Waste Not Want Not

A person passed me in McCormick Park and said, "Like your pin."

"Oh - good," I have on my Hillary Supporters for Obama Biden button. (A button for Obama "08 must do - hard to locate mine on the internet.)

Washington Grade School Project - At The School

Yesterday I attended the presentation by architects at the Washington Grade School "gym" (which was the lunchroom years ago), where they explained there will be a Mobile Architectural Studio waiting for visitors at the school this week.  It is still the lunchroom.  In 2006 I attended the celebration for the 100th anniversary of the school.  I want to share this photo taken by Linnea Jensen, my mother, of the Last Day of School , 1953, it shows the annex, which was on the Northwest Corner of the school grounds, kitty-corner from the post office.  It was during the first grade of my sister.

 

Washington Grade School Annex, Last Day of School, 1953

Mobile Architecture Studio
BLRB architects will set up a "mobile" studio at Washington Elementary the week of May 21 - 25. They will be working on the project in the basement of the school, so that students and parents can stop by and see the progress to date and talk with the architects/provide feedback.

Throughout the week the public is welcome to come by. You will need to check in at the main office to sign in and receive a pass. The architects will be at the school between 8:00 - 5:00 each day.

Martin Luther King Subarea Plan - Tomorrow is Their Open House and I Have More Comments

Boomerang density / Service organizations, density, and green / History tour emphasis and density / Non-car buildings, public transportation, and density / Pebbles On The Pond / Women-owned businesses, women's concerns and density

Boomerang density - density can be re-examined in reference to anticipated boomerang adult children. 

Graduate boomerangs should be appreciated as achievers, if unemployment immediately follows graduation, their concerns should be met appropriately.

If difficult financial times bring adult children to their old childhood neighborhoods, their presence in their family home turns that home into a home of two families because an adult in its own right is a family of one, or an adult child with children of his or her own is a larger family.  Sometimes this is tangible in the presence of a car-dependent adult child with a car parked at the family home.  Neighborhoods have a zoning code, the presence of more than one family in a single family house will be in violation of the zoning code. 

If the parents wish to remain in compliance of the zoning code, they will encourage the adult children to relocate.  The density apartments at the high density areas may anticipate a progression like this.  Perhaps group housing would be a happier progression from the return to the childhood home.  Perhaps several old houses on a block could be reused as housing in rooms with one manager at one house where breakfast and dinner were prepared five days a week.  Boomerang adult children may need gathering places where they can get away from the family home and can assess their situation. 

Service organizations, density, and green - Mr. Anderson pointed out that there are many service organization that wish to be involved in the MLK Subarea.  Many ordinary people are asked to recycle and do other green things.  Service organizations should not feel that in budgeting money and time they need to forgo green.  The largest groups in the MLK should especially focus on green to set the largest example.  New buildings should be green buildings.

History tour emphasis and density - History tours focus on separate single family housing.  Their usual emphasis leaves them not flexing to include apartments.  Off

Non-car buildings, public transportation, and density - To encourage alternative transportation use, non-car buildings could be built - apartments would have built-in wall racks and the buildings would have bike cages and racks.  Windows would be away from the traffic streets, a setting of seclusion would reward those who do not use private cars for an Earth-friendly behavior.  Perhaps separate wings with different floor plans could serve non-car couples or aging non-car people who might use a trike.

Recently I learned that an important mental health program, Pebbles On The Pond, has stopped temporarily because of funding issues.  The presence of psycho-education classes is not common-place in communities, but Tacoma has featured this service since ___.  When faced with a psychological diagnosis the chance to learn about Psychology and Psychiatry's interpretation of mental health and mental illness is can be very important.  There are many helpful books at the public library but Pebbles on the Pond is a survey course which clarifies the whole topic. 

Women-owned businesses, women's concerns and density - At the city website I see a reference to women-owned businesses and prioritizing. 

sixth avenue

at Wright Park is a sign that identifies a building as a hundred years old.  This hundred-year-old density can be an example for planned density.  History groups can also do walking tours instead of drive-yourself tours.  

A Poem Titled 1942, by Richard Brautigan, Published in 1968

By Richard Brautigan, from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, published 1968.

1942

Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
twenty-six years old, dead
and homeward bound
on a ship from Sitka,
his coffin travels
like the fingers
of Beethoven
over a glass
of wine.

Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
a legend of my childhood, dead,
they send him back
to Tacoma.
At night his coffen
travels like the birds
that fly beneath the sea,
never touching the sky.

Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
take his heart
for a lover
and take his death
for a bed,
and send him homeward bound
on a ship from Sitka
to bury him
where I was born.

(I remember reading some Brautigan in 1969 and on, but only recently I read this poem, which mentions Tacoma and which I like very much.)

Tacoma Reads Together Discussed Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella 2012

A part of Cheney Stadium for people who were students in Tacoma in 1963 was the speech by President John Kennedy when he had started his re-election campaign in autumn 1963.  All the students were brought to Cheney Field to hear him speak.  I was brought by bus from my junior high school and remember seeing President Kennedy.  I was of course at the baseball stadium.   It must have been more than ten years later that I went to a ball game with cousins on a summer evening to gaze quietly at a huge American flag on the near horizon. 

The Fred Meyer store used a flag that size because they were the view from Cheney Stadium. 

Present at King's Books April 25th at 7 p.m. for the discussion listed in the Shoeless Joe program were Mayor Marilyn Strickland, Past-Mayor Ebersol, and Library Director Susan Odencrantz.  Mayor Strickland and the Tacoma Reads Together Group, she said,  picked "a book about  baseball" for the 2012 selection because they were dedicating part of Cheyenne Avenue as Clay Huntington Way this spring, a piece of road close to the Ball Park.

The Tacoma Reads Together Group hoped Kinsella would come to Tacoma to read, because he lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.  This was not possible.    Kinsella was an Iowa Writers' Workshop student from 1976 to 1978.   Shoeless Joe is about Iowa and Iowa City.  I was a student there from 1972 to 1974.   I scanned the photo in this blog entry at the Fred Meyer store, the site of the enormous American flag.   There I had first read on a poster on a metal stand at their door about scanning.  The description of this photo service was completely understandable and interesting.  It is my 1972 photograph of a farm outside Iowa City where two other students and I were at a Fiddler's Picnic. 

I had always accepted the sight of the store's very large flag without more thought about myself or others and Cheney Stadium.  

Children's Book Week - Louisa Mae Alcott

After the computer catalogue Tacoma Public Libraries reused cards in their scratch sheet dispensers.   Once I drew this on a yellow card with a longish, narrow notch in the upper left corner.  j / Ed.a / c.2 / Alcott / Jack and Jill.  Underneath the typing is stamped:  SO 38TH JAN '50 /  SO 38TH OCT '55 / BKMBL A AUG '57.   Today I brought Jam Squares for our Books At Twelve Ten Group discussion of Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella.  Jack and Jill turns up on the back of my Jam Squares recipe card, copied from a book about cooking for Acid Reflux.  Jam Squares:  350º  8"     /    1 1/2 c flour  / 1/3 c marg  /  1/4 c gran sug  /  1 tsp bak p  /  1/2 tsp van  (this is all included in a inky bracket) Pastry blender / combine until brumbly / press 3/4 batter into (word here is no legible)  1 c jam - spread on /  sprinkle remaining batter on top  /  bake 45 to 50 min - let cool & cut

Quilts, Research About the Quilt Blocks With Stars

The following is a quote from Collecting Quilts:  Investments in America's Heritage by Cathy Gaines Florence, from American Quilter's Society, Paducah, Kentucky, 1985. 

The "Le Moyne" star design was a favorite pattern in America.  It was based on the crest of two French-Canadian brother explorers.  In 1699, one brother, Pierre, the Sieur  d"Iberville helped found colonies near what are now Biloxi, Mississippi, and Mobile, Alabama.  Pierre died of a fever in 1706 at age 45.  The other, Jean Baptiste, Sieur de Bienville, settled some French colonists by Lake Pontchartrain in 1718 and called the settlement New Orleans.  When Napoleon abruptly decided to sell the French holding in America, trade flooded down the Mississippi and ladies were quick to notice the Le Moyne crest as a design worthy of their quilts.  Two hundred years later, their "flag still flies" in quilts throughout the land!

First Day of the Downtown Tacoma Market

With my pumpkin muffin, I stood well-clear as the Master Gardener and the muffin salespeople unloaded their waterfalls from their canopies.  In my tote I also had spinach and onions.  Saw lilacs among the tulips on sale.