Puyallup

According to the internet, Puyallup means generous people. The place was out in the country but population ballooning has retained a main street bakery. Scandinavian Days has held its event in the Autumn at the Puyallup fairgrounds for years. In Western Washington, Puyallup was the original site to return to.

Posts of Swedish interest: May 23 / June 9, 11, 12, 13, 14,22, 25, 27 / July 12, 21, 26 / August 11, 21, 27

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Nice Morning to Ride the Bike

After I stopped to warm my hands inside the sleeves, the bike ride was not that cold. On the way back from getting corn, peas, two carrots, three onions - in shadows of trees water in puddles at the gutter were pure white but the street surface was fine.

Tacoma Reads Together

The Tacoma Reads Together selection for 2008 will be The Things They Carried. Yesterday Books @ 12:10 discussed Kindred by Octavia Butler.

Web Site with Recycling by Zip Codes

The web site with recycling centers by zip code, earth 911.org, did not tell me to take the bulb to an auto supply store near my apartment after all, I had jotted this down when I checked the site with the word batteries. But the auto supply store was the fate of the Earth Light - I left it with an rather uncooperative clerk, waited for the bus back in the dark rain under the bus shelter across the street from its heavily fluorescent-lit store front.

When I visited the american swedish museum in 1997, when I asked about the restroom I was shown to a basement social hall. Just inside the restroom door I found the light switch, and was in the dim beginning of a familiar gradual glow. The ceiling had a number of fixtures to hold bulbs, and all of these had been filled with a Philips Earth Light.

I bought two Philips Earth Lights thirteen years ago. I paid 37 dollars for these, different prices on different days in January 1995. Now one of these is gone - it was in a lamp and it tipped and fell over, the sound I heard was a small but sad snap. I knew that Earth Light had broken.

If I divide the total cost of the two bulbs, I figure I have paid a dollar and forty-two cents per year to use each bulb.

But I realize the light should be recycled. And that it is a hazard and contains mercury. One website really provides recycling facilities listed by zip code - the ceiling of the american swedish museum in Philadephia is quite ornate, but the eco concern matters. It was not a long visit, I was to catch my train again in the afternoon, I checked the bag and took the subway to the museum in the south part of the city.

When a bulb lasts for thirteen years it is special, and the other earth bulb is of course still working. The ceiling at the museum basement must still be working as well.

There was a raindrop at the library, it fell from a wire that supports the red, amber, green lights and the left-turn yield on green sign above that crosswalk, and it was the start of the many circular waves on the surface of a puddle. Most like, I guess, the moisture that condenses on the insides of the windows and creates wet drops near the windowsill or the floor. When I reached the lilac bush there were raindrops dangling from the narrow twig branches. The lilac bush has been a purple lilac bush each spring that I have walked along this sidewalk.