A Musing

I'm finally on a computer that doesn't have a worthless browser like the one on my BlackBerry. Not that I'm dissing the piece of crap that passes for software on my phone. I'm sitting in front of my Mom's computer cruising the Internet, and doing my darndest to remove all traces of my virtual journey across the web. The boys in Moscow are having none of it, and that's probably okay, considering that most of them travel rather than host.

I went out to The Barn today out in Uniontown, Washington. The Barn houses an eclectic group of artists' studios in many different mediums, plus it has the world's niftiest gift shop. My sister, Katherine, has a studio there, and she showed me her latest watercolor that will one day end up on a grateful wall of my home. I like her painting for its sense of place, and my connection to the place. I guess I'm a natural born humanist, or something like that. Currently, The Barn is hosting an exhibit from the Washington State University School of Architecture about the wooden grain elevators that dot the Palouse country. I grew up seeing grain elevators everywhere, but without any connection or knowledge about them. I liked the exhibit, and will quietly regret the demise of these prairie sentinels.

Tie Dye. Who knew that it's alive and well in Moscow, Idaho? Moscow has a tie-dye business (curiously called Tye-Dye Everything) and has had for ten years. I talked to one of the owners, and we're talking hardcore hippie. She and her husband lived in the woods in a recycled school bus. She's been making tie-dyed goods since 1989. The shop is overwhelming. There is nothing there that doesn't come out psychidelically enhanced. I was impressed. It reminded me of my dorm room at Theophilus Tower.