10-in-10 Independent Bookstore Day (with completely unrelated pig photo)

Jeb the Pony may have left town, but Walter (or is it Walter's successor?) remains in West Seattle.

 A week ago I thought I'd write a long, thoughtful post about this year's independent bookstore day. It would include things like which bookstore had the best selection (Phinney Books) and where I felt overwhelmed by the presence of other people and Just Had To Get Out (Elliott Bay Book Company) and which store felt like it had been seriously affected by a year of Covid (University Bookstore) and where the bookseller and I bonded over wearing similar "VOTE" masks (Ada's). I might also have mentioned the shop where I would have poked longer were it not for the line of people waiting to get in (Third Place Ravenna) and where the bookseller explained Book Store Day to me (Secret Garden) or where I asked for a recommendation (Magnolia's Bookstore) or where it was the bookseller's first experience of Book Store Day (Paper Boat Booksellers) or where I didn't get a receipt, dagnabbit (Arundel Books) or the bookstore where I ordered a couple of books for prisoners online and thus scarcely remember it at all (Queen Anne Book Company). It might have mentioned in passing the couple of standards (Book Larder and Open Books) which we skipped this year because they were, seemingly, closed on Sunday, the day we were in their neighborhood.

But time has passed and I'm a little tired and lacking in enthusiasm for any of it so let me just say that it was handy that Seattle opted to stretch "book store day" into ten days this year. We covered our ten bookstores in four days staggered over about nine days, starting with the online purchase on the first Saturday when I just didn't feel like leaving the house, a ride to Magnolia on Thursday, to Capitol Hill on Saturday, and around North Seattle on Sunday. Many a bookstore is conveniently located near a bakery so in addition to contributing to the bottom lines of ten local bookstores, we made purchases at at least six* local bakeries. I'm thinking we should go rogue and do a bakery store day / weekend / week because god knows that's a shot I have. 

 Most photos are courtesy of Mr Bailey who, now that I have a phone of my own that can take photos, seems more motivated to take photos of the bikes unbidden. And, because I'm lazy, I'm just stacking up the photos here, in no particular order:

Bikes loitering outside of Ada's Technical Books

One of my absolute favorite stops: Coyle's Bakeshop where I had a purchased latte in a real cup for the first time in more than a year. (The cake was quite fine too.)

The final haul of books: for the first time ever, we purchased the same number of books (aka, about twenty apiece . . . plus a pricy magazine, a number of cards, some pens, a pin, and a number of chocolate bars).

Bessie's basket hogs the lens outside of Phinney Books.

Balancing things out, Bernardo's bell takes center stage outside of Secret Garden.

*Bakeries visited:
Petit Pierre Bakery (Magnolia)
Sugar Bakery (First Hill)
Sod House Bakery (Ravenna)
Seattle Bagel Oasis (Ravenna)
Coyle's Bakeshop (Phinney)
Rosellini's (Ballard)

My little pony is leaving town

It's a sweet yet sad little horse story that brings me to blahdeblah tonight when it's already so late. One of the many things I have loved about West Seattle is that, some years ago, I happened across a miniature horse in someone's backyard, and we've been able to stop by to say hey (or maybe, in this circumstance, "hay") to him over the years. Yesterday I saw the headline "Happy Trails to Jeb" in the West Seattle Blog* which I found more than a little alarming since surely that is what is written when an animal has died.

Happily, Jeb is just moving to New Mexico and I don't think that he's moving to the southwest in the way that animals sometimes go to live on a farm in the country. At least I hope that's not the case. They've gone to some lengths to reassure locals that that is not the case, providing this elaborate story:

It's not a farm in the country.

And, because we're very community-minded in West Seattle, there's a big card that one can sign:

So true!

 Jeb is to head south tomorrow so I was happy it occurred to me that we could ride by to bid him farewell soon after we set out on this evening's ride.  There was a family attempting to have a meaningful moment, or maybe just pausing to talk near his fence, but Jeb was far more interested in his evening meal than in visiting. We hung around for a few minutes, signing his card and wishing he'd look up for even a moment. Being an obliging animal, eventually he did--briefly. Naturally I fumbled my phone (I now have my own phone capable of taking photos!) a bit, but I think it sort of adds to the wistful charm of the final encounter:

Jeb offers a final opportunity to the local papparazzi

The crowd then began to thicken so we left. West Seattle won't be the same without Jeb, but I'm thinking I'll give Mimi a week or two and then leave her a copy of City Goats. 

We continued our ride to the usual viewpoint in the Admiral District, where it took me a few tries to get the panorama setting to work, with mixed results:

I love that the street sign is for Seattle Street.

A gorgeous night, really, but I can feel already that I'm going to be just that much more sad knowing Jeb isn't only a few miles away any longer. Speaking of miles, a mileage update:

There have been some missed days and some light days but overall, not so shabby.

*The WSB is another thing I love about West Seattle; who can resist a news organization that reports on a local horse leaving town?

 

 

 

Plus ca change

 Mr Jonas Brown, a character in The MacDermots of Ballycloran, published in 1847, sounds so familiar:

 Jonas Brown was hated by the poor. In every case he would, if he had
the power, visit every fault committed by them with the severest
penalty awarded by the law. He was a stern, hard, cruel man, with
no sympathy for any one, and was actuated by the most superlative
contempt for the poor, from whom he drew his whole income. He was
a clever, clear-headed, avaricious man; and he knew that the only
means of keeping the peasantry in their present utterly helpless and
dependent state, was to deny them education, and to oppose every
scheme for their improvement and welfare. He dreaded every movement
which tended to teach them anything, and when he heard of landlords
reducing their rents, improving cabins, and building schools, he
would prophesy to his neighbour, Sir Michael, that the gentry would
soon begin to repent of their folly, when the rents they had reduced
were not paid, the cabins which they had made comfortable were filled
with ribbonmen, and when the poor had learnt in the schools to
disobey their masters and landlords. 

 --from page 263 of the Penguin edition of The MacDermots of Ballycloran

 though lifted here from the project gutenberg site.

No mileage--just a pair of happy grebes

 

What's not to love about pied-billed grebes?

 

Unless, of course, you're a wee fish

Gusty Sunday Afternoon Fly-by Cycle Update

Hot cocoa in the Paddington mugs and rain-bedewed tulips in sopping wet Kraft-paper wrapping;

 it must be Seattle's version of March Madness*

Some days, I feel, I should get to quadruple my distance numbers due to conditions. Today is wet and windy; gusts up to 50mph are predicted. Vendors at the farmers market looked like sailors on the high seas to me, while Scott thought they resembled subway riders; either way they were all wearing wet-weather gear, holding the supports for their tents with an upraised arm while swaying a bit themselves. It was quite jaunty-looking, really, but must have been miserable. We were pretty soaked ourselves as well and we found that no matter how hard we squeezed our brakes on the ride home (downhill, on cold wet streets), we didn't actually come to a complete stop. Fortunately traffic was light and we thought to check our brakes early on so we never allowed ourselves to build up any real speed. Still, it was good to get home. I immediately started making cocoa, while Scott brought the bikes in. 

So, a stinky two miles on the day, but surely we get some sort of bragging rights, right? And on the year:

*I've no idea what is going on with the caption formatting there.

 

Spring Equinox Weekend

I always think of Alex quoting Harvey Manning when I see one of these little bits of blue sky.

Saturday we rode for 24 miles in order to visit the Montlake Fill for the first time in over a year and also, okay, to see what Byen Bakeri might happen to have left in its cases at 2:00 on a Saturday afternoon. (Answer: croissants, cookies, and tempting but too fragile for pannier transportation cakes and tarts.) 

Bikes at a bakery. Again.

The forecast warned of rain, but Scott (quoting Madi Carlson quoting her grandmother) pointed out that we weren't made of sugar so we packed ourselves up and set out. Spoiler alert: it started bucketing down by the time we'd reached Fremont on the return trip and we were utterly soaked before we reached South Lake Union. The trail that runs parallel to Westlake is handy, but it has some serious puddles as we discovered. I suggested that we should check into the Mayflower Hotel and order room service and I'm not sure I was entirely joking. Instead we continued home to West Seattle, wheezing our way up the final hill. I found I truly was wet to the skin (I still haven't attempted to re-waterproof the sleeves of my cycling jacket) so I showered while Scott put together restorative cocktails. 

Cormorants against a backdrop of cranes

But the Fill was a good time and well worth risking hypothermia, frostbite, and other cold injuries. (Seriously, trench foot seemed likely.) It was oddly busy--a lot of teens and twenty-somethings out with inexpensive binoculars and guidebooks at one end of the spectrum and a pair of quite young photographers with mammoth camera lenses at another end of my imaginary range. The Fill has changed a bit since my last visit: the old parking lot that was being converted to wetland is now a sea of cattails, while Scott mourned the loss of more than one tree. The birds, I've got to admit, didn't seem to care one way or another, though maybe that's not true. We used to see killdeer in that parking lot and on this visit it was home to some dueling blackbirds and a black-capped chickadee who was quite dedicated to tearing apart a cattail--looking for bugs? just showing off its cattail-destruction prowess for a potential mate? I can't say. 

The old parking lot from across the canal

There were shovelers on shoveler pond and plenty of water birds wintering over water though, technically, it was the first day of Spring. We were pleased to see teals, mergansers, coots, buffleheads, mallards, wigeons, comorants, and great blue herons on the water, while Scott spotted a kingfisher quite high in a tree (avoiding the papparazzi?). Yellow-rumped warblers were just everywhere.

Clouds and trees reflected in the canal from the bridge

We heard but did not see a very vocal marsh wren by the bridge and saw and heard a few Bewick's wrens here and there. A bald eagle flew overhead as we were discussing whether the hawk in a tree was a Cooper's or sharp-shinned. (I always assume sharp-shinned.) So, all in all, a good day out, though I wouldn't have minded being spared the drenching. 

Whether it was yesterday's wet or the fact that today is cold and gray, we realized we didn't really desperately need anything at the Farmers Market so today is being a zero day. Part of the calculations about the market included a realization that stuff is blooming in the yard so I could supplement the remains of last week's tulips with some of our own Lenten roses, grape hyacinth, and camellias.  

The results of some back- and side-yard foraging

A lazy day, then, of reviewing yesterday's photos (and realizing I really need to have my camera cleaned) and reading Trollope.

This week's flower arrangements

Tapas Potatoes for St. Patrick's Day

 

Trust me, Imaginary Reader, it was lovely and delicious

Not every bike mileage update features a scenic photo of West Seattle views or thoughtfully arranged baked goods. No, sometimes the impetus for a ride is that we learn that Itto's business has picked up enough that they are no longer doing delivery only after we decide that we really don't want to make dinner and really do want some Itto's tapas. I placed the order and then Scott got the bikes out and we took the slightly scenic route to pick up dinner in the gloaming (which grew to full dark by the time we were home again). 

 But take-out food, particularly take-out that travels in Bessie's basket, does not stay particularly hot so there was no way I was going to delay things even further by taking photos of the lovely potatoes, beets, asparagus, dates, and so much goat cheese that I plated somewhat nicely. Which means empty take-out containers for tonight's photo shoot.

Scott is taking the week off to do some essential maintenance; I'm taking today and tomorrow. He has done some necessary painting and other odds and ends about the place; today I pruned roses and planted carrots. The BIG news hereabouts is that several of the tomato seeds have sprouted. We're chuffed, we are. It was nearly warm enough for outdoor cocktails today, and I did sit on the stump of the old cherry tree (cut down by Mr Oxman yesterday) to read a few pages of my current book. It's feeling very springlike, which is to say that both Scott and I are well aware that we are getting to be Quite Old People. Pruning and painting didn't used to hurt.