Lined up for a bowl of warm oatmeal. Simone, Kaya, McKinley, Liam. Simone and Cora after the first night at Boardman lake.
Troopers, Naomi and Simone, hiking in.
Naomi holding forth on the stairs. No hands as they are busy downing milk and twisting locks.
David, Naomi and John enjoying the island waters.
Hiking in Mazama with Ben and Margit.
Simone and Naomi are good friend’s with Brody and love to visit with him in Sun Valley.
Brody invited Simone over for a tea party and he made mint tea and cookies. He had it all planned out. There was a table set with the miniature tea pot, cups and plates and a vase with a flower in it.
The only thing he didn’t count on was that his new brother Finn might
have a smelly diaper just when he was introducing Simone to him.
Jennifer makes sure Simone doesn’t lose hold of baby Finn.
Playing on the giant bear.
Do you know any artists whose medium is plants?
Kim Turos, who recently moved to Seattle, works in a vernacular of organic media. Gnarly old roots hang from the 70 foot ceiling of her warehouse studio. They look like grand synaptic nerves sending messages from one giant bulbous form to another.
David, Simone, Naomi and I stopped by to see Kim and her husband John Gilleland recently.
Simone set about watering the plants in what could easily be called an industrial cathedral as the light on the walls was causing me to sing choral music.
There were nearly 50 giant pots needing H2O.
This could take a long time…best we open some wine and enjoy the cathedral while the watering ensues.
Kim is also a film-maker and on a recent sailing trip we all took up to the San Juan islands, she spent hours leaning over the railing with her movie camera aimed at the frothy wake beside the 50 ft sail boat. She opened up her laptop and showed us how she wove the frothy patterns in the wake into a final movie of dancers on a set of wild bulbous plants.
Cozy Naomi, in her blue onesie, is taking in the industrial cathedral. Kim has a cherry picker that she uses to hang her works from the ultra high ceiling. It is a fun for the girls to play on it and it is the only way to reach some of the plants that need watering. 
Simone finishes up the last palm tree with help from John. Now we all migrating to the International District for dinner.
Simone and Naomi visited the exhibit of Danish Iceland artist Olafur Eliasson at MOMA.
There was a smoky room, a foggy room, a round room that changed colors, and finally, a room of boxy mirrors. Large rooms. Naomi and Simone seemed relatively tiny, running around in them. This enormous scale was a theme on this last trip to NYC, so much of the art we saw was huge. (Robert Therrien’s plate and bowls.)
Our favorite exhibit was “Who’s afraid of Jasper Johns” at the Tony Shafrazi gallery.
The gallery walls were covered in wallpaper made from the previous exhibit. Then, new art was mounted on top of it. It was hard to tell what was real and what was wallpaper.
An image of a guard stood next to a live guard.
The artist has transformed the flight of stairs into the Gallery. As you entered from West 26th street, what you saw was a waterfall. The girls got in it immediately, “Let’s play in the water!” as it was 100 degrees outside.
Back in Seattle, Naomi and Simone had a great time at the Lawrimore Project. Scott Lawrimore was showing a Susan Robb exhibit called “The Challenge That Nature Provides.” Simone sang her heart out in the private Karaoke booth and was delighted that she was going to be able to cook (char) marshmallows on the Digester’s fire.
Methane fuels The Digester’s fire. And that methane comes from the art dealer’s daily “waste.” So, each day it must be re-charged with fresh fuel. The girls laughed their hearts out over that. Naomi suggested Scott keep a bag of prunes handy.
A gutsy hearth sculpture provocative for pondering and useful for toasting marshmellows.
Simone’s Pre-School class made fishing poles and today they added hooks and sinkers, squirmy live worms (or bright salmon eggs) and went fishing at twin ponds. The beautiful ponds are a short hike from the school. The weeping willows along the banks made hairy caves to play in. Last year we heard that they caught a fish and cooked it right there. This year, the feast was hot dogs and smores.
It turns out that today is more than just Fishing Day. It is also “Crazy hair day” and the kids take those instructions seriously. Eliza volcano hairdo hides a water bottle. If you look closely at the photos you’ll see spray paint on a shorn scalp (Daniel) or pink hair (Claire) or silly pony tails (Ruby, Evelyn & Simone) or red hair (Zane).
12 preschoolers, 12 buddies and 3 teachers
In the back of the classroom picture you can see a fish tank. Right before we left on the fishing expedition, Simone told Dorothy Shark-bait, the fish that lives in the classroom fish tank, “Don’t worry Dorothy, I’ll bring you a worm, we have more than enough bait. There will be worms left over.” The picture also shows the planets hanging from Teacher Judith’s classroom ceiling. A few days after this event, the same ceiling was strung with a gray whale, an orca and a blue whale amid a massive bloom (or swarm) of jelly fish. All of which, the kids made. When they aren’t acting out their studies, they are building them. It is a creative place.
We hardly ever seem to be able to obey the proper cart etiquette.
The girl enjoying themselves in the cart at Home Depot. They love building projects. At least for the fist 10 minutes. Naomi gets sidetracked with play tools and deep ito her own building projects. Simone tends to jump in with fortifying snacks, which is why the bookshelf has cherrios smashed inside the slats.
Have you ever toasted marshmallows at an art gallery? When Naomi and Simone walked into the Lawrimore Project, they discovered a fire burning in the middle of the floor.
Methane fuels The Digester’s fire. And that methane comes from the art dealer’s daily “waste.” So, each day it must be re-charged with fresh fuel. The girls laughed their hearts out over that. Naomi suggested Scott keep a bag of prunes handy.
Have you ever used a Karaoke booth at an art gallery? Another work by Susan Robb. We all sang our hearts out in the private Karaoke booth.
What an incredible exhibit!
If you look at the window behind Simone you will see, in the lower right, the seam for the door to the Western Bridge museum. Bill & Ruth True created the Western Bridge in 2004 to exhibit contemporary art. It is located in South Seattle at 3412 4th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98134.
Simone was inspired to do a chalk drawing of her own outside the museum after seeing the exhibit, “You Complete Me.” Below are large photographs viewed with 3-D glasses.
The girls hooted and hollered through Switzerland artist, Andres Zybach’s yellow passageway. As they stomped down the ribs of the tunnel, the hydraulic system was activated, creating gurgling noises and sending paint into tubes which spew color down the gallery walls across the room.
The last image is of a grey bouncy house by artists’ Eli Hansen & Oscar Tuazon. A la ”a thinking room” that had the girls climbing the walls.
I like this article by Valerie Tarico about the manufacturing of controversy about evolution!
The article points out that we have seen this insane manufacturing of controversy (manufactroversy) in the past.
“The fact is, there is no scientific controversy about evolution, just like there is no scientific controversy about whether tobacco causes lung cancer or whether human activity causes global warming. However, in all three examples, someone powerful and well established loses out when and if the scientific mountain of evidence becomes common knowledge and widely accepted. “
The “anti-science” forces (I’m not sure what else to call them) created a movie called EXPELLED about creationism. They ardently say they aren’t creationist, they just believe in intelligent design and then they ardently say they are creationists and that intelligent design is creationism. Logic is not a strong point in this movie. The film is produced by Premise Media who previously brought us the ultra violent, Passion of the Christ. How in the world did people get so easy to fool? Paul Abrams takes a look at the movie and says Blashemy! Paul reminds us that science is indifferent to our preferences, it is what it is. Humankind ignores that reality at its peril.
The National Center for Science Education put together a comprehensive website about the crazy movie.
It is 5:45pm on a gorgeous day. Simone, Naomi and I are in the Chinese Room. Simone is finishing her afternoon nap in the double wide stroller. We have circumnavigated Seattle’s business district with stops at the library, Sculpture park and Aquarium.
Naomi is awake and happily checking out the carved Chinese dogs and the other relics in the room. David finished a long work day in the office and has come up to join us. What a lovely golden finish to what had been a heavenly day “out and about” the city.
We are eagerly watching the development of the big hole in front of City Hall as we hear that a park with a jungle gym will go in alongside offices and housing. We’d love a place to climb and swing downtown! Here is the block (Cherry, 4th, James and 3rd) where that is hopefully in progress.
On Saturday morning we headed North to Simone’s ski class at Snoqualmie. En route Simone asked me to turn on the radio. So I did and “Stop in the Name of Love” by Diana Ross came on. Simone said, “That was just the song I wanted.” I was laughing for 5 miles. Later we found a talk show on the radio about fixing things. They pointed out that many things today are created with one use (or a particular lifespan) in mind. The hair dryer doesn’t open, though to fix it, one would simply replace a fuse. Most toasters today don’t have crumb trays, so there is no way to scrape the heating elements as we did in the past when they started getting rusty. One caller into the fix-it show wanted to repair his “reputation” which has us all in stitches as the fix-it team took that on.
They advised that “he stay at the table” keep talking to the folks who had written him off and keep doing his best to hold up his side of the bargain in life whenever he had an “opportunity” to do so. Simone was quietly listening to all this. In time, they assured him, his good name would be restored. “What is a good name?” Simone said. “I don’t like my name. Can I change it to Naomi? That is a good name for me.” The radio show went on…The fix-it hosts warned the man with the tarnished reputation not to be sensitive to what other folks say as they pointed out that 95% of what other people say is about them and that he should establish his own criteria of success. At this point Simone piped in again. She liked the idea that perhaps NOT listening was good and she said, “I’m tired of having to listen to other people and do what they say…and Mom they just said that listening to other people is a bad idea. Did you hear that Mom? It was on the radio.” Hard for me to stop laughing long enough to respond.
As we drove North to snow country, I found myself thinking back to a conversation from the day before with Virginia senatorial candidate, Governor Mark Warner. I asked him if, assuming he gets into office, he and his fellow senatorial pals (the “radical centrists” as he calls them) would propose legislation protecting the rights we now have under Roe versus Wade (along with other bioethics and privacy rights we need) since I feel that we have already lost the courts (5 -4 in the Supreme Court) and much worse than that in the lower courts. Legislation trumps in jurisprudence so this is one way we may restore and protect science and privacy rights going forward. Gov. Warner replied that he thought it might be a Pandora’s Box to start legislating women’s rights. He worried that attempting to do so might open us up for a backlash and the other side might take the opportunity to remove the rights we have today. I believe that as a nation, this is a conversation we need to be brave enough to stay at the table and have. Why do I believe this? Well, in Washington State we haven’t been able to protect the right to purchase “Plan B” at a pharmacy and though we have been in the courts trying to protect our citizens basic rights for years, we are getting shut down. I see legislation as a way to get this out into the open where I believe it will be clear we need to protect the rights of all of our citizens.
Simone is in “Treasure Trails,” the youngest group of skiers who meet every Saturday at Snoqualmie. Katrina, Jake and Logan (also pictured here) are in the more advanced classes. They are part of the “Ripacheeps” “Ice Vipers” and “Aslan’s Toxic Monkeys” and have spent the better part of the past two months skiing deep into the snowy northern woods searching for clues to decipher the Siberian Wolf Code. Last week they located the crown (Logan and Jake are holding it) and the Staff (in Katrina’s arms). Heroes! Next week they will search for the missing jewels that go on the spikes of the crown. The crown comes from a long line of gold bike helmeted Kings and Queens from Siberia…Such finery!
After skiing we headed to Zander and Scott’s birthday party. Our tribe, so to speak, was there in grass skirts and diving gear as it was a surf theme. Our horsing around was powered by Kevin’s scrumptious chocolate ganache birthday cake.
The kids were hyper and wild. Feral even. Here is a video of them jumping on a mattress and racing through a big cardboard box in the basement.
When we got back to the tower, we discovered that Simone’s bicycle had arrived and was in the lobby (Thanks William!) Simone jumped on and took it for a spin on the terrazzo before we headed up the elevator to do a circle around the chinese room’s deck.
Nice height David!
We left the house in the double wide stroller. Simone was working in her easy erase writing book sent from Grandma Patt.
Simone was also in charge of documenting this particular afternoon romp with her camera. 
She pointed out that “We need a picture of the tower, a picture of a train and a picture of the new gate to China town!”
So we set off due south to the International District to see if any of those could be found.
We usually have a list of errands on these afternoon jaunts but we also have a rather lengthly list of favorite places we want to visit and certain urban projects we like to keep an eye on.
One of those urban projects is William Justen’s 1521 Second Avenue building! As you can see it is coming along. The homes have floor to ceiling windows so from the outside all you see is glass. For errands today we had 25 pounds of books (about as much as Simone weighs) to return to the library.
En route Simone did take a few pictures but it wasn’t long before she fell asleep and I took over camera detail.
Simone and I love the bodies climbing the parking garage wall that you see pictured here. We wish our hands and feet could stick to upside down surfaces like that!
The girls take turns sleeping on the walk. When Simone is awake she likes to help push the stroller. When Naomi is awake she likes to stand up in the stroller and so I have to hold her so she doesn’t tumble out…and can’t take any pictures.
Saturday was a fun SNOW day!!!
Simone takes the Treasure Trails Nordic ski class at Snoqualmie Pass while David and I alternate skate skiing the loop and watching Naomi. Our friends Eli and Karel turned us on to the kids program. To sign up or find out more you click here. In these particular pictures it was snowing, but much of the day was warm and sunny.
When we got back to Seattle, David noticed that there was a one man show “7Sins” at the Theatre off Jackson in our neighborhood. (It was our date night.) So we headed over to the Szechuan Noodle House (next to the Green Leaf on 8th) for delicious homemade noodles and dumplings (we watched the making of the dumplings at the table next to ours as we ate) and then we wandered down the street to for a fresh fruit bubble tea before the performance. The ID (International District) is having a Renaissance. New condos, restaurants, bubble tea stands, a creperie, a newly renovated Wing Luke museum and these recent additions are not replacing older businesses, just squeezing in making the neighborhood dense and lively.
James Judd, the performance artist, launched his monologue from the open air Santa Fe Opera house and then to took us 40 floors below Las Vegas to an alien employees-only lunch hall with a snoring air system and sticky floors covered in green disinfectant. We enjoyed it! Here is the Stranger’s blurb:
“7 SINS is a collection of true, fast, and funny stories from the life of writer/comedian James Judd. It chronicles his early ambition to win his 5th Grade book report competition with My Search for Patty Hearst, and his first
job when his working mother paid him to watch The Young and the Restless and then reenact it for her. He relives his varied careers as a forgotten employee of AT&T, where he did nothing for a year, an even shorter-lived career as a dot.com journalist (which led to an insane night with five Chinese billionaires in a Chinese bordello), and as an under-prepared criminal defense attorney representing violent teenage girls, as well as many more strange and always funny stories. “
On Wednesday, Simone said, “I miss Tanner and Kendall.” Tanner lives in Idaho and we haven’t seen her in many months. Kendall lives in Los Angeles but we haven’t seen her in over a year so I was surprised to hear these names come up. Amazing what is ticking inside Simone’s 3 year old noggin! We decided we’d make them each a little movie and let them know how we were feeling. Here is the video for Tanner. Further down in this post …”live from the blue room at The Getty,” is the video for Kendall.
After a day of walking downtown LA, meandering through the dense Farmers Market with the stroller, visiting the Library’s full scale puppet theater, running through the Frank Gehry Concert Hall and then finally… playing at the 9th street park, Simone made an announcement. “I need people to play with that are kids,” she said. So on Thursday, we started the day at Kidspace in Pasadena. What a marvelously creative place! We found great kids there. Simone raced up Kal Banuska’s 40 foot Raindrop tower (pictured above) and Tom Luckey’s Wisteria Climber half a dozen times. Naomi cracked up as the earthquake demo shook the ground beneath her. The museum has a slew of presentations throughout the day and one we particularly liked demanded a bit of audience participation. I’ve included a video of Simone performing the mother mosquito in “Bugs that Suck Blood.”
We finally said goodbye to our new found friends and somehow I got both girls out of Kidspace. (It was a struggle to depart, as the place is fascinating and we didn’t come close to exploring all of it. ) As I was exiting the parking lot, I turned around to see how the girls were doing and discovered that both had fallen asleep. Hmm. Might as well head to The Getty and see if perhaps I can cover some of the sculpture garden during their afternoon naps.
The Getty was for me, what Kidspace was for Simone and Naomi. It was heaven. What grand spaces. What marvelous works. I get wound up by great art. Love the feeling of connection to one another, across centuries, across cultures, the realization that we are here on earth for a lifetime of wondering, struggling, problem solving, playing, caring, aching, creating…
Simone awoke from her nap in in the middle of Bill Viola’s “Emergence” video and just as the skinny naked man rises from the fountain. “What happened to him?” she asked me? “Why are the women crying?” “The film doesn’t tell us.” I said. “Well the women look very sad and the man doesn’t have any clothes on,” she said. We headed to what the Getty calls, The Family Room. It is a small building with six interactive exhibits and plenty of space for baby Naomi to wander through on her own without breaking anything from the 1700′s. In the photo below, we are tying ourselves up with the pretend ropes. These are black foam tubes that you can arrange into various holes in the wall to strap you into a spot. We tied ourselves up and then burst free triumphantly with foam zooming everywhere. Simone was still pretty groggy from her nap.
