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ByGD

Giant Crab

giant crab

When I was growing up, my family was really into sasquatch and ufos and ghosts. We dug anything that wasn’t supposed to exist. The tendency to prefer magical explanations over mundane ones is pretty universal. Even pragmatic people get into horror stories in October. This giant crab, preserved at an aquarium in Qingdao, China, is proof that nothing we can imagine is as terrifying as what nature offers us. We entertain ourselves with magical stories, all the while ignoring a real world greater than anything we could imagine.

ByGD

Missing The Turn (of the Screw)

Forrest Wu (Miles). Turn of the Screw Jacob Lucas photo

Forrest Wu (Miles). Jacob Lucas photo c/o Seattle Opera

I thought about calling this post “Skipping the Screw” because dirty-sounding titles get more hits. Anyway, for the first time in years, I’m going to miss a Seattle Opera production. The Turn of the Screw is heading into its second weekend at Seattle Opera, and I’m not going. It’s partly due to logistics, but the truth is, I just don’t want to see it. Why would I skip out on this opera when wild horses couldn’t keep me from seeing operas as different as Tosca and Hansel and Gretel?

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Presidential Compensation – Constitution Article 2 §1.7

ConstitutionThese days I’m studying Article 2 of the Constitution, which deals with the Executive branch of government. Article 2 §1.6 is about presidential succession, which was a happier topic than we’ve had for a while. This week I’m looking at Article 2 §1.7, a relatively harmless clause dealing with presidential compensation.

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Music I Liked – Reykjavik Calling

Margrét of Vok at Reykjavik CallingTaste of Iceland has become an annual tradition for me. I try to make it to as many events as I can each year: the tasting, the museum exhibits, laser shows, and literary events. But for me the biggest event is the Reykjavik Calling concert. In the past it was held at Neumos with some cool collaborations between local and Icelandic artists. Now it’s in KEXP’s Gathering Space with a simple lineup of two Iceland bands followed by a local band. It’s a simple setup, but it always lets me see Icelandic bands that rarely play Seattle, and I always discover local music I’ve previously overlooked. This year, I saw Gyda, Vök, and Navvi. I liked it.

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ByGD

Cool Corner

Corner building in Qingdao

Phoenix, Arizona is all suburb and no city. Growing up there accustomed me to a certain architectural homogeneity. On my first trip to Europe, I took pictures of light switches and door handles, because I had never seen anything but the Home Depot standards. One of the things that drew me to Seattle was the existence of non-rectangular buildings. The way that people make use of odd-shaped, left-behind spaces still intrigues me.

This corner building in Qingdao tickles all of my anti-suburban fancies. A weird, triangular shape. A residence above a commercial venture (indicated by the painted pizza and neon signage mounted on the early 20th-century stone wall). And public art, this time in the form of a wintry clump of trees. Combined with the snowflakes in the window, the mural makes me wonder about the person who lives inside.

I took this picture in May. Is the resident someone who really loves winter? Do they save all their money to hit the lifts in winter? Or are they, like me? A serial obsessive who gets fired up about seasonal decorating, then gets distracted by something else and forgets to change the decorations? What obsession distracted them from their appreciation of bare branches and falling snow? Whatever the answer, the person who surrounds themselves with winter in an apartment above a pizza shop in a historical building must have an interesting story.

Suburban houses never inspire viewers to imagine the lives within. Or if they do, the imagined lives are painfully generic.