Seattle!

Sally Cleveland, an artist of the Pacific Northwest, describes her work as neither environmental or political but rather "a combination of personal history and the exploration of a dark, beautiful, and awkward region." I thought she described the region perfectly with those three words.

Walking through an old alleyway of Seattle. A wall of gum on our left, and a wall of art on our right.

"It's all very new, and all very tentative, for Seattle is a city that can't decide what to wear." (The Good Rain, by Timothy Egan)

Seattle is named for a Coast Indian who allied his tribe with Arthur Denny and David Maynard in the effort to build a city on Elliot Bay. At that time the draw to Seattle was basically the timber yards and brothels. Fast forward some generations (of fires...gold rush...Boeing plants...) and you get the city of two million. As Egan puts in perspective, "Seattle was a filthy, foul-smelling lumber camp and vice pit that would, within a few generations, be called the most livable city in America."

Okay, I left a bunch out, but I have algae waiting on me in the lab, but the history of Seattle is pretty interesting so I recommend reading up on it. I'll sign off with another great excerpt from Egan's The Good Rain:

"...the growth angst has an edge because it goes to the very reason why people live in Seattle. Here in the corner attic of America, two hours' drive from a rain forest, a desert, a foreign country, an empty island, a hidden fjord, a raging river, a glacier, and a volcano is a place where the inhabitants sense they can do no better, nor do they want to."