Port Angeles Underground tour is the best tourist event I have experienced so far. The town has one of the deepest harbors in the country, so in the early part of the 20th century, its citizens salvaged it from constant flooding by raising the level of the streets by as much as 16 feet in some places. Some pre-existing buildings were moved and raised to the higher ground. Some buildings went up during the construction project, and the lowest level built at the old street level then opened into the underground after the project was finished. The town was crisscrossed with underground streets until a fire broke out in one of the buildings. The underground tunnel acted like a flue, shooting a huge fireball across the length of the street. Today there is a section of one street left, which is open for tours.
One of the buildings used to be a theater, and although most of the interior has been redone for the present store--an antique and collectibles shop--upstairs is the original projection room. Looking out of the windows where the cameras shone into the theater, you can see the original multi-colored ceiling.
Another old building is the shoe store, owned by the same family for generations, still in business. The children's shoes were in the back, with a fabulous circus scene painted on the wall, and long wooden benches with animal heads separating the seats. In the corner was a real collector's item: an x-ray machine for shoe stores, into which children would place their feet to see if the new shoes fit.
It was quite a fancy store for a frontier town, especially when we saw what was upstairs. A separate entrance in the back led you up narrow stairs to a set of 18 small rooms where girls entertained sailors arriving in the port. The store downstairs collected rent, but had no idea what was going on upstairs--if you can believe that story. Police routinely raided the illegal operation, but never managed to catch a single girl or sailor.
When we passed a Chinese restaurant, a boy about 10 years old emerged with a bowl and passed out fortune cookies for us. The tour guide praised the food, and on his recommendation, we had dinner there. It was good, but not great.
The tour guide's relationship with everyone in town was a major reason for the tour's success. He had gleaned many stories from his interactions with the townspeople, especially the oldest ones. Definitely the best tour I've ever taken.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Discovery Bay Village Book Club
I met Julia and Ted on a walk around the neighborhood. We were greeted by their yellow Golden Retrievers, 15-year-old Shem, who looked at us soberly, and 11-year old Daisy, who is still young enough to want to get physical with everybody she meets. Julia and Ted have trained them well; Daisy crouched beside her owners, whining to let us know how hard it was to restrain herself. I took pity on her, and, with Julia's supervision, I petted her nose and said hi. That seemed enough for her.
"Do you read?" Julia asked me. I didn't answer, not sure what the question was.
She realized the awkwardness of her question, and rephrased. "We have a book club in the neighborhood, ladies who meet once a month."
I jumped at the chance to meet people hidden in the woods around me. It was the first time I had heard the half-hidden houses, perched on slopes or nestled in the trees, described as a neighborhood.
DBV Book Club meets on the first Tuesday of the month. I missed February because of babysitting duties, but made the ones in March and April.
Ted is undergoing radiation for a growth in his lymph nodes, so Julia missed the March meeting. We met at Linda's house, a pleasant middle-aged woman who is a native of the Northwest. I met Sylvia and Amy, who recently built a small eco-friendly house down the hill from us. I recognized Sylvia as the waitress who had served us the last time we were at our favorite restaurant in Port Townsend. Peppered ahi, grilled rare, is the specialty. To die for, is my assessment. Too peppery, says Mike. But he finds other things.
Linda went next door to help her next-door neighbor, Ingrid, over to her house. Their houses are very close together, which happens here. Because of the ruggedness of the terrain, houses are restricted in where they can be built. Several houses might be built close together in a flatter area, surrounded by steep hilly wilderness.
Our first book was "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness," about a British family who lived in Kenya and then Rhodesia at the time of the crumbling white imperialism in Africa. This could be touchy, I thought. It could bring out flaming red or bright blue opinions. But everyone stayed diplomatically neutral, which meant the book wasn't really discussed in much detail.
We met at Julia's house this month, where I also met Margaret for the first time. She announced to everyone that she had decided to change her nomenclature to "Meg." Her mother had refused to let her be known by a nickname in school--I could relate to that! But after years of being called Maggie by friends, she had decided to be addressed "Meg."
After telling my story in some detail, as "the new girl," I asked to hear their stories. Everyone seemed a little reticent to tell their own backgrounds. Sylvia continued what I had heard last month (Amy had stayed home, after several tiring days of work), that they had lived some 20 years in Hawaii, then sold out and came to Washington for their retirement years, because Hawaii is so expensive. Hawaii must be exorbitant, if Washington is cheaper by comparison. Linda is from the northwest, and had a more ordinary story, with fewer sharp edges.
I asked Ingrid when she came to the United States, and she said with a laugh, "Before you were born!" She was right. She came in 1952; I was born in 1953. She said little, unless she was directly addressed, because she is hard of hearing. She hasn't been too happy with the reading selections, I suspected, wants to read lighter things.
Meg told me she was from Tennessee, and had moved around with her military husband, until he got a "replacement wife." After a difficult divorce, she is now happily married.
Julia's parents divorced when she was a child. Her mother became a missionary and took her daughters to Japan. Julia lived in Japan from the ages of 7 to 17. It gives more meaning to the wonderful Japanese garden she has in her back yard.
These stories will probably be rare in the future, offered to me because I was new. I think I like that. Nobody asked me about my wobbling gait, which was a relief. I don't know exactly what's wrong with my legs, and I get tired of fielding questions. Let other people tell you what they want you to know, and you find out plenty.
The rest of the discussion was about plants and animals. Everybody has gardens; everybody has problems with the rabbits and especially the deer eating everything. Julia proclaimed that no spray worked. Nobody mentioned fences; it's hard to fence in the untamed wilderness we live in. Besides,with the size of the hind muscles on these mule deer, they could jump a 10-foot fence. Not an exaggeration. My solution so far is to chase them away when they venture across the road. They spend a lot of time in a cleared field directly across from our house. Yesterday I walked down our driveway to the road to head them off. One went back to munching grass, looking at me like a pre-schooler eating his vegetables while eying the forbidden dessert. The other loped around, looking for some way to get past me. That's when I noticed the powerful muscles on its hind quarters. It walked like a sumo wrestler, impeded in ordinary movement by the enormity of his limbs.
Julia said she had put netting over her roses, and hadn't seen any more damage yet.
"Won't the birds get caught in the netting?" someone asked. Ah, yes. We are environmentally friendly here. Animals before plants, the nurseryman wrote on his blog when killdeer laid eggs in his plants, and business--all the business of humans--is last. We are the intruders here, in one of the last remnants of the frontier left in the contiguous United States. It's kind of exciting at times. Then other times, you ask, "Why can't they build more bridges across the Sound?"
I volunteered to have May's meeting at my house. Then I'm moderating the discussion in June, of a book I suggested--"The Cat who Covered the World." A nice, fun book that will avoid all discussions of politics, divorce, and cancer.
"Do you read?" Julia asked me. I didn't answer, not sure what the question was.
She realized the awkwardness of her question, and rephrased. "We have a book club in the neighborhood, ladies who meet once a month."
I jumped at the chance to meet people hidden in the woods around me. It was the first time I had heard the half-hidden houses, perched on slopes or nestled in the trees, described as a neighborhood.
DBV Book Club meets on the first Tuesday of the month. I missed February because of babysitting duties, but made the ones in March and April.
Ted is undergoing radiation for a growth in his lymph nodes, so Julia missed the March meeting. We met at Linda's house, a pleasant middle-aged woman who is a native of the Northwest. I met Sylvia and Amy, who recently built a small eco-friendly house down the hill from us. I recognized Sylvia as the waitress who had served us the last time we were at our favorite restaurant in Port Townsend. Peppered ahi, grilled rare, is the specialty. To die for, is my assessment. Too peppery, says Mike. But he finds other things.
Linda went next door to help her next-door neighbor, Ingrid, over to her house. Their houses are very close together, which happens here. Because of the ruggedness of the terrain, houses are restricted in where they can be built. Several houses might be built close together in a flatter area, surrounded by steep hilly wilderness.
Our first book was "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness," about a British family who lived in Kenya and then Rhodesia at the time of the crumbling white imperialism in Africa. This could be touchy, I thought. It could bring out flaming red or bright blue opinions. But everyone stayed diplomatically neutral, which meant the book wasn't really discussed in much detail.
We met at Julia's house this month, where I also met Margaret for the first time. She announced to everyone that she had decided to change her nomenclature to "Meg." Her mother had refused to let her be known by a nickname in school--I could relate to that! But after years of being called Maggie by friends, she had decided to be addressed "Meg."
After telling my story in some detail, as "the new girl," I asked to hear their stories. Everyone seemed a little reticent to tell their own backgrounds. Sylvia continued what I had heard last month (Amy had stayed home, after several tiring days of work), that they had lived some 20 years in Hawaii, then sold out and came to Washington for their retirement years, because Hawaii is so expensive. Hawaii must be exorbitant, if Washington is cheaper by comparison. Linda is from the northwest, and had a more ordinary story, with fewer sharp edges.
I asked Ingrid when she came to the United States, and she said with a laugh, "Before you were born!" She was right. She came in 1952; I was born in 1953. She said little, unless she was directly addressed, because she is hard of hearing. She hasn't been too happy with the reading selections, I suspected, wants to read lighter things.
Meg told me she was from Tennessee, and had moved around with her military husband, until he got a "replacement wife." After a difficult divorce, she is now happily married.
Julia's parents divorced when she was a child. Her mother became a missionary and took her daughters to Japan. Julia lived in Japan from the ages of 7 to 17. It gives more meaning to the wonderful Japanese garden she has in her back yard.
These stories will probably be rare in the future, offered to me because I was new. I think I like that. Nobody asked me about my wobbling gait, which was a relief. I don't know exactly what's wrong with my legs, and I get tired of fielding questions. Let other people tell you what they want you to know, and you find out plenty.
The rest of the discussion was about plants and animals. Everybody has gardens; everybody has problems with the rabbits and especially the deer eating everything. Julia proclaimed that no spray worked. Nobody mentioned fences; it's hard to fence in the untamed wilderness we live in. Besides,with the size of the hind muscles on these mule deer, they could jump a 10-foot fence. Not an exaggeration. My solution so far is to chase them away when they venture across the road. They spend a lot of time in a cleared field directly across from our house. Yesterday I walked down our driveway to the road to head them off. One went back to munching grass, looking at me like a pre-schooler eating his vegetables while eying the forbidden dessert. The other loped around, looking for some way to get past me. That's when I noticed the powerful muscles on its hind quarters. It walked like a sumo wrestler, impeded in ordinary movement by the enormity of his limbs.
Julia said she had put netting over her roses, and hadn't seen any more damage yet.
"Won't the birds get caught in the netting?" someone asked. Ah, yes. We are environmentally friendly here. Animals before plants, the nurseryman wrote on his blog when killdeer laid eggs in his plants, and business--all the business of humans--is last. We are the intruders here, in one of the last remnants of the frontier left in the contiguous United States. It's kind of exciting at times. Then other times, you ask, "Why can't they build more bridges across the Sound?"
I volunteered to have May's meeting at my house. Then I'm moderating the discussion in June, of a book I suggested--"The Cat who Covered the World." A nice, fun book that will avoid all discussions of politics, divorce, and cancer.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
A Different World
It drizzled all day today, while the sun shone and blue peaked out of the sky. A typical spring day.
The Olympic Peninsula used to be an island. It nearly is, even today. That explains the unique wildlife, especially birds. Ray Bradbury wrote a sci-fi short story about a human family that relocated to Mars, and they began to change because of the different environment. Mike calls this a "different planet." Am I changing?
My hair is different. Without Missouri's heat and humidity, it's not so curly. The water's hard, and my hair became very frizzy. Sulfate-free shampoo calmed it down, but it is much straighter. I don't think I'm speaking any differently. I can't tell if I'm losing my southern drawl. And I haven't started saying,"Okey-dokey" or "You betcha"--which, I'm sorry to report, are expressions they really do use.
Now that I'm getting over my loss-of-cardinals grief, I'm enjoying bird watching here as much as in Missouri.
Pine siskins are small finch-like birds. They come in large flocks, chattering noisily. They're very tame, and they can become an annoyance. They come in such numbers that there are too many to fit on the feeder, and so they get in line on the hummingbird feeder, scaring the hummingbirds away.
Stellar's jays are bigger than blue jays in the east. They frighten away all the smaller birds. A pair of flickers (woodpeckers) the same size as the jays come occasionally.
Bigger than the jays are the band-tailed pigeons, an American bird only found in the west that is 14.5 inches long. The jay jumped backwards the first time one of those pigeons appeared.
I've seen three species of hummingbird, and one is bright orange. It glistens neon red in bright light. (There is only one species east of the Mississippi.)
I can add bald eagle to my list. One flew into our front yard yesterday. It landed down the hill, out of sight. I ran out of the house to get another look. Outside the birds were screaming, so I knew it had to be there. As I was creeping up from behind, it flew away. Man, what a wingspan. Add to big and bigger, gigantic.
The next day I found a dead squirrel on the ground under the feeder. Then Mike noticed a pile of dove feathers on the ground, next to a stone spotted with three small drops of blood. There was a predator, for sure, and I think it was the eagle. I think the eagle swooped down for the squirrel, which may have already been dead--eagles are scavengers--then got scared away when I approached it. After we had left, it came back for the squirrel. While flying away, it saw a flock of doves on the ground, and dropped the squirrel to catch the dove.
I'm coming to think of eagles as flying dinosaurs: raptors. Eagles are magnificent, but they are very fierce, and not as beautiful when you see one as you expect it to be. The head is smaller than is usually portrayed, compared to the size of the body, so it looks more like a small-headed dinosaur. Don't get me wrong; they're still magnificent birds, but they killed one of my gentle doves.
The Olympic Peninsula used to be an island. It nearly is, even today. That explains the unique wildlife, especially birds. Ray Bradbury wrote a sci-fi short story about a human family that relocated to Mars, and they began to change because of the different environment. Mike calls this a "different planet." Am I changing?
My hair is different. Without Missouri's heat and humidity, it's not so curly. The water's hard, and my hair became very frizzy. Sulfate-free shampoo calmed it down, but it is much straighter. I don't think I'm speaking any differently. I can't tell if I'm losing my southern drawl. And I haven't started saying,"Okey-dokey" or "You betcha"--which, I'm sorry to report, are expressions they really do use.
Now that I'm getting over my loss-of-cardinals grief, I'm enjoying bird watching here as much as in Missouri.
Pine siskins are small finch-like birds. They come in large flocks, chattering noisily. They're very tame, and they can become an annoyance. They come in such numbers that there are too many to fit on the feeder, and so they get in line on the hummingbird feeder, scaring the hummingbirds away.
Stellar's jays are bigger than blue jays in the east. They frighten away all the smaller birds. A pair of flickers (woodpeckers) the same size as the jays come occasionally.
Bigger than the jays are the band-tailed pigeons, an American bird only found in the west that is 14.5 inches long. The jay jumped backwards the first time one of those pigeons appeared.
I've seen three species of hummingbird, and one is bright orange. It glistens neon red in bright light. (There is only one species east of the Mississippi.)
I can add bald eagle to my list. One flew into our front yard yesterday. It landed down the hill, out of sight. I ran out of the house to get another look. Outside the birds were screaming, so I knew it had to be there. As I was creeping up from behind, it flew away. Man, what a wingspan. Add to big and bigger, gigantic.
The next day I found a dead squirrel on the ground under the feeder. Then Mike noticed a pile of dove feathers on the ground, next to a stone spotted with three small drops of blood. There was a predator, for sure, and I think it was the eagle. I think the eagle swooped down for the squirrel, which may have already been dead--eagles are scavengers--then got scared away when I approached it. After we had left, it came back for the squirrel. While flying away, it saw a flock of doves on the ground, and dropped the squirrel to catch the dove.
I'm coming to think of eagles as flying dinosaurs: raptors. Eagles are magnificent, but they are very fierce, and not as beautiful when you see one as you expect it to be. The head is smaller than is usually portrayed, compared to the size of the body, so it looks more like a small-headed dinosaur. Don't get me wrong; they're still magnificent birds, but they killed one of my gentle doves.
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