Every picture tells a story, don't it?

The Giraffes Who Saved Thanksgiving

Never has this blog been more aptly named. I am not feeling particularly frivolous, and yet I am determined to post a frivolous update. Words are just not working for me so it's photos illustrating the 2017 edition of Thanksgiving which this year featured Scott and me hosting a small dinner chez Aurora. Oh I say it featured us hosting, but truly it featured Anita making cunning rose petal hats for the absurd napkin rings. 

The giraffes featured prominently in the minimalist table setting that resulted from discovering that we had no tapers in the house. When life doesn't give you a great big old South American herbivore, I say, make use of the African cameleopards you have in your napkin drawer.

Nothing says elegance like giraffe napkin rings

Stuffing: check. Squash: check. Sprouts: check.

At pushing 3:00 in the afternoon, with the table set and various others bits of business well in hand, we felt confident enough about our timing and preparations to indulge in mimosas (made with oranges sent to the Mountaineers Books' office by Gail Storey, author of I Promise Not to Suffer). Perhaps it was the mimosas that enabled us to just roll with it when the turkey turned out to be quite done some forty minutes ahead of schedule. One way or another, I insist, it all worked out fine (though you'll be seeing no photos of the bird Scott inevitably named Larry in this post).

November 23 bouquet (note fresh pea vine)

The company was fine and the conversation perhaps unnaturally light on politics, even with the wine flowing freely. I always enjoy seeing what Anita will create with the materials to hand:

After we'd bid our company adieu, I addressed myself to washing the piles of dishes while Scott shifted furniture about (much to Gradka's relief; she had been worried earlier when tables and chairs were moved from their customary spots).

Happily, there were remarkably few pots and pans.

And, because I'm all about the tidying, this was the view in the backyard early this afternoon:

But, of course, the giraffes should get the final image:

Now we can bike any day in November

"Excellence Seattle!"

 Okay, so the title of this post is a lie; there have been some seriously nasty days this November, days with 50 mph winds, lashing rain, traffic lights out all over town, and tree limbs--or whole trees--crashing down, making it downright dangerous be outside at all.

Bessie @ Besalu / Accidental Self-Portrait

But Saturday was a lovely day to be out and about in beautiful Seattle on a bike so Scott and I rode over into Ballard to see if we could buy out all the stock at Besalu (I did my best but, dagnabbit, they kept putting out more) and then continued down to Golden Gardens where we hadn't been in ages. It seemed we weren't the only ones to think it was a nice day for that bit of beach: it was pretty happening. A few kite flyers, a ton of sailboats, a guy reading a hardback novel (The Sympathizer),

Young wigeon?

some rock stackers, a bubble-blower, the entourage he collected, a number of people admiring the wigeons wintering over water, and a well-dressed woman sitting on a bench with her coffee just watching. Some days, I just love Seattle and Saturday was such a day. We rode back downtown in the dusk, admiring the sky and the neon and just the loveliness of, well, wintering over water. Of course, I took a lot of photos:

I assume this was a class of some sort

Scott obliged by posing for one (1) photo

Most of the trees had lost their leaves but this one was still gobsmacking in its orange glory

Of course, even without leaves, the trees had a certain grace

Thanks to Maria Mudd Ruth, I'm noticing clouds a lot more than I once did

Neon

Neon

Neon

Sort of the essence of the day here

Banff 2017

Some day I'll learn the name of this peak

 We returned from a few days at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival yesterday. It was a good time, if brief. Very cold and very snowy. How cold you ask? Well, cold enough that even the locals commented upon it. Scott and I both invested in new boots on our first evening there, mostly so we wouldn't slide to our deaths on the paths into town. Unsurprisingly, I took essentially no photos of any of the presentations or people. (The one below of Steve Swenson signing copies of Karakoram was taken by Scott, using his cell phone.) Many mule deer. A small herd of elk that we avoided disturbing. Ravens and magpies. No owls. Good presentations by Doug Chadwick, Bernadette McDonald, Steve Swenson, Kevin Vallely, and others, as well as Geoff Powter's incredibly moving interview with David Roberts.

View from the Lloyd Hall bedroom window

The partially frozen Bow River #1

The partially frozen Bow River #2. I love the way this looks black and white when it isn't.

Close-up of that frozen bit of Bow

Enough river. Make with the mule deer!

Steve Swenson, post-presentation, waiting to sign

Meanwhile, down by the river, some lovely atmospheric trees

Scott modeling his MEC coat

 Last year, I won a drawing for a coat from MEC; this year, Scott was the raffle winner--a $250 gift certificate for MEC. I'm not saying my loyalty can be bought, but I'm pretty partial to MEC these days. And they're supporting "Spirit North," a newish non-profit dedicated to getting First Nations youth out into the wilderness, which also seems a pretty fine thing to be doing.

My only indoor photo, taken at Bear Street Tavern.

Not only does Bear Street Tavern have excellent pizza, they also serve Grizzly Paw Grumpy Bear Honey Wheat beer in bottles!

Another mule deer who was just out and about on the Banff Centre campus

The West Seattle Junction Harvest, 2017

Oh old blahdeblahblah, you've been sadly neglected as I've been tired or sick or exhausted or tired or sick lo, these many weeks. And it's not like I've got a lot for you this evening either. But Scott and I made our way up the hill for The Harvest today and I took a few photos with Scott's iPhone which means at least some slight content here. And I've updated the books list though I'm certain there is at least one title I've forgotten to make note of. Last weekend, pre-latest-bout-of-flu, I did a massive tidy/reordering of the piles of books so whatever had been sitting out, recently read, has been neatly put away. So it goes.

At the Whistling Train Farm booth

There were many fine costumes but this mean old biddy of a toddler was the best.

One of a group of four marauding T. Rexes terrorizing the street

Something wondrous: Mozart's Starling

There is another world," Paul Eluard wrote, "but it is in this one." One world is marked by bland forgetfulness, where we do not permit ourselves an openness to the simple, graced beauty that is always with us. The other is marked by attentiveness, aliveness, love. This is the state of wonder, which is commonly treated as a passive phenomenon--a kind of visitation or feeling that overcomes us in the face of something wondrous. But the ground of the word, the Old English wundrian, is very active, meaning "to be affected by one's own astonishment." We decide, moment by moment, if we will allow ourselves to be affected by the presence of this brighter world in our everyday lives. Certainly we get no encouragement from what Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls the "overculture." It cannot be assessed by the standardized cultural criteria of worth--measures that can be labeled with a sum or a statistic or even, perhaps, a word. Receptivity to wonder is not economically productive, marketable, quantifiable. The rewards, also, stand beyond such calculation. But it is in such receptivity that we discover what draws us, and along with it our originality, our creativity, our soulfulness, our gladness, our art. Mozart found inspiration in the presence of a common bird. For us, too, the song of the world so often rises in places we had not thought to look.

--from pp 74 - 75 of Lyanda Lynn Haupt's Mozart's Starling 

Three chapters in, this book has me reconsidering my attitude towards starlings.

Ever since the eclipse . . .

The sun and the moon haven't quite been themselves . . 

This morning's sun (in the east)

This evening's moon, about the same place in the sky