WEATHER, WEATHER...

 

Since moving to the NorthWets, I have been astounded by this impossible twilight color, which is too rare for this glutton of such spectral hue. I tried to mimic it as an accent color on a wall at Soundcliff, our Vashon Island home, with only minimal success in paint.

 

 So, I was very pleased to capture another dose several weeks ago on our deck... March 20, 2025 to be more precise. The shot below was made several days earlier one morning at dawn, rare as well for me, recovering from a years-long nocturnal work habit. 

Taking us indoors, I share this moonlit glimpse of the same view from our living room... 

Living  we celebrate Frank Herbert on our daily walk along the area reclaimed by the EPA & named for the Dune series for which it is named. I've appreciated the numerous bronze quotations from this author embedded along our water walk...vying for attention with the more atmospheric parts of our ecology. This one often catches my attention... it being so currently apropos.

 Besides the major ecologic history atop which our Dune Peninsula has been so recently built, our entire waterfront, stretching several miles along the harbor, is nicked & notched by slowly recovering toward something of a healthier ecology. This view, having been sites of the major wood mills of the last century for which Tacoma's economy was known, is more easily reclaimed by water, still messy but certainly less toxic than the slag from the former copper smelter also once nearby. 

This shoreline has become a daily visual satisfaction for me from our deck. Still, it presents concrete remnants of the mills' foundations very slowly mellowing into rather romantically archetypal "plinths" in my imagination. 

A low tide reveals more of the rotting pilings of the extensive wharves which used to collar the shoreline further beyond our stretch. We are lately seeing active removal of several acres of such ecologic reparation... even as I could easily romanticize these poles as well. What difference is there to those oft photographed painted poles along the canals of Venice? Ah yes, but, yes...the creosote, poisonous to the aquatic wildlife, which they still retain... 

I absolutely celebrate the work of our government entities in that work. 

We live under skirts of our mountain, Tahoma... [La Mama as I call her] We have a tall teacher!

She's lovely while being moody.

 

 Her snowy skirts sometimes drape us here.

 

AH ... BUT

BUTTERFLIES TO THE BALLET!

  

 We asked Momo, my long-time associate & social media maven at GRB BELLS, to join us last month to see the Pacific Northwest Ballet's new production of The Sleeping Beauty. We dressed up! 

 In good part, our initial impetus toward this event was the design & costumes. The stage design is by Preston Singletary, a glass artist whose work we have appreciated for years. He is a musician as well, with a history including a stint with Rumors Of The Big Wave, a popular Seattle band in the 1990's, the principal members of which we know well, Charlie Murphy & Jami Sieber.

 The set he designed has a bridge formed as an eagle in the form line design style of NW Coast Native Cultures... Preston is Tlingit.

 It changes & evolves as additional parts move into play. The action & dancers move over, under & through the space

 The costumes were also themed in similar form line style 

 

The overall effect was stunning!

Not unlike the mountain we revere through our home's windows & on our daily walks! 

Hawai'i -- Hilton Humor... [Two]

 We did get some beach time...

I need to more fully tell the story of how we spent one of our Hilton days with no hot water in our room, or no water at all! We never quite got a full explanation, & we did survive without showers. But that was a negative experience for us all, including the sales staff trying to convince us to sign up for a time share plan with Hilton Grand Vacations. 

Obviously, we know how to make our own travel plans. The nice people with the sales job ("this is not a high pressure sell") had to acknowledge that for themselves. We don't have the usual 1 or 2 week vacation schedule, we don't have kids' entertainment to include, we don't play golf. We like to eat better [& usually later] than the few restaurants this place offered, with the exception of the last evenings' wine-pairing... when we were seated at group tables when we would have preferred to eat as a couple in that view with whales breaching in a brilliant sunset. These were, generally speaking, "not our people... not our thing".

We were happy to say Aloha to another sort of holiday!

We did find several sunny beach afternoons with our friend Zeke, who lives closer to Hilo... a fair bit of driving... he knows many more secluded spots to explore on his Island.

I was in the mood to read in the shade rather than swim with them. A fix of quiet... Ahh!

With much livelier shades of humor...

We stayed the last four nights with friend John Holliday, who lives looking down to the surf, most of a mile away...

His home has a sumptuous screened living room in a steep garden of citrus, with many orchids. A lovely pool with a huge avocado tree nearby. 

On our last visit it had been fun to help imagine the house as it would look after the remodel he was planning... using blue tape to mark where walls would move & new doorways would open. It was even more fun to walk through the finished project!

The lamp on my side of the bed danced me to dreamland.

One evening we were invited for cocktails to the hillside home of another friend, who had roomed with us at our 2019 visit to the Radical Faerie Gathering at Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon. Tom's home was delightfully quirky, with a tall wooden giraffe sculpture lifting into the two-storey stairway...

...its head surveying a palm tree chandelier in a jungle of art deco beveled glass!

With a rich sunset as we imbibed (martinis) on the deck beyond.

We met Zeke & Randy for a concert of young pianists with the Symphony... quite amazing talents!

Another wine pairing dinner gave us a second major food experience on which to fly home, quite happily!

Even as we arrived to weather which brought several inches of snow! Lovely in its short lived charm.

Hawai'i -- Hilton Humor... [One]

 

 This visit to the Big Island was some bit of impulse on Stephen's part, I believe... one of those "deals he couldn't resist." Yet it turned out to accomplish getting us out of our rainy, very cold winter weather, giving us some great meals [atop many of our favorite... poke!] & opportunity to see & visit our numerous friends who live there... plus our friend John's new special friend/partner, Ben. 

Ultimately... another great trip!

The deal was... a block of inexpensive nights at a Hilton Resort in exchange for a couple hours' pitch toward sales of a time-share plan. Notice our eyes rolling with sighs of bemusement... even as that amusement began five days before... this hotel had many parts which were rather Disney-esque. One story suggested one of designers was connected with Disney.

 Such might introduce the amusement to which I allude in this post's title...

I didn't think humorously so much about being lassoed into a reservation at a Hilton... After all, Otto (Stephen's father) left a pile of Hilton Honor Points to Helen (Stephen's mother) -- plus other family members to whom she made gifts of them...We all traveled for several trips.  Another of the many blessings she shared!

This Hilton Waikolea Beach was a campus of various opportunities to play, from the bit of true beach into a series of coves, islands & smaller swimming & water play pools, offering paddle boards & boats;  numerous buildings for dining, events & conventions strung along the coastal property. 

Of course, there was a golf course along the perimeter!

An unmanned train trundle-rumbled guests & luggage around, to & from the reception area & various registration desks... It was showing its age, as was much about this property. There was a meandering canal, originally connecting more distant parts of the resort by boat -- but the guidance system for them became slippery enough with seaweed to keep them docked while we were there. 

With the architectural infrastructure of arched bridges & walkways making a stage set, I could better imagine gondolas for such work... This place was trying to cover everyone's bases.

 

There were innumerable Buddha sculptures sprinkled around & S grabbed a passerby to play with us, me supressing giggles at our absurdity of mimicking a scene we witnessed some years ago at the World Heritage Site, Borobudur, on Java of a Japanese woman posing rather too piously with a zealous photographer: [see my post about that here]  https://grbarnett.blogspot.co some years agom/2017/01/indonesia-three-java-two-phoenix.htm

 

Such is the amusement to which I allude in this post's title 

But, we enjoyed walking from our room, in the farthest "Ocean Tower" building, via the long gently curving corridor, covered but open to the air.  It is a gallery housing the hotel's eclectic art collection. Many Asian objects & sculptures, some native Hawaiian pieces... with a sprinkling of European things loosely bridging these three cultural contexts for the Island.

All of which presented interest on several levels, intriguing one to dawdle at times or to pace more briskly when we were heading to the parking lot. We became quite familiar with its scope during our frequent passing... we enjoyed it inside many moods.

Hilton had been invited, before China opened, to come buy and make some precision copies of ancient sculptural work... the pieces we are seeing here. Some very impressive.

 

 

 

 Many pieces also were from Thailand, Burma & Indonesia...

 

  There were breaks in the passage which opened between buildings into highly designed gardens.

 

A token few were Polynesian... more local to Hawaii...

 

  

While similar media bridged back to SE Asia. I particularly enjoyed Indonesian wood relief carving...

While that could become intensely poly-chromatic!

The shadows from lattice shade in the afternoon light added its own art...

We joined an amazing chef's dinner with a particular Napa County vintner's offerings of wine. Kudos to that ending of our Hilton stay... Almost.  More to come.

BALI - part three:... NXT

 

The last time [2017] we visited our long-time friend Joel... a fellow foodie living in Bali,  he raved about a restaurant in Ubud called Locavore. Of course we we went, to discover one unique more-than-a-meal. It was an experience. I watched chefs plating food using tweezers!

Now for some months, as we planned the recent trip [November 2024], he was raving even more-so about... Locavore NXT.  I'm as curious as I might be skeptical... what's next!?

The experience begins with a drive down a long single lane driveway enclosed with tall old walls;  

there's an occasional gate, but little room for another vehicle. A set-up for an adventure! But then we come to a generous parking ramp seemingly tucked into the foliage... the first indication of the careful design of what becomes more a farm than garden. 

 

In fact, it is rather raw land. A feature catching my eye was a bamboo lattice leaning above a muddy plot. I deduced that it was a tool used to examine, analyze & catalogue the biomass of this plot of soil by means of this grid of a few square centimeters. 

This is not at all just another eatery, even if it is the latest child of a growing family of experimental  foodie ventures. We had marveled at a 20+ course menu featuring very local foods when dining at Locavore, which menu included baby wild field birds, skewered  & roasted whole...

So now... here... we are really off into the mud & weeds!

But we are also entering a sophisticated  piece of architecture. An elegant structure designed so naturally as to become almost invisible... a display case for a concept. This obviously has very deep thinking investors! 

To begin, we listen to a recorded welcome & introduction to the concept...

  With a wall of living specimens collected in jars behind us, we begin to perceive that we are in a laboratory for the immersive study of the biome of this place. 

 

To begin, trays were presented by young acolytes who were teach/learning their craft...

Introducing us to some of the variety from the land...

We are invited to examine, & touch... &, invited to play! To rearrange an arrangement of wild flora while we sip an elixir of some kind.

I was fascinated 'trying to suss what those specimens might be...

Being encouraged to play with our food was certainly not a problem! We continued taking lessons, meeting the two co-creating owner/partners [one of whom is the chef] who explain their dedication to the philosophy -- & realization that all must play, actually play!, with this life of learning.

We also need to play it smart!... as explained in part of the menu:

Knowing now the over-arching concepts,  we are properly prepped, as we move under the palm-like spread of the bar's roof,  to pass through the ornately carved & gilded doors of the elaborate portal... & actually enter... 

We visited  any number of spaces & places as the meal's education proceeded to present the potential of this institution of teach/learning:

 

The mushroom cellar was a rather eerie, low lighted space with a stairway down into red light... a very high tech mushroom cellar...

Then up to a demonstration of the digital library housing all the data being collected.

A food lab... as if this entire operation isn't that!

The food laboratory sported a group drawing made by the chefs toward a menu...

The entire staff is attending what is a live college course in food.

This is an aerial view of the entire campus:

A fermentation lab...

Meat curing facility...

After all these pieces adding to our education... 

 

At last, the dining room... 

Satisfyingly spacious design. 

Lively staff... front back & center ... cooking, prepping, plating...  all with attentive personal development as part of the service. 

Contemplation was in evidence. This is a school...

The meal of myriad courses was conflated by those side trips to the mushroom cellar; fermentation, aging  processes; numerous areas with high tech tools.

The descriptions on the menu... of which I did not keep a copy... would not communicate so well as these images...

 

 Several of those might could have been dessert!

  ... Still, there is always more... 

We were, after all, celebrating Joel's 76th birthday... postponed from last year, when the planning for this month's travel in Asia was first being planned.

HUZZAH!