Perhaps the children of today will do all their reading on an electronic device when they grow up, but I hope they'll still keep books to treasure as their very own, especially ones given to them by special people in their lives. The woman who gave me one of my favorite books also gave me a set of bookplates. They weren't personalized but I added my signature and put them inside only my most precious books. Nowadays you can order lovely personalized (or not) bookplates from crafters selling their art online such as on Etsy (some examples: art nouveau, rose, apples) or even print them yourself. Bonus link: Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie weblog.
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Cherry season has arrived. I got an early start during our recent visit to California where the yummy fruit ripens earlier, and now Washington cherries are ready to peak and it's a bumper crop this year. 78,000 tons were harvested last year and 150,000 tons are expected for 2009. 30% of it goes overseas, mostly to Asia. Growers take all necessary precautions to keep their cherries in good shape, even bringing in helicopters to blow harmful rainwater off of the fruit.
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Friday, June 26, 2009

from the past: White Glove Tracking. "On May 4th, 2007, we asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson's white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. 72 hours later 125,000 gloves had been located."
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Somehow I managed to completely forget about Dutch Crunch, the bread with the crackly top that was just a part of everyday life in Northern California, but dropped out of existence in Washington. Serious Eats brought it back to my attention and now I'm remembered how I used to often order albacore tuna salad on a Dutch Crunch roll at Le Boulanger. There were inferior Dutch Crunch versions, usually at the supermarket, that had little crunch so I always took the chance of damage to the roof of my mouth and got the good stuff. Now don't get me started about wine-walnut bread which I used to eat in vast quantities all by itself.
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Thursday, June 25, 2009

These tiger pup photos are very cute. The pups, born at the Safari Zoological Park in Kansas, were featured on NBC's Today Show on September 19, 2008. Abandoned by their mom, they were brought home by zookeepers and raised with the help of a golden retriever.
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"The oldest handcrafted musical instrument yet discovered" is a flute around 35,000 years old and made out of griffon vulture bone. It was found in southern Germany and 22 centimeters long with 5 holes.
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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Here are two local critter stories of note. In Olympia, Washington a colony of several thousand bats takes wing every night to feed on insects. All females, they're nesting with their young underneath a pier. Volunteers have been tallying the number of bats who leave their manmade home at night. In late summer the bats will scatter to locations unknown. Over in Cheney, a little east of Spokane, four trumpeter swans hatched over Father's Day weekend at the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge. Their dad, a seasoned veteran of the lake, was thought to be too old to become a father as he's estimated to be 33-46 years old. His last batch of cygnets was in 1987 and after his original mate was killed his subsequent companions did not produce. But he and his latest mate are swimming happily with their new brood.
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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Take a visual trip through 50 years of bizarre and kitschy children's television from H.R. Pufnstuf to Sigmund and the Sea Monsters through to today's bizarre Boohbah.
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Last week we visited the San Francisco area and felt like tourists for the first time. I can't recall riding a cable car during the long time I lived there, though I figure I must've taken a visitor or two on a ride. But with a four-year-old boy in tow, it was an imperative. We took the Powell-Mason line to the Cable Car Museum, which is the working powerhouse for the cable car system. There we saw the giant winding wheels that run the cables and lots of memorabilia and old cars. The Obama girls took a similar ride on Monday, but they traveled on brand new car No. 15, built from scratch and fresh from the paint shop. The car cost $823,000 and took 15 years to build with custom parts made from bronze, steel, and four kinds of wood.
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Monday, June 22, 2009

In an impressive achievement, the staff at Woodland Park Zoo's rose garden has gone organic. The 280 types of roses on 2.5 acres are fed compost tea and kept free of black spot and powdery mildew. The showcase garden is still flourishing and the zoo management retains its message of conservation.
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In Seattle's Ravenna neighborhood a group of Jews in their 20s and 30s are living communally in three houses. It's modern urban kibbutzim, a movement that is keeping these adults together in a common culture before marriage and kids. Shabbat dinners and events attract plenty of guests eager to share in the unique living environment. The Ravenna Kibbutz hopes to expand into a few other houses and eventually purchase some of the current rental property.
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Friday, June 19, 2009

Adding to the lengthy list of things you can now buy out of vending machines, a German company is building a vending machine that dispenses gold. Put in enough money and it will spit out 1, 5, and 10-gram gold pieces. It also sells Canadian Maple Leafs and South African Krugerrands coins. The machines will of course be armored for security and they'll even be tested with explosives.
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Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS has become a highly anticipated release after its E3 demos. The puzzle + action game is open-ended with a huge vocabulary of words that you can write in to incorporate within each scene. To build the game dictionary of objects, game developer developer 5th Cell had five people spend six months plowing thru reference materials including dictionaries, Wikipedia, and encyclopedias. But will we be able to kill a dragon with our bare hands? I must be patient until the "early fall" release date.
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Tuesday, June 16, 2009

I've unintentionally ended up in several Virgin Megastores in different states and Vancouver, Canada. I didn't find much difference between them and Tower Records. At peak there were 23 in the U.S. but they have all closed down, with the Union Square location in New York ceasing operations a few days ago. Tower Records has been out of the storefront business since 2006. Borders and Barnes & Noble still sell CDs but the bookstore model is looking just as grim. Best Buy and mainstream stores like Target and Walmart will hold out for a while. But you're likely sitting in front of the best remaining place to browse and buy from a full catalog of music: the Internet. And if you need the social aspect, you'll need to recreate that yourself or with the help of a cafe, club, your living room, or favorite online haunt.
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La Poste, France's postal service, commemorated the 400th anniversary of the introduction of chocolate to France with a set of special stamps. The sheet looks like a chocolate bar, foil included, with a chocolate scent too. Each stamp depicts a scene from chocolate history. Chocolate arrived in Bayonne, France (also birthplace of the bayonet) in 1609 with Jewish immigrants. In 2001 Switzerland issued a similar stamp set.
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Opera is actually popular, in San Francisco anyway. 27,000 people attended the free simulcast of "Tosca" at AT&T Park (home of the S.F. Giants). The audience watched the San Francisco Opera performance on the scoreboard screen, setting the appropriate tone first by singing the national anthem.
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Japan's pearl industry faces several difficulties on top of the recession. China is turning out pearls of similar size for much less money and has 50 times the production capacity. South Sea and Tahitian pearls are still in competition, often with bigger sizes and similar quality. And pearl necklaces are no longer mandatory purchases for sweet sixteen, weddings, and graduations. Pearl growers in Wagu, Japan are starting to leave the business, unable to maintain profits with prices dropping by half.
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Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Matte nail polish is back. Nail polish that is completely shine-free, like, well, like when you put Wite-Out on your nails because you're that bored. I forget when this trend was last "in", but OPI has a matte nail polish line out. ManGlaze has been marketing unshiny men's nail polish for a little while. Knock Out Cosmetics has a "flatte" line of polish (the pink version is descriptively called Calamine). And Zoya has a limited edition of MatteVelvet colors. I'll stick to the shiny and leave the matte for the walls.
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The apple folks are happy. No not that Apple. NBC's "Inside the Obama White House" showed the bowls full of apples that are placed around the executive offices to promote healthy snacking. The program also happens to show bowls of M&Ms and the gift boxes of official White House M&Ms (red, white, & blue with the President's signature, here's a photo of Bush's), not to mention the Obama burger run, but, hey, at least there was a shot of the President actually eating one of those apples.
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Monday, June 08, 2009

Smooth Owl's Clover isn't rare in California, but it hadn't been seen in San Francisco's Presidio since 1917. Staffers searching for seeds came across the yellow flowered plant in a remote area. The theory is that a water main break caused dormant seeds to come to life. Other wildflowers thought to be long vanished from the Presidio landscape have also made a surprising comeback.
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23 year old Josh Lipsky asked to be on the advance team for President Obama's visit to Buchenwald hoping to fill in some holes in his family history. Lipsky's grandfather, Samuel Smulowitz, met his wife-to-be at a labor camp but they were separated when he was sent to Buchenwald. With help from the Buchenwald guides, Lipsky retraced his grandfather's steps, stood in the cellar under the kitchen where he worked, and held a check-in slip bearing his signature. Lipsky's grandmother survived to liberation and searched for Smulowitz, eventually finding him in Munich. They married, moved to the United States, and had three children, one of them Lipsky's mother.
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Thursday, June 04, 2009

Valeriy Palnchuk, facilities engineer at the Space Needle, says his most difficult task was replacing the airplane-warning light at the top when it went out during the night. In his words: "The beacon is at the very top [605 feet] and sits inside a disk. It's like a big wok. I hook up at the bottom, go through all the lights, then, at the top of the mast, I have to pull myself up about 8 feet higher to be in the 'nest' and change the bulb." But he enjoys his job, especially walking "the halo," the ring around the observation deck. Many tourists have taken his photo out there.
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Among metal sculptor Don Carlson's clever creations are working barbecues shaped like toothy monsters and aliens. He also makes benches out of compressor tanks.
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Tuesday, June 02, 2009

I didn't take much notice of Seattle's King Street Station when I picked up friends arriving on Amtrak. It was just another run down, neglected train station with little glory left after "modernizing" renovations hid much of the circa 1905 ornate interior. But Seattle has managed to gather up funds to restore King Street Station and various sources are contributing to the project such as Amtrak and Sound Transit. Its 242 foot clock tower, modeled after Venice's Campanile di San Marco, is functional again with the help of local clock hobbyists. The ornate ceiling will be revealed after years behind suspended tiles. A grand staircase will be restored. And, most importantly, King Street Station will continue to serve as a critical public transportation hub. U.W. has a photo from 1943 of the then busy waiting room.
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18 year old Shehade Shelaldeh has his own violin repair shop in the West Bank where there has been a growing interest in classical music. Ramzi Aburedwan, a violist who runs a music center for Palestinian children, encouraged Shelaldeh, who lived next door to the center, to learn the trade. Shelaldeh spent 3 months apprenticing in Italy and also received lessons from visiting European luthiers. He's still got plenty to learn and he's hoping to attend Newark College's violin-making program, but for now he's keeping the students' instruments in shape, for a musical escape from the politics that surround them.
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Monday, June 01, 2009

Cranium, the Seattle company that brought us a multi-faceted game of the same name, was purchased by Hasbro in early 2008. The resulting absorption of the company is now complete with only 8 of the 80 employees at time of acquisition staying with Hasbro. The Seattle office closed on Friday. In 2006 The Seattle Times took readers inside the fun-loving company culture, revealing that they knew of 6 men who have proposed using Cranium, some with custom game cards provided by the company. With funky job titles (the two founders went by Grand Poo Bah and Chief Noodler), an understanding of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, and a new approach to sell their product first in Starbucks and bookstores, the company mixed fun and smarts in their quest to create games where "Everyone Can Shine."
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New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority maintains nesting boxes for peregrine falcons on area bridge towers and monitors them for activity. Five chicks have hatched in the past few weeks in their temporary homes stop the Verrazano-Narrows, Throgs Neck and Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridges. They'll fly off before July.
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