Eli ([personal profile] eub) wrote2005-10-10 10:44 pm

bits: P-Patch, Mephisto, joik

Went to first public meeting on the Fremont P-Patch now in planning -- 42nd and Baker. Members of public sat around five tables, sketched layouts on 1/8"-scale maps. The lot is very sloped, 1:4 and then 1:1 down to the street, which is interesting. (An ADA-usable grade: 1:12.) Our table quickly dwindled down to me and one woman. Our main feature was proposing to cut in half the land-swap proposed between the P-Patch's plat and the neighboring plat -- full swap would make the Patch a rectangle with a puny lonely-looking tail; half-swap is more a balanced L. Suggestion came from a guy who is a nearby neighbor and rather cranky on the entire land-swap idea. Other interesting features in people's proposals: flattening out the slope's "knee" and terracing it all (30:50 slope, 5' retaining wall on 8'-wide bed, yipes). Plaza at sidewalk level where 42nd hits. Stairs up that corner. Concentric rings of bed raying out from that high point. Stream winding through from water that trickles down the alley.

Mephisto has had his course of antibiotics and it's not clear what impression they've made on his variable mucus, though it seems somewhat cleared up. Various cat maintenance still to do. The most disturbing news is that Virginia Dalton at the shelter can't find any record of a FeLV test. Ugh. And of course that would be potentially transmissible, too.

Coming home from a hike yesterday I heard on KUOW a musician, a yoiker, being interviewed by phone from northern Norway. "This yoik," he said, "the melody moves like the aurora, yes, the shifting of the aurora." The track they played made the hair on my arms stand on end. So: Vajas is playing at the Nordic Heritage Museum next Wednesday! (And look, their synthesist is the guy from Bel Canto who isn't Geir Jenssen.)

This (QT video) is a little Phong-shady, but I still thought it was a lot of fun.

[identity profile] jinian.livejournal.com 2005-10-11 04:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Nordic Heritage museum also has stuff on the 150 families of Saami who came to teach Alaskan natives how to herd reindeer in the 70s, which I'd never heard about before our art-history professor told us.

[identity profile] eub.livejournal.com 2005-10-12 07:51 am (UTC)(link)
What an interesting story. I find some bits on the web, mostly referring to this exhibit itself. I wonder what the backstory was, too -- a government program for planning economic development?

Hee!
http://www.scandinavica.com/culture/world/alaska.htm
What happened with the Sami who relocated to Kitsap county?
- FF: Their descendants are still there. We had a Sami family reunion in Poulsbo, Washington, in 1998 and more than 100 people showed up.

[identity profile] beaq.livejournal.com 2005-10-17 05:51 am (UTC)(link)
Did not see yon post!

I hope I can make some fine reservations for me.

P-Patch: interesting!

Meph: poor poor!