Too late for travel planning, I discovered that Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet have been touring together as Yazoo (Yaz) this summer. Their New York appearance garnered New York Times coverage and their last performance is in the L.A. area this week with the Psychedelic Furs. The two had not reunited as Yazoo in concert since disbanding in 1983. A four-disc box set with remastered albums and videos was recently released. (bonus video link for geeks: Clarke demonstrating synthesizer programming circa mid-1980s)
archive location

Sunset magazine's August issue features a "One-Block Feast" concept where the staff sourced and prepared a meal entirely from local ingredients. The one-block aspect was stretched to include wine grapes from the Santa Cruz Mountains, olives for oil, seawater for salt, and organic milk but they otherwise grew crops, kept bees, raised chickens, made vinegar, wine and beer. The most interesting parts of the story are revealed online in the team blogs where the seeming perfection illustrated in the glossy pages dissolves into the everyday challenges of fully-occupied employees trying to sustain a second career in a craft. The vinegar team confesses to starving their 'mother.' Team wine finds a stranger passed out next to their outdoor stash of Chardonnay and Syrah, an apparent victim of helping himself to a magnum. And Ophelia, a fowl perhaps too aptly named, has to be taken in for emergency surgery by the chicken wrangers while the beekeepers deal with an ant infestation.
archive location

Friday, July 18, 2008

If you keep cash and jewelry in a fake soup can, be careful when you donate to a canned food drive. A woman in Vancouver, Washington was inadvertently a little too generous with her canned goods but luckily recovered her can safe two months later after volunteers were advised to watch out for it.
archive location

Before any spectacle begins on stage, the audience inside the Metropolitan Opera House are treated to the sight of the chandeliers rising dramatically up to the ceiling. It's an experience cited by some as reason enough alone to attend a performance at the Met. A gift from the Austrian government, the "sputnik" space-age crystal chandeliers are going through their annual summer cleaning, and the 11 that light the lobby are headed back to their Viennese birthplace for refurbishing. Swarovski is sponsoring the effort and donating new crystal. They will be back in time for the start of the Met's 125th-anniversary season in the fall. More of the lights will be re-worked next summer.
archive location

Monday, July 14, 2008

The silence from the annual SR-520 bridge closure this weekend reminded me that it's been one year since different types of quiet pavement were installed as a test on the stretch near where we live. A graph on the WSDOT site shows the results of decibel measurements each month since last summer's paving. The rubberized asphalt and polymer-modified asphalt have met up at the 100 decibel mark, still beating out the new control pavement. But it's a five year test so these numbers don't mean much yet.
archive location

Seventeen years after the devastating Oakland hills fire destroyed 3,000 homes and killed 25 people the San Francisco Chronicle has returned to take stock of the resulting architecture from the rebuilding effort. Metal and stucco were common materials, though there is some wood siding in the mix with gypsum board underneath to meet code. Architects found that different officials interpreted the building rules differently; whether eaves are allowed or certain types of eaves are allowed is one point of conflict. Ceramic and metal roofs provide a striking look to different styles and most homeowners built large houses right to the setback limits.
archive location

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Stay to the end of the WALL-E credits for a journey through art history. Oh, and Peter Gabriel singing.
archive location

Hockey Night in Canada may never sound the same to those who are lamenting the CBC's loss of the theme song that has heralded the puck for forty years. Negotiations with the composer did not pan out for the CBC and rival network CTV has snapped up the rights to the tune for an unpublicized, but rumored million dollars or more. CBC says it stayed frugal for the good of the taxpayers who provide its funding and many of those same taxpayers are fine with the lost deal. The representative for the composer says the CBC could've signed up for the same $500 per broadcast deal they've always had. I suppose with hockey there's always a good fight. CBC is running a contest for a replacement anthem with a prize of $100,000.
archive location

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

I need to catch up on sleep and work so I'm giving myself a break from daily postings. In the meantime, you can ponder a world that continues to supply us with fancy bottled water just for dogs (hey, this one comes in a bowl-shaped bottle).
archive location

Thursday, June 19, 2008

The French Foreign Legion is keeping its veterans occupied and housed by selling wine from the Legion's vineyards.
archive location

Ever see a Tudor-style house float by on a barge? Ever see any kind of house go by on a barge? On Tuesday in tony Hunts Point, WA a 3,360-square-foot house was taken off its foundation and rolled onto a barge headed for British Columbia. The owners who bought the house and its lakefront lot for $9.4 million decided not to demolish the house even though it wasn't to their liking. They signed a contract with Nickel Brothers House Moving who sold the house to a family on Vancouver Island. The house should arrive there on Thursday and it will then be measured for a new foundation.
archive location

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

At the Moses Lake Sand Dunes in Grant County, Washington, the wind thrashed dust around and the rain came and went as NASA scientists field tested equipment designed for the 2020 moon landing. A lunar rover with 12 wheels, purchased locally on the advice of a local farmer, climbed the dunes. A lunar RV that can house astronauts for longer explorations also tried out the challenging terrain. Space suits were also tested, although their test subjects had to contend with the stronger Earth gravity.
archive location

In the early 1960s, private financing enabled a project that put 13 women through the same rigorous testing as the men who became America's first astronauts. Janet Christine Dietrich, who died on June 5th, and her twin sister Marion Dietrich were part of that program. Now known as the Mercury 13, the women were all experienced pilots and most had logged more flight time than their male counterparts. All 13 passed the first set of physical tests and 3 underwent isolation tank and psychological evaluations before the project was abruptly canceled. A hearing before a special Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics had no effect. Despite repeated pleas from female pilots to test women for the program, and even though the Soviets sent a woman into space in 1963, it took NASA until 1978 to accept women into their astronaut candidate program.
archive location

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

There's a lovely set of 16 U.S. stamps out featuring the work of Charles and Ray Eames. Their iconic chairs get the most solo spots, but there is also one of a house of cards. That "house" wasn't built by the Eameses, but by stamp photographer Sally Andersen-Bruce, a resident of Connecticut (yay!). The cards were designed by the couple with all sorts of backs, and Andersen-Bruce put them together for a stamp-suitable photo. Andersen-Bruce has also worked with the stamps' designer Derry Noyes on other projects such as holiday stamps (cookies and Santa ornaments).
archive location

16 eighth graders just graduated from Lake Washington Girls Middle School and their thoughts on why this school meant so much to them illustrate why, for some girls, not having boys around can be such a benefit. "At my old school I was quiet most of the time, and I felt like I was holding all of my real self in. I was waiting to let my true self out at Lake Washington Girls Middle School." "It's a gift that I got to go to this school. I'm much better at sharing my thoughts. I'm always totally myself. I'm not scared of what other people are going to think of me." "Girls at 'L-Dub' are not afraid to express their feelings. No one is there to suppress them." "At Lake Washington Girls Middle School they teach you that it's OK to show who you really are to your friends."
archive location

Monday, June 16, 2008

"Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano" is the subtitle of the book "A Romance on Three Legs", reviewed on Sunday in the N.Y. Times. Gould's perfect piano acquired a perfect tuner, Verne Edquist, who was somewhat forced into his career by the limited choice of vocations for someone with congenital cataracts. Edquist earned Gould's respect by refusing to work on a piano that Edquist recommended instead be taken in for a full service. The piano tuner soon became responsible for keeping Steinway grand No. CD 318 in perfect shape.
archive location

Languages evolve over time, but the 80-100 "sleeping" (endangered) California Indian languages have little hope of surviving the dominance of English. A recent "Breath of Life" conference at UC Berkeley brought together speakers and students who want to preserve Native American languages. Parents want to pass this vanishing culture down to their children, the languages lost starting with the Spanish missionaries. Their tools to keep the words alive are old and new: songs, board games, cartoons, and YouTube.
archive location

Friday, June 13, 2008

You've likely seen it many times elsewhere, but I just can't let anyone miss out on the carefully constructed Fifth Avenue apartment featured in the New York Times. 18 clues cleverly built into the furniture and decorative elements of the home created a trail of puzzles for the inhabitants. The finale led to the poem that had triggered the entire project. The owners had requested it be hidden in a wall somewhere. If you don't have time to read the article, take a look through the photo gallery.
archive location

The annual Copper River Salmon run is heralded in Seattle with the airplane arrival of the first salmon, carried down a red carpet at Sea-Tac by an Alaska Airlines pilot. This year the plane wasn't as full of salmon as expected. Fishing has been hampered by bad weather and lower salmon counts. Tack on the higher transportation costs and the prices are sitting at $25 to $35 per pound. The buying public is dealing with higher food prices and fuel costs in their own day-to-day lives so this coveted Copper River Salmon isn't getting as many takers.
archive location

Thursday, June 12, 2008

The San Francisco Chronicle checks back for an update on Starr King Elementary's Mandarin Immersion program. Only one student has left out of the 25 kindergartners who began two years ago. 13 students were added to the first-grade glass, filling the two first-grade classes to capacity. And there are two full kindergarten classes coming up, with the next year's spots completely full. I think that's a pretty good metric of success even if the kids weren't speaking, reading, and writing amazingly great Mandarin already, which they of course are.
archive location

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

There's an "artisan, small-batch, homemade ice cream rush" going on in the Seattle area. Ice creameries with shops and often farmer's market stalls include Half-Pint Ice Cream, Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream, Whidbey Island Ice Cream Co., Empire Ice Cream, and the very new Poco Carretto gelato cart from Holly Smith (of Cafe Juanita, fresh winner of a James Beard award). Yet to come, Full Tilt Ice Cream and Peaks Frozen Custard. Snoqualmie Gourmet Ice Cream has been around since 1997 and supplies dairy mixes to some of the newcomers. You'll find variations on vanilla everywhere, but most carry their own specialty exotic flavors such as balsamic strawberry, lemon verbena, fennel seed, honeycomb.
archive location

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The Subaru R1e electric car has been under development for a few years now, under partnership with the Tokyo Electric Power Company. Subaru found another power company partner here in the U.S. with the New York Power Authority agreeing to pilot two of the cars on the streets of Manhattan. It's probably too tiny for the U.S. mass market (though our SUV consumption here is likely to go down!), but the two-seater is a micro-car based on the R1 gas version that is sold in Japan. The battery can be quick-charged to 80% capacity in 15 minutes with a special charger, or it can be plugged into the wall and fully charged in 8 hours.
archive location

A couple of guys I know like to harass their (amazing) bartender about not having egg whites on hand to make proper flips. Not being much of a drinker, I didn't know about egg whites and their contribution to the enjoyment of certain cocktails. After the salmonella scare about a decade ago, the traditional raw egg white addition to certain drinks waned in public bars. But the egg has returned, with San Francisco bars reporting that emulsified drinks are back on their menus and no one is asking them to hold the whites.
archive location

Monday, June 09, 2008

In junior high school our small softcover yearbook was carefully edited by the yearbook adviser who also happened to be the typing instructor. She typed up most of the student provided blurbs which resulted in the removal of all mentions of the band Suicidal Tendencies. This was not a critique of the band, whom she had likely never heard of, but of the phrase. I didn't hear any controversy over our high school yearbooks, but there was likely a strict editing process in place for our senior quotes. This year at Lake City High School in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho the adviser may be wishing she had taken a closer look at the yearbook proofs. With a psychedelic-theme, allusions to drug use and sex, the book has upset many students and parents. They also aren't happy about spelling errors, misidentified photos, and excessive photos of yearbook staff members and friends. But as the Principal put it "There's no do-over on it."
archive location

The PBS series "From the Top at Carnegie Hall" is the television offshoot of pianist Christopher O'Riley's "From the Top" NPR program. Young musicians showcase their serious skills in a light-hearted format. The second season is underway and they've put even more emphasis on the peeks behind-the-scenes, interlacing practice sessions and scenes from homelife into the actual performances, something that may horrify straightlaced classical music aficionados. It works well for the hoped for target audience of the next generation of musicians, who are being raised on fast-cut videos and reality television. The episodes are online and the results of these hard-working kids are mesmerizing, plus they've certainly been selected for personality as well.
archive location