"Secret, black, and midnight hags"

The Magic Circle
John Waterhouse

Witches repulse and fascinate us. The artist John Waterhouse was incapable of painting an ugly woman, so this is as close as he gets. An attractive "witch" is casting a magic circle to purify a space where evil magic can't enter. To do this, she draws a circle on the ground with a wand while reciting a spell. Her crows are watching.

Hansel and Gretel
Arthur Rackham

They don't get any worse than the cannibal witch in the Grimms fairy tale. That story is packed with horrors-- starving children abandoned, lost in the woods, lured in by a candy house and then caged and fattened for dinner. In the end, smart brave Gretel burns the witch alive in her own stove and saves the day. Nice bedtime story.

The Witches' Sabbath
Arthur Rackham

All of Rackham's illustrations are imaginative and fantastic-- some are downright creepy.

Witches' Sabbath
Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya (1746-1828) was a liberal idealist living in a dangerous time to be one. He was an advocate of the Enlightenment that sought to replace superstition with reason and put an end to the horrible Inquisition and witch-hunting. This painting shows Satan as a goat, and it's angry satire directed at the royalists and clergy who controlled Spain.

Witches' Flight
Francisco Goya

Reason tells us people cannot fly, but Goya is showing our dark side that resists enlightenment. At least that's what art historians say about this painting. Who really knows what was going in in Goya's strange mind?

Macbeth and Banquo with the Witches
Theodore Chasserian

The classic witches of literature are the "weird sisters" in Shakespeare's Macbeth. They pull the strings from the very first lines of the play when Macbeth wanders on the heath and they give their prophesies. And chant the best spell every written!

Macbeth:
"How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags?

What is ’t you do?"

Witches:
"A deed without a name.
Double, double toil and trouble,

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake.

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,

Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble...

This way evil comes..."

It's a wonderful world

The parking lot at Southcenter Mall was almost empty when we pulled in at 9:00 am yesterday to go to the opera. We were there to see a live, matinée performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni from the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Imagine seeing world-class opera at a shopping mall in Seattle? The wonderful Met Live in HD Series broadcasts real-time operas to movie theaters all over the country, making them accessible to thousands of ordinary people.

So we headed upstairs to the fancy new theater and bought our tickets ($22 and $20-- one of us got a senior discount) and took a comfy seat. There was plenty of elbow room to spread out with your popcorn. As we sat waiting for the opera to begin, the camera panned over the New York Met audience crowded into their $250 seats. We could see them on the big screen but they couldn't see us. Fun!

The countdown started, the Maestro headed to the pit and the opera overture started without a glitch. Of course watching live on a screen isn't the same as watching live in a theater, but in some ways it's better. For one thing, the terrific camera close-ups give you every expression and all the acting nuances you would never catch sitting 30 rows back. And this opera had a great cast. The 38-year-old Polish singer who played Don Giovanni had back surgery just 2 weeks ago after injuring himself in a "sword fight," but he was in good shape to cavort with the beauties on the stage yesterday.

During the long intermission, we had plenty of time to stroll downstairs and eat lunch at Panda Express in the food court. And when it was all over, we left with that nice "after opera" feeling. By then the mall and the parking lot were jammed. It was a great experience and a real bargain if you can avoid those $4.75 Junior Mints at the concession stand. Next week? The Met is broadcasting Wagner's Sigfried-- it's 6 hours long! That one would require SEVERAL trips down to the food court for fortification.

Baseball and opera

Did you watch the World Series? It was really exciting baseball. John said at times "sloppy," but I'll take sloppy excitement over boring perfection. We don't have sports cable TV so we can't watch regular season baseball, but the play-offs and the World Series are a big deal in this house each October. There's nothing like baseball on high-definition TV-- you can see every stubble on their chins. The only downside is the endless, endless repetition of Fox commercials.

Here's a change of pace. Today we're going to a live production of Don Giovanni at the New York Metropolitan Opera. That's right! The Met broadcasts high-definition, real-time operas to certain movie theaters around the country. Buy a ticket, plop down in a seat with popcorn and spend several hours watching a live opera. Is it as good as the real thing? I'll let you know next week.

Don Giovanni Confronts the Stone Guest
Theodore Chasserian

Beware Halloween mirrors

The New York Public Library has an amazing digital archive of photographs, art and illustrations. Their mission is: To provide broad public access and enable individuals to pursue learning at their own personal levels of interest, preparation, ability and desire, and help ensure the free trade in ideas and the right of dissent.

How great is that? Best of all, they make it easy to download images for personal use: The low-resolution web images available on the website are suitable for immediate printing or downloading to provide good-quality reference copies for a wide range of creative, research, and educational purposes.

And blogs! My favorite part is the collection of vintage holiday postcards. Here's some cute ones from the Halloween section. The superstition goes, if you stare into a mirror at midnight on Halloween, you will see your future spouse.

Crow soup

Crows can eat an amazing amount of food, and what they don't gobble up on the spot they carry off for later. I've seen them spear up moldy cheese like a shish kabob. They eat almost anything. Here's an excerpt from the old (1946) Life Histories of North American Jays, Crows, and Titmice:

Insects (primarily beetles and their larvae and grasshoppers, locusts and crickets), spiders, millipeds, crustaceans, snails, reptiles, amphibians, wild birds and their eggs, poultry and their eggs, small mammals and carrion,May beetles, wireworms, caterpillars, grubs, cutworms, earthworms, clams, scallops, mussels, sea urchins, dead fish, marine invertebrates, dead seal, dead trout, , garbage, road kills (including dogs, cats, chickens, opossums, pigs and skunks) snakes, slaughter house waste, corn, sorghums, wheat, apples, almonds, beans, peas, figs, grapes, cherries, various wild fruits (including sumach, poison-ivy, poison-oak, bayberry, dogwood, sour gum, wild cherries, wild grapes, Virginia creeper, and pokeberry), meadow mice, star-nosed moles, short-tailed shrews, cranberry, juniper berries, smilax winterberry, nightshade berries, barley, corn, buckwheat, pumpkin or squash seeds.

Modern city crows don't want yucky stuff like that-- they're partial to pizza and hamburger buns! Back in 1946, no sane person would have fed crows because they were considered agricultural pests. Now they're considered city pests. I throw them scraps, so our backyard crows are tame and set up a racket when they see me come outside. It's been proven that crows recognize individual human faces, and if I walk around the neighborhood I'm sure that's true. They like to put pieces of stale bread in the bird bath and come back later to eat their "soup."

Below is a reproduction of an old primitive sign. I'm not sure what the saying means, but it's clever:

One Crow Sorrow,

Two Crows Joy
Three crows a Letter,
Four crows Boy
Five Crows Silver,
Six crows Gold
Seven crows a secret never to be told.

"Viadoom"

The Seattle Alaska Way Viaduct
(in better times)

Some mornings, all you want to do is stay in bed and pull the covers over your head. For months, we've been bracing for a traffic nightmare known as "Viadoom"-- the nine day closure of the Alaska Way Viaduct. The Viaduct, as we call it, is a crumbling 1950's elevated highway and one of only two north-south arterials in Seattle. This week more than 100,000 Seattle drivers (many of them living in our area west of downtown) are being forced to find a way around as the Viaduct is oh-so-slowly being demolished and replaced by a tunnel. No one quite knows where the money will come from to finish this wildly expensive project, but that's another story.

Here's my morning view as the gridlock lurches along toward I-5, inch by painful inch. For the evening commute, just reverse the picture. As for finding "a way around" as we've been advised to do, there really isn't one unless you have a magic broomstick or helicopter in the backyard. For all practical purposes, coming and going to West Seattle requires crossing this bridge. The Viaduct was still open when I took this picture a month ago, so you can imagine the mess now. California had their "Carmagedden" last summer, but click here for the LA Times take on our "Viadoom."

I think I'll stay home and bake another cake.

Glazed spice cake with pecans

It's just a dolled-up cake mix, but John's eyes sure lit up when he got in the door yesterday. (Well, he's seen me in my sweatpants about a million times.)

When the weather gets dark and chilly, dinner is the highlight of the day:

Stir fry with chicken and vegetables

Fried potstickers

Big taco dinners

Sunday pork roast with apples and onions
And so on...

Dahlias and mulch

Before

Like spring in the Northwest, the autumn season here is long and temperate. The weather gradually gets cooler, darker and wetter, but there isn't a dramatic change that shouts winter. We usually don't have a freeze until December, and sometimes not at all. So plants like dahlias hang on for months after they stop blooming. Each October it's a dilemma-- should I cut them down while they're still (sort of) pretty, or wait until they collapse in a soggy mess?

Most of the time I do it sooner rather than later. There's something to be said for leaving the party before people get tired of you. Still, I felt bad whacking down these big healthy plants yesterday, although I cut off the flowers for the house. They were the best dahlias I ever grew and I don't even know why. Maybe it was the rain this summer. What I wouldn't give for a vase of white garden flowers at Christmas. But the dahlia party is over until next year and the beauties have all left.

After

I went across the street as usual with my cart to collect fallen leaves from the huge maple tree. People driving by think I'm a good citizen for keeping the storm drains clean, but each fall I count on that tree for free mulch. After I brought a few loads over to my garden, I noticed our new neighbor came outside and got to work. Since I was raking the sidewalk in front of her house, she probably thought I was making a point about their yard-keeping.

I should have gone over and explained, but I was feeling unsociable because their big new house now blocks our little view of the Olympic Mountains. Well, that's life in the city and I'll get over it. Unless I'm becoming the grouchy old lady on the block who does weird things? Well, every neighborhood needs one :-)

There's a pretty poem called Frost Tonight about picking the last dahlias of the season. The garden is a metaphor for feelings in old age-- sadness, beauty and anticipation. Here's the last stanza:

In my garden of Life, with its all-late flowers
I heed a Voice in the shrinking hours:
'Frost tonight-- so clear and dead still...'
Half sad, half proud, my arms I fill.

Edith Mathilda Thomas

Ripples of a pebble...

Patterson Lake

When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing-- just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park?

Ralph Marston

Have a restful fall weekend-- there's good baseball on TV!

Bald-faced hornet

This is a bald-faced hornet nest. Empty, of course. We found it just off the trail at Patterson Lake, not far from Sun Mountain Lodge. In the spring the hornets build a football-shaped paper nest for raising their young. The queen selects a spot for the nest and lays the first batch of eggs that will become the workers. Their job is to expand the nest, which they do by chewing up wood and mixing it with their saliva. The queen lays eggs all summer. When winter comes the wasps die, except for the new queens who hibernate underground. In the spring the cycle begins again...

The nests are marvelous, delicate and completely exposed to the elements. On the nest above you can see how the clever wasps used stems of grass as support. Tom spotted it as we walked along the trail back to the car. It was torn and deserted, but some (smarter?) members of our party gave it a wide berth anyway. Fools rush in. I pulled it off and brought it home wrapped in tissue paper. A Wikipedia article said "the bald-faced hornet will attack aggressively with little provocation and sting repeatedly." So, their highly-visible nest is probably warning enough to scare off (most) animals. Here's a picture of an intact one:

The world is a dangerous place whether you live in Manhattan or the Methow Valley. It would be unfortunate to brush against a hornet nest while clumping along on a horse, or just innocently walking along with your mom and dad. Whenever we visit Amanda and Tom we're impressed with their careful parenting and teaching along the trail of life. Perhaps Nana was not setting a good example.

Bald-faced hornet
A pretty creature, but all business.

"Smile because it happened"

As soon as she gets in the door at Hank's Supermarket in Twisp, Nova makes a beeline for her kiddie basket. Heaven help Amanda if it's not there! Here she is, careening around the wine department and deli-- I never realized a little cart and little hands could move so fast. But there were smiles and indulgent glances at the adorable sight of Nova "shopping." Although when you get home with the groceries, surprises sometimes show up. Along with the usual healthful choices, there was a package of bologna even the dog wouldn't eat. And a 99 cent package of instant cobbler mix that John did eat.

On Saturday we had a good time at the Twisp farmer's market and in Winthrop at the Trail's End Bookstore. Having lunch in a restaurant, we were sure proud of our well-behaved granddaughter. Or maybe it was the French fries and ketchup?

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."
Dr. Seuss

River poetry

The Skagit River
Newhalem, Washington
October 2011

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

By William Stafford

When we were in Winthrop last weekend, we took Nova down to the banks of the Chewuch River that runs through the back of town. There we saw this plaque where a beautiful poem by William Stafford was "published." Seven of his poems were selected by the forest service after two rangers wrote and asked him to provide words for interpretive signs on public lands. In the summer of 1994, a year after his death, William Stafford's Methow River poems were installed on roadside plaques around the valley. Of course, the river in the poem doesn't belong to any particular place or time. These were Stafford's last poems, and were later published by Confluence Press as the Methow River Poems.

Pondering the Snoqualmie River
Snoqualmie, Washington
August 2011

Click, click, click

That little hairdo I gave Nova stayed in for three minutes, but these photos will last a lifetime. Nice work, John.

Off the grid

We got back to Seattle on Monday afternoon, and the beautiful fall colors in the mountains helped pass the time during the long drive home. The rustic cabin where we always stay in Twisp is short on luxury, but it usually has reliable wireless Internet. Well, not this time. So if you were wondering, it was also a vacation from blogging and email and all those other electronic distractions. We had fun babysitting Nova while Amanda studied, and enjoyed some outdoor family time. More pictures tomorrow. The washing machine is calling...

Skagit River on the North Cascades Highway
(winter chill in the air)

Fall colors in Twisp City Park

A quiet scene at Patterson Lake

Picnic on the lake shore

Amanda and Roger

Nova says hi

She's showing off those new teeth to Nana and Grandpa!

Behind the Cascade curtain

The North Cascades Highway

Millions of years ago two massive tectonic plates collided on the American continent in what's now Washington state. As the mountains formed by that gigantic clash were thrust upwards, all the Democrats who were around at that time rolled down the western slopes to the sea and all the Republicans rolled eastward into the desert. And that's why we have the state we have today.

That's a excerpt from an interesting KUOW public radio program. We're rolling over to the east side of the curtain this weekend, and looking forward to some views like this along the North Cascades Highway:

How it goes...

Some early mornings, I have my coffee and I'm pretty sharp. On other days, I'm dull as dirt. This dark, cold weather sure doesn't help The Muse. A traditional Chinese doctor would say I have "dampness on my Qi." The Qi is the vitality or energy flow through the body.

The symptoms of damp Qi are a feeling of heaviness in the body or head (check.) It comes from worry, overwork, over-thinking problems, lack of exercise, cold food and weather (check.) If your Qi is depleted, a serious "Yang deficiency" can develop, whatever that is (yikes.) Food is medicine in China, and seasonal diet therapy treats the Qi imbalances. How about a steaming bowl of snake soup in the autumn? (No thanks, I'll stick with Starbucks breakfast blend.)

Well, anyway. Our Qi's will be energized this weekend and I'll have something more fun to write about than what we had for dinner. We'll be seeing Nova, Amanda and Tom! Stay tuned for new pictures of our little princess.