Saturday, June 25, 2011

More from the Great Northwest

The parts of Washington and Oregon I just visited are known for their environmental activism. Here are a couple of things I saw that reinforced that idea.

Recycling and trash receptacle labeled Landfill Trash
The receptacle above receives mixed paper, single stream recycling (probably cans and bottles) and also what is labeled as Landfill Trash. I thought the addition of the word "Landfill" to the usual "Trash" label was quite interesting. It made me think a little harder about what I was about to throw away.

Sign saying paper is made from sugarcane, no trees used
This sign was hung above the toilet paper dispenser at The Food Co-op in Port Townsend, Washington. I'm assuming the fibers are waste biomass from the sugarcane after the sugar is processed.

Then there are just the usual assortment of DN3 visual oddments:

Saturna Capital logo with oddly shaped flat S and large C nowhere near the rest of the word APITAL
A logo that doesn't read (APITAL?). And that has the worst-drawn letter S I've ever seen.

Yellow handmade sign reading WET ENCHILADAS NOW AVAILABLE DAILY
A bit of marketing that's bad for business.

And three favorite shots from Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park. When I last visited the area ten years ago, there was nothing there, as I recall. What a big improvement!

The former petroleum processing site has been cleaned up and transformed into a multilevel garden. The site's challenges -- it's on a hill that's bisected by a major road and a rail line -- have been taken advantage of to make the entire landscape a sculpture with moving parts.

Coiled rope, colored, with grass growing between the concentric rounds
Flemish Lines, by Nicholas Nyland. I loved how the grass grew up through the rope and wondered whether that was intentional or not.

Red Alexander Calder steel sculpture with Seattle's Space Needle straddled between the legs
The Eagle (by Alexander Calder) meets the Space Needle.

Giant typewriter eraser with round rubber disc and brush overlooking a stream of traffic below
Typewriter Eraser Scale X, by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, appears set to brush away the traffic flowing past.

My return trip from Seattle by Amtrak was interrupted by flooding in Minot, North Dakota. (To donate to help evacuees there, visit the Minot Red Cross.) So instead of another 36 hours on a train, I got 13 hours in airports and airplanes (most of it in the middle of the night, so I'm pretty sleepy right now).

As you might expect, there wasn't too much of interest there, but I did see this during a layover in Milwaukee:

Young man sitting on floor wearing shorts, side of his leg appears to have KKK tattooed along his shin
What?!! This guy has KKK tattooed onto his leg?!

Now, wait a minute... When I walked past and looked again:

View of the young man from the front, showing that the tattoo reads XXX
Oh, that's so much better.

3 comments:

Linda Myers said...

I went to the sculpture park last year for the first time. Can be a weird place, or interesting.

Nancy/BLissed-Out Grandma said...

Hey, I remember typewriter erasers! But I certainly had forgotten all about them. I wonder what young people make of that sculpture.

Ms Sparrow said...

I got a jolt of recognition from the typewriter eraser as well. It's rather alarming how quickly things disappear from memory when they're out-of-sight!