Thursday Recap

Please enjoy this quick look at our results from Thursday.

Not a whole lot of food (turkey, cranberries (from whole ones, cooked with orange zest--mmm), cornbread stuffing, and some awesome giblet gravy), but it was tasty.

Main event




How about you, reader? Any photos or stories you'd like to share?

[Update 20:15 30 November]
Here's a shot from a Montana Thanksgiving:

Eponine, Rhonda, Gina, Merrica, and Mr Dominick about to enjoy their meal in Bigfork



And then after dinner we walked (yes, I was able to move!) down to the Egyptian Theatre to see Milk.

Here's a trailer:

Very well done, and timely (not in a good way, I guess, but still) . . . That Sean Penn is pretty darn good at what he does.

Hearts and Minds

Just a quick Happy Thanksgiving, reader. Hope it's a good one.

We started on our turkey last night:

Turkey heart!

I don't know about you, but that makes me feel better about eating it …


Wish we could share the day with all of you, but at least we'll be able to see many of you next month! Way to go, SU students! Thanks for being so unexpectedly numerous!


Before I sign off, here's another cool thing google does for me:

For free, they gave me a program that tells my phone a) where I am (blue circle), b) how to get home (red pin), and even c) when the bus leaves …
so cool.


Anyway, happy Thursday and happy Thanksgiving!

End of the Season Fun

Made it to the last farmers market of the year. Quite a haul:

If you want a tiny bit more on that, you could try my capitolhillseattle.com post.

All the old favorites were there, like the people with all those amazing peppers and dried beans (sorry I'm blanking on the name!), the Olsen's with their awesome beef, lamb, and potatoes, and the friendly people from Willie Green's Organic Farm, who both remarked on my sunglasses and offer consistently delicious carrots, spinach, squash, and more.

Also got ourselves a turkey (come on by if you're around, there's sure to be plenty of leftovers!) from Stokesberry Sustainable Farms. If you'd like to learn more about them, try this nice story from the Olympian.


Other thing coming to an end soon is the Fall Quarter at SU.
Had the chance to take my students to the Seattle Asian Art Museum. As I said on another blog, we went "for one of their tours, called 'Discovering Buddhist Art: Seeking the Sublime.' It was pretty damn cool. (I think even my hipster freshmen enjoyed it.)

Docent named Kevin did a great job of explaining some of the more interesting pieces (1,000 arms on that Bodhisattva!?), the historical background, and the religious and philosophical significance of some of the great pieces there."


You know who else mentioned that museum recently? That's right, the Times.

Photo: Stuart Isett for The New York Times

Did a whole piece on Seattle in the travel section. Try and see how many places we got to first!


Speaking of the Times, do you find yourself relying more and more on google? Their email, their calendar, maps (hey, isn't blogger owned by google?), and now video chat? So do I, and so does David Carr--only he's able to make talking about it sound way more interesting . . .


All right, reader. Back to work. Have a great Monday!

Good Neighbors, Good Friends, and Great News

Can I just say that I absolutely love the fact that this is what our neighborhood looked like on Saturday?


What are all those people doing marching down the street around the corner from our place? They were part of nationwide protests against California's passage of that lame Proposition 8.

Wow. How many in Seattle? they estimate 6,000. They marched from Volunteer Park (near here--you know, where the conservatory is, and that water tower . . .) to downtown. Were expecting around 500 people. Just wow.

Stranger's got good coverage. King 5 TV station did a nice piece too.

Love this city.


Alas, we were unable to attend. Ran into (is that the right word for bumping into someone online?) a friend from college recently, who I hadn't seen since like '97. So we spent our Saturday catching up with her, and celebrating her brother's recent marriage.

Malie

(No photos of Paleka, her brother. But he brews tasty beer, I assure you.)


What else? Oh, did a small pub crawl with some KU folk. Turns out they're fun to hang with even when there's no sports on TV!

Dave, who put together the Seattle Jayhawk pub crawl



Finally, I finally heard back about that paper on Plato's divided line and cave images:
It will be published in the Journal of the History of Philosophy!!!

Not for nothing, but they told me that their acceptance rate for the year was 5%. Five percent!

(Okay, sorry, I'm just about over myself. Oh, all right, one more time: 5%!)

Some Other Stuff I Believe In

I believe in . . .

1) Mass transit!

Hooray for mass transit!

Recently voters here in Seattle passed a "$22.8 billion transit expansion package, the biggest in several decades," in the words of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Not only that, but they (we!) passed it even though (especially because!) it had *no* new money for roads (unlike last year's failed measure). Yay for mass transit!


Now I wouldn't go so far as to say that those wonderful folks back in Lawrence topped us, but I do have to give them their props. From the Journal-World:
"Lawrence voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a pair of transit sales taxes — one to keep the city’s bus system operating, and another to expand it."

Two transit sales taxes! That's just awesome. Well done, Lawrence!


And I also believe in . . .

2) Um, you know, stuff like equality and fair treatment and simple effing human decency.

So, on a less cheerful note, that stupid Prop 8 in California is still really harshing my gig (?) . . .

Now I'm not a regular viewer, but a couple of my facebook friends put this Keith Olberman video up recently, and I think it does a nice job of saying a few things that probably (unfortunately) need to get said:



And local hero Dan Savage was on Colbert the other day talking about it as well:



Oh,
3) and pie. Mmm.

Cute Kids: MT Edition

Had a couple of nice emails recently featuring some cute Montana kids. Please enjoy.


First off, Eponine had her tonsils out. Now I know that fact doesn't sound especially cute, but check out this pre-op photo:

At the time, Gina assured us that "she has been a champ!" Hope she's feeling better!


And in nearby Helena, Marisa tells us that "Maraya tested for her green belt [karate] last Thursday & did exceptionally well!"



"Her instructor hopes for her class to be black within about two years! Woo Hoo!"

Well done!

(BTW, don't you love how all the faces but one are obscured in that photo?)

Nice job Maraya; way to be a rock star, Eponine!
And thanks for the cute photos, Gina and Marisa!

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Bonus: Cutie [with] Pie

Emily picked up some amazing apples at the farmers market the other day, and baked this awesome pie.

Wish you could have tasted it, reader!

Magen!

What a fun weekend! Beautiful weather, good food, a break from grading, and Magen was in town!



We hit some of the classic neighborhood standbys, like the Volunteer Park Conservatory and Coastal Kitchen.


Not sure exactly what these are, but I know they're pretty:






Also tried out some new stores, like Casita International, where some gifts for some young folks might have been purchased by Magen (shh!), and where Emily found a cute coin purse made from recycled (and Vietnamese?) plastic . . .


Of course we hung out downtown for a while, and checked out the sculpture garden.




Look: the sky cleared up enough to see Rainier! It's there between that sculpture on the right and those buildings on the left . . .



Fun stuff. And if I get ahold of the photos from that camera in Magen's hand (hint hint) I'll let you know, reader . . .

What I Believe In

Get your sticker here!


Among the cutest reactions from the other night:

REM, in Sangiago, Chile


A bit from the Times Op-ed pages:

Bob Herbert, from Saturday:
We still have two wars to deal with and an economic crisis as severe as any in decades. But we should take a moment to recognize the stunning significance of this moment in history. It’s worth a smile, a toast, a sigh, a tear.

America should be proud.

And Nicholas Kristof:
Considering that past, perhaps the most incisive comment on Mr. Obama’s election actually came long ago. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the Hawaii Legislature in 1959, two years before Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu, and declared that the civil rights movement aimed not just to free blacks but “to free the soul of America.”

Mr. King ended his Hawaii speech by quoting a prayer from a preacher who had once been a slave, and it’s an apt description of the idea of America today: “Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain’t what we was.”

And of course Paul Krugman:
If the election of our first African-American president didn’t stir you, if it didn’t leave you teary-eyed and proud of your country, there’s something wrong with you.



It's going to start sounding clichéd soon, but for me, Tuesday was a chance to see this country the way I used to see it. I used to believe that the US was a good--no, a great--place, a place where ideas like equality and justice meant something, and where government derived its power from the consent of all the people. As I grew and read more, that belief began to fade into a hope.

I don't want to suggest that that hope has now been fulfilled, or that we've become somehow perfect overnight. Indeed, results in places like California suggest that much still needs to change. Nevertheless, on Tuesday our great country moved a little closer to becoming the country that would so much like to believe in. It is a night I will never forget, and I thank you all for sharing in it with me.



And we weren't the only ones: across the country, 88% of the country tilted toward the Democrats as compared to 2004. The entire state of Montana, for example, voted more for the Dems (even though the state still went for McCain, the margin was significantly narrower than in '04).

What a thing to see!


Video report? Sure:




[Update 08:33 Saturday 8 November]
What's Marisa's favorite celebratory image look like?

From this selection of Yes We Did merchandise

Brilliant.

Have a great weekend, reader!

Tears of Joy

Just the right words, Marisa.


We saw CNN call it live last night, but I really like this clip (which I didn't see until like 2am) of Jon Stewart making the call:



And where did we watch CNN? Well, the Showbox was full to capacity (!), so we watched at Neumos. Also full to capacity. That's right, we were in a packed rock & roll club watching CNN. What an incredible night!

Anyway, here's a blurry shot of the crowd:



Speaking of crowds, the party went pretty late into the night. I guess some of the Neumos folk marched downtown to join in the celebration near Pike Place. We ate a crazy late dinner and went home to look at the web, but here's a taste of what was going on downtown:



What about our neighborhood? Can't find embed code, but try this clip from King 5.

[Update 10:28]
Here are a couple of videos of Capitol Hill, courtesy of jseattle at capitolhillseattle.com:







Speaking of partying in the streets, how cool is it that downtown Lawrence was almost as wild after the election as after the Championship? Woo!


But as I said, we went home to see what was happening online. Here are some screen-grabs I especially liked:

Click to enlarge. (Will open in a new window.)



And then they called Indiana for Obama! Incredible.


Also celebrating: here's Wilco's page from this morning:

Thanks, Rodrigo, for pointing that one out to me!


All right, one more from the Times:

The words at the end of the night



But my own personal favorite? Hands down, it's the Stranger home page:

President-Elect Barack Obama

Just beautiful.


Thanks, all. More soon, once I dry my eyes and get some sleep.


What a wonderful county we live in, reader!

VOTE

Please vote. Please vote.

I'm an emotional wreck, reader. His grandmother; his candidacy; his vision. I can hardly contain my excitement, enthusiasm, fear, and hope. Hope.

As far as I can tell, I've mentioned this video only once, and that was a while ago. You should watch it one more time, though, even if you've seen it before:


I love you, and I thank you for reading, and I do so hope that if you haven't already done so you will join me in reaching for the best in these United States by voting for Barack Obama.

Weekend Roundup: Cute Kids, Canvassers, Cross-Canal Character, and Colbert

Too much for one post? You be the judge:

Iwanski kids sleeping cute. And notice that little bison there: from our visit to the National Bison Range!


Halloween costumes:




Hey, that cape looks familiar . . .

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Spent part of Saturday at the local Obama headquarters, where they were "inundated" with volunteers.

Cool to see just how much inundating was going on. We saw this room empty and fill three times in the half-hour we spent getting trained/orientated . . .

(Oh yeah, in case you forgot, please vote!)



Waiting to hit the streets


Speaking of, if you noticed the other day my embed of Obama's informercial didn't include the live bit from Florida. Here's the whole thing, cued to that closing moment:

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In the past, I've been accused of following too closely the advice of a certain newspaper. Now the tables have turned at last!

Photo: Michael Hanson for The New York Times

The Times is only a few months behind me in covering some of the fun to be had in Fremont and Ballard. They, like me, mentioned the Chittenden Locks and the fish ladder.


Photo: Michael Hanson for The New York Times


Even that Lenin statue:

Photo: Michael Hanson for The New York Times

Okay, yes, there photos are arguably better than mine. But I did the Lenin statue like a year ago! Scooped!

Great read, though. And I guess now I'll have to check out some of those other places they mentioned . . .

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Just one brief Wilco note: nice interview on Colbert the other day. And catchy new song:



Bonus Sunglasses Update
So we hit the farmers market today (yay for winter squash season!).
Anyway, I thought that some of you might enjoy hearing that one of the women selling produce there now recognizes Emily and I, all because of those sunglasses.

"Hey, it's red sunglasses guy": that's more or less a direct quote. And, yeah, it more or less made my morning.


Have a great week!
Please vote!