I was just warming up with the lichen post below... here we drop the photosynthetical element and are left with straight fungus, of the shitake variety, one of my favorites. Goodness from the garden. We feasted on these all week.
I couldn't resist hauling a log (alder) in for an MP photo shoot...
and from the archives: Getting a head-start in fungal culinary appreciation,
Like a lot of mushroom enthusiasts, my entry came by way of enthusiasm for the entheogenic variety. Paul Stamets, the preeminent authority on matters fungal (just down the road in Oly; see FungiPerfecti), has some great stories about his experimental forays. But beyond the entheogens,
I met his brother, John, a renown Seattle photographer, about a year ago at SAM. He told me how he helped stoke the initial enthusiasm by inviting his brother out to Seattle and introducing him to cyanescens. These days it's not something I'm too interested ingesting, but the thrill of discovery remains—even when you're not looking for them. Just the other day we were out with the kids and stumbled across a patch big enough to waste a small army (in a good way( :), right in the middle of town. It's funny that way, because I remember looking so hard for them back in the day... and not finding any. And now, only marginally interested, they so
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Loving the Rain
Saturday, November 10, 2007
gone trick-or-treating
GDT's Halloweeen Headquarters
A couple of halloween and post halloween photos. CP, now three, totally remembers last year. Especially that one house with the really spooky sounds and body parts spilling from a tipped over wheelbarrow and strewn across the yard as a ghoulish man dragging an axe lurches illuminated by a strobe light... sending the kids running and crying I want to go home! I want to go home! Now!! effectively putting a spectacular end, amidst consoling explanations, to last years trick or treating. We ran into Joe this year before we got there and he said, "yeah, they toned it down this year—the demonic element is gone." Which was pretty much a perfect description and true enough—no tears this year, just full sized Butterfingers.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Like'n Lichen, take three
Lichens are so beautiful. Even beyond the flower realm of eye candy, they're conceptually satisfying too. Two kingdoms, plant and fungus, converge to form one symbiotic unit, lichen.
Algae, representing the plant kingdom, brings with it the ability to harness the sun via photosynthesis. Fungus brings the ability to harness the earth via decomposition. Functioning somewhat like a corporate merger (the verdict is still out as to the consensuality of the union...) the end effect is beneficial, expanding the range and existence of both partners. Lichens also have the fairly unique ability to fix nitrogen from the air and therefore function as good monitors of air quality.
why take three? because that's how many times I posted to arrive at Bloggers (undocumented) maximum allowed photo height...
The first posting of this photo (that I took of a cascadian lichen) was 640 x 1720 pixels. Despite the requisite html editing (which you need to do if you would like it larger than the standard Blogger automated 400 px Width), the first posting got truncated to a 595 px W. I got it to post the full 640 px W by cropping the html "H" value to 1600 px, which kinda makes sense in a 4x4 sort of way...
Also - a note on the template -
As mentioned, Bloggers automated settings are limited to posting photos at a 400 px max W. I changed my template ("main-wrapper" CSS settings) to accommodate a 640 px photo. Since this change effects other layout elements, a few other additional adjustments needed to be made as well to retain the layout aesthetic.
Changing the template requires modifying the CSS. Even if you don't know CSS this can be fairly easily done by posting something, and then viewing the source file from the browser (View/Source). That way you can see what code is effecting which element, and can work your way back to the template from there. Once you change the width, all the other elements affected by it - header, rules, side bar, etc. - need to be adjusted to accommodate the new layout as well. I just cut and paste the whole template (make sure you enable widgets), into Dreamweaver, or your html editor of choice, and use the search/find and replace function. That way you can keep track of things and have a back up copy as well.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Happy Halloween!
After involved negotiations and lengthy deliberations, we finally arrived at a win-win, (or happy-happy) decision: Princess by day, Frog at night. ( :
As for me I'm going as a pirate so I can say "Whhhaaaaat?! I'm a pirate" when I go around the neighborhood stealing kids candy...
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Fall in Sixty-Six Seconds
As much as the leaves and the rain falling, it's the salmon spawning that punctuate this time of year around here.
This footage is from last week, from where the Tolt and Snoqualmie rivers converge, and from the pumpkin patch. Music is from Uncle Dave Macon's "way Down the Old Plank Road" off Harry Smith's classic American Folk Music compilation.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Marsupilian Concoctions
The show must have been pretty good because the other day while driving around she suddenly said, lets go to the museum.
We didn't go, but we went last week, on a drizzly Sunday, a perfect day to visit the Frye. It's a good show, droll, not too deep - maybe it was the special fx dept look, maybe not - either way, despite the mutational fleshiness, it seemed there was always something to make one smile. The artist puts up a solid veneer, but she also let's it crack, which is good. Time and again a monkey peaks out from behind folds of morphological skin, and smiles. There's reference to possums on the wall plaques, but to me it had more of a monkey feel. The videos were definitely a draw for my three year old and in retrospect, felt like the final destination. They made the sculptures feel more like props waiting to be animated. Not to say they weren't contributing to the animation - - watching people react was almost as much of the show as the show...
It was fun, there were more kids than usual, definitely a family pleaser, and definitely beyond disney.
I love the Frye. Even before the stellar curation of the last few years, I loved going, it's such a nice building. Low key, elegant, manageable, a soothing space. And now, some of the best shows in town. I went to the recent Dresden show at least three times. I've never spent so much time looking at a painting as I did Matthias Weischer's "Tuch". That one just really did it for me. The spatial and referential shifts were phenomenal, as was the handling of the paint - it totally succeeded as a painting. There is no way you could ever get at the experience of that painting by looking at a reproduction, it was all in the painting. And of course in me... or whoever... it always takes that doesn't it? The holy trinity of any artistic experience - artist:piece:viewer.
Monday, September 24, 2007
dada, "What's a Church?"
What, why, and how come, are the questions of the day that give entry into the world. A few times now we've encountered churches - there's that cute little onion domed greek orthodox church on capitol hill for example, - so that I've heard the question "What's a church - Was ist eine Kirche?" more than once. It's hard to explain god to a 3 year old, much less the structures of organized religion, so I've always told her I would take her someday. That day was yesterday.
Actually, we've tried on a few other occasions, but the churches were always locked. In Europe, this would be unheard of, where accessibility to god's sanctuary is 24/7.
Religion has always fascinated me - how can it not with its elaborate rituals and attempts to address the fundamental existential questions of humanity - but at the same time, I could never choose a religion out of the simple fact that each one implicitly states that they are the way, which automatically sets up opposition, and contributes to the strife and devisiveness of the world. The world is littered enough with religious wars. I'd prefer not to contribute, but would rather just practice what they all preach, peace.
I don't go to church very often, but I like the idea of it, especially in a St. Francis sort of way, nature being by far my preferred cathedral. The wilder the better, so as to invite as much of gods creation as possible. Today though, that was more than a tricycle ride away, not to mention a bit beyond our immediate mission, which was to go to a church built of walls. We ended up going to St. Peters, the closest church within tricyling distance. The congregation, as it turns out, is predominantly philipino-american, very much a Beacon Hill church, though when the pastor launched into his sermon, I wasn't so sure I was in a church...
He talked of the air we breath, pollution, the melting ice caps, the degradation of the waters of the puget sound and the duwamish, and how we, the "civilised" people, who took the land from the indians, are now raping that land, our land. Those were his words. I was stunned. It was beautiful to hear the ugly truth, because we so rarely do - not from our leaders, not in our schools, and only rarely in our daily business-as-usual lives. And not least because we're so busy being civilised... and here was this message coming from an institution that had participated in the "civilising" of the indians. He went on to talk of the dismal state of health care and how not voting, in our country, was simply irresponsible. When he was done with his sermon I had an impulse to start clapping, but this was a church, so the pastor solemnly sat down, and after a few more moments of silence everybody got up and sang a hymn. I liked the part where everybody turns around and greets those they're sitting next to. I wasn't sure what was going to happen after the service was over. I was kind of hoping there'd be a gathering. An opportunity to meet and talk. But mostly everybody just filed out and into their cars. Or in our case, onto a tricycle.
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