Noticed on a basement door in Port Townsend: “Over weight mermaids,” with an arrow pointing to the right.
This leads me to wonder. What do mermaids eat? And what would cause weight problems? Too much caviar? And why can’t they use that door?
Pink!
The view along Seventh Avenue has come to life as spring arrives.
Sold
It seems every time I drive anywhere I see more houses for sale. At one of them the other day I saw a woman nosing around a front window, trying to look in. Swallows are doing much the same with our birdhouses. It’s nesting season and at long last it appears that things are picking up for humans. The house this sign advertises had barely hit the market before it sold, a good thing for the sellers and the buyers. Not so good for a neighbor – me – who hates to see the sellers go. They’ve been the best neighbors, ever.
Smith Corona
I don’t know whether I find this funny, depressing, or horrifying. I came across this old typewriter last weekend in the Hastings Building during the historic buildings tour in Port Townsend. It looks just like the machine on which I learned to type. In those days we learned to type, not “keyboard.” I was in junior high school. The teacher walked up and down between rows of desks. Our hands were on “home row” and as she walked, she clapped and rhythmically called out, “A, S, D, F, G, H, J, K, SEMICOLON.”
As I learned to type, an electric typewriter was a fancy dream. The progression since then has been dizzying. Today I slip a Kindle Fire in my purse that easily has more power than my first half dozen computers combined. Yet when I look at that Smith Corona above I can still hear the slapping hands and “A, S, D, F, G, H, J, K, SEMICOLON.”
Spring! Really!
We had bright sun and blue skies Friday and yesterday. Everything is starting to bloom. I’ve even opened windows to let in the fresh air. This must really be spring. Really!
Happy Easter, happy Passover and, yes indeed, happy spring! And here’s a bouquet of daffodils to wish Lois Anne a fast and easy recovery from her recent surgery.
Another tiny cabin
This tiny cabin caught my eye in Diamond Point, a community east of Sequim. It may have been associated with the decrepit pier in the distance. The setting was certainly nice.
Details, details
In the good old days I always had this phrase on my resume: “detail-oriented.” This was a good thing for an administrator, making certain nothing fell through the cracks. I’m still working on it as a photographer. After all, there are details and then there are details. The buildings on the Insider’s Historic Building Tour in Port Townsend last Sunday were all terrific. But the details were my eye candy. Like the window pull, above, in the Cracker Factory. And it wasn’t until I pulled the shot up on my computer screen that I saw the tiny bubbles and imperfections in the original glass of the window. Cool!
These door hinges from the Cracker Factory were also in the Hastings Building, albeit less buffed. In the late 1800s I’d guess that a single foundry served the region and that choices were somewhat limited. By today’s standards these would be the “very fancy, extra-nice” option, at least in my opinion.
This door pull was in a third building we visited, one that’s now called the “Mount Baker Block,” but started out its life as the “Eisenbeis Block,” the same Eisenbeis as built the Cracker Factory which I showed you a couple of days ago. The work on this is splendid.
“What’s this?” you may ask. I’m not sure if it’s decoration or function, but it is on the under side of a stairway in the Mount Baker Block. I thought it was another “don’t see much like that anymore” detail.
Details, details: I find them interesting. Pretty. And a view onto a time when there was artistry, personal effort, and a lot of pride put into the little things. It still exists today, but is shown in different ways, in a vastly different world.