At Pike Place Market

This guy was waiting patiently


As was this guy


And this guy



These two guys were rocking out as "Raw Corn"



These two guys were discussing health care.

Sustainable Bellevue

Sustainable Bellevue has been launched! Find it here,

live and pulsating!

This project is a SCALLOPS(Sustainable Communities All Over Puget Sound) whose founder, Vic Opperman, I referred to in my blog last year here

Vic continues to be an inspiration to us, braving traffic to visit us in the wilds of Bellevue a few weeks ago. The result: we now have a brand new website and a sense of purpose: To create community projects that reflect our passion for the environment.

Click here for an overview of SCALLOPS whose mission is "driving sustainable change through community by community organizing". We've got big plans and high hopes. Join us and stay tuned!!

Imagine a Wall

Imagine your outdoor wall, or a public wall, transformed by vertical gardening.



Check this out from

Vertical gardens
and this from
Rowdy Kittens"Social Change through Simple Living"

and these images from the master, French botanist Patrick Blanc:






The beauty of these is how little of the urban space they take up.
Here's how to make your own
mur vegetal

Ladybower Plughole on Video!

Good old Youtube actually has a video of Ladybower Plughole in Derbyshire doing its thing!


For my original post on Ladybower, click here

Thank you Starbucks

I checked out this press conference held near the original Starbuck's in Pike Place Market at Victor Steinbrueck Park. Just a handful of folks, including a number of police officers, and a whole lot of reporters/photographers to see the heads of Million Moms March, Washington Ceasefire and Brady Campaign announce their boycott of Starbuck's. And what do you know? I made it into a video on the PI Blog this week! click here to see me moving rather efficiently in the background starting at the 54-second mark.

Unlike Peet's Coffee and California Pizza Kitchen, Starbuck's has said that they will allow customers to openly carry firearms at their cafes. You have to pity the poor barista who doesn't get that coffee order just right. Why would anyone want to openly carry a gun into a restaurant or cafe? It makes no sense to me.


Thank you Starbucks

Renton 7 miles, Issaquah 5

We were taking a Sunday drive to Issaquah along the back road between Squak and Cougar Mountains when we caught sight of the sprawling home of Hillside Antiques. Let's just say we never made it to Issaquah. Once we made our way through the statuary, tools, bits of machinery, farm implements and neverending racks of horseshoes rusting happily in the pale sunshine we were invited inside to feast on rooms of ephemera, some of it unbelievably ancient, which John and his aged mother share their lives with: African masks, Indian trading beads, arrowheads, stuffed grizzlies, pheasants and so much more. Drawers and chests bursting with treasure.
Be sure to click on each photo for the full junk-overload effect.

My Favorite Video (This Week)

that sticks and stones should fall

You must check out"another village unvanishes"here at Pruned.




About twenty years ago, we were driving between puddles along narrow roads through charming villages in the Derbyshire Peaks District, dodging persistent rain and seeking sustenance at any open pub we could find when I asked about the large body of water which appeared and reappeared through the rain-spattered windows. Ladybower Reservoir. Two medieval villages drowned in the 60s for Ladybower Dam. If you look through the water you can see the church spires. Got out, couldn't see anything for the rain, got back in the car and spent the next hour or so in front of a fire nursing a pint and a cold Bakewell tart. I'd have preferred a steaming hot plate of bangers and mash, but we were in Bakewell, and one eats Bakewell tarts in Bakewell.

I've never been able to wrest the image of drowned spires, hoping one day to go back and see them.

Now, it turns out, with global warming, I may have my way. Drowned villages in the Andes are starting to turn up, and a "vanished" medieval village reappeared


above Barcelona during a terrible drought in 2008.




Read about the lost villages of Ladybower Reservoir here

Ladybower Plug Hole. Every reservoir should have one.

The latest from Megan in Fayetteville: Sometimes
Well, sometimes...the birds sing sweetly. Miss Chapman's had a great week as you can see
here on her studio blog


Her work made me want to go back and look at watercolor studies by Turner and Constable but my 15 minutes of searching turned up only Sunrise with Seamonsters, which isn't what I had in mind but is quite beautiful nonetheless.

For more of Megan, click
here


Note to self: find online museum image archives in spare time.