HUNZIKER AND KRAPF*

Ross had a birthday. Sloan and Jenny took us to brunch and I enjoyed myself so much I forgot to take photos. (Thanks S & J. It was fun and delicious). After drinking way too much coffee and eating lingonberries and whipped cream, Ross, TS, Jerritt and I walked down to the bike shop. To get there, we had to walk down this accordion staircase.







Then I got terribly sick, so Ross didn't get a birthday cake until a week later, but I included enough butter to make up for the delay.


And the delay meant we got to eat the cake with Sarah and Nate, who flew out from Kentucky for a visit.


The gum wall alley, down by Pike Place Market, is full of fantastic papering and graffiti, but my camera ran out of batteries after I took this one.



Of course we took Sarah and Nate to see the library.


Sarah's fear of heights seemed contaigious. I've never felt uneasy on the top floor of the library, but once she pointed out that it was a bit scary, I got completely woozy.











And we took them to the Locks. There are no salmon there now, though...just green water and algae. It was strange--there weren't even any boats passing through that afternoon.












Archie McPhee's photobooth was my first Seattle photobooth, too, way back when Ross and TaraShea and I were the visitors, and Myles and Carey were the tour guides.














I left Archie's with a new bendable moustache. I guess you'll have to wait to see it in person since I didn't take any photos of myself wearing it, and it is a personal moustache, meaning it clips to the septum. No one really wanted to borrow it considering my snuffy nose.

< But they were willing to borrow my special eyeglasses.

Late one night Amerigo Vespucci and Chauncey LeFleur drove off to the airport to pick up their other pal, Gordon P. Cummerbund. It had been a while since the three had seen each other and Amerigo and Chauncey were afraid Gordy wouldn't recognize them so they brought a sign. (Somehow, Gordy--a.k.a. Hans--escaped my camera while he was here. He was only able to stay for 2 days).


I dragged Sarah along on a mission to find Kinderegg prizes for some of my students. The secret Kinderegg supplier was out, though. I guess it isn't as secret as I thought. So Sarah had to settle for a drive along Alki Beach.




We met TS and Jerritt, Sloan, and Cassandra at the Twilight Exit for St. Patrick's Day drinks.


Nate made gnocchi one night. He kept warning us it might turn into mashed potatoes, but it came out perfectly.



And Sarah made brussel sprouts, which I now know are quite tasty when prepared with proscuitto.

One evening we drove down to Tacoma, where museums are free once a month. First stop: UW Tacoma library, which was in an old factory building. Our wet sneakers squeaked so loudly on those shining floors.


Everywhere we went Ross and Sarah obsessed over brick patterns...English bond, Dutch bond, Flemish bond, stringers...They wanted a photo in front of this building so they could send it to their vernacular architecture professor back in Kentucky. I'm not sure you can zoom enough to make out the brick pattern though...

We spent most of our time in the history museum, but the glass museum was right next door. Dale Chihuly is from Tacoma, so there is a lot of glass art and art glass around town.




The Museum of Glass is a slick, modern building surrounded by reclaimed industrial spaces. I like seeing them together--the old and the new.




The cone is actually the vent for the "hot shop" where they demonstrate glass blowing.






Then there was "Twin Peaks Day." Just the sight of Snoqualmie Falls gets the creepy theme music looping through my brain.

The R&R Cafe burned down in the late 90s, but they rebuilt it. Still, it doesn't quite match with the show.








Twin Peaks Day was supposed to wrap up with a visit to the Black Lodge room out at Gainsbourg's. But we filled up on sushi, and Greenwood was so far away, so we just walked down to the bookstore instead. So Sarah and Nate escaped the evil void of the Black Lodge this time...



*According to Wikipedia, in 1941, two Swiss fellows named Hunziker and Krapf defined "tourism" as "the sum of the phenomena and relationships arising from the travel and stay of non-residents, insofar as they do not lead to permanent residence and are not connected with any earning activity." First of all, it just seems funny that there is a science of tourism. Second of all, I like their names. Finally, part of the fun of having visitors is that it allows you to be a tourist in your own town. Hunziker and Krapf don't seem to account for this idea. I suppose there must be a separate scientific field for the phenomena of touring your own town. I also wonder how Mr. H and Mr. K would account for tourism that leads to permanent residence, which has happened twice in my life so far.

MIRACLES IN THE NEW WORLD

I have been to Utah before, but this time around I was surprised by the sky, the wide streets, the smallness of the trees, the nearness of the mountains, the blocky, plainness of the architecture. The mountains were bare--at least those near the University. In the morning, the sun was so bright. I did not bring sunglasses. I got sunburned. In the afternoons it was windy, and a strange foggy haze dulled the sky to white.

The University of Utah campus reminded me, somewhat painfully, of the Colorado State campus. Even the athletic arena was similar to old Moby Arena--a big ugly dome. I looked down into the swimming pool, which was huge and full of lap-swimmers and pennant flags on the wall from the WAC and the Mountain West--my old athletic conference. I wouldn't mind swimming in that pool. It has been a long time.

I liked the library, which was glassy and bright, even inside, and there was a book studio within the library, where apparently some writing students study the history of the book and manuscripts in unusual forms, like Kerouac's original On The Road (he wrote it on one long scroll), and other students bind up their own specimens.


The ground was mostly bare and brown, but there were a few patches of dirty snow lying around despite the fact that it was too warm to wear my jacket.


One of my tour guides took me to the Gilgal Sculpture Garden, the lifework of Thomas Battersby Child, Jr.


Child was a member of the LDS Church; this part of the garden was his interpretation of "Nebuchadnezzar's Dream" of a giant split into pieces and scattered across the earth, like countries and like the people of God.

Somehow I forgot to take a photo of the Sphinx with Joseph Smith's face, or the sacrificial altar built to thank the pioneers for the sacrifices they made...One chapter of the Book of Mormon--The Miracle of the Gulls--tells the story of an infestation of giant crickets. God sent seagulls to devour the swarm and the pioneers survived. When I spent the summer in Elko a few years ago I was lucky enough to witness a swarm of these "Mormon Crickets." They were everywhere, and huge, covering every inch of the road on one mountain pass. Kneeling down to get a good look, I watched the live ones devour the dead. It's said that cars have wrecked driving over them because their carcasses make the road so slick. The smell of them was awful--something like burnt vegetable oil--and the road was completely red with them. As the car rolled over them they caked its underside. Even a carwash couldn't wash the smell of them away. There were enough in a square mile to feed a thousand gulls.


The garden includes a self-portrait of Child in a fantastic pair of brick pants.


Then we stopped at the public library, which was almost as cool as the Seattle Public Library.





You can go out on the roof for a look at the mountains, rising up behind the flat part of town.





And down in the basement, in the children's room, was a special room that felt like a ship.


And another like an ice cave.


On a long walk alone, I had to stop in the middle of this street. I was relieved when I made it back to the TRAX train and got out of the brightness and the wind. I felt like a cricket out there. I like the desert, really, and Colorado, too, is pretty bare, but I guess I've gotten used to trees, and moss, and a darker shade of clouds in the sky. I'm glad that I know Salt Lake City is green in the summer, even if the trees and grass are not exactly natural. And the canyons, tangled with cottonwoods and willows, have a weathered, golden beauty about them that I love. And the mountains are so close! And the people I met seemed pretty cool.





It is strange, though. Before I lived in Seattle, I used to love waking to the sound of rain. Then, for a while after we moved here, I stopped liking that sound--more rain! I would think. Ugh! But lately, I find that I like it again. I suppose I might change my mind if it keeps up until June, but for the time being, it isn't so bad.