Flowering Cherry Trees At the University of Washington

After Swedish-Finn Historical Society this morning I got a 26 – the Dexter Avenue changes after lots of road work include islands for bus riders – the bus rider steps across a bicycle lane to wait for the bus. I walked in the rain to reach the University Library via the Quad and the Cherry Trees. They are really blossoming. Work continues on the new Husky Union Building. The view out the windows near the Microfilm digital scanners still includes the portable for the haircut salon.

There was a new display at the Newspaper Microfilm area. It was not there when I visited on Tuesday. It was a multifold screen along the wide hallway which displayed photos of events in Occupy. It was a timeline that led, on its opposite side, to a First of May Occupy Event Plan.

Another change at the U this morning – no Sudoku in today's Daily. The Daily Sudoku – I confess it is harder than I like. Maybe they are changing to one that is easier.

Or maybe this a really hard Sudoku - with no clues.

Eight-Pointed Stars In A Quilt

Yesterday I got off the bus along bus way and shopped - an hour and a half later I was getting an express to the University District inside the Pioneer Square Tunnel. It turned out I could not find the Paper Zone but had the luck of at long last going inside the Pacific Iron and Metal Fabric Store. In the long ago day, ads would be on the radio for their sales. In the fabric store a clerk explained that the Paper Zone had closed a couple of months before. Another outlet of Paper Zone closed at Tacoma Central - I got recycled envelopes there. Well, it was great to climb the old-fashioned stairway to the fabric store and look around at all their bolts of fabric. Their building is like a landmark along the row of outlets south of the Sports stadium. I found a blog called Spare Time (For Sewing) - which has quilt blocks like blocks that were with my mother's things. The blog writer explains her quilt was from her family in the 1930s - and I was sure the quilt blocks I have are also from the 1930s. My mother or another family member may have made the quilt blocks - I think it might be possible the fabric was from their traveling in Finland and Sweden.

Five Years of Posts at Spice Drawer Mouse

Five years of posts at Spice Drawer Mouse.

Women's Ride Viewed Leaving Tacoma Bike at 26th and Proctor - Sunday

Cold but not raining as I walked to the library on Sunday afternoon.  Earlier I biked to see the Women's Ride leave the bike shop near 26th and Proctor.  All the riders used racing bikes and seemed trained and fit.  May is Bike to Work Month once again.  I wonder what the weather will be like.  They insisted the bike shop technician inside the shop bring out a camera to take photos of them all.  They were on their way to Steilacoom. 

A Moment Of Memorialization - Army

This was my father's army jacket in World War Two. He was thirty-nine when the United States entered World War Two and when he went into the service. He was in England as a pharmacist for a year and a half until V-E Day. I photographed it on a quilt that was with my mother's family at the time they met - I wanted the details of the lining and the seams to show.

A Few Thoughts Regarding the Holocaust Conference 2012

During the dinner break on Thursday of Thursday and Friday, March 8th and 9th of the Holocuast Conference, I learned on the internet that it was International Women's Day. Since 2009 I have done some volunteer work weekly at the Scandinavian Immigrant Experience Archives at PLU. Students were selling This Is What A PLU Feminist Looks Like t-shirts, so I bought one and wore it to the evening speech. On that day the specific topic of the plight of women in the holocaust seemed neglected, I jotted down that "ignoring conditions for women implies they were on-lookers treated as dependents." My reference was to the title of the speech by Heather Matthews, The Rape Of Europa. When my thoughts diverge from the immediate topic I can jot the thoughts down, then continue to pay attention to the speeches, results of long and hard study.

The origin of the term rape - snatch forcibly - is the word rapt - and the Biblical term for the Rapture, that the believers will be snatched into Heaven leaving others. That evening the speech by Hayes began with some explanations for why restitution has been delayed. He analyses that in the general devastation in Europe it took time to extract the details of the Holocaust, first of all. His format (of a first, and then another stage) remains with me in my thoughts. His speech, which detailed payments by the West German government to victims, along with the earlier film which showed a survivor accepting a stolen painting recovered at an art museum in Utah, helped me percieve restitution as a stage that is now advancing into memorialization. The term memorialization was present in many speeches.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the book by Stieg Larsson and the Swedish movie, along with the Oscar nominated American film version, has a plot line about serial murders of Jewish women. Compared to novels and movies, when the historians use the word horror they remain in a context of restraint. The Holocaust Conferences are partly geared, though, to provide students with some insight into how to choose when in a situation of victim, perpetrator, collaborator or bystander - or resistor - and to choose to act - "Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim - silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." I am reminded of an article about feedback loops, exemplified by a technological highway speed radar reader that displays the approaching driver's speed in contrast to the actual legal speed limit.

At the end of the conference on Friday afternoon I left the closing comments by PLU President Loren Anderson early so that I could get into my coat and head for the transit center. (Twenty-year President Anderson will be a past-president if he makes comments at next year's conference. The new university president choice was biographied in their recent edition of their paper, The Mast.) So many times I have added to my awareness of an insidious politeness credit being self-awarded within the audience, for they are staying steadily, not leaving early like that rude person. It is a genuine aspect of road rage.

Previous 45th Street Viaduct

Perhaps I can share a post with a photo of the previous viaduct, replaced during 2010.

Saturday Morning in March, I Refer To An Earlier Essay At Salt River Review

Saturday morning, early March, and at the Union Avenue and 6^th Avenue Bus Stop this morning a generous cel phone user found a phone number on the tag of a dog who was hanging around in a friendly way. As he loaded on his bike and we three riders got on the bus, her owner had appeared in the alley and was guiding her along back home.

I have wanted to make a correction - in an earlier post about University Village, before the 1950s a Japanese produce farm, I referred to my source as Sustainable Seattle – the title is actually Jaffrey C. Sanders' Seattle And The Roots of Urban Sustainability: Inventing Ectopia.

My snapshots of the viaduct were from 2010, when I had visited to do research at the University of Washington Special Collections. One reason I had taken snapshots of the University Village and the viaduct from there to the University Campus was that an essay I published on-line at Salt River Review included the viaduct.