much better, traffic-wise, than Wed. evening) and stayed through Saturday morning.  Dave is quite handy with a soldering iron and took one of his one-off projects (a circuit board with a hand switch that powers two CPU fans) to fashion a jet pack for Malcolm’s super-hero alter ego ‘Metal Man’.

 

Thanksgiving itself was a traditional affair with turkey and standard-issue gluttony (I was the glutton, natch). 

 

My punishment for gluttony (at least the excessive cognac part) was a nasty heartburn in the middle of the night.  Oh well.  Brown liquor and I, we have a stormy relationship.

Friday was better though as Dave’s Mexican girlfriend Marti made homemade tamales.  Muchos Gracias!  A short but fun visit.