Weather: Rain, and more rain, until 3:30, when the sun finally came out when we were walking around
Pics: Please excuse old-shaky-hands if some of the pictures in the blog are blurry. This is not something THB is doing to provide artistic merit…wait, maybe this is something that has artistic merit. THB rescinds his apology. It sure isn’t the camera’s fault!
Rental car, inside and out of the Turrell at the Henry (the roof is closed, not easy to tell from the pic other than that THB has been saying “NO SUN” for the last few days), cherry blossoms (and a surprise “before” pic from May of last year...or is it an after pic?) including DB and THB posing, a few street art shots one shot of a pic of a pic that THB took last year of Akio piece outside Whole Foods, two shots at/of Sitka and Spruce.
Fitness center. Breakfast at Lola with other NCECA folks and E&J, eggs overcooked (omelet for THB, scrambled for DB), good potatoes, bacon, scone, stuff the others have, and doughnuts (shared, fortunately). $150 for 7
Start with the Bellevue Art Museum: four good to very good exhibits (one focused on ceramics, two with some ceramics and one pure art jewelry). Slide back across Lake Washington to UW and the Henry for another show of early work by local ceramicists; it’s good to know that these artists all had a lot of growth in them! Across campus to a juried college (undergrad and graduate) student show which gave us a chance to see the spectacular cherry blossom display (see lots of pics).
Lunch at a local hot dog spot: rajun Cajun for THB, a shared veggie burger, beef stew, fries, a brewski, coke and iced tea (THB), $50 for 4
Finally back to a few galleries near Pioneer Square, then to the hotel to rest up for dinner at Sitka and Spruce, where we join S&C. The meal tonight is also family style, and we get to pick the dishes rather than using a set menu. To THB, tonight was better, that was not the consensus when compared to Staple and Fancy (all these … and … restaurants!).
House-made sourdough and butter (excellent); ful, carrots and avocado mezze with coffee soaked egg and dukkah (say what?); smoked sardines with parsnip skordelia and hazelnuts (more what?); chicken liver pate on toast, stinging nettles (soupy) and poached egg; chicories, arugula shoots and turnip greens with bagna cauda; artichoke, green garlic and grilled haloumi salad with lemon from the fireplace (similar ingredients to Cantinetta, much different in the eating); charcoal grilled chicken, preserved lemon, almonds and cumin; gateau Basque with Mount Adams huckleberries; licorice fern root semifreddo with poached rhubarb; 3 teas, two glasses of wine, 2 bottles of Gruner Veltliner, $420 for 7
Book Review: Sacred Trash, The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza, Adina Hoffma and Peter Cole (Kindle). Another oddity from THB’s pathological readings. A geniza is sort of a burial ground for Jewish documentation (like it can somehow be saved from a horrible afterlife or tainting the current life), and in the late 1800s, one such “tomb” was found nearly intact in the attic of a synagogue on the outskirts of Cairo. It contained 100 of thousands of scraps on paper and parchment in various stages of decay and disfigurement from the late 900s (yes, about a thousand years old on down to only 800 years ago), and is still being catalogued and analyzed, with ever more scraps being discovered in other collections and attempts to connect them with this other tomb. The story is mostly on the individuals that have been taking in the task of re-envisioning life from that period, focused (though not exclusively) on the Jewish communities and the mundane to the exotica of what was written and kept.
For those of you who want a more detailed view (THB may give it a go), here’s the first volume (of six?) by the last and most famous of the interpreters (now dead), S D Goitein: A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza
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