Recalling one of Inkstain’s two mottos*, I’m experimenting here with fire maps. This is an attempt at the perimeter/heat map for the Thompson Ridge fire in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, as of last night’s IR overflight, GIS data courtesy National Interagency Fire Center. The “view larger map” link allows you to do what …
Boarding the Victoria-Port Angeles ferry this morning, a gang of scooters: They got to get on the ferry first.
Three of the five restaurants in which we have eaten during our brief visit have had hockey on the television. This includes breakfast this morning at Denny’s. The Kwik-E-Mart where we stopped to procure snacks had Hershey’s chocolate Stanley Cups for sale. Also, hockey on the television. The tendrils of empire extended to the park …
Continue reading ‘Observations on a brief visit to Canada’ »
Our waitress at dinner tonight, on finding that Lissa and I are from Albuquerque, asked what brought us to Seattle. “The water,” Lissa said. “We’ve got lots,” the waitress said, pointing with a smile out the window to Elliott Bay. “Happy to share.” Seattle wraps around Elliott Bay, both geographically and historically. I guess that …
Above is Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. Below, the Drinkwell Original Pet Fountain. Homage?
We’ve been doing this all wrong. Growing up in LA with a May 5 birthday, I was steeped from the beginning in the whole “Cinco de Mayo” thing, the “Mexican Independence Day” that’s not. It had yet to turn into the beer marketing event that it is today. I realize now that the community I …
Typo found in my notes: “irritable” where I meant to type “irrigable“. Looking at century-old estimates of possible agricultural land in the desert southwest. Notable mistake.
In early twentieth century America, there were playground activists: Playground activists in cities across the nation, drawing from prevailing theories in psychology and sociology, championed organized play as the path toward stronger bodies and higher morals. That’s from Matthew Klingle’s fascinating Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle (The Lamar Series in Western History).
The reaction at the office today to the death of newspaperman Roger Ebert was striking. I cannot think of another writer of American English with the same broad, beloved appeal. One friend, a younger-generation journalist who’s from Chicago, sent around a collection of particularly delicious fragments from Ebert movie reviews, and I was struck by …
Here’s a great reminder that technology properly understood is not just the gizmo, it’s the human-gizmo interaction. The old people apartments where Mom lives some time ago added big-screen TV’s on the wall between the elevators on every floor. The idea was to use them as a messaging system, giving residents up-to-date information on stuff. …