Seeds of Innovation

Good morning, gentle reader. Although this photograph was taken in Northwest DC, the setting transports me to my time in the Pacific Northwest, namely in Seattle. Seattle-- where the coffee is strong and the rain, imminent. There is an Asian sensibility to this composition-- perhaps it is the brown lattice screen. 

Lamb's Ear in McLean

Seattle, being the only subtropical rain forest in the United States, has a marked advantage for gardeners. We had a (tiny) lawn that mimicked a putting green quite well; during our stay in Seattle I, even I, was able to grow Lamb's Ear and the notoriously uncooperative rose.

Last roses of Summer in DC

I read an article in this week's Washington Post ( Feeling Bookish ) on the book culture in Emerald City:

"Books are a great technology," says Erin Belieu, poet and artistic director of the Port Townsend Writers Conference up on the Olympic Peninsula. "They have a warmth that's both metaphysical and actual: Who has an image of herself curling up with a Kindle on a rainy day?"

Is it terribly sacrilegious to say that I can imagine and have done just that with my "Kindle on a rainy day"? Will we one day, as technology marches ever-forward, bemoan the absence of the feel of the smooth glass beneath our fingertips as we swipe to the next page on our reading devices? Will the common complaint be that "I find the holographic images (of Twelfth Night enacted by 3 inch, 3D "actors" a la R2-D2 in Star Wars) to be so cold and soulless"? Post-Gutenberg, did the masses protest across Western Europe that they missed the warmth of oral tradition and the opaqueness of Latin rites?

Perhaps I'm suggesting adapting early and adapting often.

Musingly,

The Modern Suburbanite