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Posts Tagged ‘Seattle’

Master Class

Posted in Food, Seattle, tagged , , , , , on 28 Oct 2014| 10 Comments »

Chuck Mangione’s Signature Hat
at the Smithsonian

My first master class was with Chuck Mangione, jazz composer and flugelhorn player par excellence. He came to my school, sat down with a group of student musicians, and attempted to speak to us about music, as a profession, and as a way of life. When it came time for the Q&A portion, one of the participants asked him, “Why the hat?” Chuck always wore a hat. It was his signature, his trademark, his brand. 

His answer, in those days of personal dignity and privacy, was, “Next question,” which was his polite way of saying, “Don’t be a dick.”

I don’t remember much else from that master class, just Chuck, the hat, the question, and “Don’t be a dick.”

Since then, I’ve participated in many other master classes (mostly from musicians), and each time I strove to get as much as I could from the experience. It’s a rare enough event to be able to sit down with a master artist or craftsman and have a conversation. After that first time, I never wanted to waste the opportunity again.

So, last Sunday, when I had the opportunity to learn from Bruce Naftaly, acclaimed master chef and proprietor of Le Gourmand (formerly a restaurant and now a cooking school), I was determined to learn as much as I could… and not to be a dick. (more…)

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Writing Process Blog Tour – Station Four

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 24 Jun 2014| 6 Comments »

Writing with Pen and PaperWelcome one, welcome all, to the fourth stop on the Writing Process Blog Tour, one of those writerly process-ish bloggy tour-like things that we use as an excuse to talk about our passion: writing.

My name is Kurt, and I’ll be your host for as long as you keep reading.

Thanks to my predecessor, J.Z. Murdock, author of darkness, for the invitation to join the tour.

The premise is simple. At each stop along the tour, the author talks about his/her writing processes, and then hands you off to the next writer in line. (Todd…you ready?)

It’s just four simple questions:

  • What am I working on?
  • How does my work differ from others in its genre?
  • Why do I write what I do?
  • How does my writing process work?

Still here? Good.

Here we go…

(more…)

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Jaybirds and Seahawks

Posted in Culture, Seattle, tagged , , , , , , , on 04 Feb 2014| 2 Comments »

Seattle has its idiosyncrasies. It’s what makes this city unique. It’s what gives the city its specific “feel.”

In general, we don’t use umbrellas. We’re more a head-down-and-face-the-weather sort of town.

In general, we’re polite and courteous. Drop your wallet and chances are someone will help you retrieve it (9 out of 10 times, according to a Reader’s Digest study). We say good morning and thank you to the bus driver. We rarely honk our horns at each other, except for a polite little “bip” when the guy in front hasn’t noticed the light’s turned green.

And, in general, we don’t jaywalk. As evidence of this, I supply a recent video that shows Seahawks fans waiting for the light to turn green before they cross the street to revel in their team’s recent victory over the Broncos.

(more…)

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Conflicted in Seattle

Posted in Seattle, tagged , , , on 19 Dec 2013| 3 Comments »

When it comes to snow, Seattle is conflicted.

We love it. We hate it.

And tomorrow, we’re gonna get it, or so says Cliff Mass, a scholar of weather in the Pacific Northwest.

Snow in Seattle is rare and unpredictable. It’s also a huge pain in the ass, precisely because it is so rare and unpredictable. We don’t have “snow storms” in Seattle; we have “snow events.” Incoming storms are always rain storms that freeze up on arrival. Conditions have to be just so before the white stuff falls, and tomorrow, it looks like a sure thing.

When snow does fall, Seattle takes on a different character. People look up more. Spirits lift. I see more smiles on the faces I pass on the street. Old buildings look newer and new buildings look older, as if the entire city has shifted to some mid-20th century convergence point. New sounds fill the streets–crunching footsteps, creaking tires–while other sounds are muffled.

Snow in Seattle is an excuse. Schools open late or close down for the duration. People “work from home” or head home early “to beat the traffic.” Metro buses chain up, giving us the modern equivalent to sleigh bells as they jangle along their routes. News teams put on their yellow weather jackets and stand on street corners to report, or drive around in cars with dash-cams to show us that yes, indeed, snow is falling in Seattle.

We love it!

Until we don’t.

Snow in Seattle is not all Currier and Ives. We have hills–big hills–and it doesn’t take much snow to make some of them impassable. One favorite spot for news crews is at the foot of Queen Anne Hill looking up the counterbalance, where the snow creates a game of bumper cars on an inclined plane for any driver so foolish as to venture on the slick hillside. Our snowplows, such as they are, only hit the arterials, leaving side streets covered in snow and ice. In serious events, freeway shoulders are littered with vehicles wounded or abandoned. 

By and large, the only Seattleites who drive in the snow are those who don’t know how. Those who do know how to drive in the snow know that the real danger is not the snow. It’s the idiots in 4WD SUVs who are going too fast (because they have 4WD), and so we stay off the roads and let the idiots Darwin it out on the unplowed streets.

Luckily, snow in Seattle is usually short-lived. Whatever falls overnight has melted off the roadways by noon and is gone by the next morning. Sure, it might screw up a commute or two, might mess with your schedule as you deal with the kids for an extra 2 hours before their school’s late start, but overall, it’s nice, polite, and beautiful while it lasts.

Tomorrow will be one of those days (or so says Cliff).

I’m lucky. I work from home on Fridays, and tomorrow I’m logging off early to start a super-long holiday weekend. If the snow lasts a bit, I’ll be able to go out for a drive in the white-clad neighborhoods. Perhaps I’ll stop, get out, take a few crunching steps in the pristine snow, smile at a stranger and wish them happy holidays.

Maybe it’ll be you.

I wish you all a pleasant holiday week, and a safe and happy new year.

k

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Sergeant Pepper

Posted in Culture, Seattle, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on 08 Oct 2013| 15 Comments »

Sergeant Pepper, our 1962 TR3BIt’s been an interesting ten days…and while this isn’t strictly “writing-related,” give me a minute and I’ll try to wrap it back around to the topic.

During the past week or so, while I was working on “Antelope Hunting with Sir John,” I was also going around looking at cars.

Cars? you say.

Yes. Cars. Remember back when my wife asked me that “unexpected question?” Like that, cars. (more…)

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The Unexpected Question

Posted in Culture, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 26 Aug 2013| 11 Comments »

On Saturday, my wife asked the question a million spouses want to hear.

Honey, do you want a Harley?

We went to visit our friend, JZ Murdock, horror author and all-around nice guy, to take him out for a birthday lunch at ChocMo.

ChocMo, in Poulsbo over on Washington’s Kitsap Peninsula, is a great place. Appointed throughout with solid wood, wrought iron, and open ceilings, it had just the right blend of bright and dark, noise and quiet. We sat at the window and perused the menus.

The place has eight fine, local beers and ales on tap, a variety of bottled locals and not-so-locals, as well as a full bar. They’ll serve you thimble “tasters” of almost everything, including their selection of whiskies (I tried the Old Pulteney, which was delightfully smooth but still had enough peat to keep me happy).

We three ordered a burger, sliders, and a smoked salmon sandwich, all of which were excellent in taste, quality, and presentation. Drinks were an Italian soda, a diet cola, and a Hale’s Supergoose IPA. We followed up with ChocMo’s signature “drinking chocolate” (think ground/melted Hershey’s semisweet mixed with frothy half-and-half) and espressos.

We talked through the shift change, watching the clouds roll in from the west, build, threaten, then break apart to release more sunshine for our beautiful Puget Sound summer’s day.

On the way back to JZ’s we stopped by the Chief Seattle’s gravesite, on the reservation in Suquamish to pay our respects. It’s been renovated since this picture was taken. It’s now ringed by a circle of concrete in which words from the chief’s famous speech have been engraved. Gone are the wooden logs and dugouts, replaced with tall stele, faced with wood, carved with stylized totem images. The gravestone and cross have not been changed, of course, but it does not have the same intimacy it once did. You don’t feel as though you can walk up and sit down next to the old man. There is a barrier–you can step over the concrete ring easily, but it’s not something that one feels is allowed, anymore. And that’s too bad…

We returned to JZ’s, threw a stick for his dog, and returned home on the ferry, watching the jewels of water and sunset as we crossed to the mainland.

And that’s when my wife asked, “Honey, do you want a Harley?”

You see, JZ, having spent decades in the Honda doldrums, recently upgraded to a Harley, and was kind enough to give my wife a ride. And when I say “a ride” I mean that I spent all afternoon chauffeuring her purse in the car, following the Harley wherever we went, watching her red hair flutter out from under her helmet. She’d never ridden on a Harley before, and she had a blast. She had such a blast, it turned out, that she thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad for us to have one, too. So, she asked if I had any interest.

The proper response to “Honey, do you want a Harley?” is “Frak yeah!” and this was indeed my initial response. Then my adult-brain kicked in–yeah, that wet-blanket overseer full of pragmatism and sense. It began annoying me by pointing out that we live in Washington State and–by JZ’s own metrics–there are only 3 months of dependable motorcycling weather in a given calendar year. Then it pointed out that JZ’s been riding motorcycles for decades, and the last bike I had ridden had ten speeds and pedals. It went on to point out other things, but by then the argument had been won. Or lost, depending on your point of view.

So, no Harley. Not for me, not at this point in my life.

However, I did manage to steer us around to something I truly had wanted all my life: a British roadster. The Morgans, the MG-TDs, the Triumphs. The curves, the sound, the smell. My wife was still in the flush of her post-Harley rumble, so if I can find a roadster for the same price as a Harley, I can get one.

At least, that’s what she said on Saturday…

k

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My Bay of San Pablo

Posted in Seattle, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 14 Aug 2013| 1 Comment »

Misty MorningThe moon is only first quarter, but the tide was low as my bus drove into Seattle. The cool breeze off the Sound brought in that parfum de la mer–a mixture of salt, sea, and tideflat–that sends me a half century back in time. I took a deep breath, a slow breath, and I stepped off my Seattle bus to stand in the California sunshine, grinning, soiled to the knees with mud, and wearing only one shoe.

I grew up on San Pablo Bay. When my friends and I sat quietly, we might hear a seal bark from out on the breakwater. At night, as I lay in bed, the fog rolled across my world like a feather-filled duvet and the foghorns across the water would call out, mourning the losses of ships on their shoals, warning others away with song and lamp.

Across the street from my house was a salt marsh. It was a trackless fen that shimmered in the sun, bright with the song of redwings hanging on the cattails, but at night it whispered warnings as hidden predators moved through the rushes. In my youngest days, we never ventured into the marsh. It was a place of mystery, of monsters. It was the place our cats went to die and whose bones lay baking in the mud beneath the summer sun.

Instead, we played at the shore, before it was all purchased and sold. We’d walk the pebbled strand, the bay’s gentle wavelets shushing at our exuberance. We’d upturn stones to play with the fiddler crabs, daring them to pinch our water-pruned fingers. We’d poke at anemones to make them squirt. We’d study the barnacles that studded the rocks, pluck the strings of mussels that hung on the pilings, and try to remove the chitons that clung to boulders like living shields. We whipped each other with ropes of brown kelp and dared each other to eat the green seaweed that waved in the tidepools.

Later, though, as our legs grew longer, we grew brave and brash. Dressed in cutoff jeans, white t-shirts, and hi-top PF Flyers, we’d grab a fallen branch of eucalyptus for a walking stick and walk out into the fen. The waters were warm with sunshine as they seeped toward the bay. We would crouch to study the striders that walked the surface on dimples of light, the oarsmen that swum beneath them in the clear shallows. We’d capture pollywogs amid the algae and bring them home in a jar to raise to frog-hood. We’d rush in a mad, splashing scramble to catch a garter snake that tried to escape our clumsy-footed approach.

Sometimes we even braved the pools that stood between the stands of cattail and the hummocks of saw-edged pampas. The water was only inches deep, but the fawn-colored mud was soft. We’d step in and be up to our ankles, next to our calves. Another step would find us knee-deep, our feet finding the cold, oily muck beneath the surface silt. When we pulled our feet from the sucking mire they came up covered in black and smelling of peat and salt and sea. Often enough, our foot would come up bare, our shoe left behind, lost forever. When developers drained the fen and built their houses, they must have found a thousand shoes, boys’, size 5.

The smell of the marsh, the seaweed, the flats–it’s a powerful trigger for me. Like the clean scent of sun on summer wheatgrass, the earthy aroma of rain in the redwoods, and the metallic tang of wind-whipped sand, low-tide is a time machine that transports me from wherever I am to the Bay of San Pablo, to a time when the world was quiet, and a place where my mind could lose itself in the marvel of sunlight glinting from a dragonfly’s wing.

Breathe deeply. Breathe slowly. And remember.

k

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