Good SAM

I'm not sure I can quite capture how much fun we had at the Seattle Art Museum's sculpture garden at Olympic Park. The space itself is amazing. The landscaping is a work of art in itself. I don't just mean that the grass is green and the End of Spring wildflowers are charming (though they are). I mean that the pathways and the railings are designed to move you among the sculptures in a way that enhances both your visit and the artwork. Even something as simple as a concrete wall has just the right angles to create a graceful lines. You can almost feel the artist's hand sketching them - and you - into place.

Several of the large installations - particularly "Seattle Cloud Cover" and "Wake" - make the viewer part of the art. As you walk through "Seattle Cloud Cover," light is refracted through colored glass, creating patterns on the gravel and on your body. The whole sculpture is about 200 feet long and becomes a different work with every step. "Wake" is a massive collection of iron ... thingies. They rise up out of the sand like ships' hulls or shark fins. The installation has wildly different looks as you enter, exit, and move among the monoliths. As you speak, your voice becomes part of the art. As the sun climbs and falls, the shadows change the character of the work. It's odd to describe art as thrilling, but "Wake" really got my blood flowing. And don't forget "Capula XVI" and "Capula XVII" - two swinging structures like wicker birdcages, large enough to fit wife and child, perhaps, or four rambunctious children.

AND! To top it off, we happened to visit on a day when volunteers from Rare Care, an organization dedicated to identifying rare plants, had set up half a dozen or so tables with very interesting and well crafted activities. Wrigley donned butterfly wings and pollinated plants, drew a picture of a plant by sense of touch alone, pressed a dozen flowers, examined twenty types of moss with a magnifying glass, and peeked at plants through a microscope. We simply didn't have the energy to participate in all the fun stuff.

On our way out, we passed a collection of photos by Glenn Rudolph. He composed a photo essay about Olympic Park back in '86. The museum invited him to create another collection to chronicle the transformation of the park from a "feral" land to a sculpture garden. The most moving piece was a photograph of a young man who had been living in the park on the day they put up the chain link fence to begin renovation. It's a moving portrait of a homeless man being evicted from his un-home, lovingly crafted by the artist, and bravely published by the institution responsible for his eviction.

Quite a remarkable place; quite a remarkable day.

One More Thing ...

29. Oh, yeah. I should probably tell her to go visit the blog.

Still More Things

22. Outside my window I can see exactly 18 brand new garbage trucks. I believe number 19 is just out of my view.
23. My favorite garbage truck is the one with the American Flag painted on its side. Where’s a constitutional amendment when you need one?
24. Outside my window, I can see seven brand new dumpsters. No dumpsters, to my knowledge, lurk just out of sight.
25. What are the odds that a conference on trash collection and recycling would coincide with a conference on AP? Feel free to draw any analogies you’d like. I’m too tired to draw analogies.
26. I got wined and dined tonight by a textbook publishing company. They bought me a little fruit, some sliced bell peppers, half a dozen (or more) skewers of chicken sate, a dozen coconut fried shrimp, a handful (pretty much literally) of egg rolls, four cocktails, and two cups of coffee. All that, and I won’t even mention their name on our blog. Man, I’m a cheapskate.
27. In class today, while reading a paper that scored quite well, a student accidentally changed reckless into wreckless. I think wreckless is my new favorite word, replacing the current champion, “crotchital region.”
28. I miss my wife very much. I should probably tell her that.

10 More Things I Ought to Tell Christie

12. I can’t forget to mention how much I love train travel. I spent a little more than three and a half hours reading a book and being rocked like a baby. When I retire, I’m gonna get a rail pass and spend the rest of my life taking the train from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere.
13. ESPN Classic is showing reruns of American Gladiator. Oh, pitter patter. My heart flutters with the giddy early days of our romance.
14. I can’t wait Reality TV Classic starts showing reruns of Blind Date so I can relive the giddy early days of Wrig’s infancy.
15. TV, um, sucks pretty hard, by the way.
16. I am madly in love with the shower in my hotel room. I’m pretty sure I could use it to pressure wash the back deck. Do you think they would notice if I tried to sneak out with it?
17. I rode to and from my conference in a school bus today. I arrived sans spitwads in my hair. Good deal.
18. ESPN Classic is showing reruns of American Gladiator. Constantly. Much less pitter patter as we move into hour 13 of the American Gladiator marathon.
19. Safeco Field is a beautiful place to see a baseball game.
20. I can’t think of a better way to start a baseball game than a bases loaded walk. Oh, wait! Two bases loaded walks.
21. The ninth inning was pretty amazing. I hear JJ Putz struck out the side, including pinch hitter Manny Ramirez; I wouldn’t know for sure, though, I had my eyes closed the whole time. M’s win! M’s win!

10 Things I Need to Remember to Tell Christie About My Conference in Bellevue

1. While standing in line to get my boarding pass, the woman in front of me turns to me and says, “I know this is really dumb, but …” I hear this all the time because, apparently, I have a very common face. This conversation usually ends with me telling the (true) story of a girl I knew in college who had a picture of me at her family reunion in Tennessee; of course, it really isn’t a picture of me, just one of my many doppelgangers. However, the woman at the train station followed “I know this is really dumb …” with “…but do you teach high school in Oregon City?” It turns out that her daughter was one of my students in my first year at OC. Her family was headed to Chicago to see her (my former student, mind you) perform at scene from a play she wrote at the Steppenwolf Theatre, which is a damn fine theatre company.
2. After I settled into my seat on the train, the people across the aisle from me look at me and say, “I know this sounds really dumb, but …” It turns out that they are the parents of a student I’ve had for the last four years at OC. He just graduated a couple of weeks ago. It’s a funny little world, isn’t it?
3. Mt. Ranier is nice, but Mt. Hood could totally kick its ass in a fight.
4. I am staying in a hotel with no free breakfast and no free wifi.
5. I am staying in a hotel where I can’t find the Cubs or the Mariners on TV.
6. I am staying in a hotel that doesn’t have Comedy Central.
7. I am staying in a hotel where I can plug my iPod into the clock radio (very cool!) but I cannot get the M’s on the local radio station (very uncool!)
8. Recap: I am staying in a hotel with fewer amenities than my house. Does anybody know the score of the M’s game?
9. Free wifi at Tully’s costs $4 (I gotta get the coffee of the day tomorrow; a week of iced mochas is going to bankrupt me).
10. A double decker taco costs $1.29 PLUS (brace yourselves, fragile Oregon readers …) $.12 in tax. I spent $2.82 on a couple of $.99 tacos. I’m totally homesick.
11. I just noticed that the keyboard of my laptop does not have a key for the cent sign. Check yours. Do you have one? What happened to the cent sign? Are you suggested that modern computer keyboards have no cents?

Go By Train

Christie has become a major sushi addict. I won't go near the raw fish, but I can always find a thing or two to fill my belly at most sushi places. Our favorite place by far is Sushi Takahashi because a) it's cheap, and b) the food is delivered by a little train that circles the restaurant. It's fun to see what's comin' round the mountain, as it were.

Last night, the Sushi Train came with an added bonus. One of the other customers was passing notes on the train. Some notes gave commands ("Clap your hands" or "Say Buttery Scotch Hands Out Loud" for example). Other notes asked questions. I couldn't help myself, so I contributed a note or two, too. Part of the fun was trying to figure out who was starting the notes. It was a great source of mystery and amusement.

On our way out the door, I dropped a "Thank You" note on the train. Who knew that dinner and a train could be even better than dinner and a movie?

Mugshot

Busted for public nose picking, pick pocketing of precious teacher appreciation week pen, defying the laws of gravity in door jambs and trees, public nudity, and being smarter than her dad.

Just What I Wanted for Father's Day...

... competition in the poetry biz!

Wrig recited this poem for me at dinner tonight:

"The Poem of the Peas"
by Wrigley Kline

In a bunch of peas
there is a poem.
It wants to be written
but no one can figure it out.

Debut

Ed forgot to mention that he was there to witness his own daughter's acting debut. Wrigley and Ed studied her lines every night for a week and a half for Wrigley's witch role in Alice in Idaho. You'd better believe she knew each and every one of them! Wrigley was thrilled to be acting on a real stage. The whole thing was very fun and funny.

Next Circle, Please

One of my favorite things about fatherhood has been the random glimpses into the wide variety of possibilites that eternal damnation might hold. For example, I once thought hell would hold nothing but an infinity of teething infants. And for a while there, I was certain hell would be a small room packed with three year-olds.

Ah, but today! Today I was invited to a two-hour performance of theater by children younger than 11. Two. Hours. Children. Oh, lordy.

The children were adorable. The director was a saint. But when they decided to take an EXTRA five minute intermission to get the smoke machine up and running, I felt fairly certain I had stumbled into a lost chapter of Dante's Inferno.

Fatherhood? Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Hello Blogosphere, Remember Me? (This post goes to eleven)

10 things that made me happy this week:

1) Seeing the first clematis blossom of the summer.
2) Watching Wrig make aphid soup (yes, that said aphid soup. She liked boiled aphids so much she made her own soup with cardamom, garam masala, and cumin. Oh yeah, and aphids. Smelled great, but she couldn't get me to taste it).
3) Freewriting with my creative writing class (down to eight kids now that the seniors are gone!).
4) It's ice coffee season! Well, it was earlier in the week anyways.
5) Freeing butterflies with W&C in the backyard.
6) Freeing butterflies with students and colleagues at the OCHS Memorial Garden Opening Ceremony.
7) Listening to my class discuss Arthur Kopit's play Indians. They sure sound smart. They must have a great teacher (see #9, below).
8) Seeing an original scene written by a graduating senior performed at the Drama 4's Final Curtain Call. Saying farewell to some much loved seniors.
9) Reading reflections from my Creative Writing class about what a great teacher I am.
10) Staying up too late playing clay-marble sudoku with beautiful Christie.

And, at no extra charge, 11) Having enough time and energy to sit down and blog.