Old Seattle: Pioneer Square

Those early Seattle settlers I mentioned yesterday moved to the eastern shore of Elliott Bay when the West Seattle peninsula winters got too rough. Pioneer Square is where they settled. It's a trendy, thriving piece of the city now, but when urban activity moved north in the 1930s, (around the same time Pike Place Market opened), Pioneer Square was abandoned. Developers had an eye on this area in the 1960s: they wanted to make it into a parking garage. Its citizens were able to preserve it citing its precious architecture from the late 1890s. After a devastating fire, Pioneer Square was rebuilt with many of its new buildings designed by architect Elmer Fisher.

[This sounds a lot like my hometown, Cape May: the devastating late-1800s fire, city rebuilt in Victorian style, contemporary developers wanting to level our favorite landmarks for parking!]

This landmark, the J&M Cafe & Cardroom, was unfortunately closed whe I visited.

So was this building, although less permanently closed than the cardroom. However, I saw no evidence other than its name that it has anything to do with quilts.

This is a cool part of town, even in a heat wave (did I mention this week's record-breaking heat wave?). I could only afford to window-shop after I blew my travel budget in Elliott Bay Books, but what a cool bookstore. [Cape May needs something like this!] I researched book events here before my trip and found author talks there almost daily with even more events in collaboration with the public library and area cultural organizations. I could only feasibly fit in one event, so I chose an author talk by Rick Bass, author of The Wild Marsh and a number of others. I enjoyed a peach smoothie in the Elliott Bay Cafe before the talk. Rick Bass came out at 7:30ish and talked about his book describing the wild place where he lives in Montana. I enjoyed knowing that people outside the place he writes about read his writing. [I've been warned that people outside Cape May are not going to read anything creative I write about my place.] But Rick Bass writes so descriptively and lovingly about his life in Montana's Yaak Valley with his wife and daughters that his book is a joy to read. [I can do it!] He wrote good wishes to me and my writing in my book afterwards.

Pioneer Square has a nautical feel to it thanks to the nearby waterfront and sailors on leave walking around town. (I saw lots!) This store, CuttySark, was devoted to nautical antiques and collectibles, and luckily was closed when I discovered it or I'd have yet another box of shipped Seattle souvenirs arriving at my house next week (besides the books and quilt fabric).

Seattle: I Covered the Waterfront

In spite of temperatures climbing close to triple digits, or perhaps because of the heat, I spent the first part of Tuesday on the Seattle Waterfront. I like how in summer there is a cool breeze coming off the water and out on a boat I can feel chilly even on a hot day. I started at the Seattle Aquarium, a small but interesting aquarium relatively speaking. There are no trained dolphins here as the emphasis is on education and research. That sounds dull, but the aquarium isn't. I still can't say I've seen a live octopus, but I saw one of the arms of the aquarium's Giant Pacific Octopus called Buster. I hung around the octopus tank for the Octopus Talk and learned a few things: the octopus changes color from snowy white to a bright coral, and it uses its tentacled arms to pull food into its beaked mouth which is actually on its underside. The speaker showed us the mouth on a puppet since Buster the Seattle Giant Pacific Octopus was not coming out of his den no matter how many creepy crustaceans they tempted him with. We could see him change color, though, and that was something.

Near the octopus tank is the arch of jellyfish called Moon Jellies, a plexiglass arch filled with water. Jellyfish swim through this and are lighted with different colors. It is an imaginative way to display jellyfish, not my favorite sea creatures. The Sixgill Shark Research Station is in this section, too. The sixgill is the kind of shark found in these waters, evidently a docile member of that family.

A scenic overlook leads to the Harbor Seals and Sea Otters along with other mammals. The Sea Otters were particularly playful. At the beginning and end of the walk through the aquarium is the Window on Washington Waters, a cool display of local fish.

I took this shot from the cafe balcony. I ate lunch there with a gull, a little fancier than the New Jersey gulls I know.

And then my ship finally came in.

It's called the Harbor Cruise, but technically it takes visitors around Elliott Bay. This company, Argosy, is celebrating their sixtieth anniversary this year. A knowledgable guide named Raymond told us all about the skyline, the waterfront, the industry surrounding the waterfront (grain is big along with fish), and the early history of the area. The original pioneers from Chicago thought they'd make a new, western Manhattan on the peninsula of (now-called) West Seattle, across the bay from what is now Seattle. The winters here were brutal, so they gave up and moved to what is now the Pioneer Square section of Seattle (tomorrow's blogpost). Now West Seattle is a bedroom community for the city, and its citizens get to work by ferry. Bridges wouldn't be feasible because the bay is quite deep. We saw quite a few US Coast Guard ships (making me feel at home--all those guys trained at Cape May, you know), enormous gantry cranes shipped here whole on special ships from China, and a floating drydock. I liked the Harbor/Bay Cruise: it's amazing what you can learn in just an hour. In fact, did you know that it takes one day less to get to Asia from Seattle than from Los Angeles? It's called the Seattle Shortcut.

Second Place, Adult Short Topic--Essay

Wow! How exciting was that?! I actually got second prize for my essay "Baywalk Rondo". I thought I might win and then I thought no way, then I thought maybe, and when they called my name I wasn't sure if they actually called my name. Did I imagine it? But the people at my table were applauding and smiling at me, so I figured I might as well walk up there and see what name was actually on the certificate. It was my name!

What a conference. I really got my money's worth out of these few days with all of the great sessions, meeting the agents and editors, making friends, and then the contest. What was really cool was that many of the people I talked to throught the conference won prizes, too. There were a lot of friendly faces at the winners' reception.

The only thing I regret is not taking more time off to enjoy Seattle. It looks like a nice city and it's about 20 degrees cooler than the Philadelphia area right now. I collected brochures for my next trip and told my new friends at the conference I would be back next year. I'll have to keep my word.

I will be happy to be home again this time tomorrow, and back to the routine for a few weeks before my next week at the beach.

PNWA conference

Hello from Seattle! I'm here for the Pacific Northwest Writers' Association summer conference, and I'm busy beyond belief. I registered for this conference because my essay was chosen as a finalist in the Adult Short Topic--Essay divison and a quick look at the presentations and benefits of attending convinced me to fly to Seattle. In preparing for this event and now living it, the contest has faded to the background and I'm looking forward to meeting an editor and an agent: both seem like good matches for my work. The presentations are also very interesting--enough so that I'm not tempted to play hookie to go see more of Seattle or take a nap. (There's a three-hour time difference that I'm coping with reasonably well.)

Books are the thing here. Hardly anyone is talking about articles. Romance, Fantasy, and Thriller writers are everywhere and I haven't met any Travel Essayists yet. Just about everyone is interested in trading book ideas, and this is good practice for stating our ideas concisely. Mine, of course, changes everytime I say it, but it is basically an essay about Cape May, NJ, through the months and seasons narrated by me, one of the last baby boomers to enter middle age. Everyone who visits Cape May knows that it has a rich Victorian heritage, but most don't know about all the other historical, cultural, and natural histories that go along with the region. People I talk to who are familiar with Cape May are always surprised when I tell them that the area was first settled by whalers in the 1600s, it was a prime target during WWII because of its proximity to major ports up the Delaware River, and that it hosts the World Series of Birding. So that's my quick description and it seems to interest most people I talk to. Whether it interests the agent I meet tomorrow remains to be seen. That's the Cape May Point Lighthouse above, by the way. (I don't have any pictures of Seattle!)

The article writing doesn't stop while I'm in Seattle. I just submitted revisions to my cranberry article for Edible Jersey late last night, and my World War II at the Twin Capes and Holidays at the Twin Capes articles were submitted to Twin Capes Traveller (the ferry magazine) hours before I left New Jersey. I'm not doing much actual writing while in Seattle, but I'm gathering steam for when I return home.

It's almost 6am and I've been up for an hour already. I should take a nap since I have to be coherent and charming until 10:30 tonight. I'm dealing with the time difference reasonably well.