From Picasso to Planes to Rocks

This will be my last travelogue written about western Washington since we have less than 20 days before we leave on a meandering, leisurely drive down the northwestern coast on our way to our next destination: Arizona. We were so fortunate to be here when the Seattle Museum of Art was hosting a major exhibit from the Picasso Museum in Paris. Picasso was such a successful artist at such a young age, and he was also so prolific that his "estate" is actually a museum which is a collection of not only his own work that he kept, but also the work of other artists he admired and BOUGHT during his lifetime. His museum holds 50,000 pieces of art. It's being renovated, and 150 pieces of Picasso's artwork is being exhibited in limited locales for the next couple of years. That's the exhibit we got to see.

Picasso lived to be 91 years old, dying in the early 1970's. He worked until a few months prior to his death. His life was colorful and spanned several great art movements, some of which he started. Most people remember him for his cubism - pictures made out of planes and angles. In fact, the Fort Worth Modern owns one of the pictures from this period. What most people don't realize is the cubism period, a movement he invented with George Braque, was a very small sliver of his career. While most artists with any longevity don't stray very far from what seized their imagination when they were forming their artistic vision, Picasso was just the opposite - constantly changing his style and approach. One of the amusing aspects of the exhibit was the interpretation that every time he changed the love of his life (and he became entralled with several women over the years), the new relationship changed his art.

The exhibit was an appealing combination of great pieces of art together with quotes from Picasso written on the walls and audio commentary that helped me understand the flow of his work. One of my favorite quotes was: "It took me 4 years to learn to paint like Rembrandt, and a lifetime to learn to paint like a child." The exhibit was breathtaking, and I was exhausted by the end of it. Picasso was an overwhelming presence on whatever stage he chose to leap onto - and I could see why he was able to sustain his place in the cutthroat world of art. To be successful in your own lifetime, it takes more than luck, more than talent - it takes a supreme egotism. That quality was still so obvious and, he's been DEAD for 40 years. I can't imagine how much more magnetic he must have been alive.

We perused the rest of the museum casually until I came across this piece which stopped me in my tracks. This is by a Korean artist (Do Hu Suh) who had 40,000 dog tags created and stamped with nonsensical words and numbers. Then he created this piece of art from those dog tags. Isn't it magnificent? It's about 7 feet tall and the expanse on the floor is about 20 feet across in diameter. I thought this piece was amazing on so many levels. It was astonishing and at the same time thought provoking.

Seattle, or should I say Everett and Renton, is the hub of airplane manufacture since Boeing has been located here since the early 1930's. About that time the US government first contracted to fly the mail around the country instead of transporting it by train. Wilhelm Boeing was one of the first pilots to get a mail contract and that business was the foundation of Boeing. It quickly evolved into building passenger airplanes. (One interesting fact: Boeing was so convinced that people wanted to fly instead of take the train that he always insisted there be space for a few passengers on his mail planes. Those early passengers usually had to sit in what we would consider today the cargo hold on lumpy mail bags. He was a visionary, though, considering we fly today almost at the drop of a hat.

Today Boeing offers a factory tour through the largest building I've ever been in. This building is where they actually build planes. The guide told us that you could take Disneyland (the amusement park) plus twelve acres of parking and it would easily fit inside this building where planes are built. The doors are the size of football fields. They building was approximately 11 stories tall. I mean impressive. They use three wheeled bikes to ferry parts and messages around the building. They work 24/7 and the plant is considered to be its own town - with police and fire departments, dry cleaners, grocery stores, and other amenities. They have their own airport since they fly in parts needed for the manufacture of the airplanes. The tour guide joked that it wasn't uncommon to see a two seater Cessna getting ready to take off with a huge 787 jumbo jet behind it waiting for its takeoff. There are numerous restaurants inside the manufacturing facility, some of which we could see on the edges of the assembly floor. There are doctors, nurses and even a small hospital. 30,000 people work at the Everett plant with an equal number working at the Renton plant - thus Boeing employs over 50,000 people in this area with a plant on both the northern and southern ends of the Seattle suburbs.

It was hypnotic to watch airplanes being built. They have different styles of assembly lines depending on what type plane is being built. (Stationary vs. moving) They have just designed a new plane - the 787 which is built with composite material. The new material makes it lighter but tougher, and the new plane has a redesigned engine which is so quiet that we watched a new 787 coming in for a landing going right over us, and you could barely hear the engine. It's also very fuel efficient. The wing has also been redesigned and it swoops up at the tip. It gives the impression that this plane just loves to fly.

I like airplanes, and they are an intregal partoof the history of 20th century United States. They did a nice job with their museum. Here's a picture of some of the hanging planes in the museum. They were just rabid about NO CELL PHONES or CAMERAS on the tour, so the museum was the only place you could take pictures. It's easy to see why - on the tour you literally stand above all assembly action, and it would be easy to photograph. We didn't feel like a visit to this part of the country would be complete if we didn't tour Boeing, and it was worth the trip.

We've discovered that November in western Washington is pretty sleepy. It feels like everyone goes into slow motion and almost hibernation. All the summer activities are definitely shut down. I noticed that when the first snows began falling on the mountains, everybody and everything just halted. There was not only a definite shift in the weather into winter, but also the people changed. We also saw the last of the dahlias this week - no more weekly fresh flowers in the house. My last bouquet has about 2 days left on it. I'm going to miss those.

We did attend a Rock and Gem Show in Sedro-Woolley last Saturday. Rocks are big here. Lots of people collect them since there are some interesting ones - amethyst geodes, embedded fossils, and a huge variety of speciality rocks. One of the things I've noticed in the small towns I've been exposed to is that their local clubs not only use their common interest to socialize, but they also use their clubs and societies to support their communities. The show we went to had a purpose: They raise money for college scholarships. The Sedro-Woolley Rock and Gem Society is giving two college scholarships this year for kids who want to study geology. They had a great turn-out especially when you consider the town has a population of about 2000 people.

My last pictures are of the holly TREE that's across from the Burlington Library. I was amazed the other day when we walked over and I passed this tree. The picture on the right is the entire tree and the picture on the left is a close up of the leaves and berries. It's gigantic, and in perfect tune with the upcoming Christmas season. Isn't this tree beautiful?