Marathon and Portland

We all came to Portland to cheer Cheryl in her fifth marathon. We wandered through the Marathon Registration Center helping her collect sample foods and learning where to watch her run.

And run she did! We found three different spots to wave her blue and gold (UCLA) balloons and to yell her name.

While that was our main purpose in Portland, it was not all we did. The Pearl District was our main area for wandering through its coffee shops, pubs, restaurants, and great Powell Books. Our evening highlight was an underground tour where we learned the horrors that awaited men who were Shanghaied from bars and brothels and taken to the underground holding cells. The kidnaping of men for servitude on ships continued until 1941. As a young boy, the individual who developed the tour learned of the secret passages under Portland and has spent much of his life and career studying the history of the area. His tours, either historical or parapsychological, are most interesting and entertaining.

Chinatown is next to the Pearl District and we delighted in the various aspects of the beautiful Lan Su Chinese Garden. Within its one block space the garden has a dozen different “vistas,” including a Courtyard of Tranquility with views through doorways and windows, a koi pond, art, a waterfall and a tea house.

For those of you who fear we have changed our museum addiction, we did go to one, the Contemporary Craft Museum. This small museum had fascinating temporary displays of cut paper art, bicycles from a design competition, and ceramics. No photos allowed.

Oh and yes, we did enjoy dining. Our best adventure was at a Korean food cart where we got excellent lunches reminiscent of our trip to Seoul several years ago. We ate these while sitting on cement benches next to the library.

We went to Kenny and Zeke’s deli twice for their wonderful soups and sandwiches and celebrated our combined breaking Yom Kippur fast/carbo-loading Cheryl at Basta’s, a delectable Italian restaurant.

Catching Up

We spent this day (Friday evening and Saturday) in synagogue in observance of Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement, the holiest day of observance in Judaism. Our day was spent in Beth Israel Temple in Portland, one of the oldest temples in the west. It is a lovely building of the Greco/Roman style. Following tradition, as we end these days of awe, we wish all friends and family a happy and healthy new year.

Now to backtrack. We spent a fabulous day at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. This was our second time there. We started in the Hot Shop where a quartet of glass blowers were making wine glasses.

A fifth blower explained the process to us.

Unfortunately and as a normal part of the risk of working with glass, the goblet we watched being made fell right before the last process, becoming shards instead of a wine glass. As before when watching the dance of creating with glass, Anna Lee wondered why there is no orchestration accompanying the performance, maybe with an alternate score for when things go wrong.

In the exhibit hall, we followed a guided tour through a collection of mixed works. We were delighted to see installations by Beth Lipman, whose work we had previously seen in DC. Together with a Swedish artist, she built with clear glass a small glen filled with trees, bushes, animals, a stream and mountains in the background, all showing the fragility of our environment. In another gallery were works designed by children for a competition. The winning selections were then built in glass by professional artists. These were delightful. Unfortunately, no photos.

Dale Chihuly, a native son, put Tacoma on the glass blowing map and left his own mark with the Seafoam Pavilion ablaze with color.

He also has work in the former train station now the federal court house.

Seattle

Seattle has added some great new places since we were here way back in 1986. We started our tour at the Koolhaus-designed library. Not surprising for this area, the library is state of the art, though the book delivery system looked like a re-invention of the pneumatic tube of old. The children’s area is inviting with lots of space to read, toys to manipulate and wonderful wall sculptures to admire. Color is key to the interior with the escalator’s bright green and a meditation hall in vivid red.

After a quick taco lunch (yes tacos in the Northwest) we took a tour of the wonderful symphony hall. The noon tour includes a chance to hear the orchestra rehearse. We sat in the back top of the tiers and found the acoustics so excellent that we could hear the conductor conversing with the first violinist. Sadly, we cannot stay to attend a concert in this magnificent facility.

Our next visit was to the Experimental Music Project/Science Fiction Museum founded by Paul Allen, previously of Microsoft. The building is a typical Frank Gehry design with giant wraparound sheets of various colors of metal. Our reviews of the design were mixed.

Anna Lee did enjoy creating her own tree and Jerry had fun being in a CGI movie.

The room with recorded stories from people in music or sci fi fields were interesting. The museum has had three incarnations and is yet to get it right. We found it mostly confusing and underwhelming.

Later a short walk through the sculpture garden provided some fun photo ops. Cheryl found some new friends and enjoyed getting ready for the marathon.

We were joined at dinner by two friends of C and D’s. The dinner at Queen’s City Grill was very good and the conversations great fun. Tomorrow we will be on the road heading down to Portland.

Friends and Family

We are off on the road again, spending a couple of weeks heading north and enjoying friends and family. We started in McMinneville, OR with Anne and Jerry, friends from clear back in the 60s. My Jerry (as we each identify our spouses) dated Anne while he was engaged to me. They were in college together and Anne was active in the social activities in the school. Her Jerry was in the service, and I was in Boulder, CO so, when Anne needed a date, they went to the activities together.

Our friendship has continued and we enjoy getting together at least once a year. This time it was an overnight visit with a chance to see their son and daughter-in-law and meet their new granddaughter. We enjoyed lots of talking and way too much of Anne’s cooking.

It was then on to Seattle, actually the Burien Elks Lodge RV Park. We are meeting Cheryl and Dave here to start a two week trip together.















One of Jerry’s dreams was fulfilled as he finally drove the Alaska Highway. Anna Lee refused to go the whole route, so Jerry had to hitchhike up north.

We climbed many flights of stairs to reach Pike’s Place Public Market. These guys guided our way.

There the four of us joined spectators watching the fish men tossing purchases to customers. After going on a shopping binge for cheeses and vinegars, we enjoyed a fishy lunch at Lowell’s.

Cheryl and Dave went off to meet a friend and we returned to Burien for a 10 k Volksmarch. This is a working class suburb with some surprising homes overlooking Puget Sound. One house with a two-sided view of the sound was for sale, a half million dollar house with a one and a quarter million dollar view (add for the asking price). This was a peek of the view from their park-like garden.