Monday, September 28, 2009

A lovely day out




Miri and I went to Sequim, Wash., yesterday, and got to see some cool stuff. First, at the Dungeness River Festival, there was an exhibition of driftwood sculptures:




This one is a dreamcatcher inside of a piece of wood. I thought it was really pretty.




And then this one is the column of fire from the Book of Exodus that guided the Hebrews at night through the wilderness. (The wood, not the flower bouquet.)




After the River Festival, we went to the Dungeness Spit National Wildlife Refuge, a 5-mile barrier island that extends out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It's one of the few long beaches walks in Washington state that doesn't make you climb a mountain in the middle of it.




We found a really big piece of driftwood there, and tried to take some artsy pictures with it, but I was using a digital pocket camera that doesn't have a manual mode, so it kept setting its aperture so as to get a good picture of the bright stuff, not the dimmer stuff. Here's Miri sitting behind the driftwood, and my shadow in the middle of it.



Eventually, I made my wife squint so that I could actually get her image exposed correctly.




And, finally, my favorite of the bunch of pictures, in which I was able to keep my elbow-shadow out of it.

So that was our Sunday.

Recently, I have had a few interesting things happen. I got another article published on that news Web site, the SeattlePostGlobe. It's about the Seattle City Council considering a change in its single-family housing zoning laws to allow homeowners to build backyard cottages on their lots.

Also, I had two job interviews last Thursday. One job seemed like it would be quite an adventure, and would be a real career-builder. The other seemed like a pretty good job that might pay the rent. I'm hopeful that one of them comes through.

If you're a PLU alumni, I'll be at homecoming this Saturday, Oct. 3. Come find me and say hi!

That's the news from Ruthfordville. We hope you are well!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

I'm a news reporter again!

Here is a link to a news story that I wrote. It's about Mary's Place, a women's day shelter in Seattle in danger of closing.

I am a volunteer reporter with the Seattle PostGlobe, an on-line news Web site consisting of former news reporters from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Times and the Seattle Weekly. It's a non-profit organization, with a big emphasis on the NON right now -- not even the boss gets paid. So if you want to promote a great news site that increases the number of journalistic voices in Seattle, please visit the donation page.