Seattle – Page 5 – The Constant Harper

The Dragons of Summer

Summer’s almost here. The ice cream truck has already made a few tentative sweeps of the neighborhood, tootling its signature “Bicycle Built For Two” theme song. Lawn chairs have been wiped free of spiders, and umbrellas lowered to half mast. Any day now the rains will taper off and the glorious Seattle sunshine will triumph over the gray sky for a few blissful months.

Many people choose summer as a time to travel, to leave home and see exotic new lands. But it’s hard to leave Seattle in the summer, when for two straight months it’s a non-stop hiking, biking, sailing, gardening, ball playing, fireworks dazzling, festival dancing in the street kind of place. The sun comes up around four a.m. and the sky stays light until ten. You have to pace yourself so that you don’t burn out by two in the afternoon. Coffee helps. But for me the best strategy to get the most out of the summer marathon is to partake of a shady spot and a good book midway through the long afternoons.

Currently I’m savoring His Majesty’s Dragon, an exceptional fantasy by Naomi Novik, whose interest in Napoleonic history and experience as a computer programmer working on game design is reflected in the smart plotting and clear vision of her writing. The dragon at the heart of her novel is a fully realized character, and the alternate history in which dragons form an integral part of the military force is brilliantly evoked. I’m so in.

It helps, of course, that the day before I started reading the book I went to see How To Train Your Dragon. The bulk of the matinee audience was made up of fidgeting four-year-olds, a few parents, and a handful of college-age dragon enthusiasts. And then there was me – absolutely mesmerized from start to finish. And not just by the dragon, who is as cute as a kitten, if a kitten were the size of a seaplane. What keeps HTTYD in the air is the snarky humor, the sleight of hand plot exposition, and a core of timeless themes – the tension between father and son, the desire to fit in, to stand out, to find love/acceptance, etc. Yeah. I liked it. It’s a kids’ movie and I liked it. So there.

The common denominator in Novik’s dragon series and the animated film is that the dragons conflate expectations. By avoiding the pitfalls of conventional conceptions of dragons as mere one-dimensional fire-breathing monsters, the author and filmmakers succeed in making dragons heroic. And that’s what I’m looking for these days. The world seems all too well supplied with real monsters. It’s hard to get away from them.

This summer, when I want relief, I’ll take dragons.

Folk Life

The power of nature is rooted in its diversity. The same can be said of the human race. Nowhere is this more in evidence than at the annual Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle.

During this four day celebration spanning the Memorial Day weekend Seattle’s always vibrant music community explodes with talent, old and new.

The known performers get their names in the program and for the most part enjoy dry places to perform no matter what Seattle’s capricious weather gods deign to provide. But out on the sprawling clamorous grounds the raw stuff of folklife is free to take root and reach for the light. On a sunny weekend there’s hardly a square foot without some fearless performer playing mostly real good for free, as the lady once wrote.

It takes more than persistent showers to dampen the creative spirit of the folk. At this year’s event the non-stop precipitation hasn’t stopped the feast of fiddling and the flow of soul. There’s something for everyone, whether your tastes run to pirate punk or sweet swing music or free-form drumming or heartfelt crooning.

It’s downright encouraging to see so many diverse peoples cheering one another on, embracing their differences, sharing their umbrellas. Gives you hope for the species.

Music hath charms, of course. Throughout human history various people have tried, without success, to get the whole world to sing the same song. But maybe that’s the wrong approach. If we could just learn to value our remarkable diversity, perhaps we would be one step closer to world harmony.

Can it ever happen? Stay tuned.

Patriot’s Progress

The Mongoose of Tomorrow

They cluster together, eyes bright, chins up, studying the mob staring at them through the glass.

And the meerkats stare back with equal intensity.

It’s Saturday morning at the Woodland Park Zoo and the facility’s newest stars, the meerkats, have already attracted a sizable crowd of jostling, jabbering, photo-shooting humans, eager to experience first-hand the meerkat mystique.

At first glance, the meerkats seem a bit small to have warranted the huge amount of attention the quirky species has been getting ever since the Animal Planet’s documentary series “Meerkat Manor” became a runaway hit. But watch them for a few minutes, even without an anthropomorphistically skewed voice-over track, and you find yourself wondering what’s going on behind those tiny pop-star eyes.

I haven’t watched a single episode of the TV show, but after seeing the little mob (a group of meerkats is called a mob) at the zoo huddled together in the glaring spotlight of their sudden fame, I felt an undeniable desire to protect them from harm. Yet although I understand the feverish desire of humans to save some of the animals whose limited existence is threatened by the unrelenting expansion and consumption of ours, it seems more and more hopeless as we hurtle forward. Species come and go. The planet, in spite of our best efforts to convince it to behave, does what it will — exploding, warming, cooling, sliding, flooding and frying. Humans excel at adapting. We move away from the heat, bundle up against the cold, curse the darkness, etc. But other species don’t seem to be equipped with as many tools. They scurry underground, climb trees, dive deeper in the ocean. Yet they can’t get away from us.

Around the world the argument continues to rage about whether or not humans are responsible for the global warming currently taking place at an unprecedented rate. But no one can argue that humans aren’t completely responsible for hunting many species into near extinction. Elephants, rhinos, tigers, and countless other high profile animals teeter on the brink. We’ve all heard the stories. Our zoos work hard to provide a kind of safety net for the most threatened species. But once it gets to the point where the only safe place for a wild animal is in a zoo, we’ve lost something irreplacable.

The meerkat, for all its current trendiness, is one of the lucky species. Its natural habitat is the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. Not a lot of human pressure on that real estate. No worries about global warming there. As long as we don’t discover oil under the sand, the meerkats have a fighting chance. And it doesn’t hurt that their diet of choice is insects, although they can also get by on scorpions if the larder runs low on cockroaches. Thus, a species with good odds for survival when the going gets rough.

Maybe that’s part of their mysterious charisma. If you look deep into their haunted little eyes you can almost see the future, after humans have gone on to the next phase or whatever.

Maybe we misheard the old saying. The meerkats shall inherit the Earth.

The Big Tease

They’re doing it again.

Up there in Skagit Valley, where the land flattens out for miles and the snow geese arrive in feathered clouds each spring, the tulips are tempting.

I succumbed to the call when I first moved to Seattle four years ago. I thought what could be more thrilling than acres and acres of tulips in bloom?

I can laugh about it now.

Veterans of the Pacific Northwest know all too well that only an idiot would expect to tiptoe through the tulips in early April, when the annual Skagit County Tulip Festival gets underway. The sadder but wiser tulip enthusiast wears full-body Gore-Tex and carries a sturdy full-size umbrella. For, although it is true that when the tulips bloom, the fields light up, it is also true that the sun is under no obligation to make an appearance.

The year I went, the temperatures were hovering in the low forties, wind gusts were in the teens, and a bracing drizzle completed the ensemble. Before I’d managed to shoot my compulsory two dozen snapshots, my nose was red, my lips were blue, and my teeth were chattering. Good times.

I’ll always remember that day for another reason, too. When I got home with my frozen feet and chapped face, I was drinking a restorative cup of cocoa when I opened my email and found a gushing note from my then-publisher, who was halfway through reading my second novel and loving it. She assured me she would be contacting me soon and that I could “expect good news.”

Hah, hah. Yes. I can laugh about it now.

Still, I’m glad I went to the tulip festival, if only because now each year when the forecasters begin the tulip drum roll, I don’t feel the urgency to salute. Been there, survived that. I’d do it again. Probably not this year, though. After we had the warmest January on record it seems we shot our wad for warmth. Since then it’s been back to the good old forty degrees with intermittent showers that we all know and love so well. It’s not so bad as long as you can find a nice warm bookstore or cafe to while away the wet hours. And of course it makes it easier to stay inside at one’s desk and work on that next novel. The one that’s sure to find a loving home somewhere.

The sun will come out eventually. I’m still expecting good news.

Out of Site, Out of Mind

Listen closely. Birds are twittering in the bushes. Teenagers are tweeting in the classrooms. The sounds of spring are everywhere. But that gnashing and grinding that you may hear off in the distance is the result of the inevitable winding up of the overworked engines of protest here in Seattle.

The causes vary. There’s the ever popular tunnel vs viaduct debate, which rages on in spite of numerous studies and referendums. There’s the hotly contested issue of naked baristas in the tiny drive-thru espresso huts. There’s endless serious concern over the health of the salmon, the clams, and the waters of the Puget Sound.

One recent debate seems to have been put to rest, at least temporarily. The life-size statue of Jimi Hendrix which has graced the sidewalk of Broadway Avenue in Capitol Hill for the last thirteen years is going to stay put, rather than be moved to the newly planned Jimi Hendrix Park across town. Personally, while I understand the reluctance of residents of Capitol Hill to lose the statue, I have to say that it seems somehow wrong for Jimi to be stuck out by the curb next to the recycling. I’d like to see the statue on a more elevated site, perhaps near an outdoor stage at the new park. But apparently the majority of residents don’t share that view. And that’s fine. Democracy in action, or inaction. Whatever.

The latest hot issue may generate more high profile debate, however. The proposal to create a new privately operated museum at the Seattle Center dedicated to the work of glass art genius Dale Chihuly has stirred up a pot of contention. And it’s going to be a tough call any way it goes down.

On the one hand are the people who worry that there are already too many high dollar tourist attractions at the Center at the expense of precious open space for Seattle residents. The proposed Chihuly building would take over a portion of what was once the very popular kiddie ride park, the Fun Forest. But on the other hand, the Chihuly project would generate much needed revenue for the Center as a whole, and, occupying an estimated one and a half acres, it would take only a fraction of the Center’s 74 acres.

Still, it would make one more place downtown off-limits to those without disposable income. And that’s hard to support. Not when there are so many other neighborhoods in Seattle with space to spare which could benefit from the presence of a stellar attraction. Is it really such a good idea to concentrate all of the city’s major tourist sites in one small quadrant? Or is that the idea? To contain the cruise ship influx?

I’m a fan of Chihuly’s work, of course. There are already more than a few places to see it around town, but it requires a scavenger hunt approach and a good pair of hiking shoes. To have a formal collection of it in one place makes sense. Should that place be the Seattle Center?

Debaters, start your engines.

Spring Snow

Petals shower the pathways in Ravenna, where spring is ON.

The Good Reign

Tree worshipping Druids would feel right at home in the Hoh Rainforest of Olympics National Park. — Tree worshiping Druids would feel right at home in the Hoh Rainforest of Olympics National Park.

I talked to some relatives back East yesterday. They were chipping ice off the driveway, having icicle measuring contests (the unofficial winner: eight feet long), and trying to keep the kids from snowboarding off the roof.

I did my best not to gloat. I didn’t tell them about the camellias blooming at my doorstep. Or the primroses lighting up gardens all over town. Or the fact that Seattle just went in the record books for the warmest January in more than a hundred years.

I feel that Seattle has earned the respite. The first year we moved here the city was slogging through a stretch of record rain that made national news (forty days-plus without the ark). The next winter a series of windstorms, ice events and floods started me wondering if we’d been sold a bill of goods by the folks who had assured us Seattle’s winters were uniformly mild. The third winter a foot of snow paralyzed the city for more than a week. People were stranded at Sea-Tac for days at Christmas. And of course the city doesn’t keep a fleet of snowplows handy because, I guess, they bought into the same myth of the mild winter.

So this year, I was braced for whatever – earthquake, mudslide, volcano eruption. But it seems this was the payoff year. Gentle temperatures. Daily sunbreaks. Sometimes whole sunny days! It’s been pretty great.

I feel for my friends back east. It’s never fun to be snowed in after the novelty wears off and the electricity and heat go off as well. I know from personal experience that shoveling driveways builds character. But once that character is built, it can be a bit of a trial to have to keep rebuilding it every time the clouds roll in and dump another foot or two of snow.

Here in Seattle the average annual rainfall is 37 inches. That’s less than Virginia’s average of 45 inches, or Florida’s average of 54 inches. What makes Seattle different is that instead of summer thundershowers which dump an inch or two at a time, Seattle gets a steady, drizzling mist over an eight month period from October to May. It takes some getting used to. But considering some of the alternatives, there’s a lot to be said for gentle rain.

In “The Good Rain,” Timothy Egan’s remarkable history of the Pacific Northwest, he credits the unusual climate of this region for shaping its history. In modern times we like to think we are immune to climate. Insulated by air conditioning, heating, and increasingly elaborate water management techniques, we act as if we no longer need to consider the realities of geography. And this recent spate of blizzards has all the climate change skeptics fired up anew, claiming a few days of record snowfall is sufficient to overturn decades of slow and careful scientific data gathered worldwide.

Our human perspective is so limited. Many centuries ago, ancient cultures thought weather gods could be appeased by sacrifices. In our own time, the force of hurricanes, snowstorms and typhoons appears to be escalating. Whether or not global warming is responsible for the planet’s wild mood swings, it looks like we could be in for a rough ride in the coming centuries.

But if I have to choose between a snow shovel and an umbrella, I’ll take the umbrella.

Moon Maid

The neon spell of the siren of 45th Street lights the darkest nights.

Yellow Gunk on My Pancake Heart

The Simpsons celebrates twenty seasons of satirical splendor tomorrow. marge0291

I’ll be tuned in.

Yet when it all started, more than twenty years ago, I had no time for television. I was working thirty hours a week at a newspaper in addition to taking college courses and raising three kids. Spare time was a fantasy.

Even so, The Simpsons seeped into my consciousness, in part because the half hour during which the show aired once a week was one of the only times my three children and their father would sit down and watch something together. The sound of them all laughing would float up the stairwell to the kitchen where I was cooking dinner. And that was good enough for me.

The Simpsons lexicon — Homer’s “d’oh!,” Nelson’s “hah, hah,” Flanders’ “okely dokely”, etc., crept into daily conversation. I knew what they looked like. I had a vague sense of the show’s skewed humor. But seriously, I had no idea how truly cool The Simpsons were until I got hooked on the reruns.

This was long after my kids had left home and gone out into the world to forge their own paths. That’s when the house got quiet. Too quiet. So, one evening, I turned on the tube and after flipping through the channels in vain for a few minutes I settled on The Simpsons. What the hell, I figured. My son had always urged me to give them a try. My daughters assured me I would like them.

How right they were. It didn’t take long for me to identify with Marge, to feel for Lisa, to forgive Bart for all his mistakes, and to love Homer in spite of his many flaws, because his heart is true. I make no mention of Maggie because, let’s face it, she’s an adorable baby; there’s no getting around it.

When I grew up, kids were expected to like cartoons. Saturday mornings were prime time. And the cartoons were lousy. No doubt there are people somewhere who thrilled to the antics of Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny and the Roadrunner. But I never saw the point of repeated gags about violence, greed and petty cruelty. The Simpsons’ “Itchy and Scratchy” segments are hard for me to watch only because they remind me of the inane antics that were provided as appropriate childrens’ fare in the late fifties.

The advent of more sophisticated shows like “Rocky and Bullwinkle” heralded a change in the culture, but there has never been anything like The Simpsons. In its ability to both mirror and mock the world in which we live, to inspire emotional connection without being sappy, and to provide insightful commentary on current issues, The Simpsons stands alone.

Here in Seattle, many locals point to the episode in which Springfield votes to build a monorail to boost its economy as an example of telling cultural criticism.

I’d be hard-pressed to pick a favorite episode. I’m not even sure if I’ve seen them all yet. But I think one of the Top Ten for me would have to be the episode titled “That 90s Show,” in which Homer starts a grunge band called Sadgasm after he thinks he’s lost Marge to a college professor.

I’m sure there will be college courses on The Simpsons in the future, if there aren’t already, and theses may be written on such tormented characters as Comic Book Guy and Moe the Bartender. But if I were still writing those kind of papers I could write a book about Marge. There’s a world of complexity underneath that blue tower of hair. As Homer put it so well in his timeless song “Margarine”: “Country churned girl in my grocery cart/ I paid for her dreams, she taught me to cry.”

Thank you, Matt Groening.