David and I took the boys and our camera to the SAM Olympic Sculpture Park. We loved it.
The Richard Serra installation is so gorgeous we could have stayed all day. So much art hard against the rocky shore, open to the warm air in spring’s cathedral… it was unforgettable, and we will be back often.

The whole experience reminded me of this Kenneth Slessor poem:

Fixed Ideas

Ranks of electroplated cubes, dwindling to glitters,
Like the other pasture, the trigonometry of marble,
Death’s candy-bed. Stone caked on stone,
Dry pyramids and racks of iron balls.
Life is observed, a precipitate of pellets,
Or grammarians freeze it into spar,
Their rhomboids, as for instance, the finest crystal
Fixing a snowfall under glass. Gods are laid out
In alabaster, with horny cartilage
And zinc ribs; or systems of ecstasy
Baked into bricks. There is a gallery of sculpture,
Bleached bones of heroes, Gorgon masks of bushrangers;
But the quarries are of more use than this,
Filled with the rolling of huge granite dice,
Ideas and judgments: vivisection, the Baptist Church,
Good men and bad men, polygamy, birth-control . . .

Frail tinkling rush
Water-hair streaming
Prickles and glitters
Cloudy with bristles
River of thought
Swimming the pebbles—
Undo, loosen your bubbles!

The rest of the photos are here.

As they say, you know you live in Seattle when you think of a floating bridge as a pain in the ass instead of a marvel of engineering. So, ever wondered what would happen if the 520 bridge got hit by a windstorm?

Or maybe an earthquake?

Enjoy your commute.

Looking for a Mercer Island Barbie, a Fremont Barbie couple or even a Capitol Hill drag Barbie? Mattel has just released a range of Seattle-Area Barbies. Get yours now!

There was a huge windstorm here in Seattle last night. It began with heavy rains early in the evening, and then the wind really started to pick up after midnight. We lost power soon after, and it still wasn’t on when we left for work this morning. Apparently much of Bellevue still lacks power; we’ll see if the lights are on when we get home. Other than a bit of water coming in the back door from a flooded gutter we came off unscathed. This slideshow shows the damage around the region. Four deaths have also been reported, including a woman drowned in her basement about a mile from where we live, after a holding pond flooded an apartment complex.

I’ve lived in Seattle for almost 7 years now, and this has easily been the worst month of weather … and it’s not even winter yet!

October 23. Only the cool kats in Seattle will be there.

And you-know-who is going to be making dessert.

Just like I knew they would!

The obvious standout in this crowded field is Stephanie Pure, a longtime aide to Seattle City Council Member Peter Steinbrueck, who is making her first run at elected office. (Ed Murray, whom she’s looking to replace, also started out as a council aide, as did current King County Executive Ron Sims and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.)

Pure, a quick study, has a long history of working to preserve the rights of people who aren’t often heard in politics: tenants (Pure organized the citywide Renters Summit with Judy Nicastro in 2000) and youth (she was a founding member of the Vera Project; she served for several years on the city’s Music and Youth Task Force to overturn the Teen Dance Ordinance; and, as an aide to Steinbrueck, she worked to increase library hours).

To winnow the candidates, the SECB held our own “primary,” narrowing the field to three: Pure, Preston Gates & Ellis attorney Jamie Pedersen, and former City Council Member and Superior Court Judge Jim Street. Pure, who’s focused on density and smart growth, is most in line with the SECB (and her district) on a wide range of issues. She supports public financing of campaigns; she says full marriage equality, not just civil unions, is her goal; and, saying the city’s commitment to meeting Kyoto standards “seem[s] to stop short when we talk about the viaduct,” she supports the surface/transit alternative for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct. (Pure’s opponents all support the mayor’s unaffordable, environmentally unsustainable $4 billion tunnel.) And Pure was the only candidate of the three to mention education and reproductive rights among her top priorities.

Voters in the district should not be swayed by the desire to “send a message” to the supreme court by sending Pedersen, who is gay, to Olympia. Pedersen—an attorney who will stay on the Preston Gates payroll even if he wins a seat in the legislature—is too compromised and middle-of-the-road to be truly effective. (During the SECB’s interview, Pedersen argued credulously that money has no influence on politics. “I don’t think there’s a problem with the system,” he said.) His constant bragging about “saving” PacMed on Beacon Hill (work he did in his paid role as a lawyer for Preston Gates) also turned us off. Street, who initially struck several members of the SECB as the brainiest and most knowledgeable of the pack, quickly started to grate on us with his know-it-all demeanor. We’re worried he’ll turn off his potential colleagues in Olympia, too. Pure, a young woman who has lived in the 43rd (mostly on Capitol Hill) her entire adult life, best represents the full diversity of her district. A smart, effective young woman would be a great addition to the Ed Murray–Frank Chopp power axis in the 43rd. Vote Pure.

I love it! And let’s face it, we all love Stephanie Pure. I’m so looking forward to saying “I knew her when!”

If you think you don’t want to see a play about semi-pro wrestling, one that has an overtly homoerotic subplot, well, to my stunned surprise, you’re wrong.

Last night I was lucky enough to catch Piledriver at the Cap Hill Arts Center. I found it wildly entertaining. Oh, sure, it’s obscene. It’s rife with profanity. It openly represents and explicity discusses gay sex. And there’s a whole lotta body slammin’ going on - after all, it’s about semi-pro wrestling. But tangled in all the showy head banging and theatrical bouncing off the ropes, there’s a good story, rich character development, and loads of laugh out loud humor.

The unlikely hero of the show is the writer. Harvey is a lumpy, aging, ex drag queen with crazy hair who sets up all the story lines around each night’s show. My friend K - who invited me to tag along - is an editor and writer and the two of us cheered like crazy when ever they made writing gags. (I didn’t mention the whole audience particpation thing.) Something that had us both hysterical? A scene where the wrestlers are arguing about the plot line. Harvey interupts with something like:

You don’t like the plot line? You don’t like where things are going? Well, F**K YOU! It’s my show. I’m the writer and you’ll follow the story EXACTLY THE WAY I TELL YOU TO.

Close enough.We were also big fans of this classic bit of ridiculous snark:

Do I look smaller to you? That’s because I’m WALKING AWAY!

The play is funny, raunchy, well staged, well acted, engaging, and, simply, a really good time. But hurry up, it’s only on for two more nights at CHAC. Get tix here.

As David foreshadowed a few days ago, we made the pages of the Seattle PI today. Susan Paynter is wonderful. We got connected with her earlier this week through our friends at the Pride Foundation and talked to her on Tuesday, before we knew how the State Supreme Court case would turn out. Oh well…

For posterity’s sake, my family “turned on a dime” the minute I came out–they didn’t wait for the wedding. But I know it did make a big difference to them.

As disappointed as I am about the court’s decision, I do believe that the best long-term approach is to go through the legislative process. Had we won, we would have spent the next five years in a defensive position trying to keep the Rethuglicans in Olympia and Tim Eyman from defeating us again–not to mention reinvigorating backers of efforts to write a marriage ban into the US Constitution. Much better, in my view, to set to work building support for a future legislative shift.

Demographics are on our side–people under 30 support our right to marry. As MLK said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Our time will come. And on that day when David and I can make our marriage official in Washington, we’ll throw one hell of a party!

We stumbled across the carnival accidentally - we could see it from the ferry when we came back from Lummi and figured we might as well check it out. The women at the gate told us there was “lots going on, lots of it!” They weren’t kidding. We arrived just in time for the Grand Entry to the Pow Wow.

It’s been a good long time since I’ve been to a Pow Wow. I’m never sure what the correct ettiquitte is around these events - it feels a little bit like crashing a wedding. But we were hungry and everyone was welcoming, so we had salmon and I took pictures. It was a visual feast. (And candidly, I feel like showing off a little, I can’t believe I got these pictures myself.)

Enjoy.