Arboretum

.

Image of the Day

.
James Lavadour, Trees, 2007 (Oil on wood panel, 32x48 inches, photo by Spike Mafford) from the Seattle Art Museum exhibition Seattle As Collector, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Seattle Arts Commission.

See more from the exhibition at seattle.gov

私たちの心は日本とされ

.
Odetta "Sakura" from Odetta In Japan (1966, RCA)

Via the Japan-America Society of the State of Washington: Pacific Software Publishing (based in Bellevue) will match 100% of your donation to the American Red Cross:
1. Make a donation online at American Red Cross (choose "JAPAN EARTHQUAKE AND PACIFIC TSUNAMI").
2. Keep your confirmation email and forward it to JapanRelief@pspinc.com.
3. PSP will match 100 percent of your donation up to $10,000.

Photo: Cherry blossoms (sakura no hana) in Brooklyn

6:18 AM

.
Vince Guaraldi "Christmas Time Is Here"
from A Charlie Brown Christmas (Charlie Brown Records, 1965)

(Photo: Beauregard, the tree we bought in I think 2003 from a hardware store while passing through Staten Island. I never thought it was such a bad little tree.)

Fungus Finder

.
I went mushroom hunting with my friend Jason in a top-secret location last Sunday.

It was nice to be out in the woods, even in the rain, and we came back with around 10 pounds of Chanterelles.

That's about all I can say about it.

America By Car

.
And we're back.

Here are some pics from our Labor Day camping trip to the Chewuch River, north of Winthrop, Washington, in the Okanogan National Forest [click to enlarge].

Many more, and some mildly entertaining stories, after the jump.

Image of the Day

.

From an article in The New York Times by Reyhan Harmanci:

It was a dream come true, straight out of “Antiques Roadshow.” In 2000 Rick Norsigian, a painter in a school maintenance department, bought a box of photo negatives at a garage sale in Fresno, Calif., for $45. Last month, a decade later, he stood in a Beverly Hills art gallery to announce that a team of experts had concluded “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Ansel Adams had taken the pictures.

The gallery’s owner, David W. Streets, appraised the value of the 65 images, which the experts called “the lost negatives,” at $200 million, and the incident made news around the world.

But a fairy-tale ending is eluding Mr. Norsigian. A day after the announcement, Matthew Adams, a grandson of the photographer, disputed the finding, questioned the credentials of the experts and went so far as to call the whole business a “scam.”

A few days after that, an Oakland woman, Marian Walton, announced that she had a photo (shown above) that was identical to one of the negatives. It had been taken, she said, not by Adams, the famous outdoors photographer, but by an uncle of hers, Earl Brooks.

Dun-dun-dunnnn. The intrigue continues at nytimes.com.

Second Life

.

Yesterday the New York Times business section featured an article called "Finding New Life (and Profit) in Doomed Trees" about Meyer Wells, a small business which makes custom furniture from trees naturally downed in and around Seattle. It's worth reading on both a business level and on a cool-product level.

[Meyer Wells], started four years ago, bears all the markers that would seem to point toward collapse and extinction in a recessionary economy. It’s founded on idealism and emotion. It’s riddled with huge and unavoidable inefficiencies. And it tenders a high-end product that asks buyers to take risks and have faith.
...
“People who buy furniture here are adventurers,” says Mr. Meyer. “They see the tree and get to be part of the process. They have to have an adventurous spirit, they have to be patient, and they have to trust. There’s an element of risk.”
...
He suddenly becomes a tour guide to a whole geography embedded in the wood — “islands” and “cathedrals” in the grain. “I’m looking to see how the grain of one board flows into the next so that the composition feels harmonious,” he says.
...
If there’s one rule in the shop, it’s this: Respect the tree’s narrative — including the chapters about its hard urban life. Mr. Meyer once found a steel snippet embedded in a beautiful cherry slab, perhaps a remnant of a nail used to hammer a “lost cat” sign to the tree. He left it in place, a piece of the story.

Read the rest at nytimes.com and visit Meyer Wells blog here.

Taken By Trees

.
We stopped by and saw this tree the other weekend – it's 1000 years old and the largest known Sitka Spruce tree in the world at just under 60 feet in circumference. Living in the Quinault Valley (Olympic National Forest), it receives an average rainfall of 12 feet per year. In the same valley are the world's largest Western Red Cedar, Douglas Fir, and Mountain Hemlock, and the largest Yellow Cedar and Western Hemlock trees in the USA.

It's a really big tree. I recommend checking it out. Afterward you can have lunch at the diner down the road. I had a grilled salmon burger.

Old World

.

Photographer Rachel Sussman is traveling the planet photographing the oldest continuously living organisms (2000 years or older). More info at her blog.

Image of the Day

.

I know, more foliage, and a bad cell-phone photo to boot
(sorry...Strath's got the cameras with him in New York this week).
I just really liked the way the electric green of this tree looked
against the dark gray sky right before it started hailing today.
It's the color scheme of urban decay.

Image of the Day

.
...this crazy tree by our house.

The tree is crazy.

Crazy!

Oceanbound

.
As previously hollered-about, Emily and I took our first camping trip of the year this past weekend. Even having grown up here and being very familiar with the ferry system and various waterways of this great state, it's still a novelty to me that you can catch a boat from downtown Seattle and easily head out across the water.

Seattle to Bremerton takes about an hour, and when the weather's good, the views of downtown Seattle, Alki, other islands, and the Olympic Mountains in the distance are amazing. (I am tired of the word "amazing" but that's what it is.) It's often said that a Washington State ferry is the poor man's cruise ship.

The boats themselves are old workhorses, beautiful in their industrial simplicity. You can't help feeling a little like Richie on the Cote d'Ivoire.

From Bremerton we drove just south, and then north along the length of Hood Canal (which I mentioned in that long-ass New York Times post from last week). Lots of cool stuff to see.

Our final destination was Olympic National Park – we camped at Mora, near Rialto Beach, just north of the Quillayute Indian Reservation.

The Quillayute used the largest of the rocks which dot the coast (James Island, right across from the town of La Push) as a fortress when neighboring tribes would come south on slaving missions.

Even though we stayed in the national park, it's very remote out there, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves (which, long time readers will remember, is how we like it).

The next morning we hiked through the woods down to Beach 3.

Sometimes I like it when place names are just numbers (though obviously there are Quillayute names that we don't know).

The national park has 60 miles of waterfront, and I'm pretty sure you could hike all of it, following the trail in and out of the woods and small beaches.

Later in the day we headed south, to the Hoh Rainforest. The tree Emily is standing under is estimated to be 575 years old.

Everything in the rainforest is covered with moss.

There's a ton to explore – we kind of thought of this as a scouting mission, just getting the feel of it so as to plan better for longer trips.

We got rained on pretty heavily Sunday. Of course you'd rather have good weather, but drinking beers and eating chili and tamales under the tarp is good times no matter what.

That night in the dark, we walked out to this perch on the bank of the Quillayute River. Just as we got there a big bald eagle took off, floating out over the water. We heard a hooting noise and looked up to see a great blue heron in a tree high above us; below in the river, a group of otters were swimming around, feasting on salmon. You could hear the lighthouse and the waves in the distance. It was one of the cooler moments in recent memory and the perfect end to our first trip of the season.

[See more riveting family slideshow action at Flickr.]
.

Christmas Break

.
Emily and I celebrated our Christmas a month late. We wanted to wait till we were in our new space and somewhat unpacked. (There are still 100+ boxes of books and records in the middle of the living room, but that's another story, shelves are coming soon.) Economic depression be damned, we decided to treat each other a little. Why the hell not. Anyway, here's some stuff we got, and I'll post a couple other things soon.

I got Emily this wool blazer she wanted from Topshop. Keeping it chic as usual.

She got me this set of maps showing all the ghost towns in Washington state. I didn't even know this existed (not to mention how many ghost towns there still are here). Can't wait to try it out, especially now that the weather is starting to get nice.

My brother's Nightmare-Before-Christmas Tree in Brooklyn. When we had our stoop sale back in September, someone down the street was throwing this weird old tree out and he grabbed it. Now it's covered with origami cranes in his apartment – it looks cool.