Friday, October 7

East to Ellensburg

Gene and I  fly to Seattle from Newark, then drive 100 miles east to Ellensburg, Washington. Neither of us have been to the Pacific Northwest before. We are astounded by the mountains and valleys, lush with dark green, pointy trees. The mountainsides are splashed with bright red and orange autumn colors.

Ellensburg, known for its Labor Day Rodeo

Truckstoppin’ It

We bunk at the Days Inn on the outskirts of Ellensburg. It is a truck stop. What should we expect for $59 a night? Our choices:  a Best Western for $128 ($128 for a Best Western in Ellensburg, Washington?!) or a variety of bed & breakfasts. We reject B&Bs on principle.

Day's Inn fitness room

Cowboy Dinner

We eat an early dinner  at a BBQ place. The booths are upholstered with laminated cowboy fabric. House specialty: the marionberry tart. What is a marionberry anyway, besides the former mayor of Washington, DC? A shop adjoining the restaurant sells stuffed ponies and rodeo souvenirs.

Gene thought I said "El Car Pool"

Saturday, October 8

Chimposium

Today we go to the Chimposium at Central Washington University. Washoe, Tatu, Dar and Loulis are chimpanzees who live at CHCI, the Chimpanzee and Human Communications Institute. The chimps communicate with each other and with their caregivers in  American Sign Language (ASL).

The Chimposium offered by CHCI acquaints us with the chimp family and the horrors chimpanzees face in the wild and in captivity. We listen to lectures and observe the chimps behind glass. We walk hunched over into the observation area, as instructed. Walking upright is considered displaying and might agitate the chimps.

The graduate student-caregivers teach us the ASL signs for hello, hug-love, friend, sorry and the signs for each of the chimp's names. We are told to smile in a chimp-friendly way with our teeth covered and we are encouraged to use the signs we learned in front of the chimps.

The chimps hardly pay attention to us, except on a couple of occasions. Once, Loulis swings over and boffs the glass with his feet. Loulis spins around in circles in from of the window, a quirk peculiar to him, the caregiver said. Tatu stares directly at me at one point, somewhat unnerving me after I sign "black" to her. "Black", index finger and middle finger swiped across the eyebrows, is Tatu's favorite sign and it also means "cool" to her. She signs "black" back.

The chimps beloved sibling, Moja

Proof that chimpanzees reason like us: Washoe and friends are given Oreos after their sandwiches. Washoe eats hers by unscrewing it, eating the "creme" first.

The Edgewater

Edgewater’s lobby	Edgewater Robo Tree

Sunday, October 9

Quiet on the Western Front

Bombs are supposed to go off in New York subway system today, the newschannel tells us.

Breakfast at Six-Seven Restaurant in the hotel at a table by the windows. I have a dungeness crab and salmon omelet with a blueberry muffin. Gene has dungeness crab-spinach eggs benedict.

View from hotel restaurant

Experience Music Project

We spend a lot of time in the Bob Dylan exhibit. The exhibit coincides with the release of the Dylan DVD set Gene watched all last week. We see film clips that were not included in the DVD set and footage of The Byrds that Gene has never seen before.

We move quickly through the permanent Jimi Hendrix exhibit. We see the same orange jumpsuit that we saw at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.

The design of the Museum building seems funky up close, but downright ugly from a block away. Seattle is a town unafraid of funky architecture. Last night we drove past a stacked glass structure, the public library.

Experience Music Project

says Gene:
“Must remember to tell Brian Robson about a mini-exhibit of The Band at EMP: it featured one of Levon's mandolins (a Gibson), the original poster for The Last Waltz concert at Winterland, AND the actual tape machine used at Big Pink to record what would become The Basement Tapes.”

Chez Shea

Dinner at Chez Shea in the Pike Place Market last night. We selected Chez Shea because Frommer’s recommended it, but also because we liked the  homophonic name. Going upstairs in the market building reminds me of Changwon, South Korea where all structures are like office buildings converted to malls.

The restaurant motif is asian-rustic fusion: log beams above, simple clean lines below. Everything we’ve seen in the Seattle area could be hyphenated with rustic. The character of Seattle itself is fused, mountains with forest.

The meal is four courses:  a tart, butternut-squash soup, ahi tuna rolled in thin cucumber strips and wild salmon. Gene has german chocolate tart and I have a pecan spice cake for dessert. We turn on to Lemongrass soda. We will search for some in the market tomorrow.

Monday, October 10

All quiet in New York

Subways intact.

Seattle Pike Place Market

Pike Place Fish Market

I mean to return to the cherry shop and to the garlic shop to buy some treats, but I wander far from there over the course of the day.

The original Starbucks

seattle’s library of the future

Seattle Public Library

Seattle Public Library

The fifth floor has hundreds of Internet stations. The stations are nearly full, two hundred people sitting shoulder to shoulder, no one uttering a word. I sit on a modular red chair and watch the rain pounding the blue steel framed wall of windows.

I walk the spiral bookcase floors. The floors are at a slight incline. As I walk the perimeter, stepping on the Dewey-decimal markers on the floor, I rise from the sixth to the tenth floor. On the eighth floor, I pass two music practice rooms with pianists practicing in each. On every floor, I pass computer stations and seating areas where visitors can plug in. The Seattle Library illustrates how high tech and traditional libraries can fuse. Before seeing this, I thought libraries might be a relic of the past.v