Sweeping, Hooding, Riding

While I was in Baltimore last month, Emily helped clean a few blocks of Seattle with some other Zipcar members. Swept up cigarette butts and such.

Can you spot her head peeking out in the photo?

Now you can read about it in the Zipcar newsletter. Way to go, Emily!

And in return, she got a few treats, including a shopping bag, a free breakfast, free lunch, a $25 driving credit, and a voucher for symphony tickets. So, you know, not a bad bit of volunteer work...

Got a few more photos of Merrica's graduation. Here's a favorite:


Oh, and how about one more shot of my handsome new bike?


Happy Memorial Day, reader!

Biking and Wining

Finally, more photos!

Fran and Dave joined Emily on a tour of some of the many vineyards out in the Yakima Valley. I was at some conference or other (shh!), so I missed it. Looks nice, though. Lovely weather too.

And tasty wine when they got back, so it worked out all right for me.

On the way, Dave took a look at the Pacific Crest Trail.

Not quite ready for hiking...


Maybe just a short walk.


Grape vines:

Among the wines I sampled (a fraction of what they tried, of course), a highlight was from the Bonair Winery. So if you see it at your local Binny's (?), check it out.

Fun visit all around: had a great dinner at Lola, saw a fun production of Sunday in the Park with George at the 5th Avenue Theater (cool slideshow on their website), and enjoyed some surpisingly nice May weather together.


On an unrelated note, Emily's been rehousing these wax babies lately:

You be the judge: cute or freaky?


Oh, and I got a new bike!


Took it on a nice ride out to Golden Gardens Park:


So far, so good. Here's the look for the morning ride to work:

Way to Go Merrica!

And thanks for recording the video, Gina!


She also got a shot of Chet on his way to get the paper:


Congrats to them both!


(Oh, and stay tuned for Fran & Dave pics, plus new bike pics...)

That Good Old New Frontier

Had a great visit with Fran & Dave, but don't have the photos for you yet, so in the meantime, how about this photo attached to Maureen Dowd's column from last week:

photo by the Times


Also read a nice piece in Newsweek about our Trekkie age...

Hope plus Obama plus Star Trek = yancies like it!

(Oh, and the movie was pretty good too, especially the main actors, who did a great job of capturing the essentials of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Will have to see it at least one more time before making further judgments.)

What Can't be Said

I can't express all the reasons why I love newspapers, but I really appreciate cmd's comment from the other day. It helps remind me of some of what's so great about newspapers and the lives they're part of.


It's hard to put this next thing into words as well:

From thru-you.com, which I read about in the Times Magazine, in Virginia Heffernan's great column, The Medium, which explains that the videos are "built from dozens of fragments of video clips of (mostly amateur) musicians, selected from among the seemingly endless footage of music lessons and private recitals archived on YouTube."

So cool.


Finally, I've heard that Plato discovered some things he couldn't or wouldn't write down. Aristotle refers to "the so-called unwritten teachings" (τὰ λεγόμενα ἄγραφα δόγματα)...

Anyway, it's a little on the mysterious side for my tastes, but SU is hosting a conference this weekend, so I'll probably be busy with that for the next few days.

You probably remember my book review from a couple of years ago, which touched on this subject:

inasmuch as the unwritten views are given pride of place, the Tübingen reading implies that Plato conceives of philosophy as a doctrine rather than a method: as Mann writes, this is a "decidedly un-Socratic" (383) view of philosophy, and I would add that it seems also rather un-Platonic. Mann also highlights the surprising banality of the supposedly central Platonic doctrines: there is a One, and a Dyad. "'Is that all there is?' (Shades of Peggy Lee!)" (385).

Well, I'll try to keep an open mind, reader...

I'd promise to tell you about it afterward, but will that even be possible??

Petals and Wigs

Tried to capture some of the amazing blizzard of petals and blossoms the other day...didn't quite work, but I think it's an accidentally nice little video:

That music in the background? According to the KEXP playlist, it's The Veils, "The House She Lived In."


Saturday was our friend Wendy's birthday party. She wanted everyone to dress as a rock star...

Wendy


Emily (of course) looked great as Lisa Loeb:



I kind of tried (hey, more than you'd expect, right?) to dress like Kanye West:







Oh, and this afternoon we heard a nice piece on newspapers on Vinyl Cafe. Please enjoy: