It's Certainly NOT Texas

As our time up here in the 'Great Northwest' - yes, that's what they call it, dwindles, I wanted to write some observations about Western Washington. As the country becomes more and more homogenized, I've been tickled to find that while a Target up here is just like a Target everywhere else, there are some regional differences that stick up and out and massage my funny bone as well as my appreciation for this culture.


First, let's talk Mount Baker. Talking about Mount Baker is the equivalent of talking about the weather in Texas. When we first arrived, people would invariably say: "Have you seen Mount Baker?" I was so tempted to say, Well, yes, I do take my eyes off the ground occasionally." These people have a justifiable if maddening obsession with 'their mountain'. It is very beautiful, and it naturally draws your eye. Now, depending where you live, in Western Washington, YOUR mountain could be Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount Sauk, Mount Baker or the Pickett Range, or any other dozen of visible mountains I could name for the next three lines of type, but you get the idea.

People say things like: "Mount Baker's really looking good today as if the mountain got up that morning and decided to wear a new outfit." Best diplomatic answer, is "Yes, I just love seeing it." What I sometimes think is: "No, I liked the vintage Jackie O it had on yesterday." As winter has approached, the Mount Baker conversation centers around snow - "Well, Mount Baker got dusted last night." I always envision God with his can of Snow Pledge merrily spraying. This "isn't our mountain great" conversation, tends to stall a bit on days where the clouds hang low. Then the talk switches to Burlington Hill. (Yes, there's a big hill on the edge of town - think Cedar Hill in Duncanville, Texas, or Berry Hill in Tulsa, Oklahoma.) You can always see the big brown/green pimple, which is what I'm reminded of. It is good for cell phone towers and I do like the lighted cross on the top of it.

Living in a farm valley has been like living in a foreign country. It hasn't been as radical as living in New Orleans was, but it's a close second. When you enter Skagit County, there's a sign that looks like an interstate sign which announces you can get InFARMation at AM 1630. I tuned in to see what was offered, and I was treated to the September Farm Report. Now, it's November, and they are STILL running the September Farm Report. It is scintillating, but I need my farm news updated. For those that have to know - the potato crop was down this year as was the corn crop because of lousy June weather. The real blow was there were no peas planted in Skagit County for the first time in 100 years because the pea processor went out of business. However, to everyone's relief, the apples, cherries and berries were A-OK as were the 40 kinds of pumpkins grown here. I personally think that 40 kinds of pumpkins is overkill, but as the Concrete Queen, who am I to judge?

An offshoot of farm living is the amount of local produce that flows out into the grocery stores, the Food Coop, a locally owned food store cooperative that sells all local produce as well as those baffling brands of stuff you've never heard of but know are good for you. The local food especially flows out into the restaurants. We have one blip of chain restaurants - they huddle for protection around the cute little minuscule Mall. The rest of the restaurants vie with one another for who can serve the most locally grown food. We have organic, range raised, hormone free, antibiotic free, pesticide free, food out the wazoo here, and is it ever yum. Since food is actually SEASONAL - what a concept -, you can't find strawberries in November in these restaurants - instead it's 40 kinds of pumpkin. Just kidding......well, sort of.

If we're going to talk about food, then let's talk coffee. Yes, it's true. This part of the USA is coffee crazy. These are the folks who have infected the rest of the country. The Starbucks phenomena is well documented, but did you know that Starbucks actually boosts local coffee kiosks? A coffee kiosk is a very small free standing building ideally with asphalt on both sides for double drive thru where you can buy a bazillion different hot and cold drinks including every coffee concoction you can imagine as well as the Zen tea thing. What they can't seem to make up here is a decent glass of iced tea. Nobody drinks iced tea. Even these local restaurants who pride themselves on the quality and taste of their food serve that horrible fountain generated iced tea that has that slightly carbonated aftertaste. After trying and trying to get a decent glass of iced tea, I gave up and now I drink weirdo coffee drinks like everyone else. Here's a list of my favorite kiosks within a 10 mile radius of my house: Whidbey Island Coffee (closest thing to a chain - have at least 3 free standing buildings I know about), Coffee Pronto (only thing people seem to want FAST up here is coffee), Jitterbugs (coffee jitters have replaced ragweed allergy as the most common ailment here), Latte 'Da (way too cutesy - but it has a big Maxwell house type cup outside of it), Beans a Brewin' (just to let you know there's no instant coffee in this part of the country - it gets stopped at the state border), BIG FOOT Java (I have no idea what this name means), Expresso Connection (we like our coffee on steroids, thank you), I Wanna Moka (coffee and chocolate - what's not to like?), and drum roll, please - it's not the name that got me Javazone - it's their slogan: Warm Up Your Trigger Finger (must be transplanted Texans, don't you think?)

Before we leave the farm topic, let me just say that this is an equal opportunity farming community. We don't discriminate. If you can grow it, by God, we'll welcome you into our farming community. We have seafood farms - yes, the underwater farms that grows shellfish and oysters. We have mushroom farms - love the name: The Two Sisters Mushroom Farm. We have flower farms - I really want to see this valley in April. We have berry farms - strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries. We have tree farms - not just Christmas trees either because another peculiarity up here is the propensity to multi-task your plants. Some people landscape with trees. Forget bushes. Forget flowers - just plant trees in an interesting configuration in your front yard. This seems a little short sighted to me because what is a pleasing configuration now could be a nightmare in 20 years. My favorite two little multitasking plants are: (1) the pencil thin evergreen tree that is used for fencing. They are planted in rows and serve the same purpose as chain link or board. You can actually go out and buy them from tree farms. (I'll take 40 feet of 6' high - can't stand seeing those neighbors anymore.) This little evergreen is always planted in multiples and always in straight rows. The second multitasker I like which is also a modified fence is the popular tree. Now having grown up in Oklahoma and traveled thru West Texas, I've seen rows of popular trees planted as windbreaks, but I've never seen them with 10 foot diameter trunks and 100 feet tall. Now, this is a windbreak! You can always spot the old ones - just look for the turn of the century house or barn - the poplars marching down the landscape next to those buildings are guaranteed to be the ginormous version.

As an Oklahoma girl - I grew up in the the land of Indians (literally), I have felt at home up here because of the number of native American tribes. The names though are so foreign. In Washington you have the Snohomish, the Stillaguamish, the Snoqualmie, the Sauk, and the Sualitte. The Makah is a relief after all those 'S's". What seems to be left of these people are three things: The names of rivers, casinos, and artists.

I have one final bone to pick. It's the only thing about living up here which has DRIVEN ME NUTS!!!! It's the weather. Now, everyone is thinking: "We told you, Jan, that you would hate all that rain." WRONG. It's not the rain - which is actually very pleasant, and not that all pervasive. It's the lack of weather prediction. I'm looking out the patio door into the bright sunshine as I write this - but the PREDICTION and the little picture on my computer is for non-stop rain. The forecast changes every 12 hours. Sometimes I think it changes every hour on the hour. This is absolute torture. I want to know when it's going to rain. I want to know when the sun is going to shine. I want to see that clearly defined front with that little red or blue line marching across the weatherman's green screen. This capricious weather forecasting is making me gnash my teeth. I don't like surprise weather, and that's all they have up here.

Oh, I could go on and on: Sloughs (pronounced 'slew') are the Washington form of canals that connect natural waterways, multi-variety evergreens, trees that in Texas are bushes (cedar and holly for a couple), clear plastic baby stroller covers with baby INSIDE, the potato store, and the death wish motorcyclists and bicyclists. Oh, and there's the art work in one town depicting the famous people of the town of Anacortes for past 100 years - scattered like cardboard cut-outs stapled to the buildings. There's the Loggerodeo with the results of the chain saw competitions over the years scattered on main street of Sedro-Woolley. The snow goose migration, the glass sculptures, and the flowers in such abundance that no one seems to appreciate. However, that's enough entertainment for one blog.

If you want to see the pictures that accompany this one, click on the embedded web site: http://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/WashingtonBizzarities?authkey=Gv1sRgCOLLuIShgO2M7gE##

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?