When it comes to Northwest legends, we usually think big: There's Bigfoot, D.B. Cooper's Big Heist, Paul Bunyan and his Big Blue Ox — even the Big White Worm of the Palouse. This tradition goes back. When Jonathan Swift documented Gulliver's travels in the early 1700s, he placed the land of the giants, Brobdingnag, in the Pacific Northwest — somewhere between what we know today as British Columbia and Alaska. But we have our mini-myths, as well. Yes, Northwest giants are fun to think about (remember Olaf?), but take a minute to think about our munchkins.

Along with Northwest Indian legends of Sasquatch and huge flying thunderbirds, there are stories at the other end of the spectrum. Yes, many believed in little people, as well. Earthquakes were said by some tribes to be caused by mountain dwarves dancing around. The Twana Indians believed in spirit creatures called "little earths." The Lummi also saw little people. And just as people today think they see mysterious giant primates in the woods from time to time, so there are occasional sightings of elfin creatures in our forests today.

There doesn't seem to be as much interest in tracking little people as Bigfoot, even though science has been full of discoveries of actual little people (and I'm not talking about the woman in India who is less than two-feet tall nor the creepy night gnome of South America). There is archaeological evidence that suggests there have been earlier races of smaller humans, most notably the "Hobbit" people of Indonesia, Homo floresiensis, and their fossil neighbors who lived on Palau as recently as 1,400 years ago. So-called "island dwarfism" is also known on Wrangel Island in the Russian Arctic, where a race of miniature mammoths appears to have survived as late as 1700 B.C.

I know at least one person who claims to have seen little people in the Northwest, but they've kept quiet. But not all who see do. Next month, you can attend the 8th Annual Fairy & Human Relations Congress in Twisp, Wash., and gather with those who believe. The Fairy Congress describes its mission this way: "Here at the Fairy Congress we are among the vanguard of humans working to bring peace and understanding between humans and the fairy realms." Lest you think George W. Bush has declared fairies a terrorist organization, the conflict being referred to is, I think, our ravaging of Mother Earth and failure to listen to the planet's other voices. But attendees can, we are told, expect to commune with actual fairies and devas (a kind of Hindu angel). According to the Congress' Web site:

The humans are vastly outnumbered at the Congress by the fairies, devas and other Light beings who are in attendance. How many fairies and devas attend? We are assured it is in the thousands. Fairies and devas of many ranks and sizes attend. Some are similar in size to the small 'hand-size' fairies we see represented in the common press. Others are immense beings of great power. Remember though, that size is not necessarily an indicator of knowledge, wisdom or power. The fairy beings who attend the Fairy Congress are fully as intelligent (and often much more so) than the human participants. We approach the fairies and devas with respect and love as co-creators of this event. We are meeting as equal participants. The fairies and devas have a concurrent Congress as well as interacting with the human participants during circles and joint meditations. ... It is a rare event for humans to experience so much fairy energy and such an outpouring of fairy/devic blessings.

No word on whether Hillary Clinton will be seeking super-delegates at this convention too.

For those thinking of attending and worried about fairy etiquette, there are resources to help you. I found one article on the Web that offers a kind of Miss Manners guide to fairy do's and don'ts. Note that they don't like cut flowers (a desecration) but do like chocolate. Also, if you meet a fairy, go easy on the sex.

Maybe it's time to downsize our Northwest legends for a new century. Instead of chasing big resource users like Bigfoot, perhaps its time to develop a sustainable mythology, one that thinks small.

• 1 comment

In 1996, the album Grunge Lite featured Muzak-style versions of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Mudhoney classics, turning them into elevator music before anyone else did. It seemed like an attempt to inoculate the music's legacy by injecting a shot of irony before anyone else did. It didn't work. Today you can get a "Smells Like Teen Spirit" ringtone for your cellphone (just Google "Nirvana ringtones" and take your pick).

Nothing really shocking about that. After all, Courtney Love has got to eat, right? Well, in furtherance of that, starting in mid-May you will be able to buy a pair of new Converse Kurt Cobain high-top, pre-distressed tennis shoes (in black or white). The shoes are covered graffiti-style in reproductions from the musician's hand-written journals. Apparently, they are just like the pair he was wearing when he died! (No mention if the shoes are pre-blood-stained, too.)

And since talent and tragedy apparently run in families, it's also reported that Kurt and Courtney's 15-year-old daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, is "in talks" with Karl Lagerfeld and company to be the new face of Chanel. Protective mom Courtney is apparently involved, just to make sure her daughter isn't taken advantage of, of course.

Kurt Cobain is not the only Northwest giant being exploited for pop-culture purposes. The notoriously shy Bigfoot better get himself a good intellectual property rights lawyer because somebody is now making electric guitars in the shape of the creature's signature imprint. No word on whether Converse has made a Cobain suicide sneaker big enough to fit Sasquatch and thus reap the rewards of cross-promotion, but it's an idea.

• 2 Comments

Seattle's Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony, also contains a fine organ, which is the most prominent visual feature as you look at the stage of Big Ben (as opposed to the recital hall, or Little Ben). This year, the Symphony has promoted a series of three Bach organ recitals on the Watjen Concert Organ, designed by the leading American organ builder, C.B. Fisk. Joseph Adam of St. James Cathedral was the soloist, and last week Dr. Adam concluded the series before a large and rightly enthusiastic audience.

Adam brought his series to an end with one of Bach’s most powerful and fully worked out pieces, the great Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, a work which combines exploration, intellectual rigor, energy, and drama in equal measure. Adam’s powerful performance brought his fine series to a fitting climax. My review of an earlier organ recital in the series is here.

Bach has an image as the austere and bewigged Cantor of Leipzig and classical music’s great intellectual, but the rest of the program centered on works that illustrate his exuberance, humor, charm, and his virtuosic (sometimes frankly exhibitionist) command of the organ. The Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major which opened the evening is renowned for its long pedal solo, but it is equally notable for its quirky, almost cheeky, opening flourish and its bouncy fugue. The Prelude and Fugue in D major also showcases the pedals. Its fugue, based on what sounds like a child’s finger exercise on the first three notes of the major scale followed by a mock-pompous octave drop, is a comical, teasing piece.

The immensely vigorous and exuberant Prelude and Fugue in G major, which opened the second half, was followed by two delightful chorale trios written when Bach was in Leipzig, and the joyful, improvisatory chorale prelude on the melody “Deck Thyself, My Soul, In Gladness.”

Adam’s interpretations were always vigorous and direct, and exploited the Watjen organ’s variety of color and expressive range. The lighter pieces came over with particular charm. In the big Preludes and Fugues, he kept up a good pace and avoided the excessive contrasts and manual changes that one sometimes encounters in more mannered performances. The one piece of registration that might have raised eyebrows was the use of a wide and to my ears somewhat emetic tremolo in the melody line of the “Deck Thyself...” chorale prelude.

• Comment Now

Let’s see if primary voters buy Hillary Clinton’s line that respect equals pandering, that if you really feel people’s pain, you appeal to their ignorance. The recent to-do over Clinton’s — and McCain’s — proposal for a federal gas tax holiday marked a new low in this already-rock-bottom campaign. George Bush’s suggestion that high gas prices mean we should drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) was merely business as usual. Even before the end of Bush’s first term, it had become a kind of running joke: Ask this administration a question, any question, about domestic policy and if the answer isn’t "cut taxes," it’s "open ANWR." Never mind that ANWR oil wouldn’t be available until some time after 2015; Bush is just being Bush.

The gas tax holiday is a somewhat different story. Both Clinton and McCain have said that they favor limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Neither is as ideologically driven as Bush. Both know that a summer-long tax holiday — assuming Congress would enact it — would make little or no difference. Federal gas tax accounts for only about 5 percent of the current gasoline price. If a tax holiday made people feel free to drive more, the increase in demand might well push the price right back up to where it would have been without the holiday; the money would just go to OPEC and Big Oil, instead of the federal treasury, from whence it could be dispensed to help repair bridges and roads. But "cut taxes" is always a popular cry, they’re both running for office, and one can say that they’re just acting like politicians.

Clinton’s attack on Obama for not making the proposal a trifecta takes the whole charade a long step further. This isn’t just a question of differing perceptions. She knows the tax holiday proposal is bullshit. She knows that whether you’re interested in global warming or national energy independence, it’s a step in the wrong direction. She knows that even it you’re not interested in global warming or national energy independence, it’s worthless. She knows that Obama is taking the responsible position. To say that if he really cared about working people, he’d make a hollow appeal to their ignorance is just bizarre.

She probably hopes to further exploit Obama’s unfortunate remarks about bitterness driving workers to guns and religion. That was a really dumb statement. It did show a certain insensitivity — and perhaps a certain pandering to the prejudices of rich liberals. But to suggest that talking about bitterness per se shows insensitivity to the plight of working people seems seriously misguided: If working people aren’t bitter, they should be: about the growing disparity in wealth between the top tier of society and every one else; about the growing disparity in income between executives and workers; about the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, the piling up of national debt, the failings of the health care system, the war in Iraq, the combination of ideological blindness and crony cupidity that has driven so many of this administration’s policies.

Bitterness is in order. Are people also bitter about the rising price of gas or just dismayed? Either way, one can acknowledge the personal impact of high gas prices without talking down to voters, without playing on what you hope is their reflexive short-sightedness, without pretending that a meaningless gesture demonstrates real concern. Both Obama and Clinton had a chance to be presidential about McCain’s gas tax proposal. He took it. She didn’t.

• Comment Now

Seattle Mayor for Life Greg Nickels is issuing press releases fast and furiously. There are, after all, only 546 days until the election — the 2009 election. And although he has no real opponent as yet, His Excellency has only $129,639.98 in the bank for the 2009 campaign and only took in $29,430.90 in March — and hired fundraiser Colby Underwood got $3,500 of that.

So it's no wonder Nickels' staff is cranking out press releases that attach his name to everything that happens in this town. In March, while he was raising that $29,430.90, the official office of the mayor issued 24 press releases, and all but three began like this: "Mayor Greg Nickels ..." Etc., etc.

• "Mayor Greg Nickels announced today the city of Seattle will participate in Earth Hour ..."
• "Mayor Greg Nickels announced today that Seattle set a new city record for recycling rates ..."
• And our all-time favorite: "Mayor Greg Nickels today declared open season on potholes ..."

Here's a dubious one from April: "Mayor Greg Nickels announced today that the Seattle Channel garnered a record 17 Emmy nominations ..." Way to go, Mayor Nickels!

The barrage will continue until we all get the picture. The latest, issued yesterday (hence our timing here, piling on after Mossback's analysis of Nickels' isolationism):

SEATTLE – Mayor Greg Nickels today announced the lineup of entertainers who have received permits to perform in downtown parks this month.

The Center City Busker Program is part of Nickels' Center City strategy for making downtown parks livelier and more welcoming with musicians, dancers, and other street performers.

"Bringing music to our parks is just one way we're making Seattle's open spaces even better," said Nickels. "It's all part of making our parks safer, cleaner and more engaging to the thousands of people who live and visit downtown."

And so on.

As long as he's sort of taking credit for things like issuing permits and Emmy nominations, maybe there are some other things he should sort of take credit for:

• "Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels today announced that buses from the University District to downtown will again be crowded with the homeless and annoying mentally ill people ..."
  
• "Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels today announced that the gaping, publicly owned hole in the ground in front of City Hall will continue to be a gaping, publicly owned hole until a private developer can be found to build something hideous ..."
  
• "Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels conceded today that despite his efforts, climate change continues unabated ..."
• "Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels today announced Seattle is now self-sustaining and doesn't need the rest of the state ..."

Oops, OK, that last one is kind of true.

• 9 Comments

It may be the season for finding big white enigmas. In March, scientists spotted a long-rumored white killer whale in Alaska. Closer to home, researchers who have been pawing the sod in search of the Great White earthworm of the Palouse have come up with some surprising new clues about the elusive and possibly endangered creature. Two recent discoveries, one near Moscow, Idaho, and one near Leavenworth, Wash., suggest that the worms are not only out there, they may live farther afield than previously thought.

The Great White is not the only giant, native worm species in the Pacific Northwest. It also has a rare non-white relative in Oregon. Sightings of both types of giants are highly unusual, and recovering actual specimens even rarer. They are tougher to spot than a white orca because they live underground. Unfortunately, when they surface, they are usually damaged due to digging, plowing or earth removal. As a result, little is known about their habitat, range, and behavior, but they are known to grow up to three feet long.

The two recent finds are significant for different reasons. The Moscow worm was found in two small bits by soil researchers and cannot be positively identified, though evidence points to it being a Great White. It was found in what is widely regarded as the worm's native habitat, an undeveloped remnant of original Palouse prairie called Paradise Ridge. Such undisturbed habitat is scarce and it is thought that the extensive plowing, cultivation and development of the Palouse's rich soil have pushed the species to the brink. Environmental groups are seeking to protect the species.

The bigger surprise is the possibility that a Palouse giant might be found as far West as the Cascades town of Leavenworth. There is some previous evidence to suggest that Palouse worms could inhabit non-prairie terrain, however. Two were captured on the wooded slopes of Moscow Mountain after being found under moss by a couple of insect researchers in the late 1980s. That surprised researchers who previously expected to only find them in the rolling hills and rich soils of Palouse country. So it was known they could live in forest, like their Oregon relations. In a press release about the latest worm finds from the University of Idaho, there is also mention of a previous Great White find near Ellensburg, which puts them within striking distance of Leavenworth's Ponderosa pine country.

The property owner who found the Leavenworth white says he has seen others. Michael Westwind-Fender of Oregon, the Northwest's legendary leading worm expert, thinks it is likely a Palouse giant, but cannot say for sure because the specimen was too damaged.

Based on the recent finds, Prof. Jodi Johnson-Maynard, a soil ecologist and Great White seeker at the University of Idaho, plans to expand her search for the giant worms in the hope of finding specimens that can be positively identified. It's been like looking for a needle in the haystack. The good news, however, is that while the haystack just got bigger, there are apparently more needles in there than previously thought. That offers hope that more can be learned about the enigma beneath our feet.

• 1 comment

Mike Parks, editor of the valuable Marple's Pacific Northwest Letter ($), has posted some fascinating data about levels of wealth in Washington and Oregon, digging into the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis figures for 2006, the most recent year available. The figures show how much Washington's richest counties are outstripping nearby states.

King County leads all counties in income per person, $52,655, which is considerably ahead of Oregon's top county, Clackamas, part of the Portland area, with $41,378. The Seattle-area income has been growing at a strong rate of 4.9 percent over the past 10 years, which includes four very slow years in the early part of this decade. By contrast, the Clackamas County growth rate for the past 10 years have averaged 3.8 percent per year. Statewide figures are: Washington, $38,212 (annualized 10-year growth rate of 4.3%); Oregon, $33,299, and 3.6% growth rate; Idaho $29,920, 4.0%. (National per-capita personal income was $36,714 for 2006.)

Some other interesting data points: San Juan County, with all those well-off retirees, is a close second to King County, but then it's a big drop to the third county, Kitsap, at $39,353, a country with the fastest income-growth rate of the two states. Oregon's counties are much more grouped together in income, with only an $11,200 difference from the top county to the tenth; in Washington, that gap is $18,900. The top county in the three-state region is Idaho's Blaine ($59,939), the home of Sun Valley.

• Comment Now

"I never thought I could get the Norwegian government interested in the Mississippi primary," quips Wegger Chr. Strommen, Norway's Ambassador to the U.S. "There isn't one Norwegian in Mississippi."

Instead, the diplomat says he's found an endless thirst for information at home about America's seemingly endless primary process. "It's fantastic publicity for the United States. You wouldn't believe the interest in Norway and in Europe in the election." Strommen told an audience at Seattle's Nordic Heritage Museum that Norwegians are gobbling up political arcana such as how voting patterns in metropolitan King County differ from those of rural counties in eastern Washington. And they relate to candidates fielding questions in farm kitchens in wintry Iowa, while sipping coffee and nibbling cookies. "It's a little like our Scandinavian model."

"You are actually very good at democracy," the ambassador says. "You actually let everyone have an opinion. 'McCain is an idiot.' 'Hillary can't be President.' 'Obama is inexperienced.' There's something very impressive about that."

"I'm not sure you should have an election like this every year," he adds with a knowing smile. "But for the rest of the world, it portrays the United States in a very good angle."

Strommen, 48, took over as Norwegian envoy last October. He's an international lawyer, former deputy foreign minister, and served as Norway's ambassador to the United Nations for six years.

He says he's "asked every day" which candidate Norway would prefer as President. His predictable diplomatic response? "I'm not going to tell you that. I would lose my job."

• Comment Now

One of the best trends in historic commemoration is a greater willingness to honestly embrace history some would like to forget. In the bill containing Washington's new Wild Sky Wilderness that just passed Congress, there is funding for a National Park Service memorial on Bainbridge Island commemorating the shameful internment of Japanese civilians during World War II. The internment proposal was pushed hard by Rep. Jay Inslee and Sen. Maria Cantwell. Coming to terms with our nuclear past is another problematic area, but one that is also getting more attention in the West.

The latest issue of High Country News features a story by Jennifer Weeks called "Remembering our atomic past: Proposed museums help preserve the west's nuclear history" (subscription req.). The piece looks at the proposal to convert Hanford's old B Reactor into a museum, and a similar museum project is underway in Rocky Flats, Colorado. As I wrote earlier, there is also talk of developing a nuclear exhibit and education center somewhere in the Seattle area by Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility. They are eying the old Nuclear Reactor Building (More Hall Annex) on the University of Washington campus as a possible site.

There already are museums and visitor's centers that look at aspects of our "atomic past," notably the Atomic Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico where you can buy everything from an Albert Einstein T-shirt to matching Fat Man and Little Boy shot glasses. But such museums inevitably make people squirm because the nuclear legacy is not just one of science and energy, but one that encompasses mass destruction, war, radiation sickness, displacement, and environmental pollution. Does one weep for the victims of Hiroshima, applaud the brilliance and enterprise of the Manhattan Project pioneers, or celebrate Cold War victory with a swig from an Einstein "Half Life" coffee mug?

That complexity is exactly why these projects are compelling and necessary. In the High Country News story, former University of Washington and now Stanford historian Richard White is asked about how such museums should tell the story:

First, says White, they should describe how the [nuclear] sites' missions evolved as the Cold War played out beyond the urgency of the war years. Second, they should tell the stories of the people who were displaced. (At Hanford, for example, more than 1,500 settlers were moved off their land, and the Native Americans were denied access to the Columbia for fishing.) "A few years ago, people would have tried to eradicate leftovers from the past that were considered distasteful and make things pristine, the way the U.S. did when it rebuilt Berlin," White says. "This is much better. Buildings provide a physical presence."

That latter point is really interesting, because so much of our nuclear history took place in secret at remote facilities, necessary both in wartime and for safety. And radiation itself is invisible, which was part of the reason it was so feared: You could be killed even if you were miles away from a blast site, or years later from exposure by cancer. On top of that, the atomic Cold War was in some respects itself virtual, a theoretical conflict of war-games and what-if scenarios.

Creating museums that wrestle with the pros and cons of nuclear power and weapons can make it all tangible, can go beyond bunkers and burial sites and bring it into the daylight. The story quotes Kim Grant, who is involved with the Rocky Flats museum:

The Cold War was predicated on the idea that war would never be fought, so we don't have battlefields and artifacts as we do from the Civil War. Much of this stuff was off-limits, behind fences or buried in the ground. But if you look, it's all over the place in the West. It's not being preserved or commemorated very well, so we have a kind of amnesia about it.

Amnesia isn't a good thing when we're still making atomic history and will continue to for tens of thousands of years. Preserving memory is not only smart policy, but it could be a matter of survival. The story points out that the B Reactor in Washington was the first full-scale nuclear reactor in the world and made the plutonium for the Trinity test and Fat Man, the bomb we dropped on Nagasaki. Rocky Flats was where they made nuclear bomb triggers from the 1950s through the 1980s. While the U.S. government is spending many billions of dollars to clean up nuclear sites, it seems only proper that some of that money should be siphoned into restoring the full historic record so that all of us can learn more about the consequences, for better and worse, of our actions.

And speaking of drawing public attention: Abby Martin, the UW grad student who is trying to save the UW's Nuclear Reactor building, tells me that a student organization, Friends of the Nuclear Reactor Building, will be holding a barbecue at the site to accompany an art installation there on May 16. They'll be inviting architecture and engineering students and hope to draw attention to the building, which was one of the few — perhaps only — nuclear reactor sites designed specifically to be visible to the public. The reactor's been decommissioned, so no roasting weenies in the core. Details on the event to follow.

• Comment Now

There's a new and growing effort to memorialize cyclists hit by motor vehicles — and in the process, raise awareness for bicycle safety and sharing the road. The first "ghost bike" reportedly appeared in St. Louis, Mo., when Patrick Van Der Tuin witnessed someone on a bike getting hit by a car. In response, he and his friends painted bicycles with white paint and displayed them at motorist-cyclist accident sites. While ghost bikes seem to have proliferated as a meme rather than by deliberate means, someone has created a Web site for the phenomenon. However, the e-mail link doesn't work. You'll find instructions for beginning your own ghost bike project in the same "organic" way that many of the projects currently listed have been conducted. Check out the list of ghost bike locations, which includes Portland, but not Seattle.

May is National Bike to Work Month. May your journeys be safe.

Update: Today I received this message:

Hi Lisa,

I came across your blog post about ghost bikes, and noticed that you have had bad luck with a couple of existing ghost bike web sites. I am one of the maintainers of ghostbikes.org. We do have some information on Seattle which can be found here;

http://www.ghostbikes.org/seattle

We also actively answer questions, update pages based on reader submissions, and even open up a city's section to local cyclists if they wish to maintain good information on their local project. Please click around our site for information on who we are and what we do.

Cheers,

~~Nat

NYC Street Memorials Project

• 2 Comments