The Year of the Horse

Happy Chinese New Year! Today is the most important of Chinese holidays, celebrated by billions of people across the world.  Festivities traditionally last for 15 days and culminate with the Lantern Festival on February 18, 2014.

The Year of the Horse is a lucky one, of course-- the horse is bright, intelligent, friendly, energetic and a good friend. 

In ancient times, Buddha asked all the animals to meet him on Chinese New Year. Twelve animals came, and Buddha named a year after each one. He announced that the people born in each animal's year would have some of that animal's personality.

Those born in horse years are cheerful, skillful with money, perceptive, witty, talented and good with their hands. Chopin and Rembrandt were born in the year of the horse, so it must be true.

Is your house clean? It's customary for every family to cleanse their home, sweeping away the bad luck and making room for the good fortune in the coming year.

If your January 1 resolutions are getting a bit tired, just think of Chinese New Year as a chance to start afresh.  The holiday is like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve all rolled into one, with gift-giving, decorating, and traditional meals combined with gratitude and reflection on the past year, and wishes for the coming one.

Chinese New Year is an important time for gift-giving. The Costco where I shop near downtown Seattle is an ethnic bazaar of diversity on any day of the week, and Seattle has a large Asian population.  This week I saw big potted chrysanthemums and gift baskets there for the Chinese holiday, all elaborately decorated with the lucky color red.

Breaking news

Edmund Dulac

"But Nicolette escaped one night..."

She's probably running away from the Super Bowl media coverage.

Oh my gosh.  I just made the most wonderful smoothie with fresh pineapple, mango juice, yogurt and frozen banana chunks.  It was worth every calorie. Now I'm headed to the gym to walk it off.  Other than my piggy breakfast, it's a slow news morning.

Have you heard the Seahawks are going to the Super Bowl? Honestly!  We can't admit it, but some of us will be glad when life gets back to normal on Monday.

It is finally raining in Seattle, and snowing in the mountains.  The skiers are happy.

Big Bertha moved forward two feet before stopping again.

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Apple Store learning to make "stunning multimedia slideshows." I think John was impressed.

Slick gadget

I'm paralyzed with indecision when I look up at that smoothie menu at Jamba Juice.  Everyone seems to know what they want, and they don't want to wait behind a senior citizen comparing calories and trying to make up her mind. 

This seems to be happening to me often-- at Subway and McDonald's, for instance. When did fast food lunch menus get so complicated? John sticks to the Value Menu, which is a good strategy if you can find it on the cluttered signs. 

If you have to eat at McDonald's, it isn't the best place to "try something new."  People claim they want choices, but studies show that too many options make us unhappy.  My advice? Don't look at the menu. Go with the small cheeseburger and fries.

Anyway, I like the idea of breakfast smoothies but not enough to drag out the big blender early in the morning, so this hand-held device from Costco is a slick thing!   It pulverizes frozen fruit, yogurt and juice in a few seconds, and a lot cheaper than Jamba Juice.  You just have to be careful what you throw in the cup, or you'll be slurping down a 600 calorie body-builder's breakfast.  

"The eyes of a hundred flowers"

Lawrence-Alma Tadema
Spring, detail 

Wow, you are cold again back East!  And so far we've had a very un-Seattle like winter.  The mornings have been foggy and dry all month.  Rain is finally back in the picture this week, and hopefully some snow for the mountains.

Sometimes the gloom burns off by afternoon, but no weatherman can predict it.  If the sun does come out late in the day, there's noticeably more light at the dinner hour, which is 5 pm in this early rising house.

I've stepped outside a few times and cast my eye around the wreck of a garden. This is truly the time of year when things look the worst. It's hard to put a happy face on it, because the remedy is work.  I look at the sprouting weeds, moldering pots, mossy bricks-- and then I go back inside and have a glass of wine. This season too, shall pass.

"You think I am dead,"
The apple tree said,
"Because I have never a leaf to show-
Because I stoop,
And my branches droop,
And the dull gray mosses over me grow!
But I'm still alive in trunk and shoot;
The buds of next May
I fold away-
But I pity the withered grass at my root."

"You think I am dead,"
The quick grass said,
"Because I have parted with stem and blade!
But under the ground,
I am safe and sound
With the snow's thick blanket over me laid.
I'm all alive, and ready to shoot,
Should the spring of the year
Come dancing here-
But I pity the flower without branch or root."

"You think I am dead,"
A soft voice said,
"Because not a branch or root I own.
I never have died, but close I hide
In a plumy seed that the wind has sown.

Patient I wait through the long winter hours;
You will see me again-
I shall laugh at you then,
Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers."

Edith M. Thomas

Left hand work

Paul Wittgenstein, Austrian pianist

We heard a good program at the symphony yesterday that included Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 4 for the Left Hand (only) played by French pianist Jean Efflam Bavouzet.  Of course Jean has both of his hands, but he kept the right one mostly glued to his lap for 25 minutes while the left worked overtime.  Quite a feat, and it entered my mind-- what did I accomplish with MY left hand last week?  Well, I didn't even pick up my ukulele.

Prokofiev wrote the work for Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right hand in World War I.  Wittgenstein was born into one of the most prominent families in Vienna.  While still a child, his parents invited the most famous musicians in the city, including Brahms, Strauss, and Mahler, to come play for them in their home. Determined to continue his career after the war, he commissioned works from leading composers for left hand.

Wittgenstein was conservative and didn’t like most of the pieces he had commissioned.  He annoyed many composers by telling them to write however they wished,  as long as the resulting piano concerto put him in the spotlight.  He wrote to Prokofiev:  "Thank you for the concerto, but I do not understand a single note in it,  and I will not play it."

Sergei Prokofiev was characteristically snide. “I don’t see any special talent in his left hand,” he wrote. Wittgenstein’s disability may have been a “stroke of good luck” for maybe with both hands he “would not have stood out from a crowd of mediocre pianists." Ouch.

Here's an old video of the Piano Concerto No. 4 in B Flat Major for Left Hand, Op. 53.

 

Catching up

The old hand is slowly improving and I can close my fingers now if I'm very careful.  On Thursday I got carried away with a marathon session on the trackpad, so I took a break from the computer yesterday.

Aperture sucked me in with a fascinating face recognition feature.  Slick as it is, the software doesn't distinguish that well between fathers and sons and mothers and daughters.  (Yes, proof that you really are becoming your parent!)  Sometimes Aperture also confuses flower closeups for baby faces, and then wants to know if that white dahlia is Nova or Maya?  Which is kind of sweet I guess, until it becomes annoying.  To make a long story short, we have over 1400 pictures of Nova and 270 of Maya.  Maya has some catching up to do.

And then the ukulele, which has been collecting dust for a couple of weeks.  My favorite workbook at the moment is Easy Classical Ukulele Solos.  It contains classics such as In the Hall of the Mountain King and the 1812 Overture brilliantly transcribed for the ukulele with fingerpicking tabs.  Someone in this house made a snide comment that these orchestral works were probably not written with the ukulele in mind. And how will I do the "cannon part?" I suppose Mr. Greig and Mr. Tchaikovsky are past caring that their masterpieces are plinked out by a beginner on a ukulele.

Another cold, foggy morning in Seattle! This stretch of strange, dry weather seems endless. But who cares? We'll be inside at the Symphony tomorrow afternoon, where unfortunately there won't be any ukuleles on the stage.  Have a good weekend.

Beaux Arts Village

Beaux Arts Village ferry dock, c. 1910

I read in the Seattle Times this morning that home prices increased to an average of $415,000 in King County, which is a five-year high.  In areas close to downtown like our West Seattle neighborhood, there's been an enormous building boom and it seems like construction sites are springing up everywhere.

This growth is part of a previous mayor's plan to designate West Seattle as an "urban village." The idea is that folks have to live somewhere, and everyone can't have their own single-family dwelling. The flaw in the densely packed "urban village" concept is that people don't walk, bike or take a bus to work like they're supposed to.  They all drive cars and try to get across the same bridge at the same time.

Most of the new buildings in West Seattle are multi-story apartments or condos with depressing retail space leased out on the bottom. They all seem to be cut from the same glass and steel cookie cutter.  Just my opinion.  Some of the funky, small houses that gave the neighborhood its interest and charm are being demolished, and three high-end townhouses selling for $500,000 each are squeezed on the one tiny lot, looming over their neighbors.

The $415,000 average home price is not very meaningful because there is so much variation between neighborhoods in King County. Over in Bellevue for example, areas along Lake Washington such as Beaux Arts Village have the highest median price in the county.

Beaux Arts Village started out as remote artist's colony in 1908. It was an hour's ferry ride from Seattle and there was no electricity or phone service. Water was hauled up from the lake in buckets. Fast forward now to an exclusive residential enclave, a separate town within a city, where a craftsman cottage will set you back a cool million.

I've suddenly become a mini-expert on this area because I just finished a finding aid on a collection of Beaux Arts Village historical photographs.  It was published a few weeks ago (that highlighted link should take you to the document.)  This one had some really interesting research on the artist's colony and its founder, Alfred T. Renfro.  Have I mentioned lately that I love my MOHAI job?

Beaux Arts Village Art Studio, c. 1915

Onward and upward

Apple's Aperture

The Apple version of Photoshop is called Aperture.  As you can see, it has a complicated-looking interface.  But this photo management software isn't intended for folks who just take a few vacation snapshots and selfies on their iPhone.

As old librarians say, Aperture is a "powerful tool" and the product description gushes how you can create "stunning multimedia slideshows" and make "impressive coffee table style books" with your photo collection.  My 11,000 photos are now uploaded and waiting for the miracle transformation. I have an appointment today for an Aperture for Dummies lesson the Apple Store.

John would probably say I have a tendency to overreact when it comes to big changes.  Who doesn't want things to stay the same?  And after 35 years of PC's (not to mention, being an ex-Microsoftie) this switch to Mac was somewhat of a trial.  They don't call them "personal" computers for nothing!

But yesterday at the Museum I opened my light-as-a-feather MacBook Pro and fired up the new version of Microsoft Office for the Mac. Behold. All my documents were right there and I could use the new Word and Excel with no more/less aggravation than before.  My worst fears have not been realized. I like to think that Microsoft made this Office version better-- instead of the program improved simply by virtue of being used on a Mac.  I'll never know.

The best metaphor for this experience is an arranged marriage.  In the beginning, you dislike your new husband and just want to go home. As time goes by, you begin to have grudging respect for him. If he's a nice guy with some strong points, affection starts to creep in.  And if you're lucky? Love.  Like I say, it's a long relationship.

The winter that wasn't

But it don't snow here
It stays pretty green
I'm going to make a lot of money
Then I'm going to quit this crazy scene
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on...

Joni Mitchell

Now I have to take back the bad things I've been saying about the weather.  Yesterday was unexpectedly spring-like with sunny blue skies and not a wisp of fog in Seattle.

The daylight hours are noticeably longer, and the first tulips are showing above the ground.  Here's some beautiful January scenes from a different time and place.

William John Hennessy

Out and About After a Snowfall

Regis Francoise Gignoux

Skaters on a Frozen Pond

Thomas Kirby Van Zandt

Judge Van Aernum in his Sleigh, 1855

John O'Brien Inman

Moonlight Skating in Central Park

Attributed to Winslow Homer

Skaters

William Charles Anthony

Skating in Winter

Edward Moran

Farm in Winter

 

Hendrick Avercamp

Winter Landscape

Go Hawks

The Seahawks are the news of the day. Did you watch the game?  Boy, that was a real nail-biter, but they pulled it off and the party is still going strong this morning.  Even our quiet neighborhood sounded like New Year's Eve after the game.

Seven hours of TV football watching was over my personal limit yesterday, but at least we can look forward to some fresh commercials after a steady diet of the stupefying "A Man and His Truck."  In past years, we've often had a symphony concert the afternoon of Super Bowl Sunday, but I just checked the calendar and that doesn't seem to be the case.  Sorry, Dad-- Go Hawks!

I'm sure the San Francisco fans were happy to leave our City of Gloom behind, in more ways than one.  This picture of Mt Rainier was taken from an Alaska Airline flight.  On Friday, the Paradise Ranger Station 5,000 feet up was experiencing warmer weather than Las Vegas-- almost 70 degrees.

A strong ridge of high pressure has brought amazing warmth to the middle levels of the atmosphere, trapping the cold, dense air at the surface where we've been creeping around in the foggy 30's and 40's. There's no chance of rain or snow for another week, and the air stagnation advisory continues. But nothing can dampen the happy mood in Seattle this morning.

Flashlights and cleaning tools

Our great tunnel boring machine "Big Bertha" has been stranded for six weeks under Pioneer Square, ever since she hit her head on a mysterious obstruction. There was wild and excited speculation in the media.  A glacial  boulder?  A sunken ship?  A pile of pioneer rubbish? Nope. The object blocking the world’s largest tunnel boring machine isn’t an old steamship or locomotive or alien spaceship – it’s an 8-inch-diameter steel pipe, part of well shaft left behind in 2002 to study groundwater movement under downtown Seattle. Oops.

State Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson says the agency “has had concerns” about how contractors have been operating tunnel-boring machine Bertha since July 30, when drilling began. In other words, this is costing a lot of taxpayer money.

Now some unlucky workers will be lowered into the shaft and use flashlights and cleaning tools to get a look around the damaged 57-foot diameter rotary cutter. Pressures around the cutter are double the surface pressure, so 10 temporary wells are being drilled to pump away groundwater first.  As I say-- expensive.

Meanwhile, above ground in Seattle, we might as well be living in a tunnel. I can't remember a winter with so little rain and so much polluted ground fog.  The warm air is just a few thousand feet above our heads.

I took my invalid hand on an excursion to North Bend yesterday-- and oh, it was nice it was to break out of the clouds and see familiar faces.

"Spanky" catching some rays above it all...

Good riddance

Everybody needs a little time away

I heard her say, from each other- 
Even lovers need a holiday, 

Far away from each other...

Chicago, lyrics

Eight days is a long time to keep your right hand dry.  But it's surprising what you can learn to do with your left.  Needs must when the devil drives.

I wasn't in much pain, so the small things really aggravated by the end of the week.  Like not washing my hands when I came home from the grocery store. Stirring pots with one hand.  Not able to hold a brush and blow dry my hair. I decided to treat myself to some salon shampoos and styles but those girls got fancy. I haven't had the top of my head comb-teased since 10th grade! Well, they meant well and just wanted to give me my money's worth.

Anyway, this is all trivial history. The bandage came off this morning, and the stitches came out. Ouch.

My surgeon is one of those who likes to sketch out what he plans to do.  I didn't have a problem with that, but why does he use indelible ink?  I wasn't going to jump up and wash it off before the operation! So I felt a bit tattooed.  And bruised. But everything looks good today. The cysts on the base of my fingers have vanished, and this tendon operation is supposedly a permanent fix for pesky trigger fingers.   Doctor says I will be "aware" of my hand (meaning painful) for about three months but self-therapy should eventually do the trick.  The therapy is simple.  It consists of making your fingers do what is painful three or four times a day.

I have to admit, life felt empty this week without my daily blog habit. Coffee and TV couldn't quite fill the early morning void.  Which I guess is the point of a vacation, to come back refreshed to something you enjoy.

Did you miss me?  What an egotistical thing to say! But after all these years, I hope you did, just a little. The holiday is over, and the bathroom needs a good scrubbing.

Sometimes

My sister said that I'd find recuperation from the hand operation more tolerable than the pain of those frozen trigger fingers.  She was right.  Everything seems to be going well, but I'll be glad when the bandage is off and the stitches come out on Thursday.

I've realized that using the track pad and key board is probably not the best hand therapy right now, so unless there's some earth-shattering Seattle news to share I'll be on a short medical leave from the blogging.  Have a good week...

News of the day

Enough about me!  The buzz in Seattle this morning is about the Seahawk's home playoff game on Saturday afternoon.  The weather looks miserable, but who cares? We'll be tucked up downstairs watching with a bowl of chili.  This Pineapple Express phenomenon always brings heavy rain to the lowlands and strong winds. The good news is there's finally some snow in the mountains.  Then on Sunday, a real treat-- we're going to see Rigoletto, a favorite opera and relaxing way to put this long week behind us.

John is the man of the day.  This January marks his 35th anniversary of starting at Boeing, and he says there's a lasagna lunch planned for his group today to mark the occasion.  I think he deserves much more than a plate of pasta. For one thing, a career of 35 years without a lay-off is almost unheard of at Boeing. (They must really need him :-)

Not only that, I can count on the fingers of one hand the days of sick leave he's taken in all that time. Maybe one for the broken knee, and another for having his wisdom teeth out? Maybe not even that!  (He will certainly correct me on this when he gets home.)  Anyway, hat's off to John, who headed out into the wind and rain once again this morning at 5:30!

Valium's "cousin"

I asked the anesthesiologist what he was giving me yesterday before the operation and he said, "a 'cousin' of Valium, and Demerol."  Well, that did the trick.  A old-fashioned narcotic pain reliever addicts go crazy for coupled with a muscle relaxant.  The 30 minute operation flew by in about 60 seconds. Amnesia is the desired effect of sedation.

The good thing about sedation and local anesthesia is I was cleared to leave about 15 minutes after. Of course a "responsible adult" like John had to sign me out since "judgement and motor skills" are impaired for 24 hours.  I vaguely remember going though the McDonald's drive through, but that's it for the drive home. They tell you not to make any big decisions that day. Deciding on an egg McMuffin was challenging enough.

Today I'm getting by OK with just some Advil.  That's the good news. But things that usually drive me crazy like unmade beds and dished in the sink don't seem to register.  Must be the residual effect of those nice drugs. 

Our Wednesday

I've had my hand surgery planned and postponed (both for cowardly reasons and other things out of my control) for about a year now.  Well, today was finally the day.  I didn't talk about it much ahead of time because I found that some people enjoy sharing their surgical horror stories!  My stress level was high enough-- all of us know how important our hands are, and you know how much I use mine. 

I don't have carpel tunnel syndrome, the scourge of the computer age, but a painful clicking tendon problem known by the jaunty name of "trigger finger."  According to my surgeon, an "easy fix."  To make a long story short, everything went well and here I sit at my computer 8 hours later with a prescription for Vicodin and a bandage on my right hand that cannot get wet for the next week. Kitchen duty for John.

My head is still fuzzy from the happy drugs they gave me this morning, so I'm headed downstairs with a cup of tea for some vacant TV.   Blogging under the influence of narcotics could be embarrassing.  :-) An update tomorrow...

Sugar cones

Yesterday was Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas celebrating the visit of the wise men to the Christ Child.  In the olden days, it was the time to take down and burn the Christmas greens.

"Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and mistletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all,
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas Hall."

Robert Herrick 1591-1674

There is nothing left of Christmas here except for candy and these pretty remnants on the dining room table.  I bought the big pine cones at the hardware store for $2 and those simple things were so naturally beautiful amid all the plastic and tinsel of December.   They come from pinus lambertiana, known as the sugar pine tree, the tallest pine with the longest cones of any conifer. They are second only to Sequoias in the total volume of wood.

Those giant cones weigh down the ends of the branches. The tree is native to the mountains of the Pacific coast of North America, and the tallest ever recorded was "Yosemite Giant," a 269 ft tall tree in Yosemite National Park which died from bark beetle attack in 2007. I might have seen this wonder when I was there in the 1970's, and it makes me sad I can't remember it.   The sugar pine has been badly affected by a fungus called white pine blister rust but conservationists are trying to replant resistant strains. They can live for over a thousand years.

The Native Americans harvested the tiny seeds and ate the sugary sap from cuts on the trunk. The naturalist John Muir called the sugar pine to the "king of conifers" and thought the syrup was preferable to Vermont maple on his flapjacks.

Bundle up

There was a big flock of happy robins foraging in the yard this week, along with a pair of noisy Stellar Jays working out their relationship.  Of course it isn't spring yet, not even close, but compared to the polar vortex in the Midwest, Seattle looks like the Garden of Eden.  We watched Green Bay and San Francisco play on that brown, brick-hard field yesterday, with the thousands of people outside in below zero temperatures.  Some human behaviors defy explanation.

The plants don't stop growing here in the winter, they just take a little catnap in December and January before everything springs into action again. The Northwest is a nice gardening climate, except that work is always looming on the horizon.  There's no lazing around inside for six months daydreaming over blub and seed catalogs.

Our lawns are vibrant green right now (ignore that moss) and will turn brown in the summer (frugal watering.) It's a bit like California, in the way the green and brown seasons are reversed from most parts of the country.  Green rolling hills in the winter and golden brown in the summer. 

Outside my window this clump of Shasta daisies is already poking through the new compost.  Think they like it?  I can still hear the compost blower's ominous parting words:  weeds sure do love a coat fresh compost in the spring.  So far they haven't popped through the top layer,  but that's just a matter of weeks now.

It was a nice sunny weekend, with no snow in the mountains or rain in the lowlands. Not good news for next summer's water supply. The ski areas are still closed and we're already hearing about the "drought."

Stay warm and safe during this strange week.

Blog2Print

I've been writing Feathers and Flowers since 2009, with a grand total of 1,470 (almost) daily posts.  My heartfelt thanks for your kind words of encouragement and appreciation.  Blogging is a lonely pastime.  Some blogs may number their followers in the thousands, but my handful of family and friends means more than a bunch of strangers checking in on our lives.  There's something a little creepy about that, anyway.  Besides, blogs like Feathers and Flowers have become as old-fashioned as email and I'll never have that kind of following.

Who cares? I've thought of trying to update to more "interesting" topics,  but Feathers and Flowers will stay the same.  Like my hairstyle. And if I repeat myself as the years go by, so be it.  Nature is repetition.  

The entire blog archive squats somewhere on Google-- that is, for as long as I add $2.70 a month to Google Wallet for "data storage." And when I'm gone?  Well, in a few generations we'll all be forgotten anyway.  I've always thought that self-publishing was the pinnacle of vanity, but archivists do love their paper, and a company called Blog2Print lets you design and order a book of your blog, including all the posts and pictures.

It isn't perfect, but still kind of fun to see all that work "in print."  And so that's what I've done every six months, for a total of eight hardcover Feathers and Flowers books on the shelf.  Maybe Nova and Maya's children will look at them someday?  As a favored customer, Blog2Print just sent me a 15% off coupon. I'm stuck home with a cold, so that's my computer project for the day.

The path of non-attachment

Nothing stays the same and clinging to the past causes suffering.  Buddhism and other philosophies all teach this lesson in one way or another.  So simple, so hard.  Just let go.  Trust.  Pray.  Practice mindfulness.

We packed up the decorations yesterday and hoisted the big tubs back into the attic.  Putting Christmas away for another year is a day-long job.  The sad Noble fir is laying out in the yard-- it was messy like all cut trees, but didn't explode like a Douglas fir needle bomb. John went back to work and without the Christmas clutter the house seems bigger.  It is suddenly very quiet. I have a cold and my head is foggy.  Now the new year stretches ahead with all its challenges.

I'm slowly getting used to this new laptop, which is just a computer after all. If I click on the "Finder" button, there's all my photographs and documents listed in a comforting "Windows File Manager" sort of way.  Thank you John for the well-done data transfer.  You even brought over my impressive collection of Firefox bookmarks.  Only my iTunes playlists are gone, but it will be sort of fun to make new ones. For now, iTunes Genius can decide what I listen to.  I'm turning my life over to a higher power in Cupertino.  I'm as flexible as a willow tree.  Keep repeating that.

I've resisted the compulsion to use a mouse and sticking with the touch pad, a new challenge for writing and self-editing.  The screen is slightly smaller and the keyboard ergonomics are completely different on a Mac book. This throws off my thought process and I've been sitting here much too long to write a simple post.  I just put a sofa pillow on my chair because my arm was getting numb from resting my wrist on the edge of my desk.  Bad ergonomics!

On a more positive note,  I had a flattering surprise at the Apple store this week when young Genius Katie looked at my meticulously organized 11,000 photographs.  For a librarian, it's just a no-brainer chronological arrangement with files for years and sub-folders for the months, going back 10 years.  Wow, she said.  We never see that kind of photo organization and this is much too good to dump in iPhoto. You need to get Aperture (Apple's version of PhotoShop.)  Add that to the list of new things to buy and learn in 2014.