Shakespeare in the Park

On some Sunday afternoons in the summer, a small sandwichboard sign appears at the entrance to the park across the street from my house.

It advertises a performance in the amphitheater there of a Shakespeare play later that afternoon.This Sunday’s performance is “Romeo and Juliet”.

Amphitheater may be somewhat of an exaggeration, given that the venue is not much more than a grassy clearing amidst the cedars in that section of the park, a small hollow where people will spread their blankets or set up folding chairs to watch the performance, where children can run off and swing or slide or romp in the playground right next to the venue, easily incorporating a Shakespearean play into thier children’s vigorous, noisy, fun activities. People strolling or cycling past along the trails will pause to look on then continue on their way.

That’s something I like about Seattle. So many of its functions blend so easily into everyday life that they seem spontaneous, uncontrived...even a Shakespearean performance. Romeo woos Juliet in the shade of a large cedar while a jetliner flies low overhead, Prospero and Caliban come to terms in their fantasyland while children create their own fantasies in a playground a stone’s throw away without a thought of incongruity, without a stage, without a Box Office.

Fishermen's Festival

at
Fishermen’s Terminal, Seattle


Fishing has supported human life for thousands of years.



Primitive fishing in streams and lakes was a placid activity, but large scale commercial fishing, such as is done by the fishing fleet based here at Fishermen’s Terminal in Seattle is very arduous and very dangerous. The daily floral tributes at the base of this monument in memory of fishermen lost at sea attest to the heavy price the crews of the fishing vessels sometimes pay to bring us our sustenance from the sea.

The names of some of the more recently lost fishermen are written on this survival suit.







You may have watched a very dramatic documentary “The Deadliest Catch” on the Discovery Channel. This is the ship featured in that tv show. It is open to visitors so I’ll take you on board later on in this narrative.

Every year on the last weekend of September the Fishermen’s Terminal hosts the Fall Fishermen’s Festival to honor those hardworking, courageous men and women who sail out from here into the Gulf of Alaska, some as far as the Bering Sea and to give the public an opportunity to visit their boats, see the nets and gear they use and enjoy some of their catch.

This is the Ballard Bridge which I often drive across,











or where I sometimes sit in my car with varying degrees of impatience when it is raised to let a ship through. At those times I get a glimpse of the vast fishing fleet down below.

Today I am down here at the Festival getting a close-up view of the boats.


Imagine, as the fishing vessels set out down this ship canal to Puget Sound and out to the Pacific, at certain months of the year there are mature salmon swimming below them in the opposite direction on their way to the streams where they were born three years or so earlier to spawn a new generation. At times, the hatchlings will be swimming in the same direction as the boats out to sea to become their catch later on.

Let’s go to the Fishermen’s Festival: (Click on picture for slideshow)

Update-It's a Jungle Out There

The cougar was captured before dawn on Sunday, tranquilized and later released into the wild.

This is the report in The Seattle Times.

It's a Jungle Out There

It could be called a jungle: often wet, usually damp, densely wooded with rough undergrowth, the expansive area across the street from my home would be a jungle, except that this is the temperate Pacific Northwest of America, not the steamy Tropics. So it is called a Park, a Nature Preserve. Not a setting in which one would expect a wild cougar to be prowling. But there have been four sightings so far this week of such an animal there and in the lane two or three blocks away.

The police have set up a barricade at the entrance to the park to keep people out. TV channels have their vans with huge satellite dishes and tall antennas parked along the street in front of my house. These are accompanied by SUV's with the camera crews and reporters. This morning a news helicopter noisily hovered overhead for some time.

Somewhere deep in the wilderness Park Rangers have set up a trap suitably baited with Pacific Northwest salmon and other meats. They are using special tracking dogs that face down large wild animals and chase them up a tree.

For a street that looks more rural than urban and where the only traffic is the occasional car or delivery van, this has been quite an exciting scene.

So far the cougar, if indeed there's one lurking there, has been elusive and the park is due to remain closed through the weekend.

I have a feeling that my doctor will make a note about my mental health in my chart when I tell him that I have not been taking my prescribed exercise walks in the park because there's a mountain lion out there.

One fierce fan of the Washington State University, whose football team is called The Cougars wrote in a newspaper today that he welcomed the cougar and hoped that it would devour all the Huskies around, the Huskies being the football team (and the fans) of the University of Washington, the arch rivals of the Cougars.

The park has been barricaded:


TV camera crews are camped out in front of my house:




Like being on an Urban Big Game Safari:

Seattle Sizzles

The temperature at Seatac Airport today, 29 July 2009 at 4:19p, set a new record high.


The record temperature as it was shown on my iPhone.
The thermometer in the banner is on my balcony.

Earlier, at around 2:30p, I had taken these screen shots on my iPhone of the temperatures at various cities around the world where relatives and friends live.

North Beach

There's a reason why Seattle is called the "Emerald City": the frequent rain not only nourishes the trees but keeps them washed and free of dust and the residue of air pollution. Across from my house on a lovely Spring day, like today, the variety of trees turns the forest into a collage of different shapes, textures and shades of green.

Less than a five minute drive from home is North Beach, which borders the Puget Sound. Access to this beach by motor vehicles is controlled, so there are never many cars there at any time, and in mid-afternoon, in mid-week, we had the beach, the little lighthouse and the expanse of wild nature preserve adjoining it almost all to ourselves, except for a couple of adults and small children.

Driftwood, gnarled and bleached, washed up onto the beach, presents an ever-changing exhibition of sculptures.




Even Mount Rainier's snow-covered craggy flanks can be seen in the distance, if you look closely.

A Bavarian Town in Washington

Our son's Mothers' Day treat was a three hour drive over the Cascades Mountain Range to Leavenworth. Leavenworth was an old logging town in the mountains that was transformed into a full scale replica of a town in Bavaria, Germany when the logging industry was phased out.

The drive there prepares you for the fantasy of being in Germany.


For much of the way the highway closely follows the Snohomish River into a very Alpine-looking valley with glimpses of bare, rugged, snow capped peaks, passing through tiny towns with names like Goldbar, Sultan, Startup and Index, past meadows then cutting through thick pine forests clinging to steep valley walls, winding all the way up to the ski resort at Stevens Pass at 4,061 feet (1,238m), where the slopes were still covered with snow.

For much of the way the river is just a few feet from the road and presents an ever-changing spectacle: sometimes churning along over boulders in foaming cataracts


sometimes as a still pool lingering under trees or meandering slowly around little islands of gravel.


Front Street, the main street in Leavenworth, was filled with visitors and mingling with them were local residents decked out in lederhosen and Bavarian skirts and blouses





The sound of an Oompah band filled the air and built up expectations for the Maypole Dance to come.


The Maypole Dance in the main square was delightful.




Over a hearty German meal at a Bavarian style restaurant


amid murals of Rothenberg, Regensberg and other old Bavarian towns we toasted the three generations of mothers in our party.