The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,500 times in 2010. That’s about 8 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 47 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 199 posts. There were 334 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 146mb. That’s about 6 pictures per week.
The busiest day of the year was October 17th with 40 views. The most popular post that day was Rocking out with Mike McCready.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were ifreestores.com, facebook.com, en.wordpress.com, homercat.blogspot.com, and mariaozawa2u.blogspot.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for kim virant, mike mccready, mike mccready wife, kristen ward, and aztec dancers.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
This year on Museum Day, September 25, I decided to check out the Museum of History & Industry(MOHAI). Amazingly enough, I had not been to MOHAI before, even though it’s current location is a short distance from me, just across the Montlake Bridge from Husky Stadium in the U District. The Smithsonian’s Museum Day provides a printable ticket for free admission to the museum of your choice (for up to two people), so it seemed like the perfect time to check it out.
Carroll’s Clock
Greeting you at the entrance of MOHAI is the old Carroll’s jewelry store clock, which seems out of place in MOHAI’s park like setting. It is not out of time, however, at least not literally. There was a clock repairman performing maintenance when I got there.
Great Seattle Fire
The Great Seattle Fire on June 6, 1889 burned down 32 city blocks according to the MOHAI sign. One of those epic events that changed the city. All because a glue pot boiled over in a carpenter’s shop.
This glue pot:
Glue Pot
Wow! This is it? This little pot filled with glue boiling over and much of the city was gone.
One exhibit I couldn’t photograph (because there was a sign asking me not to) was the visiting Women’s Votes, Women’s Voices exhibit from the Washington State Historical Society. I was really impressed how progressive Washington State has always been on women voting and other equal rights measures. In addition to being the 5th state to give women the right to vote in 1910; twice – in 1883 and 1887 – the Washington Territorial Legislature gave women the vote, only to have the Territorial Supreme Court stike it down. An equal pay law in 1943!
Hey, wait! What’s the Lincoln Toe Truck doing in here? I miss going by it on Fairview on the bus. . .
Lincoln Toe Truck
. . . and I guess now the Lusty Lady sign is officially history. . .
Lusty Lady Sign
. . . of course, we all miss the wild & humorous Lusty Lady signs. I know. It’s a family museum. Actually, those real signs were across the street from the Seattle Art Museum, often with long lines of school kids on field trips, though. Hopefully that wasn’t all they remembered when they got back to class!
Sometimes WTO seems like really ancient history, in spite of, or maybe because of?, the fact I lived through it.
WTO Turtle Costume
The turtle costumes were great! They got people asking why and learning how the treaty, created for large corporations benefit, knocked down laws to protect sea turtles.
Of course, WTO wasn’t Seattle’s first major protest that shut down downtown. In 1919 the Unions were also out for the Seattle General Strike.
A dire warning from The Seattle Star newspaper:
Seattle General Strike Headline
Another epic part of American history, including Seattle’s, was the Great Depression. A photograph of Seattle’s Hooverville, stretching out in the current SODO neighborhood where there are now two sports stadiums is at MOHAI.
Seattle’s Hooverville
It was kind of jarring to walk by Seattle’s current Nickelsville tent city on the way home.
Nickelsville
We seem to be going backwards. While I’m glad at news from this week’s Real Change newspaper that Nickelsville may soon have a permanent location, we really need housing (and living wage jobs) for all.
One of my favorite exhibits were the ship mastheads:
Ship Mastheads
I hadn’t realized there were ones of men as well as women. Wonder if that’s where the expression “like ships passing in the night” comes from?
History is really on the move with MOHAI, because MOHAI is moving. Evidently the planned I-520 expansion for the Evergreen Point Floating bridge is displacing it from it’s current beautiful, but obscure, location; and it’s going to be moving into the old Naval Reserve Armory building on South Lake Union.
Wait! Is that a picture of Pearl Jam I see? Well, at least it’s under “History is Relevant”!
Old Armory/Future MOHAI
It will be a great location for the museum. I checked out the new Lake Union Park that’s around the old armory building following an Sunday afternoon Amnesty International planning meeting at the Westlake Ave. Uptown Espresso.
There’s more history behind the armory building, with the Northwest Seaport Maritime Heritage Center and their historic fleet, including the 1889 Arthur Foss Tug, which they let you wander around on (and have a donation box, suggesting $1 a person):
OK – I’m way behind again, but there was too much good music at Bumbershoot not to get around to it. I had an incredible amount of fun on my $22 economy ticket. Yeah, I do wonder what it would have been like if I sprung for the full ticket and caught some Bob Dylan as well as Solomon Burke and Ozomatli. That was just it though. They scheduled some great music at the same time, and I wasn’t sure if I would have made it anyways, and it would have been $18 more, on my very small budget.
Bumbershoot Banner
So, I didn’t decide for sure which ticket to get until a few days before (and actually just before they announced the full tickets for the mainstage that day were sold out). I figured it would be easier if I bought in advance and they held it at will call. Wow was I wrong!
I built a little time in, and even with the bus being late, I as there an hour before Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs were due to take the stage at the Mural Amphitheater early Saturday afternoon. The sun was now shining, while earlier it was raining. . .and. . . the Will Call line was a couple blocks long and slowly moving on the Mercer Street side of Seattle Center. As a half hour, 45 minutes went by it was starting to look rather grim.
Did I mention that Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs were one of the main reasons I bought a Saturday ticket and I was eagerly looking forward to hearing them play with the new line up, even before the rumors that Mike McCready of Pearl Jam would be joining them for a few songs? Oh, yes, I even blogged a rave about that, and in a timely manner (which, as you know, is relatively rare for me).
I finally got to up the will call window and got my ticket less than 10 minutes before they were due to hit the stage, and while I was trying to dash back to the entrance near the EMP (OK, I am not in dashable shape), I did not think I would make it in time. I got there, though, just before they started!
OK, now I know Bumbershoot has apologized and hopefully got Will Call right for the next two days of the festival, but. . .as I rushed by the ticket sales at the gate near EMP, I realized I would have had no line to wait in if I had waited and bought my ticket there. . .
Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs were awesome! Even before first Carrie Akre, then Mike McCready joined them.
Here they are with Mike for Wolves in Disguise, the first of two videos I took:
and All Alone in This Together, their closing number:
Beautiful!
I wandered around some before heading back to the Mural for The Maldives, finally finding the traveling hot shop from the Museum of Glass, but without enough time to check it out, yet. Also ran into Amnesty friends, with their children. I do want to give Bumbershoot praise on this one – letting children in free with their parents on the economy ticket! Great idea.
Mayor Mike McGinn introduced The Maldives (which was kind of cool). Here they are with Blood on the Highway at Bumbershoot, video from Tacoma Rock City:
Then it was time for some old time soul and funk with Wheedle’s Groove a super band composed of members of at least 6 or 7 of Seattle’s biggest soul band from the 1960s & 70s. They came together for a documentary, which will be showing soon on PBS, and are still playing gigs around Seattle. It was great seeing an all generation audience grooving on them at Bumbershoot!
Here’s my video of (Stop) Losing Your Chances (and the audio is better than the video on this one):
With no break again, it was back to the Mural Amphiteater for Justin Townes Earle.
Justin Townes Earle
Justin and his band were in fine form! I had not seen Justin before, and what surpised me was that he went in the opposite direction from his famous dad, Steve Earle, than I expected. I figured he’d throw in something “young” like indie music or hip hop; but instead he went back to the country roots with a depression era sound (which seems to be coming back in style these days).
Here’s Justin Townes Earle with Mama’s Eyesfrom KEXP‘s Music Lounge broadcast earlier that day:
It’s a beautiful song, and I don’t mean any disloyalty to his father, who I’m also a fan of. I know it’s also an ironic song, in light of Justin’s own recent struggles with addiction, but he’s the first to admit, and in the song itself, that he’s following too closely in his dad’s footsteps that he’s so critical of.
On the other hand, at my age, I’m starting to have a different perspective. First, you start realizing your parents did the best they could , based on their own parenting and childhood, as well as whatever else was going on in their lives and causing stress. Often trying to do better. Then you look at their parents and their lives. . . Then you start realizing your children, or the children of your contemporaries (for those of us who have none of their own), are complaining about their parents; while already starting to make some of the same or different mistakes themselves, with their kids. . .
Museum of Glass Mobile Hot Shop
After that, it was time for some wandering, and I finally searched out the mobile Museum of Glass hot shop that was happening throughout the weekend. Of course, they lacked the groovy giant cooling tower of the actual hot shop down in Tacoma, but just like there, you get to watch the glass artists create their pieces from start to finish.
Museum of Glass Mobile Hot Shop
I wasn’t sure which band I wanted to see next, but had several possibilities. I decided to head over to the EMP and start there. On the way, and nearby, I caught some of This Providence. They were good, and verrry young.
Here they are at Bumbershoot with Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, video by shutterbugTrin:
I headed over to the EMP’s Sky Church to check out See Me River.
See Me River
They sounded really good, and were really intense.
Here they are with their song Ed Jackson at The Tractor Tavern last year:
As I left the EMP, I caught the Circus Una Motorcycle Thrill Show right outside:
Circus Una Motorcycle Thrill Show
Then I headed back to the Mural Amphitheater to see Solomon Burke, in what I just realized was his last U.S. performance. He died October 10, while on tour in Amsterdam.
Solomon Burke
They darkened the stage lights to bring him on stage in his wheelchair, and he performed on a throne, the man and his voice still majestic. He had a bucket of roses he had assistants pass out to women in the audience.
Here’s a clip toward the end of his set by SMI TV, ending, appropriately enough, with When the Saints Come Marching In:
Wow!
I ended the evening with Ozomatli, the band that made Seattle dance! I was realizing I’m terribly out of shape and was having a hard time keeping up.
Here they are with Malagasy Shock, video by satherp5 (and the band itself has such tremendous energy!):
They brought children up toward the end as well, who were dancing all around the stage with them.
Ozomatli
I headed home, having really gotten my money’s worth out of my economy ticket (and hearing mixed reviews about Bob Dylan, who I’m not sure if I would have caught even with the full price ticket, between Solomon Burke and Ozomatli).
I finally visited the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum (EMP/SFM) last Thursday, continuing my free tour of museums. I was a little too early for the Taking Aim rock and roll photo exhibit which opened Saturday, though.
I’m not sure how I resisted it so far. It’s not like I haven’t walked by the wavy, smashed guitar/giant bug crawling over the Sci Fi collage, Paul Allen funded extravaganza on my way into Seattle Center many times. . .
The EMP/SFM is free on first Thursdays from 5 – 8 pm, so I headed over after work, following the monorail line through Belltown (and stopping to snap pictures as I went).
After I checked my backpack (not required, but mine is heavy, coming from work), and checking photo policies (OK without flash), first I checked out the robot in the lobby. Which way to go next? I could have either started out with Sci Fi Museum or headed up to the EMP where a bluegrass band was playing.
Geek that I am, I headed to the Sci Fi Museum. The Captain’s chair was beckoning. Oh, yes, Captain Kirk’s seat and Kirk and Spock’s uniforms. Memories of my childhood now looking antique and on display in a museum.
Yes, that’s right, I saw them in their first run (but I had to be in my pajamas first)! Seems like it was yesterday. . .
I was especially shocked to see how bulky and clumsy the original Star Trek tricorder and communicator were. The cell phone in my pocket (free, with contract renewal) is considerably more sophisticated. . .
Of course there’s more than Star Trek, with other tv series & film memorabilia, and sci fi books and magazines.
Oh, cool! Another blast from the past of my childhood – The Jetsons’ world in 3d. . .
Just perfect for being in the shadow of the Space Needle. . . but, wait. . . it morphs into the darker worlds of Bladerunner and The Matrix. . . What happened to our future?
Then there’s this tripping wormhole appearing on the floor as part of the current Gelatine Lux glass art installation.
Before heading over to check out the rock and roll half of the museum, I looked for the restrooms. . .
So wonderfully geeky, yet so perfectly the Seattle way of inclusion. . . We don’t want female robots confused on which one to go in. : )
OK. Time for some rock and roll! The guitar art installation. . .
Ahh, Jimi! Gone too soon!
I remember hearing Hendrix from my older brother’s bedroom in the 60s. . . Yes, I remember the 60s. It probably helps that I was a kid at the time, and took nothing stronger than Fruit Loops or Cocoa Puffs!
Still, this is trippin’. . . It’s like the Twilight Zone. . . How did my childhood end up in a museum?
One of Jimi’s guitars. a little worse for the wear. . .
Especially check out the videos. There’s a small theater playing his life in 4 or 5 sections.
There’s more, though, including more music from Seattle and the Northwest. Bing Crosby. The Kingsmen. The Ventures. . .
Surf’s up!
That’s not all. . . Wait. . . I’m still in the 60s here. . . Moving into the future. . .
Grunge! Wait. . .Grunge? . . . in . . . a . . . museum already? I just figured out what grunge is about a decade after it happened. I thought I was pretty hip. Nirvana? Pearl Jam? I just went to their show. . .
OK. . . free concert in Magnuson Park. . .That’s history. . .
I’m just happy when the whole band actually plays Seattle (and totally spoiled by all Mike McCready’s charity gigs). . .
Wait. . . Another familiar band. Mudhoney? They’re playing a free gig at Neumosa few nights after this.
OK. They’re not quite so young anymore (who is)? Love the hair thing they got going. . .and Mark’s primal scream!
Still. . . I saw them Monday night. . . and they are not ready to be put in a museum yet. . .
Finally, I checked out the sound lab. There were kids cutting their own records, err. . cd’s? . . .ok, maybe mp3s. . . and drumming on this groovy table!
Farout! . . . but how did my childhood get in a museum?
Mudhoney next. . .bringing me somewhat into the modern era. . .
OK. . . even the band looks confused when I flash peace signs during an anti-war song. . .
I hopped a Sound Transit bus from Seattle, about an hour trip. Going there it was smooth sailing, including using my ORCA pass, which counted my the bus fare amount my monthly Puget Pass on it is good for, then took out 75 cents from my e-purse where I had added $5. I was actually a little confused if it had worked right, but the driver assured me I was fine.
The bus left me off right in front of the Washington State History Museum, and I could see the Glass Art Museum through it’s portal. It was around noon, though, and I was hungry and in need of a restroom. I saw the UW Tacoma campus across the street, and some restaurants, and decided to check out the college first.
I like the campus. A lot of nice looking college buildings, mixed in with old factories done over. Their student commons was in an old mattress factory.
After touring the campus, I had lunch at Taco Del Mar, maybe not the most exciting choice (it’s a local chain), and neither the prices nor the food are as good as they once were; but it was filling. I was kind of shocked this branch no longer sold hard shell tacos, but I had a taco salad in a shell instead.
I headed across the street to my first art stop of the day – Tacoma’s Union Station. I had spied the Chihuly glass art work in the dark through the windows after a Springsteen concert a decade ago and wanted to see it up close this time.
It’s no longer a train station, now there’s a US Courthouse inside, and you have to show your ID to a friendly security guard who asks you what your business was. I think it was pretty obvious I was a tourist, and he even offered that the restrooms were downstairs.
Ah, there’s the Chihuly glass installation right in the middle of the former waiting room, hanging from the dome. There are several other Chihuly pieces there as well, including the windows above the clock at what used to be the side the train stopped at, now the courthouse entrance.
Maybe I should back up for a moment for folks not from the Puget Sound area. Dale Chihuly is a famous glass artist, who is originally from Tacoma (and there wasn’t a museum I went to without at least one piece of his work).
I also went downstairs at Tacoma’s Union Station and checked out their old train memorabilia now in glass cases. This was one of my favorites, from The Tacoma Sunday Ledger, April 30, 1911, with a front page headline on the opening of the new Union Station, which a cartoonist has fashioned as a lady’s hat.
I went next to the Tacoma Art Museum, just a couple blocks down the street, which I somehow did not take any pictures of, not even outside (and of course, inside, cameras are forbidden). The Tacoma Art Museum is free all day, from 10 am to 8 pm on first Thursdays. They have some Chihuly art (the most inside of any of the museums), and current exhibits include Northwest Art and Impressionism.
It was almost 2 pm by then, and time for free admission at the Washington State History Museum to begin. First, I wanted to check out the Chihuly Bridge of Glass and the outside of the Museum of Glass in daylight, as free admission there started at 5 pm.
The Chihuly Bridge of Glass is a pedestrian overpass running from behind the Washington State Art Museum and Union Station across the freeway to the Museum of Glass near the old Albers Mill (now converted to lofts and an art gallery).
As you head across from the Pacific Ave. side, look up! Chihuly glass creations seemingly strewn about in a clear glass enclosure.
Then you walk by purple crystal installations. . .
Then display cases full of more intricate Chihuly creations. Here’s one up close.
The exhibit included displays on the first encounters between the Native Americans and European Americans; including a very sad one of voiced narrating “The Big Sick” they encountered diseases like small pox, the flue and measles from the white people they had no resistance to.
History continued to literally talk to me as I went through a general store from the 1800s full of customers and those who worked there, who you can push a button to ask each of them questions about their lives. Then a train where the passengers started talking to each other as you walked up to them – a family and then a couple immigrants from Scandinavia.
At one point I walked right into the middle of a good natured debate between two residents of Seattle’s Hooverville during the Great Depression. There was quite a bit about the Wobblies (IWW), including Seattle’s General Strike of 1919. Yep, 80 years before WTO we had workers shutting the city down to protest for workers’ rights and justice.
After leaving the Washington History Museum, I decided to wander around a bit while it was still daylight. I walked through the UW Tacoma Campus and up the hill just to check out a little more of the area.
Tracks run through the campus, although I don’t know if trains roll down them anymore.
I went to Cutters Point Coffee on Pacific Avenue next and had coffee and a cookie, looking toward the Glass Art Museum, my next destination, but now not my last, remembering I had a rendezvous with Sasquatch.
I walked back across the Bridge of Glass and headed down the stairs to the museum entrance just of the Thea Foss Waterway. This sculpture is right in front, and looks pretty at night.
I was really blown away by the exhibit of Native American artist Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire, and Shadows. You can see some of his pieces in the video above and more on his website: http://prestonsingletary.com/ He works so much of his Tlingit heritage into his art, from the designs to the folk lore like raven stealing the sun. Catch it through September 19.
Also very cool is the Kids Design Glass exhibit. All the pieces are from designs drawn from the imagination of kids of all kinds of weird critters, which the Museum’s Hot Shop Team then created. They do have replicas of some of them for sale at the museum store.
Then you can go into the hot shop, and you can watch artists creating glass artwork – heating it in the furnaces, shaping it, blowing it.
You can watch them work live online during museum hours at:
I had a hard time dragging myself away from the hot shop, but I did want to catch Sasquatch. When I got back to the Washington State History Museum, I found I had just missed the lecture, but was directed to the exhibit upstairs. I was fascinated by the recreation of the skull of the thought to be long extinct Gigantopithecus blacki in comparison to the much smaller skulls of a gorilla and man. See this article in the Tacoma News Tribune for a photograph:
The Rainier Beer bigfoot commercials from the 70s? I don’t know about that one. . .
Other icons included a recreated wagon by pioneer Ezra Meeker, ink well from Lewis & Clark, and oh, my, a chunk of “Galloping Gertie”, the original Tacoma Narrows bridge that swayed like an amusement park ride and came crashing down in 1940 shortly after it was built.
Account of the collapse from the Washington DOT website:
Admittedly, there are cheerier icons of Washington, like the Space Needle and Mt. Rainier – a giant painting of it was included, and a World’s Fair poster of the Space Needle.
It was nearly 8 pm and the museum was getting ready to close, so I headed across the street to catch the Sound Transit back. This driver thought I owed money over my Puget Pass, but I explained I had put an extra $5 on my ORCA card. I worried that maybe the Puget Pass wasn’t usable on the Sound Transit system like it used to be. When I got on my regular bus in Seattle, though, it showed the amount over my pass as being $3.50, so it had deducted the 75 cents extra both ways. They still need to work on explaining these cards to both riders and drivers.
I enjoyed my day in Tacoma (and it was nice to get a small vacation in my vacation)!
I finally got to check out the Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway exhibit at the Burke Museum on Thursday night. Fossils and Ray Troll’s artwork – you have to check this out if live in or are coming to Seattle by May 31, and with free First Thursdays, even if you’re broke, there’s no excuse.
Cruisin’ the fossil freeway, by Ray Troll. On view in Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway, December 19, 2009 – May 3, 2010, Burke Museum, Seattle.
The Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway exhibit combines Ray Troll’s artwork with some of the fossils that inspired them, giving a sometimes whimsical look at what they’d look like if they were still roving around.
Ray talks about his artistic process in the video below:
Ray Troll collaborated with paleontologist Kirk Johnson in creating the exhibit and the book by the same title that preceded it. According to the exhibit’s website, the dynamic duo took “5,000-mile road trip through the American West . . . to explore the fossil record.”
Here they are hunting for fossils on the Olympic peninsula in Washington state:
One of the things that really struck me from the exhibit was that these fossils are all around us, often buried in ever deeper layers going back millions of years; of all these animals that once were wandering around like we are amidst plants now long gone as well.
I checked out the rest of the museum as well, including the ongoing Life and Times of Washington State, more fossils and reconstructions of dinosaurs and other species long gone. Even the 10,000 year old mastodon is quite ancient, then there’s a 28 million year old whale (hopefully we won’t make them extinct in our lifetime), and a 140 million year old allosaurus. Wow, that really makes you think how short our time on earth is.
For some reason I was really drawn to the dinosaurs and especially the elasmosaur, a sea creature that must be the inspiration (or maybe grandsire of) the Loch Ness monster.
Here’s a video about a elasmosaur found in Canada from the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta:
There’s a photo of the Burke’s elasmosaur on their blog entry:
Love the periscope looking out at it! I didn’t notice the periscope when I was walking along on the other side, but saw it moving while I was looking at Nessie, er the elasmosaur. . .
Dinosaur highway, by Ray Troll. On view in Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway, December 19, 2009 – May 3, 2010, Burke Museum, Seattle.
Check out the Cruisin’ the Fossil Highway exhibit while you can at the Burke through the end of May. According to the website, it will be traveling nationally after that, maybe cruisin’ to a museum near you!
Ray Troll t-shirts, pins, refrigerator magnets, etc. also available at the Burke. I may have gotten in for free, but I couldn’t resist buying a refrigerator magnet in the design of the first picture on top. No doubt I’ll be back!
Java Colleen's Jitters 