I'm in Seattle. It's not the same now with me having my family in Paris. Pls. see the song 'Death of a City'--it really sums up how I feel. It's still beautiful, it still has great music, great restaurants, trees, whatever. It's not my home anymore. That's fundamental, and it's in my chest and stomach and legs as I go round town taking crap to Goodwill, or whatever it is I do all day.
My folks' home in Bellingham, on the other hand, felt very good to visit this last couple of days. I was so relaxed that I couldn't keep my eyes open past midnight...I saw a bald eagle nest on my way back to Seattle--where Electric Avenue and Alabama St. meet near Lake Whatcom in Bellingham,if you look to the southwest, up in the trees right there by the intersection, you'll see a big bunch of small branches about 40 feet up in a tree. If you're lucky, you'll see one of the eagles standing on it. As I stopped at the 4-way stop there, one of them flew right over and in front of me, I could see every detail of its face and feathers. It swooped up into the trees and went to its nest. I think the best things that have happened to me here in Seattle and environs have been visiting my folks and son in Bellingham, and two profound encounters with birds: the aforementioned; and when I was getting in my car in front of my house in Seattle, a tiny ruby throated hummingbird arrived right above my head, about a foot and a half from my face, to feed on the cherry blossoms in the trees in front of my house. It stayed quite awhile, went to a few other bushes in the yard, and moved on.
REM's Christmas single for 2005 was a DVD with two live songs from the Wercther Festival last year, I was part of the show that night. The performances and video/audio quality are outstanding...
RIP Buck Owens. He used to be a radio DJ in Tacoma for a brief period in the late 1950s, before his biggest successes. I read that in his NY Times obit. this morning. No, he wasn't from the NW. You can read the obit. but he was born poor in Texas, grew up poor in Arizona, and moved to California as a young man to play music there. He did gigs and sessions, but during a bit of a dry spell he headed up to do the radio gig in Tacoma. Song he wrote there were recorded (I wonder where/if he recorded up here?) and started a huge string of hits in the early 1960s. And back to Bakersfield he went. Merle Haggard was one of his bass players early on, and--Buck's first wife later married him. It appears they remained, eventually at least, friends.
Love
KS
Seattle
