— Jenny Neill

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Tag "Seattle"

It rained today, the first day of March, in Seattle. Shocker, I know. This morning’s precipitation felt more like a heavy mist than a moderate rain as I stepped outside to take a stroll. No breeze of any significance moved the droplets from their lazy drift downward. Too cool to call it warm, the courtyard air was comfortable and smelled like wet loam and earthworms.

Shiny, wet, earthworm.

Photo courtesy of Eva Ekeblad. Some rights reserved.

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My first camera, one I still occasionally take out to shoot with, is the Pentax Spotmatic my father gave me many years ago. He invested in this model with the then brand-new, through-the-lens exposure metering to cover sports events when he was a college student. Dad taught me how to manage the manual adjustments of that old 35 millimeter SLR while taking cues from the needle of the TTL light meter.

Seattle Sounders fans in rival territory

Seattle Sounders fans in rival territory

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Most citizens of Seattle associate the number 12 with a certain sport that involves kicking or throwing an oval-shaped ball made out of pigskin. Having heard the Twelfth Man in action from the field in 2011, I have no doubts the crowd gives the team an advantage when playing at home. Earlier this week, that number took on yet another meaning for one of our neighborhoods. The Pike-Pine corridor in Capitol Hill was named one of America’s 12 Top ArtPlaces of 2013.

Seattle Seahawk Sidney Rice runs onto the field with the 12th man flag

Seattle Seahawk Sidney Rice runs onto the field with the 12th man flag.
Photo courtesy of Mike Russell.

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Why am I starting a new blog series called “Dunged?” Perhaps I am keeping company with an immature crowd online. Or, at the very least, a certain segment of my social media buddies prefer scatological humor. Maybe it’s because sometimes in order to re-use the refuse you have to deal with a little feces. So many products we take for granted as coming from factories and labs got their start in the dung heap. And much of how we care for our world and our health has to do with how we deal with our crap.

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Wine was always my drink of choice until a few years ago. That’s when I started doing double duty as sommelier and service bartender at Ray’s Boathouse on slow nights. It’s also when I began to associate the onset of the rainy season with trying new (to me) cocktails. As I developed my palate for booze, I struggled with gin. The strong flavor that juniper imbues to this base alcohol was usually too much for me. That is, until I put myself in the hands of Murray Stenson.

Murray Stenson

Photo courtesy of Scott Heimendinger. All rights reserved.

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Increasingly, I am spending time doing research. Much of this takes place online and one of the best tools available, as a Seattle resident and library card holder, is using the Seattle Public Library website. What I didn’t realize until today was that being a member also gets me access to museums in the area.

Seattle Public Library

Photo courtesy of Mike Russell All rights reserved.

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The landscapes of my youth invaded my dreams last night. Having these images—of red brick buildings and expansive lawns, of the sepia of dawn or dusk, of the amber hues and shadows underneath the trees and shrubs—show up as the scenery for some moment of nighttime revery usually signals a shift. I woke up with Ohio on my mind.

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Seattle Writergrrls is a grassroots network of writers of all types. Our name reflects what our mission was when the group started in 1998. The earliest members, all women, came from different backgrounds with different levels of experience as writers. What we had in common was a recognition that the Internet mattered and would change the landscape of how all of us earned a living. Our goal was to collectively to support each other in figuring out how to write in what was then a brand new media: the web. I was the group’s first List Administrator, a role I held for over four years and one I reclaimed in 2010.

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Part 3 in this meme is long overdue. This part of the alphabet took me back to one of my honeymoon destinations, looking under the ocean’s surface at night, and riding the single-rail tram while playing tour guide at home.

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I was recently invited to write a short post for tourists about where to buy Pacific Northwest wines when visiting Seattle. Read it out over at Jennifer Blair’s Find Your Joy blog.

Seattle skyline at sunset

Photo courtesy of Mike Russell, all rights reserved.

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