A great unforseen side-benefit of that is that we have the ability to get a library card in many places. All the towns we’ve temporarily lived-in have had methods for getting library cards that involve getting mail at a local address.  Santa Barbara has a great service to facilitate this: they provide you with a postage-paid postcard that you fill out and give back to them. They mail you the card, which you then you bring back to the library to get your card. Very easy – no waiting or messing around with getting official mail from other sources. Nice.

In Seattle they took any kind of mail that was sent in your name to your address, so there we brought a large shipping box that had my name and address on it. Definitely not as convenient as the Santa Barbara postcard.

In Vancouver, you didn’t to show any mail – you just had to pay $30 for 3 months. Not as convenient. But at least we were able to do it.

BTW, after having been away from the U.S. for so long, it’s been fun to realize that the libraries now have ways to request books via their websites. I did that a lot in Seattle, getting books that were housed in community branches all over the city, and having them delivered to my local branch which was just two blocks away. A very nice feature of modern libraries, IMHO, and something that changed over the 11 years Chris and lived outside the U.S.

Anyway, to end this brief homage to libraries and library cards, I’ll offer a few appropriate Broadway show tunes.  But of course – I mean, some things never change.

1. A Trip to the Library, from the musical She Loves Me. I’ve posted this song before, but today’s clip is performed by Jane Krakowski, who is up for a Tony Award on Sunday for her performance in this year’s revival of She Loves Me.  (Tony Awards are on Sunday, June 12th). BTW, the clip in that link is just a small snippet of her performing the song.  Here’s a link to the whole song performed by Sally Mayes, a woman who was nominated for a Tony award for the same role years ago in an earlier revival.
2. Marian, The Librarian: a classic song and scene from the musical The Music Man.  I think that Marian might have appreciated the idea that people nowadays can access the library books online, instead of causing so much ruckus dancing around her library.
3. Belle, from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. In the song, Belle doesn’t have a library in her little middle ages European town, but she always has her “nose stuck in a book.” I bring this up in part to forestall any questions about whether or not we visited the libraries when we lived in Italy and Germany.  Here’s the scoop: in Italy, the library was intimidating: no open stacks, plus I didn’t read Italian very well.  In Germany, it worked more like the North American libraries I was used to, with open stacks and a library card you could get with an ID – and proof of a mailing address. So while we lived in Tübingen, Chris and I both had library cards. As proof, I offer this old post I wrote about it all back then. Enjoy reading that,  as you’re listing to all the musical trips to the library…

To start last Friday off, Chris and I went out for breakfast. We don’t go out to breakfast that often, so it was the first time we’d tried a place a couple of blocks away from where we’re staying,  that billed itself as a “local institution” for breakfast: Julia’s of Wallingford. . The first item on the menu was an upscale Cinnamon roll:

Cinnamon Yum Yum: Fresh baked cinnamon roll from our bakery: sliced and dipped in our l’orange crème. Grilled and served with orange butter and syrup

Cinnamon Yum Yum, Seattle

Of course,  we did get spoiled in the Basque country last year. We had a dessert there called torrija empapada en yemas de huevo y nata fresca, caramelizada en la sartén, con held causer, roughly translated as “French with cartelized sugar” (with a side of homemade ice cream). What a great concept for a dessert.  Sadly, I have no photo of that wonderful dessert, even though Chris and I ate it at least 3 times on that trip. But we’ve looked through all our photos and can’t find a single photo of something that was truly “Yum Yum.”  Ah well. We’ll just have to go back and have it again, clearly. Just for the blog, of course.

Grilled Octopus with chickpea puree

Ramp ravioli with fava beans and sun-dried tomatoes

Squid-ink linguini with seafood in a marinara sauce

The grilled octopus dish was a little odd, which is why I have presented it oddly in the photo. At least it adds some interest. Ramp is a vegetable related to a green onion, and I guess it’s trendy? Anyway, the ravioli wasn’t bad, but it was an overly small serving for an overly high price, IMHO. The linguini with seafood – meh. Ah well. We should know better, but we are always optimistic that an Italian restaurant will be good.  Even if we’re not always in Italy – and last May 20th that’s where we were.  So it’s not fair to compare that meal to this year’s offering. It’s inevitable, though, since May 20th is our wedding anniversary, and a certain amount of reminiscing goes with the territory on those occasions. But apparently the food last year was so good that I didn’t take any photos, though — so at least this year we have something to remember the meals by in this blog post, because I’m not sure that they otherwise would be very memorable.

Now, before you look at the photos, you might think that since a ferry requires there to be a body of water, a fence on a walkway near the ferry will be a reasonable place for fulfilling the basic requirements for the locks of love:

Lee’s Unofficial Guide to the Locks of Love

1. Get a padlock with a key and a magic marker

2. Write your name and your beloved’s name on the padlock

3. Lock the padlock to a bridge over a body of water.

4. Toss the key into said water.

5. Congratulations, your lock is now attached to the bridge forever as a romantic symbol of your undying love.

You will note that steps #3 and #4 require there to be water.  Crucially, step #4 really needs it, since the whole idea of this “tradition” is that the key gets thrown into the water and lost forever, thereby making the padlock permanently attached to the fence in step #3. It can’t be a symbol of eternal love if you can easily go retrieve the key.

I didn’t make the rules of the game, I just report them.

But take a look at the Seattle Locks of Love I saw on that walkway near the ferry:

Locks of Love in Seattle – photo #1

Locks of Love in Seattle – photo #2

Seriously? Locks of Love here?  Really? This is just all wrong. There are steps just off the right of the photo that would take you down to the street where you could retrieve the key. Sigh.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen badly positioned locks, of course. But at least the landlocked locks seen in last year’s Locks in Translation were placed near a view. In retrospect, I clearly shouldn’t have been so critical of those…

We’ve been here in Seattle 2.5 months, and we finally got around to taking a ferry to Bainbridge Island this past Saturday.  We’ve had unusually nice, mostly sunny  weather for the past week or so. It was a more typical Seattle day on Saturday, though.

Some might call it gray, but I’ll call it atmospheric.

View of Seattle from the ferry before we left Seattle; there are mountains in the distant fog

Still, you can get a nice view of the skyline from the ferry, even when it’s gray — er, atmospheric.

Seattle, straight head

Seattle Skyline

Zooming in on the Seattle Skyline

It was interesting that from Bainbridge island, you don’t see the whole skyline, at least not from the ferry landing. Here’s a shot taken just before the ferry started moving:

Artistically toned view from Bainbridge Island

Also, the rain left behind a puddle or two that I spotted on the ferry deck on the way back. So, even if the weather wasn’t ideal, finding a reflection in a puddle is never bad.

Puddle on the Ferry

Puddle on the Ferry – #2

—–

P.S. I used to watch the tv sitcom Frazier back in the day. At the beginning, a graphic “sketched” the Seattle skyline.

Screenshot from Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-SFhhnBwdA

I’m not sure if the skyline in Frazier is actually possible.  The little pointed tower is far over to the right in the real skyline when seen from the ferry, which puts it at the opposite end of the city from the Space Needle. It’s hard to understand where you’d have to be to get the pieces put together that way, since the tower and the Needle are so far apart in reality. But maybe I just haven’t been to the right place in town to see that. Or maybe there’s just a little artistic license going on in that graphic. Anyway, FWIW, I’ve linked that screenshot to a video that someone put together of all the variations in that opening graphic on Frazier. I had no idea that the opening graphic had so many different things happening in it, but there are balloons, moons, helicopters, etc. Fun!

You’re excited. I can tell.

Now, the official announcement says that it will be broadcast at 3pm in the afternoon, EST. Which is a bit confusing, actually, since mostly we’re already on DST, so does it mean that it will be broadcast at 3pm EST in the few places that don’t switch, but at 2pm DST everywhere else?  Hard to say.  Ah well, there always has to be something wacky about Eurovision, other than the songs.

BTW, in case you have forgotten how the contest works, you can consult my old guide to the contest. It’s a little out of date, unfortunately, as this year  they have tinkered with the judging and awarding of points. They are trying to avoid having any country wind up with  the dreaded “null” points this year, apparently. But I think the gist of the original guide still applies. Here’s a link from a British perspective that includes a graphic that compares the old and new rules. Scroll down the page to find it.

Now, I haven’t actually kept up this week with the contest’s semi-final rounds. So, I don’t know if there are any songs that involve food to make this somewhat appropriate for a Friday post. But here’s a link to one that involved food from a few years ago: Cake to Bake.  Nothing wrong with cake.

And in further keeping with the Food on Fridays theme, here’s an unusual photo from a recent Japanese meal we had here in Seattle. It’s a slice of Japanese radish (daikon), topped with marinated (pickled?) seaweed and a thin slide of red radish. The wasn’t anything we’d ordered, just an amuse-bouche that the chef offered to start the meal. It was quite tasty.

Of course, the food and the photo has nothing to do with Eurovision, of course. Although, it was a an bit unusual … and Eurovision is that. So may there is a connection after all… 

Radish amuse-bouche, Miyabi restaurant, Seattle

On Friday, I was over at the Mt. Rainer Vista walkway, which is a path that cuts across one of the quads at the University of Washington. I’ve walked along  this several times now, as it’s on the way to the library where I’ve been doing some research for my early women photographers project.

BTW, the first woman to successfully reach the summit of Mt. Rainer back in the 1890s was an Oregon schoolteacher. She later became a highly regarded professional photographer in Seattle — picking up photography at the age of 61 She remained a photographer until the age of 91, when she retired.

But I digress. We’re here to talk about the mountain she climbed.

Now, normally, what I see from that  path at UW is a big long stretch of campus, and a big fountain, with nothing in the distance. I mean, prior to Friday, there’s never been a Mt. Rainer “vista” visible from that vista viewpoint.

But on Friday, Mt. Rainer decided to come out in the open and pose for a photo op:

Mt. Rainer, seen from the Rainier Vista path at the University of Washington

Mt. Rainer off in the distance

A “closer” view of the mountain

Look how big that mountain is in the distance! It’s amazing when you see it it. But how can something that big not be visible more often?

Those photos were taken just before 2pm on Friday. Later that afternoon, as I was leaving the library around 5pm, I looked down the path and saw this:

“Believe in the Mountain”

Is there a mountain there? If you believe in the mountain … and are one with the mountain … you will see the mountain.

Skeptical? Here’s a version of that photo that has been adjusted to heighten the contrast between the mountain and the clouds around it.

Believe in the Mountain – (contrast enhanced))

The fact that something as big as Mr. Rainer is so hard to spot much of the time, even when you know it must be there, is an ongoing mystery for me. And not just on a Monday.

In any case, the main reason for the post is a photo from Volunteer Park. From a particular vantage point there you get a nice view of the Space Needle off in the distance. In fact, there is an iconic shot that you get from there that frames the Space Needle in the center of the modern art sculpture that is placed in front of the Asian Art Museum in the park. Technically, the name of the sculpture is Black Sun.

But the sculpture is referred to by locals as “The Doughnut”:

Black Sun (“The Doughnut”) sculpture

Yup, it does resemble a doughnut.

In fact, it looks just like a real doughnut that Chris and I sampled last week. Except, of course, the real doughnut didn’t provide a view of the Space Needle inside the middle like the sculpture did:

Chocolate Doughnut from “The Mighty O” in Seattle

As I said, this post was intended to be a Travel Tuesday post from Seattle. But I guess it just proves that no matter where we go or what the topic is, and despite my best intentions,  the discussion must necessarily always come back around to doughnuts.

—–

For whatever reason, this song kept running through my head when I thought about writing up this post: But the World Goes ‘Round.  Not a song about doughnuts, and not quite a crazy Broadway show tune – but it was at least written by Broadway composers, and doughnuts are at least round.  

Except, today’s story isn’t exactly about photographers. That’s the thing — you just never know what kind of story you’ll run across while looking in photographic archives. Last week, on a trip to the University of Washington special collections, the archivist pointed out that one of the names on their photographers’ reference list is James Ball, Sr., who was a pioneering African-American photographer in the 19th century. His career took him around the U.S., and he had studios in many places, including Seattle. He later moved his studio to Hawaii, but after his death his family moved back to Seattle, where his daughter-in-law took over running the photography business.

But it’s not his daughter-in-law that I want to talk about; rather, it’s her daughter, Alice August Ball. Alice was not a photographer, though. She was a chemist, and a very talented one at that. She attended the University of Washington; while she was still only an undergraduate she had a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

After graduation, she was offered scholarships to go to either UC Berkeley or the University of Hawaii. She chose to go back to Hawaii to study, and in 1915 she became the first woman and first African-American to get a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii

But it was while working on her post master’s research that she had a big scientific breakthrough: she discovered a treatment for Hansen’s disease, which is more commonly known as leprosy. There were no treatments for that disease circa 1915, but Ball discovered a treatment that actually worked!

The treatment — the one that Alice Ball discovered; the one that was used successfully to treat leprosy patients for decades — was celebrated for many years as …  the “Dean Treatment”.

Wait!? What!?

Well, the easy explanation is that the president of the University of Hawaii, one Arthur L. Dean, published her findings under his own name, stealing credit for the breakthrough, and naming the treatment after himself.

Now, Dean’s claim was quite quickly challenged by a doctor who had worked with Ball, but it took decades for the record to be corrected and the work to be properly attributed to Ball (and then re-named the “Ball Treatment”.) The University of Hawaii finally got around to honoring Ball only in 2000. Better late than never, I guess.

But you may be wondering, why didn’t Ball challenge Dean’s claims herself? Well, sadly, Ball died in 1916, so she didn’t live to see her technique so widely (and successfully) adopted. Since she didn’t live to publish her own work, it was each for Dean to take over and claim he’d made the discoveries himself.

Indeed, Ball was only 24 when she died; it’s actually the story of her death that prompted today’s blog post, not the fact that she was denied credit for so many years; that’s an all-too common happening in the history of woman in the 19th and 20th centuries, unfortunately.

But the stories about Ball’s death are a true Monday Mystery. You see, in reading a couple of different accounts about her on the web (e.g. here and here, and elsewhere), I’m not finding a consistent story about how she died.

On the one hand, since Ball worked really, really long hours, some attribute her death to simple exhaustion.

But there’s another story that says she was careless when demonstrating chlorine gas in class at the university one day, and she accidentally inhaled some, dying weeks later from the effects of that poisonous gas.

Then there’s mention of the fact that her death certificate was adjusted quite a while after her death, changing the cause of death to have been tuberculosis. But apparently nobody believes that she really died of TB.

Hmm. So how did she really die?  It’s not clear, at least not from my very limited (i.e. an hour on the Internet) research effort.

Now, in general it’s clear that there needs to be more of a celebration of Ball and her achievements as the woman who discovered a treatment for leprosy.  But I hope that when someone does that, they will also take a careful look into the oddly competing stories surrounding the death of Alice Augusta Ball.

And that is what I’ll leave you to ponder on today’s Monday Mystery.

I will start by saying that Chris and I went with a friend, D—, to go walking by a place called Green Lake last week. It’s a man-made lake here in Seattle, that boasts a nice, flat trail that circumnavigates the lake.

Green Lake panorama

We passed by a billboard at the remnants of the old Green Lake Aqua Theatre, which was an outdoor theatre used for performances. There are still some seating areas left, although there aren’t performances there anymore. But according to the billboard in the park, the Aqua Theatre boasted performances there for decades, everything from concerts to dances performances to musicals. Bert Parks played there once in the Music Man. Gloria Swanson also performed here.

And there was a mention of Robert Joffrey, who studied and then taught at the nearby Cornish School of Fine Arts; he, too, performed at the Aqua Theatre.

Joffrey mention at Green Lake

Oddly enough,  Chris and I had just a few days earlier been to an exhibit celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Cornish College of the Arts. I’d never heard of it before, but there it was, two mentions of it in the same week.

Now,  it had been a while since I’d run across anything about Joffrey or the Joffrey Ballet.  But I’d just that morning looked up some information about a ballet that I’d remembered going to back in the 1990s, a new ballet based on the music of Prince.  The ballet, called Billboards, had its premiere in Iowa City, where Chris and I were living at the time. We’d gone to see it at that time. Prince passed away last week, and I was reminded of the ballet based on his music.  So, when I’d looked it up before we left for Green Lake, I’d been reminded that the ballet had been performed by the Joffrey Ballet.

So there you have it. Three random things all connected to Robert Joffrey, all in one week, all of which I’d either never heard of or not thought of for years.

As I said, this is just a post about how odd coincidences happen … with things that might not seem related at the time.

In any event, here are a few more photos from our visit to Green Lake. Again, apropos of nothing, but it was a pleasant outing at a pretty lake.

Green Lake view from another side

Another Green Lake panorama – the Aqua Theatre is in the distance on the right

Green Lake trail view – looking toward the old Aqua Theatre

First, the photo:

Coffee at the Cat Cafe

Now, we could think of it as representing a Monday Mystery, since it’s odd to see a cat face in a cup of coffee.

Or, we could think of it as Travel Tuesday — since it is Tuesday, after all, and the photo was taken at a Seattle coffee shop called Meowtropolitan. As you can guess from the cafe’s name it’s a special “themed” cafe all about cats. Everything at the place is either named for cats or things having to do with cats. Their other feature –  er, gimmick? — is that for a not-so-small fee you can go into the “cat lounge” and hang out with some cats. Real cats from the local shelter. You can go in and play with them, and then if you want to adopt them, they are available for that, too.

Chris and I didn’t take that option, though. They charge  $10 per 50 minute session with the cats  (although that does include the price of one coffee drink). But Chris and I get enough free chances to play with our landlady’s cat if we want to.  Paying for coffee and a cat — as it were — seems a little odd to me. But while we were there, the other 8 people in the place were all waiting for their turn to go into to play with the cats. So, I guess there are enough feline fanciers to keep the cats content.

Anyway, I’ll just stop here and leave you with this song that celebrates cats. It’s from the Broadway musical Cats. It is, after all, the the purr-fect song for today’s post…

Turkish food, that is.

Yesterday was our second visit to a Turkish restaurant that’s just a few blocks from where we’re staying here in Seattle.  The food is good — not the best ever, perhaps, but consistently good on a second visit, and you really can’t ask for more than that.

So, we started with a couple of appetizers. First, some lentil patties, which are served cold:

Lentil Patties

Then some grape leaves, which were interesting with an unexpectedly interesting (in a good way) flavor. The filling was rice and pine nuts,  with flavors that included cardamom and cinnamon.

Turkish grape leaves

For our main course, we had a spinach-and-feta-cheese-stuffed filo which was very reminiscent of the same kind of food at our favorite Bulgarian restaurant in Vancouver:

Turkish fillo stuffed with spinach and feta

Our neighborhood here in Seattle might not have quite the selection of ethnic restaurants that we found in the West End in Vancouver, but it’s still possible to find something here that is tasty and fun for a Food on Friday.  

Now, I had heard of the First Folio, but wasn’t really sure exactly what it was until we went to see it. It’s the first collected publication of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623 a few years after his death. Crucially, it includes some plays that were performed but not published during his lifetime, which means that had they not been published, some of his more famous works (nowadays) might have been lost. Plays like Macbeth, As You Like It, and The Tempest.  Crazy to think now that they might have been lost, eh?

Anyway, it was interesting to see the big format of the book, with the typeface that emphasized different parts (in the page that was open, the first letters in the lines of a soliloquy almost could have formed an acrostic; in the Third Folio pages, the boxes in the layout for the different scenes gave an entirely different feel to the page.

After we saw it, I then read an article in a British newspaper about how Shakespeare’s last set of plays were done under a different monarch (he first wrote while Elizabeth I was on the throne, and then continued while James I reigned). It didn’t say it in the exhibit (at least, not that I noticed), but I having read that article, I now wonder if those plays weren’t published by Shakespeare because he was too busy being a “King’s Man” (a royal appointment), which meant he was constantly at the monarch’s beck and call to arrange for his troupe to give performances at the palace.

In other words, it was hard to be the bard. As it were. Right, well, that’s a song from the musical Something Rotten!, a fanciful and not at all historically based musical which posits that Shakespeare was a famous rock-star of a playwright during his lifetime.

At least that song is actually related to today’s post…

In any case, seeing the exhibit on our trip to the library was a little bit of serendipity on Saturday. It’s a traveling exhibit and I don’t know where it goes next, but if you should ever stumble onto a chance to see a Shakespeare Folio in person, I’d highly recommend it.

——–

Bonus clips from Something Rotten!

• Nostradamus’ nephew predicts that the next big thing in the theatre will be A Musical. (Here’s  a more complete version with all the lyrics: A Musical- with lyrics).
• The song Hard to be the Bard done in full costume, in a special performance at the White House
• Welcome to the Renaissance – the opening number from Something Rotten!

-

Yes, I know. Seattle is not known for its sunny weather.  But oddly enough, we’re not only having sunny weather, we’re having a heat-wave, Seattle-style.  Today is the 3rd day that the temperature has been over 80ºF (27ºC), which is a record for April in Seattle.

To celebrate, and because I can’t figure out another way to work these in, below you’ll find a couple more photos from our trip to Discovery Park on Sunday, the first day of the heat wave.

Forest plants in the sun, Seattle

Olympic Mountains viewed from Discovery Park

The following panorama is odd – the camera was confused by the sun, or something, and so the automatic “sticking” makes it look like it’s been folded. It’s all digital, so those are only virtual folds below:

Panorama of Olympic Mountains (Mt. Rainer is hidden, off to the left)

BTW, on Saturday, before the heat wave started, Chris and I went downtown to the central library so that I could look at some reference materials that can’t be checked-out. Which means we made a trip to the library, which happens to be the name of a fun song from a Broadway musical called called She Loves Me. The movie is based on the same source material as the movie You’ve Got Mail, a movie that starred Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, the same two actors who starred in the movie Sleepless in Seattle. And, of course, the title of that movie gave me the idea for the title of today’s post.

But I know, I know. That’s a bit of a stretch as a way to work in a song from a Broadway musical, since there is but a very tenuous thread that connects the musical to anything to do with the Sleepless in Seattle movie.

Never mind. Instead I’ll just have to end this post with a wink and a smile … which is the name of a song from that movie.

I mean, let’s consider what it says about Mt. Rainer in Wikipedia:

Mount Rainier, Mount Tacoma, or Mount Tahoma is the highest mountain of the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, and the highest mountain in the state of Washington. It is a large active stratovolcano located 54 miles (87 km) south-southeast of Seattle. It is the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States and the Cascade Volcanic Arc, with a summit elevation of 14,411 ft (4,392 m).  — From the Wikipedia entry

In other words, it’s big.

And indeed, if and when you do catch site of it, it’s not just an “oh, there’s a mountain” moment. It’s more of a, “Whoa — it’s a mountain!”.

The problem is catching site of it at all. What I hadn’t fully appreciated before is that Seattle is very hilly. Seattle turns out to be just as hilly as San Francisco, IMHO. As a result, apparently most of the time you’re not in a spot that is high enough to look over the next hill or two to see Mt. Rainer off in the distance. I mean, even if you’re on top of a hill, apparently you’re still in too much of a valley with respect to Mt. Rainer to see it.

Yes, I realize that doesn’t make much sense, but seriously, we’ve been here now 6 weeks and we’ve seen Mt. Rainer exactly three times, despite being at the tops of various hills around here more than that.

OK, right, well, some of those early weeks it was raining and/or cloudy all the time, and I will accept that Mt. Rainer might be shrouded in clouds much of the time.  But the weird part is that you can’t see it even on a sunny day, unless you’re in exactly the right spot. Which just seems odd. It’s BIG. It’s “the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous united states.”  It should be easier to see, IMHO.

Two weeks ago we were in the Olympic sculpture garden on a mostly sunny day.  As I took a photo of the Olympic mountains off in the distance, I suddenly realized that the clouds to my left had parted a little to reveal that one cloud clump was actually the top of Rainer.  Whoa – it’s a mountain! But the photo I snapped doesn’t necessarily convey that to you, the viewer who wasn’t there.  I’ve included 3 versions: one cropped one where the mountain location is marked in pink, one cropped one so you can see the mountain in a normal color, and then the full photo.

Mt. Rainer from Olympic Sculpture Park – position marked in pink

Mt. Rainer from Olympic Sculpture Park – same position, not in pink

Mt. Rainer from Olympic Sculpture Park – same position, not cropped

I know, I know – it’s hard to tell that’s really a mountain and not just a large set of clouds. I’m starting to wonder if Mt. Rainer is like Brigadoon, although Brigadoon for us in the past was a castle, not a mountain or town. ) But perhaps if you believe in the mountain, you will see the mountain.

OK, I’m joking, but only just a little.  It actually reminds me of something similar that happened to me with a  mountain many, many years ago when I lived in Tokyo. I used to go to vantage points there where people said you could catch sight of Mt. Fuji. But I never did see Fuji from those places.

Then I took a train one day to a town that was supposed to have great views of Mt. Fuji. But it was cloudy that day, and the guide said something like, “Over there you can see Mt. Fuji. Only … not today. ” Right. I decided that Mt. Fuji was perhaps just a myth, or a fancy projection or backdrop that was brought out only for a chosen few. It turned into a running joke for me that whole year, actually. Whenever I went with someone who said that they would “guarantee” we would see Mt. Fuji that day, I still never saw it. Ultimately, I think I did managed a tiny glimpse once. For a moment. But even now I’m not sure I really saw at all.

Perhaps I just didn’t believe in the mountain…

But I digress. Well, sort of; I mean, I believe in the mountain now, and I have actually seen Mt. Rainer. But I’m just finding it really disconcerting that it seems to go missing so easily from so many seeming vantage points here in Seattle.

Now, over the weekend we went to Discover Park, another place in Seattle. From a lookout point there I did spot Mt. Rainer once again.  Yay!

But the photo I took makes it look very tiny, even though in person it didn’t seem small. Take a look:

Mt. Rainer from Discover Park (cropped)

Mt. Rainer from Discover Park (less cropped)

Mt. Rainer from Discover Park (not cropped)

See how small it looks in the uncropped photo? Strange. Let’s call that a continuing Monday mystery…

Now, one standard postcard view of Seattle is a scene of the skyline, as seen from Gas Works Park, on the north short of Lake Union. It’s about a 15 minute walk, give or take, from where we’re staying.

Seattle city skyline from Gas Works Park

I took the photo while standing on the top of a small hill in the park. To the left of the view seen in the above photo stands the old gasworks buildings.

BTW, I found it odd that from that particular vantage point  I could see no mountains in any direction, even though I know they are all around, and I had seemingly climbed up to a height on a hill that should have been high enough to see something. Weird.

But in any case, that hilltop vantage point did cry out for a panorama photo. So, since I had my cellphone with me, I took a couple of those “sweep panorama” photos that’s easy to do with the cellphone camera.

But it had been a while since I’d taken one of those, and I’d forgotten how  easy it is to  get (accidentally or otherwise) special effects with it. The types of effects where you get multiple versions of a person, or a partial person, for example.

Odd Panorama and Seattle city skyline from Gas Works Park

Odd Panorama in Gas Works Park

Interesting, but not exactly what I’d intended. Think of it as a type of twist – it’s what you get when it’s a Travel Tuesday on a Thursday.