From the land of cheeseheads

When John's nephew came to visit a few weeks ago he brought us several nice chunks of specialty cheese. They're proud of their dairy heritage in Wisconsin so there are websites boasting about the 18,000 dairy farms and 126 cheese plants. No surprise the state beverage is milk. To west coast daily wine drinkers, it sounds like a totally wholesome place. But of course Wisconsin is famous for good beer, too. Thanks, Nick.

Wisconsin leads the nation in cheese production and makes about a quarter of America's cheese. I read that the average American eats an astonishing 31 pounds of cheese a year. Just under a pound a week. There are American cheese haters of course, so some people eat much more. If you think about it, that's also an astonishing amount of calories.

There are tons of processed cheeseburger/pizza cheese made-- but much smaller amounts of real cheese. Might as well have the good stuff. This cheddar Nick brought was aged 12 years. What does a 12-year-old piece of dairy taste like? Smooth and sharp, of course-- but not moldy or strong like Roquefort.


Very dense and tasty-- like our local Tillamouk cheddar on steroids.

It Happened at the World's Fair

I haven't written about the Museum of History and Industry lately, but I'm still doing my my volunteer archivist thing there once a week. The clock is ticking down on the Museum's location in Mountlake, and our afternoons in the chilly basement are coming to an end-- for better or worse. In 2012, MOHAI will open in the historic Naval Reserve Building near Lake Union. The new museum will be grand and spacious, but unfortunately not large enough to house the research library, administrative offices and the museum collections. I don't know the details, but off-site locations have probably been found and moving trucks are now parked behind the old museum as artifacts and records are slowly packed. When I worked at Microsoft, our department moved an archives collection and library several times-- so I feel their pain (and excitement.)

The big buzz this month was a $10 million dollar gift from Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos to help fund the new museum. So things are happening at MOHAI and it's exciting to be part of it, even in a tiny way.

In the meantime, work on the Seattle World's Fair archive collection goes on. Since I've been on the same project for months there hasn't been much to say, but I felt a little thrill last week to see that monster finding aid finally published on Northwest Digital Archives. Carolyn the librarian told me it's the largest finding aid the Museum has posted (can that be true?) Maybe. If you click HERE you'll see a mind-numbing list of over 1,000 photographs and slides, all entered by yours truly into an Excel spreadsheet. The fun part of doing a finding aid (and the reward for all that detailed data entry) is writing the background section. The 50th anniversary of the Fair is coming up, so all these photographs should be useful to the researchers and writers.



As I learn more about the fair, it's easy to fall into the nostalgia. Imagine a time when you dropped your kids off at the gate of an Expo and came back to pick them up at 6? The fair was a bizarre combination of popular science, nationalism, commercialism with high and low brow entertainments mixed in.

Just for the heck of it, we watched the 1963 Elvis movie the other night. Oh, how the new Seattle Center sparkled white and bright as Elvis cavorted around! Seattle at night was as warm and balmy as southern California. (Where part of the movie was actually filmed.) Anyway, all Elvis movies are the same so don't watch it for the plot but to catch a glimpse of this old Seattle. The Gayway amusement park eventually became the Fun Forest at the Seattle Center, and when Amanda was little we took her on rides that were still left over from the fair. The Fun Forest was recently torn down with the hope of building a Chihuly-type glass museum on the spot. What a shame.

"We are stardust, we are golden..."

No, this isn't Woodstock-- it's Adelina and Nova getting back to nature last weekend on the shores of Omak Lake. It's apparently the largest saline lake in Washington with no natural outlet and filled only by run-off from the surrounding hills. Amanda said they "discovered" it on an Indian reservation not far from the city of Omak.

Washington State Horse Park

East of the mountains

If you've driven across Washington, then you know the eastern part of the state has a different climate from the western side. Wet Pacific ocean weather bangs up against the Cascade mountains, dumping copious precipitation on Seattle and the western slopes of the mountains almost year round. It's what keeps us green, mossy and relatively warm. But a few miles east of the mountain divide, the terrain suddenly opens up, the sky seems to get bigger and the flora changes dramatically. The town of Cle Elum is only 80 miles east of Seattle, but the climate has a dry feel that reminds you of places like Colorado and Idaho.

A few years ago, the Washington State Horse Park opened on the outskirts of Cle Elum. It's a heaven-on-earth retreat for urban riders, with miles of trails through ponderosa forests, arenas for equestrian events and overnight camping for horses and humans. On Friday I was lucky to be invited along to the park with an old riding friend. We loaded the horses in her trailer, headed over Snoqualmie Pass and met up at the park with another group from our barn.

And here's Flo, tied to Dolly's trailer waiting to be saddled. She's on high alert because the Eastern Washington Mounted Shooter Club was having a competitive event in the arena and the loud guns were banging.

Wild cowgirl shooting

I'm not into guns, but this looked like harmless fun. Although maybe not the best event for a noise sensitive horse with nearsighted lady shooting off her back!

By the way, I recently found out that Flo is not a registered Arabian but a breed called National Show Horse, which is actually a cross between an Arab and an American Saddlebred. Making for a very flashy and spirited horse.

Quiet trails

Soon we hit the trails and left the shooters far behind. What a pleasure not having to worry about a mountain bike or ATV rushing up behind your horse. Around Seattle we're used to ferny, green, damp forest trails that have a certain charm, but this is real horse country. Where we usually ride it's just dense undergrowth, but at the horse park we could see through the forest in all directions. The trails were really dusty (actually a nice change from mud) and my friend Dolly and I agreed there is no smell on earth like sun on warm pine needles. The park covers an area of 112 acres, but the trails are mostly loops so it would be hard to get truly lost. Although take the wrong turn and you might find yourself on a very long ride back to camp. All part of the fun.

Emma and Tater Tot

Guess who went along? Yes, that's Tater Tot hanging around the parking lot soaking up attention. His owner brought all her horses to the park, and of course little Tater couldn't be left home alone. Believe it or not, he rides safely in the trailer right under the feet of the big horses.

Storms

Faith is not simply a patience that passively suffers until the storm is past. Rather, it is a spirit that bears things - with resignations, yes, but above all, with blazing, serene hope.

Corazon Aquinio

Our August has been an unbroken string of serene, peaceful days, making the ominous hurricane news from the East coast seem surreal. Our thoughts are with you this weekend as you weather the storm. God Bless.

Tater Tot

"Tater Tot" is a miniature horse, and he belongs to one of the trainers at Rosebud River Ranch. He looks like a pony and the top of Tater's back comes to about my knee, but he's still considered a "real" horse. There's debate over whether miniature horses should have pony characteristics. There are dozens of different registers for miniature horses, all with different ideal standards for the breed, which shows the controversy about these little horses. Tater Tot has short, sturdy legs like a pony, but some standards say if you saw a picture of a miniature horse without any size reference, it should have the same conformation as a full size horse. Like these fancy show miniatures:

Fine-boned miniature horses like these were once bred in Europe as pets for nobility, but not all were so lucky. Some worked as pit ponies in English and Welsh mines.

One of the smallest minis in the world is a dwarf horse named "Thumbelina." She weighs 60 pounds and is 17 inches tall:

Dwarf horses set world records, but it's easy to see their conformation is pretty strange and they also tend to have health problems. Little Thumbelina is an oddity, and miniature horse associations avoid accepting horses with dwarfism traits for breeding stock.

So what do you "do" with a mini? They're friendly and like people (not to mention adorable) and often kept and spoiled as family pets. However, minis are real horses with natural horse behavior, so they need to live outdoors with room to run around. Along with some basic training, since they can learn the same bad habits as big horses. But believe it or not, they're sometimes used as service animals-- although this is controversial.

Miniature horses live much longer than guide dogs (25-35 years) but from a practical point of view it would be hard for them to curl up on the floor of a taxi, or stay in a hotel room for very long.

When all is said and done, they're here mostly for girls to love.

Why worry?

Be happy...

oops

"Things fall apart-- the center cannot hold."
William Butler Yeats

Even if you like to think of yourself as a clean and careful person, things still break. Wine glasses jump from your hand and shatter on the tile floor. (As punishment for clumsiness, you own the world's worst broom.) Turn your back and everything is dirty and cluttered. Then the computer needs a cold boot. There are mice under the stove. Computerized washing machines give error messages when you have loads and loads of dirty clothes. The bedroom window cord snaps and won't open on a hot night. A bathroom drawer you've opened 10 times a day for 20 years falls to pieces when you pull it a tad too hard. Well, maybe chaos theory is just more obvious when you live in an old house.

But it isn't just things, is it? The day will also come when our body surprises us. No matter how much care we give it, or how lucky we've been so far. Stuff just happens.

Please keep our Montana friends Candi and Roger in your thoughts and prayers. Roger recently had a bone-marrow transplant in Salt Lake City to treat leukemia, and they wrote about the experience on their beautiful blog, the Bone Marrow Boogie. Now they are facing treatments again as the cancer is back a third time. Yet they continue to live their daily lives with a grace and bravery that inspires so many others.

Summer work

I like to can pickles and chutney in August when I'm in the mood: early morning, coffee, sweats, slippers, NPR and a quiet house.

But we've been busy around here and finally getting a late start on home repair projects. So conditions weren't perfect this weekend while I cooked a double batch of "Washington" chutney, in-between the window replacement salesman and the washing machine delivery guys. (Yes, we gave the old lemon the heave-ho.)

It sure doesn't look like an entire mornings' work. John said, "is that all you made this year?"

As I peel and chop, sometimes I think of my grandmother and mom who bulk canned vegetables and fruit in a small, hot kitchen. When produce was ripe, they preserved whether they were in the mood or not to feed the family over the winter. It was the farm wife's job in those days, along with her other chores. Film cameras were for taking pictures of people on special occasions, and it would have been downright weird to take a picture of a jar of peaches no matter how pretty. Canning that plain food was just work, and no one would have been interested in how they felt about it. A housewife in 1953 wasn't distracted by computers, blogs, smart phones, email, texts, or daytime TV. If she had time to keep a diary, she might have noted "canned 3 dozen quarts of tomatoes today."

Anyway, when I was about Nova's age I remember seeing an astonishing number of peach quarts lined up in the cellar. My mother tapped each lid to see if it sealed, and I wondered how anyone could ever eat so many canned peaches. (We did.) Nothing was wasted on a farm unless it was truly spoiled, and scraps went to the pigs and chickens.

Well, canning is a luxury activity now in terms of the time and expense. But young foodies are taking it up as a cool retro hobby. And who needs corn and peaches when you can impress your friends with interesting condiments, jams and pickles? In the mood or not, I have to find time in August to make chutney from the same old recipe of peaches, plums, onions and peppers. Or we'll be missing Washington chutney on our turkey curry, come February.

Flying horse in the dahlias

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true.
May you always do for others,
And let others do for you.

May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung.
And may you stay...
Forever young.

Bob Dylan
Forever Young

First times

When we went to the Dairy Queen, Nova didn't ask for a cone or sundae because she'd never had one before. She didn't know what soft ice cream was.
(With Grandpa's help, that's over now :-)

And on her birthday, she was happy just playing with a horse helium balloon, because she had no idea what that stack of wrapped presents was.

Here's what a 2-year-old can teach us: we'd be happier if we enjoyed the goodness that happened to come along. The present moment and the single gift-- without anticipating the next one. Watching Nova is a reminder of that short time before we were taught to have expectations about ice cream stores and what happens on birthdays.

Transported to a dream world on a cloud of soft ice cream...

Remember your first Dairy Queen?

A lily is a lily?

No, there are Day lilies, Asiatic lilies, Oriental lilies, Tiger lilies, Peruvian lilies, Easter lilies, Calla lilies, Lily of the Valley and other flowers we call " lilies" that are not part of the genus Lilium.
The magnificent Oriental lilies that bloom in late summer are some of the most fragrant flowers on earth-- like the white Casa Blancas and red-striped Stargazers that can stop a passerby in their tracks.
Most of these came from a package of bulbs I bought at Costco in February. The garden was bleak when I planted them in the soggy dirt way back then. Now I love the way they (accidentally) bloom against the while dahlias, which I didn't think would even come back after the hard winter.

It's funny-- I got one of the best gardens ever this year without trying all that hard. Thank you, rain. I'm a big believer in hard work, but Nature gets the final word.

Blooming down

Liatris aspera

Flowers usually bloom from the bottom up. Think about gladiolus, hollyhocks and lilies. But Liatris, or Blazing Star, starts blooming from the tip and the color slowly works down the stalk. Many garden flowers are native to far-away places, but Blazing Star was a wildflower discovered by Lewis and Clark on their journey to the Pacific. Along with mapping the land and keeping themselves alive, the expedition still found time to catalog 178 plants and 122 animal species.

As far as I know, Liatris are only bright purple or white. Some fussy gardeners don't care for that shade of magenta because it clashes with other colors. But they're pretty in cut bouquets, and a few stalks grew in our garden for years. Like so many things, I took them for granted until they petered out. This spring I finally remembered to pick up a packet of bulbs (corms, actually) at Home Depot and they turned into a nice little clump. Bees like them, too.

Family day at Boeing

Boeing Everett Site

Can you imagine a building so large that all of Disneyland and California Adventure would fit into it, with room left-over for 2,000 parking spaces? The assembly plant at Boeing's Everett site is 4.3 million square feet and covers over 1,000 acres of floorspace.

I've never worked at Boeing, although the company has been a part in my life since 1979. It seems incredible that in 32 years I've been "inside" Boeing facilities only twice. (It isn't the sort of place where you drop by to have lunch with your husband in the cafeteria.) The first time I passed through "The Gate" was 20 years ago when I was escorted by John to an open house at Boeing Field Flight Test in Seattle. It was a long time ago, but I remember the odd feeling of seeing where John spent so many of his waking hours. And putting faces to the names of people I felt like I already knew, and who seemed to already know me!

And yesterday I went inside Boeing again for a family day event at the Everett site. John doesn't work way up in Everett (thankfully) but 30,000 others do, so throngs of family members showed up with "their" Boeing employee. Boeing Everett does offer a $20 public tour, but this was much, much better. Thousands of us, from little kids to grannies in wheelchairs, gawked around the factory floor, took freight elevators to viewing balconies, and stood in line to buy coffee at one of the two Tully's stores right inside the factory.

The 747 assembly line

I've always known it was there, but I wasn't prepared to be so wowed by just a big building. But you really can't comprehend the scale unless you actually see it. The best views were 3 stories up from the observation balconies, where the giant jetliners were lined up below like little toys in various stages of assembly. In the long process of designing a new airplane, John tells me that putting the pieces together is not the most expensive part, or necessarily the most complicated. But seeing the final process, and the sparkling new airplanes ready to be pushed out the door and fly to every corner of the world-- well, it gave me a lump in my throat.

There were so many overwhelming sights to take in and luckily I had a personal, expert guide to explain things ;-) It's interesting that the traditional method of assembly was to park the planes in stationary, diagonal lines. More recently, Henry Ford's moving assembly line is being used successfully. On some lines, the planes are now lined up nose-to-tail and crawl along at about 1.5 inches per minute. This has cut the assembly time on the 777 from 26 days to 17. Impressive.

787 Dreamliner

I'll leave you with this hopeful image to draw your own conclusions on the future of Boeing. A new shining star on the assembly line, surrounded by hundreds of computer workstations.

A word to the wise

Do not go to the laundromat at 7 am on a Saturday morning, hoping to have a Clean, Well-Lighted Place to yourself. The detritus had not been swept out from the night before.

No thank-you, I did not need any drugs to start the day, nor was I seriously hung over and have anything special to commiserate about except a broken washer (yawn.) But the clothes and sheets are now clean (I think.) Repairman arrives Monday.

Dog days of August

Summertime, and the livin' is easy...
Fish are jumpin', and the cotton is high.
Your daddy is rich, and your mama good-lookin'
Hush little baby, don't you cry.

Sometimes I wish I could live in a George Gershwin song. Dave sent this picture of wise old "Lucy" sleeping off this strange summer of highs and lows. When John left the house this morning at 5:20, it was still dark, and the air that came through the crack in the bedroom window was cool and damp. We finally had a short stretch of pleasant August weather, although it's been below normal topping off at just 70 degrees. Now it looks like another rainy pattern will descend on Seattle and I'll be sorry to see it. Early wet weather knocks down the heavy dahlia plants at their peak, and they've never been more beautiful. See Nova playing under the big white ones in the blog photo above?

So the stores are full of school supplies and we haven't even started our long list of home improvement projects. Those of us dumb enough to pay attention have whiplash this week from watching the stock market. There have been much worse war tragedies in far-away places. And a brave and dear friend in Montana is fighting the return of a serious illness.

Closer to home with the trivial, my fancy washing machine is broken and the summer hotel is open for company comings and goings. I'm happy that Amanda and Nova are safely home in eastern Washington, but I sure miss that voice calling "Nana! Nana!" first thing in the morning. I haven't seen "Flo" for over a week, so I'm headed to the foothills today. A little horse time might put things in perspective. Followed by a Friday night steak dinner. The laundromat can wait.

"C'est la vie"

The Two Mandi

Today is Amanda's birthday! We wish you a happy one and a safe drive home.

As promised, here's pictures from last weekend's wedding. These beautiful women (Mandy and Mandi) became best friends while serving in the Peace Corps on the island of Grenada. Well-- actually, it started in Miami sharing a cell phone on the airport floor before the plane even took off for the eastern Caribbean. John and I traveled to Grenada twice to visit, and we loved Mandi from the first day we met her.

Anyway, before the wedding our own Amanda was busy with bridesmaid things, so John and I took care of Nova. After we went to the carousel park it was my job to get Nova washed and dressed and ready for the wedding. Then it was John's job to tell her she would be "quiet as a mouse" during the ceremony and "clap when it was over." We worried that after a long day away, it might be a 2-year-old melt down when she saw Amanda again. But it helped that Mom had on strange make-up, a special dress and a fancy hair-do. Nova was amazed.
So we took seats in the very back of the crowd (just in case) to watch the wedding. Nova whispered that "Mommy was up there doing things." Much older kids around us were misbehaving, but Nova sat like an angel through the entire thing.
OK. The sailor outfit. I bought it for $10 at the outlet mall. Yes, it's something I would have dressed Amanda in back in 1979.

But I lost count of how many people said how CUTE she was!

Nova's birthday

Happy birthday, Nova! Two years ago today, you entered our lives and stole our hearts. A beautiful baby has already become a charming little girl. Congratulations to your wonderful and loving parents, Amanda and Tom.


For Nova

That morning you arrived,
You were our bright summer star.
And I drove East to greet you,
Body, Mind, Spirit--
With a prayer for every mile.

Time passed. Road and silence.
Mountains, rocks, fields,
The occasional gift of horses grazing.
And finally, clear desert light
Above the ancient river.

Then your Mother's call, at last!
Wonder and tears
Turning a roadside nowhere into Somewhere.
Oh, you thrilled us
With your big entrance: Here I Am.

So, an old story but still a fresh miracle.
And I arrived at a new place, too.
A little hand to hold,
Precious life to cherish,
The circle complete.

Nana

Weekend blur

Whew! Our weekend in Oregon with Amanda and Nova went by like the blur of a merry-go-round. We were happy to get home yesterday after a long (but blessedly uneventful) drive up the I-5 freeway. Except for a short meltdown in Portland traffic (who could blame her?) Nova was a patient traveler strapped tight in her car seat keeping three adults highly entertained for over 200 miles.

While Amanda was busy with bridesmaid duties, lucky Nana and Grandpa took Nova out to see the sights of Salem. The wedding was fun (more on that later) but the highlight was two visits to Salem's Riverfront Carousel:

Imagine seeing this marvel for the very first time? All three of us were mesmerized by the exquisitely restored horses. Nova had to give it some careful consideration with Grandpa, but soon she was brave enough to climb up on her own horse and get a riding lesson from Nana:

And the picture says it all:

A weekend of firsts for Nova

A ride on a carousel, a yellow balloon and a Dairy Queen cone. And for Nana and Grandpa, the gift of seeing the world through the eyes of a two year old. More pictures coming next week...